Chapter 82: Epilogue

Anna
Six Years Later

"Sweetheart can you tell your father to come in here and grab the steaks?" Laynie asks her daughter Molly. Molly runs out to the back-yard hollering to her father that mommy said to get the 'sticks'.
Laynie and both laugh which causes me to hold onto my enormous belly. I am currently eight months pregnant and I swear if there was a way to get this baby out sooner I would do it. Laynie walks over and closes the sliding glass door shut after Molly left it open.
"So how are you feeling?" Laynie asks coming back to the kitchen and grabbing the salad out of the fridge.
We decided to have a barbeque at Alan and I's home for the fourth of July weekend. Shortly after everything went down six years ago, Alan and I got married and bought a house. I fought it at first, but Alan soon convinced me that we knew each other all our lives, we didn't need a timeline for marriage.
Jared and Laynie are here with their three children, and Jed will be here soon. We invited Alan's family as well, but they won't be here until tomorrow. Didn't surprise me much, Paul and Marryanne King went from having five single children, to all of them married with children within three years.
"Horny." I answer her blowing my hair out of my eyes.
She laughs but I'm being truthful. I'm huge, I've gained easily forty pounds and since my back is hurting so much now, Alan is afraid to go near me, which has left me horny and frustrated.
"Mom, Malcom and I want some cookies." Benjamin, Jared and Laynie's oldest comes waltzing in the kitchen. He's six years old and already takes after his father tremendously.
"Is that how you ask Ben?" Laynie gives him the mom brow, as Laynie and I nicknamed it, and Ben slumps his shoulders and asks politely.
He and Malcom run outside and join their sister at the playground set Alan and Jared put up a few weeks ago for times like this. Besides seeing Laynie and Jared, Amelia has moved out to New Jersey, so we see her and her two young children often.
Jared comes in the house and grabs the plate of steaks we pre-seasoned, and when I say we, I mean Laynie because, as usual, they wouldn't let me near the food, and heads outside, but not before kissing his wife passionately in front of me.
"You guys do that shit all weekend and I'm going to have to rent a porno." Laynie chuckles once more and I turn when I hear heavy footsteps come up from behind me.
"Gross mom." Peter says making me crack a genuine smile. He always could do that for me.
We adopted Peter a year after he was sent into foster care. I had to do some mandatory therapy because of my technical rap sheet with my father and mother, and although I hated it at first, I was glad I was able to get that release. Both Jed and I went together and we both found out things about each other that we would have never guessed. Peter's mother still sees him once a month. She was heartbroken after the kidnapping and relapsed, saying everything was her fault. After a year of rehab, she now has supervised visitations with him, but Peter calls her Cindy, not mom.
"Sorry kiddo, moms got some problems." Peter shakes his head and heads outside to most likely find a spot next to a tree and read. Kid is still a bookworm, but it makes me love him even more. He was lost for a moment, but the foster family he had was wonderful and it made him realize that there was nothing wrong with him, his adoptive parents were scum.
"You know he's going be having all those girls calling his phone, right? Laynie says from behind her champagne. I give her the evil eye, but she ignores it and shrugs. "It's true. He's a teenager now and he's gotten to be quite the looker."
"What are you, one of those old ladies that stalk the boys at the park?" She throws a grape at me and we begin out traditional kitchen food fight.
Jared and Alan walk in with now done steaks and shake their head at our antics. They know this is normal for us. Alan walks over to me and rubs my belly from behind me.
"Jed and Delilah here yet?" Alan asks.
Yes, you heard it right. My brother did some therapy with me and rehabilitating by himself. He lived with Alan and I for a few months before finding his own place which happen to be Alan's old apartment. He and Delilah met and hit it off right away. She stopped working for me at Creations and now she and Jed have started a nonprofit organization that helps troubled teens obtain jobs instead of them being on the streets. Turns out Delilah had a pretty horrid past as well.
"No, not yet. Should be here soon though. Delilah text me earlier and said they were on their way. What about your sisters? They still coming tomorrow?"
"Same, Amy is driving them all out so knowing her driving skills are on the handicapped side, they should be here sometime next year." I laugh at my husband and lean in to kiss his cheek. Alan palms my large round belly and leans down to speak to his son. He does this at least once a day. Something that I thought would drive me crazy but instead has me falling harder and harder in love with him.
It's been six years since everything went down and as I look around at our growing family and friends, I couldn't be happier to see where life has landed us. Although we have each gone through some tough things, and knowing our parents are still in prison and will be for the rest of their lives, we each couldn't be happier with where we are now. Darkness battled us along our individual paths, and we beat it in the end.
Darkness didn't win.
END OF VOLUME THREE