“For being who you are and taking no prisoners. My wife, the most loving and meanest woman I know. And love.” He kissed her again, starting the engine when he pulled away. “There will never be a dull moment with you around, and I’d have it no other way.”
Epilogue
Hawkins held his first granddaughter in his arms as he looked around the large room. He and Jamie had other grandchildren, all boys, so this little bundle was the most precious thing he could have ever imagined it would be. When he looked down at her, she was staring at him, as if she were waiting on him to finish what he’d been saying.
“Where was I? Oh yes, telling you about your great uncles. They are both your great uncles and great men. You will come, I’m sure, to love them as much as you get frustrated with them. They can be a little over protective of little girls and women. Not to say that I won’t be, but I’m your grandda, and that’s my job.” She pushed her tiny hand out from under the blanket she’d been wrapped in, and he touched his finger to hers. The grip she had when she took his large finger into her tiny hand reminded him of her grandma. “I’m already madly in love with you, little one.”
Looking around the room again, he spied his brother Colin. He was forever the loudest in the room, not with just yelling but with his laughter and his joy. Being a husband, father, and grandda had changed him the most. However, his wife Lauren was still the same bad assed woman that she’d been when she’d first came to this family.
Lauren and Colin had never become the mother and father of their own children. But that’s not to say that Colin didn’t have a brood of children. At any given time, even now they would take in those that needed them. As did their grandchildren and so on.
“Now there is Parker. He’s a great farmer around here. I believe around the world. He had so many new plants coming out every year that there is a grand party in his honor for coming up with ways to make fruits and vegetables more tolerable and with less chemicals.” He thought of all the things that she was going to try for the first time. “You’ll love your Aunt Reese. I guess she’s your great aunt. Anyway, she has been in charge of all the birthday cakes for each of the children since they started coming along. You’ll be no different. You’ll learn to butter her up too, just to get yourself a handful of cookies.”
His mom and dad were talking softly. They hadn’t aged a day in all these years and continued to be active around town. Dad still built homes and flipped houses for a profit. Mom was very social, always raising money for this and that, which was needed more and more as the years had come and gone. Hawkins told his granddaughter what had happened here.
“Several years ago, a company came to town and hired all kinds of help. They were going to manufacture blankets and sheets, of all things. We were so excited to have them here that we were supportive of them right from the beginning. But it wasn’t until Jon told us—you’ll meet him soon enough—that he’d found some dead and dying birds in the forest that we knew there was something terribly wrong.” He thought of how many there’d been. How many of the other animals that fed on the birds had died as well. “They were using chemicals that were polluting the air. And with that, the animals around here. It only took us a few days to get them out of here, but years and years to recuperate our losses in animals of the forest.”
He didn’t know why he’d told her that, but he supposed it was what he was there for. To bring her up to date on her family and news. Smiling at her as she continued to stare at him, he kissed the back of her hand that still held him.
“Great Uncle Larson is still making us all rich. Not that any of us need any money. But we have been very generous with it too. The new school was built only last year. There is a wonderful new football field that most of your cousins have played ball on. He’s been a wonderful help to the town and this family. You’ll love him too.” He looked at Larson’s wife, Virginia, and wondered how he was to tell his granddaughter about her aunt. “She writes books. Best sellers, as a matter of fact. But you’re never to read her books until.... Well, you come and ask me, and I’ll let you know when you are old enough. But don’t count on it being anytime soon.”
There was another writer in Larson’s family. But he had made his way in that world by writing children’s books about farm life. The other three kids, all girls, had told their dad that they wanted to work with him, and Larson’s business had spread all over the country. He thought that at the rate they were going, they’d be too rich to count it. Hawkins felt that wasn’t such a bad thing either, as they had very long lives ahead of them.
Hawkins told her of Dustin and his business. “He has several hundred men working for him now, all over the state. His housing company has expanded to landscaping, as well as roofing when that is needed. He has finally taken a rest now and spends a lot of his time with his wife, Great Aunt Mackenzie. She’s gone back to school several times over the years and has become a renowned surgeon—not that she wasn’t already. But she has to keep up with the changes.”
