Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“ H ow’s married life treating you?” Kyra said as Charity walked around the kitchen getting breakfast ready.
The post office had called at six o’clock that morning to let them know there was a package in for them, and for some reason, Wilson had taken the three older kids with him.
Charity had no idea what the package was, probably a tractor part or a piece for the barn addition he had been building all winter.
“It’s great. I mean, better than I ever dreamed. I am so glad I didn’t let myself be influenced by my first marriage. Or I would have never got married again.”
“What’s it been? Almost four months?”
Charity’s eyes widened. “Is it the twenty-fifth?”
“It is. Of April.”
“Yeah. Exactly four months.” She had almost forgotten their anniversary!
But Wilson must’ve forgotten too, since he hadn’t talked about doing anything that day, and they always greeted each other with “happy anniversary” on their anniversary, but he’d been so busy gathering up the kids to take them into the post office with him that he hadn’t even said anything.
It was the first anniversary that they’d almost forgotten, although Charity laughed at herself.
It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning. She wasn’t close to forgetting it.
“Congratulations. You know there are some marriages that don’t even last that long.”
“I know. That’s sad.” She shuddered. Her first marriage had lasted longer than that, but it hadn’t been a good one. Now that she knew what a good marriage was, she couldn’t believe how long she’d been in a miserable one. But she had her children, and God had blessed her with a really great man.
“Are you ready for your spring program?” Kyra was involved in the new playhouse that had just opened in Mistletoe Meadows. She was part of the orchestra, and she loved it.
“I am. I can’t wait. It’s going to be so much fun. I think everyone feels that way. No one really cares that we’re not getting paid a whole lot, you know?”
“In a small town like this, you really can’t expect that there’s going to be much of a crowd for everyone to make a killing, but who knows, maybe word will spread, and people will come.”
“That’s my dream. I mean, it’s one of those dreams that I’m not afraid to dream even though I know it’s probably not going to come true.”
“You can see what happened to me, a single mom of five children who ended up with the most wonderful man in the world, and it is nothing short of a miracle. If that happened to me, anything could happen to anybody. You never know what God will do.”
“You are an inspiration to me. No offense.”
Charity laughed. She didn’t take offense. She knew that it was true. Her situation had looked hopeless and had gotten completely turned around. If that was inspiration for people, then so be it. And she was glad of it.
“All right, I better go. I want to get some practice in before work.”
“All right. Thanks for calling.”
“Happy anniversary.”
They hung up, and Charity hummed as she moved about the kitchen, thinking that she would have breakfast ready before they got home.
She had been going to make eggs, but they only had six left, and that wasn’t nearly enough to feed her family.
Maybe someday she’d have hens of her own.
Wilson had told her she could, but she figured that that probably got pushed aside because of all the other things he was doing, like putting the addition onto the barn, and today they were going to go to the sale barn.
She really couldn’t be happier, unless she thought about how much she wanted her husband to want her, as a person, not just as a wife and mother.
She couldn’t explain it exactly. She just wanted him to be attracted to her, to give her little touches during the day, or hold her close at night, rather than escaping to the couch, while she felt stuck upstairs like that was his alone time and she didn’t dare intrude upon it.
Not that he had ever said that, that was just the way she felt when they parted at the top of the stairs each night.
That he was going to have time for himself, while she went to her lonely bedroom and slept alone.
But she had determined that she would follow his lead, and she wasn’t going to push him into something that he didn’t want.
If that was the kind of relationship that he wanted, then that would be what she would give him. Because he had given her so much more.
She got the oatmeal out and was stirring blueberries into it when the door burst open.
“Mommy! Mommy! You’ve got to come see this!”
Banks and Lavinia stood in the doorway, looking excited and like they could barely contain themselves.
“Is everyone okay?” she said, quickly turning the stove off and pulling the oatmeal off the burner.
“Mom, you have to see!”
“Mr. Wilson said that we can’t tell you, you just have to come.”
Maybe he hadn’t forgotten their anniversary after all. Although, as excited as the kids were, she still worried that maybe there was something wrong.
