I understand everyone is having trouble opening this chapter and other updates on the site lately. Hopefully they'll get it fixed soon. Here's the last chapter for this story! I have several other stories in the works, but between updating my new house and surviving the holidays, I probably won't be publishing for a bit. Thank you to everyone who followed, reviewed, and favorited this story. I enjoy all your feedback!
XOXO, Libby

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"Pronto!" A friendly young female voice came over the speaker on Tobias' desk.

"Therese?" Tobias asked. "It's Tobias, and my wife, Tris."

"Ah!" the young woman exclaimed excitedly. "Tris! I am so happy to talk to you. My brother, he talk about you all the time!"

Tris smiled at the young woman's excited but heavily accented English as much as her friendly words.

"Brother?" Tobias cut in before Tris could respond. "Does that mean it's official?"

"Official?" Therese repeated.

"You got the test results?" he clarified. "I really am your brother?"

"Yes!" Therese answered brightly. "The test says that you are my brother! It says we share a mother."

Tobias laughed, and Tris heard relief and joy in the sound.

"I have to come see you," the girl added. "I have to meet Tris, and my niece and nephew!"

"I'm excited to meet you, too," Tris said.

Therese laughed. "Tobias showed me photos from your wedding. It was very beautiful. I never dream I would have a blonde American sister!"

The three of them laughed, and chatted about Therese's schooling, and when she might get back to Albania to meet her brother's family.

Rebekah texted Tris that the babies were starting to stir and would soon need to nurse. Tris said goodbye to her new sister-in-law, and Tobias ended the call so he could join his wife in the nursery. They held hands on their way upstairs, and both felt lighter after clearing the air and talking to Therese.

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Andrew and Natalie arrived on a Tuesday. To keep things simple, just Amar went to Tirana to pick them up. Packing up the twins and juggling their schedules, car seats, and supplies was a lot of work. Plus, they didn't own a vehicle that could hold everyone at once.

Tris and Rebekah bathed the twins that morning and dressed them in coordinating tiny outfits. Tobias the fifth wore a white long-sleeved onesie with a black bow tie printed on it, black soft cotton pants, and a black cap. Lilliana wore a similar outfit, but her cap and pants were bright pink, and her white onesie was printed to look like it had a necklace of pink beads.

"Look at you all fancy for Grandma and Grandpa," Tris cooed at her children as she snapped a picture.

Tobias popped his head in the nursery door. "They just drove in the gate," he said excitedly.

Rebekah handed Lilly to Tobias while Tris picked up baby Five. They hurried downstairs where they found Roza waiting by the door.

"Jashtë është shumë ftohtë. Prisni në dhomën e ndenjes në mënyrë që foshnjat të qëndrojnë të ngrohta."
(It is too cold outside. Wait in the living room so the babies stay warm,) the housekeeper scolded.

Tris giggled excitedly as she followed Roza's instruction. The housekeeper had become quite the mother hen since the babies came home - always patting and fussing at the little ones, giving out advice, and lending a hand. It warmed Tris' heart because she knew it was a reflection of how Roza had been with Tobias when she was helping Evelyn care for him when he was small.

The front door opened, and Natalie and Andrew hurried in, broad smiles already in place.

Natalie took one look at her daughter, son-in-law, and new grandbabies, and burst into happy tears. "Look at you!" she exclaimed.

Andrew laughed. Tris teared up as she hurried toward her parents. For several minutes everyone talked, cried, hugged, and passed the babies back and forth. Tris took pictures of her parents holding the little ones and sent them to Caleb.

"They're one month old today, aren't they?" Natalie asked.

"Yes!" Tris exclaimed. "I can't believe they've been with us a month already. It's going so fast!"

"Oh, Sweetheart, you have no idea," Andrew said with a chuckle. "When they hand you a grandbaby, then you can talk about how fast it goes. I swear you and Caleb were just this small last week.

"Caleb was never this small," Natalie corrected. "How much do they weigh now?"

"Mr. Five is almost six pounds now," Tris said proudly, making the conversion from grams for her parents' sake. "Miss Lilly is five pounds, four ounces. She's growing at a good rate, but she's just a little peanut. The doctor thinks she'll always be smaller than her brother. I guess she takes after me."

"Caleb was eight and a half pounds at birth," Natalie said with a chuckle, "so he was never this small. You were Five's size at birth - a few ounces more. Twins are usually smaller, though. They have to share space and nutrients in the womb, and they tend to come early."

"We're really lucky Tris got to the hospital quickly or they could have been born even earlier," Tobias added.

He was quick to bring that up after hearing his wife beat herself up on the day Therese called with the test results. Before that Tobias hadn't known that Tris was blaming herself for the premature birth just as he blamed himself. When they finally talked about their fight, they had agreed that both of them made mistakes when they fought, but that Tris' premature labor before the fight indicated that it really wasn't about them and their disagreement.

