Better Together – Epilogue


"Harm! Will you stop?" I playfully scold as I swat his hand away from the tray of sugar cookies sitting on the kitchen counter. "Those are for the kids! And," I clarify, "they are for after dinner. It's only 0623, Harm. Who would have thought you'd be eating sugar cookies at this hour? Of all the people," I mutter as I pick up the tray and move it away.

I place it inside the cupboard, out of sight, out of mind.

He chuckles. "I can't help it, Mac. I'm beginning to share in your eating habits. Besides, who would have thought you'd be this strict about eating cookies anyways?"

"Harmon Rabb, married life as made you a pushover!"

"It has not!" He defends himself. "It has just brought out certain…characteristics…that were there all along…they just didn't come to the surface until married life. Therefore, I can't possibly be considered a pushover."

I bite my tongue, trying not to laugh. That makes as much sense as a square tennis ball. "If you say so, Sailor." There's a little smear of icing on the corner of his mouth and I lean forward to kiss it away. "Mmm. Delicious."

"Me or the icing?" He asks, an eyebrow arched.

"The icing," I tease with a smile.

Before I can say anything else, I hear the pitter-patter of little feet running across the hardwood floor and down the stairs.

"No running inside!" I remind them, and all three of them quickly come to attention in front of me.

"Sorry!" they apologize in unison.

"We just wanted to see if Santa found us here."

"Oh, I think he sure did," Harm offers. "Why don't you take a look and see, huh?"

There's a chorus of oohs and aahs.

"Can we open them now? Please, oh, please, oh please?"

"Not yet, we have to wait for your parents to wake up so they can watch you open them, too," I say it because sometimes I think Harm would agree to anything the kids ask him.

"Okay, Grandma. I guess we can wait."

"Well, Grandpa got up extra early today to make his famous French toast for you guys, so why don't we eat breakfast? I'm sure your parents will be up by the time we are done eating."

Connor and Jonah, the twins, pile into the kitchen and head for the table. They wait as patiently as they can for Harm to serve them their breakfast. They are eight-years old and have the appetite of a Marine.

I secure three year old Emma into her booster seat and blow raspberries on her cheek before I begin to cut up her breakfast into bitesize pieces. She does not have the appetite of her older cousins and is definitely a "grazer" - she only likes to eat a few bites here and there.

Harm and I sure came along way from my car accident on that fateful Christmas Eve thirty years ago. We were married shortly after- what's the point in dating anyway when you know each other as well as Harm and I did? Both of us remained in the military until we each reached our twenty years, and then when we got out, we moved to Pennsylvania to take care of the farm after Grams passed away. Harm and I took the state bar exam, too. Harm joined the prosecutor's office, and I joined a family law practice part time and taught a few classes at the nearby law school in Pittsburgh.

We accomplished a lot together, but the one thing we weren't able to do was have a biological family together. One year into our marriage, and the endometriosis progressed so much that I was almost constantly in pain – there was no choice but to have a complete hysterectomy. I was nervous about the operation at the time, but not my future. Harm was always there for me and I knew that with him on my team, I could face not having biological children – because he was right. It didn't matter how it happened as long as it happened together.

Just about eight months after my operation, we got a call from the social worker. She was intrigued with our file, and our experiences with both Mattie and Chloe. She told us about a set of twins she had been trying to find a permanent home for. They were older now, six years old, and no one wanted to adopt two older children…everyone wanted to adopt babies, so they were constantly floating from foster home to foster home. She told me they were "crack babies" when they were born, several weeks premature. Their father overdosed before their birth and they became wards of the state because their mother, a teenage runaway, couldn't care for them. They also tested positive for the drug in their system at the time of their birth. We later learned that their birthmother overdosed herself before they were even six months old. The social worker wanted to keep the children together, and thought maybe Harm and I would be the perfect fit.

And we were the perfect fit. For being born as they were, Allison and Jeffery were not the type to just give up and that was something the four of us had in common from the beginning. They were six- year old children who wanted a permanent home, a family, someone to love them and support them and care for them, and they had a hard time finding that because they were born to a drug addicted mother and spent so long in foster care that no one wanted them because they were "too old." Harm and I knew that we would do anything in our power to help them…anything.

I love our kids so much that I don't think I could have loved them anymore even if I did give birth to them. Harm was right; we didn't have to have biological children, to be a family…biological just means biology. A family is made up of love and that can happen regardless of genetics. So what if they don't have my looks and his brains, or his looks and my brains…they are still our children. And to be honest – Trish and I were secretly thrilled with the fact that neither one of them wanted to fly. I don't know how many Rabb aviators I can handle in my life.

I look up and I see Jeffery and his wife descending down the stairs with Allison and her husband following close behind, then I look at my grandchildren and smile.

With all the hustle and bustle of the kids squealing in delight greeting their parents, I glance across the kitchen and make eye contact with my husband. "I love you," I mouth to him followed by a wink.

He smiles back as he crosses the kitchen and stands behind me so he can put his hands on my shoulders. "I love you, too," he whispers against my ear with a gentle squeeze to my shoulders.

I squeeze his hand as it rests on my shoulder. "We did well together."

"That we did, Mac. That we did," he agrees.

We're the best team I've ever been on. I'm glad we were able to let go of the things that didn't matter, but hold on to the things that did – most importantly – each other.

We got our happily ever after, that is for sure, and I will be grateful for that every day.

You don't always have to do everything alone; it is okay to let people in – sometimes, I wonder why I ever doubted Harm and I could be together.

After all, we are better together – always have been and always will be.


End.