Open Your Eyes

My Soul Mate, My Best Friend

5 months before the crash.

It was a beautiful day outside. Derek had left for work and had taken Sophie into school. She had started school last August and had loved every minute of it. I didn't work today so I had the day at home with the kids. Kendall was just shy of turning 1 year old in a few days. She grew up beautifully and was walking and had been walking since she was 10 months. When I fed her she would watch Angus and Sophie run around the house and would start to follow them with her eyes. She would track them and one day while I fed her I could see her legs start to place themselves on the ground and she would take off and chase after her brother and sister.

I still fed her and made sure we were in a private room but the past week I had cut out feeding her all together because I had lost so much weight but because the doctor had advised me to stop feeding her because of the dramatic weight I had become. I had also been feeling sick for a week every night and the doctor had told me to stop before it was too late. I had taken his advice and stopped breastfeeding her and in a few days I had put on some more weight and was in a healthy weight range.

I heard her over the baby monitor blabbering away to herself.

Getting up from the bed I went into the nursery and started to feel nauseous. I knew what this feeling meant and decided that when I had the kids fed and entertained I would take out one of the tests from the cupboard and see if it was true.

"Morning Kendall. Let's get some breakfast hey."

I carried her downstairs because of a morning she was always clumsy and would fall over if she was walking so you had to carry her until she properly woke up and then she would anywhere. Angus was sitting up on the lounge watching TV when we came downstairs.

"Morning Angus."

"Morning mummy."

"Would you like some breakfast?"

"Yes please."

I placed Kendall in the highchair and made breakfast for her and for Angus. The two kids sat eating their breakfast and I ate mine. I cleaned Kendall down after she finished eating and gave her a bottle and she sat with her brother.

I headed up the stairs to my bathroom and went to my cupboard and opened it up finding the box of unopened pregnancy tests. I had seemed to stockpile them from the clinic and had a huge stash of them.

So I sat and peed on 3 tests and found out that all three were positive. I shook my head and knew that this was true. I wrapped them up and binned them and had the results in the back of my mind until at least Derek got home.

When Derek finally did get home we had sex and after we finished I told him. He was over the moon and then the dirty sex started.

With the weeks passing quickly we planned to take 6 weeks leave before the birth to go to Carolyn's farm and then do the last preparations before the baby was born. We had also worked out our maternity and parental leave for after the birth. Derek would take 4 weeks off. Everything was ready to go for the birth of our baby.

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Carolyn had all the lights off except for the one in the kitchen. She was headed to bed but first she wanted to make herself a cuppa. She heard a car pull up outside and thought it was Derek and Amelia but she thought that it wasn't because she had expected them to be longer. While she stirred the milk into her tea she heard an explosion of gunshots being fired into the house. One bullet flew past her and she ducked behind the cupboards and waited until the explosion finished.