Page 85 of Repluse

Mila

My eyes move to each person sitting around our table. As usual, everyone is with us for Christmas. As usual, it’s been hectic. As usual, I’ve loved every minute.

Sofia turned three a couple of weeks ago, and this has been the first year she’s been fully invested in Santa’s arrival. It’s been great being able to bribe her with threats of only getting coal in her stocking if she didn’t behave.

Only ever being the baby, she was a little green eyed when Frankie arrived. Big feelings meant changes to her behaviour.She didn’t want to sleep in her own bed at night, and she’d been spiteful towards her brothers, and even the baby on occasion. She’d even asked if we could send Frankie back because she was noisy, but after a couple of months, she settled down, and we got our Feefs back.

Today had been a big day for her, and my eyes land on Frankie’s, who is holding her sleeping form in his lap. He smiles, and I smile back.

“Love you,” he mouths.

“Love you, too,” I mouth back.

“Is anyone hungry?” Maryam, Frankie’s mum, asks.

“Mum, seriously? Just sit down. You’ve not stopped all day,” Frankie tells her.

She sits down in the chair next to me, rolling her eyes at Frankie as she does. Like she had with all of my pregnancies, Maryam came to stay while I was pregnant with little Frankie. She was a fantastic help with the kids, and despite having Jolly, our cleaning lady, and her team come in twice a week, Maryam was usually vacuuming, dusting, wiping down, doing laundry, folding laundry, and putting laundry away, all in between cooking our meals.

We’d hit it off from our very first meeting, and much like her son, I quickly grew to love her. I couldn’t imagine not having her in my life now.

During our first meeting, Maryam told me how she tried her best to help my mum, but when Scott Walsh realised it was her who had taken Mum to the hospital, he threatened Frankie in the same way he’d threatened the lives of my siblings and me.

Despite a physical fight breaking out between Tommy—Frankie’s dad—and Scott, when Maryam told him what had happened, Tommy refused to let Maryam make a statement to the police, and this caused a massive rift between her and her husband, which remained until he died of a heart attack.

Thankfully, Frankie didn’t know this part of his parents’ story, and I had sworn to Maryam I’d never tell him.

“I’m getting another beer. Anyone else want one?” Kristoff, Sam’s dad, asks.

“I’ll have one,” Marcie calls from the pool, where she’s playing with our boys, along with her and Ella’s three kids.

Unable to decide which one of them was going to carry a baby, they both used the same sperm donor and had their embryos implanted on the same day. Ella ended up pregnant with twin girls, Marcie a boy. The non-triplet triplets were now four years old, with Atlas being born a day before his sisters, Pearl and Flora.

With their three and our four, Christmas morning had been chaos, but with the help of all the adults, it had also been perfect.

“I’m going to make a cup of tea. Would anyone like one of those?” Nora, my ex-mother-in-law, asks.

As a five-year sober recovering alcoholic, the kettle is always on when Nora’s around, which, when my dad was here, wasn’t a bad thing, because these days, tea is also his only vice.

The pair of them had gone into a treatment facility together, and my dad was now a foreman working in the warehouse for the haulage side of Walsh Holdings.

Logan had been killed in the helicopter crash six years ago. All of his interests in the family business, as per the instructions of his will, had gone to Scott. Unfortunately, Scott, the only survivor, had been left a quadriplegic and was totally paralysed from the neck down. He now needs help breathing and is unable to talk. Scott’s will had given both medical and financial power of attorney to Logan, but in the event of Logan dying before Scott, it went to Ella. So, Ella and Marcie, with the help of a now sober Mickey and Nora, are running Walsh Holdings.

Fortunately for Scott, his brain wasn’t impacted in the accident, and Ella and Marcie, along with Nora, Mickey, andtheir three kids—whose sperm donor father had first nations heritage—very kindly keep up with Scott’s family tradition of everyone eating together. And every night, they sit around the table with Scott to tell him all about what has gone on with the business that day or week.

The money they’ve earned.

The money they’ve spent.

The charities they’ve donated to.

The programs they’ve put in place to offer workplace training to young indigenous kids, and the support they offer them if they want to further their education.

The fact that twenty-five percent of the business is now owned by Zach, and twenty-five percent by me.

As much as I’d love to be a fly on the wall to witness the look on Scott Walsh’s face when he is given all the news about the generous philanthropic gestures by his company, there is absolutely no way I am ever setting foot back in that house. And with us having the space to accommodate everyone here, I’ve never had to.

As I look around the table now, I see Sam with Frankie sleeping in her favourite spot against her dad’s bare chest. I see his mum Monica sitting beside him, with my dad on the other side while the three of them talk quietly. I see Frankie with FiFi in his arms, Maryam beside me, Kris getting beers, Nora making tea, and Ella and Marcie in the pool with Wilder, Bear, Atlas, Pearl, and Flora, and I can’t help but smile at what an eclectic, unconventional group we make.

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