Page 17 of Hearts of Fairlake (Men of Fairlake #8)

EPILOGUE

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

"Mommm!"

I sighed heavily at the sound of my 'name' in that drawn-out, whiny tone that sometimes made me question whether using my uterus for its natural purpose had been that good an idea. Which then promptly came with a flash of guilt that I quietly shoved away, knowing thoughts like that were common with parenthood. Fuck knew how my parents, my real parents, had got through raising me without wanting to throw me into traffic.

I turned, raising a hand as the towheaded boy came barreling up to me as if the world was ending, which, for him, it probably was. "Hold it."

Connor stopped and stared up at me with an unhappy expression that told me he knew he wasn't going to get what he wanted. “What?"

"You're going to take a deep breath and explain what's going on without yelling, remember?" I asked, raising a brow. "We don't use our words as weapons."

He let out a huff that spoke of the misery and suffering he was forced to endure. Whoever said teenage girls were the most dramatic creatures had never dealt with a seven-year-old...or at least hadn't met my son. "Maria took my book again! She says it's her turn, but she can't even draw!"

I sighed, pinching my nose and telling myself to breathe and remember it wasn't right to walk up to a six-year-old and chew them out. You waited until they were adults, and if they still acted like children, you gave them a piece of your mind. I also had to remember that Maria was a member of our whole cobbled-together, rather unusual extended family.

So, instead, I would go and speak to her father.

He wasn't hard to find, considering he was almost always with his girlfriend, and she could be heard as long as you were within a quarter of a mile. Sure enough, Eileen's voice drew me in, and I marched up to the young man who sat at a picnic table, bumping his feet together and chuckling at something his girlfriend had to say.

"Colin," I began, raising a brow.

He glanced at me, smile fading. "Uh oh, what now?"

Several things went through my head and I had to remind myself I wasn't as mad as I felt. It was just out of my two children, Connor was far and beyond the most sensitive. He’d been the fussiest as a baby, the one most likely to cling to my leg while his twin brother went off into the world without fear, the first to cry when something went wrong, and so many other things. It was exasperating at times to deal with because I simply couldn't relate, but that was my son , and I was not going to let someone make him feel bad merely because he had a hard time expressing himself.

"Would you be so kind as to speak to your daughter about taking things?" I asked in what I hoped sounded like a polite, perfectly calm voice. "She took Connor's book again, and we both know what will happen if Carter hears about it."

He blinked at that and winced. “And I appreciate you not saying something because you've got that twitchy look in your eye."

"Colin."

"I'm on it."

Beside him, Eileen snorted. "He's only going to do it because he's afraid I'll deal with it my way. He thinks I'm too hard on her, but that little girl?—"

"Is a handful and a half, if not more," I agreed, winking at her. I liked her, and I had since Colin met her when they were fourteen, thinking they would grow up to be exceptional adults. Of course, I was surprised when, a year later, I found out that he'd gone and got her pregnant because he decided his parents' discussion about safe sex didn't apply to him. Six years later, the two were still together, and their daughter was so unlike her laidback, gentle father and more like her fiery, adventurous mother.

Adam and Bennett had been less than happy when they'd received the news, but I didn't blame them. If Connor or Carter knocked up their girlfriend at fifteen, my reaction would be more like Bri's. It had taken the combined powers of Adam, Bennett, and Keith to calm her down before she was allowed to talk to Colin. All four parents had been horrified and concerned, especially when Colin and Eileen decided they were going to keep the baby and raise it.

Still, they had come around, agreeing that they would help with the baby so the two teens could finish school, but they were required to get part-time jobs and actively raise their daughter when they were around. That weird part of the family got even more intertwined and weird with that one decision, but just like it had been when Bri had stuck around and brought Keith into the mold, so too did Eileen and Maria.

"Where is my other son anyway?" I asked as I felt the familiar weight against my leg and reached down to rub Connor's back to calm him down.

"He said he was going exploring," Connor told me.

I stiffened at that bit of news. “And why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged, looking worried. "He was with Gray. He's an adult."

So he was, and I let my shoulders ease as I knew Carter would still find trouble no matter who he was with. At least with Gray, he was with someone who was exceptionally good at getting out of trouble when the need arose. With Gray, that need had arisen quite often in his teen years. Despite Felix and Luke's best attempts, they hadn't quite been able to fix the damage done to Gray when he'd been younger. There were still demons in his head that wouldn't go to sleep quietly, and they fought hard.

