july, age 6
The summer term ended on a half day, a blisteringly hot Wednesday afternoon after a morning of the children clearing out their school trays and tidying up the classrooms. Lucas’s bag was filled with little projects he had done throughout the year, mostly half-finished when he’d hardly ever had enough time to complete something to his standards. His obsessive neatness wasn’t accounted for by the lesson timings and his teacher had never allowed him to stay in at break or the playtime after lunch to finish up. He had tried to throw them away, to abandon the pieces for which he had no pride, but the teacher had insisted his parents would probably want to see them.
He didn’t want them to. He had no desire to show them something he didn’t care about when he knew he could have done so much better. His mother would never say that: she hardly had a critical bone in her body, singing his praises for the smallest things, but he couldn’t bear to let her see the half-hearted projects. As much as he hated to give up, he hated what he had done even more.
At twelve o’clock, he sat with the weight of his poor artwork in his bag as he and Asher waited for their parents to pick them up. The classroom wasn’t nearly empty yet: there was a slow trickle of students leaving as various parents, friends and grandparents came to collect them, the children promising to keep in touch over the summer as their parents grumbled about having to entertain their kids for the next seven weeks. Lucas didn’t see the point in all of the tears and the hype: he only cared about seeing Asher and he knew they would keep in touch over the summer.
Last year, hardly a week had ever gone by that they hadn’t seen each other. He had spent more time with Asher than with his own father, who had been somewhat preoccupied with newborn Isabella. Now she was two weeks away from her first birthday and Cora’s second child was due any day now. So was Sarah’s.
Amidst the flurry of people coming and going, Lucas caught a glimpse of Audrie out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes were red, her cheeks streaked with tears, and he heard her sniffling when she tipped into the classroom, laden down with bags.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why’re you crying?”
Audrie dropped down onto the seat next to him, a blubbering eleven-year-old amidst a sea of bemused seven-year-olds. “I don’t want to leave,” she said, dragging her sleeves across her cheeks. “I’m not ready to go.”
“Go where?” he asked, frowning.
“High school!” she cried out, covering her hands with her face. “Today was my last ever day here and I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave all my friends and I don’t want to go to a new school.” Crossing her arms on the table, she buried her face in her bunched-up jumper. Lucas didn’t know what to say. He had never really been faced with his weeping sister before, no idea what she wanted him to do.
“You’ll be ok,” he said, repeating what she told him every time he got worked up. He had never really had the unfiltered mind of most children his age, incapable of providing a stream of subconscious thought to amuse her, but neither was his empathy developed enough to know what to do. “You’ve got friends. And Dylan’s there!”
She looked up and gave him a weak smile. “It’s just hard,” she said. “And it’s so different.”
Lucas looked at Asher, who was playing with a deck of cards he had found at the back of his tray. He turned back to Audrie. “Are you ok?”
She didn’t respond but she pulled him into a hug and she held him tightly. He liked that: he wasn’t the biggest hugger, something that only became more and more obvious as he aged, but there was something oddly comforting about being squeezed so tight. It was as though he knew he was safe when she held on so tightly that he couldn’t get out.
A few minutes later, as the classroom slowly got emptier and the three of them were close to being the last ones left again, Maddie appeared in the doorway looked as much of a mess as Audrie was. She had clearly been crying, her tears spurred on by the emotions of her students. Lucas’s eyes fell on the badge on her chest, suddenly remember what his mother had mentioned that morning.
“Happy birthday, hammy!” he said. She gave him a watery grin and stepped over to the table, pulling him into a hug.
“Thank you, Lucas,” she said, making sure she held him tight when she wrapped her arms around him: she knew he preferred it. When she pulled away from him, she registered Audrie and she chuckled, stroking her hair. “Oh, you silly goose,” she said, rubbing her arm. “You don’t need to cry, Audrie. You’re going to have an amazing time at high school. You’ll make tons of new friends and you’ll still see me all the time.” She grinned down at her granddaughter. “You can’t get rid of me.”
Audrie nodded, tucking herself against Maddie’s chest and trying to get a grip of her emotions when she knew how stupid it was. She was a smart girl, as self-aware as she was environmentally aware, and she knew it made no sense to get so upset when many of her friends would end up at the same school as her and her favourite teacher would always be her grandmother, but it was one thing to know those things and another to be able to make a difference.
