by Shandi Boyes
When I make it to Nevaeh’s room, I try to wake Penelope up.
“Penelope,” I gently whisper into her ear. She mumbles incoherently and turns her head to face the other direction. “Penelope, Nevaeh is here,” I inform gently, trying to wake her up. The instant Nevaeh’s name escapes my lips Penelope’s head darts up off my shoulder.
“Nevie?” she questions half asleep. When she notices me nodding my head, she squirms in my arms, requesting to be put down. I place her gently down on her feet and her eager eyes dart around the room.
“Hi Penelope,”
“Mommy!” yells Penelope loudly before she charges towards Kylie sitting in a reclining chair in the corner of her room. She is nursing our newborn daughter Nevaeh in her arms.
It had taken us nearly a year of IVF to add Nevaeh into our family. We used a similar service that is now offered to other sufferers of ALL through the Melanie Greystone Foundation, but instead of using a donated egg, we were able to harvest a small number of eggs from Kylie’s one remaining working ovary. Since Nevaeh has completed our family, Kylie is planning on donating her remaining eggs to Melanie’s foundation.
There was a lot of legal propaganda the foundation had to wade through to legally give away Melanie’s eggs as she requested. But with the help of Jenni’s dad Michael, we managed to jump through all the hoops and the foundation has been going strong for the past two years. The foundation not only receives donations from previous ALL sufferers, but they also accept egg donations from the general public as well. It already has the ability to claim credit for eighteen children being born to ALL sufferers since its inaugural year.
Nevaeh was born four days ago via an emergency c section. The last four nights have been the longest amount of time I have been separated from Kylie in the past nearly five years. It is also the only time Penelope hasn’t had her mom or grandma at her beck and call twenty-four-seven. She has been missing Kylie just as much as I have been. We visit her and Nevaeh every day, but it’s not the same as seeing her every minute of the day. I really hope today the doctors will give me permission to take all of my girl’s home.
Our home is now a beautiful big rustic farmhouse on the outskirts of town. I never thought I would live on a farm, but the instant I saw the for sale sign swinging at the front of a property neighboring Jacob’s dads house, I knew I had to buy it for Kylie, knowing it was going to be the perfect place to raise our family. It did need a lot of work, but I had a lot of contacts in the construction industry since I use to work in it before I became famous. All of my old crew were more than happy to work on our property from sun up to sun down and they managed to have the entire rebuilt completed just before Penelope was born. The original plan was that we were going to equally divide our time between both the farm and the loft, but once Penelope started crawling it soon became apparent that the loft wasn’t baby friendly, so our time at the farm house lengthened until we eventually ended up staying their fulltime.
The rest of the warehouse conversion at our loft was completed nearly three years ago and it makes a pretty neat profit for Penelope’s and now Nevaeh’s trust funds. The loft is still in its original bachelor pad condition. But now instead of being a bachelor pad, it is where Kylie and I spend all our dirty weekends. Either Kylie’s mom looks after Penelope at our house or my mom will take her for overnight visits at her house and we spend the entire weekend naked in our loft. Even after four and a half years, I can’t get enough of my girl and I plan naughty weekends as often as possible.
Has my panic about her getting sick lessened any the past four years? No, it hasn’t. But I am confident even if Kylie does get ALL again she will give it her hardest fight to ensure our girls aren’t left without a mother. She will fight until her very last breath and I have no doubt that she is strong enough to overcome any obstacles life throws at her.
“We went and saw Aunty Rena,” Penelope informs Kylie proudly.
“Did you,” Kylie replies, her spare hand running gently down Penelope’s hair, trying to smooth the birds nest her car seat made. Once she has her hair all straighten, her eyes turn up to look at me, silently questioning if I am okay. I gently nod my head. Today is the anniversary of my sister’s death, but taking Penelope to her gravesite really helped to ease the pain I normally feel.
“Oh no,” Penelope says, her bottom lip pouting dramatically. “I forgot to give Aunt Rena her horsey,” she continues, her little hazel eyes rapidly filling with tears.
Penelope is obsessed with horses just like her mother was at her age. She has a large collection of toy horses that she proudly displays on purposely built shelves in her room. This morning, she picked out her favorite horse to give to Serena as a gift. I’m not going to lie, when she told me that she was giving her favorite horse to Serena, a tear did form in my eye and I felt like the biggest fucking pussy in the world, but I was so proud of my baby girl that I proudly wore that tear in my eye. Penelope never had the opportunity of meeting her Aunt Serena or Aunt Melanie but she undoubtedly loves them both. She regularly asks questions about them and proudly tells her playmates about her two guardian angels she has watching over her.
“It’s okay baby girl,” Kylie says, trying her hardest to comfort Penelope while holding Nevaeh. I move over and gently lift Nevaeh from Kylie’s arms so she can properly comfort Penelope. She hates seeing tears in her eyes nearly as much as I do.
Looking down at little Nevaeh in my arms brings up so many memories of Serena. Nevaeh has strawberry blonde hair and tiny little facial features just like Serena did. The only difference between her and Serena is that her eyes are brown. We called her Nevaeh as it is heaven spelt backwards and she is our own little slice of heaven.
“Maybe we can go and give Serena your horsey on our way home today?” Kylie suggests, instantly halting Penelope’s tears and forcing a huge smile on my face.
“You’re coming home?” I question eagerly.
Kylie smiles largely while nodding her head, triggering me to holler and jump excitedly into the air. I have missed her so fucking much the past four days that I never plan on being away from her this long ever again. Kylie giggles loudly at my reaction, Penelope joins me in jumping around in excitement and Nevaeh continues sleeping peacefully in my arms, not even phased by my reaction.
If you had asked me five years ago where I would have been today, I would have answered with either at a strip club or on stage performing with my band. If you would have told me that I was going to be happily married to the love of my life and a father to two little princesses, I would have laughed in your fucking face, told you to stop taking drugs and run away from you scared out of my mind that a lunatic was talking to me. Because back then even I didn’t know how much I needed my girls in my life.
Our band is still one of the world’s most successful bands. We sell out concerts halls within a matter of minutes of our tickets going on sale and our albums are multi-platinum selling albums. My bandmates are my brothers, and all of their little children are my nieces and nephews. But at the end of the day, my girls are and always will be my number one priorities.
They are my life, they are my soul and they solely and rightfully own every little inch of my heart, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The end…..
The next book in the ‘Perception Series’ is Isaac’s story…….