Epilogue #3
For my last birthday, I’d thought the day of browsing the shelves at The Strand, drinking coffee, and eating sweet treats with Gav had been perfect. Until he led me into the restaurant for dinner to find the Costas had rented the whole thing out and everyone was there to celebrate me.
I’d made a fool of myself by crying.
But I’d had the time of my life.
I had people to get coffee with, shop for cozy seasonal decor with, sit with me when I was anxious about something.
It was everything I never knew I so badly needed.
“I’ll just let out PT then I have something else you really need to see,” Gav said, pulling his sleeve over his fingers as he reached to the front of the carrier and undid the lock while Plot Twist viciously tried to claw him through the cage.
The second he emerged, though, he whacked his body against Gav’s legs like a completely different cat.
He ran off to check out the windows while Gav pressed a hand into my lower back and led me through the cavernous common room and down the hallway.
“An office, I figured,” he said at the door to the first—somewhat small—room. “Then there are two guest rooms. They share the en suite.”
And they were the perfect size for kids’ rooms. Even if they ended up needing lots of bookshelves or gaming stations.
“That’s the primary. We will get to that,” he said, but led me across the hall toward another door. “This is for all your seasonal stuff,” he said, pushing open the door to a room as big as the guest rooms, featuring massive shelves clearly meant to hold plastic totes.
“Oh, this is perfect,” I said, eyes huge. “There’s even enough floor space for a table so we can use it as a wrapping room for Christmas.”
Which we objectively needed with how many people we had to shop for.
“You really thought of everything,” I said, feeling a little emotional, and we hadn’t even gotten to our room yet.
“I want us to grow old here. It has to be perfect.”
“It is.”
“And you didn’t see the best part.”
He led me across the hall and into the primary room, which was big enough for our king-size bed but also featured a built-in shelving unit.
“This would be great for our physical Tbr books,” I told him as I walked past it and into the his-and-hers connected walk-ins.
“And, finally,” he said, stepping into the primary bathroom.
There were double sinks, a linen closet, a glass shower niche, and, yes, the biggest soaking tub I’d ever seen in my life.
“I think we need to break that in,” I said, already kicking off my shoes and reaching to pull off my shirt.
“Or, hear me out, we do it in the shower,” he suggested.
He was committed to his hatred of tubs.
But I was about to change his mind…
Gav - 6 years
“Grampy!”
The little blonde-haired girl I still had a hard time believing I’d helped create went flying down the tractor-trailer yard, her arms already thrown in the air, ready to be enveloped by her big bear of a grandfather.
We made the trip twice a year to the family business.
Then we spent a week with Daniel and Mona in the summer at a rental at the beach.
Any other time Daniel wanted to see us, he had to come into the city.
Especially for holidays. No dragging the kids away from their home during the most magical time of the year.
We wanted them to wake up in their own beds, sitting under their own tree, going to visit the rest of our family for the days following the actual holiday.
These were boundaries Caitlin had set up when we first realized she was pregnant.
Her relationship with her father had been complicated for the first year or two after all the dust settled with the Ira situation. Especially when she realized he went right on with Mona like nothing happened. And after it became clear she was never going to get an actual apology from Mona.
Mona believed that the threat on her own daughter’s life made all of her actions excusable. When Caitlin had pushed back, asking if that included her killing her father if we hadn’t been there to put a stop to things, she’d shrugged.
And when her father hadn’t been upset about that, Caitlin had stormed off and we’d gone back to the city where she didn’t speak to her father for six months.
Since then, they’d all worked to get over old hard feelings.
But it was clear that Caitlin no longer hero-worshipped her father, who was, after all, just a man—a flawed one.
Who’d fallen in love with a woman Caitlin didn’t particularly care for but committed to building an amicable relationship with.
Especially when children came into play.
Mona was Grammy. The only one our kids had.
And to her credit, Mona did treat our children with the same attentiveness as she did her biological grandchildren.
She was the only one of us who knew how to cook and liked baking, so the kids would grow up with warm memories of being in the kitchen with her.
Just as they’d have memories of playing around in all the tractor-trailers with their grandfather.
“You okay in there?” I asked as Caitlin pulled her shirt closed and lifted our newborn to her shoulder.
We’d been perfectly happy with our little girl and her bottomless love of books, cats, birds, and takeout food.
But then, out of nowhere, Caitlin started craving fruit—pounds and pounds of apples, peaches, and watermelon.
That was when we knew.
She was pregnant.
And now we had a tiny son to round out our little family.
“I think the boob is basically just a pacifier at this point,” she grumbled as she patted the baby’s back. “He’s not really even drinking.”
“Well, look at the bright side.”