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He did not dignify my statement with a response, just kept walking through the house.
Suffice it to say we bickered the whole way to the hospital.
Where, of course, we found out our daughter was completely fine.
I’d known that already.
Because, for the first time in a long time, I had hope.
I had faith.
epilogue
Happily Ever After
A whole bunchof shit went down after my current husband killed my ex-husband.
As one might expect.
First was the hospital, where Kip demanded I have every kind of test under the sun. Then I’d argued with that. He’d gotten mad. I’d yelled.
Then there was Nora, Rowan, Tiffany, Calliope, and Tina rushing in once they got the news. It was kind of embarrassing that my friends had to drop everything for the second time and run to the hospital on my account. So dramatic.
After we’d gotten the all clear, there had been the business of Kip killing a man. It was technically self-defense. That’s what Finn, our sheriff, said. Sure, there was a bunch of paperwork to go with it, but Kip wasn’t in trouble.
I wasn’t quite sure if it wastechnicallyself-defense, because Kip didn’t need to kill him. I hadn’t been the most reliable witness, but I did remember Kip having the upper hand from the start. He could’ve easily knocked Emmet out or whatever it was that soldiers were trained to do to subdue a threat without eliminating it.
Of course, I hadn’t told the cops that.
Emmet had tried to kill Kip’s pregnant wife. No way was Kip going to let him live.
I didn’t lose sleep over that.
Not a wink.
I lost sleep over my hip pain, heartburn, leg cramps, my overall discomfort. But not seeing Kip kill my ex-husband.
It might hit me later. That’s what Kip thought, at least. And Nora. And the rest of my friends.
Well, not Calliope. She’d believed me when I said I was fine.
It didn’t feel like it was going to hit me later. It was fucking dark, but I was happy Emmet was dead. He was a bad person who’d made my life a living hell. I didn’t know if he deserved to die in the grand scheme of things, but I was glad he was dead.
I didn’t think that made me a bad person. It just made me human.
* * *
My mother arrived in Jupiter like a fucking whirlwind. She came into the house, kissing me and Kip full on the lips. She’d smelled of patchouli and lavender. Her hair was still blonde, with small streaks of silver. She kept it long and wild. Her face was wrinkled, showing the hard life she’d lived before all this new-age shit. The years were not kind. But somehow, she still looked beautiful.
She radiated it. Beauty. And I hated to admit that shit. But it was true.
It only took a couple of days of her in the house, burning sage, making soups, brewing teas, and arranging crystals to see how utterly changed she was. How hard she was trying. How much she’d loved me. How much she’d maybe always loved me. But she’d fought her way out of all of her bullshit so her love shined through.
She and Deidre got on like a house on fire, of course. They were utterly different in many ways but the same in one important way. They were both mothers who loved their children.
And adored their coming granddaughter.
Who was in no rush, it seemed.
