The handoff went smoothly even though she tried putting up a fight. The attendant had done a wonderful job, and she was very well subdued. I watched until she was loaded onto the plane, and it took off. “Let’s go, Gerard; I need to speak to the caterers about my children’s reception.”EpilogueCALEN“Oh, for fuck sake!” I shifted my five-month-old daughter on my shoulder and looked down at the Lego piece that had just dug into my foot. This fucking old man! I glared around the empty room and called out for my wife. “Where’s everyone?” I never trust when my house is this damn quiet. It hasn’t been in ten years.
Calen Jr. and the twins have seen to that; now they have their little brothers joining the fray and at the center of it all is my father in law and my own father, who seem to think it’s funny to destroy my peace of mind while their home lives are calm. Four boys in ten years with the twins Sterling and Bryce coming first followed by Jonathan and Justin a year and three later, respectively.
My little Jasmine was a surprise since my wife, and I had closed up shop after giving up hope of ever having a girl. I guess that’s not exactly accurate since we never used any form of birth control, and my pullout game is nonexistent. If I thought things were bad before with the boys, I didn’t know the half of it until my little angel was born.
Mom has completely lost her mind, and Giselle’s grandma, who sometimes seemed in that first year as if she were on her last leg, has suddenly perked up at the spry old age of eighty. The kids seem to keep her young, either that or the shit my own mother gets her up to.
My latest problem, though, is Sterling Winthrop the first. Not only did he talk my wife and I into naming our second son after him, but he’s been trying to steal my damn kids away, wanting to turn them into architects. Thankfully, Calen Jr. is a chip off the old block, but the fight is still on for the others, ergo the Legos that are all over my house. I thought those shits were toys.
My wife, the sneak plays Switzerland, she’s neutral and keeps her nose out of it, or so she says. But she’s a daddy’s girl down to her damn toes. Except at night when I fuck some sense into her, then I know she’s on my side.
“Where is your mom and brothers, baby?” I’d just come home and changed when I heard her stirring in the nursery and hadn’t had time to put on my house slippers before getting to her, or she’d have screamed the place down. My angel has a pair of lungs like her grandma’s.
I finally followed the sound of voices outside to the garden where the whole family was gathered; it seemed. I smiled, and my heart filled with joy when I saw my wife barefoot in the grass, kicking a soccer ball with our boys as her dad and mine played on opposing sides.
Her laughter pierced my soul, and I found myself not for the first time in years thanking my lucky stars that she’d come back to me. Life has been even better than I could’ve ever imagined in the last ten years. Our oldest had no lingering effects from that time; in fact, he doesn’t have any memory of never having me around.
I sometimes feel guilty that his brothers and now his sister has had all of me while he was robbed of his first year and the time he spent in his mother’s womb, but whenever I get that like that, Giselle feels awful and blames herself, so I try not to go there. I do make it up to him in other ways, though, because the guilt is something I think I’ll live with for the rest of my life.
The people responsible have been dealt with. Ann is still sitting in jail for attempted murder, and Dana, well, mom’s little game with her, had gone further than expected. That place had broken her, and she was now little more than a shell of the woman she once was.
Last I heard, she was living on the streets somewhere in Washington doing who knows what for her next fix. Sometimes I recall the person I thought she was and feel bad, but I’m sure if I tried helping her, mom would finish her off, and I don’t want that on my conscience. Mom has no idea that I know what she’d done, and I won’t ever tell her because I don’t think that even she expected things to turn out this way.
My wife finally saw me standing in the doorway, watching her, and ran over for her hug and kiss. “When did you get home? Come play with us.” She ran her hand over the baby’s head before kissing her cheek, and I was only too happy to pass her off to mom, who was just waiting for the chance.