Let It Be

by Marie Force

  Elmer looked directly at Carlton when he said, “Your son is an incredible businessman and an even more incredible husband, father, grandfather and uncle. I’m proud to call him my son-in-law and one of my closest friends.”

  Elmer’s sweet words brought Linc’s emotions surging to the surface.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Carlton said in a gruff whisper. “Thank you so much.”

  “We’ll leave you to visit with your father, Dad,” Hunter said, ushering the others out of the room.

  “Impressive family,” Carlton said.

  “Thank you.”

  “The two boys… They’re twins?”

  “Yes, Lucas and Landon are identical twins. Hunter and Hannah, our eldest two, are also twins.”

  His father’s eyes filled with tears. “Wish I had known them, that your mother had...”

  “I wish that, too.”

  “Sorry, Lincoln,” Carlton said as his eyes filled again. “So sorry.”

  “I have a question I need to ask, and it may not be the right time…”

  His father waved his hand. “You can ask. There’s not much time left.”

  “Why, Father? Why did you force me to choose between you and the woman I loved?”

  Carlton closed his eyes, and when he did, tears leaked from the corners. “When your brother died…” He opened his eyes and seemed to struggle for air. “That broke something in me. I was so angry at God and the world for taking him. He and I… We had a plan, and when he died…” He looked up at Linc. “I shouldn’t have tried to force you to take his place. That wasn’t fair to you.”

  “No one could replace him,” Linc said softly.

  “No, and I only compounded the tragedy by forcing you into an impossible position. I’m sorry for that and for keeping you from the others.” He gave himself a minute to breathe. “I was just so damned angry for years after Hunter died, and by the time I snapped out of it… Well, the damage had certainly been done.” He took a labored deep breath and looked up at Linc. “I wouldn’t dare ask you to forgive me, but I hope, maybe, as a father yourself that you can understand what losing him did to me.”

  “I can’t imagine losing a child, and I hope I never find out what that’s like. I do forgive you, Father. It was a very long time ago, and I’ve moved on.”

  “That’s generous of you. I hope you and the others can…”

  “Already done.” Lincoln looked across the bed at Charlotte. “We’ll never be out of touch with each other again. I promise you that.”

  “That gives me peace, Linc. You’ve given me peace by coming all this way to see me.” Carlton raised his hand.

  Linc took his father’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “Tell me more about your life in Vermont.”

  For the next hour, Lincoln and Molly told him about the run-down barn they’d renovated into a showplace, about the store that had been at the center of their lives and the town moose named Fred, who was such a big part of the Butler, Vermont, community.

  Carlton laughed at the story of Fred strolling through the tent at Will and Cameron’s wedding and then coming “home” with baby Dex.

  “He’s basically living in Hannah and Nolan’s house,” Molly said.

  “She has an actual moose living in her house?”

  “You’d have to know Hannah to fully understand why that’s not even surprising,” Linc said. “Her husband, Nolan, is a saint.”

  Carlton’s eyes filled again. “I’m so sorry I don’t know her. That I won’t know her or the others. Tell me more about each of them.”

  Once again, Lincoln went through the list of his kids, filling his dad in on things about them that a grandparent would normally know by heart—awards, degrees, sports played and victories achieved. “Will was a champion-level skier. We thought he might make the Olympic team until he blew out his knee and ended his career. He went through a tough time after that, redefining himself, but he’s bounced back and has found a wonderful life with Cameron and baby Chase.”

  Carlton hung on Lincoln’s every word until a coughing fit seemed to deplete the last of his strength.

  “Rest,” Char said, patting their father’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, Lincoln,” Carlton said without opening his eyes. “And Molly. Thank you both for coming and for bringing your beautiful family.”

  Lincoln leaned over and kissed his father’s forehead. “Rest easy, Father.”

  Blinking back tears, he followed Char and Molly from the room. For a full minute, they only stood together, each of them seeming to process what’d just transpired. And then Charlotte broke the silence. “You truly gave him peace just now, Lincoln. Even if he didn’t deserve it—”

  “Everyone deserves peace in their final hours. I’m glad I was able to do that for him and that I could reconnect with you, Max and Will. That’s what matters now. Where we go from here.”

  She nodded. “Yes, all we have is right now, and I want you back in my life. I want to know your children and have you know mine.”

  Linc stepped forward to hug his sister. “We’ll make that happen.”

  A shout from downstairs had them breaking apart and heading for the stairs.

  Colton was on his way up. “Ella’s water broke.”

  Sarah Stillman Guthrie was born in Philadelphia at three o’clock the next morning. Her exhausted grandparents and great-grandfather were on hand to help her elated parents welcome her into the world.

  Elmer cried when he heard the baby’s name. “Thank you for honoring my Sarah this way, sweetheart,” he said as he kissed his granddaughter’s forehead.

