AN: So here we go. This is the Epilogue to the story. This is approximately six years into the future.
AN at the end.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Carol wanted to be the first to the door when Sophia got home, but she was seldom the first to reach it. Sophia barely wrestled her way inside, pulling her small suitcase behind her, when she had to let go of the bag and take up the six year that was bounding at her, determined, or so it seemed, to knock her over entirely.
"Sophieeeee!" June cried out as she flung herself at Sophia.
Sophia scooped up the small framed girl like she weighed even less than she did.
"June Bug!" She declared, kissing June's cheek.
It had been on Sophia's seventeenth birthday when she had admitted to Daryl and Carol, always seemingly let down by the event when it rolled around, that she had wished, every time since she'd had her "first" birthday with them, that they would have a child. She declared that she felt like it was something they wanted, so it was something that they needed.
But by that point, both of them had honestly forgotten that they'd even wanted it. They had a child, even if she was already preparing to leave the nest. They'd explained it to her, but she'd planted the seed.
And it seemed that nature had determined, already, that the two of them would never have their own child. Carol never officially knew why, and after some time she simply stopped asking and even stopped wondering. She'd accepted that they simply weren't going to have a biological child together.
But they had Sophia. And the weekend before Sophia had left for college the first time, determined to pursue a career as a doctor, they'd all gone together to pick up June. She'd been four years old at the time and Sophia had made a big deal of "presenting" her room to the little girl as a "welcome home" gift, even though they shared the room when Sophia was able to visit. They wouldn't share it for long, though, because Daryl was already expanding the house, enjoying the project far more than Carol thought he should. He hovered over the contractors so much that she thought he might have liked to build it himself.
"Sweetheart! You've lost weight!" Carol said, hugging Sophia as soon as she'd put June on the floor and gotten completely inside the door. "You need to eat more!"
Sophia laughed at her and squeezed her hard.
"You say that every time," Sophia mumbled into her neck. "I haven't lost anything."
"Sit down," Carol said when they broke apart. "Your Daddy will take your suitcase to your room when he gets home. I'll fix you something to eat."
Sophia clucked at Carol teasingly for her offer to "fatten her up," but she sat without further prompting and Carol went into the kitchen to fix a snack for the girl from the leftovers they had from dinner.
"Can I have a snack too?" June asked. "I need to eat with Sophie."
Carol chuckled.
"You can have a snack. But do you want what you had for lunch or…do you want some of the cookies we made?" Carol asked.
She didn't have to have a verbal response. The grin on June's face told her exactly what she wanted. Carol brought the plate of food from Sophia, warmed already from Carol's anticipation of her arrival, and then she went back and brought cookies for her dessert before she handed two to June…one for each hand.
"I made your cookies," June offered, making her way to slide into the chair next to Sophia. "They're oatmeal. But we didn't have too many raisins so there's just some in there. Not a bunch."
"I bet they're delicious," Sophia said, leaning enough to bump the girl with her shoulder. "I don't like that many raisins anyway."
Sophia ate her food with gusto, but she always did when she was home. Carol packed her food to take back on every trip, and she knew that Sophia ate in the cafeteria while she was at school, but she still worried that it wasn't as good as home cooked food. She still worried that it wasn't doing what food should be doing.
And Sophia teased her that she simply had a habit of worrying.
"Well?" Sophia asked, directing her question at Carol just after she'd finished praising June for the cookies that she'd inhaled as quickly as she had her pre-dinner snack.
"Well?" Carol echoed back from across the table where she'd settled in to watch Sophia eat.
"Where is he?" Sophia asked.
Carol bit her lip not to smile when it dawned on her what her daughter wanted. She'd known why she was coming in, but she'd been so busy that it was easy to get wrapped up in the moment and forget little things.
"Your Daddy's on his way," Carol said. "He should be here at any time."
