A/n: Sorry for the very long gap between updates. Life is overwhelming. I hope everyone had an AMAZING Christmas and a perfect start to this new decade! I started this year with a resolution to not only try my hardest to find the time to write more often, but to make the time. So the updates should be much more frequent. Thank you all so very much for the reviews last chapter and I really, really, really hope you find something good in this update.


"Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world." -- Martina McBride, "Love's the Only House".

It's hard to admit to failure.

Most humans can't ever admit it to themselves because even when other people lose hope in them, and accept that they will never succeed, they still have some sort of hope and belief in themselves. We always make excuses for ourselves. We always give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because we know ourselves. We know who we are, what we want, what we are capable of. We know that deep down, we have the potential not to fail.

It's hard to say if I would ever be able to accept my failures, if I would be able to ever admit that I am a failure as an artist, a failure as a son, and most tragically, a failure at fixing Emily. It is not the worthless people that are the saddest cases. It is the ones who had the potential one day at a certain time in a certain place to be great, but never were. I could say my parents were great people because of their talent. I could say they were great people because of all they've been through. But the real reason they are great in my eyes is because they both were able to admit their failure. They could look it square in the eye and admit that they failed as parents while I was growing up, that they failed at keeping things together, that they failed at raising me. However, the beautiful growth that comes out of that wasteland is the realization that it's never as bad as it seems. More often than not, when great people look the failure in the eyes, they get so overwhelmed with guilt that they admit to things that aren't even true. They didn't fail at raising me. Through all the bad things, it brought along something good: lessons that I could carry with me in my life.

But as I looked at her hair as she slept, with the bright sunlight turning it all shades of brown and copper, I couldn't think of one lesson that could help me now. I felt overwhelmed then, as if maybe I couldn't do what I had promised. I knew deep down inside me that I was just as broken as she was (but not in the same way) and that I couldn't even begin to heal her unless I was healed myself.

But I would try. I would try with all I had and keep trying to the day I die. Love is the cruelest dictator, the hardest hitter. Ten-thousand hateful sentences from a stranger doesn't match up to three words from a person you love. Seeing hundreds upon hundreds of people sobbing in fear and pain doesn't begin to match up to the pain you see when that one person is scared and in pain. Love turns one person into everything and suddenly your life is about them. Every moment you're without them is a moment wasted. All you want to do is talk to them, to see them, to touch them. And if something threatened that…you'd do all you could to protect it because it is everything. It is more you than you are.

But how did you protect them when the thing hurting them was themselves?

She just needed to see what I saw. She needed to crawl into my skin for a moment and look through my eyes and see the soft, shiny waves of her dark hair. She needed to see how smooth and beautiful her skin looked with the sunlight warming it. She needed to see how beautiful all the skin on her was as the blanket revealed more and more of her. She needed to see through my eyes. I could paint the way I saw her over and over again but it would never be beautiful enough and it would never show her what it should. That's why I am a failure with my art. I am supposed to be able to take what I see and what I feel and put into something solid, but I can't do it right. Maybe I should have given up on it a long time ago. Maybe I should have realized I was never as good as people said I was. But there is just something about it. Something that reminds me of the way I feel when I look at pictures from when I was a small child. Something that reminds me of holding my mother's hand and walking through the park. It took me years, but I finally pinpointed the feeling: Trust. It was so hard for me to trust anyone or anything but I had always trusted art. It was always there. Just like Emily.

It was a little staggering to believe that it was possible to lose her to herself. It was a little staggering to think of all the miles we traveled and how nothing at all had changed.

