“Anyway,” she goes on. “We won’t keep you. I’ll come say hi to Lucy in a little while.”
“Okay. See you later.”
William nods. “Logan.”
“Thanks again, Will.”
“Anytime. See you later, little man.”
I turn to find Lucy standing at the end of the hallway, at the door. She’s wearing her pressed trousers and a shirt, with short heels, her brown hair tied up in a sophisticated bun.
She looks so devastatingly beautiful.
Walking over, she leans forward, kissing me and then Adam on the top of the head. “I missed you both so much.”
“We missed you too,” I whisper.
“Is that crazy? It’s only been a few hours.”
“It feels like years.”
“I’m not even…apologetic about it.”
I laugh gently, so I don’t wake Adam. “Neither am I.”
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
TEN YEARS LATER
Lucy
I walk from the Never Alone offices, across the parking lot to our big Mom-mobile. I love the sight of that car, just like I love this feeling, this glow inside me when I hear another success story.
Of course, it’s always tempered with the sadness, the pain of what they’re going through.
But today, a girl named Wendy told me she’d finally found a job and was sticking to a regular schedule.
“That’shuge,” I said, brimming with pride. “Seriously, you should be so proud.”
She’s in her early twenties, and she blushed, making me think of myself at her age. All that blushing with Logan… and hestillmakes me blush sometimes.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s been tough since my mom….”
But from pain can come a life so happy, so perfect, the old version of us never would’ve believed it.
As I approach the car, I see Logan pull up…his is more of aDad-mobile, with tinted windows, raised off the ground with big chunky rims.
He parks and steps out, waving over at me.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve baggy shirt, the sort the wind pushes against his body… his firm, muscled body.
His hair has only gotten a deeper shade of silver as the years have gone on. His body more protective and readier to keep our family safe.
Adam steps from the car, putting Rusty down and walking over with him on the leash.
Next little Jane hops out.As we’ve come to call her, Big Janecried with joy when I told her we were naming our next child after her… little did she know Little Jane was going to have a twin.
I wanted to call her Anna, but Logan said he wanted her to have her own name. So we named her Hazel Anna Locke in honor of her big sister.