Sinner and Saint

Epilogue

Cobalt Bay, California

Many, many years later...

At some point, I've stopped counting the years, content in knowing that many have passed, each one happy.

Almost twenty years ago, my perfectly well-ordered life was knocked off its wheel locks and sent careening down what would become the ultimate journey.

I might embarrass some people, looking back on the night I met my wife and remembering her incredible beauty that no doubt floored me, and her fierce yet vulnerable soul that inevitably stole my heart.

The years that followed were passionate and tumultuous—a storm we only lived through because we were incapable of doing anything else but hold on to each other.

The world always looks different in the aftermath. Our choice had been to rebuild what was still good and start anew where we had the chance.

And we still didn't always get it right.

Over a decade of marriage with Kady was not without its ups and downs. The furious fire that used to burn hot inside her may have lost its destructive power but it was never extinguished. Not that I ever wanted it to be. It's one of the things I will always love about her.

Her incredible strength, her courage to choose to love and be happy every single day—they've allowed her to become so much more than neither of us could've ever imagined.

She stayed honest, whether its about her mistakes or mine, and she took my hand when she needed it. For someone who'd sworn before that she could live on what mere scraps of love we could share, she didn't miss any opportunity to make sure I knew how much she loved me. It's hard to imagine that at some point in the past, I feared trusting that she would ever come out into the light with me. These days, the shadows didn't touch us.

For one, there hasn't been that much time.

Not with four rambunctious children in five years—Grayson, Francie, and twins Aline and Jonas, now aged eleven, nine and seven.

Our weekdays are busy with school runs, homework, soccer practices for Grayson, evening lab visits for Francie at one of my R&D centres, dance classes for Aline and early woodworking for Jonas. Weekends were mostly family time and we had no shortage of family with everyone taking a turn to host Sunday afternoon get-togethers so that the adults could at least hang out and the kids could keep each other busy playing.

"It looks disgusting," Grayson said as he watched me take off the cover of the chocolate cake that he and his siblings supposedly made last night. Well, he supervised and the other three decorated it with a nature theme.

"Then you've succeeded in making it look convincing," I told him as I examined the cake closely. On top of the very uneven layer of lumpy chocolate frosting was a rough pile of crushed Oreo crumbs to resemble dirt where a bunch of gummy worms and liquorice bugs were crawling out of. There were thick blobs of corn syrup tinged with dark red food coloring to imitate blood and little tufts of white cotton candy were strewn all over it like cobwebs. Halloween was still a week away but clearly, the kids had been pretty inspired.

"That's not what I meant," Grayson said, giving me a meaningful look. "Jonas literally bit the heads off some of the worms and bugs and stuck them back in there with the bitten ends hidden. He thought it was funny and made them creepier but that's just not sanitary, you know?"

I raised a brow at him as I lifted the cake off the counter. "Didn't you do something similar last year with those Rice Krispies ghosts that your Mom made? Where do you think Jonas copied it from?"