Chapter 6: The Legacy Continues
Upon returning home from our honeymoon, Richard and I started talking about growing our family. Oliver was beginning to ask for a baby brother. At the time, he actually had two other siblings on his mother’s side, but since she was mostly out of the picture, which meant her other children were as well, we didn’t bring her up. Born in Sweden when Richard was twenty-two and really not ready to settle down, Oliver entered the world bright-eyed. I cooed over his pictures as if I’d given birth to him myself. His mother intended for Richard to be a responsible father no matter what, and arranged for Oliver to live with him. Stepping up to the plate, Richard became an excellent father.
This was just one of many reasons that I knew he would be an amazing dad to the kids that we would someday have, and I was anxious to get started right away. After several visits to my doctor to help us pinpoint an optimal ovulation schedule, and just to make sure my body could handle it – touring was really taking a toll on me – I was ready to go!
The first attempt was a huge fail. As was the second and third. And just to rub salt in that wound, that’s when Taryn told me she was pregnant. Taryn, who never even wanted kids, was having one with her new husband. A short time later, Abigail shared similar news. She and her fiancé wanted kids, but they weren’t planning on them this early. Her pregnancy was ‘a happy accident.’
I didn’t even bother with the fourth attempt, intentionally going out of town the week that I ovulated, just so that I wouldn’t have to face the disappointment again. Richard actually kind of tricked me into the fifth try, by just planning a romantic weekend away and not even talking about babies. We spent most of the weekend coupling, and when we returned to the city, I realized what day it was, and ran out and took a test. I thought for sure this would be it, because we hadn’t been consciously trying. I was wrong. After the sixth and seventh negative months I thought about just giving up. Taryn brought up adoption, but by that point I didn’t even want to talk about it, and I was angry with her for having what I wanted. She’d named me Gavin’s godmother at his birth, and at first I wanted to reject it. I didn’t want her pity child. It took me a few weeks to come to my senses, but I was happy I did.
We stopped trying for a little while, I just couldn’t deal with it. I was tired of seeing that single line, that minus sign, the word negative, the doctor fighting to keep the frown off her face as she told me, ‘Sorry.’ Most of all, I didn’t like feeling like a failure. The one thing that we can do, as women, that men cannot do, ever, is carry and deliver a child, and for some reason I couldn’t do that. I felt inadequate, like I was made wrong, and I was consumed with comparing myself to Oliver’s mother: I was never going to be able to give Richard what this woman did.
My grandma Claire told me it took two years for her and Abuelo to have Uncle Quincy. It only raised my anxiety level through the roof, because I was just barely halfway through that timeframe so that meant I had over a year left of this, but it also soothed me. This woman that I held in such high regard, this woman that seemed the very giver of life to everything and everyone around her, had been through this exact struggle. Even though logically, I knew I wasn’t the first person to go through this, it sunk in that much deeper knowing that my own grandmother had already been there.
So we went for try number eight. It was admittedly half-hearted, and instead of subjecting poor Richard to multi-hour marathons of exhaustion (though I bet even now he still won’t complain), we coupled only once or twice over those few days. I didn’t bother taking a test either, I figured we would just go on about our days and see what happened. When I was late, my hopes went up just slightly, but we were also touring, and my body gets weird on the road. The our travel physician confirmed it, giving me the news just before a show, and I couldn’t contain my excitement, blurting out in the middle of a song in Seattle in the summer of ’43: ‘We’re having a baby!’ As the tour progressed, I giddily used the guitar stand, as the belly grew too big to maneuver my bass around.
At the end of the thrilling nine months, Natalia burst into our lives. Following the family tradition that’s been passed down in our family for a few generations (on Mom’s side) the mother’s middle name becomes the first-born daughter’s first name (my mom’s middle name was Valentina, Grandma Claire’s was Elysia). In essence, that means every woman in the family technically chooses their granddaughter’s name as well, so Richard and I deliberated her middle name at length, when suddenly it hit me: name her after her brother. It just felt right. Something that would bond them as more than just half-siblings. At the time, I honestly had no idea if I would be able to have any more children, so I really wanted these two to be as close as possible.
