Epilogue
They raised Marjorie to know the whole story about her parents. Ellie and Clark never hid the way she came to be with them.
Because it was nothing to be ashamed of.
Her birth parents’ decision to give her up had been selfless.
It had been an act of great strength, and it had come at a time when they hadn’t had much strength available to them.
Now, at sixteen, she was well-adjusted, and an amazing older sister to her four younger siblings.
Ellie and Clark’s wedding took place when Marjorie was a year old, and it almost ended Ellie’s relationship with her parents.
It didn’t, though. She had a complete meltdown with her mother and her father in the weeks leading up to it, but rather than breaking the ties between them, somehow, it had actually effected change.
Over the years, Ellie’s mom had been able to create a good relationship with her grandchildren. She was easier with them than with her own children.
She let them finger paint at the kitchen table.
She let them make messes.
It was around the time of Marjorie’s kindergarten graduation, when Ellie had been pregnant with their second biological child, that her mother finally made peace with Clark.
Seeing him with Marjorie had suddenly broken something inside her. Made her see who he truly was. That he was good. Better than her own husband, who was more interested in his grandchildren than he’d ever been in his children.
The change in her father made Ellie feel a bit resentful sometimes, because she knew it had to do with the fact that she and Clark had four sons, and her dad seemed far more comfortable with little boys than he had ever been with little girls.
But it was something she chose to let go. Because family was too important. In all its messy, difficult glory.
If her parents had been unkind to the kids, ever, if they had made them feel they were a problem, then Ellie wouldn’t have hesitated to cut them off. But that wasn’t how things had gone, she was grateful for that.
When Marjorie was thirteen, Melanie started writing her letters.
Ellie and Clark always screened them, but they shared them with her, and eventually, stopped looking at them beforehand, as Marjorie began to develop her own relationship with Melanie.
When Melanie and Ty reached eighteen months of sobriety, just at Marjorie’s sixteenth birthday, Ellie and Clark decided it was time for them to meet their daughter.
Marjorie was dressed up, and they had a reservation at the best Italian restaurant in town—the same one they’d gone to the day Marjorie’s adoption had been finalized.
Today, they needed a whole private room for the celebration, because Melanie, Ty, and the four younger kids, Clark, Ellie, and Marjorie were all going to be there.
“How are you feeling?” Ellie asked Marjorie before they walked in. She rubbed her daughter’s back, just as she’d done when she was a little girl.
“I’m good,” she said. “Melanie gave me you and Dad. She did the right thing. I’ve always thought so.
And I’ve never felt like I didn’t have enough love.
I’ve got you and I’ve got Dad and Grandma and Grandpa.
That’s more family than a lot of people have.
But I’m glad that I’ll get the chance to actually see her.
Hug her.” Marjorie smiled. “I’m not missing anything, though. My life is already complete.”
That meant more to Ellie than maybe it should. She looked at Clark, and he smiled at her. Sixteen years together, and he was still her very favorite view on the planet. Her rock. The love of her life. The father of all five of their children. He still made her heart flutter.
They walked into the restaurant and were ushered into the private room.
Melanie and Ty were already sitting there.
Ty looked so much more like Clark than he had for years.
He’d put on muscle, weight, in the eighteen months since they’d quit using.
And then there was Melanie. Her red hair was brushed and clean, her eyes bright with the kind of life that Ellie hadn’t seen in them since they were in high school.
She and Clark had come together so many times to bail out Ty and Melanie. But there had never been a moment like this. Like this reunion.
Melanie’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at Marjorie, who had red hair just like her own. “You’re just beautiful,” she said.
Marjorie smiled and stepped forward, hugging Melanie with an ease that surprised Ellie. Marjorie was an extroverted, confident teenage girl, but still, hugging a relative stranger was a big move.
“Thanks for my life,” she said.
She stepped back and looked at Ellie.
Yeah. This life was pretty amazing. In that moment, Ellie felt entirely grateful for it too.
Grateful for everything.
They ate dinner and exchanged contact information, making plans to meet up again.
Ty and Melanie were working as addiction recovery counselors in Eugene. The two of them lived hours away, but they could all get together around the holidays, which suited Ellie.
When they got back home, Clark pulled her in for a hug. “You okay?”
“I’m good.”
“It doesn’t bother you at all, letting them have a relationship with Margie?”
“It really doesn’t. Because they’re part of the story, Clark. Our story.”
He nodded. “That is true.”
He brought her in for another hug and kissed her. It started out as a soft, supportive kiss, and then shifted to something else.
A chorus of howls broke up the kiss, and they looked at their five kids, who had come into the kitchen and were staring at them.
“You can’t possibly still be hungry,” he said. “You all ate.”
That wasn’t strictly true. Their youngest had not eaten. He had moved two meatballs around on a plate. Which was what he always did now.
“What we didn’t expect was to find you making out in the kitchen,” said Daniel, their fourteen-year-old.
“It’s gross,” agreed Ezekiel, who was twelve.
“It’s love,” Clark said. “You have so much of it around you all the time, you take it for granted. Varmints.”
And with that he wrapped his arm around Ellie’s neck and kissed her again.
And all she could think about was that they really had done it right.
Their kids were surrounded by an overflow of love, and there was more love to be had as they forged new relationships with Ty and Melanie.
She and Clark had a lot. But what they had most of was love.
That was a beautiful thing.