EPILOGUE
Ten Years Later
“Mommy, hurry up!” Addison called over her shoulder, her little legs pumping as she tried to keep up with Asher.
I smiled and watched as my five-year-old twins hurried to our family’s favorite picnic spot. Sunbeams filtered down through the leaves of the trees and shined off their blond hair as they raced to the tree by lookout point.
“You’re not going to run?” Harrison asked, a grin on his handsome face as he carried the wicker basket full of sandwiches, fruit, brownies, and drinks.
I smiled up at him. “Not this time,” I said, setting my hand on my abdomen to rest on the ever-growing baby bump.
“What about you, Alice?” he asked our eight-year-old.
She gave him a look. “I’m holding the quilt, Daddy. I don’t want to accidentally drop it and get it dirty.”
I saw the wistful look on her face as her younger brother and sister screamed with laughter ahead of us.
“I’ll hold the quilt, sweetie. Why don’t you run after Addie and Asher? You could probably still catch them…”
She tossed the quilt to me and took off like a rocket.
Harrison held my free hand, and we walked slowly after them.
“Don’t get too close to the railing,” I called after them, suddenly worried.
Harrison chuckled. “They know, Sunshine. They know.”
I forced myself to relax. My mom worries always seemed to double when I was pregnant. A thought occurred to me. “Guess what Melinda asked me the other day.”
His brown eyes were questioning.
“We’re both teaching Romeo and Juliet to our freshmen. She wanted to know if I ever thought about how twisty and complicated our love story was.”
He squeezed my hand. I knew he hated to think about those awful years where he’d hurt me so badly. “What did you say?”
I thought for a moment, watching as Alice struggled a bit to get past Asher and touch the tree before he did. She was doing a victory dance as the twins immediately tagged her and declared her “it.” They launched right into a game of hide and go seek.
I smiled. There was never a down moment with those three, and I was sure the little boy we’d soon be adding to the mix would liven things up even more.
“I told her that I rarely thought about it. When I do, I always think of two things. The first is that a lot of couples go through rocky times in their relationships. I’m just glad ours happened before we were married.”
“Me too,” he said. “It was bad enough as it was, but if it had involved kids and marriage… I don’t know that we could have bounced back from that.”
“I’d like to think we could bounce back from anything,” I said.
“You’re totally right,” he said, holding my hand up to his mouth and kissing it gently.
“We were meant to be, and I don’t think anything could have kept us apart.
I’d still prefer to think that awful time was all a very bad dream, and that I’d never made such horrible mistakes.
” He stopped walking. “What was the second thing?”
I laughed. “That no one would ever be bored by our love story.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “That’s for sure. I wish it was a little boring.”
“Wishes will never change our past, but they can lead us towards the future we want,” I said.
He looked at me with love in his eyes then turned and watched our children running and playing. “My whole future is right here. As long as you and the kids are with me, that’s the most perfect future I can ever imagine.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, as we started laying out the quilt and setting up the picnic under the branches of the tree that had seen all the stages of our love story.
The End