Epilogue

Epilogue

But can I just tell you? The man is thriving.

He’s living his best life, times ten.

All to say: The birdhouses really took off.

After he got out of prison, he started a birdhouse-building company, and he filled up his entire front yard with them. Hundreds. In all different colors, on poles of all different heights, in all different shapes: barns with sliding doors, Dutch windmills that spin, and even a little modern replica of Fallingwater. It’s become the most photographed birdhouse-themed location on the internet. Not only for its whimsy, but also because it’s a perfect selfie background.

He named his company Make It Better Birdhouses.

Nowadays, he’ll tell you that night on Jack’s roof was the darkest moment of his life. In fact, it’s in the mission statement on his website, under the heading, “Why Birdhouses?” He encountered a powerful dose of kindness at exactly the moment he needed it most—and it was a revelation. He got some professional help, and some medication, and now he tries every day to pay it forward.

To reject rage—and to choose kindness, instead.

And birdhouses.

He even did a TED Talk about it.

Last time I checked, it had four million views.

Dammit if Wilbur didn’t turn out to be the wisest one of us all.

I mean, sort of.

He’s also very aware that he almost killed both me and himself that night long ago, and not only did he send a sternly worded letter to the man at the gun store who sold him that pistol even after Wilbur hinted at what he planned to do with it—he now uses his platform to advocate for stronger gun laws every chance he gets.

It’s not theoretical for him, he says. It’s personal.

Also, every year on my birthday, he sends me a birdhouse.

Does it freak me out that he knows where I live?

Absolutely.

But not that much more than everything else.

The motto for Wilbur’s company is, after all: “Make the birdhouse you wish to see in the world.”

He seems to have found a healing vocation for himself. And to be making a pretty good living. And he’s definitely become a folk-art hero of the birdhouse community.

He says getting lost in darkness forced him to look for the light.

He also mentions Jack Stapleton as his “biggest fan and best friend” pretty frequently.

Which is fine. Jack hasn’t seen Wilbur once since the night he shot me—but it’s fine.

Jack has actually featured a couple of Wilbur’s birdhouses on his Instagram. And I follow his TikTok. As fans of both birdhouses and people who courageously change their thinking, we’re very glad he’s doing well.

In theory.

From a distance.

The question of the hour, of course is: Did Lacey ever come back to Wilbur?

She did not.

She filed for divorce.

But, as luck would have it, on the day he got served the papers, Wilbur decided to eat an entire sheet cake as a method of self-care, and when he called the order in to the bakery and asked to personalize it with YOUR LOSS, LACEY! KISS MY ASS, the cake decorator thought it was so funny that she slipped her phone number into the cake box with a note that read: “You’re hilarious. Call me! Love, Charlotte.”

A year later, on Valentine’s Day, Wilbur and Charlotte eloped.

So I sent them a copy of Charlotte’s Web as a wedding gift.

DID JACK WIND up making the sequel to The Destroyers?

He did.

Turns out it’s harder to give up being a world-famous movie star than you’d think.

Especially when you don’t hate yourself like crazy every day anymore.

Though he also made a One Movie a Year rule.

In the five years since filming Destroyer II: The Redemption, he’s made five movies. A space adventure, a political thriller, a war movie where everybody—even Jack—gets eaten by sharks (I will never watch that one), a rom-com (you’re welcome), and a western.

He did his own stunts for the western.

But nobody believes it.

It seems to be just the right work-life balance. A little filming, a little promoting, and a lot of walking the banks of the Brazos looking for fossils. And I do a similar thing, too, now—one assignment a year. And we time them just right so we’re gone at the same time.

We go off on our separate adventures, and we do our work. And then we go home to Texas.

If Glenn has an assignment for me, and I hesitate, Jack’ll gesture at his own ribcage and say, “Don’t forget your gills.”

But the truth is, I think about escape a lot less than I used to.

Because Jack did move back to his parents’ ranch, and he did build a place a few pastures away—just at the perfect spot on the Venn diagram between “too close” and “too far.”

He and Hank and Doc did wind up building Drew’s boat—and naming it “Sally,” after Drew’s favorite childhood hamster. One of these days, they’re going to sail it down the Texas coast. Just as soon as they learn how to sail.

Jack also turned the oxbow lake into a nature preserve. The Drew Stapleton Texas-in-the-Wild Brazos River Bottom Nature Preserve & Wildlife Center. But everybody just calls it Drew’s Place for short. They cleared hiking and mountain biking trails. They set up classes on butterfly gardening, birding, and waterway conservation. They started summer camps to teach kids how to fish, and build fires, and look after nature.

So that—as Doc says—keeps him out of trouble.

Jack still does something good every single day in honor of Drew. Whether it’s weeding the garden for his mom, or donating a library building to a school, or surprising a group of ICU nurses by showing up to serenade them in a snug-fitting T-shirt, Jack—faithfully, devotedly, and daily—works to honor the memory of his little brother and to justify his own remaining time on this earth.

And he marks it every time by saying, quietly to himself: “This is for you, Drew. Miss you, buddy.”

That’s enough, it turns out.

That’s enough to go on.

WHO WON THE competition for the London job?

Robby did. Glenn was not bluffing when he told me to wait for the cops or kiss London goodbye.

No surprise there.

So Robby got the London job and left the country.

Fine with me. And Taylor, too.

It bugged Kelly that I didn’t get it, though. “You saved a person’s life that night!” she insisted one night over margaritas. “Why should Robby get to win?”

But I guess it depends on how you define winning.

