Page 73 of Broken SEAL'S Secret Baby
We will make love and wait for the odd swimming movements that are our next child’s first signs of life. I’d had no idea I would marry my brother’s spoiled, bratty, absent-minded roommate, but he’d turned out to be a warm, loving, responsible man. My favorite man.
“I love you,” I say.
Charles bends and brushes a kiss on my lips. A soft, chaste kiss that nonetheless promises later delights.
“I love you, too,” he replies.
Epilogue: Ten Years Later
Charles
I live in Bedlam,I write in my journal.Kate and I are about to renew our vows. It has been ten years since we pledged our troth in our living room, but before the whole world.I stopped and thought. Did ‘troth’ sound too pretentious? Too epic fantasy, role-playing game, over the top? Kate will like “troth” I decide. It sounds Shakespearean.
“Mom!” Cece yells from the other room, “Make Jimmy give back my curling iron.”
I roll my eyes and look over at Kate, who is carefully pinning a Shirley Temple finger curl to the top of Abigail’s head.
She sighs and rolls her eyes right back at me. “Tell me again why we agreed to baby-sit for James and Grace?”
I grin at her. “As I recall, you said, ‘I love my brother, and Grace deserves some time off from herding his hoodlums.’”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Kate seems to consider the memory. “Next time I volunteer for his hoodlums, make sure we hire a whole squad of Mary Poppins nannies to look after them.”
“Mom!” sixteen-year-old Cece appears in the doorway. “Jimmy is using my curling iron to curl the leaves on your philodendron. I think he’s planning to eat them. No one is going to like it if I deal with it.”
I snort with laughter. The last time Cece had dealt with her step-cousin, she tied him to the swing set with a length of clothesline and left him there while she and Letty playedjacks on the back step. Jimmy is now six, and a more unrepentant little monster would be difficult to find anywhere.
Just to clear things up,I write, Cece is my daughter from my first marriage. Abigail and Thomas are mine and Kate’s. It seems the doctors were completely wrong about my virility. Letty, a sweet gentle girl, is Grace and James’ oldest.
Jimmy is their youngest, and “hoodlum” certainly suits him. He doesn’t necessarily mean to be bad, but he doesn’t seem to have any brakes. Kate says that James was like that when he was a kid but had mostly grown out of it by the time she was Cece’s age. So maybe there’s hope.
“I’ve got it,” I say. I unfold myself from the couch where I’d been writing in my journal.
I walk into the other room where Jimmy is not trying to curl the plant. Oh, dear, no. that would be too easy. Jimmy is trying to curl the hair on the venerable Mr. Fluffy’s back. The cat is giving the kid the evil eye, but he hasn’t popped the claws yet. Just as well he hadn’t tried to curl Gidget’s fur. The aging poodle isn’t patient.
I reach over to the electrical outlet just inside the door and unplug the curling iron. No need to endanger the cat. Thankfully the switch is off so the curling iron never heated up.
The curling iron must have pulled fur because Mr. Fluffy yowls, smacks Jimmy’s hand with outstretched claws, and escapes. The curling iron is entangled in his fur and thumps his sides as he flees into the room where Kate is trying to help the girls dress up for some sort of school function.
“Mr. Fluffy!” I hear Cece exclaim.
Then Letty’s soft voice, “I have him. Poor Mr. Fluffums! What did my nasty brother do to you, hmmm?”
Jimmy clutches his hand to him, howling as if he’d been mortally wounded. “I’m bleeding!” he wails. “Aren’t you going to fix it?”
“Yep,” I say. “I’m going to march you into the bathroom, clean your wounds out with alcohol, put iodine on them and call your father.”
It is a reasonable response to a cat scratch. I’m not mean about it, but I’m not especially sympathetic either. I hit the speed dial for James on my phone and hand it to Jimmy. “Tell him,” I say. “Tell him truthfully, or I will.”
I leave Jimmy to make his personal excuses and go to check on Mr. Fluffy.
Cece’s beloved old cat is cuddled on Letty’s lap, eating cat treats out of her hand.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Charles,” Letty says. “I don’t know what gets into him. Last week, he tried to shut Yoyo into the flour bin to see if he could walk through walls or something.”
I think I might have some idea what was wrong with Jimmy. Young as he is, he needs occupation and supervised time with something that would engage his exceptionally bright mind. I’ll have a word with James. We need to find something positive for Jimmy to do…and soon…or who knows what he’ll get into.
Meanwhile, Kate has transformed our daughters and Letty into visions of true loveliness. Our renewal will be almost a re-enactment of James and Grace’s wedding, nearly eight years ago now. The only difference will be that the girls, Grace, and Greg’s wife will be Kate’s attendants, while James, Jimmy, Thomas and Greg will be mine. I corral Jimmy, now reduced to sniveling, “I’m sorry, Uncle Charles. I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Fluffy. I just wanted to make him pretty.”
