To save any sort of confusion - 'Dad' is Edward.
Epilogue
Noah - 19 years old.
"Are you sure you're okay with me doing this?"
Momma dried her hands off with a dish cloth and paused for a minute or two before answering my question. I had already asked her this question, but I needed to know for absolute certainty. Without a sound, she hung the towel back in its original place and finally turned around to face me. "I don't like the idea, but I know how important it is to you."
All my life, Momma has hidden her true emotions from me - she was practically an expert at it now - but when things were important, she would let her guard down. This was one of those moments. I knew what I was doing was going to hurt her, but like she said, it was important to me. "You know I'll be perfectly safe." I had hoped that those words alone would reassure her, but the sad eyes never vanished.
"Do you promise that you will stay with your father the entire time? Even if you need to use the bathroom, Inky has to stay on the other side of that door." Dad has been in my life for fifteen years at this point, but my childish nickname stuck. The only nickname that didn't stay, thankfully, was Colin - I no longer gave my sister a boy's name.
I pulled Momma in for a hug and slowly her shaking began to simmer. "I'm not a little kid anymore."
"Correction; you will always be my baby boy, Noah. Especially now - I won't be there to protect you."
"If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't be any safer there. He won't even be able to touch me."
"Trust me, Mike's words are just as vicious as his hands."
Mom had slapped a restraining order on Mike's ass the second he was thrown in jail; he wasn't allowed to get in contact with us and the order will still stand when/if he ever gets released. However, because I am now nineteen, I can decide whether or not to visit him. It's not like I am desperate to see him, but I would like some answers. It took a while to ask for Mom's permission, only because I was scared of how she will react, but surprisingly enough she agreed to it. I had to take Dad with me, and I had to know what I was getting myself into, but she had agreed.
"Is there anything you would like to say to him?" I was only joking, and it helped soften Momma's sad eyes.
"Simply turning up with your dad is enough for me. It's the kick in the teeth that Mike deserves." I remember Mike and Dad hated each other, and the fact that he is permanently in my life, and my surname is Cullen, is the biggest f-you Momma could ever give him.
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Dad came into the kitchen with his keys hanging off of one finger. "We better go if you want to make your time, Lil' Man."
I gave Momma one last hug, kissed her head and told her that I loved her. That was the one time that I really wished Corin was here, but she wasn't arriving until later on. I hated the idea that Momma was here all alone with just some animals to keep her company.
"You promise to phone me the second you leave that hell hole?"
"I promise."
I stepped away and slipped on my boots. Dad took my place in giving Momma a comforting hug. "Please look after him, Edward."
"Bella, do you honestly think I'd let anyone harm a hair on his head? Noah is perfectly safe and we'll be home before you know it. Keep yourself distracted and prepare some cakes for this evening, yeah?"
When we left, Momma stood at the door and watched as our truck drove away from the stables. I wondered how long she stood there watching us drive away, and whether she was going to stay there until the minute we returned. I had told her that we wouldn't be any longer than two hours, but two hours must have felt like two years to her.
"Am I doing the right thing?" I asked, once the stables were out of view.
"Only you know the answer to that one, buddy. You've been thinking about this for a long time, so I'm sure if you didn't want to see him, you would have figured that out before now."
"Yeah, I suppose you're right."
It took us forty minutes to drive to the prison, but it only felt like five. I still had that nagging feeling at the back of my mind as we found a place to park, it wasn't too late to turn around, but part of me knew that I would feel better once this was all over.
It had been fifteen years since Dad was last here, yet he still knew his way around. I followed him silently, trying not to focus on all the inmates that were either working or chilling behind the mesh fencing. Neither of us said a word as we made our way into the reception, handed over our IDs, signed in on a piece of paper and then walked through the security scanners. We had five minutes to spare until our assigned time, and I used those few minutes to use the bathroom and prepare myself mentally.
"Are you okay?" Dad cupped my shoulder as we stopped outside the restrooms.
