Another Five Years

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da (Epilogue)

*September 2010*

"Annie?" he yelled into the quiet house, "Babe, where are you?"

He walked down the hallway that led from the garage to the kitchen, something he had done a thousand times before but always, always looked at the gallery of photos Anna had hung there. It started next to the laundry room with a photo of her dad's record shop, now two and a half thousand miles away in Virginia and would end on the other side of the refrigerator with a photo she had taken within the last month or so. The most current photo was of the two of them at a wedding in Hawaii, him in his suit and her in her gown, smiling happily next to the bride and groom. 

"I love Katie, but why would she ask for black tie at a beach wedding?" Anna complained and poured a pile of sand out of her stiletto heel.  

Dave watched her fuss with her dress and shoes before giving up entirely and plopping down on the beach to finish her champagne. "Do you remember the first time we came here?" he asked, sitting close to her in the sand.

She laughed and looked at her wrist as if she were checking the time, though the only thing she wore was the bracelet he had given her for Christmas years ago. "You're early, kitten. We don't go home for another five days."

"So?"

"So... you always ask me the night before we go home! Like clockwork."

"Maybe I'm mixing it up this time."

"Oh, you are? You're not going to sit with me in the sand as we watch the sunset, ply me with expensive wine after a romantic night out, remind me of the first time we came here and then slip in the little insignificant fact that I still haven't married you?"

"Nope."

"You're not going to hold my hand and ask me to spend the rest of my life annoying the hell out of you?" 

"Not this time," he grinned at her, watching as she pushed her champagne flute into the sand to keep it upright, then crawled up onto her knees. 

"You're telling me you aren't going to kneel in front of me like this," she laughed a little when he held her steady as she struggled to pull one knee up in her long blue dress, "and say, 'All I'm asking is forever. Darling, will you marry me?'" 

"Yes."

"You mean you aren't-," she stopped short when his answer finally registered in her brain and let her jaw drop. "What?"

"Yes, Annie. Of course I'll marry you. I thought you'd never ask."

He spun the ring on his finger, lost in the memory when a little voice jolted him back to the present.

"Daddy?"

He rounded the corner to the kitchen and found his daughters at the kitchen table halfway through their lunches. "Hey doodles, where's your mommy?"

"Upstairs," his eldest said through a mouthful of grilled cheese sandwich. Her long dark hair was a mess of tangles and her skateboard was leaning against the wall behind her. "She's sick."

Dave frowned at that and snatched a grape from her plate. "How sick?" She had been fine that morning, but he had been so busy cleaning out the garage that he hadn't seen her in hours. 

"Mama?" his youngest daughter held up her hands from her high chair, completely covered in macaroni and cheese. 

"Yeah, kitty cat," he fixed the cat ear headband in her hair, then lifted her out of her chair. "Let's go find Mama."

"Anna?" he called again when he found the double doors to their bedroom shut tight. A little tingle of worry snaked up his spine, knowing Anna would never leave the girls to eat alone and then lock herself in their bedroom unless something was seriously wrong. He set his daughter down in her playroom in front of her favorite Disney movie and slipped quietly into the master bedroom. 

Despite the sunny LA afternoon, the blackout curtains were drawn and the room was dark except for the light coming from the bathroom where he found her laying on the tiled floor, still in her white cotton nightgown with a wet towel over her eyes. "Annie?"

She weakly lifted her hand in a wave but didn't offer much else in greeting. 

"Babe, what's wrong?" he crouched next to her and felt her forehead, a little relieved when she didn't feel hot. 

"Sick," was all she managed through concentrated breaths. 

"You can't die on me now. Taylor's almost here and he needs your input on the kit acoustics."

"Yeah," she sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'll be down in a minute. Are the girls okay?"

"They're fine," he assured her. Dragging his eyes down her body, he spied the red welt on her ankle from a bug bite gained in Hawaii that refused to go away and moved to examine it closer. It had swollen up enough to keep her from the beach one day, though she had ignored Dave's request to take her to the doctor. "I still think you need to get this looked at," he muttered. 

"Yeah," she replied, finally swiping the towel from her eyes and sitting up a little. "I'll go in about six more weeks."

He frowned at her answer, then did the quick math in his head. "You're kidding me."

"Honestly, David," she whined, laying back on the rug. "Does it look like I'm fucking around right now?"

"We didn't- ... the girls were with us the whole time!"

Anna shook her head, then immediately groaned at the sensation and covered her mouth. "At the wedding, dude. On the beach." 

A slow smile spread across his face when he remembered them sneaking away from the wedding reception together, completely drunk on champagne and now officially engaged, then finding an abandoned resort cabana. He leaned over her, unable to hide his grin. "Three down, five to go."