Epilogue
Cash
Seven years later
“Hop in, Little G,” I tell my son, holding the truck door wide open for him.
One small hand on the seat cushion and the other on the door, he tries to hoist himself up, but his sneakers slip and his legs flail.
I hold out a hand, but he tells me “I can do it,” and I drop my arm.
With plenty of grunting to make sure I appreciate his effort, he finally gets his foot inside the truck and climbs up into his booster seat.
“Whew. Good effort, dude.” I give him a fist bump and pull his seat belt across his chest.
To the surprise of no one, Grant Jonathan Hartnell is basically perfect at four years old.
He’s got his mama’s go-with-the-flow nature and his daddy’s chattiness, all charm and smiles—except on the rare occasion when too little sleep meets a missed snack time, and we’re treated to a tantrum to rival his toddler years.
In a gauzy white sundress, Georgia emerges from the front door of our new red brick Colonial, dark braid cascading over her shoulder and a nylon bin of snacks and toys in her hands.
“Baby, I told you I’d get that. Get in the car and relax, it’s nice and cooled off for you.” I hurry to take the stuff from her arms, but she waves me off.
“I’m fine.” Placing the bin on the floor in the back row, she waves to Grant. “Hi, birthday boy. Ready to go?”
“Hi, Mama. Ready to go.”
She blows him a kiss, and as soon as the car door shuts, I close in on her before she can climb into the passenger seat. I swear, when Georgia’s pregnant, she gives off some kind of pheromones that kick me so hard in the brain I spend nine months following her around like a horny teenager.
“Mama.” I wrap my arms around my wife and run my hands over her round belly. “Did you know you’re the sexiest woman ever to walk the earth? Have I told you that before?”
“The world according to Cash.” She smiles over her shoulder. “If only we could all live there.”
“Step inside, sweetheart. All good times in here.”
She turns around and kisses me. “I will tonight.” Wiggling her eyebrows, she slips free.
“Way to go and set my imagination running when we’re supposed to be having a wholesome family day.”
Our house has an incredible view of Lake Michigan, but today’s outing takes us inland to a sprawling state park and campground with a warm, shallow lake and a long stretch of sandy beach perfect for a just-turned-four-year-old.
I set Georgia up in the highest beach chair we own, place a cooler of drinks and snacks within arm’s reach, and then Grant and I get to work building a sandcastle with a giant pool and wide, curving roads for his plastic trucks.
Dinner is hot dogs cooked on one of the ancient charcoal grills in the park’s picnic area, and then, long after the sun has set, I get Grant showered and cleaned up in the campground bathroom before strapping him into his car seat for the quick drive to the other end of the park.
“It’s not as dark as I thought it would be,” I say to Georgia once we’re parked and I’m spreading blankets in the bed of the truck.
“It’ll be perfect for him,” Georgia insists. “We have many more birthdays ahead, let’s set the bar low for our preschooler.”
“True. I think he’s about twenty minutes from conking out, anyway.”
With Georgia tucked into the truck bed and Grant curled up against her, I climb in myself and lie down next to my son. All day, Grant’s been intermittently peppering us with questions about our “stargazing adventure,” but as his eyes adjust to the darkness, he lies in silent awe of the sky above.
“Want to hear something cool, buddy?” I ask after a few minutes.
Grant nods without taking his eyes off the sky.
“If you use your imagination a little bit, you can see how the stars make pictures. And a long time ago, people gave those pictures names.”
“Where are they?”
“Well, let’s see. An easy one to find is the Big Dipper.
” I press close to him, trying to mimic his view, and draw the pattern in the sky.
“See how when you draw lines between those stars, it makes a picture? Like your connect-the-dots books. This one looks like a big bowl with a long handle. Can you see it?”
Grant squints and nods.
“Pretty cool, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s impressed or indifferent. Grant holds his cards pretty close to the vest.
“My favorite picture is Orion the Hunter.” I glance at Georgia, who’s smiling at me. “But we can’t really see him when it’s summer, so we’ll have to come back here when it’s Mommy’s birthday. Think you’d like that?”
“Definitely.”
It’s hard to know if he’s absorbing my little lessons or just taking in the immensity of the night sky, but he must stare up at it for close to an hour before blinking his blue-green eyes and rolling over to face Georgia. “Now what, Mama?”
“Had enough stargazing, baby?”
“I think so,” he says, stretching his arm over her chest and snuggling his face against her shoulder.
She kisses his forehead and smiles at me over his dark hair. “Birthday cake time, Daddy?”
“On it.”
Inside the cab of the truck, I find the cake carrier and pop it open on the passenger seat, sliding four gold candles into the dark-chocolate frosting, careful not to disturb the sparkly moons and stars.
With a flick of my lighter, the candles are lit, and I carry the cake around the truck, eager to see the smile on my son’s face.
Instead, I’m greeted by Georgia’s, Grant curled toward her and fast asleep.
“Should we wake him?” I whisper, sliding the cake onto the open tailgate.
She shakes her head frantically and slowly extracts herself from our son before creeping to the edge of the truck bed. “Falling asleep under the stars is part of the experience.”
“What about his birthday wish?”
She looks thoughtfully down at the burning candles. “Let’s take this one.”
“Both of us?”
“At the same time. Ready? On three…”
Whispering our countdown, we make our silent wishes and blow out the candles, watching the smoke curl and disappear into the night air.
And when we realize no one packed a knife, we pull out two plastic forks and eat straight off the cake carrier.
It’s a nice break from always having to set an example of good manners.
“What do you think Grant would have wished for?” I ask.
“Hmm. Probably a puppy.”
“Whew. Dodged a bullet there, huh?”
“We definitely don’t need another needy creature in our house.”
“What did you wish for?”
She closes her eyes and sighs indulgently. “More sleep.”
“You got it, babe. You sleep in tomorrow. I’ll get Little G to camp.”
“Really? You did it every day last week. I know you’re tired.”
“I thrive on chaos. Now quit arguing, lovely.”
She gives me a tender kiss on the lips. “What did you wish for?”
“An old classic.”
“A million dollars? A pony? More wishes?”
“Something way better.”
“Tell me, I need some ideas. Next birthday I want to wish for something more exciting than a nap.”
“I wished for every birthday to be this perfect.”
Georgia pauses to peer at me with her fork in the air, then lowers it as tears shimmer in her baby blues. “Cash.”
“It is.” I look over our perfect sleeping boy. “Because of you, Georgia.”
She follows my gaze. “I couldn’t exactly have done it without you.”
“True. Can’t beat this gene pool.”
After the cake is cleaned up and put away, I sit back against the side of the truck, and Georgia settles between my knees. Her head back against my chest, she gazes up at the stars, but I can only gaze at my beautiful wife.
“I think my bedtime is fast approaching,” she says after a bit and smothers a yawn with her hand.
“Did we even make it to midnight? How the mighty have fallen.”
“Big day tomorrow. The birthday party prep list is about a mile long.”
“Right. Shit, I better stop talking so I can save my breath for those four hundred balloons I gotta blow up.”
She chuckles. “Oh, you couldn’t if you tried.
” Turning into my chest, she curls up her legs and closes her eyes like she’s ready for sleep.
“You ever wish you could go back to our college days? When we could sleep as much as we wanted and have sex all day and we had no idea what a nursing pillow was?”
“Good times.” I stroke her silky hair and lay a kiss on her head. “But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t ever want to go back to life before I had all this.”
THE END