She stirred and there was a short and heavy pause before she slowly opened her eyelids and I saw the Earth of her eyes. Her face flushed as she looked at me and the raspberry color was deeper than I ever remembered. It brought me back to when we were ten and she was terribly sick. Her dad brought her over to our house in panic because she was shaking so violently with tremors that she could hardly get sentences out. Her temperature was so high even my mom panicked, which tipped me off that Oliver wasn't just being melodramatic. When they arrived I was sitting in my room playing a video game, trying to see how late I could manage to stay up (because when you're ten and it's the summer that all you really have to do), and I heard the panicked voices downstairs. I hesitated about walking down there for fear of getting in trouble for being up so late, but then Emily tried to speak and she was crying and I was slipping off my bed and through the mess of my room and out the door and down the hallway. I peered out over the balcony and glanced in the living room and her face was so red and her eyebrows furrowed in pain and her lips pale and tears were sparkling on her skin when she flinched or turned and the moonlight hit her face just right. It was like each milky shine pushed me forward and made my foot move one step down and that continued until I was standing right in front of her. She looked at me but I didn't even know if she really saw me. We hadn't been close since the start of that summer and for a while we just looked at each other (or rather I stared at her and she stared in my general direction, I can't be certain if in her delirium she even realized I was there). My mom had a grip on my arm and she was explaining that Emily was fine but that her and Oliver were going to take her to the hospital just to make sure and that I was supposed to stay there with dad and I remember breaking the gaze and glancing at her and realizing for a moment that she was paler than she normally was and she had been pale for a very long time, since February to be exact, but she was even paler and I knew she thought she was going to lose another child and it occurred to me even heavier then that life was just one run on sentence after another and that eventually every one would end but I could only hope it wouldn't stop on Emily. You never expect newborn babies to die before they even experience the world for a month. You never expect otherwise healthy ten year old girls to die. But right then it hit me full force that Emily could die and I felt burdened with this fact. For a moment I looked back into her glassy eyes and I felt a shove in the pit of my stomach and my muscles tensed and my throat contracted as I tried to make the words to give to her. But the pride was there in my mouth and it stopped it and they went to the hospital. I sat in the living room for a while and thought and prayed. Thinking back on all of this now, I think about how terrible it would have been for her to have died that night, thinking I hated her for no reason at all.

"What are you thinking about?" She whispered. I looked away from the glassy eyes and back into the clear ones that were gazing at me in a concerned manner. I pushed her hair back from her face and pulled her back in my arms.

"I was thinking about nine years ago, when you had that terrible fever and you had to go to the hospital." I answered. I rested a hand on the small of her back.

"Do I look that terrible now? Is that what triggered the memory?" She joked. She leaned forward and kissed me and all my pessimistic thoughts drifted away. Of course she would get better. And I would and could help.

I set my hands on her blazing cheeks. "The color of your cheeks triggered the memory." I grinned. Her skin seemed to be roasting under my hands.

"I'm not used to waking up half-naked beside someone." She admitted quietly. I let my eyes drift over her bare shoulders and the sheet wrapped around her and I focused on the gentle and calm rocking of the boat. I leaned down and pressed my lips to her shoulder.

"It's not half-naked if you're covered up," I argued. She set her hand on my head and ran her fingers through my hair. We stayed silent for a long moment, and then she slowly slid off the bed, pulling the sheet with her.

"I feel very self-conscious right now." She admitted. At first these words felt like a punch that carefully beat my optimistic side to sleep and tied him up in a closet. But then I realized that we had crossed a milestone last night and that we had to take baby steps.

She came out of the bathroom fully dressed and laid back down beside me. My cell phone chose that moment to ring and I considered ignoring it; however, it could be something really important. I rolled away from Emily and leaned off the bed and groped the floor for my pants. I grabbed them and pulled my phone free from the pocket. I slid back on the bed and answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Cole! Are you okay?" My mother sounded pretty frantic. Why would she think something was wrong?

"Yes…why wouldn't I be?" I asked. Emily's eyes appeared curious as she gazed at me. I smiled at her because it's all I could really do to express love right now.

"You called here at like five AM and I couldn't get a hold of you after that! What did you need?"

"Oh! Sorry about that. Time difference…I forgot. Anyway, I don't need anything now. I figured it out."

She sighed. "That's annoying. It's going to drive me crazy wondering what you needed. But I'm assuming you don't want to say it right now so I'll let you tell me when you come home. When are you coming home?" I heard faint voices in the background and I wondered what my family was up to in my absence.

"I'm not sure. Four days? Five? Something around there. I have to go, but give the twins a hug for me."

"Okay. Have fun—but not too much fun. I love you."

"I love you too, Mom. Bye."

"Bye."

I ended the call and Emily raised an eyebrow.

"Long story." I smiled. She moved closer to me at the same moment I moved closer to her.

