Chapter 8

Daniel waited as patiently as he could for word on the birth of his newest grandchild. It had been six years since the wedding of the century, as it was being called by anyone that had been invited, and Sen and Lester were the happiest couple he'd ever seen. They still acted like they were in a honeymoon mood and loved each other like they had hit the lottery every day of their life. He loved it.

"How many grandkids do you have, Daniel? I know it's a bit more than Tabby and I have." He had to stop and think a moment but it didn't slow Caleb down in talking to him. He noticed that nerves made him do that. "I still can't believe that you adopted Sen and the rest of her sisters when they were in their twenties. You were about their age, weren't you?"

"Yes. Sen is actually only a few months younger than I am. And Alex is the same age as Cassie. When they asked me if I would, I thought they'd been joking. But they made the courthouse appointment for us, and I did it. It's wonderful having so many children that really don't need you as much as someone younger might." He shook his head. "No, that's not right. They needed me more than I think a younger child would need me. Plus, I've eleven grandchildren that are the same age as my two are. I couldn't ask for a better family than the ones I have. You and all my brothers and all my sons and daughters. I think, however, that I'd like to have a granddaughter. Having all those little boys—and big boys is nice, but Cassie and I want to see just one little girl in this family."

"I know what you mean. I have four daughters. To be honest with you, I think I'd be happier with little boys. They can't be hurt by men like us when they start to date." Daniel laughed and said that he was nuts if he thought that men could be any less hurt. "Yes, I guess so. See? That's another reason that I'd like to have a son. Just so we can hang out together and do manly stuff."

Daniel snorted at his brother and told him he was lame. "At what point did you ever do manly things? You don't even plant the flowers around your house." He said that he watered them. "You have a system hooked up that all you have to do is push a button. Christ, man, your button-pushing finger gets more exercise than you do."

"What do you do that's so manly?" Daniel told him that he'd never said he was manly. He had. "All right then, tell me what you did yesterday, mister smarty pants."

"Yesterday, when the swing set arrived for the backyard, I put it together. I have learned, too, that reading the instructions is a vital part of putting something together. My wife taught me that." Caleb said that instructions were for pussies. "Yes, for you, perhaps, but not for this guy. I love it when I only have to put something together—how many times did you have to put together and take apart the new grill you got? I think before we left to go and get something to eat, you'd done it about ten times."

"Bullshit. It was only six. And I finally got it together, didn't I?" He cocked a brow at Caleb and just stared him down. "All right, I didn't get it put together, but Tabby did in only about twenty minutes. I'd been at it for six hours. It works really nicely. I'll have to have you guys over again, but this time, there will be food."

"Are you planning on cooking again?" Caleb said that it had only been the one time that he'd burnt the roast. "Yes, but how many times have you burnt the popcorn? Or, for that matter, made your kids some powdered drink and ‘accidentally' used salt instead of sugar? Three times that I know of. How can you fuck that up so many times? It makes me wonder if you don't need to go and get your eyes examined soon."

He was saved by Lester coming out of the delivery area with scrubs on still. All of them stood up to wait for the information that he was about to tell them. From the grin on the man's face, he was sure that everything had gone well.

"We have a son." He laughed. "And two daughters. Everyone is healthy, Serenity is doing great, and we're parents to triples. They're the most beautiful babies I've ever seen."

He came to him and hugged him. Daniel could tell that he was crying, but he'd bet his life that he was both overwhelmed and happy at the same time. He knew that he would be as well. When he pulled away, he grabbed him again and told him that he loved him so much.

"And I, you, son. You've been a great son-in-law and a better man than anyone I've come across. Thank you for taking such good care of my little girl." They both laughed, and he asked if they had names yet. "I mean, you did know that you were having triples, I'm assuming."

"Twins. We thought we were having twins. Even the doctor was surprised when the girls were born one right after the other." Patting him on the back and wiping away his own tears, Daniel asked if he could see Sen. "Yeah. She was sleeping when I left her, but she told me to bring you in right away with Luke. Did he make it here?"