However, as they all say, once you stop trying, that’s when it happens, and shortly after Natalia’s first birthday, I discovered that I was pregnant again. To say we were unprepared is an understatement of gigantic proportions. This was going to mean I’d have a toddler and an infant at the same time, then two toddlers… there was going to be no break in diaper duty, just as one moved on from a new phase the other would be starting it. This also came with a new string of worries: Would they end up growing up as competitive as Val and I? And then would they end up estranged like we were?
I didn’t have much time to focus on my worries, as you can imagine, chasing two little girls around the house all the time. Natalia and Chelsea kept us busy, that’s for sure, and I wish I could have laughed in all the faces of people who ooh’d and ahh’d over them. ‘Two girls, oh they must be so sweet.’ No. No they were not. At times I was convinced that we had two boys. The house was always a mess, I couldn't keep anything in its proper place for more than one hour. Richard would look around and say 'Ah, I see it's been all hellfire and damnation in here.'
My brother Nordin had been ill for awhile, diagnosed when I was about twenty-one. His condition went into remission several times, long enough for him to meet and marry Ebony Dobson and then have a son, Nate. The two of them had problems almost right off the bat, and when Nordin fell sick again, Ebony was unable to cope with being a wife, a mother, and a nurse, and she took off with her other kids, leaving Nordin to care for Nate on his own while he was barely able to care for himself.
And that's how Nate joined my household. Nordin had started a living will when he was first diagnosed, and constantly kept it updated. When Nate was born (about a year after Chelsea), he designated Val and I as godmothers, and after Ebony abandoned them, he revised the will once again to indicate we would become Nate's guardians in the event of his death. Since Val had recently married, moved to Chicago, and children were not yet on their radar, Nordin didn't feel it was right to ruffle both her and Nate's lives, by suddenly giving her a child to raise and by moving Nate out of New York, so he named me guardian, with a clause for Nate to go to Val if I was unable to do so.
Since I agreed with him, that uprooting Nate (who was only three years old at this time) to another city immediately after losing his father would be too much for him, I saw no choice but to agree to be his legal guardian. He and Chelsea were only a year apart, so I was sure that he and the girls would grow up like brother and sisters instead of cousins, like Tatum and I. When Nordin lost his battle, it was as heartbreaking as you would expect, but there is something to be said for having the opportunity to say goodbye. For the last month, we all knew it was coming, so we had the chance to have our last hangouts and share stories. Every night we said goodnight as if it would be the last time, so when it finally was the last time, it was kind of okay.
The girls took to Nate like he was a plaything. I felt bad for him at first, he'd spent plenty of nights and weekends with us over the six months or so prior to Nordin's death, but now that he was a part of our family full time, he had nowhere to escape. I didn't have much time to worry though, because wouldn't you know it? I was knocked up.
Troy Jordan came into the world red and screeching. The kid nearly killed me with that sound. I thought something was wrong. There was no way a newborn should sound like that. It was...inhuman. Had to be an alien. Somehow I'd just given birth to something not of this world. Then I looked at him. He was a carbon copy of his big brother, and I had this immeasurable sense of pride and smugness come over me: Even though I'd given Richard two children, Oliver's mother still had one up on me, by giving him a son to carry on his name. Now I had done it too. And then I did it again three years later. At first, after Troy I didn't think I wanted to have any more. I was overwhelmed with five kids in the house, and I didn't want to risk facing disappointment again. But Richard talked me into it, and Parker Richard was meticulously planned, much like his oldest sister. This time we knew what we were doing too, and we carefully waited until Troy was two before we even started trying, assuming that it would take a few tries, buying us more time. Of course, and we hit the mark immediately. It almost seemed unfair at first.
After that, we decided we were done. Six kids in the house, going through labor four times, I was done. Besides, Oliver was getting to that age where it seemed almost inappropriate to have a new baby sibling in the house. I always felt it was weird when couples who already had nearly adult kids went and popped out new babies. Besides, by that point there was some extra strife going on at home, centering around him. To this day I can’t say for sure what happened. There could have been even more factors than I know about, or it could have started over nothing. All I know is there was this tension between Richard and Oliver that could choke the entire room. The younger began spending more and more time away from the house, staying with friends, and at one point we realized that he’d practically moved in with a buddy that was a few years older and had his own place.
