You asked for an epilouge. Here it is.

This will be told in about three or four parts, so bear with me for a bit. :)

Love, Peace, and God bless,

~Hannah

Ten Years Later

Hayley's POV:

Five years to the day I got married. Who could've guessed that I'd end up with Ellie's little brother, Carter? Once we got engaged, started dating even, I tried to stop calling Travis and Katie "uncle" and "aunt". I still couldn't.

Ellie died eight years ago. She had come over to study for a history test we had at the university, and the next thing we knew, BAM! She was hit head on by a drunk driver. None of us had taken it well, especially my mom. That had been her baby before I came along. She went into a depression, and the new baby…

Oh, that's right.

Another crash took another precious life not a year before Ellie's. Mom was about sixth months pregnant with soon-to-be Hallison Faith. Chelsea was in the passenger seat, rocking out to one of her favorite bands, Switchfoot. Mom was laughing at her as she swung her head back and forth and looked like she was having a seizure, dancing all crazy like that. She wasn't wearing her seatbelt.

Chelsea had continued and Mom looked straight ahead…and that's when it happened. She hadn't seen the eighteen-wheeler coming, and on a whim she threw one arm across Chelsea's chest and threw the car to the side, turning until the wheel wouldn't budge an inch. They were lucky to make it out with their lives. They barely missed the enormous truck, and instead crashed into a tree. They were pretty shaken up, Chelsea with a broken arm, a giant bruise across her forehead, and a concussion. She was blessed not to have more.

Mom was fine, completely healthy, save for a couple of scratches and a bruise where her arm had been crushed when the air bag flew out at Chelsea. The doctors checked her out, said everything was fine, then sent her home.

Or so we thought. The next couple of days, she felt pain that she described as worse than labor. She couldn't move from the bed, and though she never screamed, I saw the tear stains on her pillow. Finally, it became too much to bear and she demanded me to take her to the doctor. She didn't want Dad to; she didn't want him to see her in such a weak stage.

I drove her there, and once I helped her inside, she said she'd get a cab for the ride back home. I told her I would stay, but since when does my mother listen to reason? She commanded me to go home, and with that fire burning in her eyes, I wasn't about to argue, not to mention Carter and I had a date that night.

She walked in the door all slow like about an hour or two later. I was in the kitchen, but she couldn't see me, thank the Heavens. Instead, she collapsed on the couch.

"P-P-Percy?" her voice was shaky and totally un-mom like. I went to the opening from the kitchen to the living room and laid flat against the wall, peeking around so they wouldn't know I was there.

"Yeah?" Dad walked downstairs, skipping the last two, and walked towards Mom, checking his email with his iPhone. "Hey, I wanted to ask you about the – Annabeth? What happened?"

She was quiet, and even from my point of view she looked small. "I killed the baby." She whispered gently. Then she gazed up, tears pouring from her eyes. "I killed the baby, Percy. I killed the baby!"

I've never seen my mother cry the way she did right then. She was shuddering, and her words were uncomprehend-able as she thrust her arms forward and crashed into Dad's chest.

Nothing was the same after that, not for a while at least. Mom was calm, but jumpy and reserved. She didn't eat for months on end. She was in a chronic depression that seemed to never fade.

Six months later, Ellie was taken from our lives. She got even worse. I did, too, but I had to be Mom when she wasn't.

Then one day…I'm not sure what happened. She just ended it. She was up early one morning, making the one and only food she'd accomplished in twenty-five years: pancakes. She was whistling a soft tune and dancing around and eating strawberries as she cooked them. Her voice was sweet (well, as sweet as Annabeth Jackson's could get), and lively, and just so…her. Dad was just as happy and excited. He'd missed this version of mom, and soon they were swaying romantically in the kitchen, feeding each other the juicy fruit and being the lovey-dovey best friends that they were.

That got me thinking. Carter and I had been together since that night at the fireworks, when we discussed the topic of who or what "Carley" was, and Ellie pulled me aside to tell me how he liked me. He denied it, of course, and we weren't honestly "together", not for a while at least. We became best friends first and gradually the love came. I couldn't imagine my life without him. I was twenty-two, after all. I needed someone who was going to stay with me forever.

So, we did it. We tied the knot on his sister's birthday, and that next night – well, I'm not exactly sure what happened. Let's just say we didn't wait long for kids.

Hallie had been unexpected. She really had. We were on our third week of the honeymoon (we were on a cruise to Greece, go figure, right?), and I got so sick we had to take a plane home as soon as we arrived on the island.

Even more unexpected, though, was when we told Mom and Dad.

…And they told us about Luke.

My mom was forty-five years old, and she was pregnant. I at the time I could only compare it to Michele Duggar from 19 Kids and Counting. Or maybe it was twenty-one now, I had no idea.

"You're – you're what?" I stuttered, and suddenly a scene from Father of the Bride II played in my mind.

Mom sighed. "It's a shock to us, too," she said softly. She rubbed her stomach gingerly. I saw the fear in her eyes, though she tried hard not to show it.