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Tobias thought they were handling new parenthood well before Tris' parents arrived, but having them there - especially Natalie - was incredibly comforting. Andrew helped Amar convince Tobias to get caught up on some work things he'd been neglecting. Natalie convinced Tris to nap each day, and helped with some of the overnight feedings so Tobias could get more sleep. He took advantage of his time in the office and better rested brain power to plan a surprise for Tris.

The twins grew steadily. By Thanksgiving, they were seven weeks old. Lilly had finally passed the six-pound mark, and her big brother was six and a half. Their original due date had passed, and the pediatrician in Tirana was pleased by their progress and overall health.

Tris, Natalie, and Roza planned an American-style Thanksgiving feast, and they invited the entire estate staff and their significant others to join them in the big dining room. Tris dressed the babies in matching onesies that Natalie had brought for the occasion. The little shirts were grey, and said, "Everyone is Thankful for us" in swirling white letters. Tobias the fifth wore little striped pants with his, while Lilly's pants had flowers, and she wore a matching headband. Amar set up a double infant swing near the dining table so the babies could be nearby during dinner.

At eleven o'clock, an hour before anyone was expected, Tris was notified that the first guests had arrived. She hurriedly finished dressing, thankful that her mom and Tobias had taken the babies down already.

Tris was halfway down the stairs to the living room when she stopped abruptly. "Oh wow," she breathed.

There, on the sofa, sat Tobias' sister, Therese, and baby Lilly. They had the same dark hair, same warm skin tone, same hooked nose and spare upper lip. Tris knew her babies favored their father in looks, but seeing Therese was like looking straight into a brown-eyed version of Lilliana's future.

"Tris!" the younger woman greeted her eagerly.

Tris hurried into the living room and greeted her sister-in-law with a hug.

"I get it," Tris said to her husband, who was just walking in from the foyer. "Before you got the DNA test done, you told me that you knew Therese was your sister. In person, I see it. You must both favor your mother, because you have very similar looks. The babies, too. Lilly looks so much like Therese that it's shocking."

"My mamma will love to see when she is a bit bigger," Therese said of her adoptive mother. "They adopt me when I was three years old, so they have photos. It is so exciting to have a family that look like me. I never know any blood relatives until I met Tobias."

Tris felt a pang of conscience. She'd been so bothered by Tobias' alleged sister and the inopportune timing of her arrival in their lives that she had never really considered what the experience was like for Therese. Growing up, even as loved and wanted as she had been, there was a hole in her life. Finding a biological brother - plus a niece and nephew - was the first time Therese had experienced genetic kinship since she was taken from Evelyn as a toddler.

"Speaking of siblings…" Natalie said from the doorway to the foyer.

Tris looked up and startled violently when she saw Caleb and Myra standing with her parents. Myra held baby Five in her arms, and Caleb looked uncharacteristically emotional as he glanced around Tris' home.

"Are you alright, Zemra ime?" Tobias asked, wrapping his arms around his wife.

Tris nodded mutely.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

Tris sniffled, which got Caleb's attention. At the sight of his sister's tears, Caleb's own eyes welled up.

"Bea," he choked.

Tris broke free of Tobias' embrace, ran to her brother, and threw her arms around him. After the way the siblings had got along in Chicago, Tobias hadn't expected that kind of emotional reaction from his wife. Then again, this was his first visit to their home since his brief stop after leaving the mental hospital. Since then, Tris had also walked with Tobias through losing his mother all over again, finding a sister he didn't know he had, and bearing twins. Perhaps I should have expected this after all, he thought to himself.

"What is happening?" Therese asked quietly. She still had baby Lilly in her arms, and had stepped closer to her brother in concern and confusion.

Tobias put his arm around his sister's shoulders. "It's a long story," he said. "Tris and her brother have not always been close. They grew up together, but in some ways they were more strangers than you and I. Now, like us, they're working on building a relationship. Someday I will tell you more about it."

Natalie stepped out to help Roza and Rebekah in the kitchen. Amar, George, and Tori joined the family in the living room. Other members of the staff began arriving with their significant others, and soon the house was a lively jumble of Albanian, English, and Italian, which Therese was thrilled to find out Rebekah could speak fairly well.

Tobias and Tris invited everyone to move to the dining room, where they all found their places at the huge table.

"Thank you all for being here," Tris said, then repeated herself in Albanian. "I'm going to do my best to explain this holiday, and why we're all here. Tobias is going to translate for me if that's alright."

Around the table, heads nodded, and Tobias put an arm around his wife.

"In America, we gather with our families on the fourth Thursday of November every year," she began. "It is a tradition that is based on the feast of thanksgiving which some early European settlers did after their first harvest in the new world. Nearly two hundred years later, people asked for that celebration dinner to become a regular tradition and a nationally recognized holiday. A civil war was brewing, and they thought that if everyone could just go home and remember what they were thankful for, there might not be a war. It didn't really work. The war happened anyway, and as you know, civil wars are horrible, scaring, things for a people."

Around the table, heads nodded. The older adults remembered the trouble in Kosovo and the ethnic Albanians who were killed there just twenty or so years earlier.