The result had been a string of incidents with the school and cops. There had been at least three attempts to run away, the third being successful when he disappeared in the middle of the night atseventeen. They heard from him three times over the next year, all notes in the mail, which nobody used for anything except packages.

None of us were willing to say it aloud to the heartbroken Felix or the worried Luke, but we'd assumed Gray was simply...gone. Maybe we would have if Luke and Felix had lost sight of the other kid in their house, the little girl they'd adopted when Gray was fourteen. They hadn't, though, and Rita had never been left to feel like she would suffer for her adopted older brother's decisions.

Yet Gray had come back. I wished I could say no worse for wear, but he’d been an emotionally vulnerable, angry teenager who didn't know how to survive on his own. I was never given the full story, but therapy and rehab had to come into the mix, and then life started to move on for Gray. Nowadays, he was still a pretty serious guy. He had covered himself in tattoos and piercings and generally just stared at people when they talked to him. But, according to Adam, he was great with his hands, and his apprenticeship at the shop had done wonders for him.

Plus, he adored the kids, so I knew Carter was fine.

"Please tell me you have access to a drink," I pleaded with her.

"I'm not legally old enough to drink," she said with a smirk. "But look, your hero has arrived."

Somehow, I wasn't surprised to turn around and find Ethan standing behind me, beer in hand and a grin on his face. It was still hard to make out the gray among his pale blond hair, but his smile was as full of mischief as ever. “Do you ever find it strange that you can get knocked up, serve in the military, and get student loans all before you're allowed to smoke and drink?"

"I wouldn't know," I said, taking the beer. "I didn't wait until I was twenty-one."

He snorted. “You didn't wait until you were sixteen. What do you mean?"

"Ah yes, I took a half-empty bottle of Tito's from Annie's house. She knew it was me but never told," I said with a wistful sigh. "I had my first kiss that night...and then puked on his pants."

"Just a kiss?" Ethan wondered, sounding doubtful.

"He wasn't too keen on anything else when he had to wash his pants."

"It is a rather...unique way to get a man out of his pants, but I can promise you, men are a lot easier than that."

"Like I don't know."

He grinned. “Where is Annie anyway?"

"She's got a double tonight," I said with a shrug. "And she's madder than hell that she can't be here. But I told her Amber wasn't going to be able to make it from California either, so it wasn't like it was going to be a full house."

"True, and only Grant is going to make it since Sylas is back in LA dealing with...deals," Ethan said, frowning. "Movie deals? I can't remember."

"It's been going on for a few years now, but I'm still amazed the great sleuth has all but put up his hat and doesn't know everyone's business," I said with a smirk.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Oh, c'mon. Sylas decided to open his own production company and start funding movies he wanted to see because Hollywood sold itself out, or however he put it, that one time he had far too much bourbon, and Grant had to carry him out."

"God, that was great," I said with a grin, reaching up and tucking my hair behind my hearing aid. I'd been offered advanced surgery to fix my hearing, but after thinking it through, I'd turned it down. I’d lived with an outward reflection of my disability my whole life. I figured I might as well live the rest of it that way, fuck whatever anyone else thought. "That was the same night he grabbed Grant's ass in front of everyone . I thought Felix was going to piss himself laughing so hard at his brother's face."

"S'alright," a new voice popped up, and I winked as Bennett sidled up to the collection of picnic tables, a cooler behind him. "Devin once told Adam that Chase was hung like a horse, which was absolutely hilarious. Adam was uncomfortable, but I'm pretty sure Chase wanted to fade from the Earth at that moment."

I wrinkled my nose. “I never knew that story. Thanks for that, Bennett."

"Wait," Eileen interrupted, looking between us and settling on Bennett. "If you were there, why weren't you embarrassed too?"

"Because I'd already seen Chase naked...several times," Bennett said with a laugh, bending down to grab a beer from his cooler. "And Devin wasn't exaggerating."

I groaned as Colin walked over and raised a brow. “What...are we talking about?"

"Uncle Chase's dick and the fact that Bennett has seen it," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose and sighing heavily. "All things I didn't need to hear."

Colin sighed. “Papa, c'mon. You know we hate those stories."

"Of course, you already knew," I said with a sigh. "Are any of your kids normal?"

"Bri insists Brendon is normal," Bennett said with a shrug. "When I pointed out he was currently on an extreme sports tour around the world, sponsored by whatever energy booster company that was, she threatened to remove one of my hands. Which is a weird and specific threat, so I just walked away."

