Page 20 of Painting Together a Family
In the end, he’d spent more on a few days’ food than he usually spent in a week, but it was all good quality, and he couldafford it. He’d just been scrimping and trying to make ends meet for long enough that it had become habit, and his budget belt was very tight. He imagined he was going to use the chicken leftovers to make soup, and he was going to stretch that ground beef to several meals, maybe even more, to make up for the spending.
The boys both had backpacks, and he put the strawberries and pears in Dylan’s, while the apples went into Micah’s. The rest of the food went into his own backpack.
He held his hands out to them. “Okay, let’s get our treasures home.”
“Look, there’s a chocolate stall.” Dylan pointed.
“So there is.” He didn’t think they needed any chocolate; yesterday had been a full-on treats day with slushies and candy and ice cream.
“Please, Daddy, can we have some?” Dylan asked, and his little brother took up the call.
“Please, Daddy. Please, Daddy. Please.”
He was half considering it when he saw the price of just one little truffle. It looked like he was going to get to be the bad guy. “Not today, our bags are full.”
“I carry more!” Micah told him, but he shook his head.
“Maybe the next time we come.”
“Yay!” they celebrated together.
“I saidmaybenext time.”
“Does that mean no?” Dylan asked.
“It means that we’re not getting any today, but there’s a possibility we will get some next time we come to the market. Okay?”
Even at just six years old, Dylan could make a sigh sound world-weary. “Okay, Daddy.” Still, he slipped his hand back into Bryan’s and didn’t keep bugging him to get them chocolate.
Bryan wasn’t averse to them having chocolate, but they didn’t need to spend three dollar and fifty cents for a small bite. No matter how good the chocolate was. Besides, it wasn’t like the boys were that discerning, and they’d be just as happy with the cheap chocolate you could get in the grocery store.
It was a lovely day, and the walk home was nice, Dylan and Micah talking about all the animals they’d seen at the zoo the day before. He loved hearing them being animated and happy.
“Can we stop at the park, Daddy?”
He pondered that for a moment. It wasn’t too warm yet and the chicken and ground meat would be okay not refrigerated for a short while. “Okay. For fifteen minutes. When I say it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Deal?”
“Deal!” The boys left him their backpacks and ran to the play structure in the middle of the park.
He checked his watch for the time, picked up the backpacks and followed along after them. They were pretty good about not complaining when he said it was time to go, but if he’d told them how long they had ahead of time and made them agree to the ‘deal,’ they were very good about adhering to it.
There were a few other kids there, some of them with both parents, and it gave him a little pang, being there on his own, as he always was. That wasn’t going to change any time soon, though. He didn’t know when he’d be ready to trust someone again, but that certainly wasn’t today.
He had a friend now, though. Someone who had been through the same experience as he had, and that made their friendship special. And if he yearned for Dev to be more than a friend, well, he could live with that, too.
He opened up his browser on his phone and looked up chicken recipes while the boys played.
Bryan roasted the chicken instead of doing a casserole, and made a cheese sauce for the broccoli, which was the only way his boys liked the ‘trees’. He made a big salad, and a strawberry shortcake for dessert. The berries were so good, juicy and bursting with flavor. He also had made some biscuits with the Bisquick mix; he hoped he could be forgiven for using a ready-mix package to help with supper, but he just wasn’t good at making biscuits, rolls would have taken too long, and he’d forgotten to get anything like that when they’d been out.
He had the shortcake in the fridge along with the salad, and the chicken was nearly done, the broccoli ready to be turned on as soon as it was, when the doorbell rang.
“I got it!” Dylan yelled, and he could hear both of his boys thundering down the hall like a herd of elephants.
“Check who it is first!” he called out. They were too ready to just fling open the door and he’d had to fend off a furnace salesman because of it. It had taken him ten minutes of insisting he wasn’t in the market, no matter how good the deal was before he’d finally been rude and just shut the door in the man’s face midsentence. Nowasa complete sentence and he’d resented the hard sell when he’d been more than clear. It also wasn’t safe for them to open the door to just anyone; a salesman was the least of the bad options.
“It’s Mr. Dev and Marley and Juniper,” Dylan called out.
“Then you can let them in.”
