Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning has always been Riley's favorite part. The beginning is when things are new and exciting; the beginning is when no one can imagine the difficult things that wait just a couple of pages in.
Riley only reads happy endings, to the point where she occasionally skips to the end just to make sure that everything is going to work out. If it doesn't work out, then it's probably not worth the emotional investment of reading through the entire story. She likes hope and happiness, she likes couples that fall in love and stay in love. She's aware that there are other kinds of endings out there, but she refuses to believe in them.
If Riley could choose, there would be no middle, there would only be, "Once Upon a Times," and, "Happily Ever After's."
So, she's not entirely sure how her own story came so far from what she'd always thought it would be.
Riley glanced around the house littered with laundry and an amazing array of toys. She'd just tripped over a train, that was now singing a children's song that made her consider removing the batteries, just so she would never be subjected to it again.
She'd had romantic notions when she decided to resign from her job and stay at home to raise her children. She'd had visions of doing crafts at the kitchen table (She would paint purple cats, while her well-groomed and more artistically inclined offspring would paint beautiful pictures of summer days and farm animals) and baking cookies (They would all have matching aprons and the cookies would always come out the perfect golden color, with the perfect ratio of chocolate chips to cookie).
The romance had died.
The symptoms had started with spit up, a lack of time to shower, and a remarkable number of stained clothes. Then, progressed into silverware and pans strewn across the kitchen floor, as her children had learned to crawl, pull themselves up to things, and finally walk. She'd stopped being able to go to the bathroom by herself and there were constantly tiny hands reaching out to her from under doors. She'd tried locking herself in a closet once with a package of premade cookies (Because there wasn't time to actually bake in reality) and it had taken them a grand total of three minutes to find her.
She was willing to admit to leaving one of her children at a grocery store once. They had been fine and would probably make it into adulthood without knowledge of the trauma, but that had been the point when she had started to realize that her perfect motherhood dreams were dying. She was not, in fact, perfect and the green handprint that she could now see from her vantage point, strongly suggested that her children weren't either.
However, it took her to that moment, after tripping over the toy train, to call a time of death. She had no idea what she was doing. The last time she had given the kids paint, they'd eaten it, and the last time she had eaten a cookie that was baked in an oven, had been at her grandparent's house. Her visions of the noble calling of motherhood were gone and she would settle for five minutes of time to cry in the bathroom or wash the baby food out of her hair.
"Mommy?" a hesitant, tiny voice asked, moving into view just above her head.
"Yes?" Riley replied, closing her eyes and bracing herself for what was to come next.
"Mattie and I were making a magic potion and we spilled it all over the floor," her daughter informed her and Riley let out an audible and completely heartfelt groan.
"Great," she sighed, pushing into a sitting position. Riley had never been a sarcastic person, but motherhood had changed her.
Riley reluctantly got to her feet and made her way down the hall, following the smell that strongly suggested her favorite perfume had been one of the, "Magic," ingredients. It had been a gift from her husband for their first anniversary and any other day it would have been cause for a meltdown, but Riley didn't have the energy. She'd hit her breaking point and was ready to put both of her children to bed before locking herself in her room and calling her best friend to vent and make plans to run away.
"Mommy," her toddler looked up at her with wide eyes, standing over the blue stain that added toothpaste to the list of ingredients.
"Ivy, will you please take your brother to his room and play with him, while I clean this up?" Riley requested.
"I could help," her daughter offered.
"Taking care of your brother would be a huge help," Riley returned, her eyes pleading with her daughter to listen.
"Okay," Ivy gave in, taking Mattie's hand and leading him out of the room.
Riley found the empty glass bottle that had once contained her perfume, along with a shampoo bottle, a bar of soap with a bite taken out of it, and the tube of toothpaste, all hidden behind the rocking chair that sat in the corner. She moved to the bathroom, where she dropped all of them into the sink, and grabbed a washcloth out of the bottom drawer. Running it under the sink, she looked up at the girl in the mirror and wondered when she had gone from looking like the princess of her story, to the evil, old witch.
Her hair was falling out of its ponytail and hung in frizzy strands around her face that stuck up in every direction. Her make up from three days ago was smudged around her eyes and she could see wrinkles that she didn't remember being there the last time she had looked in the mirror. She found her eyes narrowing at a piece of hair that looked suspiciously gray.
Her phone ringing brought her out of her trance and she pulled it from the pocket of her jeans, "Hello?"