I tried for months to get him to talk to me, and he’d always brush me off. “Not right now.” Or the one that always confused me, “You wouldn’t understand.” I wondered if it was about a girl. Maybe even a boy. Who knew? He’d had a handful of girlfriends, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Was it drugs? I had no idea what was going on with our oldest boy, and Richard seemed even less inclined to deal with whatever it was. I began to observe them more closely, realizing that the problem seemed to only be between the two of them. This, of course, only made things more confusing for me, and let’s face it, if something is going on with my family, I need to know what it is.
During all of this, Richard was getting sick a lot. He’d get migraines so intense that we had to cancel shows at the last minute. We actually ended up bringing Taryn’s ex-husband on board, to fill in when Richard wasn’t feeling well, so that we didn’t have to cancel shows. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the migraines were somehow connected to what was going on with Oliver, that it was all ‘in his head,’ so to speak, because the doctors couldn’t find any other reason for him to be getting them. With every denial that there was anything wrong between him and his son, the more convinced I became that my family was falling apart.
I had my theories, after confiding in my mother. She said something about how it can’t be easy to be part of a blended family, and it reminded me of how my brother and sister and I felt at the idea that our father had another family. Granted, that situation was different, because he left and just replaced us. Surely this couldn’t be what Oliver was feeling, right? He wasn’t left behind. We brought him with us. We named his sister (and effectively, his future niece) after him. He was tied to us. Our kids were never referred to as half-siblings. He was my son. I was his mom.
But maybe that was worse? Maybe he didn’t want to forget about the fact that he already had a mom (though that was up for debate, in my opinion) and other brothers? Maybe he felt we were trying to make him forget about her?
Or was I over-thinking all of it, and he was just being a moody teenage boy?
Whatever it was, it eventually seemed to resolve itself on its own, for which I was simultaneously grateful and suspicious. It started with a "happy accident" - when we found out we would be adding one more to our brood of kids after all. To say that was a surprise would not even do justice to the word understatement. With the very limited amount of time that Richard and I were even together - between him being sick which left me busy, and touring, anytime we were in any situation where we probably could have done anything, all we could think about was sleep - and the fact that we were decidedly not trying for more kids, finding out that I was pregnant was like, what? Especially, again, after nearly a year of trying to conceive Natalia, for this new one to come along at a time when we were the most stressed out (isn’t that supposed to make it more difficult?) was mind-blowing. After the doctor did the math, we realized that it happened around Oliver’s birthday, which in hindsight somehow seemed extremely fitting.
It was a fairly easy pregnancy, marked only by being in the midst the existing tension between father and son, something which was now taking a new toll on Richard. He’d started withdrawing from everyone and everything. It wasn’t just Oliver he seemed to avoid anymore, it was all of the kids. It was me. He’d disappear into the home office for hours at a time. He was spending nights in his old apartment, the one he’d been keeping with the intention to gift it to Oliver one day.
When I went into labor, I was actually at lunch with Oliver. As reticent as he’d become with his father, and as standoffish in general, he never turned me down when I asked him to join me someplace. I took this as a good sign, after all, if he was mad that his dad had a new family, wouldn’t he be avoiding us? As we sat at an outside cafe, on a rather mild autumn day, laughing about something that had happened at Chelsea’s birthday party the week before (she’d turned eleven), I felt it. It started the same for all of them. “Oliver,” I said. “Don’t freak out. But your sister will be joining us soon.” The look on his face was a mix of confusion, concern, and maybe a hint of disgust? I may have imagined that. I knew I had some time before it would become urgent, so I insisted that he finish his meal while I called Richard - no answer - and then he took me to the hospital. It was here that he took charge in the most adorable way, demanding that attention be paid to me, demanding that my doctor be called. He reminded me of Richard, and I told him so. For some reason, this seemed to unsettle him, and he returned to his sulky self for awhile, though he did not leave my side.
Richard still had not arrived when it was push time a few hours later, but I saw no reason to subject Oliver to that, and I sent him off to go get a snack or coffee, or even to go home if he wanted. He refused, determined to wait for me afterwards. Because of this, he was the first person to hold Madalynne after they brought her back, all cleaned up and tested and evaluated. After that, he doted on her. He’s the one who helped her learn to walk, he encouraged her crawling; he was hooked.
So, it seemed, was Richard. He finally made it to the hospital, finding his oldest child cradling his youngest, and it was like something came over him. Or lifted off of him, I’m not sure. He changed. That day seemed to wake them both up, and Oliver started spending more and more time around the house, even though by now Richard had given Oliver the apartment. The animosity between the two of them ceased to exist. Whatever it was, was forgotten. Throughout her life, people have accused me of spoiling Madalynne. This is the reason why. Her arrival fixed my family. To me, she was the miracle baby.
