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Back The Long and Winding Road
Chapters (31)
  1. The Long and Winding Road
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
  6. PAST
  7. 1. Where Bear Makes the Wrong Assumption
  8. 2. Where Bear Finds Out
  9. 3. Where Bear Makes a Decision
  10. 4. Where Bear Learns the Art of Breathing
  11. 5. Where Bear Has Bro-Time with Creed
  12. PRESENT
  13. 6. Where Bear Attends the Most Awkward Homecoming Ever
  14. 7. Where Bear Tells Tyson Everything
  15. 8. Where Bear Makes a Promise
  16. 9. Where Bear Goes to Lamaze Class
  17. 10. Where Bear Gets Advice About His Sex Life
  18. 11. Where Bear and Otter Role-Play at a Hotel Bar
  19. 12. Where Bear Faces the Reality of Married Life
  20. 13. Where Bear Sees Everything Change
  21. FUTURE
  22. 14. The Long and Winding Road
  23. Epilogue: Or, Otter’s Perspective, As It Were
  24. Coda
  25. No. Absolutely not. No way.
  26. More from TJ Klune
  27. Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
  28. About the Author
  29. By TJ Klune
  30. Visit Dreamspinner Press
  31. Copyright

THREE DAYS later, we picked Megan Ridley to be our surrogate.

She grinned at us and said, “Super. Let’s get the eggs and bacon inside me cooking. Happy holidays, everyone!”

We gaped at her.

ON THE morning of December 16, 2015, Anna Thompson went into labor.

“No, Bear, you cannot stay in here and watch,” she said through gritted teeth in her hospital room.

“But how will I know what it looks like to be dilated!” I protested as Otter started to drag me toward the door.

“I’ll take pictures,” Creed called after us before he yelped in pain. I didn’t see what Anna had done to cause that, but I figured it was nothing good.

Ten hours later, their son was born.

Allan Jude Thompson. Seven pounds, four ounces.

“AJ for short,” Creed said a little hysterically when he came into the waiting room. “Since Anna couldn’t keep him in until Christmas, I got to pick the name, even after she vetoed Creed Junior. He’s so awesome, he’s healthy and awesome, and he looks like a hairless mole! I’m pretty sure Anna broke my hand, but Jesus Christ, AJ is here and he’s real. He’s fucking real. Dude, Bear, I’m a daddy. Again.”

He cried a little then.

I think maybe we all did.

LIFE IS funny sometimes.

It can knock you flat.

It can take away everything you love.

One moment everything is fine, and then it turns on a dime, and you’re standing on a beach, a phone pressed tightly against your ear, and there’s a voice saying I’m afraid I don’t know anything about a Theresa Paquinn and Derrick, that’s not why I called and According to the EMTs, he was T-boned on the driver’s side of his vehicle by a van that ran a stop sign. And everything can go to hell so fast that you have whiplash from it when you’re holding a Kid in your lap and watching as an old woman who means so much more than you ever told her takes her last breath. Because sometimes, these things are inevitable. They happen for no rhyme or reason, and as you’re reeling, as you’re struggling against the earthquakes, against the goddamn ocean that wants to swallow you into the deep, you think to yourself that everything would be okay if you just breathed.

But then there are those other moments. Those moments when the breath is knocked from your body in the best and most frightening of ways.

Otter’s phone rang on a Saturday afternoon in early January. I was sitting in the kitchen, a blanket on my lap, sipping tea while reading over essays, some of which were making me want to bang my head on the table.