Chapter Thirty-Nine

There was the beginning of a baby bump under my wedding dress. Given the circumstances, our outdoor plan for a wedding failed. We did manage to get a few good pictures in the snow though.

A few of my extended family came. Annie was back to a retreat in Mexico and I hadn’t had much news from her for a while now, and had not been able to tell her of the change of date yet. I wasn’t exactly sad about it. I didn’t have many friends who took a plane for my wedding, which was understandable, but a few came, which was nice.

Obviously everyone gushed about my house, until they saw some of the before picture, and then they were not all convinced anymore they could have done this. But it did blow a few minds to realise the different and sheer work required for this, but like everything else in life, it all has a price, and if you want something that seems so priceless, then there would be some sacrifices to be made.

This was more of less my take on this whole wedding to begin with.

A few months later came a beautiful baby girl that we named Anika. Just like Eloim had grown into a caretaker for our small menagerie, he turned into an absolutely stunning big brother. To tell the truth, I don’t think anything I did, or our pets did, was as effective with him as holding his little sister in his arms for the first time.

Actually, we had to reshuffle the rooms, because if he heard her crying at night, he would wake, and come and check on her.

We actually moved her from the nursery to our bedroom for the first few months to stop him from doing this constantly. It was cute, but not the best habit to develop, and we wanted to make sure this would not impede on his sleep time too much.

I got pregnant again the same year as Eloim started school for the first time. It had been a great idea to move him to a daycare first, or the transition would have been a lot rougher.

My work really took off that year, and my painting rose in value with it. I even managed to get a few of my paintings in a small gallery in London.

Xander’s business took off as the expansion settled in, and he soon had to expend again to cater to the demand. He has managed to keep as much of his work from home, but he travelled a lot too, only he kept it to inspection visits rather than to do all the work himself. He was enjoying the change in responsibility, but he never managed to stay out of the field completely, he loved it too much. Whenever there was a particularly big contract or prestigious one, he’d take it on himself, and would bury himself into massive amount of work for a few weeks if not more. But we managed.

We didn’t get a contractor and building team working double shifts on the future garage, actually, we kept it to a skeleton crew, so it went a little slower but it got done eventually, and he got me a gardening shed in the process.

I did my garden plans and even improved it. I thought our house and land might be one of the prettiest in the neighbourhood, but I might be biases. Before Anika turned two, Avalin was born. And though a big household with young children is a lot of work at times, I loved it.

Truth be told, they made me go crazy so often, but when I tucked them all in bed at night, I had no regrets, which is probably why Xander and I decided to do it again one last time.

Though he worked a lot, whenever he was not, he was giving one hundred percent of his time and attention to them, which would allow me some alone time with my paintings.

He built them a massive tree house with his father. It was so big it needed pillars to keep it up there. He was totally spoiling them rotten.

I had decided to rent occasionally some of our extra bedrooms to students, and travelers. It wasn’t that we were strapped for cash, but it was a little bonus that we used to travel ourselves, and it got us to meet new and interesting people. It’s actually a little how I met my own husband, so I decided that to keep doing it was not so bad, but we did not have them on all the time, and sometimes enjoyed the fact that we were on our own.

Our latest addition was named, Kaydin. We liked that we ended up with two of each and stopped after him.

Eloim was doing fairly well in school and we were so proud. It surprised no one when he announced that he wanted to become a veterinarian. The girls became our little terrors causing havoc everywhere, whereas Kaydin turned into the shyest of them all.

My parents came to live here with us for a few weeks every year and video chatted with the kids weekly. We went to Canada a few times during the summer for our holiday, but one year, to indulge the kids, we went in winter, at the peak of snowfall and they got blown away by the fact that the snow had piled high enough in places to be taller than them or even us.

They met the rest of my family and as I had made sure they all spoke both languages, had no barrier of communication, and I only had to translate for Xander as his didn’t understand enough to converse.

We made sure to put a few pictures of Enola around the house and eventually told Eloim more about her. We didn’t go into details of her ghost with him, he didn’t ask and we didn’t push. We know that there will be a day when we will have this difficult discussion, but for now, there is no need for us to insist on it. We don’t even know if he remembers about it at all. But arranged a little spot in one of the drawing rooms with a picture of her and a few trinkets. We don’t do ancestor worship or anything like that, but we found some aspect of it at least a good sign of respect, and built her a little shrine-like space for her.

Now that we know that death is not necessarily the end, it changed our perspective on a lot of things. We encouraged Eloim to craft something for her once a year that he would place in the small cabinet under the shrine, just for her.

We have no idea of her situation now or if she has any awareness at all, but we thought it was the right things to do, and soon the other three decided that they wanted to do the same as their big brother, and we let them.

I added a few things myself. I kept a journal, secretly since that last incident in the basement, and I documented everything about her son. I digressed with time as the other kids were added, and in the end, it had become a project as much for me that for her. Maybe there would be one day when I would show it to them, or Xander, but for the moment, it was something only for myself and Enola, if it was even possible. I documented the first time I met Eloim, to his first school test, his first school crush that he tried really hard to hide from us, the first time he did work around the house and was paid for it, instead of just giving him an allowance. He had been so proud. I put pictures of him holding every single one of his newborn siblings, so that she could see the love in his eyes.

I know Xander would not do anything like that. He had turned the page in his life, and I knew that though he never wanted to express it, especially in front of Eloim, he resented her in how things ended up. I looked deep into myself, but I decided that resentment was not for me. We would probably have never been best friends, but I decided to make my peace.

I didn’t think as much about this part of my life as I used to do, but it never left my mind, and there were times when i walked around and I wondered if there had not been something hidden in the corner of my eye. Something other, something immaterial, but this was more than probably my imagination playing tricks on me.

I wondered if there would be another one day. Another loved one that would reappear suddenly in the middle of the night. Does everyone have a ghost?

I found myself scouring the internet one or twice looking for those same answers, and truth be told, I’m not sure anyone knows, at least the internet keeps contradicting itself, again.

I never really found my answers. Maybe it’s not something meant to be answered in the first place. Something we may find out only when we cross over ourselves. And I was in not rush to find out.