Page 51 of Sugarplum Dreams
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I guess… I guess it is kind of a mystery. I can see how it would be anyway. And… Thank you for saying something rather than just getting mad at me and telling me I couldn’t do it. I think that’s what Clancy would have done, and I appreciate you having a conversation, even if it was kind of hardfor you, and I really appreciate you being willing to capitulate even though maybe you don’t quite get it completely.”
He grinned. She’d figured out that he still wasn’t quite all in, but she had the confidence that he would get there. He had the confidence too. Sometimes it just took him a little while.
“Do you promise me that if this keeps being a problem for you, you’ll say something?” she asked, and then she grinned engagingly. “Since you know that I’m not going to get mad and storm off?”
He laughed. “Good point. Probably if you did get mad, it would make me hesitate to say anything, and that’s just asking for trouble, when you let things go until you’re so mad you want to explode.”
“Well, I’ve never seen you explode. It’s kind of hard for me to picture that, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“Trust me, I’m sure it could happen to anyone. Although you’re pretty even-keeled too. So maybe we inspire each other to keep our explosions to a minimum.”
They grinned at each other, and then he took another look around, admiring how she had made the little shack into a cozy bakery that sparkled with cleanliness and oozed with the idea that something yummy could come out of it.
“I’m so proud of what you did here. It is pretty amazing. We should have before and after pictures.”
“I do!” she said, grinning again.
He could hardly take his gaze off her. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were bright and she looked so happy and carefree, and so much younger than the tired, worn-out mom of five that he had married just two months ago.
“Hey, happy anniversary,” he said as he held his hand out to her, and she put her fingers in his, and they slid together.
“Happy anniversary. I can’t imagine being any happier than I am right now.”
“I can’t imagine admiring you any more than I do right now,” he said, and his words surprised her, as she widened her eyes. He didn’t give her a chance to say anything more but squeezed her hand, as the monitor crackled with the baby’s crying, and they walked out of the shed hand in hand, together.
Chapter Twenty-Two
March 25
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Charity asked for what felt like the hundredth time. Marjorie smiled benignly, as though Charity could ask her a million times and Marjorie would still give her the same patient answer.
“We’ll be fine, won’t we, children?” she asked as she looked around the table at the kids who sat eating their breakfast as she helped feed Evans who sat in his high chair.
“We get to spend the day with Grandma!” Banks called out, grinning and smiling and looking excited.
“I’m not jealous about that,” she murmured as they waved to Marjorie and Wilson and she walked out of the kitchen.
“It is a little disheartening, isn’t it? We work our butts off to give them good lives, and they’re okay with it, but Grandma comes, and they go wild with excitement.”
“Probably because she’s going to play the quiet game,” Charity said with a wink at Wilson.
He chuckled with her and opened her side of the pickup so she could get in.
Even when they had children, he always opened her door for her. He said that he wanted to set a good example for his boys. To show them that women deserve consideration and respect.
She watched as he walked around the front of the vehicle. So many people said that when a man was the head of the home, the woman was automatically in subjection and couldn’t live her best life or whatever, but after spending several months with Wilson, Charity was sure that it was all in how seriously a man took his duty to treat the woman the way Christ treated the church and gave himself for it.
She never felt like she was less than. And the conversation that they’d had a month ago when she opened her business haunted her, but she didn’t think it was because he didn’t want her to earn money, or because he didn’t want her to have a business. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. She had the feeling that it was something that he was a little bit ashamed of and didn’t want to talk to her about. Even though he said he wanted to be able to talk to her about anything. It seemed like he had tried but hadn’t quite been able to get everything out that he needed to say.
Maybe she was just making stuff up. Maybe there really wasn’t any problem, and it was in her head.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked as he put the car in reverse and pulled out of the drive.
He had fed the cows early and made sure she didn’t have any last-minute baking to do, so they could have the whole day together.
Both of them knew it was their anniversary, and they’d greeted each other with “happy anniversary” that morning. It was funny that they were keeping track, and every month they marked it.
She was sure after they had been married for a few years, or maybe it would not even be that long, it would be old hat, but their relationship was new. And she appreciated the fact that Wilson was trying to make it…romantic, maybe?
