Saving Grace #Wattys2016

Prologue

Sometime in the future...

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Laine?"

"Where's Daddy?" The five year asked me, her face striped with white icing from her cupcake. "I want Daddy."

"I know; I want Daddy too. He's coming home with your grandparents and Will." She gave me that angelic smile at the thought of her grandparents coming to visit and her twin brother coming home along with her father, my husband, whom I haven't seen in five days. He was off doing business again in Houston and carried William this time. The kids always switched turns on his trips. I wanted them to see more of the world that I ever thought was possible at their age. It's funny how I always drifted back to their age. Mostly because I never had any of the pleasures they had nor would ever think of it.

"Daddy!" Laine spotted familiar black BMW M3 pull into the driveway of our San

Francisco home that he personally designed complete with a partial, but beautiful, view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Whoa, slow it; your father would question me 'bout your face if he ever saw it." She stood still long enough for me to wipe the icing for our welcome home cupcakes she tested then bolted to the door. I wiped up the counter and made sure everything was clean before walking out behind her and there he stood. They looked so much alike, Laine and her father. And my little William took after me.

"Hi, Mommy!" Will launched himself into my arms as I wrapped them around him.

"Oh, boy, what did your father do to you over there? Leave you in the room service number? You must've gained hundred pounds."

"No!" He giggled when I started to tickle him.

"Okay, okay, stop hoggin' Mama up." That voice laughed the same voice that helped me through the darkest times and kept me sane. The voice that stayed in my dreams and pushed away the nightmares. The voice I longed to hear in person, not by phone.

"Welcome home." I said to him, putting Will down.

"I'm not home yet." My husband smiled at my confused face before he wrapped himself around me. The atmosphere around us was no longer, now was it just me and him. Next I felt the passion of his lips on mine and I was a goner. "Now I'm home. To my saving Grace." That accent will always hit me like the first day I met him.

"My secret agent man." I whispered, my head lying on his chest. "Welcome home, Hardy." Now I was home, too.

Sixteen years before present time

Brown and green. Yellow and blue. Red and green. Yellow and brown. Red and blue. Brown and blue. They fascinated me, the colors. They had the same skin color but different colored hair and eyes. But people with my skin color had the same color and eyes.

"Mama?" I tugged on Mama's coat. She was reading her newspaper; she always read on the bus ride home.

"Hmm."

"Why don't I have blue eyes?" Mama stopped and looked at me.

"Grace, why would you want blue eyes?"

"Because there are pretty. Why don't have blue eyes and they do?" I pointed to the pale girls that the bus passed by.

"Because none of our family members have blue eyes."

"Why?" Mama looked down at me and hugged me close. "Because.....we're different, baby. That's the best way to explain it to you right now. Okay?"

"Okay, Mama." And I went back to looking at the colors.

Present time....