2021:

TIANA'S POV :

      The airplane finally comes to a stop on the runway, and the flight attendant informs us that we can unfasten our seat belts. I unbuckle myself, and then turn to do the same for the twins, while they yawn and rub their eyes. They've slept through most of the flight from Nashville to LA, so they'll be full of energy when we meet up with Ash, who has been here for the last couple of weeks working on the next album.

      We moved to Nashville when the kids were almost a year old, after Ash had an issue with a delusional fan who had somehow managed to figure out our address, and constantly sent him letters and "gifts", most of which were either obscene or bordering on incoherent. She also made efforts to involve the rest of the band, our other friends, and even family members through social media, one of the most memorable incidents being one in which she accused Inna of literally being a demon, after she and Jake blocked her from their accounts. After a certain point, Ash finally got fed up and called her out on her actions, along with getting a restraining order, so things calmed down quite a bit after that. 

        I step off of the plane and make my way down the stairs, with a small hand in each of mine. We walk into the terminal, and Autumn looks up at me and says, "Daddy say that he will meets us at Tharbucth. That's the one with the wady with all the wots of hair and the funny hands, wight?"

      "Yes, sweetie, that's the one, so why don't you guys help me look for the sign?"

      They both nod eagerly, grinning from ear to ear, Autumn's smile displaying the space where her front tooth was until a couple of days ago, which has given her a bit of a lisp. We start moving again, weaving through the crowd, and after a couple of minutes Kylan shouts, "There it is!" As he yells, he yanks his hand from mine and goes charging toward the coffee shop. 

      "Kylan Gabriel, stop this second!" I shout, and Autumn instantly bursts into tears.

      "No, Ky!" she wails. "Now we don't geth to go thee Mickey!"

      He freezes in place, a horrified look on his face, as I see Ash moving through the crowd toward us. He reaches Kylan just as he starts sobbing as well. He sweeps him up in his arms and says, "Why is everyone crying? I thought you'd be glad to see me."

      He bounces Kylan until he calms down a bit, then asks again, and through sobs and hiccups, Kylan replies, "Mommy says that we has to be good when we's got here, or we don't gets to go see Mickey and Pwuto 'fore we goes home. But I wanted to finds you, and I forgetted, and Sissy is mad with me! I's sorry, I doesn't mean to be bad!"

      Ash carries him back to the Starbucks, and I pick up Autumn and follow. We go inside, sit them at one of the tables, and mop up their faces with napkins. When they stop crying, Ash gives Autumn a big hug and a kiss, then kneels down, so he's eye level with them. "We know you weren't naughty on purpose, but you can't do things like that. If somebody sees a cute little boy or girl here by themselves, they might decide they want you for their own and run away with you. Then Mommy and I would be very sad, because we'd miss you. So you have to make sure you stay with one of us, okay?"

      They both nod their heads, and Autumn turns and hugs her brother, telling him, "I would mithed you too, Ky! You are my bethteth fwend, and I'ms not mad wif you no more, so don't cwy."

      "But now we can'ts see Mickey, 'cause I'ms a bad boy!" he whimpers, starting to tear up again.

      Ash and I look at each other, and I say, "Sweetie, you did a naughty thing, but that doesn't mean that you're bad. You're both very good kids, you just forget sometimes, and you need to try to remember. But I guess it might not be fair to Tanner and Kimmy to spoil their fun by not letting you go. What do you think, Daddy?"

      "I think you might be right, but maybe we should see if they can be good when we go to see the movie tomorrow," he replies, after seeming to think about it for a minute. He looks back at them, and asks, "Do you think you can behave for that long, guys?"

      They both nod, and Autumn bursts out, "We can be good, Daddy. We want's to thee the movie, and watches our beds be awive, and thee the dwagon fwy. The ones Mommy have at home don't fwy."

      Kylan wipes at his eyes, and adds, "I be a good boy now, I won'ts run away no more. I don't wants nobody to stoled me, then I can'ts play wif Sissy and the doggies no more. And I don't gots a phone, so I couldn'ts call you to come and gets me, and I wills be sad, too."

      "That's good, because there are a few other people who might be a little disappointed if you two don't get to go to Disneyland," Ash announces.

      "Cari and Dante?" Kylan asks. "They gets to go, too?"

      "Y'know, I hadn't thought about that. I guess maybe I could ask their daddies if they can come," Ash replies. "But I was talking about the people that are coming up behind you."

      As I turn around, the twins let out an earsplitting shriek, nearly taking out my eardrum. "Nanny! Poppy!" they yell, squirming out of their seats as Mom and Gav come around the table.

