1,500 Acres Future Take Part Two

Our love is unconditional
We knew it from the start
I can see it in your eyes
You can feel it from my heart
From here on after
Let's stay the way we are right now
And share all the love and laughter
That a lifetime will allow

I cross my heart
And promise to
Give all I've got to give
To make all your dreams come true

In all the world
You'll never find
A love as true as mine

You will always be the miracle
That makes my life complete
And as long as there's a breath in me
I'll make yours just as sweet

As we look into the future
It's as far as we can see
So let's make each tomorrow
Be the best that it can be

I cross my heart
And promise to
Give all I've got to give
To make all your dreams come true
In all the world
You'll never find
A love as true as mine

And if along the way we find a day
It starts to storm
You've got the promise of my love
To keep you warm

~George Strait, I Cross My Heart

At two, the girls loved the horses more than anything else on the farm. The chickens were fun to watch and run after, but it just wasn't the same. More often than not, I found the horses with bows in their manes and tails after the girls had spent the day with Edward so I could get something accomplished in the house. They were a perfect mix of the two of us, with dark brown hair streaked through with red, and green eyes. Absolutely identical, I sometimes had a hard time telling them apart. Long before they arrived, I’d sewed a little A and a B in each of their outfits so I would never confuse them. It seemed like it would be a tragic thing to mistake their identities, babies or not. From the first day, I realized how difficult it could be. Bathing one at a time and dressing them in the correct clothes, or Edward and I bathing them simultaneously and knowing which baby we held was about the only way I could think of to be sure. Sometimes I still wondered how many times they’d accidentally been switched before they learned their own names.

Amelia and Adeline, or Amy and Addy, had everyone wrapped around their chubby little fingers. Seth would drop whatever he was doing if they came toddling his way. I’d caught him more than once with a girl on each of his hips as he showed them the farm. Brady wasn't as easily sidetracked, but he always had a big smile on his face when they were around. Poor Rusty didn't know what hit him when they reached the age of being able to crawl, and it only got worse for him as they started walking. I had to leave him outside during the day so he could keep his sanity—and his tail—intact. Eventually, we got baby gates to block off the living room so the old boy didn't have to be stuck outdoors.

Edward went to the feed store one day to pick up our standard order and brought home more than I’d asked for.

“Rabbits?”

He had the decency to look sheepish. “I couldn't help it. The girls are going to love them so much.”

“If I wind up with twenty rabbits, I’m hunting you down, Cullen.”

He kissed my temple. “Let’s show them to the girls.”

“They’re napping, and I’d like to keep it that way for my own sanity.” My heart melted anyway at his exuberance to show the soft little bunnies to his little girls.

“I’m going to set up their stuff. Wanna help?”

Of course I wanted to help, they were adorable.

That wasn't the last time Edward brought home a surprise animal. Besides the rabbits, we wound up with chicks, ducklings, kittens, and even a new puppy.

I had a zoo.

The fuzzy yellow chicks were easy, since they could go in with the older hens. The ducklings were equally fuzzy, but I was unsure about where to put them. I ended up sticking them in the same coop as the chickens. It was large enough to house them, and none of them were mean. The kittens were multi-colored, and we kept them in the barn in their own stall, since Edward claimed he bought them to be ratters; barn cats that would catch the mice that could eat our grain if they wormed their way into the silo. Amy and Addy squealed at every new addition, pet them gently with two fingers as I instructed them, and loved to sit in the dirt and let the critters crawl all over them.

The Christmas they turned three was when the puppy came about. Edward heard someone at Newton’s Grocery talking about a new litter of pups, and he’d talked to the family and paid for one before thinking of the consequences.

It was a mutt, but a cute one.

“That puppy is staying outside. I don't have the energy to potty train it.” Thank God he didn't get two, which he had with every other new pet.

“No problem. He's eager to follow me around, and he can sleep in the horse barn, too.”

How many nights do you suppose that lasted? Exactly zero.

