Page 16 of Demitrius

“Why did you leave so early?” He decided to come clean. He told her everything that he’d been thinking. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought you were mad at us. No, I don’t mind a little bit of a routine buster. But the boys need calm before they go to school.”

“Is that written down someplace? I mean, I remember us being at home and…never mind, that’s not a good example. But when I was going to college while living with Martha, some mornings I’d barely get out the door on time because…that’s not a good example either. Damn it, I want them to have fun. Why can’t they have fun before going to school? A food fight would be—again, not good. I don’t know what I want. I just think they’d benefit from a little laughter before tackling school. I’m coming—wait. Why did you think I was mad at you?”

“You left without telling me goodbye. You usually…you know you’re just as much in a routine as we are. You have your alarm set for a certain time that gets you up and going too.” He told her that tomorrow he was going to take them to breakfast. “I don’t know about that. It’ll be—”

“It’ll be a blast. We’ll get up earlier than usual, take them to breakfast, and have a few laughs.That will make me feel better.” She asked him if he knew what they did in the morning. “We go over homework. Yes, I’m aware of the way we do things. And I think one morning we can skip going over homework for the tenth time and just enjoy each other. If you want, we can tell them tonight what we’re doing and they won’t be so surprised about the change. But I’m telling you right now, Mandy, I need something to shake up our lives. Before I go insane.”

“All right. But if they’re upset, I’m going to blame you.” He told her that he was willing to take that blame if it got them to get together as a family. “It does sound like it’ll be fun. I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve done anything like a family does.”

He thought that having her on board was half the battle in this. And if he messed up too much, then he wouldn’t ask them again. Well, he might, but not as much as he did this time. He turned the car around and headed home. There were plans to make, and he was going to get started on them right away.

“Where did you go?” Demi told Teddy that he had to talk to his brother. “I have to talk to mine sometimes, too, but I don’t run off without saying goodbye to everyone. I thought I’d done something to make you mad at me.”

“Why would you think that? I mean, I’m usually out the door before you’re even awake when I have to go to the restaurant. You didn’t think I was mad then, did you?” Teddy told him he’d not seen him, so it didn’t count. “How about tomorrow we all go out for breakfast instead of being here and eating. That’ll be fun, don’t you think?”

“How will I be able to go over my homework? I have to make sure that it’s all right.” He asked him if he’d gotten a bad grade so far. “No. Because we go over it a lot. I can even answer questions when the teacher asks. I love doing that. It makes me feel like I’m smart.”

“You are smart.” He pointed out that it was because he went over his homework a lot. “Teddy, work with me here. I need to do this so I can feel good about having a family.”

“We’re still your family, Demi. It’s just that the morning is for homework and stuff. I don’t want the teacher to think I’m slacking again. When Dad was around, I was forever slacking. On account of I couldn’t get my homework done and stuff. I love being able to tell the teacher we went over our homework—”

“I give up.” Teddy asked him if he was upset. “No. Just resigned to the fact that you’re an old fuddy duddy and I’m going to be doing things the same way until you’re out of college.” He tousled the boy’s hair. “I should have known it wouldn’t work. There is just too much going on in the morning for it to happen.”

“But you make my whole day by being here and helping me. I think about it all the time that you and my aunt have made it so that Martin and I have a safe place to live and sleep. We didn’t get much sleep when my dad was around. Now, not only do we sleep, but we get to have showers and snacks. You have no idea how happy it makes me when I can get up and go to the fridge and there is food there for us to eat. That the milk isn’t spoiled, or I have to tear off mold from bread to have a sandwich.” He started to tell him how sorry he was, but Teddy was on a roll now. “Something else that makes me feel good is that I have clothing that’s all mine. It fits and it’s clean. One time when the washer broke down, Momma couldn’t do laundry for a whole month until her check came in. The kids made fun of us all the time for being the stinky boys. I like the way things are because they were never like this at home. I never knew if I was going to get lunch or not. I never knew if Momma was going to feel like getting up with us. She didn’t help with our homework; she was too busy trying to get dad to stop beating on us.”

Demi felt like a heel. Here he wanted something to shake his day up, and the kids just wanted things to be normal. Daily things that they knew were there so that they could have a good day. Going over homework seemed so boring to him, but it was perfect for the kids. He should have known that and should have taken into consideration how they had lived before, when he was only thinking of himself.

There was no reason that he couldn’t make them laugh in the mornings or be silly about homework. He could do those things for them. He would do those things for them just so he couldthink about them throughout his own day and smile. Giving the kids stability was more important than having a day start off differently than the one before. They needed him to be there for them and he would from now on. They were depending on him, and he was going to make sure that he was there for them.