Dustin’s kids were all different in what they had done in life. There was a teacher at the college level who was very good at it. Another was the point man—err woman—on all the projects that had to do with houses. Her sister helped her, and people were still shocked to see a woman working in her capacity. And yet another of them was working with Parker, raising the awareness of what chemicals could do to a person. He thought that he was most proud of Dustin’s youngest two boys. They specialized in building and refitting homes for the veterans that came home needing more than just what the government gave them.
Boyd was the knee doctor. In that he was the one that all the children, young and old, went to when they had a busted knee that needed a bandage. Hawkins thought that he was happier doing that, being there for the kids. Boyd’s own children had grown up too—two of them were doctors as well, and one of them had gone into the military just as Hawkins had. “Your Great Aunt Reilly is wonderful. And you’ll go to her a great deal, like the others do, when you have a report due at school. You’ll never find a better person at research than her.”
He looked at his own wife and had to smile. She had never tempered her language, nor had she been any less bossy to him. And he loved her dearly for it.
Hawkins still had bad days. They were a given considering that he’d spent so much of his younger life as a soldier working for the government. But Jamie would snap him out of it. Usually by just being there for him, but sometimes she still knocked him around a bit. She was never one to hold back when knocking some sense into someone would work so much better. And it usually did the trick, he was happy to say.
He thought about his own life. It hadn’t been easy, nor had it been all butterflies and rainbows, as Marshall used to say. He missed that man a great deal too. He had been both a savior to Jamie and a good friend to him. But when Jon had approached him about being an immortal, Marshall declined. He just wanted to go out as a winner and a good guy, he’d told him, and Jon left him just the way the man had wanted.
“I work with women in showing them how to defend themselves. It’s a good job, and sadly necessary. But I’m very good at it, and the women that leave are healthier and happier. They can not only defend themselves against someone bigger and meaner, but they are good at keeping their children safe as well.” He was saddened to think that he had to teach this sort of thing. People shouldn’t hurt the ones that they promised to love. “I’ve recently taken on helping others too. With weight loss as well as training to eat healthier. I don’t do that as much as I should, but I’ve never had any trouble in that department.”
He and Jamie had six children of their own, of both genders. All of them had joined the service, feeling that it was their duty to help where they could. But as soon as they were out, not lifers like he’d been, they all married and lived quiet lives and worked as teachers. Hawkins was in awe of them. How they managed to not let stress enter their lives. If he’d had a kick ass mom around like they did growing up, he supposed t
hat he’d be able to handle just about anything. Not that his parents hadn’t been there for them all, and God knew his mom had kept him in line, but Jamie had been more for their kids being able to deal with the things that could fuck up their lives. And like his brothers, all of them, he and Jamie had taken in children that needed a guiding hand.
He laughed at the baby when she blew a little bubble from her pretty little lips. She was still looking at him, seeming to understand everything that he was telling her. When Jon came to sit by him, he asked to hold her, and Hawkins reluctantly gave her up.
“Have you been told that she is like her grandmother?” Hawkins told Jon that Jamie had told him. “She’ll be someone that will need more than just stories, Uncle Hawkins. She’ll need you both to teach her to be careful with what she is.”
“I’ve been thinking on that. Perhaps I could hide her in a mountain cave and leave her there until there are no men around to touch her.” Jon looked at him with the most comical face. “I’m joking, Jon. I assume her father is already thinking along those lines anyway.”
For someone as smart and powerful as Jon was, he was still learning about the world. It was fun sometimes to just say a random thought to him and watch him try and figure out if it was a joke or not. Jon had never married. No one knew if he’d just not found someone that he could love, or if he just never looked. But that didn’t sway him from being the best uncle. He was the one they went to when they needed entertaining. Jon had perfected fireworks that the children and adults loved.
Hawk looked at Jamie when she came to sit on his lap.
