Page 150 of Made for Mayhem

“Okay,” Junie said, then handed the phone back. “I’ll tell Piggie to be extra nice.”

“Is that a yes?” Sandra asked, and I squeezed Ty’s shoulder, giving him my approval.

“Yes,” Ty said, reaching up to take my hand in his. “Yes, it is.”

Sandra exhaled a shaky breath of relief. “Thank you. We’ll be there in an hour.”

Ty ended the call, still crouched in front of Junie, still holding her little hands. For a long moment, none of us moved. The wind whispered through the tall grass, brushing past us like Violet herself was slipping between our shoulders, nudging us toward whatever came next.

Junie pushed her glasses up and looked between us. “We should get ready, right? Babies need bottles and blankets and those squishy fruit pouches, and a crib. Maybe Stevie has one.”

Ty smiled, small and a little undone. “Yeah, bug. We should get ready.”

She took off toward the house with Piggie snorting behind her, shouting, “I’ll clean my room! And make a sign! And find some toys he won’t choke on!”

Her voice faded as she ran, swallowed up by the golden field and the fading sun. Ty rose slowly, brushing off his jeans, and turned toward me.

He wasn’t grieving the way Junie and I were—not with the same sharpness, not with the hollow ache that had shaped our entire summer. But he’d carried us through it. Loved us through it. And the tenderness in his eyes held the weight of all of it.

“Are you sure?” he asked, searching my face. “This is a big change.”

I stepped into him, sliding my hand into his, the wildflowers brushing against our legs as the wind swept through the valley again.

“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “The hardest part of losing someone is realizing life keeps going anyway. But maybe that’s the point—we keep going too.”

His breath hitched, as if he took that right into his bloodstream.

Behind us, the last of Violet’s ashes drifted along the field, settling into the earth. I looked up into Ty’s hazel eyes and felt the truth of it settle deep inside me.

We weren’t replacing Violet.

We weren’t erasing the loss.

We were growing around it, making a life that honored her.

Ty squeezed my hand. “Okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to me. “Okay.”

We stood there for another moment—just long enough to watch the sky shift from gold to rose to violet—and then he nodded toward the house.

“Come on,” he said, a soft smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “We’ve got a room to set up.”

I leaned into his side as we walked, our steps matching without effort.

Behind us, the wildflowers bent in the wind. Ahead of us, the porch light flickered on.

Together, Ty and I walked toward the house, toward our little girl, toward the tiny boy who needed a place to land.

Toward a future that was ours to build.

EPILOGUE

Five Years Later

“In order for this wall calendar to work, you have to fill it out,” Junie said from the kitchen, decked out in Mayhem black-and-green and ready to go. Her dark blonde hair was braided with the precision of a girl who thrived on routine, and glasses replaced with contacts I was still getting used to. Gone was the baby-face, and she looked more like Violet by the day. “This was supposed to be a way to get the things out of your head, because your head is”—she circled her hand near her temple, all teenage sass—“a very unreliable filing cabinet.”

I, on the other hand, was nowhere near ready. “Now is not the time for a new system, June.” I hopped on one foot, trying to wedge my boot on, but that was easier said than done when you couldn’t see your own toes. “But thank you. Can you show me how to use it again tomorrow?”

She nodded, then pushed the button on the screen to make the fancy digital wall calendar go dark.