I closed my eyes and kissed her and saw the rest of our vacation before my eyes: the ocean, the sun on her hair and skin, that beautiful hotel room, her smile, and our future. I hoped I could make her happy. I hoped she was happy. And I ignored the one thought that pulled at my hair: Happiness is absorbed by time much quicker than sorrow. Sorrow sits on top of life like a thick, oily film, partially blocking out the sun. Sorrow makes more of an impact on life. Would I make an impact on her life? Or would I make her happy?


By the time the vacation was over we were both tan as islanders and tired. I was pretty sure my fingertips would never be wrinkle-free again.

"I never thought I'd say this," Emily whispered, "but I actually miss your hard mattress."

We were flying home and all around us were sleeping passengers.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I do too. I guess nothing really compares to your own bed."

Nothing compared to home, really. Not even the beauty of New Zealand. I missed my parents, I missed Paint, I missed painting, I missed my friends, and I especially missed my sisters. And I knew Emily missed her dad a lot.

"Do you want to stop by my parent's house and see everyone before we head back to the apartment? I'll tell my mom to get your dad to come over." I said it a little too loudly and the large and obviously wealthy man to my right snorted in his sleep.

She smiled and rested her head against my shoulder. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'd like that."

When I looked at our future, I should see her smiling in a beautiful wedding gown, or perhaps her hand in mine as we sit on a couch in a living room watching television, or maybe even a look while we tuck a small child into bed together. But there was this pessimistic side of me that only saw bad things. I saw my own mother, broken on the floor of the hospital room—because broken was the only word I could use to explain the way her legs gave out and she crashed down on herself, her face resting against the cold floor and her hair fanning out while her elbows protruded out from her at awkward, unnatural angles—sobbing so hard it could have been screaming if I didn't hear the distinct sound of her heart breaking. I saw my dad's face that morning so many years ago when I woke up in that apartment in New York City and he told me that she had left. I thought about the way she looked after she was raped; the way she flinched at almost everything, the way she tried to hide everything from me but never realized that all that time I could hear her screaming and crying in her sleep. I thought about all I had witnessed, and how it had ultimately made me scared shitless of the future, and I wondered if life was really ever worth living at all? Maybe that was the artist in me, the side that always capitalized on the bad things because art is truth, and the truth in life is love and lose and more often than not, the two are intertwined. Maybe it was the realist in me, the side that understood by all I had seen growing up that life hurt, love was pain, and healing was sometimes even worse than the injury itself. That sometimes the things you want the most are the things you can't have. I looked at my dad and I looked at me and we were so much alike that I had to fear for Emily. I didn't want to pull the Ryan legacy of pain down on her. My grandparents lost a child. My parents lost a child. What if Emily lost a child? What if it was my child? What if it destroyed her, and what if it was my fault?

I glanced at her and realized she was asleep. The light but also ironically heavy weight of her head had been on my shoulder for a while. I realized that when things like this hurt me inside, she was who I wanted to talk to. Instead of waking her up, I closed my eyes and heard the things I already knew she'd say.

'Cole, do you realize how much I love you?' –she'd start with that because she knew it healed me halfway immediately so that no matter how weak the coming argument was, I was already halfway better off than I was before – 'You are not your father, and there is no way losing children is a genetic trait passed down through the family. What happened to your aunt's sister was a tragedy. What happened to your sisters was a tragedy. Tragedies happen. They might happen to us. One will most likely happen to us before we die. But when it does it will not be your fault. It will just be something terrible that happens. Something like what happened to your- no, our – family. Life sucks but you can't really think it's not worth living? You're looking at all the bad things that happened to your parents; think of all the good things. Think of you. Think of the twins. Think of how they found each other. There are so many good things in life that we take for granted. We harp on the bad and let them overshadow the good so much that we almost forget they're there, but you better believe we'd notice in a heartbeat if they disappeared. You were right before, happiness is less potent than sorrow, but that doesn't mean it's any less important. Just because you feel the pain of loss longer than you feel the happiness of love doesn't mean the loss meant more: it means you loved what you lost so much and it made you so happy and you were so comfortable with it that you almost forgot its presence until one day you woke up and it wasn't there anymore. So really…happiness and sorrow are the exact same thing in a twisted kind of way. And just so you know, I'd rather have a lifetime of sorrow with you than a lifetime of happiness without you.'

