Eleanor looked pleased, and sat in the nearby empty glider. I carefully handed over the baby in my arms, who blinked with interest up at her great-grandmother.

“Look, Nick,” I said. “A pair of queens.”

She whipped up her head, more surprised than I’d seen her before. “Are you implying what you seem to be implying?”

“Yes,” Nick said. “You’ve had enough traumatic chapters in your life. We’re not going to be the authors of another.”

Eleanor took a deep breath. “I know all too well that it’s one thing to make a decision but quite another to live with it,” she said. “As someone who had to do that for a very long time, I can tell you, at times the pain made me wonder if the alternative would have been easier.” She looked up at Nick. “Are you ready for that? Do you think you can live out this choice without regrets?”

Nick gazed at his grandmother, his smile rueful but resigned. “No one lives without regrets, really,” he said. “But when they surface, and I’m sure they will, I just have to remember that I’m doing this for something bigger.” He glanced at the baby in his arms. “And something much smaller. The same way you did.”

“My darling, darling boy,” she said. “Thank you.”

She looked over at the baby Nick held, and then down at the one in her arms. Then she cleared her throat and turned to me. “Rebecca, there’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “I realize I abused our relationship by telling you a very specific version of the truth, but it’s important to me that you know the relationship itself was not a lie.” She took a moment, and cleared her throat. “You matter to me very much.”

I smiled at her, there in her signature dress and topper, holding my firstborn daughter, her latest-born heir. “I love you, too,” I told her.

“Also, no one else is interested in my thoughts about the Cubs bullpen. Murray simply cannot grasp it,” she said, sounding put out about it. “We need to get these babies home and start teaching them about managing your middle relievers.”

“Yes, it’s high time we all moved forward,” Nick said. “In that vein, Gran, Bex and I have decided to pack up Georgina’s writings. All of them. We’ll have Bea personally deliver the box this week.”

She blinked. “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to burn them?” she asked.

Nick shrugged. “They’re yours, not ours. It’s your story, yours and Father’s. Neither one of you got to write the beginning of it. It only seems fair that you be allowed to write the end.”