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She was standing exactly here.

“For the records,” Rory said, and lifted the camera.

Shane’s arm came around her waist. She leaned into him. The snow kept falling. The tree blazed behind them. The flash went off.

Rory lowered the camera and looked at the little screen, and their face did something Allison had never seen Rory’s face do before.

“Somebody’s going to want this someday,” Rory said quietly.

* * *

Later, walking home through the snow with his hand in hers and the little wooden sparrow in her coat pocket, her phone buzzed.

Rory had sent her the photo.

She stopped under a streetlight and looked at it. The two of them on the gazebo steps, snow in their hair, the tree gold behind them, his arm around her, her face turned up toward his. She looked at the woman in the photo and thought she had never seen herself look like that. Like someone who was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Someday someone would stand at that fence, looking at seventy years of the same gazebo, and they’d see this one. They’d ask who those two were.

And somebody in Merrybrook would know.

She opened her messages.

merrybrook does christmas, she texted Becca.

Thirty seconds.

and?

She sent the photo.

Her phone started buzzing and did not stop.

ALLISON

ALLISON HAYES

is that the hardware store man

his name is Shane, she typed, laughing.

I KNOW HIS NAME

I’m crying on my couch

Kevin is asking why I’m crying on the couch

I’m crying too, Allison wrote. A little.

I’m so happy for you I can’t breathe

I know, Allison wrote. Me too.

She looked up. Shane was standing a few feet ahead of her in the falling snow, waiting under the next streetlight with his hands in his pockets, not hurrying her, looking back at her the way he always looked at her. Like she was the only person on the street. Like she was the only person anywhere.

goodnight becca, she typed.

DON’T YOU DARE