"Hey, Riles. How's your day gone?" her husband's cheerful, "Bad news," voice came over the line.
"You're staying late, aren't you?" Riley asked, her voice flat.
"I really need to have this paperwork done by tomorrow. You know I would rather be home with you," he assured her, his voice apologetic.
"You wouldn't if you could see it right now," she informed him, thinking of the mess that she had been waiting to clean up until the children were in bed.
"We could live in a cardboard box on the side of the road and I would still be happy to come home every night, as long as I knew you were waiting for me," he informed her and a reluctant smile spread across her face.
"I love you," she admitted.
"I love you more. I'll be home by ten and you can chew me out about being late, while we catch up on the new season of that reality show that you like," he suggested.
"You know that I don't stay up later than nine," Riley reminded him.
"But maybe you could make an exception, just this once? We haven't had a chance to really talk the last few days."
"Hurry home," she insisted. They ended the call and she returned to scrubbing the stain from the carpet.
Riley loved silence, but she'd come to learn that it wasn't a good sound when your children were unattended in the house, which is why she became concerned when she realized that she was working in complete quiet.
The stain had not come out and she was pretty sure that she had made it worse. On the plus side, if you closed the door, the smell was almost pleasant.
She made her way to her son's room and pushed open the door, fully prepared to discover that they were drawing on the walls (Her daughter had a preference for blue dogs and her son mostly scribbled), but was relieved and surprised to find that they were sitting on the bed going through a picture book.
"Will you read to us, Mommy?" her daughter questioned, looking up with innocent, pleading eyes. They were her husband's eyes and she'd never been very good at saying no to either of them.
"Okay," Riley agreed, sliding onto the bed and stopping the fight that was about to break out about who sat next to her, by moving Matt to her other side.
She made it through the first few pages of the fairytale before her daughter started to get restless.
"Mommy?" Ivy asked, interrupting Riley mid-sentence.
"Yes?" Riley answered, shifting her attention to her daughter.
"I want to hear a new story," Ivy insisted.
"Why don't you go grab that one that Grandpa brought you the last time he was here," Riley suggested, closing the book and letting it rest on her stomach.
"He read that book to me. I want a new story."
"New story," Matt added, his brown eyes, wide as he looked up at her.
"Okay, have I ever told you the one about Princess Riley?" Riley asked, pulling her son closer, as she sunk back into the pillows.
"No," Ivy answered, watching her suspiciously.
"Well, Princess Riley grew up in the kingdom of New York, with her Mommy and Daddy and her little brother Auggie," Riley offered.
"Like Uncle Auggie?" Ivy questioned, sounding unimpressed.
"He was a lot like Uncle Auggie, but much smaller. Anyway, they grew up in a beautiful castle, but Riley's favorite place was her magical Bay Window," Riley continued.
"How was it magic?" Ivy pressed, her eyes closing as she leaned onto her mother's chest.
"It had the power to solve all of the world's problems," Riley replied; stroking her daughter's hair.
She had barely made it the part where she met her prince on the magical form of transportation called, "The Subway," when she realized that both of her children were sound asleep; their tiny bodies generating far more heat then she really thought they should be capable of.
She, gently, repositioned the two of them and draped them in a lightweight blanket, before, quietly, making her retreat from the room.
The light had barely begun to leave the sky, but she closed the blinds and drew the curtains; carefully, picking her way across the war-torn battlefield of the living room. She did her best to contain the toys in the corner of the room that was designated for them; well aware that they would probably have magically multiplied overnight and taken over the house by the next morning, but deciding to put in the effort, anyway.
And, then, made her way to her own bedroom; collapsing in the center of the bed. She doesn't have any intention of falling asleep, herself, only resting for a minute, before going to tackle the kitchen. However, the next thing that she's aware of is the gentle pressure of her husband's lips, kissing her awake.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," Lucas greeted her; brushing her hair out of her face.
"What time is it?" she questioned; blinking away the sleep from her eyes.
"Way past your bed time," he offered, collapsing onto the bed next to her, "But, I figured that you'd be really annoyed with me if I didn't wake you up, so you could brush your teeth."
"I've never had a cavity," she reminded him, gathering her strength and pushing herself into an upright position.
"I know. You brag about it every time we go to the dentist," he offered, his voice filled with annoyance, but his smile giving him away.
"How was work?" she crossed the room, grabbing a nightgown out of their dresser.
