Picking up the Pieces

Epilogue

This story is dedicated to my friend, Pam, who recently lost her husband to cancer. She's a wonderful friend with a beautiful soul who didn't deserve losing her best friend to such a devastating and deadly disease. I love you, girl.

An epilogue, more like a future-take, will be up next. Thank you for your patience with this one. It was incredibly hard to write it due to the subject matter. Losing my mom to lung cancer was so hard. And then, writing this with Esme, the matriarch of the Cullen clan, dying of metastatic breast cancer? Epically tough.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Epilogue

JohnPOV

Eight Years Later ... High School Graduation

"Seriously, John. Yellow is the worst color ever for graduation gowns," Grace grumbled as she sat on my bed. Her legs were folded under her body and she looked pretty in a navy dress for my graduation. "At least, you can pull it off with the skin tone ..."

"You're not going to go all Aunt Alice with the fashionista talk, Grace," I said, trying to put the mortar board on my head. Trying was the operative term. I was big. Like my dad. My biological dad ... who was probably watching down from heaven. With a big body came a ginormous head. It made finding a helmet for football interesting, to be honest. "This thing is too damn small."

"Don't cuss," Grace said, standing up and pulling out my desk chair. "It'll fit, but your messy 'do will be smushed." Grace was petite like mom, with delicate features and half my size. She was also patient and loving like mom, but she'd adopted Dad's calm demeanor, with a wry sense of humor. She stood on the desk chair, thrusting the mortar board onto my head. I grumbled. I'd worked hard on my hair. Now, it was plastered to my head. "Now who's a fashionista, jackass?" she quipped. "Who are you trying to impress?"

"Don't cuss," I snorted. "And I wanted to look nice for Mom and Dad."

"You suck at lying John Jacob Black-Cullen," she snickered. "You blush. It's your tell, brother bear."

"I do not suck at lying," I argued.

"And I'm a natural blonde," Grace quipped, flipping her long, nearly black curls over her shoulder before hopping off my chair. "I also know that you're trying to impress someone. Could it be Nessie? You've been with her forever!" My blush deepened and scowled at my sister. "I knew it!"

"Get out of here, brat," I laughed. "I want to run through my speech one more time."

"Well, Mom and Dad want to take pictures as a family. Aunt Leah will be here in ten minutes," Grace said, sliding out of my bedroom. I blew out a harsh breath of air. I looked around my room, seeing memories of my previous life in Arizona, our renewed life here in Forks and glimpses of my future – a full-ride scholarship to University of Washington on a football scholarship.

When we'd moved here after Dad's death, Mom was ... she was a mess. She was so sad and lonely, unable to sleep in a bed and just broken. She went through the motions of life until my second dad came into her life. Edward was her friend first, making her realize that she wasn't destined to have lonely life, subsisting for just her children. He made her smile when they began dating and found true happiness and true love for the second time when they got married, a couple of weeks before my ninth birthday.

Now, don't get me wrong ... I love Edward. He accepted me and my sister as if we were his biological children, loving us from the moment he entered our lives. He adored my mom more than words could say, but our lives were filled with ups and downs. More ups than downs, thankfully. The biggest downs were the deaths of Nana Esme and Aunt Rebecca. Nana died shortly after Mom and Dad got married. Dad was understandably sad, but he focused his sadness into making his old house into a new home for us and our new baby sister, Olivia Anne. The renovations were a gift from Nana Esme, leaving money to Dad and money in a trust for both Grace and me.