Epilogue

SABINE

Three years later…

 

Mon Dieu, I must have been crazy marrying this idiot.

 

I’d been to go and pick up nappies, or diapers, I had no idea what to call things anymore. I’d lived in America for so long that I couldn’t remember if I was saying the British, French or American version of things. So, I’d gone to get diapers and had come back to not only my kids running around naked, but my husband almost naked too.

 

“We have a shituation,” he yelled as he ran past me. It was his back that distracted me from my naked hellions.

 

“Is that…” I started to ask as he ran outside and started rubbing his back on the grass. Slowly following after him, I kept an eye on the two spawns of Satan who were splashing in their kiddies pool as their dad continued to whine and rub himself across the yard.

 

“It’s all Slumdog Millionaire,” he whined as he ground down into the grass, referencing the scene in the movie where the poor kid gets covered in crap.

 

I waited for him to finish and would have asked him for an explanation if, underneath all of the grass and mud and God knows what else on his back, there weren’t paler swirls and circles showing through his tanned skin.

 

Picking up the hose, he turned it on full blast, pressed the special button on the nozzle that made it come out like a tsunami and reached over his shoulder to aim the water at his back.

 

As all of the crap was washed off his body, the patterns became clearer and I saw tiny smeared hand prints too.

 

Things were starting to add up as he turned off the hose and stormed over to me.

 

“Your kids,” he sneered, “took a shit, and then drew fucking…” he broke off, his mouth opening and closing as he thought of the right wording. “Fucking cave paintings on my back!” He finished on a yell.

 

“Why did you let them do that?” I mean, who in their right minds would let their children do that to them?

 

“I didn’t let them,” he snapped. “I fell asleep and woke up to it.”

 

I didn’t get to reply as Gramps walked up, calling out to the kids as he passed them. As always, if their Gampy was around they were right by his side and they almost fell out of the little pool in their hurry to get to him.

 

“Hey, what happened to your back?” He asked as he walked up holding their hands. I winced thinking of what was on those hands as they hadn’t been washed properly after their art session. That pool was going to have to be burned too.

 

Turning to look at his back in the reflection on the window, he must have been able to see the patterns because he spun around and glared at me and then he did something that absolutely threw me. That in itself was a big achievement given the family that I’d married into. But, he hissed, actually hissed like a cat at the kids and then stormed inside the house.

 

“You might want to wash your hands,” I advised a confused looking Hurst and then proceeded to fill him in on what had happened.

 

Five minutes later, I sat back and watched as he cleaned the kids down with a long brush attachment for the hose that was normally used on cars, but that we kept on the ranch for situations just like this. Townsend kids got up to all sorts and for some reason most of what they got up to involved shit.

 

It just wasn’t normal.

 

Later that night…

 

Sitting back as Brett took a mouthful of his Corona and listened to his family talk about the latest drama to hit the town, I looked down at the plain water in my hand and then looked over at my son and his little sister running after their cousins.

 

He hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t drinking yet, but he would when the next time I got up to get him a new beer, I handed him his empty bottle with the positive pregnancy test in it.

 

Looking back at him as he took my hand, breaking me out of my plans, I gave him a grin as he leaned down to give me a kiss.

 

“Gross,” I laughed. “You just kissed my teeth!”

 

Grinning back at me, he kissed my nose and then pulled me into his side. “I’m always happy to kiss any part of you.”

 

Then he ruined my plans by putting his hand on my hip, right on the stick that was poking out of my pocket. Pulling out the hard object, he lifted it up and looked at it in confusion.

 

“What the fuck is that?”

 

Admittedly it was a bit mangled, but surely even he could put two and two together?

 

“Surprise!” I whispered warily. I didn’t want to draw attention to the situation because he wasn’t actually looking pleased by the news.

 

“What do you mean?” he asked me, getting even more confused. “What the fuck is this?” Sighing, I took it out of his hand and turned it so that he could see what was left of the screen. “Ant?”

 

Looking down at it, I saw that that really was the only word that you could see now, but surely he could still tell what it was?

 

Losing my patience, I jumped up and stood in front of him with my hands on my hips. “I’m pregnant, you stupid dick! That’s what it says – preg-nant,” I turned the screen toward him and moved my finger under it as I said the word slowly, breaking it into syllables. It really didn’t say that, but the fact that he didn’t recognize anything about the pregnancy stick pissed me off.

 

“What the hell happened to it? Oh Jesus,” he looked around me in the direction of the kids. “Please don’t tell me that they chewed on it!”

 

Throwing it at him, I walked into the house yelling, “No, Simba did just before she ran up and licked your lips before we left.”

 

There was a clatter as something hit the floor and I heard him running up behind me. “I told you she smelt funky! You said it was her new food,” he cried as he ran to the toilet. He didn’t manage to close the door before he threw up and I felt my own stomach turning as the loud sound of him being sick carried across the house.

 

Doing my best to tune it out, I filled up my glass and walked back outside to the group of family who were now sitting silently. My daughter, Tabitha, walked on her chubby legs up the stairs catching all of our attentions.

 

She was the cutest little girl normally, but at that precise moment, her beautiful blonde curls were in a Mohawk, fixed in position by something brown.

 

Please let it be mud, please let it be mud…

 

“What have you done?” Cole whispered in horror, just as his two sons joined Tabby on the porch, their hair sticking out in all directions with the same brown substance.

 

The smell that followed them answered our worries. And FYI – it wasn’t mud.

 

“I’ll get the shit shovel,” Hurst murmured as he walked around the shitty tots, keeping a big distance between himself and them, and then walked off to get the brush that he’d used earlier that day.

 

Almost like something out of a fecal zombie movie, the other kids walked up to join the three – all of them in exactly the same predicament; hair gelled into style with excrement.

 

Looking down at my stomach, I realized that I needed to start preparing myself for another one of what was now standing in front of me.

 

I could pray all I wanted, though, and it wouldn’t make a difference. It was a Townsend

 

The End