I mean, Robby has to spend the rest of his life being Robby.

That’s losing by definition.

Did I really go on assignment to Korea and leave Jack behind in Texas as soon as my sick leave was up?

Of course. I had a job to do.

But did Jack follow me there a few weeks later, showing up unannounced outside my hotel in a softer-than-velvet cashmere scarf for one magical, snowy night in Seoul?

Officially? Absolutely not. I was working.

More importantly, did Jack finally give me a taker for that Valentine’s vacation to Toledo?

He did. Though he bought my nonrefundable bargain tickets from me and we somehow wound up on a private plane. And he made me let him pick the hotel.

All to say, we went—but don’t ask me what we thought of the botanical gardens. Or the art museum. Or their world-famous chili dogs.

We didn’t get out much.

Am I saying we spent the entire week in a fancy hotel room without leaving even once?

I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Let’s just say that Toledo is now my favorite city of all time.

THOUGH I SHOULD mention that Jack and I aren’t dating anymore. You can’t date a guy like Jack forever.

Not with Connie Stapleton after you twenty-four seven to “hurry up and get married” and “make some grandkids” before her “corpse is in the flower garden.”

She continued reminding us of her possible imminent death long—long—after she was fully recovered in every possible way.

Unrepentantly.

To this day, Connie swears that death—the threat of it, the promise of it, the looming guarantee of it, even if you’re well—has its upsides.

It helps you remember to be alive, if nothing else.

It helps you stop wasting time.

JACK AND I got married at the ranch, of course.

I had a bouquet of fresh-cut honeysuckle and bougainvillea. Jack’s boutonniere had a speckled feather he’d found by the river. We made beaded safety pins and gave them out as keepsakes. And we got Clipper the horse to officiate.

Just kidding.

We got Glenn to officiate. Turns out, he was also a justice of the peace. Who knew?

By then, he was on Wife Number Four, so he declared that pretty much made him an expert. And nobody dared to argue.

We kept the guest list pretty small. Mostly family. And a handful of world-famous movie stars. Of course. But only the ones Jack actually liked.

Kennedy Monroe, for example, did not make the cut.

But guess who did?

Meryl Streep.

She couldn’t make it, but she sent us a set of French steak knives—which would henceforth be known as “Meryl Streep’s steak knives” even to our future kids. As in, “Babe, can you grab me one of Meryl Streep’s steak knives from the drawer?” Or, “Do not try to pry that open with one of Meryl Streep’s steak knives!” Or, “How did a four-year-old manage to bend one of Meryl Streep’s steak knives so badly we can’t bend it back?”

So she really wound up quite a guest of honor.

And did I let Taylor be a bridesmaid, even after she begged?

Um. Not exactly.

I did let her pass out programs, though.

And Kelly? Long-suffering Kelly? Who had tried so hard for so long to find a place on Team Jack but never caught a break from anybody?

We sat her in between Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling—and we sat Doghouse across from them and let him burn with jealousy all night. Then she accidentally spilled a jar of moonshine on one of them—I can never remember which—and she wound up having to help him take off that slim-fit dress shirt and change into one of Jack’s spares.

So in the end she had a pretty okay time.

Sometimes enthusiasm is its own reward.

WHAT’S IT LIKE to be with Jack Stapleton, you want to know?

I imagine it’s like being with any kindhearted, comically good looking, world-famous guy who laughs all the time.

It’s pretty great.

Is Jack’s handsomeness still exhausting?

Absolutely.

Poor guy. He really can’t help it.

And it’s tempered by reality. When he goes for a run and leaves his sweaty T-shirt in a clump on the bathroom floor. When his glasses get bent and he doesn’t notice. When he sneezes into his shirt and then takes a bow like he’s the world’s biggest genius. When he laughs so hard at dinner that he spits water all over the table. When he tries to throw an expired tub of yogurt across the kitchen into the trash can for a three-pointer, misses completely, and then darts out the door before you can make him clean it up.

I mean, he’s not perfect.

But you don’t have to be perfect to be lovable.

One thing that’s changed is that I know for sure I can read him now. I know the acting Jack from the real Jack at a glance. I know his fake laugh from his genuine laugh. I know his irritated smile from his delighted smile. I know his actual passionate kisses from his pretend passionate kisses.

Another thing that’s changed is that I can read myself now.

And by “read,” I mean: appreciate.

I mean, sure, we should all just know our own inherent worth, and see our own particular beauty, and root for ourselves wherever we go.

But does anybody really do that?

It doesn’t hurt to have a little help, right?

It doesn’t hurt to spend your life with people who see what’s great about you—in a way that you maybe never would have on your own.

The people we love help teach us who we are.

The best versions of who we are, if we’re lucky.

That turns out to be my favorite thing about Jack Stapleton. It’s not the handsomeness. Or the way he wears those Levi’s. It’s not the money, or the philanthropy, either. And it’s certainly not the fame.

The fame’s a little bit of a pain, actually.

The best thing about Jack Stapleton is a particular ability he has—and now I know he got it straight from his mom—to see the best in people.

Whoever you are, and whatever you have to offer, he sees it.

He sees it, and he admires it, and then he calls your attention to it. He mirrors back to you a version of yourself that’s infused with admiration. A version that is absolutely, always, undeniably … lovable.

All to say: Peanuts Palmer will never fool me again.

Remember when I called that on-screen kiss Jack had with her “my favorite kiss of all time”?

Yeah. Jack Stapleton took that as a personal challenge.

A personal challenge that he won.

Well … to be fair: We both did.