  “She was one of my favorite people in the whole world,” Ella said.

  “Mine, too,” Elmer said.

  Gavin called his parents at home in Butler to share the happy news with them.

  Leaving the new family to rest, Linc, Molly and Elmer took an Uber back to the hotel, where the others were spending a second, unexpected night.

  “What a day—or two days, I should say—this has been,” Linc said.

  “Indeed.” Elmer shook his head in disbelief. “You just never know what’s going to happen next in this family.”

  “Thank God Gavin came on the trip,” Molly said.

  “That was a good call,” Linc agreed.

  They dropped Elmer off at the room he was again sharing with Charley and headed for their own room, using new keys that Hunter had brought to them at the hospital earlier. The delay in departure would get them home on Christmas Eve. They were hoping Ella and Gavin could come with them, but that hadn’t been decided yet.

  Linc hadn’t been this exhausted in a very long time, and as Molly curled up to him in bed, he tried to come down from the emotionally charged day and night.

  “How’re you feeling?” Molly asked.

  “Tired, wound up, drained…”

  “We hardly got a chance to talk about the things your father said.”

  “It was nice to hear him say he was sorry it’d happened.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And to see Char and the boys, who aren’t boys anymore, and to hear I have nine nieces and nephews.”

  “It’s all so painfully sad.”

  “It is,” he said with a sigh. “And so unnecessary.”

  “Are you able to forgive him?” Molly asked.

  “That’s a complicated question. I can forgive him for being human, grieving his lost son and making mistakes that harmed a lot of people. However, I never saw my mother again, and he took actual steps to prevent me from contacting my siblings… Those are tougher things to forgive.”

  “You’d be a bigger person than I am if you could forgive him for either of those things.”

  “I’m glad I had the chance to see him one last time and to hear him express regret. That helps me cope with the rest of it.”

  “I hope so. We’ll come back to see Char, Max and Will and meet their families after the holidays. And we’ll invite them to visit us, too.”

>   “That’d be nice. I’d like that.”

  “Char said her daughter has an infant car seat they don’t need any more that she’s going to give Ella to get baby Sarah home to Vermont.”

  “Poor Ella, having to ride on a bus for seven hours after giving birth.”

  “If they decide to come with us, we can make her comfortable, and at least she’ll have lots of help with the baby.”

  “True.”

  Lincoln yawned, and the next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming into the room. He glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was eight thirty. “Hey, Mol.”

  She moaned.

  “The kids are going to want to get going home.”

  She moaned again.

  Laughing, he said, “Wake up, Granny. It’s time to go home for Christmas.”

  “Christmas is canceled this year.”

  “No way. You’ll have a riot on your hands.”

  They dragged themselves out of bed, showered, got dressed and joined the others for breakfast.

  “How’s Ella?” Charley asked after they shared the news of the delivery.

  “Doing wonderfully,” Molly replied. “Baby Sarah was eight pounds, six ounces, and twenty inches. Baby and Mom were resting comfortably when we left them early this morning.”

  “That’s a relief,” Charley said. “Will they be coming home with us?”

  “We’re going to check in with them this morning to see what they want to do,” Molly said. “How’s everyone at home?”

  “All good,” Hunter said. “But I’m anxious to get home to Megan.”

  “Same,” Colton said. “Lucy.”

  Having Ella go into labor early had the other expectant fathers on edge.

  “We’ll get you there as soon as we can,” Linc said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Count your age by friends, not years.

  Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

  —John Lennon

  After breakfast, they called the hospital to speak to Ella, who was also eager to get home. She and the baby were due to be released around eleven. “We’ll be there,” Linc told her.

  “One of the nurses said Sarah is their first baby to go home on a bus full of relatives,” Ella said.

  “That’s funny. Are you feeling up to the trip, honey?”

  “I’ll be fine. I just want to be home.”

  “We’ll see you soon.”

  Linc ended the call and reported to the others about the timeline. Then he called Char to let her know they’d take her up on the offer of a car seat.

  “I’ll be there at eleven,” Char said. “And congratulations on the new granddaughter, Linc.”

  “Thank you so much. We’re thrilled for them.”

  Ella and Gavin couldn’t stop staring at their tiny princess, who had a light dusting of the dark hair she shared with both her parents.

  “Do all new parents stare at their babies like crazy stalkers?” Ella asked him.

  “I hope so, otherwise we’re extra-crazy stalkers. I can’t believe how pretty she is, although I should’ve known she would be. Check out her mom.”

  “And her dad. Handsomest guy in the whole wide world.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  “Is it super weird to say I see a hint of Caleb in her? Or is that just wishful thinking?”

  “No, I see it, too. It’s that little twisty thing she does with her lips. That’s all him.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  Ella glanced at him and watched as he swiped at a tear.

  “I hate that he’ll never know her, that she’ll never know him.”

