BellaOHOT Chapter 13
After the wedding, Lester moved in with us. He brought very little money with him, but that was okay. For a while now, we have been quite okay as a family.
Indeed, I had a bit of a “secret stash” of things as it were. Not money, mind you, but heirlooms and items I’d found on my trips to Egypt and China. Things I wanted more than anything to pass down to my children along with the house. And I had been thinking about these things a lot more recently - maybe it was Dorothy’s death reminding me that neither Mortimer or I were getting any younger and that even if illness never befell either of us, someday the Reaper would come for us as well. It was, after all, the inevitable result of a long life.
Mortimer’s presence in my life now has been a blessing. We talk now as used to in our younger days, standing in the cemetery amid the ghosts. He told Trent and Aimee about his other children. Trent, like Cassandra, was not surprised at all. He even offered to let his siblings move in with them at Goth Manor, if they wanted to.
When I told them, however, both Cassie and Alex declined. Cassie on the grounds that this - the home she and I had built together out of love and sheer strength of character - was her home. Alex because he and his girlfriend, Elaine, were making plans of their own for after graduation.
“No offense, Mom…Dad,” Alex told us. “But Goth Manor will never feel like ‘home’ to me no matter what good intentions Trent has, and soon, Cassie’s going to be popping out babies for her and Lester. Elaine and I want kids, too, so we’re already looking for a home of our own.”
“If you need help, son…” Mortimer offered and Alex nodded as he thanked him. I had tears in my eyes, then, because Mortimer and Alex had never been close before, but they were now.
I wish I could say the same for my other children and their father. Don never responded to the letters I sent him about the girls. For his talk about loving children when it was Cassie and Alex, he has never come around to see his true daughters. I hear about him from time to time, going out with different women every couple of weeks. I wonder if he even reads the letters I send, or looks at the pictures of Donna and Bianca? Maybe I’ll never know.
What’s sad is that Bianca seems to be so much like her father. I heard it from Alex that she had tried to put the moves on Johnny Smith.
My poor Donna! Her own sister betraying her like that! It was a good thing, as Alex said, that Johnny was having none of it. But now, he comes over less often than he used to, and it’s probably because he is trying to avoid Bianca. I don’t know what his absence will do to Donna, though. She is still so shy and only comes out of her shell for Johnny anymore. If he isn’t around… well, I worry about her so much.
Speaking of worry… Alexander and Elaine have finally done it - graduated and moved out. They did it as quickly as possible, and got married even quicker. Mortimer helped them find a house, as he promised.
It was one of the last things he in life, as Trent called not too long after to tell me the sad the news that his father had joined his mother in the after life.
I cried, hugging Cassandra tightly, when I shared the news with her. She and I held onto each other and found some solace in that small gesture of comfort. Cassandra assured me that she all right. Mortimer was only her father for a brief time, but it had been a good experience, all the same.
But Mortimer’s seemed like the beginning of a difficult time for us all.
Donna was, as I suspected, reeling from the seeming rejection of her only true friend. She buried herself in books and studying, not saying a thing while her sister to moved on to the next guy in line.
And then there were the newlyweds.
Cassandra had waited so long to get married. I don’t know if it was because she was focusing on her music or if seeing me struggle with the men in my life had made her too cautious, but when she an Lester married, she had been almost what my mother might have called an ‘old maid.’
They were having trouble conceiving a child.
Not for any lack of trying, because as newlyweds often are, Cassandra and Lester were very amorous and in love. They often lingered in bed on weekends and even before work, doing… well, you know how newlyweds are. They can’t get enough of each other!
But after several months, Cassandra came to me in tears. She said she’d already talked to her regular doctor and he was concerned that, at her age, she might not be able to have children at all.
“Lester and I really want to have children,” she told me, tears running down her cheeks. “Mom, can you help me?”
I am a very famous doctor now. A surgeon by trade, but I’ve done research in other fields and have friends all over the medical profession. I told her I would see what I could do… and then placed some phone calls.
One of my “connections” was a fertility specialist from over near Riverview. She told me there were treatments that both Cassandra and Lester could undergo and we made the appointments.
The treatment had a few adverse reactions where Cassie was concerned. She spent months puking and retching, being tired and miserable… until finally the doctor told her that it had worked and she had conceived at last.
She and Lester were thrilled, and Cassandra… well, they say that pregnant women “glow” and believe me when I say it was definitely true of my Cassie. Pregnancy became her in all ways - I have never seen her so happy!
And then, at one of the ultrasounds, we learned the happy news that she was expecting not one, but two babies.
Twins!
The doctor said this common both for fertility patients and of women Cassandra’s age. It also explained my own twins, as well, who had come to me late in life.
We spent months trying to figure out what to do with two cribs. I had turned the old nursery into Donna and Bianca’s room and we simply did not have the money to add onto the house now. In the end, I put one of the cribs in my room, and the other went into Alex’s old room, which was now doubling as a den.
Finally, the big day arrived - Cassandra had gone into labor! Lester rushed her to the hospital, while I stayed home with the twins. Anxiously, we awaited the news… would the twins be boys or girls? Would they be healthy? I have never been so nervous in all my life, but after all we had been through just getting Cassandra pregnant, who could blame me?
Mirrored from Third Time's the Charm.