123: Epilogue—18 Years Later

“Papa talk.”

I looked at the nearly empty bakery with just my daughter and me baking bread. She had flour on her nose. I used my towel and wiped it off, wondering at her beautiful blonde hair. She was every bit as beautiful as her mother. And at twelve years old, she was already developing into a stunning young woman. Dani started bacon frying at the stove.

“What should I say?” I asked. “We can talk all we want to.”

“Is that the story of your whole life?”

“Well, as the old Yankee once said, ‘Not chyit.’ I think I’ve got some living yet to do.”

“But what about all the time since 9/11?”

“Well, those years ... Life just isn’t as interesting when you are an adult as it is when you are a kid. It seems that most of the stories of those years are about all the kids on the ranch growing up. It’s really their story to tell, not mine.”

“But there must be something interesting that happened. What about Aunt Whitney?”

“You’ve talked to Aunt Whitney often enough. She was promoted to Major right after 9/11. Times were pretty intense and she was busy in Djibouti. They needed a commander who had a full grasp of the culture and the base. The way things heated up in Afghanistan and Iraq, the base in Djibouti became more important and a higher ranking officer was put in charge. Whitney’s unit processed all the prisoners of war and the people under her command were stationed in several locations. She was sent out with her special team to combat the kidnappers who were continuing to operate out of Somalia and Yemen two or three more times. About the time you were born, she was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel to take command at Guantanamo. Whitney liked being a policeman, but didn’t like being a jailer. She retired and came home.”

“And now she coaches basketball at West Monroe,” my daughter sighed.

“Still the only woman coaching a boys’ basketball team in Indiana,” I laughed. “And a championship team, at that.”

“Do you still talk to La Madrina?”

“Every morning, sweetheart. And a lot of other times.”

“When will she be home?”

“They are shooting on location in British Columbia and at some camp called Tyax in the mountains north of Whistler. I hear there’s some really good trail riding up there. She says they’ll be finished on location in two more weeks and will be back here before the snow flies,” I said. I smiled at my daughter, my youngest child. The last one still in the nest.

“Why did you marry Mom instead of La Madrina? How could you even decide?”

“Well, now that’s a good question. Maybe it had to do with La Madrina trying to kill me.”

“Papa! She didn’t!”

“Yes, she did. But that’s not really the reason I didn’t marry her.”

“What happened?”

“Well, after her second movie came out and got panned so badly, she got pretty depressed. She’s always been a little on the edge. You’ve seen her when she was in a panic attack. Well, we all knew that exercise helped her get balanced, so we encouraged her to work out with us in the mornings doing forms. When the kids left the Sacred Space that day, she wanted to spar with me. I could see she was supercharged and wondered if she might even have taken too many antidepressants. I just said, ‘No.’”

“What happened?”

“She hit me. Hard. It took me by surprise and when I didn’t respond, she hit me again. And again. She kept hitting and kicking me, even when I hit the floor. I don’t think she would have stopped if Whitney hadn’t come through the door and kicked her ass.”

“But Papa ... Why didn’t you stop her? Aunt Whitney says you are the most powerful master around.”

“Well, I still think that’s debatable and have no intentions of testing the notion. You need to watch Whitney and Amy spar sometime. But ... I made a promise. Back when we were still in high school, I could see that Rhonda was afraid of me. So I sat down with her and promised that I would never hit her. When she went off the handle, I found that I couldn’t lift a hand, even to protect myself.”

“Papa, what if she’d killed you?”

“It would be a different story, wouldn’t it? Whitney had words with both of us. It’s the day that I realized that there was more to a promise than what you say. What I’d really promised that day was never to hurt her. If she’d killed me, that would have hurt her worse than anything else I could have done. It took us a while to work through that. But even with La Madrina, sex works wonders.”

“So that still doesn’t say why you married Mama.”

“You know, she and I were the only ones who were surprised by it? It seems that all the rest of the clan knew we’d be married back when we were in high school. They couldn’t believe it took us so long. But she had her job and she was really good at it. I had the bakery and the children and that was really all I wanted. But she came to me that day ... that beautiful September morning ... and she said, ‘I’m ready for us to have our child, Brian.’ It might sound sappy to a girl your age. It wasn’t sappy. Well, it was, but it didn’t seem like it at the time. As soon as she said those words, I dropped to my knee in front of her and said, “Rose, my Matrón, will you marry me?’ You should have seen the expression on her face!”

“That’s so romantic!”