It was more comforting to know I knew her so well that I could automatically hear her response to an unspoken fear than to actually hear her say it. She inspired me and helped me realize things weren't that bad; that even when things felt like they might dig into my heart and rip it into a thousand different directions, I still had her to help me find them and piece them back together, even when she was asleep. And I could make one hell of a painting out of it, too.


MILEY'S POV:

I was in the process of giving the twins a bath when Adeline asked me something that made me accidentally squirt too much foamy soap in Odette's tiny hands.

"What happened to the other babies?" She asked. She'd been quiet most of the day but she did that sometimes. She slipped into her own head and it was hard to pull her out. I imagined she was thinking of dragons and princesses. I never imagined she was entertaining such mature ideas such as wondering what happened to the children her and her sister's middle names came from. Jake and I hadn't said anything to them about Isabella or Joy yet, fearing and knowing that it was much too early. We'd put a tentative time sticker on the subject that read AGE 10. But it looked as though my two babies had been brought up sooner than I wanted, and I was going to have to explain it alone.

I glanced at Odette as she rubbed the mountain of foam between her hands and I looked back at Adeline. Her dark hair stuck to her face and she was wearing a curious expression. I was reminded just how intelligent she really was. I wondered if knowing this would affect her negatively. But I didn't want to lie; I didn't want to pretend I had no idea what they were talking about because I did. To lie and pretend that would be like saying those two children never made an effect on my life. To look into my twins' eyes and say I had no idea what babies Adeline was talking about would be like saying I forgot all about them; I didn't lie awake all night on their birthdays and push tears away, I didn't sometimes write the twins' full names on documents and feel that painful heat rise to the hidden chambers behind my eyes and nose, I didn't come across baby socks and know they weren't ones we bought for the twins, but ones meant to be slid gently on the tiny feet of someone else, someone that never quite made it that far. To lie would to be to say I didn't love them anymore and that I could easily forget them. What a severe and vile lie that would be.

"Where did you hear about the other babies?" I asked softly, attempting to buy myself time. I always needed time and it seemed that there was never enough of it to go around.

"Daddy and Grandma were talking about it. Where did they go? Were they our sisters?" The green of her eyes was so clear as she stared directly into my eyes. I picked the foamy soap bottle up off the side of the tub and squirted an extreme amount in her hands too. Odette was confidently rubbing the soap on her body and appeared occupied, but I knew she was hanging onto every word. Adeline mirrored her sister and covered her body in the purple foam.

"Long before you girls were born, your daddy and I had two other babies." I explained carefully. They didn't understand death much beyond the fact that when someone died in a movie, that character never returned on the screen again and all the other characters cried (unless it was a bad guy, of course.) When Abby's guinea pig Magenta died they understood that she was gone. But as far as they were concerned, death was very temporary. Sure, someone was gone off the screen, but who's to say that character didn't come back on screen after the credits rolled? I couldn't end their dreams that movies were reality with pieces of the story caught on tape. I couldn't end the wish that things that die come back eventually, even if it's not where they can see it.

"Where are they?" Odette asked suddenly. I glanced at her and she had the purple soap all in her trademark Ryan blonde hair. I grabbed the plastic cup off the side of the bathtub and lowered it into the tub, feeling the resistance until the cup and all its air submerged under the water. I pulled it back up out of the water slowly and Odette automatically tipped her head back. I set my hand gently on her forehead so none of the water got on her face and poured out the water on her hair so the soap was washed out. She slid back up and the noise of the water splashing and the strange, squeaky sound skin made when it was moved on the ceramic of the bathtub was mesmerizing.

"Mommy?" Adeline asked. I leaned back and glanced at her.

"They are dead." I admitted. The words still hurt but for the life of me I couldn't think of a better way to say it.

Both of them looked at me and I smiled as wide as I could so maybe they would think it didn't hurt me, which meant it shouldn't hurt them either.

"Why?" Adeline demanded.

Why?