      "Hi there, sweeties!" Mom says, as she catches Autumn, while Gav swoops Kylan off of the floor. "What's this about not going to Disneyland with us?"

      "Mommy thay if we's naughty ats the airport, we can'ts thee Mickey, and Ky runned away, so we was afwaid Mommy and Daddy will thay 'No!', and it maked uth cwy," Autumn explains.

      Mom spends a couple of minutes reassuring them, then turns to give me a hug, and I ask, "What in the world are you guys doing here? You didn't say anything about coming the last time I talked to you!"

      "That's because it was a surprise, of course," she informs me. "You really didn't think we'd miss the premiere of your movie, did you?"

      "It's not exactly my movie, they just made it from my book."

      She lets me go, so I can get a hug from Gav, and she walks over to hug Ash. It always makes me smile when I see this, because we had sort of a rocky period when the kids were small, and I wasn't sure for awhile if we'd ever get back to normal again. Then we go to get everyone's bags from the carousel, and head out to where Ash has parked the SUV he's renting while he's here in LA. Mom and Gav get into the back with the kids, while I start to go around to the passenger door, but Ash stops me, inquiring, "Aren't we forgetting something?"

      "I don't know. Are we?" I rejoin.

      He grins, nods his head, and then sweeps me into his arms and kisses me, causing Autumn and Kylan to start up a chorus of "Ewwww, yuck!", which makes the rest of us laugh. I get in, and Ash starts driving to Rick and Shan's place, where everyone, including the rest of the band and their families, are getting together for dinner.

      I lean back in my seat, listening to Mom and Gav chattering with the kids behind me, and remember when that didn't even seem to be a possibility. When they came to visit right after the twins were born, Ash and I realized that there was a chance that one of them would see his painting and ask questions, so we decided to finally tell them everything. Needless to say, she wasn't entirely thrilled, and there was quite a lot of yelling, but after that, I assumed that everything was all right again, until they came back to spend Thanksgiving with everyone, and celebrate the fact that Scott and Bri had actually gotten engaged and set a wedding date. 

      We were in the kitchen after dinner, helping Shan clean up, and discussing our plans to go and visit her and Gav for Christmas, and she informed me that she would prefer it if the twins and I came, but left Ash in Vegas, because he was selfish and irresponsible, and would almost certainly bail on us again, so I should face reality. He walked into the room just in time to hear this, and even though he didn't say anything, I could see by his expression that it hurt him, so I blew up. I informed her that if my husband wasn't welcome in her home, then she was no longer welcome in either my life or the kids. I left the room, gathered up the twins, informed Ash that we were leaving, and we actually went home and made arrangements to leave almost a week early for a book signing I had in Wisconsin. When Scott called me later, I informed him that we wouldn't be back until they could confirm that she was gone.

      I then blocked her phone number, deleted her from all of our social media accounts, and completely forbid everybody from sharing any pictures of the twins they had, unless they wanted to find themselves in the same position. We actually didn't have any contact at all for several months, until the guys had a conversation with Gav over the fact that Brian wanted me to be his "best woman" in the wedding, and I refused to even come if my mom was there.

      Apparently this caused Gav to have a serious conversation with her about how her attitude was causing problems with the whole family, because the guys, as well as Rick and Shan, had made it clear to him that they were on my side in the matter, not hers, and that they weren't willing to expose Tanner, or any future kids, to a "toxic" environment. He made it clear that not only had she lost any contact with me and the kids, but that Shan and Rick were very close to instituting the same policy with Tanner. He then informed her that he wasn't going to allow her to cost him his kids and grandkids, and if things didn't change, he was moving out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            This was apparently something of a wake-up call, because until then she'd been insisting that it was just me being blind and stubborn, not acknowledging that no one else agreed with her. So I came home one day from taking the twins to the pediatrician to find out that she had actually called Ash, and they had spent nearly two hours hashing everything out over the phone. I was still a bit skeptical at first, but Ash asked me to at least make an effort, if for no other reason than the fact that he wanted the kids to be able to have a good relationship with their grandparents, like he'd had with his, since his folks and grandparents were all gone. So I agreed to do it for him, and it took a little while, but things finally got better, and they get along great now.

      I'm brought back to the present by hearing the kids giggle as Gav asks them, "So do you guys still let that big polar bear sleep outside of your rooms at night?"

      "You's thilly, Poppy," Autumn replies. "Him is a doggie, not a bear!"

      "Him's just Pancake," Kylan chimes in.