"He's on his way." He thought about the young man who was going to run for the presidency after serving as governor of Ohio within the next decade. There was no doubt that he'd do it too. Right now he was studying to get a doctorate in the law because he wanted to be prepared when he hit the White House. For a sixteen year old, he had his life pretty much mapped out better than he ever had. "Did he tell you that he's going to be taking on a large case? I still see him as that little boy that was in need of male companionship, and here he is driving and going to one of the most sought-after colleges in the nation."

As if he'd summoned him to them, Luke showed up and hugged everyone. As they made their way back to Sen's room, Luke was telling them how traffic had been backed up for miles because of an accident on the highway.

"However, it didn't appear to have any fatalities at least. Just a lot of banged up people that were standing alongside of the road." Daniel told him not to mention that to his sister, or she'd be wanting to go to the ER and help out. "Don't you know it? Getting her nursing degree had made her the happiest but she doesn't take that many breaks."

All of the Branch girls, well now they were all for the most part married, had gone into some kind of medical field. He'd never been more proud of anyone than he'd been at them. Daniel entered Sen's room and noticed that she was still sleeping. However, the babies were there, and he couldn't help but to peek in on the three of them.

"You can hold her." He grinned at Sen when she struggled to sit up in bed. Daniel knew better than to offer her his help. They were still independent and would murder you in your own bed if you offered to help anyone of them. "We've not named one of the girls yet. And as you suggested, we didn't name either one of them Abby. I think there are enough in this family as it is."

"Yes, I think that we all have at least one child named after her." Daniel picked up one of the girls and handed her to Sen when she asked. After Luke had a seat, he handed him the other girl, and he sat down with the little boy. "My goodness, young man, you're going to be a heartbreaker. Look at all that hair you have already."

Stripping the baby down to his bare skin except for his diaper, Daniel counted his fingers and toes. Also, because he couldn't break the habit of being a doctor even though he had been retired for a little while now, he checked his heart and lungs. When looking at the child's face, it looked as if he was fully aware that he'd not been ooh and awing over him but giving him a full workup.

"When will Mom be back? It seems like she's been gone forever, and I know it's only been a couple of days." He told her that she was on her way home now. That the assignment was over on this case. "I'm so proud of her for doing what she does for the government. I've seen some of her videos online. I know that I can't tell anyone that it's her, but I'm very proud of her."

"I am as well. However, I think this is the last one that she's doing. She's sick of missing out on important events." Luke said that the baby he had had pooped. "Well? Change her. I know you know how to do it."

"Gross, no, I'm not changing her diaper. Yuck. I might get it on my hands or something." He took his sister's baby and handed her the dirty diapered one. "You do it. She's your kid."

Daniel took the little girl and changed her himself. Also, doing a thorough examination of her, he was happy that she was as healthy as her brother had been. Once he had her snapped into her clothing again, he took the other child and changed her, too.

"You're going to have to tell them when they're older that you checked them out after the doctors and nurses did it. They'll think it's funny that grandda had to make sure that they weren't duds." He kissed Sen on her forehead before taking the little boy back and holding him. "I love you, dad. I always have."

"And I love you too. After their time was up, the staff saying that Sen needed her rest, he remembered to take their pictures. Lying them side by side, he took about ten pictures that way and alone. Then he laid them in Sen's arms with their blankets off and took one of her holding her babies. He couldn't wait to show the others his newest grandbabies.

His phone was passed around for about an hour. Cassie showed up just as he got it back and took it from him again. She, of course, cried not just for missing out on seeing them born but also that she was a grandma again. Everyone thought that they were too young to be grandparents, but he didn't care. They called him that, and he was thrilled beyond words that he had that title, too.

On the way home, Cassie was telling him about the special assignment she'd been asked to do. No names were given to him, but details. She had been assigned to fly a drone over some houses that the feds were fearful of making bombs and other explosives that were being built there.

