La Musica del Cuore

Epilogue

Elijah closed out his recording and pulled up the latest song that we'd recorded for our fourth studio album, Speranze e Sogni, or Hopes and Dreams. We had almost finished it when Bella went into preterm labor in early October with our twins, Kellee and Jasen. We just needed two more songs, which I was working on with the guys, recording when my family was sleeping.

Thank goodness, our studio in the basement was sound-proof.

Kellee was named after her godfather, Kellan. Nia acted as her godmother, giving Kellee her middle name of Lynne. Jasen was named for his godfather, Jasper and Ainsley, Emmett's fiancée, was named as the godmother. His middle name was Whitt, honoring both of his god parents. Ainsley's middle name was Whitney and Jasper's last name was Whitlock, so it worked. They were a little over three months old now and just now sleeping through the night.

In addition to getting ready to put out our fourth studio album, we were preparing for a world tour to promote Speranze e Sogni and our latest foray into movie score composing. Bella was hesitant about going on a world tour, but when Adele said we'd be able to bring our children, we were sold. The tour would begin in February in London, concluding in late August in Los Angeles so Eli could start going to kindergarten at some private, exclusive school.

We'd done a smaller North American tour when Elijah was two-years old. He was with my parents while we were on the road, but every two weeks we'd go back to New York to spend time with our son, a necessity for Bella. We hit a number of large cities and the cities we'd missed when we did our last tour with the nightmare of James stalking us. It was a promotional tour for our third studio album, Sempre.

"Daddy, can I be a rock star like you?" Elijah asked.

"You can be anything you want to be, Eli," I smiled, kissing his temple. "What do you think?" I played the title track of the album, "Speranze e Sogni." He beamed when he heard his mother singing, in a clear, ringing soprano. "You hear Mommy?"

"Yeah," he grinned. "Is she going to sing on the last two songs?"

"Nope. I'm singing those last two songs," I answered. It was a necessity since we needed to finalize the damned album. We had to change the keys so the songs were more comfortable in my range. "You want to hear those?" Elijah nodded. I stopped the recording and turned on the first song, "Darkness and the Light."

"Daddy! You sound so good," he sang, throwing his arms around my neck. "You need to sing more, Daddy."

I smiled at him. His wish was going to come true. Out of the thirteen songs for the fourth album, I was singing seven of them. We were also going to put out another album of different arrangements of popular alternative songs just before the holiday season, called Breaking Midnight: The Mixtapes. Half of that album was already recorded and we were working on finalizing the rest of the options during Kellee and Jasen's naptime.

"Green-Eyed Freak," Alice chirped. I rolled my eyes as my sister glided down the steps. "Hey, Nugget."

"Hi, Aunt Ali," Elijah smiled. He leaned against me and his eyes drooped. I kissed his forehead.

"What's up, Pix?" I asked. "You look stressed. Your hubby treating your right?"

"Kellan is treating me fine," she giggled. "But, I'm stressed. We're trying to finalize the dates for the world tour and we're struggling in trying to get dates that fit within our time constraints. Kellan is trying to negotiate, but it's not going well." She brushed Elijah's messy hair back. I looked down and I saw that he was sleeping. "He's so beautiful, Edward. All of your children are."

"You sure about not having your own?" I quipped.

"That's another thing I wanted to talk to you about," she said. "Kellan knows and he's telling Bella, but I'm pregnant. About two months."