A/N: Thank you, my beautiful wonderful readers, for waiting so long and so patiently for this update. This story has a special place in my heart: it was a summer indulgence and then a seasonally appropriate Christmas story and now another summer is starting just as this story is ending. This is the final chapter. Letting go is bittersweet, but even though this story is ending, the Addek Revolution is just beginning. I'm not going anywhere. I hope you enjoy this final chapter.
(Song lyrics, naturally, from Ryan Star's "Losing Your Memory.")
All the Best of What We've Done
..
Wake up, it's time, little girl, wake up
All the best of what we've done is yet to come...
Just remember who I am in the morning
..
Bizzy takes one step closer. She reaches up and rests her hand with its familiar rings on the top of Addison's head for just a moment, like a benediction.
And then she's gone.
... just like that, leaving Addison's mind swimming.
Gone.
Bizzy, gone.
The heavy circle of jewels around her own neck now.
But it can't be. Bizzy would never leave the Bulgari behind.
You'll have to pry it out of my cold hands before the pastor finds out, she used to say that to Addison when she caught her admiring the necklace.
And yet … Bizzy is gone, leaving along with the sparkling necklace a fleeting sensation of warmth at the crown of Addison's head where her hand rested moments before.
In a world the contours of which should never have existed, it's remarkable that she can still feel surprise, still feel wrong-footed.
But she does.
She stands unmoving, trying to understand, until Derek calls her name from downstairs and then with shaking fingers she unfastens the necklace and tucks it into the drawer of her nightstand. And then she leaves behind the bedroom another version of herself called home to join him.
Derek is waiting for her, holding the card when she reaches him, that innocuous seeming little envelope.
Four by six inches of life-changing regret.
Why didn't she read it?
Why didn't he ask?
She surprises herself, a bit, by walking directly into his arms. His close around her in return, and she can feel the outlined edges of the card against her back. He's still holding it. Six years of could have been dry in her throat as their heartbeats mingle between them. She's been indulging in his touch, bathing in it, and now she lets herself admit in silence how much she's hoped each one won't be a farewell.
Not yet.
She's not ready, not when his arms still feel so warm and so right.
The faint sounds of the Christmas movie playing in the den swirl around them as she rests her cheek against his shoulder, letting the solid realness of him reassure her.
Inhale, exhale, remember: the rhythm of her life in this world.
"Derek…"
He leans back, one hand still wrapped around the card, and cups her cheek with his other hand. His voice is a little husky when he responds, a little hesitant, like he's worried about what she's going to say.
She smiles, as reassuringly as she can manage, and brings her own hand up to his face, letting it settle in his hair.
"…let's go to the beach," she says.
..
There's something odd about packing, and helping the children pack, when she so deeply doesn't want to leave.
Her arrival seems so long ago now, so fuzzy and half-real and she treads the hallway that's become familiar again.
She doesn't want to leave.
She shouldn't want to pack.
And yet she feels compelled to, for some reason: it was she who assured Derek she was ready, who encouraged the children into compliance with words of excitement about the impending journey.
"Packing," Nicky says in a serious tone when she finds him in his cheerful room, kneeling on the thick blue rug protecting him from the hardwood floor underneath.
Ellie is standing behind her brother, placing things at random into the little suitcase – here a stuffed tiger, there a picture book about trucks.
She beams when she sees Addison. "Mommy, I'm helping Nicky," she announces, sounding pleased with herself, as she adds a small rubber figurine of a motorboat.
"I see that." Addison smiles at both of them. "What about your things, El?"
The little girl hesitates, a pensive expression crossing her sweet face. "Daddy will pack them!" she says brightly after a moment.
"They have everything they need there," Derek says gently, in the tone of a reminder, "the bags are just for what they want."
She considers the difference as she watches Derek help Nicky to zip up his bag – Ellie helps, too, by sitting on top of it rather like a giggling cat.
"Wait!" Nicky is standing on his tiptoes. "Bizzy's presents!"
