Epilogue

I sitwith my feet up and my back resting against my husband with a soft smile on my lips as I watch Thomas, Eliza, and Jacob interact across the room. My belly is hugely swollen with a nine-month-old baby bump, my ankles are pretty swollen too. Dean fusses over me constantly and a few times I’ve had to bite my tongue so I won’t snap at him. I know he means well, and really, I’m only frustrated that I can’t do everything I could a few months before.

Dean loves to caress my stomach and each night he reads a Beatrix Potter story to our child so that he or she will recognize his voice. We are impatient to meet our child and can’t wait for the arrival, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.

Hearing the raucous laughter coming from his grandfather, Dean laughs and nuzzles into my neck. “I can’t believe we have all this,” he whispers, sending shivers down my spine. “And all because of you, my beautiful wife.” He kisses my shoulder, his large hands caressing my belly.

“I’ve never been so happy.” My hands cover his.

“You’re my happiness—” He stills. “What was that?” he questions, straightening behind me. “Your stomach went hard.”

I can’t answer because the most incredible pain rips through me while I hold on to Dean’s hand for dear life. When the pain subsides, I gasp for breath, sweat appearing on my forehead and panic clear in my eyes.

Dean quickly settles me back on the sofa as he moves in the front of me...only just missing being caught in the release of my water breaking. “Oh, Dean.”

He laughs and I throw him a scathing look, but luckily for him, his grandma Eliza interrupts with her hand on his back. “Is it time, honey?”

“Her water broke.” He pales. “Oh!” Until he said the words out loud, I don’t think it properly registered with him just what was happening.

“You’ve got this, Dean. Let me get the men out of the room and I’ll call for an ambulance.” Eliza moves quickly for her age and ushers Jacob and Thomas out of the room without allowing them to catch a glimpse of me. I’d be laughing if another contraction isn’t creeping up on me.

I grab ahold of Dean’s hand, squeezing with all my might as I try to concentrate on the breathing and panting sequences that I’ve been taught to do in the birthing class, however I squeeze my eyes closed and can’t help hold my breath as the intense pain takes hold.

Dean leans forward to wipe my eyes as tears leak from between by lashes. “I love you,” he whispers.

“I’m scared,” I admit, my voice breaking. “I’m also uncomfortable in wet panties.”

Before I can speak another pain take my breath away. I must be close, the contractions are so close together that I feel panic starting to set in. Dean crouches in front of me and grasps my hands. “I have you, honey.”

As the pain subsides, I turn tear filled eyes up to his. “Tell me what to do for you,” he begs.

My lips quiver. “Remove my panties…please.”

He smiles and catches my lips twitch with amusement. “One of my favorite jobs… Can you stand?”

“If you help me.”

Dean slips his arm around my waist and hauls me to my feet when I say, “Be quick before another hits.”

He moves me away from the puddle on the floor and slips his hands beneath my dress. He grabs my panties and quickly tugs them down my legs, helping me to step out of them. “I have an idea,” he comments.

Quickly moving to the sofa, he yanks the throw off and folds it in half before he places it on the seat. He takes hold of my hand and guides me to a dry chair. “I’m going to lift the back of your dress, so you’re not sitting on the wet part.”

Once I’m seated, I’m panting my way through another contraction and when the sudden urge to push hits, my eyes snap wide.

It’s too soon. I can’t be ready to push. Not yet. “Will you look?”

“Look?” Dean queries, his eyes widening in panic when he registers what I mean. “As in look?” He pointedly stares below my belly. “Okay.” He kneels at my feet. “What am I looking for?”

“I got the urge to push with the last contraction. See if you can see something…anything,” I urge.

Gripping my dress, he moves it over my stomach and ducking down he spreads my legs. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

“Spread me open and see if you can see a baby’s head or something. I don’t know. I just know you’re supposed to check me.”

He waits until another pain subsides and then he gently spreads me, and stills . . .

“Uncle Dean, are you stroking Auntie Mack’s p?—”

“Lucas Cartwright do not finish that sentence,” his mother screeches, barging into the room. “Go wait with your father.”

“Um…” Melinda comes to a sudden stop behind the sofa, “…what…”

“She needs to push,” Dean answers her befuddled silence.

“Oh!” Melinda says in panic and dashes around to Mack’s side. “Pant, honey. Don’t push yet, just pant through it and the paramedics should be here soon.”

“They’re here.” The emergency lights flash through the window.

Moments later they come barging into the room.

* * *

Dean hastears streaming down his face that mingle with mine while we cuddle our just born daughter, Rose Elizabeth Evans.

The hospital staff have checked our daughter out before laying her on my chest while they cleaned me up.

Rose Elizabeth has been impatient to arrive and had been born within thirteen minutes of them arriving at the hospital.

