The Descendants Series Vol. 2

Epilogue

“I do love her,” I said.  “And I do want to look at her, watch her grow.  But she looks so much like Kade, it’s unbearable.  When I look at her, all I see is him.”

“Do you ever think that that’s probably why you have her?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking over at her.

“She’s a gift, one that shows you how much you and Kade loved each other.  And every single piece of that love is in this beautiful baby girl now, to remind you of it,” she said.

I looked down at Alexandra in her arms.  She had just woken up, wiggling around in her blanket.  Her little eyes had opened and fell straight on me.  She cooed and wiggled more.

Grandma laughed.  “See what I mean?”

I took a deep breath, tears coming to my eyes again.  “Put her beside me,” I said, turning over on my side.

Grandma stood up and placed the baby next to me so that she was just leaning against my chest.  And when I looked down at her, her eyes were still on me.  Her little hands came out of her blanket and grabbed onto my sapphire necklace in one hand and Kade’s ring in the other.  She looked down at them both, and then her eyes slid back up to mine.

“She’s a gift,” Grandma said again as she stood up again and headed for the door.  “One that you get to keep forever.”

And after that, everything changed.

I spent every single minute with Alexandra, not wanting to miss anything that she did.  I talked to her, too, and told her about absolutely everything:  about her grandparents and how much they would have loved to meet her, about everything that I’d been through since I found out about Rowan (I’d left out all of the bad parts, even though I knew she didn’t know what I was saying), and everything about her father.

And now, in just two months, she’d be two years old.  She was getting bigger and bigger and looking more like Kade with every day.  I knew Grandma was right now, and I was glad that I still had a part of Kade with me. 

She’d been walking since she was a year old, but she still on occasion liked to crawl around on the floor, especially when she was playing with toys with Lyric and Lilah or the other kids.  They’d been the ones to teach her how to walk.  They’d sat facing each other with Alexandra taking stumbled steps between them.  And after about three weeks of that, she was able to walk all the way across the living room floor. 

Now Alexandra was walking perfectly, only stumbling a few times when she was running around the house as Lyric and Lilah chased her.  She loved crawling up the carpeted stairs and sliding down on her stomach.  Every time she did it, it had her giggling her entire way up to slide down again. 

As I sat on my balcony, I could hear two sets feet walking up the stairs and another crawling up in front of them.  But once they reached the top, the one who had been crawling started picking up pace, running down the hallway, giggling.  I could hear another two sets of laughter running after her.  And a few seconds later, I heard running across my bedroom and then someone was right in front of me, crawling up into my lap. 

“And what do you think you’re doing, Miss Alexandra?” I asked her, helping her up onto my lap.

“Mommy,” she said, giggling, and then she started saying something else that I couldn’t quite understand but caught a few words.

“Okay,” I said, laughing.  “And who did your hair?”

“I did it!” Lyric said, walking out onto the balcony, Lilah behind her.  “Don’t you think it’s cute?”