Addison is startled for a moment, then remembers.
The gifts are for the children. And the necklace is for you.
"Oh, that's right." Derek ruffles his son's hair. "Bizzy gave them to me when we were in Connecticut to make sure you would have them in time."
No she didn't, Addison whispers silently, she gave them to me and you just don't know it.
But there's too much going on to wonder, the children laughing with delight as they tumble into their parents' bedroom in search of their grandmother's presents.
"They always open Bizzy's gifts before we leave for Montauk," Derek says softly to her, like a political aide trained to give background. She squeezes his hand with gratitude, with wonder, at who he's turned out to be.
It's not just me who's different and the same all at once.
"This one is for you," Derek is saying now, "from Bizzy." And then she hears the word necklace and her stomach clenches.
But it's not the necklace she expected. Resting in Derek's open palm is a small locket of burnished gold, oval and intricately carved. Antique. "She said you would recognize it," Derek continues.
She does.
"It was Grandmother Forbes's," Addison says slowly, remembering. She only met her maternal grandmother a few times. She was white-haired and imposing, but Addison can recall standing at her knee while the old woman appraised her, red hair, Beatrice, really? – and reaching out for the necklace, quickly pulling her hand back at a sharp look from her mother. Grandmother Forbes caught her looking, though, and opened it up to let her see the pictures inside. On one side a sweet faced baby with ringlets, Bizzy, it's Bizzy, she didn't know her mother had ever been that small, and on the other side a stern looking man in an old fashioned hat. Her Grandfather Forbes. How come she was wearing those pictures? Addison asked her nanny later, at bedtime, since she never told her to be quiet when she had questions, is it 'cause she forgot what they look like? Nanny smiled, no, her memory is fine, that's what he said. She just wants to remember them.
Why did she want to remember them, if she hadn't forgotten them?
She didn't ask the question on that long ago day.
She thinks she might know the answer on this one.
With careful fingers, she opens the locket, expecting to see the pictures of her mother and grandfather in each of the small frames.
"Addie?"
She smiles weakly so he won't worry, tracing the locket with the pad of her thumb.
It's not the same.
It's different.
On one side, miniature photograph of both Nicky and Ellie, together, close up and tiny but she can still see the boy's arm slung over his sister's shoulder. The captured versions of them are beaming at the camera. And on the other side, Derek, in three-quarters profile as if he's looking at the children. She recognizes the picture, though, a version of the one in the bedroom resting on the bureau right now.
It's not the children he was looking at in that shot, his eyes soft, his smile genuine.
It was her.
"She did a good job," Derek observes mildly. "Or Thea did – she's so crafty, remember the quilt she … ." His voice trails off. "Addie? Don't you like it?"
Her fist closes around the locket.
She doesn't like it.
There's no word for how she feels about it.
Swallowing the tears that threaten, wondering how her mother knew exactly what she needed to remember, she draws a deep breath and lifts her hair away from her neck.
Derek recognizes the silent gesture and fastens the necklace around her throat. He presses a kiss to the back of her neck when he's finished, brushing her hair aside to do so.
He always did that when he helped with my necklaces. When he zipped up my dresses.
She touches the locket. It's a long chain, and the closed gold frame rests just over her heart; it feels alive, warm, like it has its own pulse.
She just wants to remember them.
"Mommy, look!" Nicky is beaming, holding up a box. "It's a really hard puzzle of a forest. With bears!"
Addison admires the gift as Ellie finishes tearing the paper off hers. "Ooh," she breathes with wonder, and holds up a small pink bottle shaped like a bunny. Derek examines it. "Nail polish," he says, sounding confused. "All natural, non-toxic, safe for children," he reads, and Addison isn't surprised when he smiles, "more of Thea's help."
Ellie looks enchanted, holding up her hands for the gift. "I want it," she pleads, "I want pink toes like Mommy's."