All their kids were a little on the weird side, but that made sense. Plus, we loved them anyway. Colin was trying his hand at being a writer while he worked out of Grant's bakery. Apparently, he was pretty good at historical fiction, which wasn't my thing, so I didn't ask. Amber had gone off to become a medical examiner, with a minor in entomology because apparently bugs were really important when it came to dead bodies...which I tried not to think about too hard. Then there was Brendon, the quiet little kid who’d grown up to be good at extreme sports and had a daring for adventure that made even Ethan wary.

"She still blames me for him," Ethan said as if reading my mind. "Like I somehow managed to hide my genetics inside her, waiting until she had a kid, and then it popped up. I tried to point out that that's insane, and all it takes is going through some of our family stories to know that just about every generation had some whacko that put themselves in harm's way all the time, but you know Bri, she's not listening to reason."

"Wouldn't that make you the whacko of your generation?" Eileen asked with a raised brow.

"Uh, duh? I thought that was obvious," he said, sipping his beer. "I have to say, living the quiet life is pretty nice, though. Nowadays, I get to boss people around and lecture them because they really wanna learn what I have to say. Almost as lucrative as throwing myself into danger, but without the danger."

"And yet you couldn't resist the urge to call your business a guild and send other writing guilds into a frenzy and threaten you," Bri said dryly as she and Keith approached, a beaming Brendon behind them, wheeling two large coolers. One might have thought the stress of being a lawyer in Boston, then the dissolution of her marriage, getting replaced by her ex-husband's male best friend, three kids, and then a teenage parent son would have worn her down, but...no. Bri, in fact, still held an air of authority about her, and while the color had faded from her hair and there were wrinkles, she still managed to have skin that made me envious sometimes. "Because you're always going to look for trouble, even after you're dead."

"Well, then it’ll be someone else's problem rather than yours. I thought you'd be happy," he said with a smirk, shaking Keith's hand and grunting when Brendon picked him up and shook him around a little. "Lovely, thank you, Brendon. You always know how to greet people in a normal way. Love that about you."

Which took the topic of conversation out of my hands, and I drifted from it, looking around to find that Connor's book had been returned to him and he was quietly sitting in the shade under a tree, scribbling away. Honestly, he had a great eye for a seven-year-old, and I’d say he could grow up to be a phenomenal artist. The only problem was how sensitive he was. I didn't have a creative bone in my body, yet I knew how cruel the world could be to artists.

Then again, his father had managed to get through life taking criticism left and right, though he had been a screenplay writer. After dating so many roughnecks and blue-collar men, having someone whose head was in the clouds and had a softer approach to life was a breath of fresh air. He’d been kind and sweet and even tried his hand at poetry to show how much he loved me. After working with and dating so many rough guys, I even let myself believepoetry could be love.

I was twenty-six then and should have been wise enough to know better. I certainly figured it out when, after I'd told him I was pregnant, and there was no way in hell I was getting rid of the baby, he had grown quiet and pulled away, though he'd agreed to stick around and help. The day I'd told him it was twins, I knew I was staring at a ghost. It took less than a week before he disappeared in the night, leaving behind his book of poetry and a goodbye note that only said he was sorry.

The poetry had always been garbage, but I'd saved it in case his children wanted some piece of him in the future. I had shed tears for the man I had believed andthe man he had actually been. Then I had prepared myself for single parenthood, knowing damn well I had a whole host of people to back me up. It was an advantage I’d taken because my boys deserved to have a family like this their entire childhood rather than just the last half like it had been with me.

"I don't fucking care what Bennett said. He's an idiot. You should know that since you married the moron," a familiar growl rose from the tree line, and I smiled. As Devin and I were fond of saying, Chase was Chase, and that was all he would ever be, love him or leave him. In truth, he had calmed down over the years, yet the subject of Bennett and his eternal shenanigans would forever get him riled up.

He appeared, Devin trailing behind him as Adam walked beside him, shaking his head and looking amused. Not that I was surprised, he’d always been amused by how Chase and Bennett's relationship worked. And as far as I knew, he had never once batted an eye that Chase and Bennett had once been...something before they'd switched to a purely platonic relationship. Maybe he’d known that whatever had been between them had run its course, or maybe that when it came to Bennett, there was no one but him and that when it came to Chase, there was only Devin.

