“We’re lucky,” she agreed.
“I’m glad that I can remember this,” I said. “I’m glad that, out of all the things I’ve forgotten, it wasn’t this. I don’t know that I could’ve done this without you.”
She laughed then.
“Well, technically, you needed a uterus to have…”
I pinched her ass, and she started to laugh.
Which then woke the baby up.
“Now look what you’ve done,” I said when Isabelle started to cry.
I looked at my two girls and knew that this was just the beginning.
I may have lost the first part of my life and memories, but I still had the second part.
And I knew that, somehow someway, everything would even out in the end.
“I love you, Frankie,” I said suddenly.
Frankie’s eyes were wide and smiling when she replied with, “Same for you, Luca. With all my heart.”
I handed her the now really pissed off baby, then watched avidly as she fed.
When she was done, I took her back, and didn’t let either of my girls go until I was forced to hours later when they came to get her for a bath.
“Go with her,” Frankie urged. “Make sure nobody steals her.”
I looked at my wife and said, “I’ll protect her with my life.”
***
Gabe
I watched as my son watched his girl through the nursery glass window.
“Jesus,” I said. “This is unreal.”
Ember’s face went soft.
“We’re lucky, Gabe,” she said. “This could’ve… this could’ve gone so much differently.”
I knew that.
Over the two years that Luca had been gone, we’d both done a lot of soul searching.
Nobody ever wants to hear that their son, their child that they were supposed to protect, was missing or possibly hurt.
It’d been a very bad two years.
Rough—both emotionally and physically.
But our boy was back now.
And our baby now had a baby.
As I watched my son get his now-clean little girl, pulling her in close seconds after she was placed in his arms, I knew without a doubt that he’d make the very best of fathers.
Much better than we could’ve ever hoped for.
Luca turned then, his face happy, and saw us.
He walked to us and I got the first chance to hold my new granddaughter in my arms.
Emotions like I’d never felt before poured through my chest at holding the third generation of Maldonado in my arms.
Ember pulled her phone out and took a picture.
And for once, I didn’t care.
I smiled like a goddamn loon.
And so had my son.
My granddaughter, though?
She cried.
And I loved the picture all the more.
It now hung, front and center, in my office.