“Is Mummy coming?” Lucas asked, looking up at his grandmother.
“Actually, you’re going to be going home with Asher today, both of you, and Tom,” she said.
“Is Mummy getting us later?”
“Maybe, or Truman will,” she said. “I’m not sure – all I know is that you’re going to go home with Asher. I need to head off, honey. I need to be somewhere, but I’ll see you soon. I’ll come over later to collect Tom.” She squeezed Lucas’s shoulder and brushed Audrie’s tears from her cheeks with a smile before she disappeared into the classroom next door. A minute later, Lucas watched as she left with Tom with a hug and a kiss and she hurried off to her car. Tom slunk over to sit with Lucas, Asher and Audrie: they were the only other children in the school he was comfortable around. After three years, he had yet to make a friend in his class.
Two minutes passed before Ishaana turned up with her keys in her hand and a grin on her lips: she wasn’t the last parent for once, on the last day of school, and she beamed as she helped with the assortment of bags surrounding the four children she was now in charge of. “Home time!” she said. “I can’t believe the year’s over already.”
The words prompted another hiccup from Audrie and Ishaana laughed, tucking her arm around the hopeless girl.
“Oh, Audrie, hun,” she said, walking towards the car with her arm around her. “I forgot it’s your last day, isn’t it?”
Audrie nodded, her lips curved downwards, and Ishaana rubbed her shoulder.
“You’re moving on up: bigger, greener pastures. I know Dylan’s looking forward to you joining him at St Matthew’s.”
She looked up, her tears seeming to clear. “He is?”
“Of course he is,” Ishaana said with a grin. “So there you go – you’ve already got a friend there before you’ve even started. I’m sure he’ll show you the ropes. You’ll be absolutely fine, sweetheart.”
Audrie nodded, dragging the backs of her hands across her cheeks. “Ok,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
Tom shuffled closer to Lucas, taking his hand and holding on tight as they walked to the car.
“Where’re we going?” he whispered, his voice almost imperceptible.
“To Asher’s house,” Lucas said. Though Tom was only four months younger than him, he had taken on a protective role: they were similar, something he picked up on without really realising what that meant, but he had once overheard his grandparents talking about Tom being special. He hadn’t spoken a single word for the first three years of his life and now coming up for seven, he couldn’t bring himself to talk to anyone outside his own family. School was a living nightmare.
*
The high school didn’t break up until Friday afternoon and the house was weirdly quiet without Aaron and Dylan having raucous two-person football matches or playing video games in the playroom. While Ishaana set to work on putting together a spot of lunch for the disparate set of children she’d gathered from school, one one quarter of which belonged to her, the four of them headed up to the top of the turret.
Tom didn’t leave the worried frown from his face until Audrie gave him one of her magazines and he could lose himself in the words and pictures. The energy he saved by not speaking seemed to be directly repurposed for reading, devouring books intended for children older and more advanced than him, and he gave Audrie a smile when she handed him a nature journal from her school bag. He scrunched himself up in a ball on a beanbag with the window behind him, natural light flooding the page. Asher spread himself out on the floor with a grin.
“It’s summer,” he said. “No more school! I wanna stay up late and eat ice cream and watch films.” He rolled onto his stomach and let out a long sigh, running his hands over the fluffy carpet. “I like the holidays.”
“Me too,” Lucas said. He liked not being at school, even if that only meant hanging out with his family at home. They understood him better than his teacher, who seemed to have a mould of the ideal seven-year-old in her head that she tried to make every child fit into. “What’s the date?”
“The seventeenth,” Audrie said. “You know that, it’s hammy’s birthday.”
Lucas pursed his lips, screwing up his face in thought as he tried to do the maths. “Mummy was supposed to have the baby thirteen days ago,” he said. “Why’s it not here yet?”
“Sometimes babies are late,” she said. “You were late. Issy was late. Maybe that’s why she didn’t pick us up today: maybe she’s having the baby.”
Lucas gasped, his eyebrows shooting up. “Really?”
“I don’t know.” Audrie shrugged. She was still feeling a little blue, trying to come to terms with the fact that her primary school days were well and truly over and for the next two months, she lingered in the purgatory before she was officially a high schooler. “Maybe. Then she smiled. “That’d be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?” She lay down next to Lucas and took his hand. He didn’t flinch or pull away, letting her invade his bubble of personal space. “I really want to meet the baby.”