"Um… yeah. It's just a lot, y'know?"
"I get it. But remember - no-one will think negatively of you if you decided to leave."
I nodded my head slightly and gave him the best smile I could muster. "I'm… I'm okay; I just need a minute."
You know when you're about to perform on stage and suddenly you need to pee really bad? You hadn't had anything to drink, but the nerves took over and your bladder worked on over-time? That was exactly how I felt, however I also had a feeling that I was going to vomit at the same time. I was about to meet the man who tried to kill me, how are you supposed to react to that? If Mom hadn't found the strength that she did, I wouldn't even be here right now. What do you say to that person? How do you introduce yourself to that person?
I found myself staring into the mirror above the basin. I can't remember what Mike looks like, but I thoroughly hope we don't share any similarities. Dad has always told me how much I look like Mom, but my eyes are blue instead of brown. Poppa Charlie's eyes are blue, so hopefully I got that color from him.
"Noah?" Dad poked his head around the door. He shot me a frown when he saw how pale I had become. "I'm going to ask you one more time. Are you sure you're okay?"
I looked back at the mirror, and at my pale face and red-rimmed eyes. "Yes." I finally said to the both of us. "Let's go."
We sat in a small waiting room until a guard called out my name. We followed the man down the corridors where he lead us to the visitation room. A row of booths took up the far off wall. Each booth held two chairs, two phones, and a sheet of plexiglass that separated you from the prisoner. I felt better that Mike wasn't able to touch me, but Momma's warning played in my head: Mike's words are just as vicious as his hands.
We were asked to take the fourth booth and that Mike will be joining us soon.
"You've been given half an hour, but you can leave any time before that." Dad whispered.
"Half an hour?" I thought visitation was a quick process?
"Yep - inmates are given a maximum of two one-hour visits every four weeks. You can chop and change how long you visit them for, and seeing as Mike has no-one else to come and see him, he has all the time in the world."
"How long were your visitations?" We never spoke about Dad's time here, but now he was the best person to ask.
"Corin wasn't allowed in to see me - my parent's rules, not the government. So the one time that they did allow it, I saved all my time up and sat with her for a full hour. Otherwise my mom would sit with me for twenty-thirty minutes. We sat at a table though - phone call visitations are only for the more serious cases. "
"And Mike can leave at any point too, right?"
"Absolutely. He may also get dragged out by the guards if he gets violent or starts to scream and shout."
The moment quickly arrived. My hands were sweating and my feet bounced off the floor as the nerves rattled through me. A loud buzzing come from the other side of the glass wall, I heard a guard order an inmate over to our booth, and suddenly Mike was there. Sitting right in front of me for the first time in a long time. I couldn't drag my eyes away from his beaten face - he had various scars scratched across his cheeks and even some next to his eyes. Some of the wounds were much older than the others, but some of them even looked fresh as if they had only just happened.
"Noah, take the phone, son." Dad whispered again.
With a shaking hand, I grabbed the handle of the phone and brought it to my ear. Both Dad and Mike were doing the same thing.
"Cullen. You've returned." Mike smirked. His voice was harsh, no doubt from the cigarettes that I remembered he would constantly smoke.
"We're not here to talk about me, Newton."
My eyes zeroed in on the fading tattoos on Mike's hands. Those I remembered well, especially how he had my name tattooed across this fingers. I'm pretty sure that was one of the first things I had brought up with Dad when we first met - "Are you a bad man? My Daddy is bad man and he has those inky things too."
"Are you not going to say 'hello' to your old man, kid?"
I snapped back into the real world. The evil grin on Mike's face angered me to no end, and so to test the waters I turned to look over at Dad. "Hello." I said a smile.
"Ha!" Mike shouted down the phone. "Cullen isn't your dad."
My new snarky attitude became known with my word choice. "According to my birth certificate he is. Oh, and my surname." When I was born, Momma was smart enough to leave Mike out of it. She never would have put her abuser's name on my birth certificate, and so when it came to changing my surname, she managed to add Dad's name onto it, too. "But we're not here to talk about my father - we're here to talk about you."