“I’ve talked to Marshall. He said that he was going to bring her to us one or two days a week when she’s older. I told him not to wait too long. If someone saw his daughter using her power, it could be dangerous for her.” Hawkins kissed Jamie when she glanced at him. “You have that sappy look on your face again. What are you thinking?”
“That I love you more and more every day. That you’ve taken a broken man and made him into someone that even I can be proud of.” She told him that he hadn’t been broken, but stupid. Laughing, he thanked her. “But I do love you.”
“And I love you, my wonderful husband, who will go into the kitchen and get me a bowl of ice cream.”
He set her on the couch next to him and went into the kitchen to fetch her some of the treat that she loved. He found his dad in the kitchen mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Dad? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He nodded and wiped his face again. “Do you want me to go get Mom?”
“Nah, I’m all right. I just had me a thought, and I was down about it a bit.” Hawkins asked him what it was. “That you all grew up to be such wonderful men, and now you’re all fathers and grandfathers. It makes an old man like me wonder if you need me much anymore.”
Hawkins was shocked by his dad’s thoughts and hugged him tightly to his body. The thought of not having his father here with him, for any reason, made his eyes fill up with tears as well. Rich was his dad.
“When I was out on a mission, sometimes for days on end, without doing much more than going to take a piss, I’d think of you and Mom here. Think about what you might have been doing. I rarely knew the date, so I’d always think of a holiday, one that we’d all spend together.” His dad looked at him then. “I’d think of Mom running around trying to coordinate, getting us all here on time. Making sure that the table was perfect, and that there were enough places for that just-in-case person that might need a hot meal and a friend to share it with. And I’d think of you, sneaking in the kitchen, tasting whatever food had been left unattended. How you’d be ready with your fork if you could figure out a way to get to whatever it was without Mom knowing what you’d been up to.”
“Sometimes when she was too riled up to make any sense, I’d wait until I knew she was coming to dig my fork into something just to set her off. Got her to thinking about something else other than whatever was stressing her out.” Dad laughed when he did. “Sometimes—well, most of the time, it would backfire on me a little. But I didn’t care as much as she thought I did.”
“Do you still carry around that fork?” He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. Hawk had it specially made for him. It would fold over and become too small to be detected in his pocket. “Dad, I need you every day. Not just need you, but look forward to talking to you. Asking you a question that I know you’ll have the answer to. You and Mom, you got me through a great many missions. Kept me safe, too, when I thought about how pissed you two might be if I got hurt.”
“I’m sure that we didn’t know half the times you got that way either, did we?” Hawkins shook his head. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to know about them now if you don’t mind. Having you home, here, like you used to be is the best thing that’s happened to us all. That Jamie of yours, she’s just what you needed. Someone to shake you up a bit and not take any of your guff.”
“She doesn’t, let me tell you.” His dad hugged him again and leaned against the counter. “Our granddaughter, have you met her yet? Her name is something that we’re all very proud of.”
“I heard that. And it is a powerful name that Marshall and his Belinda gave her. Suits her too, since her grandmamma is named for a boy.” Her name was Alexandra Jarvis McCullough. “She was named after a great man. I surely do miss him sometimes.”
“I do as well.” The two of them hugged again and Dad wiped his face. “Are you all right now? I’ll go get Mom if you want to dive into that cherry pie there.”
Dad turned the pie so that he could see it, and there was a large chunk taken right out of the middle. Mom was going to have a fit, and Dad would enjoy every minute of it.
They made their way back into the living room just as Mom was going in the kitchen. As soon as she yelled for Dad, they both, him and his dad, shared the joke together. It was as it should be.
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Kathi Barton , winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement award as well as a best-selling author on Amazon and All Romance books, lives in Nashport, Ohio with her husband Paul. When not creating new worlds and romance, Kathi and her husband enjoy camping and going to auctions. She can also be seen at county fairs with her husband who is an artist and potter.
Her muse, a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Hugh Jackman, brings her stories to life for her readers in a way that has them coming back time and again for more. Her favorite genre is paranormal romance with a great deal of spice. You can visit Kathi online and drop her an email if you’d like. She loves hearing from her fans. [email protected].
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