“Well, all our cónyuge happened to be in the room at the time and the applause and catcalls kind of broke the mood. But she said, ‘Yes, ‘ and I’ve never regretted that moment. And look who we got as a result. Miss Anna Marie Frost. Who has six more years to be Papa’s only child at home. We should plan what we’re going to do!”

I don’t know why I don’t have even more children, other than the fact that most of us in the clan are either only children or one of two. Liz is the notable exception, but she was the baby of the twelve kids and so was alone a lot. Of my fifteen cónyuge, Rachel and Doreen had seven between them. Cassie and Mary had two each. Liz had two. Sam, Dani, Rose, and Courtney only had one each. Five decided that they didn’t want, couldn’t have, or shouldn’t have children—Nicki, Rhonda, Joanne, Elaine, and Jennifer—but they all doted on the other kids. Whitney miscarried three times after she was out of the service. It was heartbreaking. We put markers in the River for each of them. I ended up with only seventeen. And I truly didn’t care which ones were Doug’s and which were Josh’s. They were all my children.

Anna’s mama, my darling Rose, is still the CEO of HCEN. The position has truly become an executive position now. She hired a president with a strong industry background who bought into our operating principles and dug in to grow the network. It’s actually four channels now. We’ve added programming on different channels as our market ages. The original channel is still focused on emerging adults, seventeen to twenty-three, with programming that doesn’t just revolve around pop culture. Armand passed away about the same time that his last shares were transferred to Casa del Fuego. We owe a lot to him.

When Casa del Fuego moved out of the big house into what we all referred to as ‘the mansion, ‘ there was a little concern about what we’d do with our original dwelling. Rhonda shot another miniseries using the big house as the location, but then Mom and Anna decided they’d like to buy it from us instead of building in the village. I thought they’d want some nice little hideaway for the two of them, but instead they did some remodeling and opened a bed and breakfast. They’ve been having fun there now for fifteen years and have no intentions of ever retiring. I don’t think there has ever been a day when the two of them didn’t visit Dad out in the River.

Dad’s not the only one we’ve laid to rest out there. Marshall and Martha were frail by the time Dad died and they only lasted another few months. Angela and Del’s first baby was stillborn. It was a real shock, but they brought the baby’s ashes home and scattered them in the River promising they’d be back one day. They’ve had two more sweet kids who like to spend summers here at the ranch.

Lily Cortales went to join her daughter a couple years ago. Fucking cancer. Sly is hanging on, partly just to take care of his grandchildren, I think. And I don’t just mean Brian Jr. Melanie has been married three times but with no kids. We tried to tell her she didn’t have to marry every costar. She’s none the worse for wear and has a new role in a science fiction space thriller that might shoot her stardom through the roof. But her sister Stephanie fell in love with a boy her sophomore year in high school. They were married the week after graduation and she had their first baby seven months later. He’s about the same age as Anna. She had two more before I think they finally figured out what caused it. The five of them live with Sly and he loves those grandkids. I know he often meets Mom and Anna at the River as they go to talk to their spouses in the evening. I’ve even seen him leave the big house early in the morning when I was headed to the bakery.

Matt and Ellie are living in Lawrence on the east edge of Indianapolis. It still has the feel of an old hippie community and hasn’t changed much in the past fifty years. Except for the addition of their artisan bakery, The Baker’s Dozen, Too. Of course, he does a bigger variety of baked goods than I ever have. The two of them went to Paris and met up with a former competitor of mine named Carla Leoni. She taught them pastry-making. They’ve got a pretty good staff and supply bread and pastries for a chain of coffee shops all over Indianapolis. They waited to get started on their family, so their two children aren’t the oldest of my grandchildren.

That would be James and Céleste’s children. It was no surprise that James and Céleste were basically living with each other (and sleeping together) from the time they were children. In fact, they announced cheerfully that they had consummated their relationship at exactly four-twenty-eight in the morning on their seventeenth birthday. The time of their birth. How many couples can claim to have been born in the same bed at exactly the same time and not even be related? Céleste waited until after high school graduation to get pregnant. James completed his EMT training. They wanted to get out of town so they weren’t quite so close to Aunt Nicolette. They chose Columbus. Not too far. But far enough to keep their children off the ranch most of the time. Liz, I’m happy to say, is just as horny today as she was when she was fourteen and my permission on the ranch still stands. Any time, any place. I take advantage of that. She and Nicki bought new motorcycles last year and rode to the big rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. They were there all of twelve hours and decided it wasn’t their scene. After seeing Rushmore and Crazy Horse, they headed for LA and spent a week with Elaine.