      He's referring to one of the three dogs we have back in Nashville, who has decided that the kids belong to him. Not long after we moved, Ash got himself another black Pom, named Cash, and then gave me a basset hound puppy for my birthday, who I named Lucy. They were all we had for almost two years, and then a few months ago a dog showed up on our property, dirty and matted, nervous, and so thin you could see his ribs and backbone. We fed him, and gained his trust enough to get him to the vet to be checked out, where they figured out that even though he was roughly the size of a fully-grown Rottweiler, he was only somewhere around three or four months old. We decided to keep him, and got a DNA test, which said that he's a Great Pyrenees/Irish Wolfhound/Old English Sheepdog mix. The kids gave him the name Pancake after he stole a stack off of a plate at the edge of the table, and he basically became their shadow. He's also become absolutely massive, outweighing Ash by about ten pounds and taller than me when sitting on his haunches, and he's completely enamored with Autumn and Kylan, so it makes me worry a lot less about letting them play outside when he's with them.

      We pull up to the house, and before we can even get out of the car, the front door opens and a small herd of children come piling out into the yard, with Tanner in the lead, followed by Jake and Inna's three-year-old daughter Carolyn, who is usually called Cari, two-and-a-half year old Dante, who belongs to Andy and Juliet, and Kimberly, who is one of Scott and Brian's two kids that they had by a surrogate mother. Kimmy, as she's usually called, is a month older than Dante, and is Scott's biological daughter, while her eight-month-old sister Mariah is Brian's.

      We greet the little ones, then go inside and find out that everyone else is already there, watching Jinxx and Alice's thirteen-month-old son, Elijah, trying to get Mariah to play with him, as Shan, who is nearly ready to pop with Tanner's new baby brother, offers pointers to Anna, who is about four months along with her and CC's first baby. Everyone spends some time just hanging out and catching up, and then gather at the table for dinner. As things get passed around, CC looks across as me and Ash and inquires, "So, are you two ready to see yourselves up on screen tomorrow?"

      "Sure, why wouldn't I be?" Ash responds. "It's not much different than seeing myself on YouTube or in our videos. Besides, T's part is bigger than mine, so you should be directing that more at her."

      "It's not that big of a part, it's just little bits scattered through the movies," I remind him. CC's question referred to the fact that, when filming started, the director asked Ash and I to actually appear, so he took the part of a half-elven bard called Callevan, which gave him an opportunity to show off his excellent voice, while I show up in flashback sequences as my main character Aschanel's late mother, Wyntress. They actually decided to film all three books in the set, and did it all at once, the way "Lord of the Rings" was shot, so some of the scenes we filmed won't be seen for another year or two, even though they were filmed six months ago.

      We spend several hours hanging out and having a great time, until everyone has to leave to get the kids put to bed. Then Ash and I gather up the twins and follow Scott and Bri to their place, where we'll be staying for the next few days. We also need to get up early in the morning to go to the airport to pick up Kelli and her family, which now includes her second husband, Tom Zimmerman, and their son Wyatt, who just turned one. We put the kids to bed, hang out and talk to the guys for an hour or so, and then head to bed. As I turn out the light, Ash flips the covers back for me, and I climb into bed next to him. "Big day tomorrow," he reminds me. "Are you ready for the mayhem?"

      "As ready as I'm gonna get," I reply. "It's just cool to have everybody all together here for it, so I'm gonna focus on that and enjoy it."

                 *******************************************************************************

      As we walk down the red carpet at the movie premiere, the kids are somewhat in awe of all of the cameras flashing, and the realization that the people they see in movies or on TV are actually real, and in the same place that they are. They squeal with excitement when the actor who plays the dragon's elven form, and who also stars in a very popular kids TV show, stops to talk to them. And even Jayna, who is nearly eleven, and fancies herself too cool for "little kid stuff", is impressed by the enormous animatronic replica of Bertram that has been set up in front of the theatre. 

      Ash and I pose for a number of pictures, and do a couple of brief interviews for the local news, and shows like "Entertainment Tonight" and "E! News", who have reporters hanging around outside the theatre. And since the rest of the band is with us, they get hit up for quotes as well, so between them and all of the movie-industry people, the TV folks are pretty happy for the star power here tonight, since they're guaranteed ratings.

      Everyone finds a seat, and we attempt to keep the kids from getting restless until the movie starts, which is a bit easier than normal now. Ash and I talked to everyone at dinner the other night, and decided to make the Disneyland jaunt a group outing, so now if it looks like someone's thinking about getting rowdy, their parents just have to mention whichever Disney character they most want to see, and they settle right down.

