Page 34 of Charmed
“Oh, it’s still home, but sometimes you have to move away to make your own place. Your own magic.”
“Like Daddy and me did.”
“Yes.” She closed the dishwasher and began to fill the sink with hot, soapy water for the pots and pans. “You like living here in Monterey?”
“I like it a lot. Nana said I might get homesick when the novelty wears off. What’s novelty?”
“The newness.” Not a very wise thing to suggest to an impressionable child, Ana mused. But she imagined Nana’s nose was out of joint. “If you do get homesick, you should try to remember that the very best place to be is usually where you are.”
“I like where Daddy is, even if he took me to Timbuktu.”
“Excuse me?”
“Grandma Sawyer said he might as well have moved us to Timbuktu.” Jessie accepted the clean pot Ana handed her and began to dry, an expression of deep concentration on her face. “Is that a real place?”
“Um-hmm. But it’s also a kind of expression that means far away. Your grandparents are missing you,sunshine. That’s all.”
“I miss them, too, but I get to talk to them on the phone, and Daddy helped me type a letter on his computer. Do you think you could marry Daddy so Grandma Sawyer would get off his back?”
The pan Ana had been washing plopped into the suds and sent a small tidal wave over the lip of the sink. “I don’t think so.”
“I heard him telling Grandma Sawyer that she was on his back all the time to find a wife so he wouldn’t be lonely and I wouldn’t have to grow up without a mother. His voice had that mad sound in it he gets when I do something really wrong, or like when Daisy chewed up his pillow. And he said he’d be damned if he’d tie himself down just to keep the peace.”
“I see.” Ana pressed her lips hard together to keep the proper seriousness on her face. “I don’t think he’d like you to repeat it, Jessie, especially in those words.”
“Do you think Daddy’s lonely?”
“No. No, I don’t. I think he’s very happy with you, and with Daisy. If he decided to get married one day, it would be because he found somebody all of you loved very much.”
“I love you.”
“Oh, sunshine.” Soapy hands and all, Ana scooted down to give Jessie a hug and a kiss. “I love you, too.”
“Do you love Daddy?”
I wish I knew. “It’s different,” she said. She knew she was navigating on boggy ground. “When you grow up, love means different things. But I’m very happy that you moved here and we can all be friends.”
“Daddy never had a lady over to dinner before.”
“Well, you’ve only been here a couple of weeks.”
“I mean ever, at all. Not in Indiana, either. So I thought maybe it meant that you were going to get married and live with us here so Grandma Sawyer would get off his back and I wouldn’t be a poor motherless child.”
“No.” Ana did her best to disguise a chuckle. “It meant that we like each other and wanted to have dinner.” She checked the window to make certain Boone wasn’t on his way back. “Does he always cook like this?”
“He always makes a really big mess, and sometimes he says those words—you know?”
“I know.”
“He says them when he has to clean it up. And today he was in a really bad mood, ’cause Daisy ate his pillow and there were feathers all over and the washing machine exploded and he maybe has to go on a business trip.”
“That’s a lot for one day.” She bit her lip. Really, she didn’t want to pump the child, but she was curious. “He’s going to take a trip?”
“Maybe to the place where they make movies, ’cause they want to make one out of his book.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“He has to think about it. That’s what he says when he doesn’t want to say yes but probably he’s going to.”