"Hey," I took her hand and held it. "Don't be worried. You wouldn't have been given another chance unless it was meant to be, you understand? Chin up. As Jamie says, there's something bigger out there."

Jamie.

Jamie Jackson, that's who she would become later on, about eight years after her and Audrick hit it off at the beach. So many times during that summer and year later, up till he was sixteen, he went to the hospital with her. He read to her at night and usually fell asleep next to her on the hospital bed. He brought games like Parcheesi and Sorry and Monopoly to play as she went through chemotherapy. She lost all of her hair, and for some time she was in so much pain she could hardly move without shedding a tear.

And then one day, they forced him out. They told him that she was going to die, had maybe ten weeks to live if they were lucky. She had stopped responding to treatments a while ago, but they had to keep trying. For some months, Audrick was stuck in a rut, constantly going back and forth to check on her. There was never a day when she wasn't constantly on his mind. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't think and couldn't talk until he knew Jamie was okay, even if just for that night. He would spend hours talking to her on the phone, even if we had school that next morning, and he loved to skip and go see her instead. He was an A+ student, what was it going to hurt? That is until our principal told him he was going to have to go to summer school if he missed anymore days.

Eight weeks into her ten-week-initative, they released her. Her father, who had become and poor and drunk over the years, had no means to take care of her, sent her out to live on the streets. Audrick took care of that real quick, and Mom had her moved in within the next day.

One Sunday morning, Jamie shuffled down the stairs. Audrick had been counting down the days. Three were left. A mere three. Still he had never seen anyone as beautiful as the once-had-been blonde coming down and smiling in a bright yellow, flowing dress.

"I want to try something," she said, quietly as if talking loud would hurt her. Maybe it did, we didn't know, and she wasn't one to just admit when she was in pain. We all practically whispered, too. We were all afraid. How could we not be?

"What's that," Audrick asked with a smile, standing and pulling out her chair as always. She nodded fragilely and took her seat next to him, cutting the warm pancakes Mom had made (the same day her depression had vanished).

"Remember how I've always there's – " she paused to swallow her pills with some orange juice – "something bigger out there?"

We all nodded.

"I want to see," she said plaintively. "I want us to try. You don't have to, but I think we should. And if not, Audrick, will you drive me? There's one right down the street. I'd do it myself, but in my condition…" she trailed off and stuck the fork in her mouth, chewing slowly and delicately. Sweat beaded on her forehead from the effort.

Audrick grinned, placed his hand over hers. "Of course I will. We all will, won't we?" he eyed each of us as if daring us to decline. None of us said a word. "Good. We'll be ready in ten."

I don't know what happened that day. We all got dressed in fancy clothes, and went to this little, small-town church I'd never seen before. Sure, I'd worn skirts and Chelsea had all of our lives because we thought they were cute and stylish. But something about stepping in there slapped me in the face, pounded on my chest, told me all that I had done wrong and made me want to beg forgiveness from it. We went through the service, and though the preacher was short, fat, old and scraggly, his voice was loud and proud, and he knew what he was saying. We had sung a few songs just before he'd gotten up on the platform behind the pedestal. Jamie knew all of them by heart. She stood and she sang, and wow, did she have one of the most beautiful voices I'd ever heard.

Prayer at the alters were called, and Jamie didn't hesitate to walk up there. She prayed and prayed and prayed, until finally the entire congregation was on their knees up there with her. I couldn't understand the language they were speaking, but I knew I wanted to taste it on my lips, too.

The service finally ended and we all went home. Chelsea smiled from the back of the van.

"I think we should go again on Wednesday."

"Good idea," Audrick smiled.

"Yeah," Jamie said. Suddenly her face fell and she smacked the side of her head. "Stupid! I've got a doctor's appointment today!"

"When?" Dad was driving.

Jamie checked the clock on the van's console. "In about thirty minutes."

"We'll just go together, then," Dad had treated Jamie gently since the day they first met. Now that she was his semi-daughter, he seemed even happier to be so.

Not much was said between us as we pulled into the hospital's parking lot. We filed out one by one and went with Jamie inside. Only one of us was allowed to go back with her, and it came to no surprise when Audrick was the first to shoot a hand towards the sky.

Twenty minutes later, Audrick came dashing down the hallways, circling this way and that, trying to find us. When he did, his face was completely ecstatic, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. "It's gone!"

"What?" I knit my eye brows in confusion as he sprang forward and started bouncing up and down, his smile wide and immaculate.

"It's gone," he repeated. "It's gone, it's gone, it's gone, it is gone!"

"What is?" I had to yell to get his attention.

"The cancer," he sat down on a chair in front of us, smiled wide and clasped his hands together. "They don't have any idea where's its gone, but it is gone. They can't find a trace it. I'm not sure what happened at that church, but man was it something. Perhaps we should start believing in a higher power. I mean, how did the Olympians, Titans, all that get here unless something created them? There had to be something bigger and stronger and better than just Gaea and Uranus. Not a big black bird called a Nyx." He stood and started walking backwards towards the hallway. "It's gone," he grinned again. "It's gone."

He took off running in the opposite direction.

