Chapter 20

Ten years later

Josh and Becky were sitting on their front porch, watching their kids running around in the front yard. They had four kids; two were nine years old, and two were seven. The older two were Mackenzie and Jeff, while the younger ones were Ashley and Albert. All four had strawberry blond hair ranging from almost red with a bit of blonde to almost entirely blonde with a little red. Separately the kids were a handful; together, they could be someone’s worst nightmare or the answer to their prayers. They all had started school early, were still ahead of their class, and had a love/hate relationship with their teachers. If a teacher crossed any of them, they would make the teacher’s life hell.

On the other hand, if the class started to get out of control, they could bring the class back under control faster than anyone else while making the teacher look good. Additionally, there were two kids with dark blond hair running around. There were aged eight and six. These two belonged to Josh and Chrissy and were somewhat closer to normal children their age. All six kids were tight and didn’t have too much in the way of sibling rivalry. When one got into any trouble, all the children closed ranks to defend that sibling.

Today they were waiting on a friend. Becky had a young black kid sitting next to her on the glider and was helping teach him how to read. He was Ben and Cynthia’s oldest and showed signs that he would be just as bright as his parents. They were at the hospital because Cynthia had just given birth to their second kid. Josh just sat next to Becky and reflected on his life.

Becky had gotten knocked up during their honeymoon and had gone into labor in one of her medical classes. Ironically, they were discussing childbirth at the time. She had gone on to deliver the kids and was back to class a week later while Josh stayed home to take care of the kids. He could work from home, so this didn’t create any problems. Becky had given birth to another set of twins before she had her tubes tied; two sets of twins were enough. She graduated top of her class in med school and had even had the drive to pick up a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Her job was to help hospitals with cost-cutting and implement new robotics into surgical teams. She was quite famous for increasing the efficacy of surgical teams with the theory that hospitals were nothing more than fancy factories and should be treated as such. By doing this, Becky cut every hospital’s cost that she had ever worked with by at least forty-five percent while increasing the quality of care provided. She headed up her own company under the umbrella of Josh’s holding company. He had started it to help him invest and to insulate his profits because he didn’t see the need to pay any more taxes than necessary.