Epilogue Grant
Epilogue
Grant
Six years later
“No, you don’t do it like that.”
Grandmother froze, the small pitcher of milk hovering over her bowl. “I beg your pardon?”
Posie leaned forward, tongue tucked between her teeth when she couldn’t quite reach.
She’d refused a brush that morning, so her hair was everywhere.
Grandmother sighed, handing her the milk.
My father lowered the newspaper in front of his face, eyebrow raised at the sight of his granddaughter practically climbing up onto the table.
His bowl of Frosties remained untouched.
“Why did we give the kitchen staff the morning off, again?” he asked in a droll tone.
Mercy and I traded a look. She ducked her head, hiding her smile behind the dark, fuzzy hair of our son. I took a sip of my tea. “Posie wanted to make breakfast, Father.”
When my daughter aimed her smile at me, crooked and determined and perfect, I winked.
“Yes, I see that,” he answered, gaze lingering on the carpet underneath her chair.
The floor was covered with the remains of what hadn’t ended up in our bowls. Her pouring skills were a work in progress. One of Grandmother’s little terriers was snuffling up each individual piece.
“Grandpa, you haven’t started yet.”
At five years old, Posie Hastings was on a very clear path to world domination.
She was ambitious. Straightforward. Stubborn to a bloody fault (her mother’s trait, of course).
Shockingly good at getting her way, with a riot of white-blond curls—I’m told she favored both Connor and Mercy when they were young—and her heavily lashed grayish-blue eyes, there were very few people who could resist her.
“And I can’t add milk,” he clarified.
“No.” Posie leaned closer, her hands on the arm of her chair, which was dragged closer to his. “It’s gross when it’s mushy.”
My father gave Mercy a dry look. “And this is your doing?”
“The girl knows what she likes.” She smiled, lifting CJ to a standing position so she could hand him off to my sister.
Grandmother wrinkled her nose, her spoon holding only a few pieces of dry cereal. “This is ridic—” Posie turned her big eyes in her direction, and Granny halted. “This looks delicious, young lady.”
She took a bite, the crunching of her cereal uncommonly loud.
Rose untangled CJ’s hands from her hair. “A revelation, isn’t it, Granny?”
“Quite.”
Mother watched from the other end of the table, her spoon full of the sugary cereal. Her eyes, locked on her husband, promised retribution if he didn’t do exactly as she asked.
My father sighed and ate a rather large spoonful, much to my daughter’s delight.
Our summer visits quickly became something we all looked forward to once the school year was done—three full weeks so that the kids could adjust to the time difference—and just as she’d vowed, Mercy instituted strict family time when we were all staying at Blackmoor.
My father took occasional meetings while we were there, but my wife had gotten her way.
Some things hadn’t changed.
And the things that had, at least in this house, were all because of her. The river that cut through the mountain, as it turned out.
Posie followed my father everywhere, clambering up into his lap while he worked, and I’d never seen him turn her away. More than once, I caught him explaining stocks and bonds. Savings accounts. How to properly evaluate an investment.
“Grandpa, can I work with you when you’re done?”
He finished his first bite, then pushed the bowl away. “I’m finished. What would you like to learn today, poppet?”
She hopped off her chair and into his lap. “Can you teach me about the bullshit market?”
Grandmother dropped her spoon in a noisy clatter. Mother froze with hers halfway to her mouth.
I raised my eyebrows as color climbed up my father’s cheeks. Mercy slapped a hand over her mouth to contain her laugh.
“It’s a bull market, Posie,” he corrected primly.
“Okay! I’m ready.” She turned in his lap and started playing with his tie. “Can we go now?”
My father hoisted her in his arms, which was no small feat.
My daughter never sat still. She wrapped her arms around his neck and bounced in his grip as she motioned in my direction.
He tilted her over so I could receive a sugary kiss on my cheek.
Mercy watched them with an amused quirk of her mouth, blowing a kiss to Posie.
“Bye, Mommy. Bye, Granny. Bye, Auntie Rose. Bye, Great-Granny.” Posie waved over Father’s shoulder as he strode from the room.
“Bye, CJ,” she yelled. “You can come when you’re older and know how to talk and stuff. ”
Connor James, at all of one year old, shoved a handful of his aunt Rose’s hair in his mouth.
When Posie and my father were clear of the room, Grandmother reached for the milk and poured it over her cereal.
“You’re still eating that, Granny?” Rose asked.
“As opposed to what? Making my own breakfast?”
I shook my head.
Mercy stretched, standing from her chair.
We hadn’t gotten much sleep. CJ was cutting a molar, and Posie woke at three a.m. ready to go ride one of the horses.
When we told her no, she insisted on sleeping between me and Mercy.
I was only kicked in the head twice, which was a fairly successful night when it came to sharing space with my firstborn.
“We have a meeting too,” my wife said, sliding her hand over my shoulder. I took her hand in mine and brought her fingers to my mouth.
“Do we?” I gave her a curious look. She raised an eyebrow like I should know what she was talking about. “Oh. Right. We do. We, uh, we have a very important meeting we couldn’t reschedule.”
“I’ll watch CJ,” Rose stated, blowing a kiss into her nephew’s neck. He laughed, and everyone in the room smiled at the sound. “It’s quite lovely outside. Would you like to join us for a walk, Granny?”
“I suppose. Is that tattooed curmudgeon coming along?”
“My husband?” Rose asked dryly. “Yes, I think he might.”
Mercy and I shared a look, and she rolled her lips together, trying to hide her smile. Granny never did handle change well.
She hummed, eyeing her great-grandson. “He seems like he won’t be too much trouble.”
