I smiled at my youngest grandchild and said, “Yeah, that’s your grams.”
My mother had passed peacefully in her sleep before she was even born, but all the grandkids knew about her.
As they should.
The matriarch of this family would never be forgotten.
“Pretty.” Geraldine smoothed her dirty hand over my mother’s face that graced her headstone.
“She is,” I said. “Come on, let’s go. Your parents are probably wondering where you’re at.”
Having a family compound was great.
We had Boone on one side with his kids. Sawyer in his big house with his wife on the other. We had my place with Holly and DeeDee. Catarina was in her own little place now just to the left of our house. Then there was Joe and her kids, Bastien and Geraldine, with Jetty.
There were fuckin’ kids everywhere.
And sometimes they ran wild and had zero apologies for it.
Like now, finding Geraldine in the middle of a pasture on her way to me.
Not that I minded, but I’m sure that her mother would.
I slung Geraldine onto Harry’s back and asked, “How’d you get on him, anyway?”
Geraldine had gotten a halter on Harry, but that was about it.
At two and a half, she was pretty limited in that department. I guess I should just be impressed that she’d gotten him haltered and out of the barn without anyone noticing.
But then I saw the streak of white hair in the middle of the pasture on our way back picking wildflowers and knew that Geraldine hadn’t gone out on her own.
My wife had helped her.
The woman who adored my grandbabies like they were her own.
And really, they were.
My girls may not be Holly’s blood, but that didn’t matter.
They were hers all the same.
That meant that my grandbabies were hers, too.
And watch out if you said differently.
“I see you found your papa,” Holly teased as we got close enough.
“I was wondering how she got Harry out,” I said, leaning down to press a kiss to my wife’s upturned lips.
We’d gotten married five years ago in a little backyard ceremony shortly after my mother had passed.
I’d hated that we hadn’t gotten the lead out to allow my mother the chance to watch me get married, but we hadn’t wasted any more time once my mother had left a note with her lawyer to be shared with us upon her passing saying “get the lead out.”
We’d gotten the lead out and had been happily married ever since.
“I got her out of the fence,” Holly said as she got to Harry’s side. Using my help, she got onto Harry bareback and explained. “But Geraldine got him haltered and out of the barn. I just helped.”
I looked over at my wife, holding our youngest girl against her chest and smelling wildflowers, and knew that I’d finally made it.
