A/N: I hope you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement.

-Epilogue-

"Molly, I have a proposition for you," Sherlock said, sitting down at a small bistro table in the conservatory off their kitchen one late August day. "And I hope it won't take you two years to agree to this one."

Molly Holmes looked up from the Nature article she had been reading on her iPad, seated beside Bennett who was picking up pieces of cereal and examined each one carefully before popping them into his mouth.

Sherlock ruffled his young son's floppy, brown curls and took a piece of the cereal for himself.

"Daddy! Tha's mine!" the young boy cried with all the indignation a two year old could muster.

"What is this proposition?" Molly asked, expression carefully schooled into neutrality.

Sherlock sat up straight, adopting his best schoolboy manners. He gave his son a conspiratorial look and cleared his throat softly. "I think Ben needs a dog."

"Sure," Molly said simply.

He went on in what Molly had long since termed his deductions voice. "Now I know you like your cat and I'm sure if we get a puppy it will adapt to the cat with a minimal adjustment period. With a garden as large as ours, there should not be any trouble ensuring it has exercise even if we aren't able to take it out for a walk on any particular evening. Children with dogs, statistically, have fewer incidents of cold and flu-like illness and typically experience fewer allergies. As Ben was premature, anything we can do to ensure he has a robust immune system should be seriously considered, and so I think we should get him a dog."

"Very impressive arguments, Sherlock, but I already agreed." She smiled brightly at her husband of three weeks. "I've always loved dogs. I just didn't have a garden in Smithfield. I was thinking of it myself."

His face broke in a gleaming smile, his blue eyes bright, the corners crinkled up. Molly did so love it when he smiled like that. It did, however, have the effect of making him look all of twelve years old instead of the nearly forty he now was. "You hear that, Bennett? We're going to get a puppy!"

"Puppy!" the toddler crowed enthusiastically. "Woof!"

"Very good, Ben. That's exactly what a dog says." Molly sipped her tea and turned back to her article. "I assume you've already found one?"

"Of course," he said as he pulled out his mobile. He held it out to her. "Irish setter. Intelligent, friendly, easily trained, and there's a breeder near Dover who has a litter ready to go home in a week."

Molly handed Bennett the toddler cup of juice he had pushed a bit too far away to reach. "You call and we'll go pick one out. How's that sound, Ben my dear?" Her voice raised to a pleasant chirrup at the last and Bennett giggled at his mother.

"Now, I'm for work. Will you get him to the centre or shall I take him?"

"Taking the day off today, I think. I don't have any pressing cases, so Ben and I are going to the shops!" He pulled the toddler out of his seat and held him on his hip.

"Have a lovely day in the morgue," Sherlock said, giving Molly a quick kiss and hurrying out of the room with his son. She shook her head, looking after them, laughing softly to herself at seeing her husband bound out of the room like an excited puppy himself.

On Saturday morning, Sherlock drove his small family to the small farm near Dover in a hired car. They pulled up to a small, neat cottage surrounded by green pastures. Two bay horses in a paddock near the house watched the car approach with the wide-eyed disinterest common to all equines.

Sherlock parked the car and they got out, Molly removing Ben from his child seat in the back. They walked together to the cottage, Molly's small hand held loosely in Sherlock's while Ben ran ahead of them excitedly exclaiming over the animals he could see.

Molly knocked at the door when they reached it. A moment later, the door opened. Before anyone said a word, Ben crowed "Getting a puppy!"

The gentleman in his fifties who had answered the door smiled benevolently at the child. "Indeed you are, young master Holmes," he said with mock formality. "Lovely to meet you, Mister Holmes. I've read about you." He extended his hand to Sherlock, who shook it firmly, only slightly more habituated now with encountering people who had heard of his work, though it always made him uncomfortable.

"Sherlock, please. Thank you for meeting with us Mister White. This is my wife Molly, and our son Bennett."

"Pleased to meet you." He inclined his head to Molly and smiled widely over towards Bennett. "The pups are in the barn. Follow me and let's see if any of them suit, eh?"

They followed the man into the surprisingly tidy barn. One of the horse stall doors was open and the stall was full of soft, sweet-smelling straw. Four rust coloured puppies bounced around between the bales, chasing one another in a game played by young animals of most species. Bennett squealed in excitement and ran into the stall, falling face first into the straw. Molly made to help him up, but he had already rolled over, laughing, and was in an instant surrounded by young dogs who licked his face enthusiastically.

Ben pushed the pups aside as he stood up in the straw, somewhat overwhelmed by their exuberance. "Yuck," he said pointedly, wiping his face with his sleeve.

From the side of the stall, a puppy smaller than the others stepped toward the youngest Holmes. He almost seemed to shy away from his bounding siblings, but approached Bennett cautiously. The toddler reached a hand out and the small dog gently licked the tips of the young boy's fingers.

The puppy stepped closer to Bennett and the small boy stroked the silky, red fur gently. The dog sat down, and leaned a bit of his weight against the boy's legs, looking up at him with wide, deep brown eyes.

"I think we'll have that one," Sherlock said pointedly.

Molly smiled. "Yes, looks as though they've chosen each other."

Later that day, as Sherlock and Molly watched their son frolicking in the back garden with his new friend; Molly wondered aloud what they should name the new addition.

"That's already been decided," Sherlock said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"When?"

"When Ben and I went shopping." Sherlock held up the tag he'd had printed for the dog's collar and handed it to Molly who smiled when she read it and handed it back to her husband. He attached the tag to the metal ring on the thin, leather collar.

The detective walked over to the young friends and affixed the collar around his newest family member's neck. "Remember the name we picked for him, Ben?"

Bennett nodded and, as his father returned to the patio to sit back down, called happily to his new friend. "C'mon Redbeard!"