Page 58 of Sugarplum Dreams
“It smells amazing in here,” he said as he opened the door and he and Gifford walked in.
“Daddy!” Lavinia said as she threw herself at his legs.
The sound never ceased to make him smile. She’d started calling him that maybe a month or two prior. First her, and then Serafina and Evans had followed suit. Banks had said it maybe once or twice, and Wilson had watched as Gifford had carefully studied his younger siblings as they accepted him and called him Dad.
He wasn’t sure that Charity didn’t have something to do with it, but if she did, she wasn’t admitting it.
But to be fair, he hadn’t asked. He kind of wanted to think that the kids had done it on their own, but the idea that Charity had encouraged them was also encouraging to him.
In all the time that they’d been married, as far as he knew, she hadn’t heard a word out of her ex-husband.
“Did you help make lunch?” he asked Lavinia as he picked her up and hugged her, then settled her on his hip.
She was going to be starting kindergarten with Banks the next year. It was odd to have both of them in the same class, but from the way their birthdays fell, it was the accurate way, although he and Charity had talked about holding Lavinia back a year so Banks would have a year to himself.
They had eventually decided that it wouldn’t be fair to Lavinia to keep her back, and it might be good for Banks to have his sister with him.
Maybe they were making the wrong decision, but that’s what parenting was, doing the best a person could, even while knowing that you were sure to make mistakes.
He hoped it was the best decision. He didn’t want to screw these kids up any more than what they’d already been messed up when their dad abandoned them.
It had definitely been hard on Gifford, but Wilson prayed for him nightly and felt like maybe he would eventually come around.
“Mom made your favorite. It’s a recipe that Grandma gave her a long time ago.”
Wilson looked over Lavinia’s head and exchanged a smile with Charity. A long time ago was a couple of months. But he supposed to a five-year-old that really was a long time.
“I forgot our anniversary yesterday. Happy anniversary a day late.” He figured he might as well admit it right away, rather than beating around the bush.
“Oh my goodness. I totally forgot too.” She looked around. “You wouldn’t think one more kid would make that much of a difference.”
“I think she’s blaming it on you, Gifford,” Wilson said, ruffling the boy’s hair and grinning at him.
“I’ve got broad shoulders,” Gifford said, sounding so much like himself that Wilson had to pause for a moment.
It was amazing what the kids picked up and how much of himself he saw in them, even though they weren’t biologically his. He loved that though, even while it made him feel like he wasn’t worthy to be sharing a home with them. What if he led them wrong?
He supposed there wasn’t any better way to keep a man on the straight and narrow than to have five small children staring at him constantly, watching his every move.
“I know you do, son,” he said, using the word son as an endearment.
Gifford didn’t bristle as he had been afraid that he might. Instead, he just grinned bigger.
“If it’s okay with you, I’m gonna call my mom and see if she can come over, and I’m gonna take my wife out for supper tonight.”
“I don’t know. Can we go out on a date if it’s not our anniversary?” she asked, smiling so he knew that she was teasing him.
“Let’s try it and see,” he said, and she laughed.
“That pretty much is our idea of wild, isn’t it?”
“That, and getting chicks,” he said, knowing how much joy she found in them. There were several times where he found her just sitting in the chicken coop watching the baby chicks run around and enjoying them. He asked her what she was doing, and she really couldn’t say, other than she just loved sitting and watching them.
He’d actually spent some time sitting beside her, not saying anything, just enjoying what she enjoyed. He could kinda see what she saw in it, although he supposed he was less interested in the chicks and more interested in seeing a tractor drive across the field. Driving it himself across the field was really what got him.
He loved that feeling of…he wasn’t even sure how to describe it, and he figured that that might be something along the lines of what Charity felt with the chicks. Regardless, he had spent some time doing what she loved, just because he thought that he would really like to have her spend some time doing what he loved, although he understood that she couldn’t exactly leave the kids and come running out to spend time in the field with him.
He asked his mom before he washed his hands, and she texted back almost immediately that she had already committed to watching Gilbert’s kids, although she could do it later in the week.