Our daughter has a head full of black hair, and as I manage to get her latched onto a breast so that she can feed, Dean strokes his daughter’s soft head. He buries his face into my neck where he places a tender kiss. “Thank you,” he whispers, overcome with emotion.

I reach up and curl my arm to the back of Dean’s head. I hold him against me while I wish that I was already in the private room so that Dean could climb into bed with us.

* * *

Things had gottena bit shaky toward the end and Dean had gone lightheaded. It had only been pure determination not to let Mack down that had kept him on his feet.

But damn, he was a Daddy and that thought filled him with excitement. The precious little bundle, nuzzling at Mack’s breast was a miracle—a miracle that they’d made together.

“Mack,” the nurse interrupted, “do you want to have a shower before we move you up to your room for the night?” Dean had forgotten others were in the room with them.

“I’ll probably feel better if I do.” Mack released the hold she had on Dean, and with reluctance, slipped her nipple from her daughter’s mouth. Rose had fallen asleep as she’d nuzzled her.

She smiled when Dean helped cover her breast, but the look of panic on his face when she passed Rose into his arms made her chuckle. “You have this.”

Dean didn’t even acknowledge her as he looked at the small bundle in his arms. His first time holding his daughter, and the emotion on his face had more tears welling in Mack’s eyes. That first image of Father and Daughter would stay with her forever.

* * *

I lay backon the bed with Dean cuddling me from behind while we watch Eliza cuddle her great granddaughter. Jacob sits beside her, his eyes watering as he strokes one of Rose’s small hands.

Dean kisses me on the side of my face. “So precious,” he whispers into my ear. “You’ve given me so much, Mack. You’ll never know how grateful I am.”

I softly shake my head. “I wouldn’t have the most beautiful baby if it wasn’t for you. I wouldn’t be as happy as I’ve been since I’ve met you. You’re everything to me, Dean. Everything.” I turn my face and bury it in Dean’s chest as his hands threaded through my long hair.

“Eww, you’re always kissing.” Lucas bursts into the room with a look of disgust on his face.

I take one look at our seven-year-old nephew and chuckle.

“Just wait until you’ve grown up into a young man, then you won’t be saying, ‘Eww,’” Dean comments.

Lucas became lost in his baby cousin the second his eyes landed on him. He slowly moves over and wiggles his bottom onto the chair beside Eliza. He reaches out and strokes Rose’s head. “I think I like my new cousin, even if it is a girl.” Lucas is too engrossed in our daughter to notice the amusement on the faces of everyone in the room.

Eliza is the first to break the spell. “Who brought you to visit, Lucas?”

“Mommy and Daddy. They’re taking too long so I left them with Thomas.”

Moments later the door opens and in walks, Thomas, Melinda, and Daniel.

Melinda comes over and kisses us both on the cheek. “Congratulations.” She turns to Daniel. “I think I’ve gone a bit overboard with presents, so we’ll bring everything up to you in Cape Elizabeth once you are home.”

“Thanks, sis.”

“That is so cute,” Melinda whispers, looking at Lucas being so gentle with his cousin. She retrieves her phone and snaps some photographs of her son and Rose.

“You did good Mack. At least she wasn’t as big as Lucas was when he was born. I couldn’t sit down properly for weeks.”

“I’m not sure I can go through that again,” Dean comments, causing me to chuckle as I feel him shudder behind me.

“At least you weren’t the one pushing the baby out,” Melinda adds as she leans over the new arrival.

I witness Lucas frown before he looks at me and then his mother before his gaze is back on me and Dean. “Auntie Mack, did you really push my cousin out of your?—”

“Lucas,” Melinda snaps, covering his mouth. “Please behave today, okay?”

He rolls his eyes and tugs his mother’s hand away. “What’s wrong asking?”

Melinda is quick and seals his lips closed. “Not one more word or we’re leaving.”

Lucas nods his head. “You’re boring.” Having the last word, Lucas ignores his mother and concentrates on his cousin.

Dean shakes behind me, so I glance at him and watch as he laughs at our nephew.

* * *

Jacob wastired as he climbed into bed beside his wife of nearly seventy years. They’d gotten up that morning looking forward to spending time with Thomas, Mack, and Dean, only to become great grandparents. It had been an emotional day all around, and he wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

He considered himself lucky to still be around after ninety plus years, the majority of those spent with the woman who slept silently beside him. She’d been his life from the day that he’d met her, looking windswept out on the cliffs at Two Lights so many years before. When he closed his eyes, he could still see her, and he still felt the jolt of disappointment lace his heart when he heard her brother say she was to be married.

Of course, that hadn’t happened, and she’d married him, and their life together had started. They’d had a lot of good years together, each extra day that he got to spend with her was nothing short of a blessing. He was so thankful for the hand that they’d both been dealt, and he had not one regret. How could he? He still had the love of his life beside him…Rose Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Evans, his Rose.

The End