Epilogue 1
Marissa
“Where is Piper?” I ask after not even squinting helps me locate her smiling face in Dylan’s car.
He glances to the left. “It, er… didn’t work out with her.”
“That’s too bad,” I frown as I reflexively rub my baby bump. “I really liked her. DJ did, too.”
Dylan rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not sure she’s step-mom material. She’s not…” He swallows and finally meets my eyes. “She’s not you, Riss.”
I roll my eyes as dramatically as I can.
“Wow, and I mean at least a little offense, but you’ve got to stop idealizing your exes! That’s what got you into this mess in the first place, Dylan. Besides, it’s dehumanizing,” I add when I see his offended frown.
“You spend too much time with Molly,” he says grumpily.
It’s nice to be able to talk to Dylan like this. For a while there, after everything that happened with Rebel and DJ, he was really struggling to come to terms with what his life had become. Susan even feared that he might do something crazy and that we might lose him.
The therapist Yoda recommended helped a lot, but in certain areas of life, I sometimes think that Dylan still doesn’t get it.
“Why can’t you live in the present? Or look at the person you’re with as they are instead of in relation to someone else?”
“I can! I do! Our situation was different. Rebel was a cancer on my heart, preventing me from being happy. She and I were bad for each other, toxic even.”
Not for the first time, I wonder what Preacher has done to her, but I quickly cast those thoughts aside.
I’ve had my own countless therapy sessions with Yoda where I unpacked all my feelings of guilt on that topic, together with my other issues. We worked on my mental resilience, the abandonment issues stemming from my childhood, my low self-esteem...
Having my new family members helped, too. After I finally gathered the courage to send in my saliva for that DNA kit, I found a cousin on my mother’s side, my aunt’s daughter. Unexpectedly, I learned that my mom's entire family had been desperate for any news about her.
When it was time to meet them, I flew to the East Coast without worrying about their acceptance or approval. I already had my son, a wonderful husband, a big biker family that loved me, and an enjoyable job that made me really good money.
I walked into that meeting completely and utterly confident, and it was awesome.
My mother’s family are good people, but I could see how a 15-year-old flower child might have found them boring. We all cried and talked for hours, and the one takeaway we all came away with after that weekend was: It wasn’t us, it was her.
My grandmother and aunt told me that the entire family, including my deceased grandfather, would have been thrilled to welcome my mom back at any point in her life, but she never reached out to them.
“Not even a postcard,” Grandma Althea said.
“Emily always wanted to believe the worst in people,” Aunt Linda explained.
The DNA kit also helped me finally find the other tree this splinter came from. My father, unsurprisingly, is the lead singer in a Grateful Dead tribute band.
He still tours the States despite being in his late seventies, and we see each other whenever he’s in the area, but he isn’t ready to stop being a rolling stone yet. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure that, at some point, I’ll find out I have a few more paternal siblings out there.
Nowadays, until our new house is completed, birthday parties and special events in the Hawkins household have to be held at the clubhouse, because our backyard can’t accommodate all of our friends and relatives, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
I'm especially thrilled that Susan is now able to come stay with us from time to time.
I feel a pang of discomfort in my lower back, so I lean against the door.
“Do you need to sit down?” Dylan asks with genuine concern.
“I’m okay. Standing is becoming increasingly difficult these days, and I still have about a month to go,” I tell him with what I like to believe is a reassuring smile.
“Do you think you’ll have more after this one?”
I take a moment to think about it. “I don’t know. Three seems like the perfect number, and they’re spaced out so nicely. But who knows, maybe once this one’s feet start stinking, I’m going to start craving another little one,” I laugh.
This is my third pregnancy, but it never stops being special, not even if I had ten more. Which isn’t out of the realm of possibility for my husband and me.
My husband, I think, swoonily.
Exactly three months after The Accident (as it has come to be known in our family), Hawk asked me to marry him. Three months after that, we said I do in front of our friends and club members.
The first two years of our relationship haven’t always been easy for Hawk, and I feel deep shame whenever I remember my mistrust or the many emotional outbursts I subjected him to, especially during our first pregnancy and postpartum.
Therapy helped, but the main factor in my healing was Hawk's infinite patience and his ability to always reassure and comfort me. There is no limit to what he would do for me and our children.
“You’re the woman for me, the one I’d choose always and over everything. If two out of our twenty, thirty years together are hard, I don’t mind,” he told me once.
As if conjured, my handsome husband opens the front door to bring DJ’s bags out, all the while dispensing sage parental advice.
“Even if they’re delicious, I still wouldn’t eat them.”
DJ looks dejected. “Daddy, do you agree with Pop that we shouldn’t eat boogers?”
Dylan widens his eyes in horror, and I bury my face in Hawk’s chest to hide my laughter. “Yeah, buddy… No booger sandwiches, please.”
“Where’s Mandy?” I ask.
“Napping,” Hawk says, rubbing my lower back.
Having our little girl has been another piece in the puzzle of healing. Loving all the parts that make her who she is has made me love myself more. It has made me see that I was never the problem; it was the limited emotional capacity of those around me that was.
Yoda told me I had to model good and healthy behaviors for her. “If you want her to believe that she deserves everything, you have to believe it for yourself, too,” she said.
“Your brother has the hiccups,” I tell DJ as soon as I notice, and he rushes over to feel it, since it’s his favorite thing.
I’m so proud of the big brother he is. I hug him tightly, and I want to cry. He looks so big in his new cut, all ready for his camping trip with Dad.
“Call me every night, okay?”
“Gee, Riss, it’s a week, he’s not going off to war,” Dylan says good-naturedly.
Hawk laughs. “I think she’ll break her own record of how many patches she can make in a week.”
He’s beaming with pride as he says it.
Although I enjoyed working for Cotton, I enjoy working for myself more. After the website Molly set up for me took off, I decided to focus exclusively on my online business.
Now I’m the person for custom-made patches and embroidery; clubs all over the country know me by name and want to work with me.
That achievement fortified me in a way that was more than needed.
I now move through the world like a woman who knows she can do anything and is no longer afraid to try new things.
But at the same time, I know that if I ever decide to stop working and stay home with the kids, Hawk would support me in a heartbeat. I work hard because I want to, not because I have to, and that makes all the difference in the world.
After DJ’s things are in the car and he’s buckled in his booster seat, Dylan lingers outside with us. On his face, an expression I’m unfamiliar with.
“Kids, man. One day, they’re these tiny chubby angels sleeping in your bed, and the next, you’re having a full-on philosophical conversation about the nutritional value of boogers,” he says with a sad smile, then gets into the car.
As we wave at the two of them as they drive off, I remember what Hawk once said about Dylan.
“I hope Slim never realizes what a beautiful life and family he talked himself out of.”