Chapter 30: (END)

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

Three years, six months, and fourteen days after signing my divorce papers, I became a mother again.

Hope arrived on a Tuesday morning in early spring, screaming her lungs out and turning purple with indignation at being evicted from the womb. She was perfect. Angry, but perfect.

Diego cried. Actual tears, not the performative kind Julian used to produce on command. He held her like she was made of glass and miracles, and he didn’t let go for two hours.

Clara and David visited with their twins—chaos in matching outfits. They brought flowers and balloons and an absurd amount of baby clothes.

“You’re going to be fine,” Clara told me, reading my face. “This is different. She’s different. You’re different.”

“What if—”

“No what-ifs. Just this moment. Just her.”

Clara was right, as usual. Hope was healthy. Thriving. Hit all her milestones early, as if she was in a rush to prove she was here to stay.

At six months, she smiled at everyone. At one year, she was walking. At eighteen months, she was talking in full sentences and had definite opinions about everything.

“She’s so much like you,” Diego said one night, watching her refuse to go to bed for the third time.

“Stubborn, you mean?”

“Determined,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

We moved to a bigger apartment when Hope started walking. Needed the space. Needed to be farther from the memories.

I still visited Samuel’s grave, but less frequently. Once a month instead of once a week. I’d bring Hope sometimes, let her leave flowers. Tell her about her brother.

gαℓησν𝒆ℓs․com brings you fresh updates

“He would have loved you,” I told her when she was two. “Would have been protective and annoying and perfect.”

Hope didn’t understand. Just played with the grass and asked if we could get ice cream after.

Kids have a way of anchoring you in the present. Making the past feel distant.

Julian and I had no contact. None. He’d respected my boundary, finally. Or maybe he’d just moved on.

I hoped he’d moved on.

Through mutual acquaintances—Clara still had connections at Metropolitan Hospital—I heard he’d relocated to Oregon. Was working at a small clinic. Dating someone normal. A teacher, apparently. No Instagram, no drama, no obsessions.

Good for him.

Marcos had moved to New York after his company tanked. Got a job at a consulting firm. Was doing okay, from what Clara heard through her grapevine.

He’d sent her a wedding gift when she got married. She didn’t open it. Donated it still wrapped to a charity auction.

“Think he’s okay?” I asked her once.

“I don’t think about him at all,” she replied.

That was a lie—Clara thought about things obsessively—but I let it go.

Diego and I expanded our design studio. Hired three new assistants. Started taking on bigger clients. Designed costumes for a theater production that got written up in national magazines.

Life was good. Busy. Messy in the best possible way.

“Do you ever regret it?” Diego asked one night. “Not giving Julian another chance?”

“Never.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a molecule.” I kissed him. “I wasted ten years on someone who couldn’t love me the way I needed. I’m not wasting another second looking back.”

“Good answer.”

“It’s the only answer.”

Hope turned three.

We threw her a party at the park. Invited Clara’s twins and half the neighborhood kids. Had too much cake and too many balloons and too much noise.

It was perfect.

Halfway through, Diego pulled me aside.

“So,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Hope needs a sibling.”

“Hope has Samuel.”

“Hope needs a living sibling. Someone to fight with and blame things on and eventually become best friends with.”

I looked at him. At his stupid hopeful face. At the life we’d built.

“You want another baby.”

“I want whatever you want. But yes. I want another baby. With you. Because you’re an amazing mother and our daughter is incredible and I think we should do it again.”

“You’re not supposed to pressure people about having children.”

“Is it pressure if I’m batting my eyelashes?”

“That’s definitely pressure.”

“What if I throw in backrubs for the entire pregnancy?”

“Tempting.”

“And foot massages?”

“Now you’re talking.”

We tried. Got pregnant four months later. A boy this time.

We named him Samuel.

Not Samuel Junior—that felt wrong. Just Samuel. A name that deserved to be used. A name that carried love even though it carried grief.

Hope was thrilled to be a big sister. Slightly less thrilled when Samuel turned out to cry a lot and smell weird.

“Can we return him?” she asked seriously.

“No returns.”

“Not even if he’s broken?”

“He’s not broken. Just loud.”

She accepted this with the gravity of someone who’d just learned a disappointing truth about the world.

Years passed.

Hope started kindergarten. Samuel learned to walk. Clara had a third child—“on accident,” she claimed, but I saw how she looked at baby number three. That wasn’t an accident. That was love.

Diego and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. Then our tenth. Time moving in that strange way where days are long but years are short.

I got promoted to co-owner of Tradition Design Studio when Diego’s original partner retired. Started teaching workshops for young designers. Found I loved it.

Life wasn’t perfect. Hope went through a phase where she bit other children. Samuel refused to potty train until he was almost four. Diego and I fought about money, about work, about whose turn it was to do dishes.

But it was ours. Real and flawed and absolutely ours.

I saw Julian one final time, completely by accident.

I was at a design conference in Portland. He was there with his wife—the teacher—and their son. A little boy, maybe six years old, with Julian’s eyes and his mother’s smile.

We made eye contact across the hotel lobby. Both froze.

Then Julian smiled. Genuinely. And waved.

I waved back.

His wife noticed, said something to him. He nodded, replied. She looked at me, and I saw understanding cross her face. Not jealousy. Just recognition.

So you’re the ex-wife.

Julian said something else to her. She squeezed his hand. They walked away.

I stood there for a moment, processing.

Julian had a son. A living, breathing, healthy son.

And I wasn’t angry about it. Wasn’t bitter or resentful or hurt.

I was just… glad. Glad he’d gotten another chance. Glad he was using it better this time.

“You okay?” Diego appeared beside me, carrying coffees.

“Yeah.” I took my cup. “I’m good. Let’s go home.”

“Home home? Or hotel home?”

“Real home. With the kids and the chaos and the dishes I’ll definitely make you do.”

He laughed. “Deal.”

On Hope’s tenth birthday, we took her to the cemetery.

She was old enough now to understand. To know about Samuel, about what happened, about the brother she’d never met.

“This is weird,” she said, standing in front of his headstone.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

“Did you love him?”

“So much.”

“Do you think he’s mad? That I got his name?”

Samuel Jr—our Samuel Jr—was sitting on Diego’s shoulders, oblivious to the weight of the moment.

“No,” I said. “I think he’s glad. That his name gets to mean something happy too.”

Hope placed flowers on the grave. White roses. She’d picked them herself.

“Hi, Samuel,” she said seriously. “I’m Hope. Your sister. Mom says you would have liked me. I probably would have liked you too, even though you’re a boy and boys are gross.”

Samuel Jr chose that moment to drool on Diego’s head, as if proving her point.

“I’m going to take care of everyone,” Hope continued. “Mom and Dad and Samuel Jr and even Clara’s annoying kids. You don’t have to worry. I got this.”

She saluted the headstone.

I started crying. Couldn’t help it.

Diego put his free arm around me. “You good?”

“Yeah. Just… yeah.”

We left the cemetery as a family. All four of us. Five, if you counted the ghost of a little boy who’d changed everything by leaving too soon.

Life had gone on. The way it does. The way it has to.

And somehow, impossibly, we were okay.

Not perfect. Not without scars. But okay.

And that was enough.

That was everything.

.

.

.

THE END

.

.

.

Message from Noa: Have a beautiful weekend dear readers. Today we have three new novels on gal novels, and I hope you enjoy them. As always… God loves you, and Noa wishes you all the best. („• ֊ •„)੭

.