Epilogue #3
“Just you and me, kid,” I said, making our way outside instead.
We sat and watched the birds and squirrels for over an hour before Gracie made her way out, scooting in at my side and resting her face against my shoulder.
“Thanks for letting me sleep.”
“Anytime,” I said.
“Look,” she said, nodding toward the picnic table full of whole peanuts. “I told you Steve was a girl. Look at that pregnant belly.”
“Gotta put out some extra fluff for her to build her nest,” I said.
“God, I love you,” she said, smiling up at me.
And, fuck, I loved her too.
Gracie - 11 years
“I’m gonna say what everyone else isn’t,” Layna said, moving in at my side. “This is batshit crazy.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
I glanced out at a sea of bounce houses, trampolines, water features, and games.
It started out as an idea when I’d been pregnant with our third baby as the first finished up their first year of school.
By the next year, I had it all planned, ordered, and executed.
And just like that, the Summer Kickoff party tradition was born.
On the first day after the last day of school each year, we took over a massive field and filled it with fun and games for the club kids as well as our closest allies’ kids.
It was loud, chaotic, messy, and a complete blast for the kids.
But because I was me, I always tried to make it better each year so no one ever got sick of it.
“Baby,” Perish called, lumbering up with a little fur ball tucked under his arm like a football.
“What’d he do?” I asked, reaching to take the fluffy merle Pomeranian from him.
“He is trying to deflate the balloon house.”
The balloon house was mostly for the little kids. It was a transparent round tent where a bunch of balloons were blown up so the kids could play ‘keep up’ without losing any of the balloons.
“I know you love a good balloon,” I told Sprinkles. Yes, his real name. Obviously named by the kids.
“How about I take him,” Layna suggested. “And you,” she went on, speaking to Perish, “make her go take a break. She’s been here since the crack of dawn.”
“That I can do,” Perish agreed.
“The kids…” I insisted, catching sight of a head of sunny blonde hair.
“Are surrounded by their family,” Perish reminded me.
“But what if—”
“Desperate times,” he said, ducking down, then throwing me over his shoulder like a firefighter.
“What’s this?” my father asked as we walked past, as he and two other club members were making their way back with the pizza.
“Forced break,” Perish informed him.
“Carry on then.”
“Dad!”
“Been standing in the hot sun for eight hours. I support your husband getting you off your feet. Penny and I will watch the kids. Take her home.”
“Will do.”
“What if someone needs—”
“There are several dozen other adults there if someone needs something,” Perish reminded me. “Plus your entire team.”
Yeah.
I had a team now.
It was crazy how my business had gone from a tiny little dream, to a baby side hustle, to, well, a whole little party planning empire.
I went from having one assistant to having five different party planners, each with their own team of assistants and secretaries.
We were busy.
Work was really, really good.
Life was even better.
Three kids.
One dog.
A squirrel family.
A few hundred backyard birds.
And one absolutely amazing husband.
Who was always looking out for me. Always picking up the slack. Always taking care of me when I got too busy taking care of everyone else.
“This really isn’t necessary,” I said when Perish finally pulled me down and set me inside our family SUV.
“It is,” he told me, closing the door then moving around the car.
When he turned the car over, the speakers immediately started blasting the most obnoxious song either of us had ever heard in our lives that the kids were currently obsessed with.
“Fuck no,” Perish said, switching over to our music that we almost never got to listen to.
“That feels nice,” I said as the air started to blast from the vents.
Perish had spent half the day in the water features with the kids, keeping him cool. I’d been mostly fussing about things in the heat.
“Kids were bragging about you to the Grassi kids,” Perish told me. “Saying that their mom was so cool because she set the party up.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling the damn tears immediately prick my eyes.
“Yep. Better soak it up now. Won’t be long before they think everything we do is embarrassing as fuck.”
That was true.
I’d been watching my cousins go through it with their tweens and teens for years. As much as I liked to think it wouldn’t happen to me, I also knew that I wasn’t anywhere near as cool as some of them, so if their kids thought they were cringe, mine would definitely think I was.
“You got a bit on the little one,” Perish said, sensing my thoughts and reaching over to squeeze my thigh.
I did.
We had two boys back-to-back. After that, I’d taken a nice little break because, well, pregnancy was not easy for me.
I envied my cousins who thought it was the most magical experience of their lives.
I’d been horribly sick for five months, then so swollen I could barely walk the last two months.
So there were basically only a few weeks in the middle when it felt kind of nice.
We hadn’t been planning on a third baby but got a surprise after a weekend away from the kids.
My final pregnancy had been easier on me when it came to sickness and swelling but completely wrecked my skin.
Thankfully, everything went back to normal a few weeks after delivery, and we had our sweet little girl.
“And the boys know they gotta respect their mama,” Perish added.
They were already so much like Perish. Insanely tall for their ages, rough and tumble, and fiercely protective of their baby sister.
I was sure she would hate it when she was a teenager. But I loved it for her.
“God, this is weird,” I declared when we moved into our eerily silent house.
“Like a horror movie,” Perish agreed, accidentally kicking a toy truck that was in his path. It ricocheted off the coffee table and started to make siren sounds.
“That’s more like it,” I said, shooting him a smile over my shoulder. “I’m going to take a quick shower to wash the sweat and sunblock off.”
He was already cleaning up the disaster area that was the living room as I made my way into the bedroom.