      When the film finally starts, the kids are entranced by all of the bright colors and fantastic creatures on the screen, so they're pretty quiet until the dragon makes its first appearance, when they, along with most of the audience, let out some sort of exclamation: a squeal, a gasp, or just "Oooh!" I look across the aisle and see Malcolm and Jonas, the director and the special-effects guy, in their seats with ear-to-ear smiles as they see the audience reactions to what's showing on the screen.

      "I think it's gonna be a winner when it actually goes out next week," Ash whispers, giving my hand a squeeze. "Just looking at everybody in here, you can tell that they're not just trying to make you or Mal feel good, they're really into it." He makes a gesture with his hand, and I look down the row to see Andy and CC both leaning forward in their seats, totally absorbed in the film, and Jayna, who is holding her baby brother and pointing out things to catch his attention. The only one who's slightly disappointed is Autumn, because Prism the winged cat, who was Ash's model for her bed, doesn't show up until the second movie.

      When the final scene is over, and the credits start rolling, everyone can see the final thing that I insisted on in the contract for the film rights. The picture freezes, and in the middle of the screen appear the words:

                 This film is dedicated to the memory of Braeden Harper Keenan-Purdy

                                                                                   2002

                                                                   Flown to the angels

      After finally telling the family about him, we decided to go public, hoping that it could help other people who might find themselves in that situation. I discussed it in some interviews, and so did Ash, and I've even done a couple of PSA spots about teen pregnancy, and why it's important to talk to someone, and not try to hide it. And the twins know that they have a brother who can't live with us, but is still part of our family. More often than not, when we do something as a family, at least one of them will mention him, wondering if he can see what we're doing, or if he'd enjoy it, too.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   And tonight's not any different, because as we get up from our seats and get ready to leave the theater, Kylan tugs on my sleeve to get my attention. I lean down so I can hear him over all the noise, and he says, "It's a pretty movie, Mommy, we likes it, 'cept for the scary ugly things. I think our Brae-bubby would likes it, too. Does you think him can sees it where him is?"

      "I think he probably can, love," I reply, as I pick him up to keep him from getting lost in the crowd.

      "I think so, too," Ash informs him, as he swings Autumn up onto his shoulder. "And I bet he's very proud of Mommy, don't you?"

      Autumn nods, and chimes in, "Him be pwoud of you too, Daddy! You singed weally good in the movie, and yours cothtume was pwetty, too!"

      We leave the theater and head back to Scott and Brian's place, where we're staying, along with Kelli and her brood, and let the kids run around until they finish wearing themselves out, and we put them all to bed, reminding them when they argue that they need to sleep so they won't be too tired for Disneyland in the morning. This finally gets them into bed, and as we're tucking them in, Autumn looks up at me and asks, "You know what, Mommy?"

      "What, munchkin?"

      "You know the pwace in the movie, where all yours peoples are, and where the dwagon wivs? I thinks that's where Brae wivs, too. And him can pway wif the pwetty kitties and the umicorns, and goes fwyin' ons the dwagons. Nanny say him wivs in Heaven, and it's muchly nice, so thats where it am, I thinks."

      Ash and I glance at each other over their heads, because we're both a bit startled to hear something like this from a four-year-old. She's looking up at us, expecting an answer, and Kylan chimes in with, "Yes, Sissy is right, that's where it is! Him is there wif the dwagons and the nice pointy-ear peoples, and them will be hims fwends!"

      Ash smiles at them, and says, "When I was little, my grandma told me that Heaven was the nicest place you could imagine, and I think that it's very sweet of you to want your big brother to be in such a nice place. And if that's what you guys believe, then Mommy and I believe it, too."

      We finish tucking them in, kiss them goodnight, and go back to the kitchen to hang with Kelli, Tom, and the guys for awhile, until the day's excitement starts catching up to us, and we decide to call it a night. As we get into bed, I curl up next to Ash, with my head on his chest, and ask, "Did you really mean what you said to the kids awhile ago?"

      "Babe, you know I'm not a real big religion guy, but I kind of have to tell myself that there's something there for him," he answers. "The idea of just... nothing, doesn't sit well with me."

      "Me either."

      "And if you think about it, it seems pretty appropriate," he continues. "What better place for our son to be than a fantastic, beautiful place that his mother dreamed up. I suppose you could call that something like a 'fairytale ending' for him, if that doesn't sound too weird."

     "No, it sounds beautiful," I tell him. "If we can't have him here, then he deserves at least that, if not better." I raise my head up to kiss him, and say, "We finally got our own 'fairytale ending', so he should have the same."

      As I lay back down, just before I slide fully into sleep, I hear Ash murmur, "And they lived happily ever after..."

      And I know he's right. We finally got our storybook ending.