Tempting Fate Part 28

As a young girl, with a mother who surrounded herself with people, Gabby shut herself away, feeling as if she didn't have a family of her own, or at least a family who noticed her.

Here she is, as an adult, not only with a family of her own, but with the type of family that surrounded her as a child, the type of family she never knew she wanted, but the type of family she has spent her life looking for.

They are family through choice, hard work, acceptance and love. They are family because they have found each other, often in the unlikeliest of circ.u.mstances, and have chosen to stay together, even when it would have been so much easier to walk the other way.

Matt didn't think he wanted children until he was much older and had settled down. He and Gabby were a moment in time, a brief obsession that was never destined to be anything more than it was, and shouldn't, in fact, have even been what it was. When Gabby became pregnant, by rights Elliott was supposed to have left her, and Matt was supposed to want nothing to do with the baby.

Gabby was supposed to be a single mother, struggling to raise her children on her own, working all the hours G.o.d sends to provide for them all.

Instead, here she is, slicing up a Carvel ice-cream cake, listening to shouts of laughter from the living room, knowing that in her house, right now, are all the people she loves most in the world.

Elliott comes into the kitchen to grab another bottle of Scotch. He kisses his wife as he pa.s.ses, tenderly rubbing her back, as if no explosions had happened to blow apart their happiness, as if, in fact, they are newly-weds, which is how he so often feels, now that he, they, have been given a second chance.

Olivia, who at eighteen has come through the teenage years and is a young woman, beautiful, naturally beautiful, in a way Gabby never was, is getting ready to go off to college.

She will go to college provided, Gabby thinks wryly, she isn't derailed by a potential modelling career. Oh G.o.d, please let that not happen. Gabby has had to handle too much in the past two years but that might actually derail her. She smiles.

Matt appears, holding Henry up for Gabby to plant a kiss on his cheek. How could she ever have contemplated a life without Henry? No matter how her life is going to turn out, Henry will never have been a mistake. She fell in love with her daughters the moment they were born, but the love she has for Henry, a mother's love for a son, is unlike anything she has ever known. She can't bear to think she might have missed out on this.

Claire and Tim are in the other room. It is a slow journey back for Gabby. Things are not the same with her and Claire, and may never be exactly the same, but they are trying. The four of them have had dinner together once or twice, and those evenings go a long way to healing the rift. More than anything, Gabby has perhaps learned not to rely on friends in the way she once did, and that saddens her. When she had problems in the old days she would turn to Claire. Nowadays, she turns to her mother.

Her mother, who was always so busy sorting out the problems of the world that she never had time for her own daughter, is now the one person Gabby trusts to advise her, listen to her problems, offer a shoulder to cry on if need be.

Gabby carries the last of her plates herself, one for her mother, one for herself. She sits on the sofa next to Natasha and leans her head briefly on her mother's shoulder as her mother smiles and strokes her hair.

It feels natural now to allow herself to be held in her mother's arms, to have her hair stroked, to be kissed. She wonders if her mother has changed, has softened in her old age, but suspects that it is she herself who has changed. The fiery resistance Gabby used as her armour when she was young has vanished. Life is too hard to get through alone, and it was her mother who stepped up when everyone else had gone.

Alanna squeezes up on her other side, the three of them looking around: at Elliott pouring out the Scotch for a toast, at Olivia and Monroe chatting, at Matt sitting cross-legged on the floor while Henry zips around him in circles, huge smiles on both their faces.

Natasha turned out to be a good mother, after all. Gabby watches her son and her elder daughter, as her younger daughter entwines her fingers with her own. I hope, she thinks, watching all the hope and possibility in Henry's smile, I hope I turn out to be a good mother for my children. I hope I can give them everything they need. I hope I can raise them to make good choices, to be good people, to go into the world treating others with kindness and respect.

I hope our year of insanity a for this is how she and Elliott have come to refer to their separation, in terms thinly veiled with humour a I hope our year of insanity hasn't damaged them, or destroyed their belief in the power of a strong relations.h.i.+p.

She looks up then, aware that she is being stared at, and Elliott, standing by the fireplace, gazes at her, his eyes filled with love. He just smiles, and she knows it's all going to be fine.

Somehow, what they least expected a what they least wanted a has brought them full circle. A little family. Her little family.

Acknowledgements.

As always, my extraordinary publis.h.i.+ng team and home at St Martin's Press, and my family at Penguin in the UK. Louise Moore for so much love and support over all these years together, and Jen Enderlin, who has swept into my life and dusted out all the corners, with so much wisdom, brilliance and talent.

My agents a Anthony Goff, who has blessed me with sage advice and true friends.h.i.+p for such a very long time, and the incomparable Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for whom I am truly grateful.

My friends a you know who you are.

Michael Palmer, who so graciously and kindly offered up his wonderful old farm in New Hamps.h.i.+re for me to use as a writing retreat. Without Michael, this book would not have been written, and that's no exaggeration.

The friends who helped enormously in coming up with the story, and those that supported me throughout.

Glenn Ferrari, Alberto Hamonet, Dusty Thomason, Randy Zuckerman.

To the many people who were open and honest enough to share their heartbreak and their stories with me.

Finally, my husband, Ian. Who is truly the only man I want to walk with, side by side, as we continue the journey.

THE BEGINNING.

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