Epilogue #2
I loved that they got along. That they could carry on a
conversation without their women, like we could do the same.
Toni’s eyes came to me, and I read in them what I felt in
the hug she’d given me outside Fortnum’s a few months ago.
I got it. I lived it.
My happy-goodness cloud never went away, and I knew now it
never would.
“Daddy!” Talia shouted from the door.
I twisted to look around my chair at her.
She seemed peeved about something.
She didn’t make us wait to share what that was about.
“Liam is cheating!” she accused.
“I am not!” Liam yelled from the lounge in the other room.
“Liam isn’t a cheater, baby,” Tony said.
She glared at him, then shifted targets.
She walked to Darius, put her hand on his forearm, turned
her ankle, looked up at him with wounded doe eyes, and pouted, “Uncle Darius,
Liam keeps winning at the TV games.”
Instantly, Darius pushed out of his chair. “All right,
sweetheart. Let’s go have a chat with him.”
She smiled a gleeful smile, took his hand, and they walked
out.
“When you give him another kid, you are gonna be in a world
of hurt,” Toni warned.
“I already know that,” I said blithely, then took a sip of
my wine.
And I did know it.
I just didn’t care.
“You see it?”
“Shoosh, I see it.”
“You haven’t always seen it.”
“I so have.”
“You totally haven’t.”
“Gah!”
I tore my gaze from Kenneth, who was cuddling his and Lena’s
brand-new daughter, Michelle, to his chest while sitting tucked up next to Lena
in her hospital bed, and as was not unusual, the world had melted away for
Kenneth.
The only people in it were him, his wife and his daughter.
“You think he’s touched. I think he’s got it goin’ on. He only has space for what’s important to him,
what’s interesting to him, what matters to him, and the rest fades away. It’s
genius,” Darius whispered.
I couldn’t argue.
I watched Mom try to get in there and get her hands on
Michelle.
Kenneth ignored her, making googly eyes at his wife in turn
with doing the same to his daughter, so into it, Mom had no choice but to back
away.
“See?” Darius was still whispering. “Genius.”
I gave him the side-eye.
He grinned at me when he caught it, then dipped down and
murmured in my ear, “I want one of those.”
When he pulled away, I promised, “When the time comes, I’ll
do my best.”
He smiled at me before he kissed me.
He kept his arm around me as we returned our attention to
the newly expanded family.
Lena rested her head on Kenneth’s shoulder and touched her
daughter’s cheek.
My cloud gave me a hug.
I sighed.
Not too long later…
We didn’t have near enough tickets for
everybody in Liam’s family.
Still, we managed to scrounge around and get Mom and Dad,
Lena and Kenneth, Toni and Tony, Miss Dorothea, Gabby, Danni and Grandmoms
Beverly in the stadium.
After Liam accepted his diploma and moved his tassel across
his mortarboard, his steps determined, like he was already walking into the
brilliant life he would lead, his honors stole flapping off to his sides, his
gaze came direct to me.
I waved, hopping in my seat, and blew kisses.
His big smile got bigger, spreading across his face.
Then he stopped dead and sharply dropped his head, before he
looked up at his father. Only after he did that did he pound his fist to his
heart.
My throat closed.
Darius pounded his fist too.
Liam strode off.
I looked up to my man and I didn’t have time to deal with
the tears in my eyes.
I had to deal with the ones in his.
It wasn’t really a worry we couldn’t get tickets for
everybody.
When we went through the back gate after the graduation
ceremony, I saw the RCHB had been busy. Our backyard was transformed. There
were balloons and streamers and banners everywhere, tables groaning with food,
more groaning with wrapped gifts, feet thick on the ground and booties resting
in every lawn chair in the neighborhood and some brought in from other places
besides.
The confetti floated dense in the air among whoops and
hollers when Liam showed his face.
Lee was the first to grab him by the back of his neck, give
him a manly shake, then pull him into a hug, beating his back so hard, I swear,
Liam would have bruises.
