Chapter 19

Epilogue - four years later

The afternoon was warm and sunny, a recipe for relaxing. We sat on deck chairs placed around a blanket. The village cricket team was playing their local rivals.

Crack - the sound of ball on willow came from the center of the pitch and a polite round of applause echoed around the cricket pavilion. I bounced my nine-month-old niece on my knee and she giggled as she clutched my fingers.

“Michael, I’ve only just fed her,” her mother said. “If she throws up, it’s all your fault and you get to clear up the mess.”

“Mila stop being a fusspot,” my wife said from where she sat on the blanket

Mila rose to her knees and retrieved her daughter and pointed at the wicket. “Look, Samantha, silly daddy, is running back and forth going nowhere.” Her daughter gurgled happily, dribbling on her mother’s top.

My heavily pregnant daughter Gillian grinned at her from where she was sitting in a deckchair. “You do know that if Ian bowls him out, we are never hear the end of it.”

Mila laughed, “I’m not sure what’s going to be worse if Ian does or doesn’t. Either way, one of them is going to be bragging for the rest of the weekend.”

I stirred and asked Gillian, “What time are Julia and the rest of the family arriving?”

“Later tonight, dad, they are supposed to be here around seven,” she replied.

“It’s been a lovely week without the kids, but I’ve missed them.” She and Ian had been staying with us the past week while Julia and her husband Robert had taken all my grandchildren camping in France for a week. Our large English house was going to be full for the next few days.

Sally wriggled in her desk chair, trying to get comfortable. I placed my hand on her rounded tummy and she hummed contentedly. I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to know the little one’s sex this time?”

“No, we started the tradition with Michael Jr., and we are not going to change it.”

I groaned theatrically, “Honestly; you think she could have come up with something more original than that.”

“Come on, it’s not all Zoe’s fault, she’s American, and you know how they like their juniors.”

“Harrumph,” I grunted. I looked down happily at Michael Jr. – Mikey, as he was known to us, played with his toy tractor in the grass beside us.

“And in any case, you know it’s all your fault. Who was it that came up with the idea that the other wife should name the baby?”

“Which both of you thought was a great idea,” I replied.

Sally settled back, resting her head on my shoulder, smiling at me, “And we still do!”

“So, what’s she considering for this one?”

“Shaun for a boy and either Leigh-Ann or Rebecca for a girl.”

They all sounded nice, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “Is that her punishing you for Siobhan?” I asked.

She punched my leg, “ Don’t be daft; she loves that name.”

I said, “Should I go and get them?”

“Nope, she texted a few minutes ago. They are walking down to join us.” She gestured with her head.

I glanced over to the road leading to the car park by the pavilion, and sure enough, Zoe was pushing my one-year-old daughter in her stroller. She saw me looking and she waved. She looked a lot more rested now. There was a spring in her steps, which had been missing the last few months.

As I settled back to enjoy that pleasant summer’s afternoon, I thought back about the past few years. I guess it’s only fair that I bring you up to date.

First, and of course, the most obvious thing to say is that after we’d been in the States for nine months, Mila finally met the man of her dreams. She jokes about it now that she moved all the way to Denver to meet him, and he lived in Kent, only a two-hour drive from our England home. It hadn’t come as a great surprise to any of us. Sally, Zoe and I had always known that deep down, I was a game to Mila. Not that she didn’t love us all, she did! But I was never really her ‘special one.’ Her love for Sally was the thing that kept her with us.

We had all become great friends with our neighbors, Daniel and Mia, from across the lake. The man of her dreams was Dave, Daniel’s best friend from England. He had been staying with them for an extended holiday. Sally and I saw a mutual attraction the first time he and Mila met, but it took several weeks before we could get Mila to admit it. The thought of moving away from her Aunt Sally was far harder on Mila than the thought of leaving me.

It took Mila a month to gain the courage to admit to the rest of us what we had known from the first, that she was in love with Dave. The poor girl was so confused that it was ripping her apart. And yes, it was very hard for us to let her go. But as I reminded all of them, I’d always said that I’d never want any of them to stay with me because they felt they some obligation.

We all did our best to support her. It took her yet another month before she followed him back to his village in Kent. I’d loved to have been there when she walked into the village pub and sat down on Dave’s lap. I was so proud when she asked me to walk her down the aisle and give her away from the next summer.

She still visits us regularly. Dave knows that she’s bisexual, but he’s happy knowing that she is also content to restrict her playtime to Sally and very occasionally Zoe. She’ll curl in bed with me but that’s all, and she still snores. Dave tells me he’s got the best side of the deal. He has his ‘me time’ and a hot sexy wife on her return.

At the beginning of our second summer, we sat proudly in the audience as Zoe graduated. Sally, Mila and I had seats amongst the rest of the faculty. Zoe sent her allocated tickets to her parents with a plea to come. They came but wouldn’t talk to us. As far as her father was concerned, I was an abomination in the eyes of God and corrupting his precious daughter. She went out for a celebratory meal with them but called me to pick her up after an hour. She stood outside the restaurant in tears, and it took us all several days to bring her back to the Zoe we all loved and cared for. I had given Zoe the money for their trip, and she passed it on to her mother, I’ve no idea what she did with it.

In early September, Sally was Zoe’s matron of honor and Mila and Bree, her bridesmaids at a commitment ceremony we held at the lakeside at our home in Denver. Sally was six months pregnant at the time and her curving belly enhanced the beauty of her dress. Mila and Dave had flown over a couple of weeks earlier. They split their time between Daniel’s place and ours. The weekend before the ceremony the bridesmaids and the bride to be, took Mia and went on a spa vacation. Daniel, Dave and I had a man vacation on the lake; we spoilt the children something rotten.

Zoe’s father refused to attend; I really had hoped that he would swallow his damn pride and be there for her. Her mother arrived unexpectedly, the day before the ceremony with Zoe’s elder sister and her family. She’d been so upset at her husband’s refusal to acknowledge his daughter that she’d gone to stay with Elizabeth and Ralph. They had convinced her to come with them. Zoe cried when she saw her mother at the door. Ralph gave her away and Daniel was my best man.

Daniel’s Christmas bestseller that year was a disguised retelling of my life with Sally and the girls. I didn’t talk to him for a week after he sent me a signed pre-release copy. For Christ’s sake, he turned me into a washed-out cardiac surgeon. It cost him a week of serious ass-kissing and a bottle of extremely rare and very expensive Glenfiddich 50-year old single malt to get back in my good books. Please, I’m an artist of healing, not a bloody butcher. I might let him have a glass one day, but then again, at nearly $1,000 a glass, I’m not sure I’ve forgiven him that much to waste a glass on the heathen. Sally thinks I’m pedantic as he did dedicate the book to ‘the wonderful family across the lake.’