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Ross sticks his head into the tiny room and smiles, “Okay guys. It’s time.”
I turn to Dax and grin, “Alright, this is it. Thanks for being here man. For being the best mate a guy could ever have.”
“What are friends for?” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me in for a hug, slapping my back with his huge hand.
“Jesus Dax. You need to learn to rein in your strength.” I make an exaggerated wince and he laughs. Needing to do something with my hands, I take one last chance to straighten up my jacket, then we head out to take our places in the next room. Hawke and Gavin and Dax’s family wave from their seats in the first row, across from Ellie’s mum and her step-dad, Miles.
The string quartet starts playing the song I composed just for today. A surprise for Ellie. It’s an arrangement of Unconscious Devotion that I spun into a sweet, lilting melody. Perfect for her walk down the aisle.
Kate appears in the doorway at the back of the DK, the same shoddy pub where our band started playing all those years ago. It’s not a large room, so it only takes Kate half a minute to reach the front and take her place opposite me and Dax.
The small crowd stands and everyone faces the doorway when Ellie steps into view. She literally takes my breath away. Dax must notice because he nudges me with his elbow, “Breathe mate,” he whispers with a chuckle.
I watch, my heart pounding in my chest, as Ellie makes her way down the aisle. Her eyes shimmer when she hears the music that was inspired by her, no longer bringing up sad memories. It now represents our future. Ellie takes her place by my side and hands her small bouquet of flowers to Kate before turning back to face me.
“How’s the little one?” I whisper, unable to resist putting my hands on her moderately swollen belly.
“Doing great.” She grins, the look on her face one of pure love. “Very active today actually.”
“Brilliant. Let’s get married. I want to start the rest of our life.”
“So do I, Adam. So do I.”
* * *
“You don’t have to do this with me,” I tell Ellie for the hundredth time as the car pulls through the gates of the sprawling cemetery in the East End.
She threads her fingers through mine and squeezes my hand reassuringly. “I know, but I want to be here for you. We want to be here for you.”
Our one year-old daughter is asleep in her car seat, her dark hair framing her delicate features. I never thought I’d love anyone as much as I love my wife, but that all changed the minute Sadie was born. She’s the spitting image of Ellie, except for the shock of the dark, almost black hair that she got from me. The day she was born, my heart grew to make room for both of them to fit perfectly inside. My family. The first real family I’ve ever had.
We’re only in the U.K. for a few weeks, preferring to spend most of our time at our New York flat. That’s where we consider home. The one we have here in London, that I bought years ago in an effort to keep roots in the U.K., we gave to Ellie’s mum and her husband as a wedding present. Later today, we promised that we’d come over to celebrate Sadie’s first birthday, even though it was last month.
The driver stops the car in the section of the cemetery where my mother’s grave is located. Just as Ellie had predicted almost two years ago, Danny was arrested and his drug ring was taken down. I hadn’t spoken to him since that day with Dax in the Chinese restaurant, knowing if I had any contact with him after discovering that he hired Callum to attack Ellie, he would be in this cemetery next to my mum.
Ellie pushed me until I agreed to visit Danny in prison while we’re here in the U.K., saying that I would get closure from confronting him face to face. She was right, and not just because it was satisfying to see that pathetic, useless bastard behind bars.
While I was there, shouting at him for hurting El, Danny admitted to me that our mother had passed away a year or so back. Drug overdose. I wasn’t surprised to find out how she died. What surprised me was my utter lack of emotion over learning that she was dead.
“You going to wait in the car with Sadie?” I turn to El. “It’s chilly out there today, Sweetheart.”
Ellie zips up her overcoat and unsnaps the baby’s harness. “We’re a family, Adam. We’re all going together,” she says with an air of finality.
Family. I have a real family. Not a fucked up, abusive, shitty family like the one I grew up with. I have a loving, supportive, perfect family like the one I always wanted. They’re my whole life. They travel with me on tour, support me when I’m struggling, make me happy when I’m down. Everything a family should be.
I lower the partition to speak to the driver and to Duncan, one of the bodyguards I hired to keep my family safe. Even with Danny and Callum in prison, I’m not taking any chances with crazy fans or plain old nutters getting anywhere near my family. I think about my friend Sydney, and how she was attacked by a stalker and the thought makes me shiver.
“Dunc, apparently we’re all going to get out.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Reynolds.” The large man unsnaps his seatbelt and climbs out of the car.
Sadie wakes up when Ellie lifts her out of the seat, and she gives me a toothy grin right before she bops me on the nose with her tiny hand, making my eyes water. I take her from El, holding her in my arms as we exit the car and trek across the damp grass. Duncan stays unobtrusively behind us, leaving a respectful amount of space.
I find my mother’s gr
ave easily, marked by a plain grey headstone that has her name and dates of birth and death on it, nothing else. For a moment, I allow myself to remember the mother I had in bits and pieces, small pockets of normality in between the long stretches of drug use, absence, and prostitution.
Smiling, I recall the time that she bought Danny and me a pair of cheap kites and took us to the park near our flat to fly them. Mine dive-bombed and splintered into pieces on the ground almost immediately and I burst into tears. She hugged me and told me it was okay, because Danny would share his. We ended up having a great day, Danny letting me hold the string after he got the kite up in the air.