Connor looked up, and his face brightened. He scrambled up from the ground to run over to Devin, nearly slamming into him. Outside of me, Devin was easily Connor's favorite person in the entire world. Ironically, he’d been wary and outright scared of Chase. Of course, Chase had always been confused by the positive attention he'd received from kids in the past, so he thought Connor was the only normal kid in the group.

All things considered, I had to agree with him on that one...though maybe calling any child I've raised 'normal' was a bad call.

"Hey there," Devin said in that sweet voice as he bent down to see what Connor had to show him. I noticed he got onto the ground rather than squatted, and I wondered if his knee bothered him more than usual. It was the echo of some injury he'd had while he was living in Fairlake, an injury that, if asked about, he would get a small smile on his face and say it was another life. "What do you have for me today?"

"Hey, kid," Chase said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and squeezing it. "Doing alright?"

"Like you didn't just see me this morning," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Or is the dementia setting in. "

"Alright, fuck you too," he grumbled, but I caught the way his lips twitched. He was now the full owner of the car shop, having bought it from the last one and started running it his way. I'd been working there for over a decade, and I could attest that he was a good boss, a hard ass at times, but fair. He'd only ever asked me in the beginning, when I'd returned from two years at college if I was sure I wanted to work at his shop.

"I can still take pictures," I had told him with a roll of my eyes. "But college kids? Annoying. At least in this shop, if I tell someone to shove their wrench up their ass, I don't have a whole council of stuffy old people wagging their fingers and telling me to behave. Plus, I know a lot of this shit, and you can teach me the rest."

He had snorted, leaning on his desk and raising a brow. “You know I won't treat you any different to anyone else around here, right? Might even be harder."

I had rolled my eyes and flipped him the bird, and then flicked my fingertips along the underside of my chin to give him a double 'fuck you' for good measure. "Like I didn't already know that, I'm fine."

And in typical Chase fashion, that had been that. He had just needed to get a measure of how serious I was about taking on the job, and since he'd seen what he’d been looking for, that was all that was necessary and I'd had the job. It paid well, especially once he started making me the floor supervisor because I could run circles around half the crew, and the other half didn't want the job anyway. He got to sit in his office and make sure things ran smoothly, sometimes coming out to fix something whenever he wanted to.

"Heyyyyy," Bennett called out, pulling my attention away. "You made it!"

I turned to see that Grant, Felix, and Luke had arrived. Felix and Luke waved as they approached, but Grant stopped with a large box in his hand. “Of course we made it. Were we not invited?"

"He's excited to see us," Felix said with a shake of his head. "Julian and Isaiah will be showing up later. I just saw Isaiah, and I guess he's going to be staying a little late so Chief Borton can show him some more."

The announcement that Borton would be retiring next year hadn't been a surprise. Neither he nor Trevor were young anymore. At some point, even if you weren't taxing your body, you were still taxing it through all the stress. Better to take the nice government retirement package and try to have some peace in your life. However, what surprised some people was the announcement that Isaiah was chosen to take his place.

No one, and I mean no one, had been more surprised by that announcement than Isaiah himself. From what I'd been told, none of the guys had been surprised, though some wondered if it might be Julian instead. From the sounds of it, though, no one in the station was remotely upset by the choice, so now it was up to Isaiah to learn everything about administration that he hadn't learned yet.

"Speaking of," Chase grunted, eyeing Bennett. "Did Trevor ever manage to get anything through that thick skull of yours before he retired?"

"According to my husband, no," Ethan said with a roll of his eyes. "But we all know how hard it is to please him, so I think Bennett probably managed. Plus, the city hasn't gone down in flames in the past five years, so I think he's managing just fine."

Now, almost everyone was here, the setup began while everyone chatted and fell into easy, comfortable conversation. At some point, Carter came back with Gray, Carter all smiles, and Gray...well, he wasn't smiling on the outside. You had to be around him enough to sense when he was inwardly smiling, which he was. Felix once mentioned that Gray would have been a good teacher for younger kids. He was patient with them in ways he wasn't with others, was careful, and liked interacting with them.

"He said he'd think about it," Felix had finished saying a few months ago. "But who knows how long that’ll take."

Brendon made sure to help with the grilling because it involved fire, making all the right assuring noises when Bri told him to be careful. Bennett was telling a story that made Eileen and Keith laugh while Chase threatened to shove a spatula in...well, I didn't catch the specific area, but it was undoubtedly uncomfortable. Connor sat by Devin, who told him a story about me when I was younger, while Carter decided to play with Maria, which meant we all needed to keep an eye on them.

