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“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.
She nodded but then went stiff and leaned forward over her protruding stomach. “Um…I think you might get your wish sooner than we expected,” she huffed.
“What the fu—” Even in labor, my wife managed to glare at me for swearing in front of our children. “—udge? Your C-section isn’t until next week!”
“Don’t talk to me. Talk to the overachieving football players you put inside me!” she snapped.
“How did Daddy putted my bwothers inside you, Mommy?” Cassidy asked with a giggle.
Ava and I both froze for a minute until she had another contraction, and we jumped into action. “We’ll talk about it later, sweet cheeks.” I called my sisters as I ran to the closet to get Ava’s bag, and they were there by the time I’d put shoes on my wife’s feet.
We kissed our girls and headed to the hospital.
Two hours later, we were each holding one of our infant sons. She’d gone into labor so fast that she ended up giving birth naturally. “You did good, baby,” I said, smiling down at Lucas sleeping in my arms.
“Yeah, we make pretty cute kids,” Ava said as she brushed a kiss over Foster’s head.
“Does this mean we can have sex again?” Ava had repeatedly told me during labor that I was never allowed to touch her again.
“What’s sex?” Cassidy asked as she skipped into the hospital room. “Can I hab some?”
Over my dead body.
Epilogue
Ava
With four children under the age of five—barely since we were only a few days away from Cassidy’s birthday—a short walk to the mailbox sometimes felt like a treat. It didn’t matter what I found inside. I just liked taking a quick moment to myself to clear my mind while Roan or his sisters wrangled the kids.
Normally, I didn’t even pay close attention to the envelopes I pulled from the box until after I was back inside and dropped them into the bowl on the table in the entryway to look at later. But some instinct had me rifling through the envelopes until I reached one that looked as though it had been put through the wringer before it was delivered.
The postmark was too faded to tell the date, but it had to have been mailed quite a while ago since it had been forwarded from my old address in New Jersey, and that request had expired a year after I moved in with Roan and the girls. I was so occupied with wondering how I was just getting this piece of mail now that I didn’t notice the handwriting until I was back inside the house. My shocked gasp had Roan running to the front of the house, his gaze raking over my body as he asked, “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I flashed him a soft smile, knowing he was particularly overprotective since I was already pregnant again. “Or at least I think I am.”
“What do you mean?”
Tossing the rest of the mail into the bowl, I kept hold of the envelope that had been such a surprise and turned it toward him so he could see the front. “I’m not sure how it’s possible, but this is from Carrie.”
“Holy fuck.” He guided me into the living room and gently pushed me onto the couch. “Give me a second. I’ll let Rose know that we need a minute.”
Thankful that his sister had come over to play with the kids this afternoon, I nodded and took a few deep breaths until he came back and sat down next to me.
“Want me to open it?”
My hands were shaking enough that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t accidentally rip the contents. “Yes, please.”
He carefully slid his finger under the flap and pulled out a sheet of paper that had been folded into thirds. Handing it to me, he murmured, “Is it okay if I read it, too?”
I didn’t know what Carrie had written in her letter, but Roan and I didn’t keep secrets from each other. Climbing onto his lap, I said, “Of course.”
Tears welled in my eyes when I unfolded the paper and saw my name at the top in Carrie’s pretty handwriting. They streamed down my cheeks as I read her final words to me, written only days before she died. She explained how she had given a lot of thought to making me the girls’ guardian. She ultimately decided to ask Roan instead because I was already struggling to make ends meet, and she knew my brother wouldn’t pitch in to help. She also asked me to reach out to her cousin to offer as much help with them as I wanted, letting me know that she was sure he’d be grateful since he didn’t have any experience with kids and didn’t know the girls that well.
I had long since come to terms with my place in Cassidy and Daisy’s lives, growing very comfortable in my role as their second mom. I had no doubt about how happy Carrie would be, knowing that I was raising her daughters with Roan. But getting this letter in the mail soothed my mother’s heart, even after all this time.
Sniffling, I whispered, “It’s so good to know that everything turned out the way Carrie would have wanted it to.”
Roan chuckled and shook his head. “I wouldn’t put it past my cousin for this to have been her plan all along.”
My eyebrows arched as I considered the possibility. “Do you really think so?”
He nodded. “We didn’t talk all that often, but looking back, you have to admit that it’s weird that she never mentioned you to me, with how close you two were.”
I traced my fingers over the sweet words she had written to me and murmured, “I really like the idea that she had always planned to play matchmaker between us.”
Roan slid his palm over my gently rounded belly. “Then I guess it’s especially fitting we learned this one’s a girl and decided to name her Carrie.”