Present Time

Hayley's POV:

Things changed in my heart that day.

I didn't always believe in miracles. I thought that they were a dime a dozen, one in a million. I was wrong.

"Mommy!" An excited five year old ran from down stairs and threw herself into my lap. I smiled down and her and engulfed her in a huge hug, adorned her in kisses. She laughed and grabbed my face with two of the smallest hands I'd ever seen. She held them there and stared into my eyes. "No – more – kisses," she stated, to which I simply kissed her more and more, then tickled her until she laughed so hard she couldn't breathe.

"Where's mah Daddy?" she asked, crawling down from my lap and going to her art table in the middle of the living room. She wanted to be an artist one day, and I was sure she had the name for it.

Hallie Artemis Stoll. That's what we named her. I had her nine months after we were married. Mom had my baby brother Luke five days prior (even though our due dates were on the same day). Sometimes it still shocked me to think of myself as a Stoll. I was no longer a Jackson kid, part of the "Jackson Five" as Ellie used to say.

"He's at work," I stood and followed her into the kitchen, me walking around the island while she climbed up in a chair.

"What's a work?" She picked up her fork and smiled a toothy grin at me.

"Hmm…" I tapped my spatula as I turned on the griddle and strapped my apron on. They were a dying a fashion, which to me was all the more reason to own twenty-seven of them. "It's like when you go to school," I said, smiling.

"How come?" How come was her favorite saying. 'This is a rock', 'How come?'.

"The teacher makes you do things, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Even if you don't want to?"

"Yeah! She makes us do ma'ff, Mommy. Ma'ff. I don' like ma'ff. The numbers float in my face."

Dyslexia skipped a generation, but it's still fifty percent dominant.

"Math," I corrected, pouring pancake batter unto the griddle.

"Ma'ff." She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out. I did it back.

"You better start acting sick, kiddo, if you don't want to go to school today," I warned.

"It's nine o' five, Mommy. I can't go to school no-mores."

"I can check you in."

Her mouth formed an "O" and she gasped.

"I'll be a sick girl then, Mommy. Ah-hugh, ah-hugh." Her faking coughing was priceless.

I laughed and sat down beside her, two plates of pancakes for us to share. I'd sued bananas and strawberries to form a smiley face on hers. She looked at mine skeptically. "What?" I finally asked.

"Where's your smiley man, Mommy?"

"Hmm, I don't have a smiley man."

"How come, Mommy?"

"'Cause I don't need one."

"How come, Mommy?"

I gazed sideways, tilted my head, and tapped my chin. "Hmm, let's see…ooh, I know!" She grabbed her and pulled her into my lap, brushing her hair behind her ears. "Honestly, it's because I've got you right here with me. You're the biggest smiley man I could ask for."

She giggled. "But I' not a man, Mommy. I'm a gurl."

I pressed my lips unto her cheek, "I know, I know."

She crawled back over into her seat, started eating plaintively, before she gazed at me again. "Mommy?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

"I don't need the smiley man, neither."

My heart swelled, and I laughed. "Come here," I tickled her until she couldn't breathe.

Some hours later

The door cracked open, and Carter walked in. Hallie looked up excitedly. "Daddy!" She dashed from her art table and wrapped herself around his leg. He laughed, then bent over and picked her up.

"Hey," he smiled in my direction. I nodded. He sauntered over and kissed me, and as he was pulling back, he whispered, "I've got something we need to talk about."

I gave him a weird look, but said nothing.

"You're home early," I mused, glancing at the old coo-coo clock we had in the living room. We should probably get rid of that, I thought absentmindedly.

The thing we need to talk about, he mouthed. I scorched my eyebrows together and finished Hallie's grilled cheese. I was all about using my griddle, and since Mom had never been one for cooking, I'd taken a head course in it at the university. I tried something new every night for a year. Everyone loved it, too, which was a bonus.

I'd thought about going into the cooking business, but Carter had quickly talked me out of it. Why, Heaven knows (though later I would find out that it was because Ellie had wanted to be a chef, and that would hit too close to home with him).

Oh, I mouthed back, placing the grilled cheese on a plate and setting it in front of Hallie. Where do you want to talk?

Back porch a good place?

Sure.

"Hal," Carter smirked at his daughter. "You remember that time me and you snuck away and hid where Mommy couldn't find us?"

Hallie swallowed her food and nodded.

"Mommy and I are gonna do that now, okay? We'll be back in a second. No peeking!" He poked her stomach for good measure. She laughed.

"Oh-kay, Daddy."

"Good," he kissed her forehead and ruffled her blonde hair, then led me outside. As expected, Hallie immediately abandoned her food and ran to catch us, but he shut the glass door with a smile. She still leaned her ear against it, trying hard as she could to hear.

"Your blood tests are back," he said quietly. I leaned against the porch rail and looked at my stomach.

"Oh." I paused. "And?"

"I think you need to look." He handed me his iPhone, which I took and opened his email. I scrolled through until I found the one from my doctor (we have her send it to both of us in case the other forgets to check ours), and I clicked on.

I choked when I read it.