"Sometime after the war," Tris continued, "people started celebrating the holiday regularly. Today, it is one of the most important holidays in America every year, and it's my favorite. There are no gifts to buy, and it has no religious connection. Thanksgiving is just a day to remember everything we have to be thankful for. We spend the day eating a huge feast with our families. Traditionally, we have roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry jelly, stuffing or dressing, and pumpkin pie for dessert. Some of these things are familiar to all of you, and some of them will be new. Roza, Rebekah, my mom, and I have prepared the traditional feast for you. If you have questions about any of the new foods, I promise I will not be offended if you ask about it. And if there are things you don't like, that won't hurt my feelings either. The idea behind the meal is just to spend time with the people you love and to think about all the things for which you are grateful."

"Another tradition -" Andrew interjected as Tris finished. "We also usually go around the table and say one thing that we are each thankful for. Would you all be willing to do that with us?"

Tobias translated, and the suggestion was met with smiles, so Andrew started.

"This year, I am thankful for my family being safe, healthy, and rebuilding their relationships," he said, and Tobias translated.

"I'm thankful for my two new grandbabies," Natalie said.

Myra was thankful for having a family to be with on the holidays. Caleb was grateful for a second chance in life. Rrarman expressed gratitude for his hard-working staff. His wife appreciated their grandchildren. Around the table, each person shared one thing. Some were grateful for their jobs. Many mentioned their family members or friends. Tori said she was grateful for Tobias and the way she accepted her brother and Amar. George kissed his little sister on the top of her head before saying that he was grateful to have babies in the house again. Jorik surprised a few of his coworkers by saying that he was thankful for his beautiful girlfriend, Rebekah. She returned the favor and expressed her gratitude for Jorik and his family.

"I am happy that I found Tobias," Therese said.

Tobias took his sister's hand. "I had better explain who you are," he said with a chuckle as he put his other arm around Tris before launching into the story about how his mother hadn't actually died when he was a child, but had lived in Rome, where she had another child. The staff knew bits and pieces of the story. Amar had given them some basic information after Evelyn really died. But most of them did not know about Therese until Tobias explained.

When her husband finished talking, Tris stood and held up her glass. "It has been a crazy year," she said in English and then Albanian. "I am so thankful to have all of you here with us. Our family has grown a lot since Tobias and I met, and I am thankful for every single one of you. Gëzuar!" (Cheers!)

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On Thanksgiving night, when the babies were settled in their cribs and the guests had gone home or to their rooms, Tobias led Tris through the nursery dressing room and into the master suite. A tray waited on Tris' writing table bearing fruit, cheese, crackers, and sparkling juice.

"What is this?" Tris asked.

"I wanted to spoil my wife a bit," Tobias said, biting his bottom lip to contain a smile.

"Your wife is already spoiled," Tris argued. "She has an incredibly handsome husband, two beautiful babies, a stunning estate managed by the most caring staff in the world, a house full of people she loves, and more money than anyone on this Earth needs."

"So what's a little more?" Tobias teased as he opened the sparkling cider.

"Is there a special occasion I'm missing?" Tris asked, still trying to figure out what her husband was up to. "It's not anyone's birthday, and it's not an anniversary of any kind."

"No," Tobias agreed as he poured the juice into champagne glasses, "I literally just wanted to spend some time alone with my beautiful wife, and to show her how much I love her."

Tris smiled shyly. "I love you too," she said.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Physically, I feel great," Tris replied. "Emotionally, I have my moments. I had no idea the hormones would hold onto me after giving birth. No one warned me about that."

Tobias scooped his wife into his arms and deposited her onto their big bed. "I love you," he said, nuzzling her neck.

"Tobias, I…" Tris began haltingly as she recognized the smoldering look in his deep blue eyes. "I don't know."

He knew what she meant, but he stuck out his bottom lip in a pout and teased her. "You don't know if you love me?"

She gave him a stern look. "You know I love you," she said. "But I just… my… my body isn't the same anymore."

He saw the tears in her eyes as she averted her gaze, and it broke his heart.

"No, it's not," he agreed, startling Tris into looking up at him once more. "This body is so much more than it used to be. First, it was yours. These gorgeous legs moved you around. This brain learned so much in school. Then we met, and it became mine, too, just as my body became yours. This heart, it beat for me. And this body did crazy things to me - it still does. Then, this body of yours grew two beautiful babies. It stretched to accommodate them as they grew, and it gave up its own needs to provide for them first. These breasts…" Tobias stopped to nuzzle his face between Tris' full breasts. "These breasts are like ripened fruits. They're so full, and lucious, and they provide sustenance for our children. Your body is amazing, Beatrice Grace Eaton. It does so much, and I just want to celebrate it, and love it, and kiss every square millimeter."

Tris sighed as her insecurities and objections melted away under the intensity of Tobias' loving affection. She and her life might not be perfect, but she was well-loved.

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The End.