“Me too,” Lucas said.
*
Bishop came home from work for lunch, unquestioning as he sat opposite the children that didn’t belong to him. Lucas had become a feature in the house over the past three years and more recently, so had Audrie. Tom was a new addition but he didn’t question his presence, putting two and two together: there weren’t many kids who looked like him at St Mary’s.
Ishaana brought out a couple of quiches and a pan of boiled potatoes, as well as an assortment of cocktail sausages and miniature scotch eggs she had bought for an easy lunch for four hungry children. Her family had always had a hefty appetite and the spread she laid out was far more than they could manage, but she hated to underprovide: she had an subconscious need to be a good host, giving her guests whatever they could need.
Gentle conversation flowed, most of it between Bishop and Ishaana rather than the children who tucked into their food as though they hadn’t eaten in a week. Audrie was ordinarily a fountain of conversation but in her slightly weakened emotional state, and with Dylan still at school, she didn’t have a lot to add. Tom was typically silent, his words disappearing in front of Bishop and Ishaana. Neither had ever heard him utter a single syllable.
Lucas kept to himself too, until Asher’s parents left to clean up next door and he turned to his sister. “Do you like Dylan?” he asked. She snapped her head up.
“What? Why? Why’re you asking that?”
Lucas shrugged. “I think you like him,” he said. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Audrie’s cheeks turned the deepest shade of pink, matching her puffy eyes. Flustered, she struggled to find the right words. “I’m eleven!” she eventually said. “He’s not even at my school!”
Lucas couldn’t help but think that she hadn’t answered his question. When he asked a question, he liked it to be answered but she had forged a new path to get around giving him what he wanted. He couldn’t sense the connection between Asher being Audrie’s boyfriend and what school he went to. “But do you like him?”
“He’s my friend,” she mumbled, busying herself with her glass of water. “Of course I like my best friend.”
That seemed to be good enough for Lucas, who didn’t really understand the gravity behind what he was asking or why she reacted the way she did. In his head it was simple: there was like and there was not like. The various shades of grey didn’t make sense to him, the mutilcoloured spectrum that was love and hate and indifference. He lived a binary life: yes and no; good and bad. Feelings complicated that.
In the kitchen, Ishaana’s ears perked up as she washed up a plate. She turned off the tap and went quiet, listening once she heard her son’s name. Nudging Bishop, she nodded at the door. “Hey, Bear,” she said. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” He finished drying up a tea cup and hung it on the mug tree. Ishaana crossed her arms, holding out on a response as she listened to the children chatting.
“I think it’s time for a new bet,” she said. Bishop sighed. “Are you listening to this? It’s adorable!”
“It’s nosy.”
“I have ears; I can’t help what I hear,” she said. “A little birdie tells me Audrie likes Dylan.”
Bishop gave her a slightly weary look. “Would that little birdie be Audrie, by any chance? And by telling you, do you mean that you heard it when you shouldn’t have been listening.”
She threw a tea towel at him with a grin. “Oh, come on, grumpy butt. It’s so fucking cute. And I’m already sure Dylan’s got a crush on her. I bet you when she gets to high school, that’s going to become a thing.”
Bishop laughed and took another mug from the drying rack, wiping it down with the tea towel. “You’re terrible, Ishy. You’re so bad. You need to stop playing matchmaker with our kids.”
“It’s just a bit of fun and it’s not like I’m doing anything. I’m just making bets with you – they’re the ones with the feelings.” She eyed him and a slow grin spread. “Oh, I get it. You just don’t want to take me up on a bet because you know you’ll lose.”
“That’s so not it,” he said.
“So what’s the harm?” She shimmied over to him with a glint in her eyes, taking the tea towel out of his hands. She draped it around the back of his neck, using it to pull him closer to kiss her. “What d’you say, twenty quid?”
“What exactly is the bet?” He asked, his hand on the small of her back. “You need to lay out the parameters.”
Ishaana pursed her lips. “That Dylan and Audrie will date. Some point in the next … five years, I reckon. It’s brewing.”
“Four years and you’re on.”
She shook his hand and took out her phone to make a note of yet another bet. It was just a bit of fun, but she enjoyed keeping a log of her wins and occasional losses.
