Page 41 of Sugarplum Dreams
He wanted to ask her a million other questions, like, did you change your mind? Are you still okay? Did you decide that you’d made a huge mistake and you want out of it? But he didn’t.
“I did, surprisingly. I didn’t realize how nervous I had been about being here by myself with all the children and if there was a bump in the night, it was all my responsibility. I just thought to myself, ‘Wilson’s down there now, and he’ll take care of it,’ and I laid my head down on the pillow and slept like a baby.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” he said.
“What about you? I always thought that couch was really comfortable. It sags through the middle, and I just love it.”
He laughed. “That sag in the middle kind of made my hips hurt, but I walked it off. And I slept really well. So well in fact that the three oldest children were standing around me, staring down at me talking about me before I really even realized what was going on. I never heard them come downstairs.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll say something to them?—”
“No. It was fine. You wouldn’t say something to them if I was their real dad. Would you?” He hated to use that word, “real.”But it was true. If they were married and they were his kids and hers, she wasn’t going to stop them from doing that if he allowed it.
“No. But… I don’t mean to say they’re not, it’s just, I’m not sure that you’ll tell them no if you don’t want them to do something.”
“Will it make you feel better if I promise you that I will tell them no if I don’t want them to do something? Or maybe I should say if I feel like they’re doing something they shouldn’t do. Because it might not have been the best way to get woken up this morning, but when you’re a dad, sometimes that’s the way you get woken up and it has to be okay.”
“You could have yelled at them and told them to leave you alone, that you were still sleeping.”
“And then I would miss this time making pancakes with them. I’m glad I didn’t. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to take the easy way out. I want to do the hard things. The hard things that dads do, when they’re good dads. And they don’t put themselves and their own comfort above their children.”
“Wow. That’s inspiring.”
He chuckled, but he knew she was also serious. He didn’t mean to be inspiring. He meant to be honest.
“So are you okay?” he asked, wanting to know if she changed her mind but not wanting to say it.
“Yes. I’m fine. How about you? I worry a little that after all the hubbub of yesterday, you would…regret what you’d done.”
“Never.”
She looked like she wanted to say a little bit more. And he thought for an instant that maybe they should talk about what the pastor had told him, but that kind of defeated the purpose, didn’t it? He was supposed to be wooing her, courting her, not getting her input in everything, and if he did that, she might feel compelled to have to say that she didn’t want to wait a year,because there might not be any way he could keep himself from saying that he didn’t. And he didn’t want to pressure her. The pastor was right, they needed to build a strong foundation, and that would be slowly and surely, over time.
“I didn’t really have any plans for today, other than maybe starting to pack some things up.”
“That sounds good to me. I was going to get some of my brothers together, and my brothers-in-law, and figured they could give us a hand between now and the new year, when they’re not working as much. I actually think Jones has closed his clinic for the entire week. So he will probably be available almost any time.”
“All right.”
“I know you want the kids to take their naps in the afternoon, so not today, but maybe I can get some things in line for tomorrow, and maybe during that time, we can figure out exactly when we want to move everything so that we don’t have one kid’s bed here and another kid’s bed there and we’re trying to figure out how to put everybody to sleep some night.”
“That makes a lot of sense. I suppose I should have been the one to think about that.”
“I think you had enough to think about.” He paused and then figured he’d better check. “It’s still okay to move to my house?”
“Yes. And the sooner we can do that, the sooner we can get this up for sale.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“And I’ll see if I can get in touch with Clancy and see how we’re going to split the money for this. I hate to do it. But I might as well take the bull by the horns. Of course, I might not be able to get a hold of him. It’s not like he left me contact info. All I have is his old phone number, which, unless he changed it, should still work.”
“If not, we’ll figure it out by going to a lawyer and seeing what they say. It will be nice to know, but I think probably we should just work on the assumption that you get half and he gets half, and if something else works out, we’ll just be pleasantly surprised.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I think the pancakes are done. Would you come check them, Mr. Wilson?”
“We’ll have to figure out what the kids are going to call you,” Charity said softly as he started to move away.