Addison strokes the little girl's hair as Derek assures her she can have it, but can't use it without their supervision – and the child safe closure and non-breakable outsides support that rule. It's a clever gift and from Ellie's expression, it's one she wanted.
Addison recalls wanting nail polish when she was young, perhaps a little older than Ellie, enchanted by a pretty nanny's red toenails. Clara, that was her name. She painted Addison's toenails at her request and when she proudly showed her mother the next time she saw her, Bizzy's face telegraphed her disapproval. Trashy, that's what she called it, and, I imagine you're satisfied, that's what she said to the Captain before she ordered Addison to take if off.
She remembers telling Savvy that story one tipsy freshman night as the blonde painted her toenails dark red. Nail polish isn't trashy, Savvy – a veteran of a string of debutante balls – protested. It's nice.
"Can I paint Nicky too?" Ellie is asking eagerly.
"If he wants you to," Derek says, smiling down at his daughter.
"Maybe." Nicky is busy tracing the outlines of the puzzle with one small finger. "Can we do this now?"
"Not now, but you can bring it with us to the beach," Derek says. He pockets Ellie's nail polish as she, too, begs to bring her present along.
And then, at last, they're ready to go.
Derek hauls their suitcases down the stairs and then goes to get the car while Addison gives the downstairs a quick once-over, they have everything they need there. On her last circuit, something catches her eye – a hardcover book, its cover sharper than a memory.
Bear Gets Home for Christmas.
Nicky's favorite. "Do you want me to –"
But the little boy is already shaking his head no, taking her hand and pulling her toward the door where his little bear-headed hat hangs from a peg at his height. Ellie is holding her bunny-eared one in her hands already.
"Mommy, what are you doing?" Nicky asks as she rests a hand on each of their heads. Bunny and bear, daughter and son. Two Christmas babies.
"Nothing, sweetie," she assures Nicky. She fingers the locket around her neck.
Memorizing you. That's what I was doing.
..
"Bye, house," Nicky says casually as Addison locks up the brownstone behind them. Derek left first, to warm up the car, braving the chill so the rest of them don't need to.
She won't cry. Not because of that.
The heated car is cozy and close. The city lights fade rapidly and then they're riding through velvety darkness, both children requesting Christmas carols and singing along until Nicky requests a stop.
The air feels different when they pile out together, the adults stretching legs stiff from the car. Fresher, sharper. As if there's more of it, and she inhales a lungful, pausing to look around at their new location.
It's a little roadside shop with a pebbled drive and frosted windows, unfamiliar to her but from Nicky's smile he knows it.
"Ice cream," Ellie requests sleepily from her hip as they approach, puffs of visible breath escaping her pink lips. She must know this place too.
Addison kisses the top of her fragrant head as the belled door swings shut behind them. Inside, it's mercifully warm. "It's a little cold out there for ice cream, El."
"Mommy." Ellie holds Addison's face with her two small hands, her expression serious. "Ice cream is the good kind of cold."
Addison can't help laughing and stealing a kiss from one soft round cheek. When she looks up she notices an older woman paused in front of the racks of nuts and dried fruit.
The woman gives Addison a rueful smile. "Enjoy her now," she says, nodding toward the child in Addison's arms. "It goes fast. A snap, and then all you have are memories."
You have no idea.
Addison just smiles back weakly.
Derek emerges with Nicky then, who looks triumphant and sheepish at the same time – which is turn makes him look so much like his father she has to try not to laugh.
She catches the expression of the older woman who spoke to her earlier, when she sees Derek and Nicky, when Derek rests his free hand on Addison's back to lead them all out the door.
We look perfect.
She ponders this as Derek holds the door for her, as they all exhale into the cold gusty air leading them back to the car.
Derek buckles Nicky in while Addison does the same for Ellie. The complicated series of straps and locks somehow makes sense, each piece sliding into the other with a satisfying click. She waits for Ellie's comment – the little girl has been in turns helpful and encouraging when it comes to Addison's attempts to buckle her in – but she's already dozed off again.
