Bookworms | ✔

epilogue

"I'm so bored," yawned the oldest of the Muller kids, Daris. His arms were folded across the dining table as his legs kicked back and forth underneath, energy bursting through him. "Can we do something fun?"

Nicholas glanced at his eight year old son, finding the familiar mischievous grin on his son that he always found on his wife's lips. "Are you saying crosswords aren't fun?" he teased.

Daris rolled his eyes. "Come on, Dad. There's a million other things we could be doing right now." He turned to his sister, who was only one year younger than him. "Naira, tell Dad about how much fun it'd be to go to an amusement park or to see a movie or to-"

Sitting beside her brother, Naira's jet-black hair fell over her forehead in bangs and down to her shoulders. Glasses were pushed up the bridge of her nose as her dark, brown eyes stared blankly at Daris, hating the interruption from her rubix cube. "Speak for yourself," she huffed. "I want to finish my puzzle."

Daris pouted, resting his chin on the palm of his hands. "You two are no fun," he mumbled.

Nicholas chuckled, nudging his son. "We can do something fun after your Ammu (Mom) comes home, deal?"

"Describe fun."

"A good retelling of a book?" tried Nicholas.

Daris narrowed his eyes at his father, hazel with specks of green on the outer ridges as bright and vivid as the dappled light through a iridescent forest, whisks of sunlight skimming the surface. His eyes were like Haroon's and his mother-in-law.

Nicholas sighed, knowing there was only one thing that his son found amusing. "Letting you beat me at that Islamic trivia game for the thousandth time," he grudgingly consented to.

Instantly, Daris perked up, tan skin glowing. "Yes!"

Over the course of their marriage, Nicholas had two children to thank Allah for, two kids that made even stormy days an adventure and sunny days a wild ride for both their parents. Daris resembled his mother in almost every way with his outspoken personality, daring courage to take risks, and in his golden complexion and wavy, chaotic tangle of ebony hair.

He could create a hurricane with the tales of adventures he saw himself sailing through. Even the calmest ocean trembled in his presence. There were times when Nicholas thought fatherhood would make him old and retired far too early, but he couldn't deny the amusement he found in Daris's antics.

They reminded him of Dina and all the days that she'd talk herself out of trouble with Professor Jerikson.

His gaze shifted to his daughter, watching her pursue her lips as she calculated her method to solve the cube. Her dark, midnight, crescent eyes were exactly like Dina's, had the same sass, same kindness, same slyness, same confidence coursing through. Compared to Daris, she was much lighter in her skin tone than he was, more on the paler side. She even wore glasses like Nicholas.

He saw himself more in his daughter. She was cautious and very intelligent for a seven year old. Naira's memory was too sharp to go unnoticed that when Dina saw how easily she memorized pages upon pages of facts, she quickly taught her the fundamentals of reading Quranic texts to enroll her in a full-time hifz (memorization of the Qur'an) course.

Daris knew a lot too, but he preferred to run a couple laps around the house before he settled and did his Qur'an homework or his school work.

"Assalamualaikum!" chirped the lovely voice he was accustomed to. "Please tell me Daris didn't burn the house down."

"Ammu!" the kids cheered, running to greet her at the door with Nicholas close by.

When he reached the hallway that led to their front door, he couldn't stop the smile on his lips as he watched his children climb on their mother's legs, watched as Dina dropped her journalist bag to the floor to embrace them, laughing so much that the sound echoed off their walls and filled their home with the same warmth she brought him.