Taunt

A Not So Taunting Epilogue

[] A M E L I A []

Christmas had went by in the blink of an eye. I had gotten home three days before Christmas eve, giving me enough time to help with remaining decorations around the house, and clean it too. I had already bought everyone's presents when I had gone shopping with Gemma back in the Lethbridge, so I was able to spend more time with my family.

When I came back home, all of us had fallen into a comfortable routine, as if the past four years of our life didn't happen. As if we all didn't celebrate Christmas in four years. Since Levi was in jail, we didn't have the heart to.

We felt as if it was wrong to celebrate when we had a murderer among us.

But now, we celebrated it with a renounced happiness. We pummelled four years of missed Christmases into one. We all bought numerous presents for each other, putting our heart into all of them.

On Christmas eve, mom had invited Lillian, Gemma and her dad, over for dinner. We all celebrated the night together, and had a lot of fun. In the morning, us four exchanged our presents and mom presented us with a hearty breakfast. Then, we had all sat down and did what we always did for Christmas before the incident. We all devoured hot chocolate, and cookies that mom baked, and watched reruns of old Christmas movies. We always did this on Christmas day for some reason, and not before that.

As for the rest of my extended family, mom and dad tried their best to keep in touch with their families. However, when they had found out what Levi was accused of four years ago, they all shut us out completely. Not that we were close to them before, but now, we hadn't spoken to them in years. A few weeks back, Dad's family had tried to get in touch with us. However, once dad found out that it wasn't out of guilt, but rather, for the money that Levi had inherited, dad completely shut them out of his life. Mom's side of the family wasn't much better. I knew that mom had been the balck sheep of her family growing up, and we didn't talk much about it either. But after hearing the news of Levi being innocent, nobody from her side had even tried to contact us.

I wasn't bothered by this at all. If they couldn't be there for the worst of our times, they didn't deserve to be here now.

After Christmas was over, we had one day left to prepare for Leo's family to come over. Mom had even invited Jamal and Andre, and they had agreed to come over too. Gemma was already a given, and I was happy that her dad and my dad got along so well too. It was nice to see my father connect with someone after so long. And I just knew that he'd get along with James as well. And of course, John was also invited.

The last day had flown by as well. Before I knew it, I standing in front of my full-length mirror, smoothing down my dress for the night. It was a knee-length red velvet dress, one that Gemma had given to me as a Christmas present. All five of us had exchanged our presents before we left for the holidays, in case we couldn't meet up before break was over.

Gemma had given me this dress, along with a gold necklace, one that I also wore now. Jamal and Andre together bought a new sound system for my car, and I nearly cried when they installed it.

For Gemma's present, the boys and I pitched in and bought a car.

It definitely dented our bank accounts, but it was worth it to see the pure happiness on her face. Her old car had completely broken down, and she loved the darn thing and took care of it properly too. It was just too rundown to be surviving this weather. So all of us decided to do this. The car we got wasn't anything special, since we found the best deal we could on a used car website, but we still found the best one we could without going completely bankrupt. We made sure it was one that would last her longer than her old one did.