Liam would never, not ever, complain.
He loved his Uncle Lee.
Eddie moved in next and did the same.
Liam wouldn’t complain about that either, because he felt
the same about his Uncle Eddie.
Daisy shouldered in next, reaching high, even if she was
wearing Lucite, platform, stripper shoes that gave her at least an extra six
inches (my boy was as tall as his daddy, and then some). She grabbed his face
in both hands.
“Look at you, honey bunches of oats, makin’
your momma and daddy proud. Headed off to Harvard!” She turned, bent double,
and shouted, “Harvard!”
Everyone who had a glass raised it (which was most of them)
and everyone who didn’t (which was barely any) shouted, “Harvard!”
I laughed.
She turned back to Liam and smacked him gently twice on the
cheek. “Proud of you, kid. Done good.” Then she whipped around again and
yelled, “Now, where’s my margarita?”
“She’s like a demented cheerleader,” Liam muttered after she
tottered away, but he was smiling, because she was, and he loved his Aunt
Daisy.
It was Darius who grasped the back of his neck then, and he
held on, walking his son forward, into the bosom of a whole bunch of people who
loved him, saying, “That she is, son. That she is.”
Not too long after that…
He knew I was there.
Nothing got by my man.
But he didn’t look up from his task.
“‘And the baby elephant said to the bunny, “But why does the
frog have to stay on his lily pad?”’”
He was rocking in the Jill bedroom.
Our daughter was on his chest, her big eyes drooping as her
daddy’s deep voice sounded around her and rumbled up into her as he read to
her.
I left them to it.
I got all this goodness all to myself when I had Liam.
And I’d learned Darius would give me anything, but he was a
baby hog.
I didn’t mind.
Not even a little.
Instead of going downstairs to my chair and my book in the
study, I went to the kitchen, because I’d had to give up wine for pregnancy and
breastfeeding purposes, but now, I got it back.
I poured myself some then went to the turntable in the
living room.
I put on the album.
And I curled on the couch and waited for him.
He showed not much later with a baby monitor in his hand.
His eyes came to me, but his body went to the kitchen.
He came out still with the baby monitor, but also with a
glass of wine.
He set the monitor down on the side table then he curled his
long body around mine from the back.
“Well?” he asked into my ear.
I knew what he was asking.
We had a big decision to make.
I rested against his wide chest.
“Life’s an adventure, right?” I asked back.
“That’s not an answer, baby.”
I twisted my neck to look at him. “What do you want to do?”
No bullshit or prevarication, he said, “I wanna go.”
“Lee and Eddie won’t be there.”
“Yeah, they will. They’ll always be there. Maybe not as
close, but they’ll always be there.”
He was correct.
“Mom’s gonna retire soon. The weather is better there,” he
told me. “She’s sick of snow and cold.”
He was correct again.
“I’m sick of it too,” he added.
“What’ll we do with the house?” I asked.
“Rent it.”
I made a face.
He smiled and said, “We can build a wine cellar anywhere,
sweetheart.”
I glanced around the space before saying to him, “It’s not
just that.”
“We’ll take the stuff with us,” he said. “Or Danni and Gabby
wouldn’t turn down another job.” He smiled again. “I’m outnumbered now. You and
Antonia can make it what you want it to be.”
“We want to be surrounded by you.”
He closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to mine, and
close up, I could see those long, curly lashes I fell in love with years ago in
a row of books at a used bookstore resting against his cheeks.
When he opened them, I whispered, “Let’s go to LA, baby.”
He kissed me.
“So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” ended and the arm of the
turntable lifted up and whirred back in place.
Darius left me, flipped the album and set the needle.
He came back and curled around me.
And together, we listened to Darius’s life in a song (for
the most part), sitting close, sipping wine, our son across the country,
preparing to take on the world, our daughter upstairs, sleeping and dreaming
and carefree.
And Darius and me, on our couch, but riding a cloud.
The
End