Epilogue
One year later
Edgar watched from the chair on his porch as his granddaughters were placed side by side in baby bouncers, tiny cloth hats shading their eyes from the harsh Australian sun.
“Here, bubbies.” Tabby clicked her fingers rapidly, trying to get both girls to focus on the camera. Pearl Maisy DaSilva stared resolutely down at her toes while Clara Lilian DaSilva blinked benignly up at Nicole, who was hovering above, as though worried a bird of prey might seize the opportunity to snatch her.
“They don’t know how to look yet,” Sam called from the barbecue as Scott laughed and handed her chicken wings. “They barely even have eyes.”
“Hence the clicking,” Tabby shouted and clicked even faster. “Pearly-Whirly! Look at Mumma!”
Pearl was four months old, dark-haired, with big brown eyes.
“She’s a genetic throwback!” Tabby had crowed in the maternity ward. “Grandma DaSilva had brown eyes, and so does Dad, and so did Toby’s nana! Look at my little brown-eyed boo! Isn’t she gorgeous?”
She was. She had a quiet, introspective nature. More like her father than the older generation of DaSilvas.
Toby had married Edgar’s youngest daughter in Carlton Gardens four months before Pearl was born. Sam and Nicole had been bridesmaids, and Mopsy and her six puppies served as flower girls. It had been something, seven hyperactive dogs spilling rose petals from the little pouches Tabby had fastened to their backs.
Edgar had been the celebrant, and the memory of that golden afternoon was one of the most touching of his life. All three of his girls, out in the world, always his, but now also tied to men who loved them and who could look after them once he departed to whatever waited behind this veil of existence. Edgar smiled at the thought, knowing if Maisy could hear him thinking about life after death, she’d tease him for being “so overly philosophical, dahling. Really, it’s a party.”
Edgar refocused on his grandchildren, who were still doggedly avoiding having their photo taken. Clara looked more like her mother, blue-eyed with a black tuft of hair. But she also had Noah’s wide lips and a grip like steel.
“My little wrestler,” Noah told anyone who’d listen. He carried his daughter so high, so often, Sam hummed the song from The Lion King whenever they walked into a room. She loved both her nieces, and while Edgar knew she and Scott were unlikely ever to have their own children, she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into being an aunt.
A week after he’d returned to Silver Daughters, Nicole fell pregnant. Sam said it was because Nicole could never stand competition, and Nicole said it was because he’d come home, and she could finally stop worrying about him. Whatever the case, she’d conceived naturally.
It had been something, two of his girls pregnant at the same time. There had been many late nights, many ups and downs, many heart-to-hearts with his sons-in-law, both of whom were convinced they would accidentally suffocate the baby. Edgar smiled a little at the memory of their pinched faces, their agonising only strengthening his belief that his daughters had chosen the perfect men to start families with.
Tabby had insisted on giving Pearl her last name. “Sorry, Tobes,” she’d said one Sunday dinner. “I know it’s a girl, and there’s no way I’m not calling her DaSilva. We need more soldiers for the army, mate. We’re gonna be legion.”
Laughing, Toby had kissed the side of her head. “I understand, sweetness. DaSilva it is.”
Then Noah had come to him a month before Clara was born, so nervous Edgar feared for the health of his unborn grandchild.
“Everything’s fine,” Noah had said as they sat at the kitchen table, his former protegee unable to meet his eyes. “I just. I want permission to give the kid your name.”
Edgar had frowned. “You want to call your daughter ‘Edgar?’ I’m flattered, Noah, but it’s a little unconventional even by my standards…”
Noah had fixed him with a stare Edgar was sure had once made men quake in their boots. “DaSilva,” he said. “I want her to be a DaSilva.”
“Oh.” Edgar had considered the proposal for a long moment. “You’re not your father, Noah. You’re a good man, and you can give your daughter your name with pride.”
“I don’t want her to be a Newcomb,” Noah had said stubbornly. “I wouldn’t let Nikki take my name for the same reason. I don’t want to change mine to DaSilva because I know I haven’t earned that, but if it’s okay with you, I want my kids… I want them to know they come from good people. I want them to know they’ll always belong here. At the studio. With you and Sam and Tabs.”
At that, Edgar had teared up, as he was prone to doing. “The name’s yours for the taking,” he told Noah. “Even if you want it to be yours. I love you. You’re my son.”
Noah had risen, his jaw clenched, and left the room without saying another word. And because Edgar knew him well, he knew that it was too painful for Noah to speak any more of what he felt in his heart.
It was often hard to be close to the people you loved, to watch them, to love them in proximity. In Bali, it had been his pain and his privilege to have that separation. He gained a greater sense of himself at the same time his daughters came into their power. But it was only a temporary state. Home had called, and he had answered, and now he had three new sons and two granddaughters to love in addition to his girls.