"The car's not even moving." Derek shakes his head, looking fondly at the sleeping child. By the time Addison has fastened her own seatbelt, she can see in the mirror that Nicky, who's making a half-hearted attempt to play with a Rubik's cube, is nearing sleep himself.
They love the car.
The thought pops into her head unbidden. Tentatively, she lets it, welcoming the brief swirl of someone's else's memories that follows: early days with Nicky, the tiny boy crying inconsolably and his parents not far behind – wrapping him warmly and bundling him into the car. Derek would drive aimlessly late at night, in big looping squares, until the rhythm of the moving vehicle lulled their son to sleep.
The memory is gone as soon as it arrives, leaving behind a lingering scent of something fresh, like baby powder. The infant Nicky seems terribly far from this car now, from the solid little boy currently dozing off with both hands clamped firmly around the puzzle he hasn't yet solved.
"Addie?"
She glances at Derek, who has his eyes on the road yet she can tell is somehow also seeing her at the same time. He frees a hand from the wheel and rests it on her thigh, briefly. "You okay?" he asks.
"I'm okay."
He smiles at her.
We're not perfect. No one's perfect.
She didn't read the card, and Derek didn't bring it up, and they traveled together down a forked road that should have led instead to this car, this wintry beach.
They're not perfect, she reminds herself as Derek's warm hand brushes her thigh.
They're pretty damned close, though, and it's that wistful thought that clings to her as the soothing rhythm of the car draws her, too, into sleep.
..
"Addie."
She wakes to the soft sound of her name, eyes still closed, and then feels a warm hand brushing back her hair. Slowly, she opens her eyes.
"We're almost there," he says quietly, and she could mouth the words along with him, because somehow she knows.
They're getting close.
She can tell, because it has the feeling of a long-forgotten dream. She glances automatically in the backseat at the two sleeping children, then at the profile of the man who was her husband, driving with the same look of concentration she still remembers.
From when this was real. She remembers it from when it was real.
Now the air is all lashings of salt, and even with the windows closed, the heat pumping, the scent of cold sand is everywhere.
The beach is so cold in winter here.
So cold, and so beautiful.
There's Christmas music playing, in the car – habit, Derek said, smiling sheepishly, when he put it on even though both children were sleeping.
They're getting close, and then they'll be at the house she's never seen. That other Christmas that changed everything, arriving on a winter's beach as a family of three and leaving as the sparked beginning of a family of four.
She's half-hoping the house will be … magical, for lack of a better word. The last time she walked through the door of the other Addison's house, magical would be an understatement.
Other Addison – it's just natural to think of her now, but her mother's voice echoes in her head:
Oh, Addison. There is no other you, dear. There is only one you, and many choices.
Trusting Bizzy feels both necessary and dangerous at this point. No one seemed to know, or understand, why she was here. Who she was. It's something Bizzy did to her.
Not to her.
She's realizing this even as the pain of leaving this family behind stings like the salt water yards from the car: for her.
Bizzy did it for her.
If I can send you back to Christmas six years ago … but you'd have to go. You'd have to take care of this. You can't worry about me.
It's very like Bizzy: take care of this, like she used to say when delivering brisk orders, whether to the maids – about silver polishing, or dust on one antique or another or to Addison – about her unkempt hair, or her disappointing penmanship.
But even Bizzy, who projected regal confidence in all things Addison can remember, can't do everything, she reminds herself. Can't move time, can't –
But if she can't, how am I here?
Addison lets the confusion fill her like air. Ellie is dozing on her hip now as they approach the front door of the sweet shingled house she wishes could be hers. Nick is somewhat awake now, resting his head on his father's shoulder.
"Are we here?" he murmurs, so quietly Addison almost misses it. Derek, who's jingling his key ring, doesn't seem to hear.
