Epilogue II
Waverly
Seventeen Years Later
“No, you cannot beat the hell out of the boy just because he likes your cousin. Either of you.”
This is an intervention. Boston, Memphis, and Fennec are in the living room with the two boys while Sadie, Neve, Lena, and I are all gathered around the door.
“Not to mention he’s one of your best friends.” This comes from Memphis.
“He was!” Al says.
“Until he fucked with our cousin.” Kaydon finishes.
Both boys are spitting mad.
Their friend, Anson Kirkpatrick, was caught kissing their seventeen-year-old cousin this afternoon.
“What are they saying, Mom?” Lena pushes against me and her aunts.
“What are you all doing out here?” All four of us turn to shush my youngest daughter, Aster.
I put my finger to my mouth and stare the eight-year-old down. “We’re just making sure Dad and your uncles aren’t leaving anything out when they talk to the boys.”
“It looks a lot like you guys are eavesdropping to me.”
She is too smart to get anything by her.
“Mom, what are they saying about Anson?”
Lena leans just a little too far, and the door gives way, causing all four of us to spill into the room. The conversation stops and all the male heads turn to look at what happened. Lena is the first of us on her feet.
“Listen Almanzo Wrath, and you too Kaydon Simon, if you chase that man off being stupid…”
“He’s not a man to start with…” Kaydon starts but Memphis stops him.
“Boys…”
Everything stops when a new figure steps in front of the door.
“Anson!” Lena runs to him.
“You have some nerve showing up here.”
Anson ignores Kaydon.
“Can you girls give me a minute with the guys?”
“You don’t have to…” Lena starts, but Anson gently interrupts her.
“Give me a minute, baby.” The cousins growl at his use of a nickname for Lena. "Just a minute. I promise."
I take her by the hand and walk out with the girls.
This time I don’t stand at the door but go to the kitchen.
I recognized the look in Anson’s eyes when he looked at Lena.
I’ve seen that look before. I look at it every time Memphis turns those midnight blue eyes on me.
Anson loves Lena, and from the way she was trying to protect him from her cousins, I think she loves him too.
Ten minutes later, Memphis, Fennec, and Boston come into the kitchen and sit down with us. Lena pops up and goes straight to her dad.
“Don’t worry, Lena. Everything is going to be just fine.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?”
“Because the boys talked, they aired out their grievances, and Al and Kaydon started listening to reason.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “They just backed down? That doesn’t sound like the boys.”
He pulls me down into his lap and gives me a kiss. “It might have helped that Anson found out Kaydon likes his little sister, who happens to be younger than Lena.”
I can’t hold back my laugh. “And how did Anson find this out, love?”
“It’s a mystery really." He says it in such a smart-assed way that I have become very familiar with it. “He could have seen them sitting at the movies holding hands or caught something she said that led him to the information.”
“Or it could have been the fact Memphis saw how Kaydon looked at her the last time we were at the town picnic and gave Anson a heads-up.” Boston finishes for Memphis.
“Boston!”
Our little girl grabs him in a quick hug, “Thank you, daddy. I love you bunches.”
I take his face in my hands and bring my lips to his. “That was…incredible. That you would do that for our little girl. It’s very sexy.”
“Really?”
“Oh, get a room guys,” Fennec says it but he’s grinning like an idiot which takes any meanness out of it.
Memphis quickly stands with me in his arms. “That is an excellent idea, brother. And wouldn’t you know…we just happen to have one.”
I laugh all the way up the stairs as my husband, my protector, my lover, takes me to our room so I can show him just how sexy I find him!
The End!