Daire and Aspen

Epilogue: Daire

About fifteen years later...

We had talked about this day long ago, after Aspen found the letter I'd written to Elly. We decided to give her the baby book and my letter right before her sixteenth birthday. 

After Aspen's stunning success with her first fundraiser, she and her girls worked out the best way to use the profits for the charities The Ladies of the Lords were supporting. Over the years, their fundraisers raised more and more, and they did a lot of good locally and state-wide. After that first fundraiser, nobody could help but bow to Aspen and her position as queen was cemented not due to my power and influence within the club, but through her own strength and determination. The ol' ladies she'd chosen as her tribe were good women like Aspen, and those few women with attitudes learned to lose them and become team players or resign themselves to being on the outside of the fun and the important work the Ladies were accomplishing.

Not too long after her first fundraiser, Aspen and I were married and we took a honeymoon -- cutting it short a couple of days because we missed Elly, who was staying with Molly. 

She'd rolled her eyes at us for coming back early and reluctantly handed Elly over to me. "I knew you two wouldn't last the whole ten days. And why the hell did you tell that man to check in with me every day? I do not need his help."

I'd raised my hands to protest my innocence. "That was all Tac. We didn't ask him to do anything."

Right before Elly's second birthday, Aspen told me she was pregnant, and  seven months later, we had another little girl, Zoey. I was all over Aspen with that pregnancy, trying to make up for missing Elly's -- so much so that Aspen threatened to go hide in Montana again if I didn't give her some breathing space. But watching her body change because my child was inside of her? I'd kill without a second thought to keep something that miraculous and beautiful safe and protected.

Aspen fucking glowed. I'd heard that term before, and she did. She'd catch me looking at her sometimes and snap at me because it wasn't just awe and desire in my eyes.

"Get over your guilt. We worked through it. It happened, it sucked, but you are not that man any more. If you were, we wouldn't be together and I sure as hell wouldn't be pregnant again. So no more puppy dog eyes, OK?"

I tried but knew the guilt would always be there to some extent. Aspen may have forgiven me, but the way I'd treated her would always weigh on my conscience, a reminder of the man I was no longer going to be.

We decided to have one more child, and boy or girl, we were done. Our third child was a boy Aspen wanted to name Beau, so Beau it was. Then our little family was complete.

Since both of us had little to no experience with solid parental figures in our lives, we read a lot of how-to books and just loved the hell out of our children. They all were happy little terrors, with a lot of energy and curious spirits. Aspen and I fell into bed many nights, looked at each other and just laughed from sheer exhaustion with trying to keep up with the three of them. I had never known happiness like this, and I worked hard to make sure Aspen knew how much I loved her and our children...and that I never took my wife and our family for granted, not for one minute.

Despite the constant tiredness, despite the jam-packed schedules between school and homework and each child being involved in one outside activity, the years passed quickly until here I was, standing outside Elly's bedroom door on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

Aspen and I had given her the baby book and the letter I'd written to her so many years ago two hours ago. We'd agreed that I'd go up first to talk with Elly.

I walked in, and there was Aspen's mini-me. Zoey was a combination of the both of us and my boy was all me, but Elly was now all Aspen. She was sitting up on the bed, my letter in her hand, the baby book open.