Epilogue
Nika fights back tears through the applause. Her vision clouds and she is lost in a memory of Leo's first day of school. His backpack too big for him, his hands so small, hanging onto his father's pant leg, his tiny nose sniffling bravely with the resolve not to cry.
And now, here he is, getting his white coat, on his way to become a doctor, having graduated top of his class from Stanford for undergraduate and starting at Harvard Medical School now.
She feels a hand on her waist, pulling her against a strong shoulder to lean against. Nika allows herself to burrow into her husband's side, knowing that he must be feeling some of the same things as her right now.
With her eyes blurred to the point that looking towards the stage is pointless, she looks to her right, taking in the sight of her husband, a man she has lived with, loved with, and parented with for nearly a quarter century.
His hair is still dark, though there are a few streaks of grey running through it now. His body is still lean, strong, and fills out his dark black Armani suit to perfection. And his eyes, there are more crinkles around the edges than when he first proposed marriage all those years ago, but they still hold the same commitment and loyalty from all those years ago.
"He's going to be so far away now," she whispers half to her husband, half to herself.
"Only a flight away, Nika." He pats her hand in assurance, though she senses that he may not be fully assured himself.
It's true, Boston is a few hours by flight, but they had been spoiled, living in Napa Valley while Leo attended Stanford. Being that close meant that Leo could still come home sometimes on the weekends for dinner, that they could drop by and have breakfast with him at times, and that Leo could see his younger brother's baseball games and little sister's hockey matches when he visited.
Speaking of his siblings, Nika looks to her left and sees her youngest son and daughter fidgeting in their seats, clearly bored by the ceremony but in awe of their older brother who stands on the stage in his crisp white medical coat beaming at them in the audience. They had all flown out to Boston months prior to come look at medical schools with Leo, and she remembers how wide Ana's eyes were at the old windy cobblestone streets.
She looks between them both - Nikolas, at seventeen years old, who has been taller than her since middle school, and Ana, her baby, who came as a surprise when Leo had just gotten to high school – and finds herself filling with so much love she can hardly breathe.
She thinks back to their decision two decades ago to settle down permanently in the United States after a few years of roaming the world with Leo before he could remember any of it really (as her son points out to them all the time). She remembers moving them into their Napa estate with Leo hanging off her hip and an empty house to furnish, her husband making phone calls in the other room, taking care of things as usual. She remembers the pattering of tiny feet and shrieks of joy as the two of them chased Leo around the patio.
How fast it has all gone by.
And through it all, so much love, enough love to fill the sky and spill out of rooms and flood the ocean, enough love that every sunrise Nika sees she tends to think that all the hurt and all the pain and all the bad in earlier days were all somehow worth it if it means that it can be washed away by the pouring of love in her life in the present. A present that started when a man in a red tie with a bouquet of red roses knocked on the doors of her gilded penthouse cage.
She knew the day he asked her to marry him that she would gain a husband in name and a father for her baby. Just how much of a father and a husband he would be, she could not have imagined in her wildest dreams.
She never asked for him to be a man who would study the rules of T-ball so he could coach their little boy's team or for him to be a man who never raised his voice with the children no matter how many vases they smashed or garage doors they scratched or who would love someone else's child like his own every day like he loved his own to the point that bloodlines became irrelevant. She never asked, but he was that father all the same.
As for being a husband, never in a million years could she have imagined their marriage. Never in her bravest of dreams, her wildest longings, could she have imagined the strength and trust and deepest understanding in their marriage (or the sex, the sex is amazing).
They had renewed their vows a few years ago, under a beautiful sunset over their own Napa Valley vineyard, inviting a few close friends they had made along the way. Mostly, though, it was for their family. For Leo and Nikolas and Ana to be a part of the vows they were making. They had agreed long ago never to let their children know the true story of how they came to be married, but they've never hidden the love between them. Their beginning might have been invented, but the last twenty-three years have been very much real.
They have spent their weekends lounging on patios, reading side by side, driving vehicles of their children and children's classmates, going from practice to rehearsal to tournaments. They have spent family vacations at Disney-fucking-world of all fucking places (the old Nika would have burst out laughing at that thought). They spent one particularly traumatic spring break in Hawaii when the weather did not decide to cooperate and it rained all week. They have toured college campuses together as a family, with Ana still in a stroller, right about the time Leo was about to leave home as a recruited baseball pitcher who simultaneously won state science fairs for his biology research (Nika had been worried during this period of time that his picture in the local paper would draw too much attention to their family, but it was her husband who assured her with a dark look that anyone looking for them was long gone). Nika treasures all those memories and more – treasures each Christmas that her and her family have gone to pick out a tree and decorate it together, treasures each recital and each skinned knee, treasures every time her hitman husband taught their child to ride a bicycle patiently by holding onto the seats behind them.
Nika burrows deeper into her husband's side now, remembering all those sleepless nights with colicky babies and stubborn toddlers and loud teenagers. She treasures those moments too, just as she treasures all those exhausted touches and tangled limbs and tired laughs as they held onto each other. All those gentle kisses and reverent glances and warm embraces. She treasures all those moments and more, knowing there are millions more to come.
The dean of the school is wrapping up his speech, pausing to look between the future doctors on stage and the proud (if not a bit bored) families in the audience.
"The best is still to come," he concludes, to a smattering of applause.
And as she has for the past twenty-three years of her life, Nika believes it.