"Even the main house on the farm was full of bomb making equipment that they were lucky it didn't explode with all the heat in the house. They were actually growing pot in the basement as well as storing large amounts of cocaine, too. It was a bomb just waiting for the opportunity to go off." He asked her what had happened to it. "When I left, they had hazmat there, taking things out one at a time. They're going to have to kill the animals that lived there as a decoy. One of the vets that had come along with us said that they'd been breathing that stuff in since birth and would need a fix like a newborn child would be if the mother had been doing drugs when she carried them. This world is messed up."

"I agree." Pulling into the garage when they got home, he was surprised to see a great many mail-order-like boxes on the front steps. "What have you ordered now? Not that I care, but I'm going to be the one that has to carry things in, so hopefully, it's not too heavy."

"It's the stuff that I ordered for the Fourth of July picnic that we're having. Mostly, it's paper plates and décor. I think that all of us getting together with the townspeople is going to be a yearly event. It's going to be that fantastic. I'm so glad that we thought of it before Caleb did. I love getting ahead of him." He did as well, and it had been like that since he'd come to this area to be with his family. "Oh, and Liz's things too. With her starting school this fall, she'll need to get uniforms and shoes. I can't believe our baby girl is ready to start first grade already."

Daniel refused to think about that. To him and his way of thinking, she was still just a baby telling him to read to her every night. His brothers had been making fun of him since it had been mentioned that she'd be dating in a few more years, and he'd slapped them in the back of the head. How dare they say something like that to him. She wasn't ever going to date, nor was she ever having sex. He was going to put his foot down with that notion.

~*~

Cassie sat by the headstone that proclaimed that her brother had lived for only a short period of time. He'd been thirty-one when he'd been killed. It still, after all these years, hurt her to remember that she had lost him. Like every time before, she brought him a small duck. She'd finally had to purchase a basket for them, there had been so many. It had been his favorite toy from baby until he was murdered. There had been hundreds of them in his house when she and Daniel had moved in.

Once she had all the weeds pulled from his gravesite, she leaned back in the chair that she'd brought with her so that she could rest a bit. Wiping away the tears that were coming more and more because she was pregnant again, she told Bradley that she loved him.

"Sen had her baby last week. Well, her babies. Two little girls and one son. We couldn't believe that she'd named her baby boy Daniel Benson Bradley Hutcheson. It's a mouthful, but I think he'll have no trouble growing into it. The girls are Emma Cassandra and Emily Grace. I love the names. You'd end up calling them EC and EG just to be confusing for us all." She laughed and noticed a couple sitting on the ground near a headstone similar to her brothers.

Cassie also knew that it was a baby girl who had been killed in a car accident along with her older brother. It must have been her birthday today. They had cake and candles there for her, too. She looked at her brother's grave again.

"The ex-president is in prison, much to his disappointment. He's told everyone that he sees that he was innocent of the things that they caught him at. But no one believed him, I guess. He can't have a trial, either. The government body doesn't want the public to know that they'd elected a murderer and he was in office for two terms." She saw the young woman coming toward her with a slice of cake in her hand. If she was here when they visited, they always shared what they had brought for their children.

"Meggie would have been three today, and Jess would have been nine." Cassie told her that her brother had been gone for just over six years. "Yes, well, it's hard on those of us that are left behind, don't you think? I miss them every day. Does the grief ever go away?"

"No, it does soften a bit more over time, but you still miss them, and it hurts." She nodded. This was the first time since Cassie had been seeing them here that they'd ever spoken of their losses. "There are days when I'll think of him and smile. Thinking about something he would have said to me before laughing like a braying jackass and it will bring a smile to my face. Then, other times, I can have the same thought about him, and I'll cry my heart out. But it's easier now, too. I have my own husband and children to help with it, the depression. Thankfully, I have an entire family of babies and adults around that I can hold, too." Nodding, the other woman looked away before turning toward her again.

"I've wanted to end my life every day. There are days when I don't want to get out of my bed or take a shower. I find life, my life to be worthless. I couldn't keep my babies safe. What kind of woman can't keep her children safe? A bad mother is who." Cassie stood up and started to reach for the other woman. She then backed away from her when the gun suddenly appeared. "No, stay away from me. I know what I'm doing. Just eat the cake."

