The Proposal - Kitty Thomas Page 0,86

We talked it out. Are we okay?”

“Why wouldn't we be okay? You're a grown adult, and I already liked Soren. Griffin and Dayne are working on winning me over. No promises that I'm ever going to be even a little okay with this, but we'll see. I'm willing to keep an open mind.”

“And a secret?” I ask.

“And a secret,” she confirms.

She gives me a hug and gets back into the car. I'm glad to see that at least her color is back to normal.

“Oh wait, Mom, what were you coming over for?”

She laughs. “We were just going to the spa for mani-pedis and wanted to know if you wanted to come along, but we'll do it another time. I think we all have a lot to process, and you've still got unpacking to do.”

I watch them pull out of the driveway filled with the same worries they are, wondering if this can possibly last long term or if it's just a dream that must someday end in tragedy.

30

Soren

Heirs

New Year's Day. Eight years in the future.

We're all at my parents' house for our annual New Year's Day tradition. Except there hasn't been much football today. My parents, along with Dayne, Griffin, and I are out helping Dayne's seven-year-old twin boys build a snow man. Griffin's little boy, age five, sits on a sled watching us work, gripping pieces of coal and a carrot in his gloved hands. He's waiting to do the fun easy part, letting us do all the work. He's figured this shit out.

Livia watches us from the glassed-in sun room where she's nursing my six-month-old little girl, Lily—named for my mother. At first Dayne and Griff gave me shit for thinking of myself as the leader but not having the strongest swimmers after all—until it looked like we wouldn't be able to conceive.

We didn't understand it. Livia was obviously able to have kids, and all my tests had come back good. We ran all the tests again and everything was fine. The doctor had joked that maybe my sperm got stage fright. Maybe they suffered from performance anxiety. Or maybe Livia's body saw them as invaders and was killing them on sight. It does happen.

Though it seemed unlikely since it didn't happen with Dayne or Griff. Maybe her body was simply rejecting me. Because of what I'd done. After all, it was me who decided we were going to share her—her wishes and needs be damned. It was me who decided to bring Dayne in. It was me who decided I'd find a way to force her hand so she couldn't say no to our proposal—because I couldn't stand the thought that she might say no, or worse, choose Griffin over me. So it would only be right if it was me who couldn't have a child with her—some kind of cosmic punishment balancing the scale and ending my genetic line on this plane of existence forever.

But I guess karma decided a more fitting punishment would be to give me a daughter—someone vulnerable I have to find some way to protect from men like me. I agree with the universe, it is the more fitting punishment. I worry about her and the men she'll date all the time, and she's still many years away from dating. Hell, she's still many years from her first day of school.

I understand with a whole new clarity and respect why Harold was so cold that Christmas Eve when he found out his baby girl was getting married to someone like me.

If some man walks into my house and snidely announces he's marrying my daughter, I might have to bury him in the backyard.

The snowman is done. Little Cade is wobbling in his layers of clothes to our creation with the coal and carrot to give the snowman a face.

One of the twins, Weston—we call him West, what seven-year-old is called Weston—puts a hat and a scarf on him. And the other twin, Eric, adds some coal buttons to his front. Cade claps delightedly at this frozen miracle we've created.

“Okay, now boys, it's time to bake and decorate Christmas cookies,” my mother says in an excited tone, shooing them into the house.

My parents know the boys aren't mine. Early on they didn't, and so they didn't initially know about the struggle Livia and I had to have a child of our own—we'd had to keep that pain secret. But soon after the twins were born we realized the logistical nightmare we'd taken on.