Reaching up, he touched a finger to her lips. “Pretty sure I started falling for you the first day I saw you crying on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore.”

Natalie would always remember that he had been kind and patient that day. She wanted to forget what a mess she’d been at that moment. She took his hand away. “You thought I was a homeless woman.”

“I thought you were sad and beautiful and someone I wanted to know. Every moment I spent with you made me feel alive again. I wrote songs about you …” He paused, and she was shocked to hear a quaver in his voice. “Say yes, Natalie. It’s not hard.”

It wouldn’t be easy, either. She was not so naïve as to think this would be a walk in the park. Peach would challenge her. He would also love her with his whole big giant soft heart. Last night, she’d told him she was about to lose everything, and it hadn’t mattered at all to him. Instead, he’d made it clear that she mattered.

She laughed with the madness of it all. He had already changed her heart, made her feel braver, bolder. “If this is what I think it is,” she said, gesturing at the folio, “can we honeymoon in Spain?”

“We can honeymoon on the moon if you want. But honestly, I’d go anywhere with you. A beach motel. A cave. Seriously, anywhere.”

Her laughter fluttered into wonder. And even though it was the biggest leap of faith she’d ever taken, she trusted that. Trusted him. Trusted whatever the future held.

EPILOGUE

RARE AUDUBON MASTERPIECE SELLS AT AUCTION FOR RECORD $11 MILLION

SAN FRANCISCO—John James Audubon’s four-volume masterwork, The Birds of America, sold in a fiercely competitive bidding war at Sheffield Auction House, to a bidder who requested anonymity. The buyer, a philanthropist and connoisseur of rare books, will gift it to the California Museum of History, Arts and Sciences. The work is the artist’s crowning achievement—a four-tome folio of 435 hand-colored prints depicting life-size birds in their natural habitats.

According to provenance expert Theresa Delaney Rossi, the recently found treasure was originally the property of William Randolph Hearst, who acquired it from his father, Senator George Hearst. During his post-Harvard years in San Francisco, Hearst gifted the set to a woman of his acquaintance, an Irish immigrant named Colleen O’Rourke, who was presumed killed in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Her son, Julius Harper, was one of hundreds of orphans who survived the disaster and was raised in the San Francisco Orphan Asylum.