“I’ll be home as often as I can to visit,” Aurora assured her. Her mother and father always made time to drive up to Seattle to visit her once or twice a year.
“Of course you will,” Jade agreed. “This little one is going to need to have his or her aunt in their life.” She looked at Aurora with a conspiratorial wink.
Guilt filled Aurora, knowing she might not be able to be there for her niece as much as she would like to be. But there were phone calls and video chats. She would make it a priority to use every source of communication she had to build that special relationship.
“Mom . . .” she said.
“Yes?” her mother replied.
“How did you know Dad was the one?”
Her mother looked surprised by the question and then smiled. “I would have to say that my heart knew first,” she told her. “My head, however, took a little bit longer to catch up. I knew I was almost done with the job I was sent there to do in Alaska and would be heading to Glacier National Park next. I couldn’t allow myself to start something I wouldn’t be around to continue. Your father’s job in Alaska was permanent. It hurt my heart, knowing that our time there was coming to an end.”
Aurora understood that feeling. She had experienced it during her last few days there on Conley Island.
“A few nights before I was supposed to leave Alaska,” their mother went on, “your father asked me out for a goodbye dinner. On our way back after eating, the night sky came alive with the most wondrous colors. We pulled off the main road and then saton the hood of his car, watching the Northern Lights swirl all around us.”
“How romantic,” Jade said, tearing up. Something she also did more often since becoming pregnant.
Their mother nodded. “The Northern Lights took my breath away. At least, I thought it was the colorful phenomenon above us causing it. But the longer I sat there with your father, the more I realized it was being there with him that made it hard for me to breathe. I was in love with this man I had worked alongside professionally. That night, your father told me he loved me, and I knew I couldn’t walk away from what we had between us. I ended up staying and going to work for his company. We married and stayed in Alaska until we started our family. Then, we moved here to Oregon, where your father’s family was from, and have been here ever since.”
“I just love that story,” Aurora said with a sigh.
Their mother looked her way. “Trust your heart, sweetie. When it’s right, your heart will let you know.”
Aurora was pretty certain hers already did. She nodded her response.
“Is it almost time to eat?” Jade asked. “I’m starving.”
“You’ve been eating all day,” Aurora teased.
“We’vebeen eating all day,” her sister replied with a playful jab at her expanding abdomen.
Aurora’s cell phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans, signaling the arrival of a text. Slipping it free, she glanced down to see that Gage had sent her a text. As it always did whenever he called or texted, her heart did a little flip.
Clicking on the screen to open the message, Aurora read what he’d sent her:
I just wanted to wish you and your family a Happy ‘Early’ Thanksgiving!
“What, or maybe we should ask who, just put that big ol’ smile on your face?” her mother inquired with a querying glance.
“I bet I know,” Jade said in a singsong reply.
Aurora smiled. “Gage texted me to wish all of us a happy Early Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, that was really sweet of him,” her mother said.
“That’s Gage,” Aurora told them. “Always thinking of others.”
If he only knew how often she thought of him. When Aurora had least expected it, she had found love under the Northern Lights, just as her parents had all those years ago. Things hadn’t worked out as easily for her and Gage as they had for her mother and father. But anything worth having was worth investing the time into getting. She loved Gage. That was the first time she admitted that to herself.
“I love him,” Aurora said aloud.
Both her mother’s and Jade’s eyes widened with that blurted-out admission, joy lighting their faces.
“I knew it!” Jade exclaimed.
“The Northern Lights did it again!” her mother declared in delight.
