Chapter 30/Epilogue by: Owen/Everyone

5 years later:

After regaining my possessions from the house on Luna Avenue, life seemed to fly by in a blur. Now that I could finally focus a hundred percent of my time and energy on work, reconnecting with my friends, and fixing up my totally sweet new house, I was happier than I thought possible. I even managed to get back into the dating scene once or twice, although I never found anything serious.

I'll start with how my monastery turned out. It took several months, but after several long nights and weekend afternoons of painting, re-wiring, re-plumbing and redecorating, the place finally felt something like a home. The grounds around the monastery luckily weren't very big, so I could do most of the yard work myself. Once every few weeks or so I would have a guy come in and mow, but the majority of the land was taken up by various gardens I decided to plant.

I never would have thought myself to have a green thumb, but it was relaxing to come out and tend the flowers and vegetables I was growing. I also saved quite a bit on fresh produce, ad never went to a flower shop except during the Winter. It was about a year after I bought the house that I felt it was finally ready for a housewarming party.

Yes, I know that housewarming parties generally take place after the purchasing of a house, but before I held a party, I had to make sure the place was just perfectly fabulous. The living room had to have the right artwork, the dining room had to have the perfect table, and I had to have the right general ambiance in the monastery before letting anyone in.

Surprisingly enough, Penny was the first person to see the inside of my newly remodeled house. We'd kept in touch after I collected all of my belongings from the house on Luna Avenue. We were never really best gal pals like me and Cassie, but she was a sweet girl, and since I knew Alex the best, she came to me for advice. It was hard to not spill the beans about the truth of my past relationship with Alex, but I made it a challenge to myself to hold out until Alex slipped up himself.

Honestly, it didn't take very long. On their second year anniversary, about a year and a half after I bought my monastery, I got a call from Penny. It was pretty late at night, and I instantly knew what happened when I heard her teary voice on the phone. He'd made two mistakes that day, the first being he brought up a memory of celebrating an anniversary with an ex, the second mistake was naming said ex, and calling her Stella instead of Sara. It didn't take long for Penny to get the whole truth from him.

“I'm so sorry, Stella,” she kept repeating over and over.”And I was stupid enough to believe him and go on about being such good friends with you. I know you went with his story to protect me, but it had to have been hard for you too!” Eventually she calmed down enough to pack her things, including little Jacob the toddler, and come stay with me. One of the good things about owning your own monastery was having plenty of space for guests.

Luckily, Penny's career decided just about that time to pick up. A celebrity chef happened to be attending a party she'd catered for and fell in love with her cooking. Her clientèle got increasingly ritzy, and she even had chances to cater for important people abroad. Luckily for her I didn't mind babysitting Jacob for extended periods of time and he loved his Aunt Stella. Alex somehow managed to get joint custody, the judge was probably sexist, but he often failed to pick Jacob up most of the time.

Finally, I guess I should talk about G.M. Sadly, Project Miracle was a total failure. We never could quite perfect the synthetic wombs, no matter how close we came. Eventually, continued research would just be a big waste of the company's resources and budget. I was heartbroken, it was like losing my child, Luckily, I'd learned from my last big emotional breakdown, and worked through the pain. Cassie was a huge help, and strangely enough, so was Robert, Tom's assistant lab manager.

The day after the decision to cut Project Miracle was made, Robert was the one that found me listlessly sorting through files in one of the archive rooms. I really had no idea what to do with myself. I'd been so sure that with enough effort and skill, we'd be able to pull off anything. I had no idea what to do with myself now that I didn't have the project to drive me forward. I know it was selfish what with all the other projects G.M.

“Stella,” he said from somewhere behind me. Startled, I turned to look at him. “What are you doing? We've got a lot of work to do, and we could use your help.”

“What do you mean?” I asked more than a little confused. God, please don't let this be another dream. I don't remember falling, and damn those bruises took forever to heal.

“Look,” he put a hand on my shoulder. “I know you took a serious personal interest in Project Miracle, and you put a lot of time and work into it.” He paused, and smiled at me. “That's why I didn't want to let it go to waste. I pulled an all nighter and discovered last night that we can use a lot of what we were doing with synthetic wombs to help repair and possibly heal damaged wombs. We can still help people's dreams of having children come true Stella, just not in the way you wanted.”

