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Dave enjoyed being a teacher, and eventually went on to become Professor of Music at UCLA. He later married a history professor, and the two had a daughter, Maureen. Dave appeared in several live concerts with Adam, and remained a close friend of the Clark family for the rest of his life.

Adam continued to write music and went on to release seventeen more albums of original compositions. Not one of them failed to be successful. At the urging of Charlie, Adam created a record label of his own, and was responsible for signing several new artists that went on to enjoy notoriety-- including the famous Dave Walker. After a lifetime of happy years with his beloved Charlie-girl, Adam died peacefully.

As hoped, mental stimulation, the same operation as Chuck's, and a preventative lifestyle all helped to delay the onset of Charlie's Alzheimer's Disease. She continued to learn the compositions Adam wrote for her, and several of them can be found on her husband's albums. Charlie never remarried after Adam's death, but happily chose to remain at Villa Rosa. While Charlie had shown signs of a failing memory late in her life, the disease progressed so slowly that by the time she died an old woman, she was still able to recognize her son.

Matthew grew up to be very much like his father. Not only did he resemble Adam in appearance and temperament, but he also inherited his father's love of music. Adam and Matthew spent endless hours together in the music room, and Matthew had eagerly absorbed all that Adam taught him. With Adam and Dave's help, Matthew became an internationally recognized musician and composer in his own right. Though always proud of his son's success, Adam once told a reporter, "I'm even prouder of the godly man that he's become." Matthew later married Dave's daughter, Maureen, and they raised their family of two girls and three boys on the Villa Rosa estate. Since Matthew hadn't inherited the gene that caused AD in his mother, the Overholt family curse was finally over.

Adam and Charlie's great-grandchildren would one day run through the same indoor courtyard that Adam had enjoyed, and play games in the enclosed garden that Charlie had built. In honor of their memory, Villa Rosa would forever remain in the Clark family.

Soon after Charlie passed away, Matthew went through his mother's things and found a yellowed sheet of paper tucked inside her Bible. In his mother's elegant handwriting, Matthew read:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

"Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

"Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away...

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a [woman], I put away childish things.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." (1 Corinthians 13)

Matthew smiled tenderly, and placed the worn slip of paper back inside his mother's Bible. Truly, of all things that Matthew had known about his parents, the greatest of these had been love.

end of book

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