Mike faked a yawn and peered down at his bare wrist. "Hurry up then, I don't have all day."
"Why?" I asked suddenly.
"Why what?"
"Why did you hate me so much?"
Mike shrugged. "I didn't want a fucking kid. Simple."
I always thought that I would have gotten emotional, perhaps even cried, when I heard the truth, but I was too angry to get upset. "So that's enough to try and kill them?!" Dad patted my knee as a way of telling me to lower my voice. After taking a deep breath, I continued to ask my questions. "I don't know what I ever did wrong?"
"It's not like you did anything wrong, but you looked too much like your damn mother. That bitch pissed me off, and then you would fucking cry and… well, you were an easy target."
Both Dad and I had to control our anger, especially when he spoke about Momma like that. "An easy target?" I repeated.
"Yeah. To be honest, Noah, I'm surprised you're even here. I thought I was going to have to wait until I left this shit hole before I saw you again."
"Did you want to see me?"
"Sure, I was interested to see how you turned out."
"Well as you can see I turned out just fine, no thanks to you."
"I can see that…"
I took a look at the large clock pinned to the wall. We had only been talking to him for five minutes. I couldn't imagine us staying here for the entire thirty minutes, but until then I still had a few more questions to ask. "Do you ever regret it?"
I hoped that he would give me an honest answer, but like with everything that Mike says, it came out sarcastically. "Oh, I cry myself to sleep every night. All my prayers are asking for you to forgive me."
Dad couldn't keep his mouth closed. I made a mental note to thank him for that when we left. "It wouldn't surprise me if you did cry yourself to sleep every night. Your wish was for Bella and Noah to suffer, and even though they did for a number of years, it must annoy you that your actions only made them stronger. Because of you, they were given a life that you hate. They are so incredibly happy, and despite all of your efforts, Bella now has two children." He added that one in just to get one extra jab.
Mike tried very hard to hide is anger, but we both noticed it. Dad's words had hit a nerve and it was the best feeling to see how said words had affected Mike. "Good for her…" He muttered.
"Mom didn't want me to come here today - you don't deserve my time, or even me - but I'm glad that I went along with this. I can now hide my nightmares and dark memories with memories of triumph - Mom and I have won and that angers you more than you care to admit. I will always remember this day as the day that I realized how pathetic you are and how lucky I am."
Mike barked out a dirty laugh. "You still have nightmares? Aren't you, like, twenty or something?"
I rolled my eyes at his childish response. "Can I ask you one last question? And I want you to answer this one honestly, please." Mike shrugged his shoulders, so I continued to talk. "Did you ever love Mom? If not, then why did you trap her in a loveless marriage? And if we made you so angry, then why didn't you leave? You could have saved yourself all of these years in jail."
"You want an honest answer? Okay." He adjusted the way he sat. "At first I did love your mom, otherwise I wouldn't have fucking married her. But shit got difficult, and then she fell pregnant with you. Why didn't I leave? Because I didn't want to. My hope was that she would abort the pregnancy and maybe we could have gone back to the way we were, but when she refused it only made my anger worse. Alcohol was my only way out, and I couldn't control my actions when I got drunk."
Wow. There wasn't a single hint of sarcasm in sight, and for once he had given me a proper answer.
"So I was the reason that this all happened? I am to blame for the scars that Mom tries her best to hide?" Momma thought I hadn't noticed her scars, but even as a little boy, I knew they were there. She was only doing it to protect me.
"I suppose you are, yeah."
It was nearing time for us to leave. We still had fifteen minutes, but Momma was right - Mike's words can harm you, and I didn't want to give him the ability to cause any more pain. My parting words told him everything that I wanted him to know.
