Epilogue #4
“Which is?” she asked, her eyes puffy and tired.
“Shit. Didn’t expect to be put on the spot,” I said, getting a tired laugh out of her. “I guess… think how many audiobooks you’re getting read with all the feedings.”
“That is a perk. I finished that whole series this weekend. And they were chunky books.”
“Small miracles. And now you will be able to hand off the baby and take a nap.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, giving me our son so she could slide out of the backseat. “Plus, my dad told me they opened a new bookstore in town to explore while we’re here.”
“That always makes everything better.”
“Maybe they will have the seventh book in that cryptid romance series you pretend not to love.”
I shot her small eyes. “That’s a secret.”
“So I shouldn’t have told Alara?”
“You didn’t. That’s gonna end up on that murder board of hers.”
“I know. That’s kind of the best part,” she said, leaning her head into me.
Caitlin - 22 years
“Why would you do this to me?” I whimpered as I walked into the kitchen to find our daughter’s textbook open to a particularly gruesome image.
I whipped around, eyes closed, deep-breathing through the nausea that rose up my throat.
“That’s not even close to the worst thing I’ve seen. Last week—” my daughter started.
“La la la la la,” I yelled, hands over my ears.
“Stop torturing your mother, you sadist,” Gav said, ruffling her hair as he passed, the way he did when she was still little and blonde, not this grown person standing in the kitchen with her dad’s hair and my eyes and the stomach belonging to either her Uncle Salvatore or Uncle Brio.
Because no full daughter of mine would voluntarily choose to slice people up for a living. And no daughter of Gav’s would do that, you know, legally.
Somehow, though, our little girl was going to med school. Whether she would use those skills to become an actual doctor, work for the family, or some combination of both, was anyone’s guess.
“This is your fault, you know,” I reminded Gav as he made his way to the coffee machine.
“You were the one to buy her that damn Danny the Dormouse Wants to Be a Doctor book. It’s been straight downhill from there.
I wanted to get her Wally the Walrus Wants to Be a Writer.
Just think, we could be reading her debut New York Times bestseller right now.
Not having that horror novel sitting on our island. ”
“Yep. It was totally the book I read when I was four. Not my brother’s millions of wounds and broken bones.”
That was fair. Her brother was a little daredevil who often leaped—literally—before he looked.
“You don’t understand. You made us read it ten, fifteen times a day. Every day for six months. It was practically brainwashing. We should get you to a shrink to deprogram you.”
That got a laugh out of both of them as Gav handed out mugs to each of us. Each featured a bookstore—a romance bookstore for me, a mystery/thriller bookstore for her.
Though she had often said that when thrillers and romance teamed up so there was a bunch of “banging between the bullets,” she was all over that.
“Speaking of your brother. Where the hell has he been? He hasn’t been home in two nights,” Gav said.
This parenting adults thing was weird. You birth them, raise them, control their daily schedules for years. Then, bang. They’re eighteen and can do whatever the hell they want.
It’d been easier with our daughter, since she was always the homebody sort. Content to read her books, work on her crafts, and help me foster endless litters of kittens over the years.
But then her brother aged up a few years later and all hell broke loose.
By ‘hell’ I meant I didn’t know where he was every minute of the day, and after a lifetime of that being my reality, not knowing was giving me some not-so-mild anxiety.
“I saw him yesterday afternoon,” Gav said. “He popped in for a shower and change of clothes before heading back out.”
“Do you think he has a girlfriend?”
“One? At his age?” Gav shot back with a smile.
“If you want, I can pick up pamphlets for venereal diseases and tack them all over his room. They have pictures. Graphic ones.”
“I like the way you think,” I said, getting a chuckle out of Gav.
“How about we take you out for some lunch?” Gav asked our girl, who saw less and less of us between her soul-sucking schooling schedule and her attempts to still have some sort of social life.
“Can’t. I have to go help out at the clinic. Someone sliced their foot open on a job,” she said, shooting her father a knowing look.
“Far be it from us to keep you from your blood and guts,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure there are no guts in his foot,” she shot back, eyes dancing. “But you can consult my textbook if you want,” she said, pushing it closer.
“Off, with you,” I demanded, waving at her.
She chugged down the last of her coffee before heading out.
“It’s quiet around here,” Gav said.
“Mmm. You know what that means…” I said, dropping my voice low and teasing.
“Reading and Chinese?”
“You know the way to my heart.”
“Thank God for that,” he said, wrapping an arm around me.
XX