Sophia made a face at Carol and Carol snickered to herself, already getting up from the table because she knew that Sophia wasn't asking about Daryl's whereabouts. She would worry about that later. At the moment there were other things on her mind.
So Carol slipped into her bedroom and eased her hands under the sleeping baby in his bassinet. He didn't wake at first, at least not more than to stretch slightly, and he settled into her arms as soon as she arranged him comfortably.
Carol had heard countless people tell her that it was tragic that she'd "never be a real mother." By now, since they'd made no effort to hide any of the truth from anyone who wanted to know, most people knew the circumstances surrounding Sophia's birth, or at least they knew most of them. And most people knew, by now, that Carol had very little recollection of the whole thing besides flashes and moments that came to her in dreams…moments that she was never quite sure if they belonged to memory or imagination, and it didn't matter anyway. As a result, many of them never considered her connection to Sophia to be the same as if she'd been there to raise her from birth, and maybe it wasn't. Carol didn't know for sure. She had little to compare it too.
But it didn't really matter to her how many people lamented, for her, that she'd never know what it was like to be a "real mother". Because, even if she wasn't quite sure what supposedly constituted being a real mother, she knew that she loved her children. And she knew that they loved her.
She knew that she'd cried the first time that she'd held Sophia in her arms in earnest, accepting that she was her child. But she'd worried that she'd felt the way she did with Sophia because she knew, even if others dismissed it so quickly in an effort to discredit her feelings and experiences so that they could build up their own, that Sophia was actually her daughter. She'd worried, especially once they'd put in their application to adopt, that she'd never feel that way for a child that wasn't biologically linked to her.
But now she knew it wasn't so at all.
Because she'd cried the first night that June had come home and she'd slept with her because the girl suffered from bad dreams that had taken months to pass.
And she'd cried the very first time, two weeks ago, when they'd placed Jack in her arms, just two days short of his "one month" birthday.
So Carol figured that people might be right, and she might never know what it was to be a "real mother", but she knew what it was to be a loving mother, and she knew what it was to have her children wake her in the middle of the night because they trusted her to protect them against phantoms that she could never see or because they knew that she would come and offer them whatever it was that they needed to simply go on feeling like all was good and right in their world.
And for Carol, that was as real as it could get.
Carol took the baby to Sophia and offered him to her, but Sophia shook her head over holding him and chose to admire him instead.
"I don't want to wake him up," Sophia said, lowering her voice to show that she didn't want to disturb the baby in any way.
"He'll be up soon as it is," Carol said. "During the day? He never naps longer than two hours. He's really getting good at night, though. We can easily do three hours and sometimes we even get four."
"Jack Jack cries because he gets hungry," June offered. "I can make him a bottle. You want me to show you? I can show you…Sophie…"
June crawled precariously from her chair into Sophia's lap and Sophia arranged her so that she would be comfortable and not fall off the chair entirely.
"Sophie, want me to show you how to make a bottle for Jack Jack?" June asked, capturing Sophia's face between her hands for maximum attention.
"Maybe when he gets hungry you can show me?" Sophia offered.
"How's Daddy with him?" Sophia asked, directing her question to Carol again.
Carol smiled.
"Just as wonderful as he is with you two," Carol said. "He's bringing home food so I can start dinner. I've been so busy with Jack that I forgot entirely to go to the grocery."
Carol laughed. Sophia beamed at it though.
"New baby in the house," Sophia offered.
Carol nodded.
"But Miss June?" Carol said quickly. "She's the best helper anyone could ask for. She helps me with bottles and diapers and watching Jack. I don't know what I'd do without her around."
Carol winked at June and the little girl sat up a little straighter in Sophia's lap, beaming at the pride she felt with her compliment.
They were interrupted when Daryl came in the door, carrying with him the bags of groceries that he'd promised to bring. He sidestepped Sophia's suitcase and walked past them quickly, evidently about to drop at least one of the paper bags that he carried, always determined never to leave anything for a second trip, and then he came and tapped Carol on the shoulder so that she would turn a cheek to kiss him.
