Mended Hearts ✔️ 18+ 🍭

Chapter 28 Three Years Later ✔️

Both Heather and I graduated early from college with the help of Harold. He had used his pull with the college so that we only had to take classes that actually pertained to our majors.

Like my "father," he could get anyone to do just about anything he wanted, but the difference was that he actually used his influence and money for good.

I wonder just how many people and families he and his family have helped over the years. No number would surprise me, and I'm sure it's a high one.

I may not have liked him when I first met him, but as Heather and I have both come to find out, first impressions aren't always accurate.

We had both started work at the local high school. I am working as a guidance counselor, and Heather is teaching the art class.

We both love our jobs, but Heather still longs for the chance to do more and have more of an impact on those who truly need a boost up in this world, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the same.

As much as we loved what we did, there was always a part of us that just felt unfulfilled in our current positions.

We had talked about it at length and know that if and when the opportunity arises, we will both jump at it.

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All the renovations that we had wanted to do on our little house are nearing completion, and we are already coming up with ways to make it even more our own.

Heather joked that we would probably never be finished.

I just laughed and told her that it was like our love: "It'll go on forever."

After we moved out on our own, marriage just seemed like the next logical step. Neither of us were hung up on the idea of a wedding for show. To us, there was no ceremony or piece of paper that could make us love each other any more than we already do, but it still just made sense.

We even joked about me taking her last name instead of her taking mine, but ultimately we decided to make her a Wright.

Something good ought to come from that wretched name. Ann, of course, being the doting mother, insisted we at least make a formal announcement in the local paper. Bart laughed and told her she was just looking for any reason she could find to brag on us, which earned him a swat on the arm with her oven mitt before she kissed his cheek and said how she would "always brag on her babies."

The announcement in the paper led to a rather awkward phone call from Malcom, my long-estranged "father." How the man got ahold of my cell number, I have no idea, but if I ever find out who gave it to him, they are in for a good swift kick in the ass.

It was the first time I had heard his voice since right after we left the Simmons office and I got shipped to Westward. He sounded old and weak, but his demeanor was the same.

It began as an awkward hello and soon seqwayed into him bringing up the "Wright name." After talking with Grant on the helpline that night after I got their letter, I took her advice. "Let them."

And just like she had later predicted, they never followed through with their threat of taking me to court. I can only assume that my lack of response other than an eloquent yet strongly worded letter telling them that I would be keeping the name unless they wanted their dirty laundry aired in open court and telling them all but to shove the ten grand up their ass got my point across.

That was the end of it, until the phone call. Malcom did inform me that Charlotte had died of cirrhosis, naturally brought on by her years of drinking, but I already knew that. If he had ever bothered to visit her grave, he'd have seen the flowers we had left on multiple occasions.

I honestly wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for Heather.
To her, it was a way of making peace with the past, "learning when to hold on and when to let go," or something like that.

I also knew that the empire that he once had had all but crumpled. He still had the house and cars, but the business and fortune he had amassed were tied up so tight in lawsuits and loans that if he lived a hundred more years and hit the lotto, he'd never get out of debt.

But more to the point, he called to ask if I intended to follow through with giving Heather my last name.

I simply said I was and that it wasn't his decision to make. I left out the part about us considering taking her last name.

But after he saw there was no sense in arguing, he quickly ended the conversation with "goodbye."

I told him I wished him well and that I hoped he'd find peace with the things he's done before his life is over. (Which may have possibly been that very moment if I had told him where that two hundred and fifty thousand went.) I thought at first I was saying that was just a subtle kind of jab, but after thinking it over, I realized I actually meant it. Growth, I guess. That or Heather's beautiful mended heart rubbing off on me—either way, I feel at peace about it.

Phone call aside, our wedding went amazingly. It was a small but beautiful, intimate affair. Bart gave Heather away with tears shamelessly streaming down his cheeks. For such a large and intimidating man, at first glance, he is such a softie. Not that we'd have him any other way.

We even had a lot of our friends, including some of our favorite staff from Westward, in attendance.

Of course, both D and Jermey were there. They have graduated and are both working at a dual treatment facility a couple towns over while finishing up their degrees in that field, also as a couple.

I guess there is just something about Westward that brings people together.

Britney and Josh, of course, because, well, as close as we were then, we are even closer now. 

Emily and Dr. Howard both came with huge gifts and tears in their eyes.

Tony, Heather's art instructor, couldn't make it as he was in Paris at a gallery opening, but he sent his love and a 30x30 canvas of a pair of doves flying from a cage and off into the sunset.

Grace, the nurse, was there, though she had to have Emily's help, mostly moving arrangements and people out of the way to get down the aisle with her walker. But you can't keep a good woman down, and she proudly boasted after getting one of the legs on it hung on a folding chair, causing other chairs to fall loudly to the ground as she thrust her walker about trying to get it loose and requiring the help of most of the other guests to put things back in order that, "I took care of people for almost 40 years; it's only right they take care of me from time to time."

Even old man Westward was there. He sat in the back and refrained from socializing, but he smiled as proudly as Mom when the officiant announced us.

Yeah, things have been good. Great actually.

To look at us now and then to think back on all the hell the two of us went through, wow, just wow, Heather is the most magnificent person to ever walk the face of the earth, and damn, I am one lucky son of a bitch!

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End of Chapter 28