She looked down at the cake and then at what she had assumed was her husband slumped over the marker for their child. She didn't know what she was going to do but Cassie was not going to taste that cake. Not even at gunpoint.

"You killed your husband." She said that he was worthless anyway. "How did you come to that conclusion? He'd been with you every time you've come here. That has to be something."

"He comes here so that I don't get to do this. But I fooled him, didn't I? He thought that I'd just shot him in the head, but poisoning him was so much…He should have killed me when it happened." She asked her what she meant. "I killed my own family. Rusty blames me every day. Oh, he's too smart to come out and just say that I did it, but I know what he's thinking. That I'm a fucking murderer and should be put down like the dog that I am."

"And what does that have to do with killing me?" She told her that she was going to be taking her misery away for her, too. "I'm not miserable. I'm happy. Sad at times, but I'm not miserable at all. I come here to tell my brother about the things that had happened this week. Tell him what he's missing. I know that he can't hear me, but that doesn't stop me from telling him. It's a comfort to me. Please put the gun away, and no one else has to be hurt."

"What if I put my gun to my own head?" Putting her statement to good use, the gun was at her head before she could blink. "I want to die. No one will allow it. What am I going to do?"

She didn't want to die. She had when Bradley had been murdered, all she wanted to do was to end her life, so she sort of knew what the other woman was going through. Then she thought of the story that Tabby told her about meeting Joey for the first time. And smiled.

"Go ahead. Shoot yourself in the head. I won't stop you." The other woman looked confused. "Unless you'd rather I did it for you. I don't mind. I've killed before. As a Federal Officer, I've seen my fair share of deaths. Caused quite a few of them as well.

"You're a murderer?" She told her that all the deaths that had been done by her had been done to keep the world safer. Putting out her hand, Cassie asked for the gun so that she could shoot her. "You'd do that? Kill me?"

The gun was wavering enough that Cassie thought that she could snatch it from her without much effort. And no one else could be harmed. Telling her again that she'd do it had the woman backing up. Cassie took two steps toward her with each step that she took back.

"Unless you want me to use my gun." Just as she finished the sentence, Cassie had her gun pointed at the woman's head. "There is no way I'd be able to miss from this distance. It would be a clean shot if that's what you want. Using your gun would save me a great deal of paperwork. Seeing how you've already killed your husband—where are your other children? I just remembered your name being in the paper now. Victoria Coulter. It was mentioned in the paper that you had five little ones at home. Tell me what you did to them, and I'll make sure that if you didn't kill them too, they get put into a good home."

"He hid them away from me." Cassie felt a relief all over her body, hearing that the children were at least safe. "He's a dirty bastard for doing that, don't you think? It's why he had to die. They all have to—what are you doing? Put that phone away."

"I'm calling the police to have them go and look at your house to find the others. I'd surely hate for them to hear that their own mother had planned to kill them, too. Plus, their dad. You just hang on—Hello, yes, my name is Major Cassandra Watson, FBI. I have an address to give you for you to check on the welfare of the children of Hank and Victoria Coulter. I'm standing in front of her, and she has a gun pointed at me. I have one pointed at her as well." She was never so glad to hear Joey Phillips, her brother-in-law, put on the call for her. He asked her if she was all right. "I am, so far. Mr. Coulter is dead, I believe. Victoria poisoned him, she told me. And I have a slice of the same cake near me that she was insisting that I eat as well."

"Did she give you a reason why she killed her husband?" She told Joey what she'd said about him hiding the children from her so she'd not kill them. "And what did she say about killing you."

"She believes that I'd feel better about losing my brother if I was dead. She has also threatened to—what was that, Victoria?" She told her that she wanted her children to be brought to her. "I don't think that's even remotely going to happen. Since everyone in the station knows that you want to kill them, too. No, it's just you and me now. And Joey. If he comes here, he'd going to blow your head off for you because he loves me and is that good. You'll see. In just a few minutes, you'll be wishing that you'd stayed home today. Or not. I don't give a rat's ass how you feel about being shot in the head."