I honestly had no answer to that. I stared at them and for a moment I didn't see them and I didn't see anything. I felt my mind slipping away to a memory and that scared me more than anything. It reminded me of times I didn't want to go back to. I fought away the memory—a painful one that I never wanted to remember ever again—and forced an answer out so that my little girls wouldn't be plagued like me: they wouldn't have to lie awake at night and picture the tiny hands and wonder why. They would have a solid reason, something that justifies everything that happened.

"Because they belonged with God. He let me hold them for him for nine months while he got a room ready for them in Heaven."

Adeline smiled widely because this was just the answer she wanted. Odette seemed a little more suspicious but didn't say anything about any of it. She was indifferent.

"Are they in a castle?" Adeline asked, her eyes shining bright as she pictured satin ball gowns and diamond stairs and gold dressers. I liked to think that too.

"Yes. They each have their very own room and it's filled with everything they could ever want and they are really, really happy." I smiled softly at her and thanked her by dropping a kiss on her cheek. Children helped grownups believe in beautiful things when sometimes the world looked so hideous it was hard to not be sick. And even though I knew that was most likely wishful thinking, it was hard to believe it wasn't true when Adeline believed it so strongly that I could tell by looking at her that she would have died for it. It's almost impossible not to be swayed by that kind of faith.

"I bet it's nice in Heaven." She mused. She grabbed the plastic pony her and Odette used when they played in the bathtub and ran her tiny fingers through its mane.

I ignored the stinging that seemed to caress every vein in my body and grabbed their towels off the counter. They stood up carefully and I wrapped them each in one, and then enveloped them in my arms so that I could smell the soap and their hair could soak through my shirt and leave a circular shadow of moisture where their heads had rested.

"I bet it is nice, but I am so glad you two are here with me." I whispered. Odette kissed my cheek.

"I am too, Mommy." Adeline said.

"You guys are having a group hug without me? That hurts."

I released the twins and they ran towards Jake, laughing as he lifted them up into his arms. I hadn't heard him enter the house, much less the bathroom. I stood up and walked over and we exchanged a generic welcome-home kiss that was as much a part of my routine as brushing my teeth in the morning. He took one look at me and his forehead creased with worry lines.

"Why don't you two go down the hall into the play room and make your brother and Emily some welcome home cards?" He suggested. Cole was coming by as soon as the plane landed. That made me feel a little better. Having him home would make things seem right again.

Odette and Adeline seemed excited at this idea and took off toward the play room—still clad in towels with soaking wet hair—and Jake hugged me tightly.

"What happened?" He asked.

"Adeline heard you and Alana talking about them."

I didn't have to explain who them was. I knew he could tell by the slight ache and longing that cushioned the simple pronoun. His posture shifted a little and I knew he probably didn't even realize it. He shifted it as if to protect it from a blow.

"I'm sorry, Miley. What did you say?" His arms tightened around me and for a moment we were in a bubble that no one else would understand. To outsiders of this bubble, the subject was tired and we should "move on" or "get over it" but to those who were inside their own bubble, to those who have experienced this, to Jake or to me…there was no "getting over it". There was only the resolution to face it bravely. This was in simple things, like saying the name out loud. Or finding the strength to display pictures. Or explaining to two children what happened. To others it was a loss and it was a broken heart, but broken hearts heal. What they didn't realize was that when your heart breaks, pieces fall out and get lost and are never found again, so when it does heal, there are chunks missing, and you always feel that emptiness, the space that should have been filled by them. It is always there. It doesn't go away. But slowly the spaces become less foreign and become part of who you are.

"I told them that they were in Heaven where they were meant to be. Adeline especially liked this. She decided that they live in a castle." I explained. He smiled gently.

"That is as perfect of an explanation you will ever find. Are you okay?" He said the last statement like his life depended on my answer, like if I wasn't okay he wasn't either (which he wouldn't be.) There's no way to explain how it feels to have someone love you that much.

"I am fine. And this time, it's the truth. I love you."

"You know I love you too." He responded. And I did.

He pulled away from me and cupped the back of my head. He stared intently at me.

"No more bad days?" He asked.

I smiled and let myself lean into his hand, confident that he'd always support me. "I haven't had a bad day in a very long time, and it's going to take a disaster to make that change."

"Now that's what I like to hear! Let's go make sure Odette isn't cussing Cole out on her welcome home banners."