"Soph!" He belted out with a laugh when he came up from kissing Carol. He held his arms out and Sophia got out of her chair, setting June on her feet, before she flew into his arms. June squealed too, piling herself into the mix, hyped up already on the cookies and the residue from the nap she'd woken from not long before Sophia arrived.
"June Bug!" Daryl said, pulling away from Sophia and hoisting the smaller of his daughters up in the air.
The noise finally stirred the baby from his slumber and he let out a wail to inform them all that he didn't appreciate it. The act made Daryl laugh and he came to take him from Carol's arms.
"Hey Tater," Daryl said, nuzzling the baby that wasn't happy with him for his rude awakening. Carol got up then and went to the kitchen to start preparing a bottle. June bounded in behind her to "help."
"Need help with dinner?" Daryl asked.
"No," Carol responded. "I've got everything else ready to go on and I can have the chicken ready in a minute if you'll hold Jack for me until then. Then I can feed him."
And Carol knew that was fine with him, since Daryl never had any problem with keeping any of the children occupied when Carol needed assistance. She was certain she was the only "not real" mother around who could boast that her husband "traded" feedings with her at night when Jack required them.
When she had dinner on and Jack's bottle prepared, Carol took the boy back from Daryl and Daryl asked her again if she wanted his help. Dismissed, he asked Sophia if she and June wanted to play catch for a while before it got dark. Carol gladly gave them all "permission" when they looked at her for some kind of assurance that this was an acceptable plan.
Leaving the door ajar to air the house out a little with the fresh air from outside, just showing the first signs of really cooling off, Carol wrapped Jack in a blanket and took him and his meal out on the porch so that she could sit and feed him while she watched them play.
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"So how are your classes going? Everything goin' alright?" Daryl asked. "I've got some money for you. Remind me to give it to you before you leave on Sunday."
"Classes are great," Sophia said. "And you don't have to give me money every time I come home, Daddy."
"I don't have to," Daryl commented. "But I'm gonna do it anyway."
He paused a moment, focusing on their back and forth triangle of a game.
"I always think of you bein' here, ya know?" Daryl said as he threw the ball to Sophia and waited for her to make the transfer to June who would throw it back in his general direction. "So I keep forgetting you ain't met Jack before. What you think of him?"
"I think he's perfect," Sophia said. She laughed. "He seems like a pretty good potato," she teased. "What do you think?"
Daryl chuckled.
"I gotta agree with ya," Daryl said. "His…uh…his birth mother was pretty young. She weren't married. Couldn't keep him."
He saw Sophia's expression change slightly and then she smiled and nodded her head at him, catching the ball that he threw at her now that it had made its way around the triangle. She threw it back to him since June was momentarily distracted by something that had caught her eye in the yard…likely a cricket like the ones she was bad about bringing into the house so that they sang all night and sent Daryl and Carol both on wild goose chases after almost invisible and unwelcome house guests.
"It's good for him that you two were waiting on him," Sophia said.
Daryl nodded.
"Reckon it was," he said. "I'm tryin' to talk your Ma into one more. Putting our application in again, ya know? There's gonna be enough space. I figure four kids sounds like a good number?"
Sophia smiled at him and chased down the ball she missed while it rolled across the yard. The movement caught the attention of June who went running after Sophia and then followed her back over to join in the triangle once more.
"I think it sounds great," Sophia said. "There's always room for one more. Now there's even more love to go around, right? All of us adding to the tank?"
Daryl chuckled.
"You right, Soph," Daryl said. "We got more'n enough."
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AN: And with that, we bid our family adieu. I hope that you enjoyed this story as much as I did. I want to thank you all for reading and reviewing. It means so much to me and keeps me going!
And a special thanks to Hanna for bringing the idea of this story to me! I hope I at least did it some justice. ;-)