The Night That Changed It All

Epilogue.

"Liam Payne, get down here. We're gonna be late!" I yelled up the stairs to Liam, who apparently didn't feel it was necessary to turn up to his own daughter's graduation on time. Lily Ann, who was twenty five, was about to graduate from King's College London with a teaching degree. She would then go on to teach Art in the local post-primary school, whose old Art teacher had just retired.

"It's Horan Payne, actually." Liam called back from upstairs and I could just see the stupid grin he'd be sporting as he continued to take his sweet time. Rolling my eyes, I huffed impatiently before leaning against the wall by the stairs.

"It won't be anything if you don't hurry up." I grumbled to myself, giving Cathal a long suffering look when he stuck his head around the edge of the door into the kitchen. He was fifteen and looked almost exactly like Liam, which I was a bit put out by. The only thing that he'd gotten from me were his eyes, which were blue, the same as all his siblings.

"You want me to go get him?" Cathal asked, walking out into the hallway and glancing up the stairs, before stifling a laugh when we heard Liam mumbling something vague to himself. Lord only knows what it was.

"Nah; it's fine. I'll do it. But can you get Keith and Laura? I think they're outside." I sighed, getting a nod from Cathal, who then spun away and went off in search of Keith and Laura, who were both seven years old. They were twins and had been born four years after we lost Daniel, who would have been eleven.

It'd taken a while for us all to completely come to terms with our lose after Daniel, but we did eventually, much to everyone's relief. When I got pregnant with the twins, we worried that the same thing might happen again, but, thankfully, everything was fine and they were both born perfectly healthy almost two weeks after their due date.

"Lily Ann is graduating today." Liam sighed when I made it into our room, where he was sitting on the end of our bed with only one shoe on. The other shoe was still in his hand and it didn't look like he planned on doing anything with it so I took it from him and bent to put it on.

"Yeah. She is. And if we don't leave soon, we might miss that happening." I replied tersely, getting up off the floor and sitting next to Liam when he didn't respond. "Alright; what's up?"

"It's just mad to think that Lily Ann is graduating college in just a few hours. Come September, she'll be a teacher. I keep thinking of her when she was five and she told everyone that she wanted to be a stylist like Lou." Liam explained, laughing a bit at the memory. 

"Then she realized she hated it and decided she was going to be a fisherman until she remembered she got horribly seasick every time she went on a boat." I reminded with a nostalgic grin, making Liam laugh again.

"And now she's graduating." He sighed suddenly, after we'd both finished remembering Lily Ann's childhood. She'd had the most interesting imagination growing up and never hesitated to tell us all about her next scheme.

"And now she's graduating." I confirmed slowly, before I jumped back up from the bed and pulled Liam up, too. "But that's a good thing. She's doing what she wants to, it's something she enjoys doing and she gets to pass on her wisdom to the next generation, which might just include Keith and Laura if either of them decide to do Art."

Thankfully, traffic was light on the way to London, and we did manage to make it there on time. After joining the others, who all decided to attend because 'none of ours will be graduating for a long time', I scanned the crowd of graduates for Lily Ann. When I did see her, she was already looking our way, so I waved enthusiastically. She visibly laughed at me before waving back and turning back to her friend.

Laura and I spent most of the actual ceremony pulling faces at each other and playing rock, paper, scissors, much to the annoyance of the couple behind us, who looked down at us with disapproving glares every time Laura giggled to herself. It wasn't until Liam elbowed me in the side that I looked up to see Lily Ann accepting her certificate with a polite smile.