Little did I know, a year later that would all fall apart and only get worse twenty years later.
This was just one of many reasons that I knew he would be an amazing dad to the kids that we would someday have, and I was anxious to get started right away. After several visits to my doctor to help us pinpoint an optimal ovulation schedule, and just to make sure my body could handle it – touring was really taking a toll on me – I was ready to go!
The first attempt was a huge fail. As was the second and third. And just to rub salt in that wound, that’s when Taryn told me she was pregnant. Taryn, who never even wanted kids, was having one with her new husband. A short time later, Abigail shared similar news. She and her fiancé wanted kids, but they weren’t planning on them this early. Her pregnancy was ‘a happy accident.’
I didn’t even bother with the fourth attempt, intentionally going out of town the week that I ovulated, just so that I wouldn’t have to face the disappointment again. Richard actually kind of tricked me into the fifth try, by just planning a romantic weekend away and not even talking about babies. We spent most of the weekend coupling, and when we returned to the city, I realized what day it was, and ran out and took a test. I thought for sure this would be it, because we hadn’t been consciously trying. I was wrong. After the sixth and seventh negative months I thought about just giving up. Taryn brought up adoption, but by that point I didn’t even want to talk about it, and I was angry with her for having what I wanted. She’d named me Gavin’s godmother at his birth, and at first I wanted to reject it. I didn’t want her pity child. It took me a few weeks to come to my senses, but I was happy I did.
We stopped trying for a little while, I just couldn’t deal with it. I was tired of seeing that single line, that minus sign, the word negative, the doctor fighting to keep the frown off her face as she told me, ‘Sorry.’ Most of all, I didn’t like feeling like a failure. The one thing that we can do, as women, that men cannot do, ever, is carry and deliver a child, and for some reason I couldn’t do that. I felt inadequate, like I was made wrong, and I was consumed with comparing myself to Oliver’s mother: I was never going to be able to give Richard what this woman did.
My grandma Claire told me it took two years for her and Abuelo to have Uncle Quincy. It only raised my anxiety level through the roof, because I was just barely halfway through that timeframe so that meant I had over a year left of this, but it also soothed me. This woman that I held in such high regard, this woman that seemed the very giver of life to everything and everyone around her, had been through this exact struggle. Even though logically, I knew I wasn’t the first person to go through this, it sunk in that much deeper knowing that my own grandmother had already been there.
So we went for try number eight. It was admittedly half-hearted, and instead of subjecting poor Richard to multi-hour marathons of exhaustion (though I bet even now he still won’t complain), we coupled only once or twice over those few days. I didn’t bother taking a test either, I figured we would just go on about our days and see what happened. When I was late, my hopes went up just slightly, but we were also touring, and my body gets weird on the road. The our travel physician confirmed it, giving me the news just before a show, and I couldn’t contain my excitement, blurting out in the middle of a song in Seattle in the summer of ’43: ‘We’re having a baby!’ As the tour progressed, I giddily used the guitar stand, as the belly grew too big to maneuver my bass around.
At the end of the thrilling nine months, Natalia burst into our lives. Following the family tradition that’s been passed down in our family for a few generations (on Mom’s side) the mother’s middle name becomes the first-born daughter’s first name (my mom’s middle name was Valentina, Grandma Claire’s was Elysia). In essence, that means every woman in the family technically chooses their granddaughter’s name as well, so Richard and I deliberated her middle name at length, when suddenly it hit me: name her after her brother. It just felt right. Something that would bond them as more than just half-siblings. At the time, I honestly had no idea if I would be able to have any more children, so I really wanted these two to be as close as possible.
However, as they all say, once you stop trying, that’s when it happens, and shortly after Natalia’s first birthday, I discovered that I was pregnant again. To say we were unprepared is an understatement of gigantic proportions. This was going to mean I’d have a toddler and an infant at the same time, then two toddlers… there was going to be no break in diaper duty, just as one moved on from a new phase the other would be starting it. This also came with a new string of worries: Would they end up growing up as competitive as Val and I? And then would they end up estranged like we were?