“So,” Bishop asked, “who’re you shipping Aaron with? You’ve already paired off Asher with Lucas and Dylan with Audrie but you’ve run out of Sarah’s children.” He laughed, drying off a couple of plates that he stacked in the cupboard.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, lips pressed together. “He’s a bit of an enigma, I have to say, even to my infallible mother’s intuition.” With a wicked grin, she straightened her back and laughed to herself. “Give him a couple of decades and maybe he’ll end up with Isabella.”
“Who’s that?”
Ishaana rolled her eyes. “Come on, keep the fuck up. She’s Lucas’s little sister. His dad’s daughter.”
“Ishy! She’s, what, one?”
“I said a couple of decades!” she cried out. “And no, don’t worry, I’m not betting on that. That was a joke. Though it would be funny as fuck, oh my God.”
Bishop tutted, shaking his head. “I feel so sorry for anyone they ever bring back,” he said. “They’re in for one hell of a grilling. How long before you sit Lucas down to quiz him about his intentions?”
Ishaana laughed and swatted him with a tea towel. “Stop it! It’s just nice, don’t you think? I think it’s sweet that they found each other, despite the odds.”
Bishop frowned. “What odds? Being put in the same class? There’s only one class.”
She rolled her eyes at him with a snort. “No, you know what I mean. I used to be so fucking worried about Ash, that he wouldn’t fit in. He’s not like Aaron or Dylan, and life has dealt him a pretty shitty hand.”
Bishop glanced around at the house they lived in before his eyes landed back on his wife, who was responsible for the majority of the fortune they had in savings. “What on earth do you mean?”
She hugged her arms and shrugged. “Well, it can’t be easy being dyslexic and asthmatic when school’s so focused on academia and sport,” she said. “I was worried he’d really struggle or he’d be the odd one out and he’d get teased when he couldn’t read or play football.”
“Ish…” He trailed off, a sad expression taking over his face, but Ishaana smiled.
“But he has Lucas,” she said, “and I think they’re really good for each other and Sarah even said the other day that Lucas is better when he’s with Asher.”
“What do you mean he’s better?” he asked as he returned to drying, listening to his wife as he tidied up. She gave him a hand, putting away the cups and plates and bowls that he laid out for her.
“She said his symptoms get a bit better when they’re together.”
Bishop frowned at her, staring. “I’ve missed something, haven’t I? Is he sick? What symptoms?”
Ishaana stared right back, tilting her head to one side. “He’s autistic,” she said. “And I think he has OCD, though that might just be part and parcel of autism, I’m not sure. You knew that already though.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d remember something like that, Ish.”
“Are you sure? Because we’ve talked about this before, I’m sure of it.”
“We really haven’t. I mean … well, I’m not really surprised now that you mention it,” he said, speaking slowly as he thought to himself. With degrees in both biomedical science and sociology, he had done a couple of modules on behavioural disorders in children and seen enough cases in real life with his work in and around hospitals and clinics, but he had never thought to apply his knowledge to his son’s best friend.
“Mmm, well, he is,” she said. “I have to say, I had always assumed it. Sarah only actually told me last year and I had to act surprised. I mean, I thought it was obvious but she only actually got a diagnosis … maybe two years ago.”
Bishop raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Well, I had no idea. That’s quite late, isn’t it? He would’ve been, what, five?”
She pursed her lips and shrugged one shoulder, feeling for her friend. A sad smile licked her lips and she pushed the cupboard shut. “She was scared.”
*
The children hardly made a sound all day as midday turned to afternoon and crept into evening. Much of it was spent upstairs before they had migrated down to Asher’s room to read and play, though none of them were the kind of children who enjoyed that kind of play. Lucas preferred to order everything according to its size or colour – or both, if he had the time and space – while Audrie was happy to lose herself in one of her nature books and Tom was happiest in his own company.
After Aaron and Dylan got back from school, the six of them had congregated on the two sofas in the playroom, sprawled out to watch a film when the two older boys had dragged themselves into the house complaining of the heat and begging their mother to let them skip the last two days of school. While she hadn’t exactly said yes, she hadn’t said no either.
Maddie had been over at five to collect Tom, assuring Audrie and Lucas that their parents would arrive soon. Neither had questioned the odd day too much when Audrie was too overwhelmed by her final day of school and Lucas was just happy to be with his best friend.
