When they were ready, Ella was rolled outside in a wheelchair while Gavin followed, carrying the baby in the seat. As they prepared to get on the bus, Ella’s siblings gave her a round of applause.
“Way to go, Mama,” Lucas said, hanging with his brothers from the open windows.
“Holy hot brothers,” one of the nurses said to Ella.
“They’re jackasses.”
“They’re adorable,” the nurse said, laughing at their antics.
Linc hugged Char. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, Linc. It was so great to see you and to meet your beautiful family.”
“I can’t wait to meet yours.”
“We’ll make that happen very soon.”
They hugged once more, as if they were afraid they might not see each other again.
When everyone else was back on the bus, he left Char standing on the curb and waved to her as the bus pulled away.
“You’ll see her soon,” Molly said when he was seated with her.
“I really hope so.”
“You will.”
When they were on their way, Linc stood and turned to face the others. “I just want to say thanks to all of you for coming with me and supporting me through these last few days. And I want to thank you, Hunter, for handling the logistics and realizing that having you all in the room would make a much bigger statement than me telling my father I have ten children.”
“We do tend to make a statement,” Colton said, making everyone laugh.
“That’s what happens when you’re raised in a barn,” the group of them said together.
Lincoln laughed at the familiar refrain. “Indeed.” He glanced at Molly. “And now I want to tell you another story, this one about your mother.”
Molly’s brows furrowed with confusion. “What’d I do now?”
“It’s what you did forty years ago, after the first time we were here together, that I want tell them.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling as she tuned in to where he was going.
“When we got back to Vermont, we were still pretty shell-shocked by what’d happened with my father. We told your grandparents, and they were equally astounded. And then your mom, she went to her dad and told him I needed to know I still had a family. I had their family. She asked him to marry us that night.”
“Whoa,” Hannah said. “Did you do it, Gramps?”
“By then, I knew there was no coming between your parents, so of course I agreed.”
“What did you say, Dad?” Lucas asked.
He looked down at the love of his life and reached for her hand. “When Molly Stillman got down on her knees and asked me to spend the rest of my life with her, starting that night, I said, ‘Hell yes.’ And your grandfather married us right there in their living room, three months before our official wedding.”
“How have we never heard this?” Will asked.
“If I told you that, I would’ve had to tell you the rest, and I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want you to know I was estranged from my family when I was raising you to be all about your family. I didn’t want to set that example for you.”
“It wasn’t your fault you were estranged from them,” Wade said.
“Still… I didn’t want you to know something like that could happen, so we agreed to keep the first wedding between us and your grandparents. Megan overheard Elmer and me talking about it at the diner the other day, and she told me I needed to tell the rest of you about our first wedding so you’d know just how amazing your mother truly is.”
“We already knew that,” Hannah said. “But way to go, Mom.” She led a rousing round of applause for Molly.
“Stand up and take a bow, love,” Linc said.
Molly stood and bowed dramatically.
“And now you know all our secrets,” Linc said.
“Not all of them,” Molly reminded him. “There was that time—”
“No,” their children shouted.
Lincoln returned to his seat next to Molly.
“Thank you for the shout-out.”
“My pleasure. Still ranks as one of your finest moments.”
“I remember everything about that day so vividly. I was running on pure emotion and a ferocious need to do something to make things right for you. Not that I ever really could.”
He leaned his head against hers. “You did, though. You fixed almost everything with that one gesture.”
The family was in high spirits as they made their way north with Christmas music playing on the sound system. They even sang along, loudly and off-key, and the baby slept through the chaos.
“That makes her an official Abbott,” Molly declared. “The ability to sleep through madness.”
Lincoln had never seen Ella glow the way she did when she looked at her newborn daughter, and Gavin… He was an emotional disaster on his first day as a dad. The poor guy had been through so much since losing his beloved brother. To see him starting his own family with Ella was deeply satisfying to everyone who loved him.
“Your folks must be on pins and needles,” Linc said to Gavin.
“They can’t wait to meet her,” Gav said, his gaze fixed on his fiancée and daughter. “They’re so excited.”
Bob and Amelia Guthrie had been part of the Abbott family for a long time, since Hannah married Caleb and made them family.
With rest stops and food breaks figured in, it took seven hours to reach the Vermont border, and a cheer went up inside the bus when they crossed the state line as a light snow fell.
“Ugh,” Molly said. “I hope the snow doesn’t slow us down.”
“It might,” Linc replied, leaning around her to see the snow coming down at a good clip. It was apt to be more significant in the mountains.
Sure enough, the closer they got to home, the slower they had to go to navigate snowy, icy roads.
“Should we stop somewhere?” Molly asked Linc in a soft tone that ensured they wouldn’t be overheard.
“The kids would probably walk to get home if they had to, and knowing our kids, they’d do it.”
“They get that from your people.”
“No way,” Linc said, smiling. “My people are refined city folk who know enough to stay inside when it’s cold. Yours are the mountain people who think it’s fun to go looking for people in a blizzard.”
“For the record,” she said, “that was never me. My father and his brothers and cousins, my brothers, yes. But never me.”
“It’s in your bloodline.”
The friendly bickering helped to keep their minds off the increasingly hazardous weather conditions.
Caden was crying to be let out of his car seat, but Max told him he had to stay put for a little while longer.
Right before they would’ve lost reception in the mountains, Max’s cell phone rang. “It’s Cam. Hey, what’s up?” After listening for a minute, he said, “Sure, I’ll tell them. See you soon.” After he ended the call, Max said, “Cameron and the others are at the barn waiting for us. She said they’ve set up beds for everyone, including you, Gramps, and have Christmas ready to go. They even have a bassinette for baby Sarah. They thought we’d want to be together this year.”