"There's the birthday boy," someone called, and I smiled to see Trevor slowly approaching. He wasn't exactly immobile, but he’d pushed past sixty, and seventy was always around the corner, as he put it. He was slower than he used to be, but there was still that same warmth in his eyes, and despite his slower pace, there was a steadiness to his step. The three kids swarmed to wish him a happy birthday, and he talked to each of them until he made it to the group.

"You know, you could have just called me. I would have come and got you," Ethan said with a shake of his head.

"I wanted to take a walk, so I did," Trevor said, sitting down at one of the tables, using his hand to steady himself. "Nice days like this don't last."

"That's my husband, optimistic to the end," Ethan said, bending down to kiss Trevor on the temple. "Stubborn old man."

That was when I heard a shriek that brought us all around, and I saw Maria on the ground crying, her arms and legs covered in leaves and dirt. Carter stood over her, looking surprised for a moment, and then I saw the look that sealed my suspicion…defiance.

"Carter," I scolded. "What did you do?"

"She was mean to Connor," he said, tipping his chin up and glaring at me. "No one's mean to him."

"That is no excuse," I told him, squatting down. "Just because someone is mean doesn't mean you need to be mean right back at them. Especially when I had already taken care of it."

"I take care of him," Carter insisted, the stubborn set of his jaw growing even firmer.

"Sorry," I told Colin as he swooped in to get his daughter.

"Kids," he said with a smile, pulling his child close and walking off.

"Listen to me. You can't hurt people just because they're mean or because you think they're mean," I told Carter.

"She stole from him," he said, sounding a little put out now. "That's mean."

I glanced at Connor, staring at me from where he sat with Devin. “Did you...tell your brother?"

"No," he said solemnly, shaking his head.

"Maria told you she took the book, and you pushed her down?" I asked Connor wryly, but I wasn't surprised when Connor shook his head. "Then who told you?"

"No one, she just did," he said.

Of course, after seven years, I didn't have to ask how he knew because he just knew. Just like he’d known when Connor started to get sick when staying the night at Chase and Devin's. Just like Connor had started crying hysterically with me one day, knowing Carter had been stung several times by wasps in the backyard, only seconds before Carter's wailing was close enough to be heard. Just like they knew when the other had a bad dream before the other said anything, or how they knew when the other was happy or near to tears.

"Well, you're going to stick by my side for a while. No playing, just stick with me."

"But Mo?—"

"No," I said, leaning in closer. "You could seriously hurt someone doing stuff like that. If you were upset about your brother, you should have said something to me. So now you're going to think about what you could have done instead, rather than playing. No arguing."

He seemed fully prepared to continue the argument, but all the air went out of his sails, and he dropped his eyes to the ground. I leaned forward, kissed him on the forehead, and took his hand in mine so he could come and sit next to Connor and Devin. Being near his brother would calm him down and probably make him think a lot more than he would if he were by me on his own. That same weird 'knowing' they had between one another also had other effects. Being near Connor made Carter gentler and more thoughtful, and being near Carter made Connor bolder and more adventurous.

Devin smiled. “He just knew, huh?"

"Don't they always?" I asked with a weary sigh as Connor leaned in and said something quietly to Carter.

The corners of Devin’s eyes wrinkled as he smiled, and I couldn't help but remember a night almost fourteen years ago. When he'd stood under the open sky, the night clear, and the stars bright because someone, we'd always suspected it was Trevor, had arranged to have the lights downtown turned off at nine so the light pollution would be minimal. He'd stood there, eyes swimming with tears, as he and Chase had sworn their love and devotion to one another for the remainder of their lives.

There had barely been a dry eye in the small crowd assembled to watch their wedding. Even I could feel myself overwhelmed by it, and now I remembered something I'd thought at the time and had told no one.

"You had stars in your tears," I said, feeling my face warm when Devin looked at me in confusion.

"When you said your vows," I said, explaining myself before I sounded any more weird. "I remembered swearing I could see starlight reflected in them...or moonlight."

"Oh," he said, confused still but smiling. It was a smile I had seen so much since that night under the stars, as if the weight of the world steadily dropped from his shoulders and left him free to be happy and clearheaded. "Funny, Chase said something similar once."

"Oh?"

"Something for him and I to share."

