Epilogue

LACEY

“How could this be? I didn’t know anything about the ring being stolen; how can I be sent to jail?” I looked around the courtroom for any kind of help, but there was no one there to come to my aid.

I was led away and out to the waiting bus that would take me not back to the local jail but to prison. I was going to prison for the next ten years. This was a dream; it had to be.

From the moment I was dragged away from my wedding in handcuffs, I’ve been in a perpetual state of shock. No one came to bail me out, and I didn’t hear anything from the outside world until I heard the guards talking about my Mom and Dad facing long sentences.

I cried myself to sleep every night for a month until I was out of tears. No one would listen to me and I think I was being judged because of my character more than anything. The hypocrites in charge looked down their noses at me and were punishing me for being a free spirit.

Now, the judge has sentenced me to ten years and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. I didn’t even have the money for a lawyer and had to get representation from the state.

None of my friends answered their phone when I called, and no one was there to stand up for me. I tried to get Mom to tell the truth, but instead, she blamed me for her being in this predicament, like I told her to steal. I never did.

But the worst thing of all is when I lay down to sleep at night in the filthy cell that’s not even half the size of my closet at home, the last thing I see is Grayson sitting next to Lily with his arm around her, looking at her adoringly. I think that sight will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I have yet to get over what those two had done to me, and when I tried calling Gray, for old time’s sake, to ask for help, I found out that I was blocked. There was no way for me to reach him, and I was losing my mind.

I haven’t heard from anyone I knew since being thrown in jail; no one showed up for the trial, and the last time I saw my mother when I went to testify in her case, she screamed at me and called me names.

Some days, I wonder what would’ve happened had I just let Grayson go all those years ago. Maybe if I had just left well enough alone, none of this would’ve happened. But how was I to know that he could be this cruel? The boy I knew was kind and caring. Not the cold-blooded monster who had destroyed my life and the lives of so many others just because he didn’t want to marry me.

* * *

LILY

* * *

“Devon Sinclair Carter,come back here. This kid. Why are you your father’s son?”

“Whose did you want him to be?” I stopped running after my son to turn to my husband, who had just returned from inside with our daughter after changing her diaper.

“Give me the baby and go get that terror before he does something horrid again.” My back ached, so I sat down to catch my breath, and something moved under my ass. I jumped up from the outdoor chair and screamed, and Grayson came running with our three-year-old under his arm.

“What happened?”

A frog jumped from under the cushion, and I glared at my son, who was howling with laughter. The little shit. “Don’t you dare laugh, Grayson; this is not funny.”

“So why are your lips twitching?” This is our penance for being asshats. That’s the only reason I can come up with for having borne a son who is half imp, half whiz kid, and a daughter that, well, she’s a special kind of different.

I haven’t had a moment’s peace since my wedding day, why? Forget the havoc we unleashed in our enemies lives, that’s small potatoes compared to what I have endured since then.

The morning after my wedding, when I should’ve been enjoying the first day of married life on my honeymoon, I was sick as a dog and was sick every morning for about two months because I was already three months pregnant.

How? I have no idea. By that, I mean how was I three months pregnant and didn’t know? I never missed a period and never had any other symptoms until the morning sickness started.

Grayson was equal parts excited and scared because he didn’t get the concept of morning sickness and threatened to beat the poor local doctor on our getaway island to death if he didn’t do something. He was always making threats in those days, but that was something that I could deal with.

What I couldn’t handle was his imposed bed rest and treating me like an invalid for the next couple of months until my Mom and grandmas broke me out of jail. I only wanted some frozen yogurt and to see something other than the four walls of our house.

He found me when he called on his lunch break and I wasn’t answering. That’s when I found out he had a tracker on my phone and in my car. I tried arguing, even tried removing them, but he never said anything; he just kept replacing them.

That’s another thing, he doesn’t argue, but he’s a sneaky little thing. I’d sometimes think that I won an argument because of his silence, only to have him do the exact thing we’d been arguing about. Or that I was arguing about, at any rate.

For instance, I wanted two and done. I got the boy and then the girl; that should’ve been it. I was convinced that since I was breastfeeding, there was no chance of me getting pregnant, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Neither of us wanted me to go back on the pill since I was nursing the baby, so he was supposed to wear condoms.

And what did he do? He seduced me when my daughter was three months old, and now I’m six months pregnant with baby number three. Okay, so I was the one who told him to take off the condom because I missed feeling him inside me, but couldn’t he have kept a clear head?

I have a company to run and four old people to keep out of trouble because I don’t know what happened to my sensible family, but ever since Grayson and I took over, it’s like they’ve reverted back to their wild, untamed youth and is running all over the place getting into trouble.

My grandmothers went zip lining while their husbands were jumping out of planes. There ought to be a law against people over fifty doing certain things so that their loved ones don’t die prematurely from heart attacks.

I try to keep them home where I can keep an eye on them, but then that becomes a problem because my kids can do no wrong in their eyes, and they let them, especially my son, get away with everything so that by day two I’m ready for them to go throw themselves out of moving vehicles just to save my sanity.

“Devon, is that your pet frog?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“What is it doing out here?” He put our son down so he could retrieve his vermin from the grass, and the little scamp ran off again.

My daughter, who had only just learned how to walk, was pushing to get down and join her brother, her little grubby fingers reaching out for him to give her his pet. He’s no fool; he knows what happened the last time he did that. That frog didn’t last ten seconds in Daddy’s little angel’s hand.