The puppy slept in our bed. It sat on my face and woke me up. It pooped on the floor and the stench woke me up. It whined and cried when I tried to leave it in the kitchen.

Edward and Seth built it a crate the next day. It didn't help nearly as much as I'd hoped, but I gave the little guy a hot water bottle to cuddle up to, which made the biggest difference. It was like having another baby.

Since we received Edward's inheritance when the girls were approximately four months old, we'd expanded the house to include that dining room I wanted, a much bigger kitchen, and turned the space at the back of the house into a bigger master bedroom with a large ensuite bathroom. The girls occupied the upper floor most of the time. I'd kept them close in bassinets when they were little, and almost never used the beautiful nursery Esme finished for me when they were born. They spent their second and most of their third year there until they started crawling out of their cribs. Separate rooms seemed like a good idea, but I always found Adeline in Amelia's bed in the morning. I ended up putting their beds in the same room and figured they could choose what they wanted as they got older.

All of my spare time, if it could be called that, was still spent baking. Vera sold her quilts and hand-sewn clothing. Esme had indeed gifted the girls with homemade nightgowns, and they wore them every time she visited until they outgrew them.

I would love to say that Carlisle was an enthusiastic grandpa, but I'd be lying if I did. He wasn't terrible, but he didn't like to get dirty. Amy loved dirt more than she loved horses, and I thought when Addy handed him a worm one time he would actually leave the state of Oklahoma. Their hands were constantly sticky and Carlisle was constantly helping them to wash up. Where he shined was right after bath time when he would let them climb in his lap and he would read them a story. They'd drag their cuddlies and a blanket with them, and those three heads bent close together to look at the pictures. That was when I could see the love inside him and it kept me from resenting the times he was aloof.

By the time they were ready for kindergarten, my daughters were tomboys in tutus. They wanted pink or purple everything, flowers and lace and ruffles, but they loved climbing trees and helping Seth do oil changes. They wanted to braid the horses’ manes and then ride them through the mud. They sat on the tractors with Emmett and Jasper at each harvest in sparkly pink boots. They wrestled with our friends’ children, and it often seemed a contest for who could get the dirtiest.

Their teacher and her TA couldn't tell them apart. I knew it would be that way, and I put their names on everything. It was amusing and frustrating and I loved almost every minute of it. Edward went with me to every parent/teacher conference, assured the teacher we would work on Amelia’s wildness and Adeline’s tendency to stare out the window instead of focusing on her work. We participated in the bake sales, which went over very well since the parents wanted what I brought more than anything else and were willing to give large donations to the school to get it. We helped plan the harvest fest and the winter wonderland party. It was almost as time-consuming as when they were home.

By February, the girls were pretty well adapted to school. There were fewer concerning notes home, at any rate. They did well with their school work and loved making friends. They shared class with several of their ‘cousins’ since a few of us had kids at the same time; the others they saw at lunchtime. There was something comforting about having one elementary school and one teacher per grade. There was time to devote to each individual child, even the ones that were identical.

The summer they were six and a half, Carlisle and Esme came for an extended stay. They’d stayed in the house with us since we remodeled, but Carlisle had not been with us for longer than five days yet. They were scheduled to stay for a month that time, and I was a bit worried.

They drove out themselves, arriving in the middle of the afternoon. We were all in the barn: the mutt they’d named Rascal; old Rusty who slept more than anything else in those days; the cats they’d named Tiny and Cutie; Seth, Brady, and us. Buttercup, Lucy’s dun-colored offspring, was full grown and really good with the kids. She was letting the girls walk her around because they wanted to go for a ride, but I’d told them they had to wait for Grandma and Grandpa.

I shouldn't have worried so much. Carlisle had spent six years with the girls at that point, and he was slightly more accustomed to their exuberance than when they were younger. They still had the tendency to be dirty, but they were not typically sticky anymore. My in-laws took Amy and Addy for a ride around the property while Seth and Edward put their luggage in their room and I checked on dinner. No longer a novice, Carlisle nonetheless was not a pro rider, but he held his own. When they returned, the girls got cleaned up so their grandparents could hand out their gifts. They never came empty handed, to the delight of both six year olds.

