✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

134. Our Future

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Maja. Thank you for your support!

Ffrances smiled when she looked at the page. There were so many notes in it, so many messages. Some of them were inconsequential things, a letter from one character to another about something that had happened in one of the other comics. Both characters who were in this book, and those who weren't. Some of them were generic text messages that someone might send, like asking a spouse to pick up eggs at the supermarket. Ffrances gave a little laugh when she found that one; "We need eggs" was nearly always one of the messages in these displays, but the names were always different, and sometimes it was in another language. And then there were the personal messages... snippets of off-topic discussion from the various forums where Kernigan's fans congregated. It was a mark of respect for a fan to see their name on the page; it meant that Kernigan thought they were someone worth paying attention to. And Ffrances was already excited to see if any of her friends had appeared.

Ffrances started in the top corner of the page, trying to ensure that she wrung every drop of truth and foreshadowing out of every single message. I'd seen her trying to decipher them before, and I knew that a page like this could take more than an hour to read in full. But I would happily wait. And this time, I could understand some of what she was talking about. It really was a weird rabbit hole once you started reading those books; a whole world of interconnected theories, stories, and jokes that felt like you could only see through the smallest window. I was glad I'd given it a chance.

Watching her go through every detail, I felt like I was falling in love with her all over again. So serious, so meticulous, but still making enough little jokes. I could have listened to that voice for hours, no matter what she was talking about. She knew an awful lot, sure, but she was also incredibly intelligent and could put the right clues together in a forest of red herrings. She had a mind like a razor, and she could always come to the right answer. And perhaps more importantly, she was always happy to accept help. She would talk to anyone, and never thought herself superior. Those were the things that had gotten my interest in the first place; even more than her figure.

Somehow, it was Spike who noticed my message first. He pointed it out at the bottom of the page: "This one's for Ephemeral Addict!"

I saw Ffrances's eyes go wide when she heard that, but she didn't read it right away. Even the boy who had planted himself in our house, disrupting all of our plans, got some measure of respect. She asked him to read it, so that he could feel like he was a part of this discovery. So it would be something they discovered together. And I hoped that he wouldn't make a joke of it, because his keen eyes suddenly had the power to ruin the atmosphere for my proposal, which I had worked on for so long.

"It's addressed to you," he said simply. "You should read it." And in that moment I was grateful to him. Even after everything I had done, and everything I was going to do to get him out of my hair, he didn't take the chance to get in my way.

"Ephemeral Addict," Ffrances read, and it felt strange to hear her reading her own nickname. Especially since she'd never said it aloud to me before. In fact, the only person I'd heard use that name for her had been Kernigan. She read out the message; and the joke about buying her a golden ring. And then her voice cracked and she was fighting against a sudden stammer as she came to the last sentence. "Will you marry me?"

That was my cue. I had the ring out of my pocket while she was reading, and opened it as she said those words. And perhaps she wasn't sure the message was from me. Her lips were parted as she looked up, as if there was another question there. But then she saw the box, and the sparkling diamond, and she was lost for words.