Epilogue

Nadia

Twenty-Five Years Later

THE SUN WAS SHINING bright and the sound of laughter rang in the salt-infused air.

“Brayden!” Viv yelled out. “You need sunscreen.” I watched the curly blond head with beautiful mocha skin fly past me and laughed as he threw himself into my beautiful daughter.

“You shouldn’t laugh, Mom; it only encourages him,” she scolded. All I could do was give her a soft smile and the best advice a mother could give.

“Life is too short not to laugh, Vivi,” I told her. She gave me a teasing glare. I watched as she shook the bottle of Coppertone Kids and did the best to slather the white cream on my very wiggly five-year-old grandson.

“Do you know what time Becca and Liam are going to get here?” she asked over her shoulder. I opened my mouth to answer but was cut off before I could even speak.

“We are here!” Becca announced from the sliding door, towel in hand, dressed in a black tank top and indigo denim jean shorts. Liam stood behind her. I couldn’t help but smile.

All my babies were home for a week.

I was showered with hugs and kisses, then we all sat. The girls talking about some book they’d just finished reading, and my twenty-three-year-old son, Liam, sitting by my side.

“How’s school?” I asked him. My hand covered his as I looked at him; all I saw were his dad’s green eyes staring back at me. A pang of emotion hit me square in the chest.

“It’s good.” He winked, and I shook my head, knowing I probably wouldn’t get more than that.

“Anyone special you want to tell me about?”

“Mom.” He chuckled, shaking his head, and in that instant, he looked just like Owen. “Its law school. I need to focus.”

“You can’t study your life away.” I shrugged, sipping my ice tea. “You have to go out and meet people.”

“Trust me, Mom, he does that.” Becca chimed into our conversation, and Viv laughed.

About a year after we had come home that summer, we’d decided to start trying for another child. It took so long we almost gave up hope. Then, on the girls’ tenth birthday, we not only found out we were, but his arrival was only three months away.

Owen jumped in and helped. He never stopped working hard to provide for his family and to be there for each of us in any way he possibly could. From coaching Vivian’s soccer team and becoming the school coach when she started high school and decided to drop dance, to taking a red-eye to New York to pick up Becca after a bad break-up with her college sweetheart and bringing her home for winter break, to never missing a debate with our son, Liam.

We had both changed dramatically that summer, and life had never been the same after it.

It was brighter and sweeter.

Even in the hard times and the twists and turns that life had put us through, we’d always held on strong and together.

“Your flowers look great, Mom,” Liam pointed out. I looked out toward the roses and peonies. The blooms were bright and happy. I smiled.

From when the girls and I had set root to the flowers and Owen had built the pergola we were all sitting under now, we’d ourselves never stopped growing. Our roots as a couple and a family had been cemented into a stronger foundation that summer, so it was no surprise we hadn’t stopped coming here. I didn’t think there was more than a three-week span during which we hadn’t returned. Always making sure to clear the weeds and re-soil the garden to make sure it had everything it needed to thrive. Much like Owen and I did in our marriage from the day we’d left that summer.

“Do you remember when we put that garden together?” Becca asked, and Viv laughed, recollecting the crush Becca had had on some redheaded kid named Sloane at art camp. I found it a relief that despite the tense and conflicted time we’d had as a couple that made me break and come out here, that wasn’t what the girls remembered.

“You guys are here!” Owen’s deep voice rumbled as he came in through the side fence, a grocery store bag in one hand and a bouquet of peonies in the other.

I watched as the kids all stood and went to their dad, giving him a hug, congratulating him for finally retiring. I still couldn’t believe it. About ten years ago, he’d stepped away from practicing and had gone into teaching. He loved it. I loved it because we’d sold our home in the Los Angeles hills and made our beloved home away from home our permanent residence. Which was convenient, since Owen was teaching at UC Santa Barbara. Vivian’s husband, Jeremy, walked out with our other grandson, three-year-old Frankie.

“Grandpa!” Frankie wiggled out of Jeremy’s arms and ran right to Owen.

