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“Just get down on the knee and ask, Carter!” I heard my brother bellow.
Auden got down on one knee, plucked the ring from the pastry, and offered it to me. “Will you marry me, Sunshine soon-to-be Carter?”
The presumptuousness of this man…
“Of course I will.”
Then I launched myself at him.
Garrett came in while I was licking the icing off the ring.
He had a bag stuffed full of pregnancy tests which he tossed on the floor, and left.
Dima took one look at the boxes—when he’d come in, I didn’t know—and shook his head. “Mom and Dad would be ecstatic right now.”
I felt tears well in my eyes. “I think they’d be dying right now.”
“A new baby, and their own baby back?” Milena asked. “They would be inconsolable. So happy they’d be unable to breathe through their tears.”
A tear of my own fell down my cheek at the loss of a set of parents who loved me so.
“Get into that bathroom and test, baby,” Auden said. “I’m dying to know.”
I wasn’t speeding on purpose, Officer. It was the music.
—Maven to Auden when he pulls her over going 23 over the posted speed limit
MAVEN
7 years later
Getting out of the house with three children was always a rather daunting task.
Today, however, it was worse than even I expected.
It was only after I had the kids all strapped into their seats that I asked my youngest child a question.
“Guess what, baby?” I asked my toddler, who was so much like my husband it hurt.
For someone who didn’t want a third child, this one turned out to be exactly like him. Redford Carter was Auden’s little sidekick.
He did everything his daddy did, and only what his daddy did.
His first word was ‘daddy.’
His second word was ‘my.’
He then paired those two words every time I was in the vicinity of his ‘my daddy.’
“What?” Redford asked grumpily.
I’d had to wake him up from his nap, and like his father, he didn’t like it.
Auden glanced into his rearview mirror as he started to accelerate to get onto the interstate.
“I love you!” I sang to him, reaching over to grab Auden’s hand as he merged.
Auden squeezed my fingers, keeping his eyes on the road.