"I'm sorry I made you so angry, and I'm sorry that Mom became your punching bag because of me, however if that hadn't have happened, we never would have met Edward. We are now the perfect family of four, all because of you. My Dad shows me what it's like to love someone, and how to protect someone - you never taught me anything until today. Today I realized what a miserable piece of shit looks like. You can laugh and smile all you like, but deep down you are a lonely, hurt old man with no-one who cares for him. You probably don't regret any of your actions, but the day you get released, when you don't have a single soul to run to, I want you to think of us. I want you to think of the family that you did have, who you tried to murder, but instead it had the opposite effect. You may still be alive, but you're barely breathing. Your life ended the day you tried to take mine."
I slammed the phone back onto its cradle and stormed away. Dad was only a step behind.
A loud crash and bellowing echoed from behind the glass. I didn't turn around to see whether it was Mike or not, because part of me knew the answer anyway.
The door hadn't even closed behind us before Dad had pulled me into a fierce hug. "I've never been more proud of you, Lil' Man." He kissed my head and held me tight as I allowed my true emotions to finally come to the surface. I sobbed into his shoulder, so hard that I could feel a pain start up in my chest. "Let it all out, buddy. Let it all out."
"I'm sorry." I cried.
"Whatever for?"
I pulled away and tried my best not to notice the wet patch that covered Dad's shoulder. I knew he didn't care. "I… I just… I was so angry and… I shouldn't have allowed myself to get so worked up."
"Hey," Dad cupped my cheeks and wiped away at the tears with both thumbs. "Never apologize for how you really feel. He needed to hear that, and it was important for you to show how strong you are. If you had gone in there crying, begging for an apology, you would have been easy prey. It is very natural for you to cry after that, especially when it is something as deep as this."
"I guess you're right."
"C'mon," Dad put a caring arm around my shoulders. "Let's go phone Momma, and put this whole thing behind us."
"Thank you for coming with me today. I wouldn't have managed it by myself."
"I love you, buddy; you never would have had to do it alone."
Our walk back to the truck was silent, and neither of us said a thing. That was until we had phoned Momma, and she told us news that made us both smile.
"Corin and Masen are here already! They're waiting to see you!"
The thought of seeing my nephew's smiling face made the drive home a happier one. Of course I'd love to see my sister too, but… y'know, it's Masen we're talking about here.
The day that Corin announced that she was pregnant was an interesting one. Momma let out an almighty scream and instantly jumped into everything baby related, whereas Dad was not as pleased. Corin was twenty-one at the time, and she had been with her boyfriend, Steven, for three years, but to Dad she will always be that ten-year-old little girl who met him eagerly at the door every time he came home. She is now twenty-five and is still with Steven, so clearly everything is going well. Dad quickly warmed up to the idea as the pregnancy progressed, when they found out it was a little boy, and especially when Corin told him that their baby was going to be named after him. Masen is one of Dad's middle names, and it fits my nephew perfectly.
When Masen was born, Corin and Steven wanted to live closer to the stables so that we could help out whenever it was needed. Poppa Charlie heard of the news and was quick to offer them his second house. Y'know, the one that Dad and Corin lived in for a while? It's funny how things run in full circle. I still lived with my parents, but only because the plan was for me to take over when I turn twenty-five. There wasn't any point moving house, only to move back again in a few years. When it came time to decide who was to take over from Momma, I had offered the position to Corin seeing as she had her own little family that would appreciate the house more than me. Apparently that was a very sweet thing for me to do, but I was the rightful 'heir' of the stables, so I took control. However, if I end up not having any children then Masen will take it off of me when he turned twenty-five, and so on, and so forth.
It really is like royalty and who is next in line for the throne.
"Uncle Noah!" My four-year-old nephew ran over to me as we stepped down from the truck. He wore jeans, a plaid shirt, tiny boots and Dad's hat on his head. He reminded me a lot like myself.
I threw Masen up into a hug. "Hey, Lil' Man."
"Inky here too?"
"Masen…" Dad cooed from the other side of the truck.
"Inky!'
