EPILOGUE
Ben
"INCOMING," I hollered, too late, because the fountain had already arced up out of the changing table with the range and ambition of a lawn sprinkler and caught Luke directly in the chest of his good work shirt, and Luke stood there frozen with his arms out like a scarecrow, being rained on by a person who weighed eleven pounds.
"She got me," he said. "She waited until I leaned in, she’s very tactical."
"She learned it from her mother," Cole said, and reached past him for the wipes and knocked the open canister of baby powder off the shelf with his forearm.
I have seen this man handle live ordnance, and none of that training helped him when the canister went off on the way down like a soft, lavender-scented grenade.
The cloud got him full in the face. He straightened up slowly, six foot plus of tattoos and military training, powdered like a beignet, blinking through it as though he would simply not acknowledge what had just happened.
Wren thought all of it was the funniest thing that she had ever seen. She was four months old and she had this big rolling belly cackle way too large for the rest of her, just like her mama's, and she let it loose from the changing table bare-butted and pleased with her work.
"Oh, you think that's funny," Cole told her, leaning back over the table with powder still in his eyebrows, and then Cole Ramirez, scariest man in three counties, started singing.
I had to pull my phone out and start recording cause Cole's singing voice sounds like an out of tune cement mixer. He was doing some lullaby his grandma used to sing him, half in Spanish, and the fountain artist stopped cackling and went still and stared up at him like he was the moon.
Luke stood there dripping. I leaned against the nursery doorframe, which used to be an exterior wall back when this was the little yellow house, before the additions and the second bathroom and my workshop out back made it the big yellow house, and I laughed until my stomach ached.
"You could help," Luke told me, peeling his shirt off.
"I am helping. Someone has to document this all on camera," I said holding up my phone.
"Someday she's going to marry some poor unsuspecting soul and I'm going to stand up at the reception with this footage, and it's going to be the greatest day of my life.
This is a long game, Luke. I've never once not wung the long game. "
"Wung still isn't a word."
Cole finished his singing and taped up the fresh diaper with two moves, snapped the little duck-print onesie shut, and picked her up against his shoulder, where she immediately grabbed a fistful of his ear and shrieked with joy directly into it, because Wren loves three things in this world: her mama, her stuffed animals, and destroying Cole's hearing.
"Downstairs," Cole said, deaf and happy. "Before we're late for the biggest day of the year."
The big yellow house is pure carnage at seven in the morning.
We came down the stairs into the full glory of it.
Beth was at the counter negotiating loudly for chocolate chips in her pancakes on the grounds that it was "basically a holiday.
" Noah was wearing his backpack already, at the table, eating, strapped in like breakfast was a mission.
Emma had her sketchbook propped against the syrup bottle and was drawing the whole table instead of eating, her pancakes going cold, and every time somebody reached for the butter she yelled "STOP MOVING" like we were ruining a masterpiece.
And Callie was at the stove in my favorite dress, flipping pancakes with one hand and drinking coffee with the other, hair already a complete mess and escaping its clip.
She was humming to herself, some made-up song that a person only sings when they've stopped waiting for something to go wrong.
The baby had done something unholy to that woman's body.
Her hips had gone fuller, her ass had opinions now, and the neckline of that dress was hanging on to more cleavage than it was ever built to carry, and I stopped dead on the bottom stair and stared like a teenager, already counting the days until we could get her alone and make her scream again.
Callie turned around to yell something to the kids and saw us.
She saw Luke first, holding his ruined shirt at arm's length. Then she saw Cole, powdered head to chest with Wren on his giant shoulder wearing her very smug and satisfied face.
Her coffee went down on the counter. Both hands came up over her mouth.
And then she lost it, that big honking laugh that takes her whole body hostage and makes her grab the nearest piece of furniture.
And then Wren heard it, and her tiny copy of that exact same laugh came cackling out from Cole's shoulder, and the two of them cracked each other up until neither one could stop.
"Do I want to know," she wheezed.
"Your daughter is a marksman," Luke said. "And one of your husbands is a funnel cake."
"There was an incident," Cole said through the powder.
"There is powder in your ears."
"I'm aware."
"You look like the world's largest donut."
"Happy first day of school, Cupcake."
Breakfast was loud and chatotic. All four kids talked at once, nobody listened to anybody, and somehow everyone got fed anyway.
Wren went into her playpen in the corner of the kitchen with her toys.
Luke found a new shirt. Cole de-powdered to about sixty percent.
I made Callie's lunch and wrote something filthy on the napkin and folded it where the kids wouldn't find it.
"Backpacks," Callie called, and the herd assembled. "Shoes. SHOES. Emma, honey, you can draw in the car. Noah, why are you already wearing your backpack. Never mind, I respect it."
Oliver was last in the line and he stopped in front of his mom on his way to the door and looked up at her.
"Mom."
"Yes, baby."
"Today the new kids in your class are going to meet you for the first time.
" He pushed his glasses up. "They don't know yet that they're getting the best teacher.
I had to wait until second grade to get you, and I already knew you from before, from being born.
They get you right away, without doing any of the work.
" He considered this. "It's not really fair to the rest of us who did not get you for the whole year, but I've decided I'm happy for them anyway. "
The kitchen went quiet. Callie's eyes filled up instantly and she got down and hugged him, and he allowed it for a full four seconds before patting her twice on the back to let her know their meeting was adjourned.
"Okay," he said. "Don't cry on the new kids. It sets a strange tone."
"No promises," she said, wrecked.
Vaughn's truck honked from the driveway, doing the school run with the whole flock, and through the window I could see Tessa in the passenger seat with baby Sam on her arm, waving, already yelling something supportive we couldn't hear. And the kids all ran out to catch their ride.
And then it was just the four of us with Wren in the playpen.
"Okay," Callie said. "Okay. First days are fine. I have done a hundred first days."
We didn't let her finish the pep talk. All three of us moved in at once and folded her into the middle of us, and she disappeared into the huddle with a squeak, and I'm not going to pretend it stayed wholesome, because Cole's hand went straight to her ass and mine went to the other side like we'd planned it, and Luke murmured something into her hair about the cabin next weekend, about two whole days with no kids and a giant hot tub.
She wriggled loose, flushed and grinning, straightened the dress where we'd wrinkled it, and kissed Wren's fat cheek in the playpen. Then she grabbed her bag, her coffee, and the tray of cupcakes she'd baked last night for the parent meeting, and stopped in the doorway.
"One weekend at a single parent retreat," she said, shaking her head at the whole ruined kitchen.
"One night at a lake, and look what followed me home.
" She hefted the tray. "These are for the parents.
If a single one of these cupcakes went missing, I will know which of you starving animals did it, and there will be no cabin. I'll be home by seven."
And she walked out the door into the morning light, and the three of us stood in the kitchen she built, with a baby laughing hysterically and all of us covered in powder and pee and I knew we were the luckiest sons of bitches in the world.