"We're here," Addison tells Nicky, brushing back some of his dark curls, which are in sweet disarray on his smooth forehead. He smiles at her and she feels it – in her heart, and below her heart, where this child could have grown if things had gone differently.
Derek has the door open now, and she holds her breath, not daring to hope –
But when they walk in, it's a house.
A warm and welcoming house, a house that smells of pine and salt and wintry beaches, but it's not the transformative experience of walking into the brownstone when all this began.
"Addie? Is something wrong?"
Everything is wrong. It's wrong because it's so right and it's not real.
She touches his cheek in response, with her free hand, memorizing its contours in case this is the last time. "Nothing is wrong," she assures him, and lets him lead through the house another version of her must have decorated – it feels strange at first but then fades into something like familiarity, like a polaroid waved slowly back and forth until it develops.
Lights catch her eye, little and white and bright. The caretaker, Derek is murmuring, because the house feels warm and lived in, not cold and closed up.
It feels like Christmas.
You don't have much time. It's almost Christmas.
She strokes Ellie's soft hair and rocks a little as she stands at the foot of the staircase. The wood creaks with welcome and she memorizes the soft homey sound along with the silken strands under her fingers.
At least I met you, she reminds herself, blinking back tears before Derek can see them. At least I'll have that.
She doesn't want to think about the alternative.
..
"I want to read," Nicky murmurs as Derek buttons his little flannel pajama top.
"It's late, Nickles." Derek brushes his dark hair away from his face.
"Just one book," he bargains, sounding more awake now, and Addison can't help smiling as she watches the little boy lead his father by the hand out of the bedroom. Addison has finished changing Ellie, who's still sleeping in her flannel Christmas pajamas.
She could take her to bed.
She doesn't, though, just holds the warm sleepy weight of her, letting the little girl's cheek rest against her shoulder, rubbing her back through soft flannel.
"Mommy." Nicky is smiling at her, holding a book aloft, as he returns to the room with Derek on his heels.
Bear Gets Home for Christmas.
She looks at Derek with surprise – she just saw the book in the brownstone before they left; it wasn't packed.
"He has a copy here too," Derek reminds her quietly, reading her expression, and she nods as if she knew it all along.
And if they'd choreographed it, Addison scoots back toward the headboard while Derek lifts Nick and his book onto the bed. Nicky burrows in next to her while Ellie, jogged slightly awake, reaches sleepily for her father.
Addison and Derek are propped up next to each other now, close enough to each hold half of the well-worn hardcover book as the familiar story starts to unfold.
"Bear said goodbye to his forest friends, one by one," Derek reads, "Raccoon, and Red Fox, and Bunny Rabbit, and White-Tailed Deer."
Nicky is mouthing the names of the animals along with his father.
"'Don't forget us, Bear,' said Bunny Rabbit. 'I could never forget you,' Bear told his forest friends. 'I'll be home for Christmas. And I will love you forever.'"
The page with its soft pastel drawings blurs under her gaze.
"Mommy … you're s'posed to say it too," Nicky reminds her gently, patting her arm with one small hand. "You and Daddy and me and not Ellie 'cause she's sleeping. You forgot."
His voice is neutral, sweet, but she feels a pang of guilt.
The next time, she says it with them:
I will love you forever.
The story doesn't end there.
The story is just beginning.
She watches as Bear shoulders his little red sled and heads off on his journey. Rain forest. Mountains.
"Bear liked the beach," Derek reads aloud, as Nicky turns the pages for him. "It was salty and nice to touch. And he liked his new friends, the fish."
Nicky's head is leaning against Addison's arm now.
"But Bear missed his forest friends," Derek continues. "And then Bear said, 'this isn't my home,' and he knew that he had to move on."
This isn't my home.
The words brush her skin, leaving her raw.
"He's gonna find it," Nicky whispers next to her, sounding as fascinated as if he's hearing the story for the first time. And sure enough, as Derek keeps reading over the soft sounds of Ellie's sleeping breaths, Bear does in fact find his sled.