"Slow. I gave a couple of vaccinations, but it was mostly paperwork. I let myself get behind on my charting and I needed to catch up," Lucas replied, kicking off his shoes and following her into the bathroom, "How were the kids?"
"They spilled a magic potion all over Mattie's room," Riley informed him, "Unfortunately, that perfume that you bought me for our anniversary was one of the ingredients."
"I liked that perfume," he sighed; turning on the shower and shrugging out of his scrub top.
"I did, too," she agreed.
She waited until he had pulled the shower curtain closed, to collect his clothes and shove them into the laundry basket and added her own to the top of the pile. It probably says something about her emotional state that she finds herself getting slightly choked up at the sight of their clothes mixed together.
There had been plenty of times over the years when she'd thought that they weren't going to make it, but, now, here they were sharing one messy house, one laundry basket, one bed.
"You going to join me?" Lucas's voice rose over the sound of the water hitting against the porcelain tub.
"No, I've been wrangling your offspring all day. All I have energy for is brushing my teeth and getting to bed," Riley informed him, as she pulled on the nightgown and let the material settle down around her knees.
She called it her grandmother nightgown because, while it was light enough to be comfortable in the summer months, it was, also, the single most unflattering piece of clothing that she happened to own. But, it was soft against her skin and she'd worn it in the hospital after the births of both of her children, so she kept it around.
She wiped the condensation that was gathering on the mirror off with her hand and pulled out her toothbrush. The routine had been around for long enough that she didn't have to think as she brushed her teeth and listened to Lucas hum from the shower. If confronted he would deny that he did it, but she'd, yet, to get any other reasonable explanation for the progression of notes that were drifting over the shower curtain.
The water, abruptly, cut off and she spit her toothpaste into the sink.
"I was thinking that, maybe, I could take a couple of weeks off towards the ends of the summer. We could take the kids to the beach," Lucas suggested, grabbing the towel from the rack and wiping his hair, before hanging it, loosely around his hips.
"That would be fun," Riley agreed, returning her toothbrush to the cabinet.
She retreated to the bedroom and started pulling down their covers; pausing to stack the decorative pillows on a chair by the door before sliding into her side of the bed and stretching out. It took Lucas several minutes to finish his own routine and he flipped off the light on his way to climb in next to her.
They laid there in silence; their breathing the only sound in the dark. And, then, a cricket chirped outside of their window and, somewhere, a screen door slammed.
"Are you happy?" Lucas broke the silence, rolling over on the bed, until he was facing her. He aligned his body with hers and rested his head in the space between her neck and her shoulder, wrapping one arm loosely around her waist.
"What do you mean?" Riley twined her fingers with his against her waist and settled back against him.
"I know that you volunteered to quit your job and stay home, but are you happy with it? Do you want to go back?"
She didn't really have to think it through, but she hesitated a moment, anyway. She thought about the overflowing dishes in the sink and the laundry that was still sitting in the dryer. There would be little feet pounding across the hardwood far earlier, then Riley wanted to get up, the next morning and she probably hadn't seen the last of her children's magic concoctions.
"Someday, maybe, after the kids are both in school," Riley decided, "But I don't regret my decision."
"Even when the kids dump your four-hundred-dollar perfume all over the floor?" Lucas joked.
"Evan then," she agreed, enjoying the feeling of his laughter shaking both their bodies. She waited for him to still before she spoke again, "Are you happy?"
"Yeah," he didn't hesitate, "I thought I was happy when I met you, when we were dating, when you agreed to marry me; but, somehow, none of it even comes close to what it's like to be able to come home to you every day and have moments like this."
"Do you sit around all day thinking up these great speeches?" Riley questioned, wishing that she could see his face.
"No, you just bring them out in me," he returned and she shifted around, until she was facing him.
"I love you," she whispered, pressing her forehead to his.
"Still?" his breath brushed against her face.
"It's far too late to stop now," she informed him; one hand tracing the curve of his cheek.
"I love you, too," his lips descended on hers.
She wakes up in the center of the bed with Ivy's hair in her face and Mattie's tiny feet pressed against her ankle. Lucas's hand rests in the curve of her hip; like it was designed just to fit there and the sun is casting tiny ripples of light across the carpet.
She can't help thinking, in that moment, that even if the romance is dead and her life isn't the fairytale she'd once believed it to be, she wouldn't trade it for anything else. Not for castles, or glass slippers, or cookies with the perfect ratio of chocolate chips.
But, they still have time; this is only the middle.
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