Epilogue

There they are! Oh Paul, they made it after all!”

Despite the unpredictability of December Wisconsin weather, Sarah and John had promised to come for Christmas, and it was just a day away. Little did they know their visit would include a celebration besides the birth of the Savior.

By the time Virginia rushed outside to wave at them still far down the lane, another buggy soon appeared on the horizon.

“Looks like Reverend DeWeis will be as punctual for us as he expects his congregation to be on Sundays for him,” Paul said, drawing Virginia close and adding a wave of his own with his free hand. He hadn’t promised to accompany Virginia to church every Sunday, but she’d visited Paul’s cathedral in nature often enough for him to have convinced her he met God there with every bit as much reverence as she met Him at a conventional church. Paul had agreed, though, to occasionally attend church in the village with her, if only for her to claim progress on the task Pastor DeWeis had assigned to her.

“Oh Paul, it’s perfect, isn’t it? Having them here for an exchange of real wedding vows this time?”

He kissed her, and the familiar sensation of warmth and tingles spread throughout her. It had been marvelously difficult, this courtship under one roof, knowing legally and perhaps even spiritually they were already married. But Paul himself had suggested if they both wanted this marriage to be real they ought to exchange their vows for a second time. More than that, though she’d seen him fairly choke on the words, he admitted it was probably the high road to take if they waited until then before she moved into his bedroom.

They exchanged fierce hugs with Sarah and John, who were both surprised to see the reverend join them a few moments later.

“Oh Virginia! I’m so, so very happy for you! For you both!” Then Sarah beamed, smiling down at the infant in her arms. “Just wait, little Elijah, until I tell you how I arranged the marriage between your Aunt Virginia and Uncle Paul!”

The ceremony was every bit as brief but far more happily done than the first one out in the garden earlier that year, but Reverend DeWeis cheerfully repeated the vows for them to exchange.

That night, after all were abed—Sarah and John and the baby in the room Virginia had vacated only that morning—Paul held his wife and kissed her temple.

“The reverend was right, Virginia. God did use you to make this marriage a true ministry of marriage. You with your bonnets, me with my bees. After Christmas, I think we ought to go back to the city with Sarah and John. Your place will be finished sooner if we stop pestering poor Mr. O’Shea. What do you say to splitting the months between here and there? Summer here, in the peace and quiet. Winters there? Everyone hibernates in Wisconsin winters, so what will be the difference?”

She sat up, and in the dim moonlight that filtered through the window above the bed, she looked all the more lovely. “Do you mean it? You wouldn’t be too unhappy so far from the openness of life out here?”

“I’ve never liked the winter months. They’re long without my bees. And with you … home is here, or there.”

“Oh Paul, how I do love you!”

“And I you,” he whispered, pulling her back into his arms.