"Bear saw his forest friends," Derek reads. "He saw the lights on the trees. Christmas was waiting for him. And then Bear knew it: he was home."
"The end," Nicky reads happily, one small finger tracing each word, and then he eases back against her with a satisfied sigh.
Now the story is over.
Nicky's long lashes settle on his rosy cheeks. Bear is home with his forest friends, and now he too can sleep. Derek catches her eye, smiling. Ellie is sleeping deeply, it seems, her thumb near her mouth, her head against her father's arm.
Addison closes her arm around the little boy cuddled into her side and studies the man who was her husband.
I would have loved you all my life.
Derek's hand is warm, threading through hers.
I just want to stay.
It forms an arc around both the children, and for a moment the connection among the four of them pulses with electricity, so strong she's certain it could singe.
I just want to keep this dream in me.
If Derek feels it too, he doesn't let on, just squeezes her hand with gentle reassurance as her eyes, too, slip closed.
..
She wakes before she opens her eyes.
Does that seem obvious? It isn't, not in their bed. Derek opened his eyes first; then he woke. It fascinated her at first. His eyes would open with a start, bright blue, and then he would wake up. She teased him about it when she noticed it, in medical school; he teased her in return for trying to hold onto sleep for a few last seconds before lifting her lids.
A decade and a half with him and she's still not out of the habit of referring to him as the other half of any observation. I'll have red, Derek prefers white. I'd rather drive automatic, Derek loves manual. I like fourteen towels in the OR before I start, Derek needs sixteen.
Derek.
She remembers him before she opens her eyes, before she realizes where she is.
Before where she is makes her hold her breath.
Where is she?
She's in bed, she recognizes the cool slippery feel of the sheets. In bed, where she fell asleep last night with her husband and two sweet flannel-clad children, all four of them crowded into the bed together. Somehow, then, it was the perfect size.
Now, she's stretched out.
On either side of her, arms' width, her fingers brush … nothing.
So she's alone.
Of course she is.
She takes a moment just to breathe in the disappointment to the sound of the pounding waves outside.
Oceanside, because she thought the beach might comfort her. She thought it might change her life.
She's alone in her California bedroom, the one she pretended to care about decorating to stanch the flow of loneliness. She doesn't open her eyes yet, but she knows that when she does, she'll see light colors and fabrics, the kind that wouldn't stand up to a small child.
Why would they need to? She has no children.
She's on the opposite coast, in her opposite life.
Alone.
If I can send you back to Christmas six years ago…
She has a brief flash of feeling for her mother as she recollects the offer she made. She has the sensation that she tried, that Bizzy tried, and there's a faint, fleeting warmth inside her at the thought.
Her eyes are still closed, but she knows it's not six years ago. Six years ago, she woke up in the brownstone she shared with Derek. There are no ocean sounds there. There was someone beside her, a heated arm flung over her midsection. She would get chilly, while she slept, and he would come find her across the expanse of the bed.
Tentatively, in the darkness behind her lids that she recognizes as the blackout shades she's been buying since residency, she stretches out her fingers, her toes.
Nothing.
She waits.
She tastes the word alone.
Of course. This was all a dream.
She doesn't open her eyes, not yet.
It felt so real, so long. Can a dream be like that? Can a dream worry about her, wonder about her, stay by her side even when she can't remember their life together? Can a dream look like her and like Derek at the same time, gaze up at her with innocent eyes, hold onto her with tiny fingers, seek her comfort in the night?
It felt real because it could have been real.
The thought dances through her mind unbidden and she allows it – resigned to the brief slumbering glimpse of what she could have had.
Her fingers move slowly on the sheets, holding nothing.
What she would like is to hold onto the dream, to remember it as long as she can. To feel its almost-realness, so different from her solitary life on the west coast.
What she could have had: the warmth and safety of the brownstone, filled with love and laughter.
Children's voices.
Derek's arms around her.
