Granted, I had begun to get upset, but that all seemed so inconsequential now compared to what I’d done to him.
“So why—?”
“Oh, Gemma, I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life,” I said, jumping out of my chair and pushing my fear away.
I rushed inside to where my phone was, grabbed it, and hit speed dial, praying under my breath.
“I just wanna talk to you.”
The panicked way he answered his phone confused me.
“Huh?” I asked, looking down at the phone.
Had he called me or had I called him? The call said outgoing.
“I know you said you don’t even want to discuss—”
“No, I do! I do!” I said quickly, forgetting about my confusion. “I’ve been so selfish and stupid, Aaron.”
My voice gave, and I could feel yet another rash of crying coming on. I’d been sucking down Gatorades and frozen electrolyte pops for days. Between all the crying and throwing up, it was the only thing that kept me from having to be rushed back into the hospital, completely dehydrated.
“I think I can have this baby,” I said then corrected myself, touching my belly again. “No, I know I can. I want this baby.”
“You do?” His voice was a near whisper.
“Yes, yes, I do!” I said, smiling even as I cried. “It’s the only thing that’s gotten me through these last several days. I’ve missed you terribly, baby, and knowing I had a little piece of you inside me is the only thing that got me through the days and nights. I didn’t even realize it until today. I’m miserable without you. I’ve been so incredibly weak and stupid. Please forgive me, Aaron. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, his voice a little strained. “I’ve missed you too. I don’t know how the hell I thought for even a minute that I could live without you. I didn’t even last a few days and even those were torture. I’m just glad this was so much easier than I was expecting.”
Again, I was confused, and I looked down at my phone. I’d called him. “What are you talking about? You knew I’d be calling you?”
“No, but isn’t that why you called me?”
I shook my head, feeling more confused than when I’d been in the hospital. “What?”
“Because you saw me drive up outside?”
It took a second, but when it registered, I was practically sprinting through the house. “You’re . . .”
The moment I saw him through the window outside on his phone, my hand clasped over my mouth and I lost it. I practically crashed through the front door and ran out to him. I jumped in his arms, sobbing, and then I realized something. This was an absolute first for me. In all the crying I’d done in my lifetime, this was the first time my hysterical tears were of pure joy. I knew right then I’d never leave his side again.
Feeling his big strong body tremble with his own emotion as he squeezed me tightly, I also felt something I’d never in my life felt before: the absolute certainty that this man was my soul mate and I’d never have to live in fear of him leaving me.
“I knew you were the one way back,” he whispered against my ear then kissed the side of my face as he finally let my feet touch the ground.
I looked up at him as the tears continued to flow. “I can’t live without you either. I wanna come home with you.”
He smiled, wiping my tears. “Sweetheart, when I jumped on that plane, I’d made up my mind. If I couldn’t get you to come home with me, I was staying here with you.”
“Home,” I said, unbelievably feeling even more emotional.
“Yeah, home.” He smiled that perfect smile that still made me melt. “And I’m not talking about that apartment either. I’m talking about my house. Our home.”
I brought his hand to my belly. He glanced down and then up at me again, his brows pinching together as his red-rimmed eyes glistened. My own emotion nearly strangled me as I felt his hand caress my flat belly ever so gently. But for the first time ever, it was a good kind of strangling emotion. I swallowed it back as my trembling lips prepared to repeat his words, and I could barely wrap my mind around the fact that I was referring to the three of us. My family now. “Our home.”
Epilogue
I closed the door to the bedroom as softly as I could, tiptoeing away. Never say never. Geez, wasn’t that the truth? I stuck my head in the girls’ room. “Can you girls please turn that down? I just put the twins down for their nap. Took me forever.”
Cammy rolled her eyes playfully as Lauren leaned over her books and pressed something on the speaker that sat on the nightstand.
“Look, Mom,” she said, lifting her tablet so I could see. “It’s the dress I told you I want for the dance.”
I glanced at it then gave her a knowing look. “Did you talk to Dad about that yet?”
Instantly, both my brace-faced daughters were rolling their eyes. “Oh my God! It’s just a two-hour after-school dance. He probably won’t even be home.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, walking in and getting a better look at the dress. “It’s cute.” I smiled then lifted a brow. “But you still have to at least talk to him about it, Lauren. We’ve been through this before.”
“Mom, he’s gonna want Jake and Justin there to walk us home,” Cammy whined.
I turned to Cammy, the younger of the two. “You’re going too?”
“Yes.” She straightened out, lifting her little chin, hand on her hip. “It’s not just for eighth graders. Seventh graders can go too.”
“Well then, you two are really gonna have to talk to Dad.”
They both groaned. “Okay, okay, we’ll tell him,” Lauren grudgingly conceded. “But please no Jake and Justin.”
“Yes, Mom,” Cammy agreed immediately. “You know how they act.”
“They’re only doing what Dad asks them too.” I smirked as I started out of their bedroom. “Looking out for their baby sisters.”
