Page 5 of Sugarplum Dreams
Banks’s words cut. She tried not to let it show, but she recognized the truth in them, even as she wanted to deny it. She didn’t take care of her children the way she wanted to. She sometimes did forget to honor her promises, and she hated that. She wanted her children to learn that they could trust her when she said something. That they could take her words and count on them. The way they couldn’t count on their dad.
She wanted to be different, but it sounded like she ended up being exactly the same.
She felt weary, the whole way to her soul, but she sat her son down at the table, put his hand over the back of his head andtold him to hold it, grabbed the playdough from the container in the dining room, set it on the table in front of Lavinia, opened it, ignored her when Lavinia protested that she wanted pink and not green, and then walked into the kitchen where Wilson had made himself at home, sitting at the table, Serafina on one knee, Evans on the other, and she couldn’t quite hear what he was saying to them, but he had made them both laugh.
“Thank you for taking them. I can get them now,” she said, holding her hands up for evidence.
The little boy, so much like his father, looked up at her like he didn’t know her, put his shoulder out, like he was pushing her away with his body, and laid his head on Wilson’s shoulder.
She didn’t want to think that he was like his father, but that was exactly what Clancy had done to her.
She tried to pretend she wasn’t embarrassed by the fact that her own child didn’t want her as she shifted toward Serafina, who could be counted on to always want her mom.
Serafina shook her head no, her thumb going in her mouth and her head lying against Wilson’s neck.
He’d had them all of five minutes, and both of her children didn’t want her anymore.
Maybe that was the sign that she needed to show that she really wasn’t fit to be their mother, and she should just give them all up.
“I’m sorry. Apparently they want to stay on your lap. But I can take them if you want me to.”
“They’re just fine. I came to talk to you, but I see that this wasn’t a very good time. It’s…not exactly an emergency, but I kind of wanted to get it said. Since…I’m here now.”
“All right. What is it?”
“Actually, you can go ahead and finish taking care of everything you need to do. I would like to have some privacy.”
“Well, I have five children, and this is all the privacy you are going to get.” She didn’t mean to be rude, but she knew the words came out kind of snippy. What did this dude think? That she was just going to…send her kids into the living room and they were all going to all of a sudden behave? This was her life. This was the way they acted. Of course, she probably could turn the TV set on, and all but Evans would be glued to it. She tried not to depend on that for a babysitter, but sometimes she was just so overwhelmed that she had no choice.
Chapter Three
Wilson held a young child on each knee and sat awkwardly at the table. This was not going the way he had anticipated.
His thought was that he would knock on the door, Charity would answer, and she would step outside while he presented all the finer points of his plan, convincing her that a marriage of convenience was in her best interest. And that would be it. They’d get married within the next few days, and her children would have a father and she would have a protector and provider and he would be doing the good deed of a lifetime.
Was that really what he thought he was going to do? Swoop in and be the savior here?
Seemed like one man wasn’t nearly enough for all the chaos and problems that he’d seen just in the ten minutes that he’d been sitting here.
“That’s fine. Would you like to talk about it right here?” he asked, trying to sound calm. She just told him that this was all the privacy they were going to get. And he understood what she was saying. She couldn’t just leave her kids. Although, he kind of figured she could probably step outside for a few minutes.
But whether it was because she didn’t want to, or because she really was concerned about leaving her children, he could go with the flow. Something told him that he was going to have to learn to go with a lot of flows if this plan worked out.
This is how You’re going to shape me, Lord? Send me into a family with five small children and a woman who…is a little bit more stubborn than she seemed last time I’d been in her vicinity?
He knew her from church, although they didn’t exactly run in the same circles. She was, of course, involved in all things children, while he, a bachelor with no children of his own, was not.
He had plenty of nieces and nephews, but somehow, it never seemed to be as chaotic at his mother’s house, even when all of her grandchildren were there, as it was in Charity’s house this morning.
She lifted a shoulder and looked around. “It really has to be. I have one kid who’s bleeding and broken glass that really should be cleaned up, and I ought not to leave kids unsupervised in here until that’s done at least.”
“I can clean up the glass, if you just tell me where the broom and dustpan is.” He didn’t mind. He actually enjoyed growing up in a big family, and while he didn’t remember the chaos, he remembered the camaraderie, always having someone to play with, and while he did remember having to share, as an adult he knew that having siblings had taught him many valuable lessons about life, loving people the way they were, not being able to change anyone but himself, and knowing that there were other people who were going to be affected by the decisions that he made.
Big families were not popular in America anymore, but maybe that was part of the overall problem. Because so manygood lessons were learned when people grew up with lots of siblings.
He had never considered how hard it was on the parents to raise such big families though.
“It’s behind the door right there. If you don’t mind?” she asked, and he’d be willing to bet that she didn’t typically put her guests to work, but today seemed to be an anomaly. Maybe guests didn’t typically show up when she had someone bleeding.