Oh yeah, that's another thing. When it came to picking names for Masen to call Mom and Dad, we thought that Dad should be Poppa Edward, to go along with Poppa Charlie, but Mom thought that Inky was such a special name and that we should keep it in the family. So now we have Nana and Inky.
With Masen in my arms, telling me a wild story about a bird that he saw, I walked us into the house to find Momma and Corin.
"And then… and then the bird flew away!"
"Oh, I'm sorry Lil' Man."
"It's 'kay! We're still friends."
"Did the bird have a name?"
Masen tapped his chin with one finger. "Yeah, I think he said it… I think he said it was Goose."
"Goose the bird - I like it."
Yep, he is far too much like me.
The three of us joined Corin and Momma in the living room where I put Masen back down on his feet. He kneeled to the floor and played around with our Dalmatian, Jax. When Buzz and Zucko passed away we weren't sure if we were ready to get a new dog or not, but it didn't take long before we realized just how much help the dogs were around the stables. Jax is still very young and so he loves nothing more than to run about the room with Masen where both can let off energy.
"I thought you weren't coming until later?" I asked my sister as I took the spare seat beside her.
"I know, but I knew that you had your meeting today, so I didn't want to leave Momma by herself. Steven will be joining us for dinner as planned when he finishes work." I gave her a hug as a silent thanks for looking out for our mother. "So, how did it go?"
I looked over at Dad with a smirk. Now that we were home we could openly laugh about everything that Mike said. It wasn't funny in the slightest, however you'd either laugh or cry at the craziness of it all. "Noah was a trooper." Dad started, shooting me a wink. "Mike was… well, no different."
"But it is all over now and you never need to return!" Momma just about cheered. She had been having nightmares for weeks leading up to this day and so she could finally relax.
"How long does he have left to go?" Corin asked.
"Er…" I looked over at Momma as she calculated the numbers mentally. "He's eligible for parole after thirty-four years… so… eighteen/nineteen years?"
"Just because he is eligible doesn't mean he will get released then, right?"
Again we left it up to Dad to answer his daughter's question. "Absolutely not. The Board takes everything into consideration. First of all they will look over the case and what lead him there in the first place, and then they will need to look at the records for his behavior. However the main thing that we need to remember is, no matter what happens, Mike will be nearing seventy before this decision is made, so he is no threat to us anymore."
"Okay!" Momma flapped her hands. "Can we please change the subject now?"
It was almost as if Masen could feel the tension in the air and chose to change the subject himself. "Inky, I can show Uncle Noah what you taughted me?" He asked whilst climbing onto his grandfather's lap.
"Oh, Dad! What have you been teaching my son now?!"
"Hey! It's not that bad!"
"Really?" Corin crossed her arms in defence. "Because I can't say the same for everything else that you've taught him."
Dad let out a loud laugh. He loved nothing more than to teach Masen the ways of the world - like peeing in a bush which then lead Masen to pee all over Corin's plants. "I promise, you'll like this one. It is something that a little boy said to me a long time ago… Go on, buddy - show Uncle Noah."
Masen clambered off of the chair, slipped the tips of his fingers into his jeans pockets and started to walk towards me with a slight swagger. With a grin plastered all across his face he said:
"I'm Masen. I got'sa wiener, and I wipe my own ass."
0-0
That final line is what made you fall in love with Noah in the first place, so I felt it was only right to end on it.
I just want to say a huge thank you to every single one of you who followed this story, left me some love, and even allowed me to pick it back up again after four years. I really am going to miss writing this story and I'm terribly sad that we are saying goodbye. I have had a few people ask me if there will be a sequel, and as much as I would love to write one, I really don't think it would work. It would probably be based around Noah and Corin, and seeing as they are my own original characters it wouldn't make sense to write a fanfic where Twilight characters aren't the main focus. But if you are looking for more of my work to read, then I have a current WIP called 'Hereafter' if you would like to give that one a go.
I'd love to know your final thoughts on the story, the characters and whether or not I did the epilogue justice? Thank you once again.