The film they were watching came to an end at the exact time there was a crunch of gravel outside. None of them looked up until Ishaana’s voice rang through the house.
“Audrie! Your dad’s here!” she cried out. Audrie and Lucas headed out of the playroom, joining Ishaana in the hallway as she opened the door to a slightly tearful Truman standing on the doorstep. His eyes were as pink as Audrie’s, his hair ruffled as though he had spent hours running his hands through it.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” she asked, her nerves spiking at the sight of her father. He looked like a wreck, but he shook his head.
“Nothing, peanut, nothing’s wrong,” he said, breaking into a grin. “The opposite, actually.” He stepped to one side to reveal Sarah standing behind him with a baby in her arms. Audrie gasped so loud that Lucas jumped.
“You had the baby! Oh my goodness!” she cried out, rushing forwards to her mother. Lucas looked up at Truman, confused.
“Mummy had the baby?”
“She did,” he said, unable to control his grin. He looked as though he might cry at any moment.
“Is that why she didn’t pick us up?”
Truman laughed and nodded. “We were in the hospital,” he said. “We wanted to surprise you two tonight.”
Ishaana stood with her hand over her mouth, gazing at the tiny baby Sarah held. “Oh my God,” she said, her voice hardly more than a breath. “Come inside. Jesus. You’re supposed to be resting, Sarah. When did you even give birth?”
“She’s about four hours old,” Sarah said, staring at the little girl in her arms. Lucas stood up on his tiptoes to look at his new sister, a thrum of emotions crowding his head that he struggled to pick apart.
“She’s my sister?” he asked. His mother nodded, her eyes watering.
“She’s your sister, baby.”
Ishaana led them through to the sitting room where Sarah sat down with a heavy sigh and a wince, handing the baby to her husband. Truman held her in one arm, the other tucked around Lucas’s shoulder as he bent over his tiny little sister.
“Does she have a name?” Ishaana asked.
“Liliana,” Sarah said, her eyes glued to her baby as she made herself comfortable on the sofa.
“Liliana Sun-mi Song,” Truman said. He bent his neck to kiss his daughter’s head. Bishop came into the room when he heard voices and did a double take when he saw the newborn in Truman’s arms.
“Oh my goodness,” he said with a laugh of surprise. “Congratulations are in order! I didn’t even realise that was why we were babysitting today. Oh, wow. She’s precious.”
Audrie was transfixed, staring in wonderment at her baby sister, the tiny sleeping bundle that shared half of her DNA. “She’s so tiny,” she whispered. Sarah shook her head to herself: Liliana certainly hadn’t felt tiny for the hour that she had spent pushing her out, when she had been certain that her body couldn’t take the excruciating pain for a single second longer. But she had, and her daughter was proof of that.
“Can I hold her?” Lucas asked. Truman passed him the baby, making sure he held her just right. “I don’t want to drop her.”
“You won’t,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
Liliana was passed around from Lucas to Audrie before she handed the baby to Ishaana, who cooed at the tiny baby.
“God, I miss babies,” she said, grinning down at the little girl. “Hi, Liliana. You’re in good hands, honey. You won’t realise this for a while, but your parents are pretty incredible people.” She held on for a while, swaying with the little girl in her arms as she recalled the first time she had held Asher. She’d had to wait for almost a day after his birth before she had even been able to see him, the impossible tiny baby whisked away after an emergency caesarean, and almost two weeks had passed before he had been well enough to feel his mother’s touch.
She handed the baby to Bishop. He was a natural, the little girl fitting into the crook of his arm without fussing, and Ishaana leant over to his ear. “Aaron’s future wife, eh?” she whispered, quiet enough for no-one else to hear. Sarah was too out of it to notice; Truman’s attention was fixed on his wife, and their children couldn’t tear their eyes from the newest member of their family.
“You can’t pimp out a newborn,” he muttered back to her. “You’re going to lose all your friends.”
She laughed and when he handed the baby back to Sarah, she tucked herself under his arm with her hand over his heart. “You must be tired,” she said. Sarah gave her a smile.
“Shattered,” she said. “And very out of practice.” She rubbed her eyes. “It’s just hit me that it’s seven years since Lucas was a baby and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
“It’s like riding a bike,” Ishaana said. “It all comes back to you, I promise. I was the same when I had Ash.”
