Page 57 of Living for Truth (Broken Shelves #2)

Epilogue

Hannah

Two and a half years later…

“ P oppy, no! You’re supposed to eat your oatmeal, not put it in your hair,” Aly groans from the kitchen table. “Mom, I think we need a dishrag.”

My heart still soars when she calls me that, even almost two years later. I love being her mom. We finalized Aly’s adoption six months after the girls were born, and the same day, she shyly asked if she could start calling me Mom. I was so excited, I burst into tears.

“I think Poppy is going to need a bath, what do you think, Vi?” I ask her twin sister, who’s meticulously spooning oatmeal into her mouth. She still gets a little messy, but she’s not nearly as chaotic about it as her sister.

“No bath!” Poppy protests, pounding her hands on the high chair tray and splattering oatmeal on the wall .

“Poppy bath,” Violet agrees, placing her spoon in her mostly eaten bowl and holding it up for me to take. “All done.”

“Aly, would you mind helping Violet get dressed for the day while I go put Poppy in the bath really quick?”

“No problem, Mom. Come on, Vi. What color dress should we wear today? Pink or purple?”

“Pink!” Violet yells excitedly as Aly takes her up to her room.

“Alright, Pop. Let’s get you a quick bath so you don’t have oatmeal hair when we take you to Gigi and Papa’s.” I wipe most of the oatmeal mess up before taking her out of her high chair and carrying her upstairs to the bathroom.

“Gigi! Papa!” Poppy claps excitedly.

Iris and Axel are watching the girls for a week while Morgan and I go to Texas for Wes and Elli’s wedding. They’re having a small, intimate ceremony for their closest friends and family, and I’m honored to be on the guest list.

It’s a childfree wedding, mostly because no one else has kids in their friend group, otherwise we’d bring the girls with us. It’s hard to leave them for this long when we’ve never been apart for more than two days, but it’ll be nice to have some time with just the two of us.

I hear my husband’s footsteps on the stairs and the patter of Violet’s feet padding down the hall before I hear a screeching, “DADDY!”

Poppy splashes the water and chants, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

“How are all my best girls?” Morgan says from the bathroom doorway, scooping up Violet and propping her on his hip. Violet wraps her arms around Morgan’s neck and nuzzles into him.

The sight makes my ovaries explode, but we will not be having any more babies. Morgan had a vasectomy four months after the girls were born, and even though we know there’s still a small possibility we could get pregnant, we haven’t had any issues.

“Pops put oatmeal in her hair, but other than that, we’re good,” Aly answers, coming to hug Morgan from the side. I love that the girls hug him when he gets home, even if he’s only been gone for an hour.

“Poppy, oatmeal is for eating, not for your hair,” Morgan teases, and Poppy gives him a toothy grin.

I finish up Poppy’s bath and help her get dressed for the day while Morgan loads up the suitcases into the van. We upgraded my small sedan for a minivan when we realized how hard it was for Aly to climb in between the girls and how uncomfortable it was to be squished between two bulky car seats.

Once everything is loaded into the car, we put the girls in their seats and head over to Iris and Axel’s. The twins make us play B-I-N-G-O on repeat the entire way there and sing along the whole time.

Thank God the drive is less than ten minutes.

“Oh, it looks like Uncle Kenny is here too, girlies,” Morgan says as we pull into the driveway.

“Uncky Kenny!” Poppy and Violet shout in unison.

The girls love their aunts and uncles, but Uncle Kenny and Uncle Jake hold special places in their hearts.

They come over to play almost every week, and they take Aly out for ice cream or other special treats pretty often.

Jake and Aly play video games together, and he helps her with the math homework Morgan and I don’t understand.

Jake ended up coming home from his mission two months after the twins were born because he was being so badly beaten by his companion.

He won’t give me many details about how bad things were, even now.

I know he’s in therapy for it, and is working through the trauma he endured.

The best I can do is hope he comes to me in time.

When he got home, we went to lunch to catch up, and he told me he was questioning things about the church. We spent over four hours talking, with him asking me about things he was questioning and me answering them as neutrally as I could. In the end, he decided to leave, too.

My mom blamed me, of course, but Jake stood up for me and told her he came to the decision on his own. He told her if she wanted to be involved in our lives, she should rethink the way she treated us growing up.

We haven’t really heard from her since. The only time I saw her was at my grandpa’s funeral the October after the girls were born.

Kendall, Axel, and Iris come out the front door to help us unload the girls and their luggage, and the twins squeal as Kendall takes turns tossing them up in the air like they don’t weigh anything.

“Hey, Han, how’s Sage?” Kendall’s body language is nonchalant, but his voice sounds eager.