He got to take the kids to school most mornings, so he was going to make that his time with them. Find something along the path that they took so that they could examine it. A pine cone or something like that to marvel at. He could have his routine messed up a little if he wanted, but not at the expense of the kids having their routine just the way they wanted it.

The rest of his morning and into the afternoon, he worked on his next project. The restaurant was running nicely and didn’t need him there all the time. Now that it had been turned over to capable hands, he was ready to start something new. Something that would benefit his sons. Because at the end of the day, they were his sons as much as Mandy was going to be his wife.

That got him thinking about a ring for her. He had three that had been left to him from Martha. The one he was thinking about would be beautiful on her hand. It had special meaning to him as well. Martha had worn it to his college graduation and told him then that someday it would be his to use with his own wife.

The yellow diamond had gone well with the dress that she’d worn that day. Her happiness had been infectious, and he still remembered the check that she’d given him when he’d been going off to have some fun with his other classmates.

“You use this money for fun, young man. And I do mean it.” He told her that every day was fun to him, and she’d laughed. “Someday you’ll meet a young woman and you’ll want to get her something special. Use this money for that. Don’t ever cut corners with buying someone you love something lovely, Demitrius. It will be a remembrance for the two of you for the rest of your lives.”

He decided that he needed to go to a jeweler and figure out something special for Mandy. As he was thinking about what he wanted in the way of a ring, the first one he thought of kept coming back to him. It would be perfect.

The yellow diamond was surrounded by smaller white diamonds in a beautiful setting that he loved. The band was wide and made of platinum. It had been cleaned when he’d gotten it and now only needed to be sized. Mandy had such tiny fingers he knew that he’d have to be careful in getting the size right. Then he realized that he could just take her to get it sized, and he’d not have to worry about getting it right. Christ, there were times when he outthought himself on things.

He was deep in thought about the ring when Knox found him. The two of them had been meeting up for lunch on Thursdays for the past ten years or so. He got together with his other brothers, too, but for some reason, meeting up with Knox was the highlight of his week. Today was no different.

“I need a new project, and I’m betting you have an idea what I should be working on.” He asked him if he’d been to the school board meeting last night. “No. I didn’t even know there was one. I need to pay more attention to what’s going on. The boys go there.”

“They’re having trouble keeping people employed to do the morning breakfast program. It’s the first hot meal some of these kids get before lunch comes around, and that one isn’t always hot. They need five cooks willing to come in and do it. Do you know anyone who might have experience in cooking for a lot of kids?” Demi asked him what it meant in the way of a cook. “Mostly just what you think. Eggs mostly. Sometimes they have cereal when there isn’t enough money for eggs and sausage. But for the most part, you’d be cooking for about two hundred kids in the morning, then go home. There isn’t even any clean up as the lunch ladies do that, so they don’t have to come in earlier for that shift.”

“I take it that it doesn’t pay well.” He told him what was the going rate was, and Demi whistled. “That’s a lot of money. Why don’t they just let me do the cooking and then use the money for—why are you shaking your head?”

“You would need to be paid. It’s a paid position, so not getting paid would cause all kinds of issues. You can donate the money back in some other way, but you would get paid.” Demi thought thatwas silly and told his brother that. “Silly or not, it’s the rules that they have to abide by. Anyway, you would go in and cook, feed the kids, then leave. The hot breakfast consists of eggs, of course, sausage or ham, toast, and some kind of packaged jelly. There is milk and juice when they can afford that, too. It’s pretty standard. And you get to hang out with the kids every day. I know you’re kind of sappy like that.”

“I like to hang out with my kids every day. Two hundred of them would make me crazy.” Knox told him that he thought he’d love it. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t, but that’s a lot of kids to take under my wing. When can I start?”

“Since you’ve already had a background check, you can start tomorrow. I wouldn’t think you’d need all that much help, being that you know how to cook for a lot of people. And you might well not have all that much help. I’ll come and work with you. I think it would be fun, and I’ll see if I can get two more people on board to help us out. I would think that cracking the eggs would be the most help you’d need, right?” He said that making the toast would be helpful as well. “I forgot about that. Hopefully, there is more than a couple of two-slice toasters.”

“If not, then we’ll bake them. I can do this if you help, but we will need a couple more people. Maybe a couple of the women would come in and help us out. I know that they all have jobs, but if we ask nicely, maybe they’ll be willing to carve out some time to help out.” Knox pulled out his cell phone and called someone. “Also, I don’t know anything about the kitchen. I’ll need to go over there soon to get the lay of it. I don’t want to mess up anything by having to look for things that I might need.”

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