Maybe if I keep my eyes closed, it will keep feeling real.
"Merry Christmas, Mommy!"
The door bursts open and her eyes fly open at the same time – the darkness is gone and the room is flooded with light. Nicky pounds across the floor in his red and white Christmas pajamas, holding a filled stocking. Derek is at his heels, grinning, Ellie in his arms.
"Merry Christmas, Mommy!" Ellie repeats her brother's words, then wriggles down from her father's grasp and crawls across the bed, a warm flannel bundle snuggling into Addison's waiting arms.
"Merry Christmas, Addie," Derek says, his smile so familiar that he can't not be real.
He touches her cheek, looking concerned, when she doesn't respond.
"I didn't see you," she murmurs by way of explanation.
"We were getting our stockings," Nicky says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. Ellie is cuddled into her side now, one small hand playing with the satin cuff of Addison's pajama top.
"Downstairs," Ellie clarifies, smiling up at her.
Addison nods, still trying to make sense of their appearance.
You're still here. Of course. This is your life, why wouldn't you be here?
The remaining question: why am I still here?
Derek is still gazing at her.
It's Christmas. Her deadline. Isn't that what Bizzy said from the beginning? You're running out of time, Addison. Christmas is almost here.
And if Christmas is here, and she's here … no, that can't be right. Bizzy said she needed to go back to Christmas six years ago, to fix things. So how can she be here, now?
"You, uh, you weren't here," she says to Derek, knowing she must sound strange.
"But you knew we were coming right back," he responds.
"I knew," she says quietly, not realizing until she hears the words how true it is. "I know you."
Derek's eyes are very soft.
If I didn't go back, how can I be here?
Could she have already gone back? A half-dozen time travel theories, from stories of her youth, slide through her mind. And then she stops trying to calculate, because Nicky is clambering onto the bed too, hefting his overflowing stocking, and math doesn't matter.
He's beaming at her. "Mommy, you remembered!" he says, as if it's simple.
"I remembered," she breathes. "I … remember," and he's right.
It's true.
God, it's true: memories are flooding her, filling her up.
There's nothing she can't remember, every moment and memory, every sound and scent, it's like blowing up hundreds of balloons and letting them float away in a bright sky as memory after memory drifts back to her consciousness.
I remember everything.
She folds both children into her arms, the babies she birthed after all, and then reaches up and pulls the husband she never lost down for a kiss.
When his lips touch hers she feels something new, something unexpected, as if a hand is drawing back a dark curtain toward a sunny morning.
No, it's the old memories receding to the back of her mind. Not lost forever, but smaller and darker like old dreams she half-remembers. Fear and loneliness, pain and regret, rain-soaked steps and rough black lace on her fingertips, cold hands and cold eyes: slowly, they drift away like seaweed until they're so small they're nothing compared to the colorful balloons of memory.
Her heart swells and when she pulls back she cups her husband's face, memorizing it again, like always.
He smiles at her. "What was that for?"
"You still take my breath away," she whispers, and sees his eyes sparkle with recognition in return.
I remember.
With a little sound like the tinkling of wind chimes – or jingle bells, maybe, or the sweet laughter of two small children – everything is right.
Christmas waited for her. Six long years.
And now she knows it:
She's home.
The End
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I planned for this ending and I've been excited to share it with you. It's the one I wanted. Is it the one you wanted too? I hope you'll write and tell me. To all those of you who recognized the significance of the necklace and Bizzy's last heartbreaking communication with Addison in PP: sing it, sisters. That was a brutal part of the show and I loved the idea that Bizzy could somehow realize her effect on Addison's life, and give some last efforts to help her. And I loved the idea of Addison's recognizing that, especially now that she is/was/is again a mother herself.
And I promise more Addek is coming - The Climbing Way and Some Bright Morning are both in the works, winding to an end, and others are still gearing up.
Last author's note, last sentence: thank you, one last time, for coming on this journey with me!