More groaning followed. I felt a little evil, but I couldn’t help laughing. Jake and Justin weren’t nearly as overprotective as I knew Aaron would want them to be. But they sure played their parts well and loved embarrassing their sisters every chance they got. So they laid it on real thick whenever Aaron asked them to keep an eye out for them. I glanced out the back window where Aaron and the boys were practicing their knots for the boys’ fire explorer program. Both boys were nearly as tall as Aaron now, and as lanky as those two were, they ate more than he did now. I could hardly believe they were already fifteen. I smiled, watching them laugh with their dad. They were going to be as handsome as he was once they filled out.
I’d long ago gotten over the guilt that I’d felt for too long of ever thinking I might give birth to monsters. The only thing we were pretty sure was passed down in my genes was the twin gene since they didn’t run in Aaron’s family and we now had two sets.
I shook my head as I entered the kitchen. For someone who’d sworn she’d never have kids, I had six now. After Cammy was born and we had a set of twin boys and two girls so close in age who looked so much alike they may as well be twins, we said we were done. Then ten years later, surprise! But I couldn’t imagine my life now without any of them.
The boys rushed into the kitchen with their usual clamor. “Shh!” I turned instantly. “Your brothers are asleep. If you wake them, you two are keeping them busy while I make dinner.”
“I finally got the bowline knot down,” Justin said, putting his arm around me and kissing the side of my head. “I’ll show you later.”
Jake was drinking orange juice straight out of the box. “That’s good, Justin. I told you, you would.” I turned to his twin with a frown. “For the hundredth time, Jake, use a glass.”
“Yeah, dude, and leave some for the rest of us,” Justin said, reaching for the box of juice.
Aaron walked in, holding my phone. “It was beeping,” he said, handing it to me, then pecked me on the lips.
“We’re having salmon for dinner,” I informed him, taking the phone.
“Yes!” both the twins said at once.
“Make a lot, Mom,” Jake said, making me groan then laugh.
Aaron often said it felt as if he were working now just to feed these two ponies. I glanced up from my phone as they pulled more and more stuff out of the fridge. Looking down again, I saw I had a text from Edi then brought my hand to my mouth and choked up instantly.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, going through the slideshow she’d sent.
I hadn’t even noticed the boys and Aaron were staring at me, waiting to see what I was sniveling about. I shook my head, feeling silly and wiping the tears off my cheek. “It’s from Edi,” I explained. “Breanne had the baby.”
After going through all the photos of Edi looking so happy with her new baby, I handed my phone to Aaron. The boys had already been hanging over my shoulder, looking with me, but lost interest, going back to their sandwich making.
I watched Aaron’s facial expressions as he perused the photos. He smiled as he peered closely. For years, I’d given up hope that Edi and I would ever rekindle any kind of friendship again. Once or twice a year in the beginning, I’d get a text from her out of the blue that I could only imagine she’d sent when she’d been drunk. Aaron had actually suggested I change my number or block her because, even though I’d made such progress in my therapy and dealing with all my issues, hearing from her did such a number on me. But I refused to change it. I just couldn’t.
Even on our Disney trips we took every summer when we stayed with Gemma for a little over a week, Edi had never bothered to stop by. I’d planned on never telling Gemma about Edi and me. I figured she didn’t need to know, especially since Edi and I didn’t even speak anymore. I just said we’d had a falling out. But only a year after Lauren was born and I was pregnant yet again, I got one of Gemma's snail mail letters where she said she’d taken the latest photos I’d sent her of the kids over to Edi’s mom to show her. Edi didn’t live with her parents anymore, but she happened to be there visiting and left abruptly when Gemma told them why she was there. Edi hadn’t even wanted to see the photos. Gemma said the conversation she and Magda had once Edi was gone was “eye-opening.” I got the feeling she was upset she had to find out that way, so I had no choice but to call her that night and explain it all. Of course, she’d been completely non-judgmental about it and agreed I’d made the right choice following my heart. I felt stupid about not having told her in the first place but at the same time relieved that I didn’t have to lie anymore anytime the subject of Edi came up again.
Aaron never actually said it, but I knew it’d been a weight off his conscience when we heard just a few years after we got married that Mia was marrying a successful dance choreographer and ironically moving to the Los Angeles area.
My conscience on the other hand hadn’t had it as easy. Aaron had been spot on about hope being so impossible to kill, and I think I would’ve held on forever to the hope that Edi would finally come around if she never had. We were still friends on social media, so we each had a glimpse of each other’s lives. Though I had my hands so full with babies and toddlers I had zero time to even think about stalking her social media as I might’ve otherwise.
I was happy when I started seeing her post photos of her new girlfriend finally after years of nothing. As beautiful and popular as Edi had always been, I was sure there was no shortage of girls in her life, just none she considered significant enough to add to her profile.
It wasn’t until after I’d been married to Aaron for years that I finally heard from Edi. It started slowly. I’d posted the pictures of our latest addition to the family at the time, Cammy, and Edi commented to congratulate me.
When she posted about her engagement to her girlfriend, I congratulated her and so on. I truly was happy for her. For too long, I’d lived with the guilt that she may never find happiness. For a long time, our relationship was strictly through social media. I think we both thought it was safer to keep any communication between us via a public platform. It ensured things couldn’t get too personal. It stayed that way for years, but I was grateful to at least have something. More than anything, I was so glad she seemed genuinely happy. At least she did in all the photos she posted of her and Breanne.