At that moment, I had an important decision to make. I could either be selfish and continue to try and find some way to make my own dream of having a child come true, or I could help women everywhere to achieve theirs. Looking into Robert's imploring eyes, which where bloodshot from his night of research, I decided to dedicate my future scientific endeavors to help heal people.

From that day on, I worked mainly with Robert and Tom in the labs. I hardly ever saw my office, at least not until we had our first breakthrough. We created and perfected a way of using cells from our artificial womb to help repair damaged ones of women that had been in accidents or whatnot and received severe blunt force trauma to their stomachs. Scar tissue was the next opponent we would challenge

However, before I even had a chance to pick up a clipboard or put on my name brand lab coat Robert and Tom both confronted me.

“You need a vacation,” they said in unison.

Rather than argue, I took a month to tour Asia. I ended up spending about three days in China, a week in Japan, and the rest in Korea. I took Cassie's advice and bought two new wardrobes worth of clothes, and as many shoes as I could. The shipping cost me almost as much as my mountain of clothes. The only bad part of the trip was the day my biological clock began ticking.

I was passing a Korean elementary school, and I stopped to adjust the strap of one of my heels. I'd just bought them the other day, and they were being particularly fickle. At that moment, one of the children playing in the schoolyard approached the fence and began talking to me in Korean.

My Korean was only rudimentary at best, and the girl had a good laugh at my clumsy replies before running back to her friends. In short, I was just embarrassed by the most adorable creature I'd ever encountered. I felt a pain in my chest, a need to raise a child of my own. Teach her how to speak and read, cure all her boo boos, take her to school and feel heartbroken the moment I drove away, all of it.

I had to adopt, of course, but it would be difficult. Even though I was a successful C.E.O at a multi-million dollar company, I was still a single trans-gendered woman. I knew it would take time, even for a heterosexual couple it took time and a lot of effort, but I knew the end result would be worth it.

And now, after several months of psych evaluations and all manner of other things, I was finally certified to adopt a child. Throughout the whole process I debated on what kind of little girl I would look for, almost everyone tried to keep me from getting my hopes up too high. For some reason, I'd taken to talking to Robert about my debate with myself. It was probably because he was one of the few people that didn't offer his own opinion. He just helped me sort out my own. Should I adopt an older child? They usually have a harder time finding parents, it would be a good deed to help out such a child. But I also wanted the connection you could only get from raising an infant.

Ultimately, my debate led me to an orphanage not far from my home. I'm not sure why I chose that particular one, the adoption agency suggested one not five blocks from the G.M building, But something made me want to go back to where I'd come from to start this new chapter of my life. Lucky I did, because I found the perfect little girl. She was half-American and half Korean. Her parents had been teenagers, her Korean mother an exchange student staying with a host family. The poor child was given up for adoption as soon as it could leave the hospital. Normally infants are found families rather than being sent to an orphanage, but this child wasn't so lucky.

The adoption was finalized two days before Christmas. The timing couldn't be more perfect, she was the best Christmas present I could ever have imagined. I was so happy, I planned a Christmas party for Christmas Eve. Normally I just went to parties, but I wanted everyone to meet little Rose Soo-Young. I'd chosen a traditional Korean name, meaning everlasting beauty, because I wanted her to experience as much of her mother's culture as she could. She'd certainly be able to speak Korean.

In any case, I definitely wanted to celebrate this personal victory and joy. I invited just about everyone: Cassie, Penny, Tom, just about everyone from G.M that I thought I could cram into my house. I'd even invited the lady in charge of G.M daycare. I certainly wanted to get to know the woman that was going to be taking care of my little Soo-Young while I was at work.

Robert surprised me by being the first to show up. I'd just put Soo-Young down for a nap in her living room crib. I was dressed for the party already, but I'd yet to set up most of the decorations. I was expecting Penny with the food, there was no way I had time to cook for a party with a baby in the house, but was surprised to see him there holding a bag of presents.

“I came early to help you set up,” he said in response to my inquiring look. “There's no way you could be very productive with a baby in the house. You're must be a mad woman planning a party so soon after adopting.” I laughed, leading him into the living room. Not that he needed any help. We'd become pretty good friends after all the time we'd spent working together. Many a time we'd brought the research back to my or his place with a box of Chinese food.