“Hey, buddy!” Owens voice rumbled deeply as he picked Frankie up easily into his arms. Even at our age, Owen held a steady strength. I smiled at the sight of them together.

Walking toward them, I gave Owen a small kiss on the lips and Frankie a kiss on the top f his curly head before taking the grocery bag from Owen’s hand.

Stepping into the house and the kitchen that after so many years looked leaps and bounds better than when we’d bought it, I started to chop up the fruit Owen had run out to buy. Smiling at all the sounds and voices that rang through the air.

The sounds of my family.

Owen

They had taken lunch and drinks to the beach.

As a family, they had sat around; his grandsons splashed and ran around, while the grown-ups cheered them on. Currently, Frankie was done, in his mom’s arms. Looking at his daughter, he couldn’t believe she was old enough to be a mom, much less a mom of two. But Viv was. Time had a funny way of moving forward no matter how much you wanted to put it on pause. The sun started to set, the sky filled with orange and red hues, and he absorbed the beauty of the moment. There was no doubt he had spent the last twenty-five years enjoying the bounties life had afforded him. Looking around at the faces that surrounded him, he couldn’t help but feel more than lucky. He was blessed.

The sun set as Liam and Jeremy started up a bonfire. Standing up, he ignored the way his knees creaked and ached and walked to his beautiful wife, who sat next to his daughters. The three were talking, planning Becca’s upcoming wedding to a banker on the east coast. He was a nice guy and made Becca smile, which, as a dad, was all he could ask for. Sitting next to Nadia, he listened to his wife and daughters talk animatedly, laughter here and there as his eyes went to the pier to the right.

The conversation he had with his girls so long ago was as fresh in his mind as if it had just happened the day before. The fury in Becca’s words when confronting him. The patience Vivian showed even at that young age. He’d hoped that was the turn of his relationship with his daughters. The moment his words started to match his actions. Raising daughters hadn’t been easy, but he had done the best he could when they’d returned home, and he hoped that even now, they knew he was someone they could count on to be there for them.

That trip twenty-five years ago might have started out rocky. He never let himself completely forget the fear he had felt at the possibility of losing his family. He always found it interesting how it had started as a way for Nadia to escape, but it was him who always felt like had been found during that month together.

“Dad?” Viv’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked at her. To him, they would always be his little girls, even if they were grown.

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head and felt his wife’s head on his shoulder tilt upward to observe him.

“You were miles away, baby,” Nadia pointed out, and Becca’s hand covered his from his other side.

“Don’t worry, Dad. Mace and I are going to be helping with the costs and—”

“It’s not that. The wedding is fine.”

“Then what’s the matter.?”

“I was just thinking I’m a lucky son of a gun.” He winked, not missing the way Becca’s eyes twinkled. He was glad to have that instead of the anger and confusion from so long ago. He stood and extended his hand toward Nadia. “On that note, I need to go for a walk with my favorite girl.” He grinned, helping Nadia stand, listening to the girls argue about who was his second favorite girl like they always did.

His relationship with his children, Liam a very welcome addition to their family, was what he always had hoped he could have. It wasn’t perfect in the least, but it was a good one and they were all close. He had made sure to work hard, day in and day out, to get it there.

Hand in hand, they walked to the shore. Without uttering a word, completely in sync with one another, they turned to face each other when they reached the edge of the water. They gazed into one another’s eyes, stroked one another’s hands with the pads of their fingers for a long moment. She was still the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Even more beautiful than the day he had met her in the hallway their freshman year. She was still a knockout, making men take a second glance; and she was his. Only his. Always his.

He opened his mouth to say the words they made a point to say to each other yearly on that date no matter where they were or what they were doing. The anniversary of their second vows. That particular day and the thirty days beforehand had helped give them the tools and guidance that ultimately helped them stick together through everything life had to throw at them.

“I, Owen, take you, Nadia, as my wife. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part,” he promised, and just like that night he’d said those words in the very spot he now stood, he meant them even more than the first time in a little chapel in Vegas.

The End