We Are One

Chapter 1: A New Family and a New Life

St. Lawrence church was beautifully decorated for a wedding, which was nearly ready to start. The guests were all seated and the bridal party was ready to walk down the aisle. All that remained was rounding up the two youngest members of bridal party, something the groom and the father of the bride were trying to do.

"There you are," the groom, Kanan Jarrus, said as he scooped up the flower girl, his seven-year-old adopted daughter Sabine. "Where's your brother?" he asked referring to his bride's seven-year-old son.

"There," the little girl said pointing to the room that the bride was waiting in.

"I'll get him," said the bride's father.

While Kanan took Sabine back to her place in the bridal procession and then made his way to the front of the church, the father of the bride made his way to the room where his daughter was waiting and where his grandson was supposedly hiding. He knew that his grandson and new granddaughter weren't hiding to stall the wedding, both were excited about getting a new parent and sibling; they were just having fun. His daughter Hera looked up as he came in and he smiled at her.

"You look so beautiful," he said.

"You said that nine years ago," she said.

"And it's just as true now as it was then."

"Is everyone ready?"

"Yes. I just came to get a certain little rascal."

His grandson peeked out from behind his mother.

"I want to play," the seven-year-old said.

"Ezra," Hera said, kneeling down so she was eye level with her son, "you can play after the ceremony...with your new sister."

"You promise?"

"I promise. But you know what that means; the sooner the ceremony starts, the sooner it will be over and then you and your sister can play."

                            ♡♡♡

The ceremony proceeded as scheduled. The groom, ringbearer, and groomsmen were all wearing white summer suits with yellow ties and yellow roses on the lip of their jackets. The bridesmaids were all wearing yellow, A-line, strapless dresses while the maid of honor's dress had a shoulder strap on the left side and all of them carried bouquets of yellow roses. As for the bride, she was wearing a beautiful strapless A-line gown in pearl white with her long, brown hair pinned up. Next to her was the flower girl wearing a child version of her gown.

Of course, for a pair of seven-year-olds (or, to be more exact, six-in-a-half-year-olds), the ceremony was much too long. They wanted it to be over so they could play. However, they both understood what this wedding meant. Once the ceremony was over, they would both have a complete family not one parent and one grandparent.

Kanan had adopted Sabine over six years ago when she was seven months old. The daughter of two of his colleagues at the college, she had lost both of her parents in a tragic car accident and Kanan had taken her in. Not long after that, his mother Depa moved in to help him raise Sabine, knowing full well how difficult it is to raise a child alone. She had raised Kanan by herself after his father was killed during Desert Storm when Kanan was just four-months-old.

Ezra, exactly two months younger than Sabine, had never known his father. He had been a police officer and was killed in the line of duty. It had been several weeks after the funeral that Hera learned that her first husband had given her one last, precious gift: their son. When her husband died, she had moved back in with her parents and, two years ago, after her mother died from cancer, she had moved from New York to Michigan with Ezra and her father Cham.