"Cassie, honey, you probably shouldn't piss off a woman holding a gun to your head. It might make her pull the trigger." She said that she was pissed off that she'd made it so that she'd not get to talk to her brother. "You're near your brother's headstone? Thank you for that. My ETA is four minutes. Do you think you can hold her off for that long?"

"I do, as a matter of fact. If you're going to use that high-powered rifle, then I'm going to need to know when so I can move out of the way." Cassie knew that there wasn't any way that she'd be in the way unless she stepped in front of Victoria. But if she could get the woman to give her the gun because she was afraid, then no one else had to die today. "Victoria, you're to stand very still, all right? They don't want you to be moving around when he kills you."

"What are you talking about? No one is going to kill me." Just then, a cruiser pulled into the parking lot just behind her car. "You really called the police on me? You bitch."

"Give me the gun, and I promise you that I'll tell the police that you cooperated with me. Otherwise, the man that you can see lining up his shot on the top of the cruiser is going to kill you. And I promise you, neither one of us will lose any sleep with you being dead." She looked at the cruiser and then down at the red dot on her chest. "He will kill you, Victoria. There is no doubt about that."

"Here. You win this time. But next time, I'm just going to shoot you and be done with it. Tell that man to stop putting dots on me." She took the gun away from her and put her hands atop her head like she asked her to do. "You're the meanest person that I've ever met. Even meaner than my mother-in-law, I'm thinking."

Flipping her over after putting her on the ground, Cassie had to lean over and puke her breakfast up before she could cuff the younger woman. By the time she was in cuffs, the other officers were there and she was helped up by Joey. All the time Victoria was being read her rights, she was telling them what a bitch she'd been to her.

"Are you all right?" She told Joey that she didn't know. "I've had Caleb bring in Daniel instead of him driving. He's a lousy drive to begin with. Being scared out of his mind would make him have an accident."

"Do you think that he'll be mad at me? While make-up sex is wonderful, I don't want him to ever…she was going to kill me with that cake, Joey. She didn't have any idea who I was, but she was going to kill me." He held her to his body while she cried. "I don't want to die, you know that, don't you? Also, I need to stop coming out here to talk to Bradley. He's more than likely pissed off at me too. Don't you think?"

"I hope so. No one is pissed off at you. Terrified out of their minds but not mad. Honey, that was the scariest call I've ever taken. You saved that woman's life." She nodded, still leaning on him. "When Daniel gets here, just let him talk or yell at you. Then allow him to check you over. Nothing has happened to you, but he won't believe that until he sees it for himself." She told him that she'd do that.

"All I could think about was how I'd not gotten to babysit my granddaughters yet. How I hadn't baked any cookies with Luke in a very long time." She looked up at him. "I'm going to retire from the FBI starting now. I don't want to be pulled from my family ever again. I know that I could be shot without being in the Feds, but I think that I'd stand a better chance of living if I was just a normal person like a parent who volunteers at school. Maybe I'll drive one of the school buses or something just to be near them.

Cassie was happy that he wasn't agreeing or disagreeing with what she was saying. What she wanted more than anything right now was Daniel. She looked down the hill from where they were standing and saw him.

Taking it easy so she'd not fall, she made her way to him as he came up the hill to her. She was sobbing, coming so close to losing all the time that they had left together. When he was close enough to touch her, he picked her up in his arms and swung her around several times before putting her on her feet to kiss her.

"I love you so much." He told her that he loved her too. "I'm done with the feds. I want to live my life with you. Seeing the world and playing with the babies for whatever time we have left. Can you handle that?"

"Yes. Forever, love. Forever."

~*~

Love conquers all. Caleb, Joey, Martin, Harlin, Sebastian and Daniel and their respective wives lived for decades after that day.

They were the richest people in the world with money, love and companionship.