We gathered in the dining room after that, and as I listened to the noisy chatter of children telling every single important piece of their days since they last saw their grandparents, I realized again exactly how blessed I was. I shot a smile at Edward as he served me first, and the smile he gave me in return was incredibly sexy. I knew there was a very good chance I was getting lucky after everyone else went to bed.

EPOV

I couldn't believe that we’d lucked out with twins. They didn't run in my family, but Bella mentioned that she was pretty sure there was a set of twins in some distant corner of her family tree.

It was difficult in the beginning to keep track of which daughter needed our attention. They seemed to always need something, and I had to go through the routine of checking their diapers before moving on to what else it could be. By the end of the first month, I had it down cold, I just wasn't sleeping. By nine months, they had become mobile and were taking over the house. We’d baby-proofed the living room and blocked off the doorways with baby gates, but they were either trying to eat Rusty’s tail or attempting to hoist a leg over a gate. They learned to climb over their crib rails by ten months, and we had to raise them to the highest slot they would go. By two and a half, they were escape artists, and we tried separate rooms, but they just wanted to be together. They certainly had enough stuff for two rooms.

I never could resist their adorable faces. They loved everything about the farm, from horses to hay to the fields of knee-high wheat waving in the prairie winds. There was nothing quite like their giggles as they ran through it while the wheat tickled their chins. I let them clip bows meant for them in the horses’ manes, collect eggs with me, and pick apples. I might have been a sucker for tiny animals in packs of two that made my babies squeal in delight.

Off and on Bella and I talked about more children, but we honestly had our hands full with Amy and Addy. It never seemed to be the right time, and by the time they went to kindergarten, Bella was thirty-nine. We focused on them instead, on being active at their school and enjoying each other in the middle of the day again. Bella got more sleep as a result of them being gone for seven hours a day. I was lucky enough to call three girls my own, and I never wanted to be a glutton and ask for more.

My dad was never going to win grandfather of the year, but he gradually relaxed around the twins as they grew. I knew that watching him read to them was Bella’s favorite memory of their time together. He did it even as they became too big to sit on his lap, instead crowding into the oversized chair in the living room. Remodeling and expanding the house had been the best use of my inheritance to date.

We thrived, the four of us. We worked hard, we loved hard, and we were rewarded with a successful farm. We hired more men—and a woman—as our operations progressed. We kept more steers, focusing mainly on that and wheat for profit, while the rest was for our use. We still kept a garden, chickens, and dairy cows. Bella still canned with her friends and sold what she could online, along with Vera. Some of it slowed down at times, depending on what she was busy with pertaining to the twins, but she always kept her hand in it.

I thought I would probably die of a broken heart when my girls started noticing boys. I was no longer the most important man in their lives. Amelia was interested in Finn, Alice and Jasper’s boy, from about the time she turned twelve. He was thirteen, and she adored him. Addy was infatuated with a boy from school whose parents we only vaguely knew from church named Austin. They all went to a school dance together, and I let Jasper chaperone. I didn't think I could watch them with their first crush.

Bella was only more beautiful as she aged. I knew she sometimes worried about how much older she looked than me, but I only saw the same woman I’d met the summer before my whole life changed. I told her daily how much she meant to me, how proud I was of her and the girls. I never let them doubt how I felt because I’d grown up that way. I knew Bella had suffered without compassion for such a long time that she was very affectionate with everyone she met. People couldn't help but love her.

I knew that fall that I changed my plans at nineteen was the right choice for me, and nothing I’d experienced since proved me wrong. I worked for what I had as I said I would. I cherished the family I was lucky enough to have. I was content on my fifteen hundred acres with my wife and my girls.

It didn't hurt that my father admitted every time he visited that he'd been wrong about me and Bella.