I love you for your heart. I couldn’t bear it if you stopped.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll never stop thinking. But I will think of the best version of things, not the worst.”
She blinked slowly, her eyelids feeling heavy. “Then so will I. And I think there will be a lot of good things for you and I to think about.”
Lucie had always thought that being in love was for fools. And, indeed, it had always looked like it was a foolish thing.
But as she sat with Abdul, wrapped up in his arms, under the stars, murmuring the same kinds of words that would have seemed like platitudes to her mere months ago, she finally understood.
It wasn’t about the words. It wasn’t about what they said to each other—it was the feeling behind it. The feeling that she could only hear in the sound of his voice, not the meaning of the words. The feeling that she could sense in his touch, and in the warmth of his glances.
And it was that feeling that she knew she would trust, now and forever.
Epilogue
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
Lucie couldn’t believe little Nadiah was running already, but she couldn’t deny the evidence as she chased her around the palace. Not that she minded. She loved racing through the halls as much now as she had loved exploring them that first day with the man who was now her husband. And, besides, tonight would be an important night—it was good for little Nadiah to get out her energy before the guests arrived.
Were Abdul a stricter father, he likely would have insisted she be kept away somehow, so that she wouldn’t be underfoot while all the dignitaries, scientists and academic luminaries might be annoyed by a child in their midst. They would begin arriving at any moment, and in a household where children were to be seen and not heard, she would have been spirited away.
But theirs was not a very traditional household. They didn’t cling to the old, dusty ways of either of their families. But they did honor some traditions. They honored loyalty, and love, and a certain amount of blissful chaos. And, Lucie remembered, as she put her hand on her belly, soon they would be honoring the tradition of big, noisy families as well.
Not that they were waiting for the rest of their children to come to fill the palace with people. What had once been such an empty, lonely place now teemed with life. There was a certain inconvenience, maybe, to the garden being torn up. But living in an active dig site had made the inconvenience well worthwhile.
“The first guests from your alma mater are here,” her husband grinned at her. He was adjusting his tie on his way down to greet the guests, but on the whole he was much more prepared for the night ahead than Lucie was.
“Harvard or Yale?” she asked, though she was already moving on, lest she lose her daughter around a corner.
“Harvard!” she heard Abdul call from behind her as she continued the chase.
Life after finishing her PhD was better, certainly, than it had been before. Though she could hardly give all the credit to having completing her studies.
Living in Al-Brehoni had been an adjustment, but it had been one that she made quickly. Once she had realized that the center of pottery that she had theorized had once been on the site where the palace now stood, the rest of her dissertation practically wrote itself.
And, once the small matter of her achieving her lifelong dream and completing her doctorate was out of the way, she achieved the dream she never even knew she had, and married the love of her life.
And tonight, she would stand beside him, and announce a formal, permanent joint program between the newly-formed Al-Brehoni Archeological Trust and certain key American universities. The test program had certainly been a success—in more ways than one.
As Lucie caught her daughter, and scooped her up into her arms, she remembered the first time she had come to Al-Brehoni. She’d known so little, then, about what an impact the trip would have on her life. She’d thought she had, but she’d been clueless. And, in the end, though there was much confusion, and anger, and unhappiness along the way, she knew she’d do it all again in a flash. She’d go through anything again to end up with the life she had now: living and working in a place she loved, with a man she loved, and the family she didn’t know she had so badly needed. Finally, she was home.
The End
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