I actually cried tears of joy when I saw the photos of her wedding. Her taking so long to find someone hadn’t been all about me as I’d feared. Her career took up a lot of time. She was an orthopedic surgeon now, but getting there had sucked up most of her free time.
It wasn’t even until after I had my surprise twins that she actually called me. Hearing her voice had been emotional, but I was long past the struggle to accept that things between us would never be as they had been once upon a time. It was just emotional as if I were hearing from a long lost relative. She’d called to tell me that hearing about me being pregnant this late in life again, even if at the time I was still only in my early thirties, had inspired her, and she and Breanne decided to try and have a baby biologically. They knew they wanted to have a family but had been struggling with whether or not they should go through the process of having Edi’s eggs harvested and inseminated in Breanne. This way even if both couldn’t be biologically related they’d each play a major role in the pregnancy. They knew it would take time and thought maybe they were too old to try.
Of course, I encouraged her to do it. Aaron was almost ten years older than I was, though you couldn’t tell by looking at us. He’d always been in such good physical shape. He was still so full of energy he hadn’t even flinched when I laid the news on him that we were going to be parents yet again.
The next time I heard from her over the phone was months later when she called me in tears. The second try at in vitro hadn’t taken and she was devastated. They’d really gotten their hopes up, but, as usual, she was being the strong one and didn’t want Breanne to think she was losing hope. She’d called me from her car because she needed someone to vent to before she got home. I was heartbroken for her, but I did my best to console her and told her she shouldn’t give up. They didn’t, and now almost three years later, they’d just had baby number two. I couldn’t be happier for her. They were the only times we’d talked in all the years since the last time I’d talked to her in that hospital so many years ago. Realistically, I knew our relationship would never be more than keeping in touch via social media and the occasional photos we might text each other of our kids. But I was genuinely happy she seemed as happy as I was.
I leaned in and saw the photo Aaron was currently on: a close up of the baby wrapped up all cocoon-like in her hospital blanket. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Yeah, she is.” Aaron smiled, putting his arm around me. “Edi looks real happy too.”
“Oh, I know she is.” I said, taking the phone back and staring at the photo of Edi glowing as she held her toddler, who looked just like her, on her lap and her newborn in her other arm.
I did a double take when I noticed my sons’ sandwiches. “You can’t be serious,” I said, staring at their ridiculously stacked sandwiches.
“What?” Justin asked with actual confusion.
He looked down at his sandwich as Jake poured the mustard over his mountain of cold cuts and what appeared to be three different slices of cheese.
“How are you even gonna eat that?” I asked, staring at his food. “You can’t open your mouth that wide.”
“Sure, I can,” he said, pressing down and squishing it all together tightly.
I watched as they each poured themselves big glasses of milk, grabbed a bag a chips, and started to head out of the kitchen.
“Ah uh.” I grabbed Jake by the shirt. “You two put all that away before you leave this kitchen.”
“But what if I want another one?” Jake asked and my jaw dropped.
Aaron laughed. “Go ahead,” he said to the boys. “I got this. I’m going to make me one. Those look good.”
“Ew!” Lauren said as she stepped into the kitchen, eyeing their enormous sandwiches. “They’re really go
nna eat all that meat?”
“That’s so gross,” Cammy added, walking in behind Lauren. “I don’t even like cold cuts.”
“Look,” I said, showing them my phone. “My friend had her baby.”
The girls surveyed the photos, far more interested than the boys and making all the normal silly coddling noises people usually do when looking at baby photos. When they finished, Lauren handed me the phone. I noticed her glancing out into the living room cautiously before eyeing Aaron, who was busy making his sandwich, and then exchanging a nervous glance with Cammy.
I grabbed an apple and leaned back against the kitchen sink, already grinning because I had a feeling what they were up to and knew this was going to be fun.
“Daddy,” Lauren started.
“Um?” Aaron didn’t even glance up from the food he was preparing.
“There’s this dance at school in a couple of weeks.” Now she had Aaron’s interest, his eyebrow already at attention. “It’s after school and only two hours. Cammy and I wanna go—”
“Didn’t you just go to one?” Aaron asked. Then his face soured further and he turned to Cammy. “You too? Aren’t you too young for school dances?”
I laughed at the OMGs I knew he’d just unleashed.
“OMG!” Lauren said first. “That dance was like four months ago.”
“Oh my God, Daddy,” Cammy said, equally exasperated, crossing her arms in front of her. “You keep forgetting I’m twelve now. Seventh graders are allowed to go to these dances. Last time Lauren went you said I had to wait until the next one.”
Aaron looked to me for help as the girls, whom he often referred to as “little lawyers,” continued to plead their case. I shrugged with a smirk, biting into my apple but offered no help. The girls hadn’t even been in there fifteen minutes, and unbelievably, the boys were already back with empty plates and cups.
“Do we have ice cream?” Jake asked, opening the door to the freezer.
Justin put his arm around Lauren then let out an obnoxious belch. “Gross!” she said, wriggling out of his forced hug.