At that time, I could only nod and hope that one day, I might be able to discover something like that in my life. Honestly, with all of the love stories that surrounded me, it would be easy enough to feel like I was missing out and going to keep missing out. Yet at the same time, two pairs of former best friends didn't find love with one another until later in life, others who met when they too probably thought the game was up for them, and two who met each other and chose a life together despite their differences, even in their ages.

So, I also had plenty of reasons to keep seeing if things might work out for me one day.

I looked up and felt my chest ease as two familiar faces walked off the nearby path to join us. Kyle was still handsome. I'd always thought so, even though he considered himself plain and average-looking. He still refused to lose his hair color and had been dyeing it, but that didn't matter to me. The familiar curve of his smile was what I liked about him. Then there was my father, older, maybe wiser, and still as tall and strong as I remember him being from my earliest memories.

Because it had always been him I remembered the most. Sometimes, I remembered my mother, but those were usually harsh memories, surrounded by jagged edges that could catch you if you weren't careful. There was one where she’d sung to me in Spanish, and in that memory, I knew she'd done it several times before, but I didn't remember those. In a time when I thought my mom could be a little scary sometimes, but not really.

No, it was mostly just my dad. My dad as he tried his hardest to keep me safe, and the way he fought to make sure I was happy and taken care of. He wasn't always sure what to do with me, but always tried to accept me and refused to let others put me down, even if he didn't give himself the same treatment. He was a man who fought for others intensely but always forgot about himself.

That was probably why it was good he had Kyle, who sometimes just fought to make sure people knew where he stood. And he stood with us, stood with my dad, so he fought like hell for us. I still liked to tell people stories of when Kyle had come to the school as a legal guardian and gave the school hell for something or another. He had become my second parent, someone who understood the frustration and anger in my heart but who also knew how to remind me that I had to have a handle on it or it could make me into a monster.

"Sorry we're late," Kyle said. "My dad was being difficult, as he does."

Grandpa Bower was sweet but also incredibly set in his ways. I could only imagine what it had taken for them to get out of the house and ensure he was taking care of himself. His health had been failing lately, and I made a mental note to visit him. Grandma had passed about five years ago, shortly before the twins had turned two. It was odd that in the last year of her life, it was as if she knew and something changed in her. Maybe it was having great-grandkids, or maybe she realized she'd lived spitefully and sharp-tongued for too long. Either way, she had been gentler, more prone to listening, and less likely to try to cut you down to size. I'd been sad when she died in the middle of the night.

As for my mother? The less said about her, the better, but even her story had run its course one day. It was five years after she'd held me at knifepoint. Someone in prison had had enough of her or something because they took their own blade to her. She'd bled out on a dirty bathroom floor, mop still clenched in her hand when they found her. I had shocked myself at the time by crying over her death, even as I let the state take care of her remains and refused anything of hers.

But no matter what she’d become, no matter how much I hated her, she was still my mother, and I guess a part of me needed to grieve. That realization made me understand my dad and why he’d put up with my grandmother for so long. Even though he'd learned to fight back and put his foot down, he had still stayed close to her. He had been staying in her house on the night she passed, and I’d never seen someone look so miserable and yet relieved at the same time. Now, I understood completely that she had been his mother.

My dad made me smile when he signed rather than spoke to ask if I was doing alright. I told him the kids were acting up, but otherwise, I was ready to get started with this little party of ours. He then told me motherhood suited me, which almost made me tear up until Kyle elbowed him and told him to stop being emotional in front of other people, making me laugh and hug them both.

It meant it was time to finally pull out the undoubtedly lovely cake Grant had made for Trevor on his birthday and try to get everyone to sing, not necessarily in tune because there were some terrible voices in the group, mine included, but at least in sync. Then we had to get the food ready and let ourselves settle into eating in the park that fifteen years ago had been damaged badly by my mother's insanity and hate but now looked like it had never known anything but peace.

It was pretty apt when I thought about it because almost everyone here had once seen their share of pain and horror, loss and grief. Some more than others, and yet none of us showed the slightest hint that we’d known anything but peace and shared love. In reality, it had been fought for, worked for, and we had all struggled to ensure that ourselves and those we loved were taken care of.

That was why they were all my family as far as I was concerned. Family wasn't my dad, my mom, or my grandma, they were my dad, Kyle, Grandpa Bower, and everyone else here. They were the men and women who had fought and worked together to save me from my mother. They were the ones who had helped to be there for me in the years after. They were the ones who cared for me, and I had helped to care for them.

These were my people, and I was theirs. This was my town.

This was home.