Wildflowers |h.s|

forty two

Devon - 5 months later

Hand in hand, the girls and I walk into Fine Lines. We greet Corrine, who's training a new front desk employee, Ricky. The girls run over to greet her, knowing she'll give them each a lollipop since they always get one when they come to the shop.

Harry requested that I bring the girls to the shop since I had the day off and was already watching Oakley. So when Annika got out of school, I got the kids loaded into the car and drove right to the shop.

It's October now, and I must say, Harry and I have made leaps and bounds in our therapy sessions. He no longer has to see Tilly weekly, he can just call whenever he feels the need to talk, but he feels good enough not needing to go see a grief counselor once a week. He still sees his therapist once a week though, and it's helping a lot from what I could see.

I've been seeing a therapist too, and luckily the whole vomiting thing just turned out to be anxiety. Horrible, untreated anxiety. I've discovered a lot about myself and how to cope with my feelings and accept what's happened to me in the past. But luckily I haven't thrown up in about four months now, and I now have new coping mechanisms to stop myself from getting to that point.

We've even gone as far as seeing a couples therapist a few times, since our therapists suggested it on separate occasions, just to talk about what happened in the bathroom and just issues we've come across in our relationship from the beginning. It gave us a safe space to lay everything out from the dishonesty in the very beginning, to the New Year's orgy fiasco, to Jamie and how she plays a part in our relationship. And we both agreed that it felt nice getting it all out, talking through it and leaving it all in a space that wasn't our safe home bubble.

We got to celebrate Annika's birthday in the late spring, and even took a trip to visit Jamie's grave on the anniversary of her death, just to show the girls that it's okay to grieve and be upset about her not being around. Plus Tilly said it was a good idea for Harry to go there and just talk for a little bit, whether it be to the girls about Jamie, or to Jamie. I gave him some time at the end to be alone and talk to her, and he says it did feel good to do that. He had never been to her grave site since the funeral, so it was a big deal going over there.

We've had our fair share of fights and he's unraveled a few times, but we both just take a second to breathe and always make sure to talk through it and either take some time to live in our own spaces for a few days without breaking up, or we'll just figure out a way to solve whatever issue that may come up.

Something that makes me extremely happy is that Annika is back to playing fairies again. She just seems so much more radiant and bubbly in the past few months. She's just growing into the most beautiful little girl, Oakley too. God, Oakley's speech is improving every day. She speaks in full sentences now for the most part, and she gets funnier and funnier the more she talks. It's hard to believe such a silly kid came from such a serious man, but I think he needed Oak to get through the past two years.

We've all just been growing and healing and spending as much time as we possibly can together as a family. My family even met the girls over the summer, and I was genuinely surprised when my dad gave Harry a chance. Even more shocked that Harry gave my dad a chance too. They actually seemed to get along in a weird way. And everyone loved getting to meet the girls.

I decided to stay in my apartment, only because Harry and I have been talking about me moving in with him and the girls. He doesn't want to leave the house, mostly because of the garden he's spent years on, plus he just feels weird moving and being in a new space. And I don't blame him, that garden is so magical, plus he just spent a lot of money renovating.

But I think the biggest change we've gone through the past few months is that the girls are trying out mom on me. We never pushed them to call me that, or expected to honestly. Oakley, I understand her wanting to call me mom, since she never met Jamie, but I never expected Annika to ever want to call me that. But one day she asked Harry if it was okay, and they use it a couple times a day, but for the most part still refer to me as Dev or Devi in Oakley's case. They mostly use it when they're really tired or not paying attention to what they're saying. It makes me smile every time though, and Harry always gets excited when they call me mom.