Epilogue
“You do that shit again, I’m taking your keys away and this time no amount of begging or sex is gonna sway me.” I slammed out of the car pissed the fuck off. The girl’s a fucking speed demon.
“Simon, don’t be like that, I was only going ten miles over the limit.”
“Try twenty and I don’t want to hear it. I told you before…do you drive like this with Ana in the car?”
“Of course not .
“Then why would you do it with him?”
I placed my hand on my unborn son who was distorting her tummy even more than his sister had when she was this far along and she was a big baby.
“That’s not fair, I was being careful.” Her lip trembled as I took her hand to lead her up the steps. Fucking hormones, she cries if I even look at her too hard these days. I’m beginning to think she’s milking that shit though.
The door was barely opened, when our one and a half year old baby girl came barreling towards us screaming my name at the top of her lungs. She’s her mother’s kid, no behavior whatsoever. I bent down to catch her up in my arms and accept her wet kisses all over my face.
Her mom is just a little bit jealous of our relationship though she tries to hide it well. She’s already threatening to Bogart my son once he gets here, we’ll see about that. “Hello little princess, what have you been up to?” Her grandmother smiled fondly at her as she lied her ass off about being good.
“Let daddy see what you made.” She waved at her mom over my shoulder as I headed in the direction of the playroom. I knew Ash was going to need some downtime, the way she always does when we come back from one of her doctor’s appointments and grandma would be about ready for a break from my little angel, so it was u to daddy and take up the slack .
If I’d thought my life before was complete I was amazed to realize after the birth of my baby girl that I wasn’t even close. The love I had for her was a different kind of love, the kind that woke me up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with worries of the future, her future. That little body held my DNA.
She had her mother’s heart and my face, down to what my wife calls my crazy hair. She came into the world kicking and screaming, took one look at me and cooed. Hopefully, she’ll never hear the story of how I lost my shit in that delivery room. How I ranted and raved-threatened and brow beat everyone within earshot until my wife, who was in more pain than a human had the right to, calmed me down .
The first time I held her in my arms, I trembled. I cried along with her and her mother her first few minutes in this world and fell in love so deep it shook me. From the minute we brought her home, she’s had me wrapped around her little finger. She whimpers, I’m up like a shot to check on her in her crib.
Ashley thinks it’s funny. She jokes that now she can catch a break since I have someone else to obsess over. Hah, more like now I have two of them. I want so much for her, want to be so much what I never had in my life when I was a kid.
Others claim I spoil her and her mom, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as them both being my whole world and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them happy. “Dada wook.” She held up a picture she’d painted of me, her favorite subject. Ash is going to make me pay for this one I’m sure.
“It’s beautiful baby. Do you want daddy to read you a story?” She clapped her chubby little hands together with glee and ran to her toy chest to grab her favorite dog- eared book. Just then a ray of sunlight came through the high curtain-less window and highlighted her curls so like mine.
My heart twitched so hard I had to close my eyes. I never forget how close I’d come to losing it all. Her mother had been carrying her the day she’d been taken. Had I known that then, no way that son of a bitch would be rotting away in a jail cell. I would’ve snapped his fucking neck.
She toddled back to me on her little legs and threw herself into my arms. “Let’s go to our chair.” I kissed her curls and inhaled the familiar scent of her hair as we sat in the rocker that had been in her mom’s family for generations. I liked that. Like that my little girl had family history at least from her mother’s side of the family.
Her grandparents had become so much more to me than in laws over the last couple of years. They’d embraced me completely, and though they never said it, they’d fashioned themselves the parents I never had.
A lot had come out in the trial, things that I hadn’t thought of in years. The defense had dredged up my past from birth until the time their clients had set their sights on me. In the end, it served no purpose other than to open old wounds that were better left untouched.
They’d turned on each other, Jen and Jeremy. She, blaming him for the whole sordid mess, and he claiming that it was she who’d cooked the whole thing up after he’d drunkenly told her what had happened to his mother. The court seemed to be gridlocked on who to believe, but I tend to believe Jeremy’s version.
Sure he went along with it after the fact, but I believe that she was the one. He didn’t have the fucking brains to pull off a stunt like that. If he had, he wouldn’t have grabbed Ashley in the middle of the day in a parking lot full of holiday shoppers. Funny what you can piece together when given half a chance .
It didn’t much matter who said what anyway. With the pull Sorenson and Jonas had in the judicial system they were pretty much gone before the first gavel bang. The kidnapping alone carried a fifteen to life sentence, add the blackmail and extortion and they would never see the light of day. Works for me!
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from or about them in anyway, not since the trial was over. I know Jen had tried contacting her sister, but I’d forbidden them both from mentioning her to my wife. Her place in our lives is over. Better yet she has no place in our lives period.
If they get newspapers where they’re at, then they would know that the people they’d sought to harm are doing very well. The judge had found his someone and Jonas hadn’t been too far behind. Of course the gossip rags had covered every aspect of it as they’d done with our wedding and the birth of our first child.
“Dada weady.” I shook myself out of my reverie and begun to read my girl her favorite story. It wasn’t everyday that I let those thoughts intrude, I like to focus more on my happy little family these days. I guess what they say is true; the best revenge is to live well.
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