Page 112 of Full Circle

Celeste

“Turns out you were right, Mama,” I said. “Life really does come full circle.” Leaning forward, I brushed a stray leaf from her gravestone. It was the first time I’d been back to River’s Run in five years and while I felt like everything about my life was different, my hometown stood the test of time. The pain was gone and I was able to traipse through all my old haunts without any of the dark clouds following me. My therapist would be really proud of that when I told her.

Visiting Mama and Daddy’s graves was the first thing on my to do list the moment we hit the county line. Wesley wanted to come with me, but I made him promise to give me some time alone with them first. We had a lot to catch up on.

Daddy was finally buried right beside Mama, where he should have been all this time. It probably sounded crazy to everyone, but I swear I felt one of their family bear hugs when the final shovel full of dirt landed. Like some part of my soul could finally be at peace knowing they were reunited and happy together once more. By now, the grass had long since grown over and both graves looked like they naturally belonged…just like how they had looked in life.

“Marla’s doing great things with our recipes,” I added. “Finally getting all the recognition she’s always deserved.”

As clear as if he were standing next to me, I felt my Daddy’s approving smile. He always wanted Marla to succeed on her own rather than be stuck in our restaurant. And so she had.

Marla’s Sweets and The Comfy Cushion had joined forces in the rebuild after the fire. It was now one giant restaurant and bakery, filled to the brim with home-cooked meals that stuck to your ribs and fresh desserts that went straight to your heart rather than your stomach. It had been featured on The Today Show, The View, and in dozens of magazines. Wesley and Phillip connected Marla with a great attorney who brokered a deal to get her pies into grocery stores around the country. She was working on a highly sought after cookbook, and well on track to become a household name.

Although Marla took a while to come around to it, I had wholeheartedly agreed with the decision to rename the place. Marla finally relented after a lot of deep conversations with Nana, Maggie, Wes, and me, and so Hometown Heaven was born. A little bit of Mama, a little bit of Marla, and a whole lot of Daddy’s business savvy. The perfect combination.

Business was booming and had been since the day Marla reopened. I cried in bed all day over the fact that I wasn’t strong enough to be there for the event, but everyone assured me that I deserved the time away to heal. At that point, healing was all I could really do. My friends and family were in my corner, just as they had been from the beginning.

Desiree and Jeremy’s trials lasted more than a year. When the guilty verdict came down after only three hours of deliberation, I blacked out on the bench in the courtroom. Both faced 25 years in prison, though Jeremy’s was without parole. He was also required to register as a sex offender. The district attorney assured me she would continue to fight against Desiree getting parole, which was enough of a promise that I pushed the worry from my mind. It would only drive me to madness anyway.

Mr. Madden’s trial, on the other hand, took a lot longer. He paid several flashy attorneys to defend him, but in the end, all of the proof Elle Fielding accumulated through the years was too much for the judge to ignore. He was found guilty of more than 26 counts of fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, conspiracy, and more. Ultimately, Wesley’s father was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison and ordered to pay close to $1 billion in restitution and fees. Wesley turned off the tv in disgust and spent two hours alone in our home gym after the reporter announced the verdict.

To this day, nobody had seen or heard from Hillary. I speculated once that she probably still had enough friends out in Vegas to start over out in the desert again, but I also hadn’t lost a minute of sleep worrying about it. She wasn’t worth it.

“Mama! Mama!” Joshua’s animated trill came from behind me. I turned just in time for my son’s sticky toddler arms to wrap around my neck as he buried himself in my arms.

Iris was close behind, rolling her eyes. “He’s such a mama’s boy. Acting like I’m not over here being the best big sister ever.”

Wesley came up beside her, resting an elbow on her shoulder. “That’s why it’s us against them, Rainbow.” He turned his megawatt smile in my direction, the same bright smile that made him look every inch the angel I knew him to be, and it was hard not to melt into a puddle. “Can’t wait to see whose side the new recruit will be on.”