CJ let out a loud shriek, wiggling to get free of Rose’s grasp when Granny’s dog trotted across the room. It jumped, hiding behind a chair.
Mercy laughed. “Just keep the dogs away, and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
She took my hand and dragged me from the room. As soon as we were out of sight, I gripped her hips, steering her into the nearest wall. A picture frame rattled as I slid my hand up along her waist, palming her backside firmly as my tongue swept into her mouth.
“We have no children for at least the next hour. Do you know what that means?”
Mercy dropped her head against the wall, moaning as I pushed a hand underneath her shirt, working it beneath her bra to find her nipple. “Yes.”
I sucked her earlobe into my mouth, dragging my teeth along the soft skin. “We can nap,” I whispered against her mouth.
Mercy laughed. Still, so many years later, the sight of her smile almost sent me to my knees. She cupped my face in both hands and kissed me deeply. “We actually do have a meeting, Hastings.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t pout. It’s on your calendar.”
“I’m not pouting.” I dragged my fingers over the line of her ribs, pouting only the slightest little bit. “What for?”
“One last board spot to fill, and this candidate is perfect. I think it’s mostly a formality.”
“Ahh.” I dropped my head into her shoulder. “Fine. If we do it quickly enough, there’s still time to fuck my wife in our very big, very private suite with a lock on the door. Then we can nap.”
She smiled. “Deal.”
Back in our rooms in the west wing, Mercy adjusted the laptop so that we were both fully visible in the screen.
Working on a family vacation wasn’t a rule we broke lightly.
Mercy’s school year was still incredibly busy, but since CJ’s birth, we’d discussed one more year of her teaching full-time before she dropped her hours.
She missed being home with the kids, and our current project was hopefully going to help with that.
As the foundation copresident, she’d still work quite a bit, but she’d be at home, her hours more flexible than they were now.
The screen flickered to life, and Dr. Washington’s face filled the other square. Her wide smile hadn’t changed a bit. “Hello, you two,” she said. “How’s London?”
“Wonderful,” Mercy answered. “Thank you for meeting with us. I was thrilled to get your email.”
I set my hand on Mercy’s thigh, briefly meeting her eyes when she wound her fingers through mine. “Dr. Washington, I’m not sure we should waste time on formalities,” I said. “We’d be ecstatic to have you on the board. You were able to review all the projections?”
“It’s ambitious, but I love what you’re doing. It would help so many in this area.”
Mercy smiled. “That’s the goal. I’d be working directly with local schools to determine the best fit for the scholarships. Meeting with families and figuring out how we can best support them. Meeting with school boards and teachers to discuss their projects too.”
The Kincaid-Hastings Foundation was Mercy’s brainchild.
The endowment at Michigan in Connor’s name was just a start, in her eyes.
It was good, but not good enough. Not big enough.
In her own experience teaching, she saw so many kids who had the drive and the ambition to reach for goals that their circumstances might make difficult to achieve.
She saw teachers who wanted to help but lacked the resources to support their students in the ways they needed.
We would fund educational programs in the greater Ann Arbor area to middle school and high school teachers.
Grants to schools for reading programs. Scholarships for low-income students and financial support for their families.
It was countless hours of research. Fundraising.
Working ourselves to the bone to get this off the ground.
Dozens of times over the last eighteen months, I’d found her sound asleep on a stack of papers in her office.
She’d had one meeting with my father and grandmother, a meeting that I was quite unfairly barred from. She came out of my father’s study with a check so big it made my eyes water.
It was humbling, marrying someone who genuinely wanted to change the world.
Often, over the years, I came to realize that my favorite thing to do was sit back and watch her.
Rocking our children to sleep, or reading them a book in the soft light of their bedroom.
Teaching Posie how to plant a flower. Singing “Wheels on the Bus” over and over simply because CJ loved it.
Taking on a school board meeting when she felt the teachers deserved more than they were getting.
I had to drag her away from only one—slung her up over my shoulders and walked her out before she could start a brawl.
An octogenarian with nothing better to do than complain told her to keep her trap shut and go back home to the kitchen.
I caught her around the waist, but not before she called him a misogynistic prick and suggested he come say that to her face.
The rest of the audience applauded her on the way out, which she quite loved.
The school board, despite the outburst, approved her suggested changes.
She was the best woman I’d ever known. The kindest, fiercest mother. A partner I’d never dreamed of having. My best friend.
I didn’t say much during the meeting with Dr. Washington, who enthusiastically agreed to become our final board member.
Mercy clicked the X on the meeting tab and stood, swinging her legs over mine until she was settled on my lap.
Her hair was longer now, and the ends tickled the tops of my hands where I held her waist.
“You were quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” Her eyes searched mine. “Is everything okay?”
It hit me unexpectedly sometimes. What we’d been through. How close we’d come to losing it all. I had to remind myself, in those moments, that we hadn’t. We’d come through it. Come through it stronger because we’d chosen each other, again and again.
That we made a family that was filled with so much love and care that it didn’t seem possible. We were parenting our children differently from what we’d been taught. Promising them through our actions that they’d always be loved. Always be safe.
I nodded, emotion making it hard to swallow. My love for her, for our life, defied all common sense, and somehow, through some miracle, her love for me was the same.
“Mercy?”
My voice was rough. If I were any more exhausted, I’d probably weep, simply because it felt so good just to sit and hold my wife, the person who anchored my world.
“What?”
I kissed her. She smiled. There was nothing more in the world I could ask for than this.
“I’m quite glad you’re mine.”
Her smile softened. “So am I, Grant.” She kissed me again. “So am I.”