Chapter 7 - Someone Noticed
One year later, Alexander stood outside the same bedroom where everything had begun.
The door was open now.
It was always open.
Inside, Annie sat on the bed helping Jordan with his tie.
“You're choking me.”
“I'm barely touching you.”
“Dad!”
Alexander entered.
“What's happening?”
“Annie's trying to kill me.”
Annie stared at him.
“Your son is dramatic.”
“My son?”
“Today he's yours.”
Justin appeared wearing one shoe.
Alexander frowned.
“Where's the other?”
Justin shrugged.
Alexander looked beneath the dresser.
There it was.
For a moment, nobody understood why he started laughing.
Then Annie did.
The first afternoon.
Her missing shoe.
Lauren's bed.
Two sleeping boys.
A broken father standing in the doorway.
Alexander picked up Justin's shoe.
“Come here.”
He knelt and put it on.
Justin studied him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Are you nervous?”
“Extremely.”
“Why?”
Alexander looked at Annie.
She was wearing a simple ivory wedding dress.
Because today they were getting married.
“Because I'm about to do something very important.”
Jordan jumped from the bed.
“More important than buying companies?”
“Much.”
“More important than your phone?”
“Definitely.”
Justin considered this.
“More important than pancakes?”
Alexander hesitated.
Annie laughed.
“Careful.”
Alexander smiled.
“Almost.”
The twins screamed with laughter.
The ceremony took place in the garden behind the Morrison home.
Small.
Family only.
No press.
No corporate executives except Richard, who insisted he was family after “surviving twelve years of Alexander Morrison.”
Before the ceremony began, Alexander took Jordan and Justin aside.
“I want to ask you something.”
Jordan immediately said, “Yes.”
“You don't know the question.”
“Is it about Annie?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
Alexander smiled.
Justin looked more serious.
“Is Annie our new mommy?”
Alexander crouched.
“No.”
Justin looked confused.
Alexander continued.
“You only have one Mommy Lauren.”
Justin nodded.
“Annie isn't here to replace her.”
“Then what is she?”
Annie had approached behind them.
Alexander looked up.
“You want to answer?”
Annie knelt beside him.
“I can be Annie.”
Jordan smiled.
“Forever?”
“If you'll have me.”
Both boys threw themselves at her.
Alexander wrapped his arms around all three.
Richard watched from several feet away.
“I'm not crying,” he announced.
Nobody had asked.
That night, long after the guests left, Alexander checked the twins' bedroom.
Jordan was asleep.
Justin had kicked off his blanket.
Alexander smiled.
He pulled it back over his son's legs.
At the doorway, Annie watched.
“You remembered.”
Alexander looked at her.
“Children don't wake because they're cold.”
Annie smiled.
“They wake because they want to know someone noticed.”
Alexander switched off the lamp.
They walked quietly into the hallway.
Fourteen months after Lauren died, Alexander had believed his family was permanently broken.
He had been wrong.
Grief had changed them.
It had left scars.
There were still nights Jordan had nightmares.
There were still mornings when Justin asked questions about his mother.
Alexander still visited Lauren's grave.
And sometimes Annie found him sitting alone with her photograph.
She never asked him to put it away.
Because healing wasn't forgetting the person who was gone.
It was learning how to love the people who remained.
Alexander stopped outside the bedroom where he'd first found Annie with his sons.
“Do you know what scared me most that day?” he asked.
“What?”
“That they looked safer with you than they did with me.”
Annie touched his face.
“And now?”
Alexander glanced through the open doorway.
His sons were sleeping peacefully.
“Now I understand.”
“Understand what?”
He smiled.
“They didn't need me to solve everything.”
Annie took his hand.
“They needed you to stay.”
Alexander looked at the woman who had entered his house as a maid and somehow helped turn it back into a home.
This time, he didn't look away.
“So did I.”
And for the first time since that rainy October night, Alexander Morrison didn't feel guilty for being happy.
Down the hall, Justin murmured in his sleep.
Alexander immediately turned.
Annie smiled.
“Where are you going?”
“To check on him.”
“He's sleeping.”
“I know.”
Alexander walked toward the bedroom anyway.
Because Lauren had been right all along.
May you like
Sometimes children simply needed to know—
someone noticed.
