The twins were growing up so fast, they were already beautiful little girls. The girls couldn’t be more opposite in looks, but loved to do the same types of things. They both loved to paint, they would play with their dolls together for hours, and even fight over who could walk the dogs. Sometimes when I looked at Anastasia I could see the spitting image of myself at her age and it would bring me right back to times that were spent with my dad. I thought it was stupid that I was still missing my dad at this age, I thought maybe it would have passed at this point now that I had my own family and everything. The pain of my father not being here, however had just never stopped. It had stopped hurting so much, but I still had things remind me of him and thought of him. Now, that was a lot more often, since most of the time when I looked at my daughter it would make memories of him come swimming back to me.
We had built the girls a tree house bedroom, it was literally built in a tree. They absolutely adored it and spent a lot of their time up there. I did worry sometimes that something might come up the tree and hurt them, but Cruz reassured me it would be okay.
After finding out all that I had Cruz and I had obviously tried to go right back to the way things were, but something had shifted between us. Things just weren’t the same, free, easy going, happy, marriage we had always had since the beginning. I couldn’t help myself but be worried when he would go to work and he was always on edge because he felt like he needed to be on the defense with me. I decided to try and restore our marriage to the way it was I would ask him to renew our vows.
“Cruz, I’m glad you haven’t left yet, I just wanted to ask you something.” I said, walking into our shared master bathroom where Cruz had just finished showering.
“What’s going on Estella?” He asked, seeming a little bit scared of what I might say. Instead of saying anything, however, I dropped to one knee in front of him, cradled his big hand in mine, and pulled out the small velvet box that held my diamond engagement ring he had given me so many years ago. He cocked his head at me, seeming confused, but let out a chuckle when he saw my smile.
“I know things haven’t been quite the same between us, so to show that our love is still here I wanted to know if you would marry me, again.” I smiled up at him, a tear falling from my eye as I thought about the pain I must have put him through.
“I think that’s a great idea, darling.” He hadn’t called me darling in a long time, this was definitely a great start.
Gus was becoming a wonderful writer, he had started his first novel just weeks before. Someone had already told him they wanted to publish him once he got it done. I knew my boy would be a big success, Cruz used to be a writer when he was Gus’ age. I’m a writer now, I guess, I do write down all that’s happened to my family and my personal life and maybe one day I’ll even pass this journal along to Gus to take over writing about our family legacy.
The girls were also developing talents of their own, Anastasia was constantly in the wine cellar with Cruz trying to learn all she could from him. Being the soft hearted father he was, Cruz would sometimes pretend he didn’t know what the right move was and let our daughter beat him. It was adorable to watch those two play together, and I knew it was moments like this Cruz would treasure for the rest of his life.
Druzella was more into the arts and could spend all day at an easel painting whatever her heart desired and her fingers could make up. She definitely wasn’t a bad artist and would even brag sometimes that she was going to become a professional painter and sell her paintings all across the world. We encouraged her to keep going with her talent, but not to deliver her paintings to someone half way across the world because it just wasn’t safe to be traveling that much.
A day I never thought I would see finally did come, the dogs were in the dog house, well, doing their thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bella got pregnant, we had always hoped they might one day have puppies, but had never pushed them to breed. We wanted them to have puppies on their own if they wanted to, just like Cruz and I had chosen to have our kids.
Speaking of kids, since I had proposed to renew our vows things between Cruz and I had definitely gotten better. Things weren’t completely back to normal yet, but they were definitely heating up. If you know what I mean. We had our nights when the kids were all in bed, or at school and we would make time for each other. It was really fantastic to be back with my husband in this way, it had been so long.
I had become a small town celebrity for my wine garden and I would even have local reporters come to take pictures of me gardening and get an interview with me. It was an odd thing and I wasn’t really sure why they were so interested in me, but I accepted the fame anyway and told them all they wanted to know.
I had been right, it wasn’t long before Bella gave birth to two little pups. It was one girl and one boy, we named the girl Leaha and the boy Leo. I was so happy for my dogs and their new little family, I knew exactly what they were feeling right now.
My little boy had found love at a very young age, he sat Cruz and I down one night and asked if it would be okay if he brought his girlfriend home. We weren’t really sure what to say at first, but of course, this moment comes for all parents and we decided he was old enough to have a girlfriend so we said yes. The very next day, after school, Tatiana came home with Gus. She was a little bit different then I had pictured, very eccentric, but if Gus liked her that was good enough for me.
The girls were growing every day, as they grew they also grew apart. Each had a very different look from the other, and were interested in completely different things. I wondered if the girls would ever get back to how they were when they were young, but Cruz assured me once they matured they would see that it was important. I sure did hope he was right, because right now it seemed they just couldn’t get more opposite.
DisneyDreams 