After dinner, which the three women cooked together, they caught the kids and got them into the biggest tub in the house and washed hair and sweaty little bodies.
By the time they were done, Olivia was exhausted—but in a good way. Part of her missed her young body, but another part was so content with what she was now that she didn’t want for anything.
When Kit came to bed, he smelled of expensive whiskey and illegally imported cigars.
She snuggled into a spoon with him.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in years,” he whispered. “And today I kept thinking of Uncle Freddy and Mr. Gates. Tomorrow, Alejandro and Diego and I are going over to Tattwell to work on the cemetery.” He chuckled. “Remember the first time I cleaned that place up? You—”
She turned in his arms to kiss him. “I remember you wore tiny shorts and absolutely nothing else.”
“Yeah?” He was kissing her face. “Did you like what you saw?”
“Of course not. You were just a worthless boy and I was on my way to becoming a Broadway star.”
“And you danced for me in a cabbage patch.” He slipped her nightgown off her shoulders.
They made love slowly. It didn’t have the fire of youth, but it held memories of a life together and of shared experiences. Most of all, it held a love that couldn’t be broken even across time. They fell asleep together, clasping each other tightly—as they had done for over forty years.
It was morning now and Olivia didn’t want to get out of bed. She wanted to snuggle under the covers and think about what she’d seen and felt in her three weeks in the past. The faces were so fresh in her mind and she wanted—
She broke off as something moved against her leg. Did someone let a dog in the house?
She lifted the cover to see a sleeping child with his head toward the bottom of the bed.
When she flipped the coverlet back, to her surprise, the big bed was full of children. They ranged from three years down to a baby in a soggy diaper.
Olivia sat up in bed and tried to identify them. Elise’s boy, Kathy’s two. The blond head of Liam, her grandson. He and his dad must have arrived in the night. She thought a couple of them belonged to Diego.
Like puppies, the children began to stir and Olivia slid back down in the bed. They gravitated to the warmth of her, piling on her and on each other.
It’s my fantasy, she thought, the one she’d told Ray and Elise. Well, not really. But she could see the connection. She’d often dreamed of being woken up by kisses from “men” with different skin colors. This experience, however, wasn’t at all sexual—instead, it was simply full of happiness. These children weren’t men but they were all male and there was a lot of variation in skin color.
She could feel them beginning to wake up. “Whoever kisses me the most gets chocolate chip pancakes.”
In seconds, she was overrun with the biggest, wettest kisses ever given. Olivia laughed and hugged and asked for more.
And that’s how the parents found their children—all of them in bed with Olivia and kissing her. Cameras and cell phones flashed and beeped as the scene was recorded.
Later, everyone said that the photos were proof that Dr. Olivia Paget Montgomery was the happiest person on the planet.
She agreed with all her heart.
* * * * *