I didn’t have much time to focus on my worries, as you can imagine, chasing two little girls around the house all the time. Natalia and Chelsea kept us busy, that’s for sure, and I wish I could have laughed in all the faces of people who ooh’d and ahh’d over them. ‘Two girls, oh they must be so sweet.’ No. No they were not. At times I was convinced that we had two boys. The house was always a mess, I couldn't keep anything in its proper place for more than one hour. Richard would look around and say 'Ah, I see it's been all hellfire and damnation in here.'
My brother Nordin had been ill for awhile, diagnosed when I was about twenty-one. His condition went into remission several times, long enough for him to meet and marry Ebony Dobson and then have a son, Nate. The two of them had problems almost right off the bat, and when Nordin fell sick again, Ebony was unable to cope with being a wife, a mother, and a nurse, and she took off with her other kids, leaving Nordin to care for Nate on his own while he was barely able to care for himself.
And that's how Nate joined my household. Nordin had started a living will when he was first diagnosed, and constantly kept it updated. When Nate was born (about a year after Chelsea), he designated Val and I as godmothers, and after Ebony abandoned them, he revised the will once again to indicate we would become Nate's guardians in the event of his death. Since Val had recently married, moved to Chicago, and children were not yet on their radar, Nordin didn't feel it was right to ruffle both her and Nate's lives, by suddenly giving her a child to raise and by moving Nate out of New York, so he named me guardian, with a clause for Nate to go to Val if I was unable to do so.
Since I agreed with him, that uprooting Nate (who was only three years old at this time) to another city immediately after losing his father would be too much for him, I saw no choice but to agree to be his legal guardian. He and Chelsea were only a year apart, so I was sure that he and the girls would grow up like brother and sisters instead of cousins, like Tatum and I. When Nordin lost his battle, it was as heartbreaking as you would expect, but there is something to be said for having the opportunity to say goodbye. For the last month, we all knew it was coming, so we had the chance to have our last hangouts and share stories. Every night we said goodnight as if it would be the last time, so when it finally was the last time, it was kind of okay.
The girls took to Nate like he was a plaything. I felt bad for him at first, he'd spent plenty of nights and weekends with us over the six months or so prior to Nordin's death, but now that he was a part of our family full time, he had nowhere to escape. I didn't have much time to worry though, because wouldn't you know it? I was knocked up.
Troy Jordan came into the world red and screeching. The kid nearly killed me with that sound. I thought something was wrong. There was no way a newborn should sound like that. It was...inhuman. Had to be an alien. Somehow I'd just given birth to something not of this world. Then I looked at him. He was a carbon copy of his big brother, and I had this immeasurable sense of pride and smugness come over me: Even though I'd given Richard two children, Oliver's mother still had one up on me, by giving him a son to carry on his name. Now I had done it too. And then I did it again three years later. At first, after Troy I didn't think I wanted to have any more. I was overwhelmed with five kids in the house, and I didn't want to risk facing disappointment again. But Richard talked me into it, and Parker Richard was meticulously planned, much like his oldest sister. This time we knew what we were doing too, and we carefully waited until Troy was two before we even started trying, assuming that it would take a few tries, buying us more time. Of course, and we hit the mark immediately. It almost seemed unfair at first.
After that, we decided we were done. Six kids in the house, going through labor four times, I was done. Besides, Oliver was getting to that age where it seemed almost inappropriate to have a new baby sibling in the house. I always felt it was weird when couples who already had nearly adult kids went and popped out new babies. Besides, by that point there was some extra strife going on at home, centering around him. To this day I can’t say for sure what happened. There could have been even more factors than I know about, or it could have started over nothing. All I know is there was this tension between Richard and Oliver that could choke the entire room. The younger began spending more and more time away from the house, staying with friends, and at one point we realized that he’d practically moved in with a buddy that was a few years older and had his own place.
I tried for months to get him to talk to me, and he’d always brush me off. “Not right now.” Or the one that always confused me, “You wouldn’t understand.” I wondered if it was about a girl. Maybe even a boy. Who knew? He’d had a handful of girlfriends, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Was it drugs? I had no idea what was going on with our oldest boy, and Richard seemed even less inclined to deal with whatever it was. I began to observe them more closely, realizing that the problem seemed to only be between the two of them. This, of course, only made things more confusing for me, and let’s face it, if something is going on with my family, I need to know what it is.