And then there was Maisy. She’d joined his daughters and Scott at the scene of the photo shoot, her bright blonde hair glinting in the sun. She jingled her keys in the baby’s faces, trying and failing to get Clara and Pearl to focus.
She was a fine-looking woman, so beautiful and classy. From the minute he’d met her, he’d known she was only single by choice. Despite her flirtations, he’d been sure she couldn’t possibly be interested in a wrung-out dishrag like him. It had taken months of nagging from Sam to ask her over for dinner. Sweating like a much younger man, he’d made his best eggplant curry and sat down to wait and see if he’d humiliate himself.
He needn’t have worried. Maisy had arrived with an overnight bag and two bottles of champagne and she’d never really left.
He hadn’t expected to find love at this stage in his life, but it had come regardless, as such things always did. He’d been content to be alone these last few decades, but it was nice to have someone to talk to. To hold. To discuss all the chaos that surrounded, and probably would always surround, his daughters.
He’d been alone once, tattooing through the night, battling demons that raised their heads each and every time he opened his eyes. He and Deborah had muddled through, scraping together money for pints and red kidney beans, sometimes in love, often in crisis, and then there came the day when two babies were placed in his arms, and everything changed.
Two girls to love and then a third. Beautiful things worth putting down roots for and devoting all of himself to. And in loving his girls, he’d learned how to love himself. Learned how to see that everything was beautiful, if you tilted your head just the right way.
Toby and Noah strode past him, both fathers fixed on their children—fine young men, strong and healthy. With Maisy’s help, Toby had started a not-for-profit financial support business, and from what Edgar could glean from the statistic-heavy conversations, it was going well. Tabby was helping part-time in his office, but she had plans to sit the MCAT next year and go to university to study medicine when Pearl was a little older.
“I’m gonna be a surgeon, Dad,” she’d informed him as they sat watching the stars, Pearl at her breast. “I’m gonna cut people up like you wouldn’t fucking believe.”
But Edgar could believe it, just as he could believe Sam was running an exemplary tattoo business, and all Nicole’s charitable and accounting endeavours were a success.
There had always been a chance his daughters might not have ascended to the heights they had, but it was only a small one. Miniscule. Tinier than a grain of sand. All they’d needed was a push, and he’d given them that by leaving, getting out of their way so they could stand on their own without considering his feelings.
Those years without his daughters had been lonely. There were nights when he’d cried from missing them, but as Kahlil Gibran had written in his poem ‘On Children,’ a father was the bow from which his daughters, like living arrows, were sent forth. Sam, Tabby and Nicole did not belong to him. They belonged to life, to the world that had so much to offer them and be offered in return. He had been drawn away so his daughters could go straight and fast toward their destinies. He had failed many times in his duties as a father, as all parents did, but he would never regret his choice to leave. It was that time that had allowed their happy home to become a paradise.
“There we go!” Tabby shouted. “That’s a fucking picture and a half! Where’s Dad? Dad, come look at this fucking picture!”
As Nicole scolded Tabby for swearing, everyone else turned to look at him. Edgar smiled and waved.
“Come, dahling?” Maisy called. “We’ll get a photo with you as well. The whole family!”
Edgar nodded. He’d get up in a moment, but right then, he was enjoying seeing all of them together, artists and accountants, sons and daughters, wives and lovers. Whatever wrongs he’d done in this world, he had brought them all here, to Silver Daughters Ink. And here they would always stay, at least in spirit, at the best and brightest place in Melbourne.
Or maybe that was nonsense, Edgar thought, rising to his feet. At the end of the day, it was just a tattoo studio.
* * *
Thankyou so much for reading SO HECTIC! I hope you loved wrapping up the DaSilva family saga as much as I loved writing it! If you haven’t already, go unpack the origins stories of Sam and Scott in SO WILD and Nicole and her ex-biker love Noah in SO STEADY.
“So Steady is hot, witty, satisfying romance that’ll keep you turning the pages.” NYT bestselling author Kylie Scott
“So Steady is soo freaking good. Eve Dangerfield is a master at character and has a charmingly unpretentious style that’s my kind of crack.”USA Today Bestselling Author Amy Andrews.
For more deliciousness, I’d also suggest you try my bestselling romance novel BACK INTO IT
“I think I may have just met one of my favorite fictional men ever. Do yourself a favor and read this!” Dirty Girl Reviews
“No one makes me cackle while reading like Eve. And, for f**k”s sake, no one writes filthy, kinky sex like Eve. This is just *chef”s kiss*”Romantically Inclined Reviews
“There are literal stars in my eyes! This was soooo good; it ticked all my boxes and then some.” Melanie A
Turn the page to read an excerpt from BACK INTO IT