mine {h.s.} | {b3}

CHAPTER THIRTY

— CHAPTER THIRTY —

epilogue.

Grayson Fitz and Josie Reese Styles are the youngest of our children. But they're hardly young anymore, something that I have to remind myself as I sit on the dock with them in Maryland, handing them cans of beer and mixed drinks galore. They don't share our penchant for tequila. Still underaged, they drink what they can get their hands on, their taste hardly refined as they've fallen in love with the enemy: vodka. Poked fun is all my husband and I can offer them as we still sip our margaritas and tequila neat, watching the grimaces settle on our children's faces as they brave the glorified rubbing alcohol. Only nineteen, Harry and I hadn't put up much of a fight for our youngest two drinking on our family vacation. Though, Edie still had come prepared, eager to free her siblings from the restrictions of legality, reminding us that had we chosen to raise them in England, they would have been drinking for a year by this point.

Neither of us has put up much of a fight in the first place.

There was just something so full circle about all of us sitting out on a dock together—practically on top of each other as we try to accommodate for the sheer size of our party—drinking and reminiscing on the good old days. The days from when we were young. The days from when they were done. Sharing secrets that we'd never shared before.

Ever since the twins were two, we made a very collective and concentrated effort with all of our friends to go on an annual family vacation. We've gone all over the country together. Family vacations to Disney, to Hollywood, to the midwest, to the Grand Canyon and Vegas... one year, we even went abroad to visit Kiera and Elio in Tuscany, where they settled.

I don't think there was ever a moment in which we consciously realized this, but there did come a moment in which we stopped viewing each other as simply our friends. Each of us, every single one of us, have become our own sort of found family. A family unit that defies the necessity of blood, and is instead based on the monumental love that we have for each other. The desire to see each other succeed, the want for only good things in life.

Our families have grown.

Monty and Oliver bring their two children: Elliot and Ryan. Ryan was the final addition to their family. When Ryan was five, the couple started fostering them. Ryan had been bouncing through families for the duration of their life, and something about them just stuck with Monty and Oliver. Ever since they moved back to Seattle for Oliver's work, they started fostering children. Very quickly, Monty and Oliver knew that they wanted to adopt Ryan. Such has been the case for the past eighteen years.

Fitzy and Ruth bring their two kids: Zana and Eleodoro. Zana moved in with us full time when she was thirteen. Switching between households became more difficult when she started school, considering that our place and TJ's apartment are in two different school districts. Ultimately, TJ and Ruth—with help from Zana herself—decided that they liked our school district better. Accordingly, she spent most of her time with us, anyway. Still, she spent plenty of time with TJ and Angelica, both of whom were very accommodating and understanding of her choice, especially when she decided that she wanted to stay with us full time.

Eleodoro was the final addition to their family. A couple months after I had the twins, everything with the adoption process clicked into place for the two of them. Ro fit into our families quickly, effectively. He was the missing piece to our mixed up, collected family in the house. With him around, everything seemed to fit.

That's not to say that things weren't messy, that things weren't chaotic at first.

I'd always known that the house was too big for our family alone. Having Ruth, Fitzy, Zana, and Ro around filled the spaces better than I could have ever imagined. Sometimes, I joked that the spaces were filled too well. Those early days required a lot of shuffling around on our parts. At first, the twins shared a bedroom. When Ro was brought into the house, we originally stuck him in there, too, figuring it to be the collective nursery space. As the kids got older, Josie was moved into Edie's room while Grayson and Ro shared their own room. Fitzy and Ruth had their own suite in the basement, the one that they had designed together as soon as they agreed to move in full time.

When Zana made the decision to stay with us full time at thirteen, we decided to move her into the attic space. For her birthday, they let her redecorate the room, funding it with playful eye rolls and a whole lot of yeses. Shortly after, Josie moved into Zana's old bedroom while the boys continued sharing the space. Eventually, when Zana moved out, Grayson took over her space and claimed it as his own. Shuffling became a necessity for the house that was holding nine people.

TJ and Angelica come on these vacations, too. They were the last to finish having kids. Valerie, the oldest, is the same age as Zana. They've never stopped being the best of friends, treating each other as sisters. In the time since, they had two more kids: Emma and Junior.

Family vacations with us are crowded. Our original idea had been to get a house big enough for all eighteen of us, though very quickly we realized that was not an easy thing to do. Especially as our families continued getting bigger, when significant others and best friends were required to come along. Usually, our families will rent two houses next to each other, allowing for us and the kids to move between each house interchangeably.

Life, we realized, has happened all around us without our even having realized it. Zana is twenty-six now and is married. Edie is going into her senior year of college in a pre-med track. Having gone in undecided, she very quickly realized her fascination with medicine, wanting to be like her father and I. Grayson has had the same boyfriend for the past three years and begged and begged to finally be able to take him on the family vacation—something that, again, had Harry and I relenting rather easily. Josie skipped out on college, instead opting on doing travel programs that allow her to teach English in foreign countries while she decides what it is, precisely, that she wants to do with the rest of her life. That's only the beginning of it all.

It's easy to look at the kids and see that they have grown up. It's harder to look in the mirror, look at ourselves, and realize that somewhere along the way, we did too.

Somewhere along the way, we grew up.

Harry and I stopped trying to sabotage each other, but instead fell in love.

Ruth and Fitzy decided that marriage wasn't for them, instead entering a domestic partnership that is amongst the healthiest that I've ever seen. Their love for the other staggering and honest and so entirely out of the blue that it just makes sense.

Monty and Oliver returned home and could not have been happier for it, happier to be back with their friends.

Only just barely, I can hear Edie talking to Ruth. "Soon," I can hear Ruth telling her, "you'll be going into the hospital for the first time, too."

"I know," Edie shakes her head in a sort of disbelief, her curls fanning out across her face. She looks more and more like Harry every day, even adopting his mannerisms so minutely, it causes me to pause for a second as I look between them. Grayson, too, takes after his father. Josie is the only one who looks more finely like me, her eyes entirely Harry's—the only one with green eyes like her father—but everything else so wholly mine. While pregnant, I always dreamed that my kids would look like their father. The most perfect person I know, I would have considered them blessed to look like him. Though, I couldn't really have anticipated how much it would mean to me to look at my child and see the mirror of myself staring back at me. "I just can't believe it."

"Have you ever heard about our first day?" Ruth asks her, taking a long sip of her drink as she adjusts her position to better her access to the sun. "Hell, have you heard about the stories of our lives?"

"No," Edie leans into the story brewing, and I smile at the memory.

All of our kids are well versed in the story of how mommy met daddy. They all know that we hated each other, but somewhere along the way, that quickly became love. Privately, Harry and I have congratulated ourselves. We defeated the odds, raising our kids in a household where they know what unconditional love is. Not only are they on the receiving end of it, from us, but they see it every time that they look between their parents. They have the parents that never fell out of love with each other, with life.

But I'd never taken the time to walk them through exactly what it was that happened in those first few days, months. "You should ask her sometime," Ruth says, smiling at at me. She winks. She knows that she caught my attention.

"Mom?"

Gamely, I nod my head. Within seconds, I feel Harry's hand clasping around my own. Confidence, love, adoration, and infatuation for life swells in my stomach. "It all started with the words, 'Starting today is the rest of your life.'"