The whole parenting thing was not as hard as society liked to claim when you had a partner who was actually a partner.
We both cleaned, cooked, did the grocery shopping, laundry, and took care of the kids.
The only thing I wasn’t “allowed” to do was the lawn. For obvious reasons. And Perish wasn’t allowed to pick out the kids’ outfits because, well, the man once put our girl in a polka dot shirt and floral pants and had insisted that “it’s the same color, though” when I’d asked about the choice.
I knew that by the time I got out of the shower, the living room would be free of toys, the blankets would be folded, and the old coffee and drink cups would be in the dishwasher with it running.
Would the kids come through like bulldozers and ruin it all in a few hours? Sure. But we accepted that our life would be mostly chaotic with occasional moments of tidiness.
“Still fucking love that scent,” Perish said, coming up behind me to lean in and sniff my neck.
I leaned my head to the side when his lips pressed into my skin, feeling a familiar fluttering in my belly.
Sensing the immediate change in me, Perish’s hands slid down, working the tie of my belt free, then lowering my robe to the ground.
Then, well, we made the house not so quiet for a while.
Perish - 20 years
“Does he really think he’s sneaking in?” Gracie whispered, her head on my shoulder as we heard our second son outside in the driveway, his phone dinging, giving him away.
“Kids are dumb,” I said, smiling as I heard him creeping around the house toward the back door.
“He probably thinks we’re too old to be up this late,” Gracie said.
“To be fair, we woke up early,” I reminded her, glancing at the clock that was flashing five in the morning.
“Shh. He doesn’t need to know that. Should we go out there and scare him by flicking on the light like they do in the movies?”
“Got a better idea,” I said, hearing him creeping down the hallway toward his bedroom. “Hey, bud, that you?” I called.
We both tried not to laugh at the quiet ‘fuck’ that escaped him.
“Yeah.”
“Glad you’re up early,” I called, trying to keep my tone serious even as Gracie laughed. “Got a big day planned. Make sure you grab some electrolytes. Gonna be busting our asses.”
There was a little groan at that.
“Okay,” he called back, likely still thinking he wasn’t caught.
“Get the coffee going. We’ll get to work in thirty.”
There was a whimper at that, but he turned and made his way back to the kitchen.
“That’s evil. I like it,” Gracie said, smiling up at me. “Where do you think he was this late?”
“Friday night? Party for sure. And looks like he walked home,” I added, glancing out the slats in the blinds at the driveway.
“You think he’s drunk?”
“Probably. And he’s gonna be real upset about it in another half an hour. Ever do manual labor while wasted? That shit sucks. It’s gonna be sunny and hot as fuck today too.”
“You sound delighted by that.”
“I am.”
“That’s evil,” she declared. “I like it.”
As a whole, the kids were good.
Our eldest got suspended from school once for fighting. But when we learned it was because some eighteen-year-old senior was hitting on a little freshman (and not taking ‘no’ for an answer) we took him out for a fancy dinner instead of punishing him.
We weren’t, and would never be, a ‘violence never solves anything’ kind of family. Experience told us otherwise. But we were a ‘use violence wisely’ family. And the kids respected that.
Grades were good.
Adults were respected.
They didn’t mouth off.
We were okay with a little teenage rebellion if they were, as a whole, good people.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to make this kid seriously reconsider sneaking around and drinking again.
“So, since our eldest is prospecting, and you are busy torturing our middle, I think I am going to take our youngest up to Hailstorm to kick some soldiers’ asses.”
“Take some videos,” I demanded.
I never got sick of watching our sweet, petite, golden-haired, blue-eyed little girl going feral at the drop of a dime.
She was a lot like her mother.
Soft.
Loving.
Always taking care of others.
Constantly crying over shit.
But every once in a blue moon when she got good and pissed off, I saw little glimpses of myself in her. A fierceness, a ruthlessness that demanded respect.
She also loved the birds.
So much so that when she found an abandoned baby dove, she nursed it back to health and still had it as her little best friend many years later. The bird joined us at the dinner table most nights. And had a special diaper and leash so it could go on adventures with her.
“I was thinking of inviting that neighbor boy who is puppy-dog-eyeing her to come with us.”
“As a warning,” I said, nodding.
“As a reminder that she doesn’t need her big brothers around to protect her,” Gracie clarified.
While actual dating was likely a few years off still, Gracie seemed relatively comfortable with our girl eventually entering into that phase of life.
I suddenly had a newfound respect for Duke because I didn’t think a single guy on earth would ever deserve that girl.
Her brothers were on board with that thought process too.
“Uh-oh,” Gracie said, wincing as the sound of our middle kid getting sick in the hall bath drifted in our direction.
“Yeah, he’s about to not have a great day.”
“Don’t be too hard on him.”
“Couple hours of manual labor. Then you can coddle him.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Then you and me, we gotta take a trip over to Billie’s place.”
“I have only been out of the lotion for two days!” she said, beaming up at me.
“Two days too long,” I told her, leaning down to plant a quick kiss on her lips. “Then tonight, I can rub it all over you.”
Her eyes warmed at that.
Even after all these years, that heat had never cooled off.
And the love that had evolved and grown over the years, which only made things hotter.
“Forever thankful we broke the rules all those years ago,” I said, leaning down to press my forehead to hers.
“I’ll forever be thankful that you saved me.”
Maybe I’d saved her in a very literal way once upon a time. But she’d spent the last twenty years saving me in every other way possible.
XX