She squeezed the poor thing until it exploded, then after she got over being startled, she laughed and rubbed the goo between her fingers. So tell me, isn’t this our penance for what we did more than four years ago?

My grandparents love to tell that story every time the whole family gets together, which is often because my husband likes to cook and feed this bunch as if they don’t have chefs on their payroll. That suck-up learned how to make Persian dishes as well as Mediterranean food, and my grandparents think the sun shines out his ass most days.

My mother has become someone else entirely. It’s as if Dad’s arrest and subsequent sentence had released her from something because she has a new man in her life, and I see her through my computer screen more often than not these days.

She’s radiant, positively beaming, and when she floats in laden down with gifts, her grandkids go nuts for their grandma. I’m happy for her, really I am, but she needs to get back here and wrangle her ex-in-laws, her parents, grandkids and son-in-law so I can get some peace.

“I’m going inside to take a nap. You and your cohorts are not allowed on the third floor until I say otherwise.”

“Second floor, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Why can’t I go up to the third floor?” I almost stomped my foot because I sensed another one-sided argument brewing.

“I know you like the playroom I made you, but you’re about to pop; no more extra stairs, I mean it. If you take one step, it’s going to be your ass.”

See what I mean? “I’m six months, oh, never mind.” He really would come and drag me back down, so what was the point? I’ll take what I can get.

* * *

GRAYSON

* * *

The falloutfrom our wedding day coup d’état was far-reaching and still reverberates through the financial world to this day. Both our fathers are in jail, serving twenty-year sentences. They tried to blame each other and others for their crimes, but my evidence was too airtight for them to wiggle their way out.

I’d been collecting evidence since my last year in high school. I’d bugged my Dad’s home office as well as the conservatory where he and Mom like to hang out in the evenings and have their meaningful conversations.

I guess he never thought he had to keep anything from me because I was so well trained that sometimes he’d discuss certain things in front of me, all of which I pretended to ignore while filing the information away for later use.

All those late nights I stayed back at the company office when everyone was commending me for being a hardworking young man fresh out of college, I was actually hacking into their system. Papers that were earmarked for shredding were saved and poured over for anything that could be of use to bury them.

I gave it all to the authorities. The case dragged on for a while but in the end, they ended up being sentenced to more time than even I expected. Mom tried to get Dad charged with statutory rape because she was convinced his affair with Lacey had started way before they were exposed.

He denied it, of course, but when the truth came out that he’d started when she was sixteen, there was nothing they could do because the age of consent in our state just so happens to be sixteen. There was talk that he might’ve groomed her, but those who knew her swear it was the other way around, that she went after him.

Apparently, she used to brag about the older man she had seduced but never gave up a name. When that didn’t work, Mom went for a divorce, but too bad for her, all of Dad’s assets were frozen until the trial was concluded, and since she never expected anything like this to happen, she wasn’t prepared financially.

She tried calling me a couple of times, all of which I ignored. She had no problem subjecting me to a life of misery so she could keep her cushy lifestyle, and I can’t find it in me to care what happens to her.

I never spoke to her again, not since a couple of nights before my wedding when I left their house for the last time. Last I heard, she was broke and had moved out of state to be closer to family. Whatever, it’s none of my concern. I don’t want her anywhere near my wife and kids because she lacks the maternal instinct of a slug.

Janice was arrested and convicted of theft. She, too, tried to claim innocence, but the video evidence from the security cameras showing her breaking into the home and taking the ring was enough to put an end to her claims.

Too bad for her; in this state, if you steal something with a value above five thousand dollars, it carries a hefty sentence. The ring she stole was appraised for more than half a million dollars, which came with a sentence of almost thirty years.

Lacey, for accepting that ring and having no proof that she didn’t know it was stolen, was given ten years and a fine. Her mother did not back her claim that she didn’t know it was stolen but instead blamed her for wanting a ring that was as big as Lily’s.

She’d probably get out in another year or so, knowing how these things go and if my bloodthirsty wife doesn’t pay someone off to keep her in there. It doesn’t matter anyway since her life is pretty much over. Those videos somehow made their way onto the internet, not by me, of course, and she became kind of a local legend, and not in a good way.

She had nothing left since her Dad was broke and in prison. She flunked out of college, and everything she owned was auctioned off for her Dad’s defense, or so I heard his parents say. When she does finally get out, she’d be lucky to get a minimum-wage job.

My father sent me a letter when he first went to jail, but I burned it without reading it, and that was the last contact he attempted. I don’t miss them since I’d mourned the relationships long before this happened.

They stopped being my parents the moment they opened their mouths and ordered me to sell my future so they could live a life of luxury. I don’t hate them, neither do I bear them any love beyond the natural love of a child for his parents.

I don’t have a need for them anyway since my life is so full. I have grandparents, a new mother, a wife, and two wonderful kids who keep both their mother and me on our toes, so I don’t have time to sit down and brood over what could’ve been.

Every day, I’m grateful that I loved myself enough to want better for myself. The thought that I could be married to Lacey right now gives me the shivers. I’ll take my son and his pet snakes and frogs, and pretty much anything that his mother is afraid of, as well as my daughter’s sneakiness, which I can already foresee is going to be a problem any day instead of being tied to something as horrible as her.

I watched the two of them with their heads together, one who just barely learned how to speak and the other speaking a language all her own, and yet somehow, they understood each other well enough to give their mother and me at least one migraine a week. I’ll take it!