Interesting.

“Hi, Kenny, I’m good, thanks. Super excited for the trip. How are you?” I tease, watching his cheeks stain pink.

He huffs. “I’m good…?”

I roll my eyes but decide to put him out of his misery. “Sage is doing well, I think. We haven’t had a chance to hang out as much because she’s been busy with her new boyfriend.”

Kendall’s jaw clenches at the mention of Sage’s new boyfriend. Dale is… well, he’s a douchebag. I don’t like him very much, but Sage seems… kind of happy. I think she just wants to be done dating, so she settled for Dale. She hasn’t asked for my opinion on him, and I haven’t given it unsolicited.

Dale works for Kendall’s rugby team, but I’m not sure what he does. I know he doesn’t play the sport, just works in the office.

Kendall and Sage have been acting weird toward each other ever since our small courthouse ceremony where they served as witnesses. Sage acts like she doesn’t even know Kendall exists, but Kendall asks about Sage whenever I see him—which is a lot.

I don’t know what’s going on there, but if Kendall’s interested in Sage, he’s kind of shit out of luck.

She knows his reputation and doesn’t want anything to do with it.

Sage doesn’t do no-strings-attached sex like Kendall.

He’d have to work really hard in order to even get her to give him the time of day.

“Good for her,” he grunts before his demeanor changes to the happy-go-lucky guy we all know and love. He takes off in a gallop, making Violet giggle.

“He asked about Sage again, didn’t he?” Iris asks as soon as I’ve breached the doorway.

“How did you know?”

She shakes her head. “That boy hasn’t stopped talking about her since your wedding. I don’t know why he’s still denying he likes her. Did you know he’s over here most weekends when he doesn’t have a game? I don’t think he’s been out with a girl in over a year. Odd behavior for him.”

My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “That can’t be true. Kendall doesn’t want to settle down.”

Iris shrugs. “Sometimes when the right person comes along your whole perspective changes.”

“That’s true. I guess stranger things have happened.”

I give Iris and Axel a rundown of the girls’ schedule, even though they’re very familiar with it. I tear up a bit when Morgan reminds me it’s time to say goodbye and get to the airport.

I give the twins and Aly a hug and a kiss on the cheek before we leave, and they wave us off as we drive away.

Wes and Elli’s ceremony is held in a lovely botanical garden in Austin, right in front of a waterfall.

There are less than twenty people here, but the love pouring from everyone is palpable.

Keely and the rest of the band are here, along with Wes’s close-knit friend group, and Emma and her fiancé flew in, too.

Izzy walks Elli down the aisle, beaming at her sister.

Elli looks so beautiful and so happy, it makes me tear up a little.

It’s not flashy, just a white satin dress with spaghetti straps that hugs her curves and has a slit running up the thigh.

Her hair curls in long waves down her back with half of it twisted back and decorated with baby’s breath.

Wes gets emotional when he sees her walking in, falling to a crouching position and covering his mouth as tears stream down his face. He has on a plain black dress shirt, rolled to his elbows, and black dress pants. His long hair is pulled back into a neat bun.

Wes’s best friend, Robin, is officiating the ceremony, and she can barely get the words out because she keeps tearing up.

When they get to the vows, Wes tries to compose himself, but he still cries when he promises Elli forever, and Elli blubbers her way through her own vows as she promises him the same.

I find myself a little misty-eyed by the end of the ceremony.

It reminds me of the small party we had to celebrate our marriage on our one-year anniversary.

Morgan and I exchanged vows in front of his family, my brother and cousins, and Sage.

I had already done the big wedding, and Morgan didn't care about having a big party. It was small and intimate, just like Elli’s, and it was perfect.

Wes’s friend, Matt, knows a guy who owns an exclusive fancy restaurant in Austin—where he apparently took Elli on a date before she started dating Wes—so we head there for a small reception after the ceremony.

The rest of the night is filled with dancing, drinks, laughter, and good food.

“It’s wild to see how far the three of us have come, isn’t it? Especially you and Elli. You two were much deeper into the church than I was,” Emma muses from next to me. Wes and Elli just cut their cake, and now they’re feeding each other bites in between kissing and laughing.

“It’s nice to finally be able to be ourselves.”

“‘Live for truth.’ Isn’t that what Grandpa always said? I don’t think this truth is exactly what he meant, but it’s our truth. That’s what matters.”

“Probably not what he meant,” I agree. “But I hope he’s proud of us anyway.”

I like to think that whatever the afterlife has to hold, Grandpa Walter is looking down on us and smiling at the fact we’re happy. We may not be part of the church anymore, but we’re living for ourselves and our loved ones, and I think that’s the best thing we could do.

The End