“Then, two years later, she got pregnant again, but this time the baby was stillborn at thirty-one weeks. Both of those losses took a huge chunk of our hearts with them, and it took us a while to recover.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
As a doctor, you can’t help but focus on the losses versus the ones you’d saved because they felt like a failure in a way. It didn’t matter if you knew no one could’ve saved them, you still felt like you’d failed. So, to lose babies like they had—the pain had to be overwhelming.
“After that last one—a little boy called Ian—we decided we’d been blessed with three kids biologically and that we’d use the love inside us to extend our family to people who either didn’t have one or who needed the extra support. It’s not us trying to be overbearing, it’s that we want people to enjoy life and make the most out of it. Sometimes it takes a little bit of extra security to make that happen, sometimes it takes having a family. That’s what we do.”
Looking around the occupants of the table and thinking about the rest of the Townsend family, I could see now what they’d done.
“George and Christy Montgomery are like-minded, and between both of our families, we do our best to help people out.”
“You were both there for Dale and me. It felt like someone had ripped the world out from under our feet after Mom died, and when she came into our lives, it was like we’d been sent straight to hell. I don’t know what we would’ve done without you both.”
“You’ll never find out,” he winked.
I really fucking hoped he was right.
“Now,” he said as he straightened up and cracked his neck, “none of this paying us back bullshit, ‘cos we won’t accept a dime. You just make my precious girl happy. She’ll lead you through the bowels of hell, but once you get in there you’ll be stuck fast. She’s a lot like her grandmother, so I can tell you without any doubts that you’ve got your work cut out for you, but it’s worth every second of it.”
Huffing out a laugh, I asked, “The bowels of hell?”
“Yup,” he nodded. “You’ve lived your life a certain way for so many years that it’s your norm. Ariana lives life her own way and with a different outlook. You think you’ve got your shit set straight now, but she’s going to open your eyes to a lot more and disorganize the hell out of it.”
I’d already worked hard on myself, so the thought of my new order getting messed up made me feel uneasy.
“I see you’re getting that feeling,” Hurst noted, scanning my face. “Parker, sometimes all it takes is for someone to move the clouds for the sun to hit you. Do you get what I mean?”
Well, when he put it like that. “I do.”
“Then hold on and enjoy the fucking ride. The second that sun hits you, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.”
“I tried to fight it and pushed her away because I didn’t want to mess her up, but she already owns me, Hurst.”
“None of that ‘she’s too good for me’ bullshit, Parker. She’s had issues in life, too, just like you, and she has her own self-doubts. No one is immune from that part of life. You get to balance each other out now, so how about you get on with doing that.”
It was the little flutter of his fingers at the end that made me burst out laughing. I still had a lot of questions, but life was a day-by-day thing, so that’s how I was going to do it.
Then, I did something rare: I touched someone.
Yes, in my job I had to do that a lot, but I rarely hugged people. It was a trust thing, and I hated being touched unless it was on my terms. But I’d probably never be able to find the words to tell him how much his family meant to me, so I hoped the hug conveyed it for me.
Without looking at him afterward, I went in search of Ari.
If I’d looked back, I'd have seen the tears in his and Linda’s eyes and the look they shared that screamed relief and happiness. Relief that I was safe and happy, and happiness that I had the life I had now. Also, maybe relief that I was going to have the life they’d wished so hard for me to have.
I wish I’d seen it and been able to record it, because thirty years on, I’d want to look back on it when they were gone and I was looking up at the sun that was warming my face, thanking the skies for their existences.EightArianaWhile my family was sitting down and relaxing like the mean bastards they were, I was working behind the bar. Mixing together vodka and Red Bull for the lady standing in front of me, I watched the conversation going on between Gramps and Parker, wondering what they were discussing that was making them both look so serious.