“She is.” Mom smiled. The baby opened her eyes to look around. Mom and I gasped at the same time. They were brown.
“Charlie,” Mom said with a happy sigh. “She looks likeyou.”
“And you,” I said.
“Us,” Mom whispered.
She did. So much. But…I tilted my head to get a better look…she looked like Jane too. Hold up. Wouldn’t that mean Jane looked like me? I’d certainly never had that thought before. But she also looked like Theo. Wait. Maybe that was Tristan. How could that be? Tris looked like Ashton, who wasn’t blood related to Theo or me at all. How could she look like all of us?
Because you’re a family,the answer came, simple and clear.All of you. Whole, half, it doesn’t matter. Mom was the connection, the reason we all fit together.
Realizing how much of my siblings I carried in me…something inside me cracked open, shattering the darkness and letting in the light. For so long, I’d only seen the worst parts of my DNA, the shadow my biological father left behind. I’d believed I was an outlier on the edge of an otherwise perfect family.
Mom had risen above the hurt he’d caused her and created something so beautiful in spite of it. She’d found love and given that love right back with the same intensity. She hadn’t let her past define the rest of her life.
I looked over when I felt her watching me. She was so strong. Resilient. I’d gotten that from her. If she could rise above her past, so could I.
Because I had her DNA running through my veins too. But more than that, she’d raised me. She and Ashton. Everything good in me was because of them and I could choose to let that part prevail.
At that thought, a glorious, cleansing sob ripped through my chest. Mom pulled me against her, hugging both of her crying daughters. The baby curled her fingers around my pinky in a death grip.
“How are you, sweet girl?” Mom said to her in hushed tones. “We’re so happy you’re finally here.” Then she looked at me with so much love in her eyes. “So glad you’re both finally here.”
I nodded and whispered, “Me too.”
The van door slid open and Dad climbed in. While he shut the door, I scooted down the bench, moving Mom’s legs into my lap. Dad shifted her so she could relax against his chest.
Then he pressed kisses into her hair like she was his greatest treasure. I knew she was. But he was looking at me the same way. “Dang, Charlie. You were amazing. We would’ve been in real trouble without you.”
“I’m glad I could be here,” I said, wiping my cheeks. “But Mom did all the work.”
“No.” His eyes were watering like the rest of us. “Don’t downplay it. We needed you and you came through.”
“She did,” Mom said. “She’s our Charlie girl.” Then she tugged Dad down by his blonde, close-cropped beard. But she stopped before their lips touched. “Hey, old man,” she murmured. “Told you I was going to give you that brown haired baby you always wanted.”
He looked into her eyes. “Thank you.” Which was generous, since we all knew he wanted to get snipped after Emily. But you don’t say something like that to a woman who just gave birth in the backseat of a minivan unless you want to be murdered in your sleep. But then he added, “For waiting until I was forty-seven.”
Mom’s chest shook with exhausted laughter.
Dad chuckled, his big thumb running over the baby’s cheek. She chased it, rooting for food. “Once she finally leaves for college, I’ll have about three years before it’s time to put me in a casket.”
Mom slipped her hand into his hair and kissed him. “No caskets,” she said in a voice so serious it made me press a hand to my heart. “Unless I’m in it with you, okay?”
“How about no caskets, period,” I said.
But they were too busy staring into each other's eyes. Dad kissed her again.
For the first time since I’d arrived back in Seddledowne, I let myself admit that I wanted someone to look at me like that. Like I was the sunrise, the sunset, and all the moments in between. No, not someone.
Cash.
When Dad pressed one more kiss to her lips, I waved them apart. “That’s enough. How do you think you wound up here in the first place?”
The sliding door of the van opened and two female nurses grinned at us.
The older of the two laughed. “Well, I see y’all like to take ‘drive-thru service’ to a whole new level.”
twenty-two
