Happily Ever After, Finally

“Will you tell me the story again?” his head rested against the side of his seat, his blue eyes watching her as she took a deep breath.

“Once upon a time,” it was a hard story to tell, but that didn’t stop him from asking her to tell it at least once a day. Of course she skipped the part about how she woke up that last morning and he was gone or the fact that when she sent him the letter she had received no response.

He didn’t need those details, so she smiled brightly and told him about how she met his father. He was always a knight or a prince who swooped into save the princess from ogres because how do you explain to a five year old that she had been in a bar trying to get her drunk friend out of trouble? You don’t.

The story didn’t have a happy ending, though she smiled through it.

“But the princess knew her Knight had to go back to his people and keep them safe from the ogres and dragons plaguing his city,” he would nod slowly, in rapture at his father’s gallant efforts. “So she let him go,” the slight crack happened every time, every single time, she lied to him, but just like you edit stories about drunken people you don’t ever let your child think his parent abandoned him just because he didn’t want children.

“However,” she smiled as his eye lids dropped heavily, “he left a seed of love deep in her belly and nine months later a beautiful baby boy was born,” he smiled even in his sleepy state he looked so much like Asher it was hard to breathe. “She named the little prince Ashton so that he knew he was part of both of them, the most important part,” by the time tears sprang forward he was fast asleep, clutching the picture to his chest.