Page 46

FIVE’S A CROWD

Luke

A few weeks later…

“We really need to upgrade to a bigger car. A family of five definitely needs something with three rows,” I say as I peer over my shoulder at the back seat of my Rivian, where Ollie naps in her car seat while Lemmie and Mellie watch a movie from their booster seats.

I don’t love giving them too much screen time, but it’s a long ride out of the city and I want to keep their stimulation-levels low for now.

“Yeah,” Dean chuckles. “Five really is a crowd, isn’t it?”

The rays of sun shining through tinted windows of the SUV feel like a warm renaissance. A sign of good things to come. It’s a bright and beautiful day, and I crack my window to get a breath of the fresh, late-summer air while Dean pulls into the cemetery.

Today is exactly the kind of day Gigi loved most. Perfect weather, perfect company, and all the time in the world to spend with her family. I couldn’t have picked a better time to visit.

Dean navigates the narrow paths of the cemetery, pulling up to the row in the middle where Gigi’s tombstone rests.

I don’t like thinking about her bones being in the ground beneath our feet, so I don’t.

She doesn’t reside in the graveyard. Her soul is with us all the time.

She’s in Lemmie and Mellie’s eyes. She’s in Ollie’s laugh.

She’s in me every time I make an inappropriate joke and in Dean when he lets the kids give him highlights in his hair with their washable markers.

Still, the tombstone gives us a physical place to visit, and I know Gigi is here with us today, too.

“Want me to give you a minute?” Dean asks as he puts the SUV in park. He glances back at our kids in the backseat, but I shake my head.

“No, it’s okay. They need to stretch their legs and say hi to their mom.”

“Are we at Mommy’s house?” Mellie asks, causing Lemmie to look up from the movie and look out the window.

They have a better understanding of Gigi’s death after all this time, but for some reason, they like to call the cemetery ‘Mommy’s house’, and I don’t stop them.

I think it makes them feel better, just like looking for signs from Gigi around makes me feel better.

“We are. Would you like to go say hi?”

We pile out of the car, and I hold the twins’ hands while Dean carries a half-asleep Ollie on his hip as we pad across the grass.

Gigi Cannon

Mother. Sister. Friend.

“Hey, Gigi,” I say quietly. Lem and Mel let go of my hands, and I run one over the top of her simple stone.

“Mommy, we brought you something!” They say together, then Lemmie pulls an envelope out of the pocket of her pink overalls. The front says “Mommy” in her messy handwriting. Mellie pulls out an identical envelope, but hers has a drawing of her and her sisters accompanying the word.

“We brought you letters, Mommy. Miss Kira wrote the words down for us. We miss you.”

“We miss you so much, Mommy. And we love you so so so much.”

Tears well in my eyes as I listen to the girls talk to their mother and gingerly place their envelopes on the ledge of the tombstone.

“Would you like to read the letters to her? I’m sure she’d love to hear them,” Dean says, a hitch in his voice. I look at him and see that his tears are freely flowing, so I reach out and squeeze his hand three times in mine.

I love you.

“No thank you,” Lemmie says, shaking her head.

“They’re private. Mommy can read them when we’re gone,” says Mellie, and then the two of them step forward and place kisses on their mother’s stone.

I guess they feel Gigi’s spirit with us, too.

We spend an hour with Gigi, laying down flowers and telling stories. We share pictures from Ollie’s birthday party and the smash cake that ended up all over all five of us, and Lem and Mel show off the new ballet poses they learned this week.

I could stay all day here, feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin and the love of my sister in my heart. But eventually, the kids get hungry. So we pile back into the car and head to the nearest greasy spoon, where we order chicken fingers and pancakes and chocolate milkshakes.

“Dee dee dee!” Ollie babbles from her high chair, tracing a red crayon over the coloring sheet in front of her.

“That’s right, Ollie. That’s Dean!” I say, encouraging her. She’s got a good arsenal of words at her disposal now, but she’s still struggling with the back half of Dean’s name.

“Dah dee. Dah dee. Dah dee.”

Umm…okay. That’s new.

“Did she just—” Deans starts, just as I say. “Is she saying?—”

“Daddy. Daddy! DADDY!” Ollie shrieks, and my jaw drops. She continues her chant, looking back and forth between Dean and me as she repeats the word over and over again.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

“Holy sugar,” Dean mumbles. “I think Ollie is calling you Daddy.”

“I think she’s calling us Daddy,” I say, my smile splitting my face in two.

Dean and I have talked about this since the custody hearing.

What the girls would call us, how we’d interact with them as parents.

We decided it was best for them to take the lead.

We’ll continue to be Uncle Luke and Dean, but if they ever wanted to refer to us by a different name, we’d be okay with that too.

And it looks like Ollie just made the decision.

“How did you learn that word, mi pollita?” Dean asks, pinching one of Ollie’s pink, chubby cheeks.

“We taught her!” Lemmie and Mellie say together. Dean and I look at each other, then back at the girls.

“You taught Ollie how to say Daddy?” I ask, careful not to infer anything but curiosity with the tone of my words.

“Yeah! We taught her Lemmie and Mellie and Daddy. But she doesn’t say our names yet. She just says lemmel, which is close enough,” Lemmie shrugs.

“And you taught her Daddy along with your names because…”

“Because Ollie needs to know our names, and you guys are kind of like our daddies, right?”

Dean squeezes my thigh under the table, and I bite my tongue to stave off the tears threatening to spill.

“What does a Daddy mean to you, Mel?” I ask, and she taps her finger to her chin.

“A Daddy means someone who loves you and takes care of you. He feeds you breakfast and brushes your hair and plays nail salon.”

“And he teaches you things! Like Spanish and football!” Lemmie interjects.

“And he tucks you in at night and lets you sleep in his bed when you have nightmares.”

“And that’s why you and Dean are our Daddies, right? Because you love us and you take care of us?”

The girls look at us with their wide, innocent eyes, and a part of me melts. Of course, my sister is their mother. Gigi will always be their mother, and I will never let them forget how loved they were by her.

But this? This simple gesture from the three little people I love the most is more overwhelming than I could have ever imagined. I swipe at a stray tear on my face, and I see Dean out of the corner of my eye doing the same.

“Yes, chickadees. Me and Dean do love you, and we do take care of you, and we always will. That makes us like your daddies. And if you’d like to call us that, that would be more than okay with me.”

“Me too, mis pollitas. I’d be honored to be your Daddy.”

“Perfect!” Mellie says, clapping her hands together, and Lemmie does the same.

“You’ll be Daddy Luke, and you’ll be Daddy Dean. And we are Lemmie and Mellie and Ollie! One big happy family!”

I take one of Dean’s hands in mine, and one of Mellie’s in the other. Mellie grabs Lemmie’s hand, and Lemmie and Dean each grab one of Ollie’s, so we all form a big circle.

“One big happy family,” I say.

And here, at this diner off the highway with my kids and my husband and a hand to hold onto, I feel at peace.