“Ok, you go string up some lights,” I said handing him a box. “But be quiet. If you wake her up, I swear I will strangle you with them.” We quietly bantered like old friends for a while until Penny finally made an appearance. I was shocked to see she wasn't alone.

“This is Charles,” she said gesturing towards a very handsome man holding a platter of cold cuts. He looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't recall meeting any handsome gingers.

“We met in London,” he explained further. I nearly dropped the glass ornament I'd been holding. That accent! It couldn't possibly be the same guy from the dream! No way! ...and if he is, then there goes Penny, picking up my sloppy seconds. I mentally chuckled. We'd gotten to the point where we could joke about Alex and both tear up from laughter.

Eventually, Soo-Young woke up, and I had to stop what I was doing to take care of her. Luckily, Penny was great with babies.

“Where's Jacob,” I asked as she heated up a bottle of formula for Soo-Young.

“Alex actually decided to pick him up for Christmas this year,” she said plainly, although I could hear some scorn in her voice. “I figure it'd be a once in a lifetime experience, so I'd let those two have fun.”

By the time everything was set up, I was quite proud of myself. Even though it was a Christmas party, I wanted it to be as multi-cultural as possible. I didn't want anyone to feel left out, so I'd made sure to put up Hanukkah decorations as well, and have dining options for any sort of restricted diet. I'd even researched different Asian Winter holiday decoration ideas as well as some from Europe.

When most of the guests arrived, Soo-Young was awake and ready to charm the pants off of anyone. The cooed at her and made sure to drop her presents under the tree. When she got cranky and tired, I put her down in her crib in the next room. The door was ajar so I could peek in and check on her as frequently as possible, and I'd enlisted Penny and Cassie to help as well, surprisingly Robert volunteered to sub in for Cassie, as she was too busy flirting with as many men as she could.

“Excuse me, might I go and see the baby,” a woman I didn't quite recognize asked. She looked and sounded so familiar, I had to stop and think for a moment. “I'm Danica, the person in charge of the daycare service at G.M,” she continued, taking my silence for askance. Looking at her stunning gold colored dress, I had a realization. TruPaul!

“S-sure, let's go check on her,” I managed to stammer. “Have we met before?” I asked as she looked in to the crib, brushing a lone lock of ebony hair from Soo-Young's forehead. She looked at me then, and I almost expected her eyed to flash golden. Instead they were a warm brown, almost the same as her chocolate colored skin.

“No, I don't think we've formally met,” she sounded unsure herself. “Maybe briefly at a company function like this.

“That must be it,” I replied.

As I returned to the party room, Robert found me. “Stella,” he began. “You've been chatting with everyone at this party but me. I'm hurt.” He held a hand to his chest and had a mock pained expression on his face. Conveniently my iTunes playlist decided to begin playing slow songs, giving Robert the idea to grab my hand and pull me into a dance.

“That was rather forward of you, assistant research manager,” I said playfully as we moved about the room. I couldn't help but remember the final part of that oh so peculiar dream I'd had five years ago. Almost all of it was fuzzy, as dreams usually were, but the ball scene had been my favorite part.

“Well,” he said. “I've been wanting to have a dance with you all night, but you've been busy.” Something in his voice was different than usual, but I couldn't quite place it.

“Robert, you've become a good friend of mine. If you wanted a dance, you should have asked.” The expression on his face was weird too, but I ignored it. Penny had just gone to check on Soo-Young, and I wanted to catch her all clear signal.

“You know I'd be happy to help you out with Rose any time you need,” he said. I was beginning to think I was the only one that preferred her Korean name over her American one. “Any time at all.” Something about the way he emphasized any time made me look into his eyes. They were shining as bright as the lights he'd strung up earlier. I felt a spark go in through my eyes and travel down my spine. It reminded... it reminded me of when I met Alex.

“I'll keep that in mind,” I replied after a long minute of swaying in his arms. On impulse, I hugged him as we were dancing. I hadn't felt such a warmth in my chest in a long while. Dancing with a handsome guy, surrounded by friends. It truly was a perfect Christmas, and I hoped that I would give my new little miracle as many of those as I could.