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“Talking about me in Turkish again?” Eddie appeared, smacking a kiss on his husband’s cheek. “I’ve been learning too. See... ailemi seviyorum.” (I love my family).
My heart stopped.
Anger feathered through me for a split second.
This family was missing a significant part.
Teddy flicked me a glance, hearing my quick inhale. Cocking his head and pursing his lips in apology, he wrapped his arm around Eddie and announced, “I have good news for you both. That Kickstarter you started last month, Neri? It’s already hit the target. We have enough to start building a prototype.”
“Oh wow, really?” Eddie blinked before shooting me a glance. “You know I mean I love our family, including the ghost that haunts us, right, Nee?”
“I know.” I ran my fingers through Ayla’s damp dark hair. “Sorry...I thought I’d stop being this...raw.”
“You can be as raw as you want for as long as you want.” Eddie blew me a kiss. “But right now, I need to know more about this prototype. Were my sketches approved by the local council as a dwelling?”
Teddy frowned. “Well, seeing as there’s no such thing as a council for undersea living, I’m guessing the further along we get with Lunamare, the more red tape we’re going to have to bulldoze through, but for now, we’ve sourced glass thick enough to withstand pressure up to twenty metres. We’ve found marine-grade steel that can last a hundred years without losing its structural integrity and have almost figured out the sealing complications. Our spheres will look more like Frankenstein decagons, but it will do. We need to get something into the water so we can start figuring out filtration and air flow.”
The two men looked at me as I grabbed the towel, wrapped it around my daughter, and hoisted her from the tub. “You ready to hustle up some more money, Nee?” Teddy asked.
I frowned. “I thought you just said—”
“I said we had enough for the preliminary builds, but we need somewhere to test.”
“I figured we’d rent the local pool. My parents’ one isn’t deep enough.”
“I don’t want to risk people seeing what we’re doing, even if it’s the local minnow swimming school. I want to test at any time of the day.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want to build a pool. In our back garden. And not just any pool but one with at least a five-metre bottom.”
“You’re crazy. No one will approve that.” I laughed as I dried Ayla, kissing her cute little nose as she pressed her damp hands against my cheeks. “Seni seviyorum,” I murmured, determined to scribe those words on her tiny, perfect heart.
“No laughing, woman. Make it happen.” Teddy winked, grabbed Eddie’s hand, and dragged him down the corridor. His voice trailed back. “Come join us after you’ve put your little moonbeam to bed. It’s time we got this show on the road!”
*
One year, eleven months...
*
“Bloody hell, it’s so deep it’s giving me vertigo.” Honey clung to my arm as we stood at the edge of the almost completed swimming pool. We’d gotten planning permission to add a pool into Eddie and Teddy’s back garden, but...we hadn’t been exactly truthful on how deep it was.
We kept a temporary fence around it at all times while it was being dug, doing our best to prevent nosy neighbours from tattling on us. Once there was water inside, it wouldn’t be as obvious, but right now, it looked like an asteroid had drilled its way into the ground.
“It’s been a daily battle to keep an eye on Ayla so she doesn’t fall in,” I said. “It literally keeps me up at night.”
Which I’m grateful for as I can’t have panic attacks about Aslan still alive, somewhere, out there...stolen from me.
Honey blanched. “Oh God, I can imagine. Especially now she’s walking.”
“She’s into everything.” I smiled and looked at my rascally daughter currently being bounced in Billy’s arms a few metres away with my parents. For such a gruff burly guy, Billy was one of the gentlest souls I knew and the best husband to Honey. We’d all married young, but...we’d all known we were meant to be. “Did Teddy tell you that her first word was ‘kitty?’”
“Kitty?”
“Yeah, she pointed at the lion mural in her room and went rarrww then, clear as day, announced it was a kitty.”
“Wow, that’s so cool.”
