Page 154 of Duke
“I think she will, yeah.”
He motions to the dance floor. “Let’s get to it, then.”
The band is excellent, their cheery renditions of wedding classics like “September” and “Shout” making it impossiblenotto dance. Sawyer, Ava, Junie, and Ella join us out there, and my heart twists at how adorable Sawyer looks when he puts Junie on his hip and twirls her around the dance floor.
Duke is all smiles as we move, keeping his eyes on the girls.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
He turns to look at me. “That you’re beautiful. That our daughter will be beautiful.” He nods at the happy little family beside us. “One day, I’ll get to dance with her like that.”
“I can’t wait,” I say. “Soon.”
He pulls me close. “Never soon enough when it comes to you.”
We dance and we laugh, and together with the people we love the most, we send off Wyatt and Sally with sparklers and lots of hollering.
When the commotion dies down, Duke grabs my hand. “Off to our next adventure?”
Grinning, I take it. “If by ‘adventure,’ you mean going home to sleep for twelve hours, I’m in.”
“Sounds like a mighty fine adventure to me.”
THE END
Epilogue
Brand-New
Duke
“Good Lord, can everyone just slow the fuck down?” I motion to the truck that speeds through the intersection. “He’s gonna kill somebody.”
Wheeler chuckles from the back seat of my new king cab Silverado. It’s not a yacht in the Caribbean, but somehow it’s a million times better. Maybe because the truck is getting us through the kids’ very first ride.
“All right, grandpa. Most people don’t drive ten under the speed limit.”
“Well, they should. I’m hauling precious cargo today.” I glance in the rearview mirror, and my heart just about bursts.
Wheeler sits in the center of the back bench between two car seats. A blue ribbon is tied to the top handle of one car seat, and a pink ribbon is tied to the other.
While identical twins don’t run in families, apparently fraternal twins do. Turns out Wheeler’s grandmother was a twin, and so washergrandmother.
No one was more shocked than me when we discovered a second heartbeat at our twenty-week anatomy scan. It’s not common to miss twins at the first ultrasound, but it does happen.
It happened to us. And now here we are, bringing home a girlanda boy.
“How does it feel to be right but also wrong? About us having a girl?” Wheeler meets my eyes in the mirror. Hers are tired but happy.
Exactly how I feel after a stay in the hospital that was exciting but not exactly restful.
“Feels pretty dang great.” I smile. “How are you feeling, Mama?”
She chuckles quietly. “Still not over the fact that we have not one buttwobabies now. How lucky are we?”
“The luckiest. And also the most tired.”
“No kidding. Thank God we’ve got lots of helping hands.”