As if on cue, a sleepy Asher wandered into the sitting room and his eyes popped when he saw the baby. “Is she your sister?” he asked Lucas, who nodded and grinned.
“My baby sister!” he said proudly, his beam so wide that his cheeks pushed his glasses up. Asher raced over to see, peering in fascination at the bundle in Sarah’s arms before he turned around to hug Lucas. Sarah watched the way her son hugged his best friend with such ease when there had been a time he wouldn’t let anyone but his family near him, let alone touch him.
“Mummy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“When’s Cora having her baby?” he asked, aware that his father’s fiancee was fit to burst too. Sarah smiled and glanced at Truman, passing the question onto him when she was too tired to answer.
“Cora’s in the hospital at the moment,” he said. “She had her baby right after Mummy had hers.”
Lucas sucked in a deep breath as he tried to process the news. “She had her baby? And Mummy did too? Today?”
Truman nodded, his smile almost painfully wide, and his gaze returned to Sarah as though he couldn’t bear to look away from her. He had been by her side all day, holding her hand when she had squeezed so tight he felt as though his bones had splintered; he had encouraged her when she waned; he had kissed her when she had brought their daughter into the world.
“Oh my God,” Ishaana spluttered. “Seriously? Synchronised births?”
Sarah nodded. “I still can’t believe it. I think Liliana was hanging on all this time just to wait for Matilda,” she said. Cora’s caesarean had been scheduled for a couple of weeks now after a few minor complications and Sarah had almost felt bad when she had gone into labour on the same morning, giving birth just thirty minutes before Cora had.
“Matilda?” Lucas asked. “Who’s Matilda?”
“Your other baby sister,” Sarah said with a laugh. She couldn’t get her head around it, that after thirteen agonising days after her due date, her daughter had decided to steal Cora’s limelight. She wanted the two girls to be friends: they shared a birthday, after all, and a brother. “Cora’s baby.”
“When can I see her?”
“Tomorrow, baby,” she said. “Truman’s going to take you tomorrow. Right now, I think we’re going to go home.”
Truman took the baby from her, shushing her against his chest when she began to cry. “I think an early night is in order,” he said, but Sarah scoffed.
“We’re not sleeping for the next few months,” she said. She could still recall those long days and nights after Lucas’s birth a month before she had returned to university for her final year: it hadn’t been until the end of the first semester that she’s settled into any sort of sleeping pattern.
Audrie was still lost for words. “She was in your tummy this morning,” she said, staring at the baby and then at Sarah. “I … I don’t get it. It’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it,” Sarah said. She took Audrie’s hand and pulled her in for a hug, wrapping her arms around the girl as if to reassure her. Although Liliana was the first girl she had birthed, that didn’t mean she was her first daughter: that position belonged to Audrie, who began to cry against her mother’s chest. “Don’t you start, hun,” Sarah said, leaning away to look at Audrie’s face. “We don’t need any more tears, not with a new baby.”
“It’s good tears,” Audrie said with a sniff. “I’m just really happy.” She reached out for Lucas, her fingers finding his to bring him closer to her. Liliana united the family, the baby that brought two sides together, and Audrie felt the need to hold her brother’s hand.
Truman secured Liliana in her car seat, Audrie and Lucas sitting either side of her while Sarah got in the front, her limbs aching with the effort of doing up her seatbelt. As they pulled away, she rested her head against the cool window and closed her eyes to block out the lingering light of six pm in summer. Truman slipped his hand over hers once they were on the open road.
“Hi,” he said. She gave him a tired smile.
“Hi.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she murmured, turning her hand over so their palms touched and she laced her fingers with his.
“Sarah?”
“Mmm?”
When he came to a junction, he looked over his shoulder at the three children behind them, the family they had pulled together like the tightening of a shoelace – the son they shared with Floyd and Cora; the daughter Sarah had adopted as her own; the little girl they had made – and his gaze fell back on his wife, their hands still entwined. She was stitched and sore and shattered and he had been there for every moment of their daughter’s birth, but she looked more beautiful than ever.
“I have never loved you more than I do right now.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said, her voice as weak as she felt. He squeezed her hand and kissed the back.
“I do.”
+ – + – +
i hope you enjoyed this chapter, and it’s nice to have finished it so early – i can’t do another 3am night! the support on this story so far has been phenomenal, thank you all so much!
Comment