  “She’ll know him, Gav. She’ll know him through us and through Hannah and your parents. He’ll be part of her life. I promise.”

  He nodded and ran a finger over the baby’s cheek. “She’s so freaking perfect. Thank you for her.”

  “Thank you for her.”

  “You did all the hard work.”

  Ella leaned into him. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” She continued to gaze at the sleeping baby. “I’ve dreamed of her for years, and you made my dream come true. All my dreams have come true because of you. As long as I have you and Sarah, I have everything I need.”

  He held her close and kissed the top of her head. “You’ve got us, love.”

  The bus full of Abbotts pulled up to the hospital’s main entrance shortly before eleven. Linc and Molly got off the bus to go inside to help Ella and Gavin. Char was there with the car seat, and the baby was loaded up. Linc took the base of the seat to the bus and asked Lucas to install it for his sister. As firefighters, he and Landon were car seat experts.

  When they were ready, Ella was rolled outside in a wheelchair while Gavin followed, carrying the baby in the seat. As they prepared to get on the bus, Ella’s siblings gave her a round of applause.

  “Way to go, Mama,” Lucas said, hanging with his brothers from the open windows.

  “Holy hot brothers,” one of the nurses said to Ella.

  “They’re jackasses.”

  “They’re adorable,” the nurse said, laughing at their antics.

  Linc hugged Char. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Same to you, Linc. It was so great to see you and to meet your beautiful family.”

  “I can’t wait to meet yours.”

  “We’ll make that happen very soon.”

  They hugged once more, as if they were afraid they might not see each other again.

  When everyone else was back on the bus, he left Char standing on the curb and waved to her as the bus pulled away.

  “You’ll see her soon,” Molly said when he was seated with her.

  “I really hope so.”

  “You will.”

  When they were on their way, Linc stood and turned to face the others. “I just want to say thanks to all of you for coming with me and supporting me through these last few days. And I want to thank you, Hunter, for handling the logistics and realizing that having you all in the room would make a much bigger statement than me telling my father I have ten children.”

  “We do tend to make a statement,” Colton said, making everyone laugh.

  “That’s what happens when you’re raised in a barn,” the group of them said together.

  Lincoln laughed at the familiar refrain. “Indeed.” He glanced at Molly. “And now I want to tell you another story, this one about your mother.”

  Molly’s brows furrowed with confusion. “What’d I do now?”

  “It’s what you did forty years ago, after the first time we were here together, that I want tell them.”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling as she tuned in to where he was going.

  “When we got back to Vermont, we were still pretty shell-shocked by what’d happened with my father. We told your grandparents, and they were equally astounded. And then your mom, she went to her dad and told him I needed to know I still had a family. I had their family. She asked him to marry us that night.”

  “Whoa,” Hannah said. “Did you do it, Gramps?”

  “By then, I knew there was no coming between your parents, so of course I agreed.”

  “What did you say, Dad?” Lucas asked.

  He looked down at the love of his life and reached for her hand. “When Molly Stillman got down on her knees and asked me to spend the rest of my life with her, starting that night, I said, ‘Hell yes.’ And your grandfather married us right there in their living room, three months before our official wedding.”

  “How have we never heard this?” Will asked.

  “If I told you that, I would’ve had to tell you the rest, and I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want you to know I was estranged from my family when I was raising you to be all about your family. I didn’t want to set that example for you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault you were estranged from them,�
� Wade said.

  “Still… I didn’t want you to know something like that could happen, so we agreed to keep the first wedding between us and your grandparents. Megan overheard Elmer and me talking about it at the diner the other day, and she told me I needed to tell the rest of you about our first wedding so you’d know just how amazing your mother truly is.”

  “We already knew that,” Hannah said. “But way to go, Mom.” She led a rousing round of applause for Molly.

  “Stand up and take a bow, love,” Linc said.

  Molly stood and bowed dramatically.

  “And now you know all our secrets,” Linc said.

  “Not all of them,” Molly reminded him. “There was that time—”

  “No,” their children shouted.

  Lincoln returned to his seat next to Molly.

  “Thank you for the shout-out.”

  “My pleasure. Still ranks as one of your finest moments.”

  “I remember everything about that day so vividly. I was running on pure emotion and a ferocious need to do something to make things right for you. Not that I ever really could.”

  He leaned his head against hers. “You did, though. You fixed almost everything with that one gesture.”

  The family was in high spirits as they made their way north with Christmas music playing on the sound system. They even sang along, loudly and off-key, and the baby slept through the chaos.

  “That makes her an official Abbott,” Molly declared. “The ability to sleep through madness.”

  Lincoln had never seen Ella glow the way she did when she looked at her newborn daughter, and Gavin… He was an emotional disaster on his first day as a dad. The poor guy had been through so much since losing his beloved brother. To see him starting his own family with Ella was deeply satisfying to everyone who loved him.