Hate You Not

We didn’t move out of the other house—just set up this one in addition to it—which has been good for Leah, who was looking for a new place. She’s renting it for now. We moved our pig and goat babes to the field behind this house, and Latrice is checking in each morning with the chickens and the horses—including Hot Rocket, who’s made a full recovery.

Ever since Christmas, I’ve been feeling merry and bright. I’ve started thinking all the butterflies aren’t going to fly away. Burke and the kids go out to jump on our new trampoline, and I warm up some soup for myself. When my water breaks, at first I sort of think I somehow spilled some soup.

Then I start screaming my head off, and Burke comes running.

“What the—”

I shriek. “My water broke!”

“Oh shit. Shit! For real?”

I laugh. “Oh my gosh, go get a towel, Burkie!”

“What is going on?” Margot runs in, with Oliver and all four dogs on her heels. He stares at the puddle at my feet, mouth gaping.

“Aunt June! When the water breaks, that means baby’s coming! Is the baby gonna be born now?”

“No!” Margot and I cry at the same time.

I’ve got everything packed, and within thirty minutes we’re all loaded into the truck. We swing by to pick up Leah, and from the back seat, where she’s sandwiched between Margot and Oliver, Leah calls my family one by one.

We make it to the hospital before everybody else does—and about ten minutes before Miss Ashtyn makes her grand appearance.

Afterward, I hold her in bed. Burke is beaming, and the kids are big-eyed as they tiptoe in to see her. My whole family gathers ’round, and they all coo at her but keep their distance because with wintertime and flu, Burke is worried that she’ll die.

She has Burke’s blue eyes and my pale hair, and I’m thrilled to find when you shift her around—like passing her from me to Burke—she makes the sweetest little squeaking sounds. Another little critter.

Everybody stays for a while. When they leave—Mary Helen takes our big kids with her—Burke climbs in the bed beside me. He beams down at Ashtyn.

“So that’s ours, huh?”

I grin at him. “That thing’s got a name. And yeah, she’s ours. You gonna be able to handle being a daddy to a little darlin’ that’s this perfect?”

“I don’t know.” He kisses my cheek. “Her mom’s pretty perfect, so I’ve had some practice with that.”

I snort, and then yawn hugely. “You do know the right things to say, don’t you?”

We lean on each other, and he touches her cheek with the back of his finger. “You know what this feels like?” he murmurs.

“Heaven?”

He smiles at me, and it’s one of the brightest ones I’ve ever seen on his face. “It feels kind of like a happily ever after.” He takes my hand and kisses my knuckles, sliding something on it. “Ms. Lawler…will you be my happy ever after?”

My hormones are already set on roller coaster mode. I cry so much, it takes me almost five minutes to say yes.

“I sure will.” I hug him with the arm that isn’t holding Ashtyn. “Will you be mine?”

“If you want me to be,” he whispers. His face is solemn, his eyes locked on mine.

“I need you to be.”

It’s just in the nick of time for Ashtyn to start life a full-fledged Masterson—just like her honorary older siblings. Within two months, we all are sporting the same surname.

We are the Mastersons of Heat Springs, Georgia, sometimes San Francisco, and really who knows where else we might try out.

We met through tragedy and started off as enemies. But then we won each other’s hearts and made a precious peanut, married in a little white chapel on a sunny April Sunday.

We are the Mastersons, and we are going to have the finest happily ever after ever. That much I know.