During all of this, Richard was getting sick a lot. He’d get migraines so intense that we had to cancel shows at the last minute. We actually ended up bringing Taryn’s ex-husband on board, to fill in when Richard wasn’t feeling well, so that we didn’t have to cancel shows. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the migraines were somehow connected to what was going on with Oliver, that it was all ‘in his head,’ so to speak, because the doctors couldn’t find any other reason for him to be getting them. With every denial that there was anything wrong between him and his son, the more convinced I became that my family was falling apart.
I had my theories, after confiding in my mother. She said something about how it can’t be easy to be part of a blended family, and it reminded me of how my brother and sister and I felt at the idea that our father had another family. Granted, that situation was different, because he left and just replaced us. Surely this couldn’t be what Oliver was feeling, right? He wasn’t left behind. We brought him with us. We named his sister (and effectively, his future niece) after him. He was tied to us. Our kids were never referred to as half-siblings. He was my son. I was his mom.
But maybe that was worse? Maybe he didn’t want to forget about the fact that he already had a mom (though that was up for debate, in my opinion) and other brothers? Maybe he felt we were trying to make him forget about her?
Or was I over-thinking all of it, and he was just being a moody teenage boy?
Whatever it was, it eventually seemed to resolve itself on its own, for which I was simultaneously grateful and suspicious. It started with a "happy accident" - when we found out we would be adding one more to our brood of kids after all. To say that was a surprise would not even do justice to the word understatement. With the very limited amount of time that Richard and I were even together - between him being sick which left me busy, and touring, anytime we were in any situation where we probably could have done anything, all we could think about was sleep - and the fact that we were decidedly not trying for more kids, finding out that I was pregnant was like, what? Especially, again, after nearly a year of trying to conceive Natalia, for this new one to come along at a time when we were the most stressed out (isn’t that supposed to make it more difficult?) was mind-blowing. After the doctor did the math, we realized that it happened around Oliver’s birthday, which in hindsight somehow seemed extremely fitting.
It was a fairly easy pregnancy, marked only by being in the midst the existing tension between father and son, something which was now taking a new toll on Richard. He’d started withdrawing from everyone and everything. It wasn’t just Oliver he seemed to avoid anymore, it was all of the kids. It was me. He’d disappear into the home office for hours at a time. He was spending nights in his old apartment, the one he’d been keeping with the intention to gift it to Oliver one day.
When I went into labor, I was actually at lunch with Oliver. As reticent as he’d become with his father, and as standoffish in general, he never turned me down when I asked him to join me someplace. I took this as a good sign, after all, if he was mad that his dad had a new family, wouldn’t he be avoiding us? As we sat at an outside cafe, on a rather mild autumn day, laughing about something that had happened at Chelsea’s birthday party the week before (she’d turned eleven), I felt it. It started the same for all of them. “Oliver,” I said. “Don’t freak out. But your sister will be joining us soon.” The look on his face was a mix of confusion, concern, and maybe a hint of disgust? I may have imagined that. I knew I had some time before it would become urgent, so I insisted that he finish his meal while I called Richard - no answer - and then he took me to the hospital. It was here that he took charge in the most adorable way, demanding that attention be paid to me, demanding that my doctor be called. He reminded me of Richard, and I told him so. For some reason, this seemed to unsettle him, and he returned to his sulky self for awhile, though he did not leave my side.
Richard still had not arrived when it was push time a few hours later, but I saw no reason to subject Oliver to that, and I sent him off to go get a snack or coffee, or even to go home if he wanted. He refused, determined to wait for me afterwards. Because of this, he was the first person to hold Madalynne after they brought her back, all cleaned up and tested and evaluated. After that, he doted on her. He’s the one who helped her learn to walk, he encouraged her crawling; he was hooked.
So, it seemed, was Richard. He finally made it to the hospital, finding his oldest child cradling his youngest, and it was like something came over him. Or lifted off of him, I’m not sure. He changed. That day seemed to wake them both up, and Oliver started spending more and more time around the house, even though by now Richard had given Oliver the apartment. The animosity between the two of them ceased to exist. Whatever it was, was forgotten. Throughout her life, people have accused me of spoiling Madalynne. This is the reason why. Her arrival fixed my family. To me, she was the miracle baby.
Little did I know, a year later that would all fall apart and only get worse twenty years later.