“I’m coming. Where we going?”
“Out to the truck.”
As she walked out the door, she saw her husband grinning, standing beside his truck, holding a brown box with little holes in it. Like air holes. It might be the kind of box in which a person would transport animals.
“What kind of animal did he get?”
Banks had a hold of one hand, Lavinia had a hold of the other, and they were both chattering at her side, or she might have heard the chicks chirping before she was standing right next to Wilson.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “You would not believe that I was just standing in the kitchen wishing that we had chickens because I don’t have enough eggs to do breakfast.”
“We should have more than enough eggs to do breakfast now, because you have fifteen Rhode Island Red hens in here.”
“Just hens?” she asked, crunching up her brows. “Don’t you need a rooster to have eggs?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “No. The hens will lay without a rooster, but you won’t get chicks if there is no rooster.”
“I see.”
“Wait a second. We won’t get chicks if we don’t have a rooster?” Gifford asked, looking concerned. “But how will we get more chicks?”
“I guess if your mom wants a rooster, we’ll have to get one.”
“So this is what you picked up at the post office?”
“Sure is,” he said, taking the box and walking the short distance to the picnic table that sat in the yard.
They had supper on it multiple times, especially that spring when the weather was nice.
But for now, he set the box on the table.
“So they mail chicks?” she asked, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that the post office would mail live animals.
“They do. Just before the chick hatches, it sucks up the yolk somehow so that when it hatches out of the egg, it can go for three days without eating or drinking anything. I would imagine that’s so that the mama hen who is sitting on the eggs can continue to sit after the first chicks are born and doesn’t have to take them directly to get water. ”
“Interesting. I didn’t know that. So they have three days to ship them wherever they’re going?”
“That’s right,” he said as the kids begged to open the box. “These are your mother’s chickens, so I think she gets to be the one to do the honors.” He handed her his knife.
There was some kind of plastic strap around the box, which kept the lid closed tightly, although Charity could see little beaks poking out of the holes and could hear them chirping loudly.
“Just be careful when you do it, because they might be able to jump out, and while I think we can probably catch them, it won’t be good for them. They need the heat of each other to stay warm.”
“Oh my goodness. How are we going to take care of them? I don’t have?—”
“I have all the things you need.”
“You do?” Of course he did. He wouldn’t have gotten chicks without getting everything that was needed to take care of them.
“It’s all out in the addition I put on the barn. That’s your chicken coop.”
“Are you serious.? You’ve been spending all this time putting an addition on the barn, and the whole time you’ve been doing it, you’ve been intending to use it as a chicken coop for me?”
“You said you wanted chickens.”
“I did. But I didn’t realize…”
“You should have.” They looked at each other, and while the kids were still talking around them, encouraging her to open the box as quickly as she could, it felt like the world faded away and it was just the two of them.
She was bemused and charmed and surprised, and he could read all those expressions on her face and looked pleased as punch that he had made her so happy.
It wasn’t that he had bought her anything, it was that he had listened, and he had cared, and he had paid attention to her when she was talking and had taken it to heart.
That meant more to her than anything, and she felt like he truly cared about her.
“Thank you,” she said, and she didn’t just mean thank you for the chicks, she meant thank you for everything.
“Thank you,” he said, and she had no idea what he was thanking her for, but he seemed sincere, and then he pointed to the knife. “You better open that, before the kids go crazy.”
“Where are we going to put them?”
“I have a place ready over in the addition in the barn. We can head over there, but you want to peek inside first?”
“I’d love to. I can’t wait to see what they look like. You said Rhode Island Red? I assume those are red chickens?”
“They are, but the chicks are going to be orange and yellow. They won’t be red until they shed their baby feathers, around four to six weeks.”
“You sound like you’ve done this a time or two.”
“Back when I first bought the farm, I had several batches of chicks, but I was always drowning in eggs and giving them away, which wasn’t terrible, but it was a lot of hassle to try to take care of everything, and I just couldn’t keep up.”