I laughed and rubbed my protruding belly. “We’ll know soon enough.” Ever mimicking me, Joshua leaned down to rub my baby bump before slapping a slobbery kiss on top.

All three of us cooed.

“Just wait, Joshy! I’ve gotta show you the ropes of this big sibling thing!” Iris bent down to scoop him up, twirling him in a circle so that he giggled and screamed in delight.

Wesley held out a hand to pull me up. “You okay?” He still had small pockets of anxiety whenever there was something he couldn’t fix for me, but we were working on it.

Therapy had become my best friend in the past five years. After heading to Boston, Wesley and I both went to intensive individual sessions three times a week. We took Iris for family sessions, too, so that we could work through her overwhelming feelings of reconnecting with a father she had never known. It was hard—so much harder than any of us anticipated—but in the end, it was the best thing for all three of us. After a year’s worth of therapy, self-care, bucket list trips, and watching our daughter live out her dreams on stage with the Boston Ballet, when Wesley proposed, I said yes.

Neither of us wanted a big wedding. We booked a cruise down to Turks and Caicos with Nana, Marla, Maggie, and Zeke, who had become a close friend of Wesley’s by that time, and got married on the boat with our favorite people surrounding us. Nana loved every second of it and spent the entire vacation talking about the hot pool boys that she wished were actors on one of her soap operas so she could watch them shirtless each day.

Iris gave me away in Mama’s wedding dress.

With Wesley’s encouragement and the suggestion of my therapist, I finally enrolled in college. Earning my BSN to become a registered nurse was probably one of the hardest things I had ever done, especially when Joshua surprised us with his arrival halfway through, but I didn’t regret it for a second. I was fortunate enough to work in the oncology department at the Boston University Medical Center, caring for patients like my daddy. Every one of them reminded me of him, and it brought me that much more closure over his loss. I loved my job. So much so that I applied for a master’s program to become a nurse practitioner. The letter burned a hole in my pocket at that very moment because I wanted to open it with Mama, Daddy, and Wes.

Wesley was a changed man. Though his temper rose every so often, he had finally learned how to manage it so that walls weren’t broken and objects weren’t thrown. It made him a formidable lawyer now that he had made the switch over to criminal prosecution. Wes said inspiration hit after everything we went through with Desiree and Jeremy, and he loved nothing more than giving bad people what they deserved. Evidently, he was good at it because after only a few years, the city placed him in charge of the district attorney’s office. Rumors swirled that he would become the Attorney General of Massachusetts, but every time I asked him, he groaned and said that he would rather dry hump a cactus on national tv.

I took that as a “maybe.”

Most importantly, Wes and Iris had grown so close they were practically inseparable. He attended every dance recital, every exhibition, every school event, and routinely took her on Daddy-Daughter Days. Usually they were just expensive day trips, but Iris came back beaming every time.

He had been so worried the day the doctor confirmed that I was nine weeks along with Joshua. What if Iris felt like we were replacing her? “I missed out on all of this stuff with her,” he whispered to me in bed at night. “What if she thinks my excitement means I love the baby more than her?”

Thankfully, that hadn’t happened because Iris was more excited over the prospect of a sibling than we could have reckoned for. She wanted to go to every doctor’s appointment with me and immediately framed every ultrasound photo. Maggie helped her plan a huge gender reveal party for us, and the memory of Iris crying while jumping up and down screaming, “I KNEW IT!” over the blue ballons that escaped the box could go down in the record books as one of the happiest of my life.

Joshua ended up being the world’s most cheerful child, and we were all smitten and wrapped around his little fingers from the moment he opened his eyes. Wesley was exactly the kind of hands on daddy I dreamt he would be, only sharing Joshua with Iris. “You got to carry him for nine months already,” Wes griped. “It’s my turn now.”

Life had turned out better than I had ever hoped for. The future finally became something I welcomed with open arms and a blissful heart, filled with promise and excitement. I loved my family, my job, and our home, so even if it was a rejection letter in my pocket, everything was going to be okay. It just meant I was already exactly where I needed to be.

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