5. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Oak
I waved wildly at the three little faces I could see on the screen of Charlie’s phone.
“Hi, guys!”
“Hi, Oak!” they managed to almost harmonize.
“Let’s go see the rooms, okay?” Charlie took over and turned the camera the other way.
I walked to the first door and opened it. “We think this could be Tristan’s because it’s the closest to the stairs,” I said as Charlie panned in.
“It’s really dirty!” Tristan yelled, scandalized.
Charlie chuckled. “It won’t be once we’re done with it.”
“It’s a bit smaller than the others,”—because it had been a nursery once but I didn’t say that out loud—“but we can make it really nice.”
We showed the rest of the rooms and somehow Harper wanted the middle one, while Marlie would get the bigger one at the other end of the hall. They were so damn excited, that eventually we had to get Law on the call.
Once he got them settled a bit, Charlie told them our agenda.
“So here’s the thing. We’re going to get your rooms ready for when you arrive, but we need some things from you. Oak?”
“Right, so Harper, can you get a pen and paper and write this down?” I asked, and she vanished from view.
Law smiled slightly, and again, it got to me how good looking he was.
“Okay, I’m back!”
“Okay. You three, and Daddy too, need to decide a few things. First of all, what color do you want your room to be?”
She diligently wrote that down while Law’s smile grew. He seemed to be in good spirits, but I could tell he looked tired, too. It must’ve been rough, having so much change in a short time, even if that change was good. Not that I knew if the divorce thing was good or not, but from what I’d gathered, he and the ex-wife were good friends so that had to be a plus?
“What else?” Harper asked, snapping me out of staring at her dad through the small screen.
“Next, we need some things you like. We know Marlie likes dogs, for example. We need more things like that. Favorite colors, books, and songs.”
Law’s eyebrows scrunched a little, but he stayed silent.
Charlie, who was sitting right next to me, noticed it, too. “We’ll handle it, Law. You just get yourself and the kids and whatever things you want from there safely to our neck of the woods.”
Sighing, Law nodded and relaxed. I could immediately tell he was relieved that someone else was doing some of the work.
“Now, that’s most of what Uncle Charlie and I need, but then there’s another thing; Auntie Dana wants to know all you guys’ favorite foods, so Harper, if you can make a list and then when Auntie Dana calls you, you have it ready?”
“I will!”
“Hooligans, disassemble,” Law told them, making me snicker.
Harper told her siblings to follow her to make the lists, and their babbling faded into the background.
“Guys….” Law peered at us through the screen.
“Don’t you even,” Charlie answered.
I grinned. “What he said.”
“I don’t want you to—”
“No, but we will anyway,” Charlie interrupted. “We have time. We’ll spruce up the house to a point where you can be comfortable and still do a lot of the renovations yourself. Now, do you have good beds for them, or should we get them new ones?”
I didn’t need to be here for that, so I wandered downstairs and into the main bedroom, looking around. There was an old bed frame that I thought was kind of neat. There were tall posts in each corner, and some vines carved into the wood. If we got Law a new mattress, it would be nice.
We were going to put new carpet in the kids’ rooms, but Charlie said that we should see what was under the old one in Law’s bedroom just to see if it was hardwood. If it was, we could give him the hardwood floor of his dreams, or something like that. Apparently it was all about the rugs.
I agreed, I would’ve actually liked to have a hardwood floor in a bedroom like this. I’d paint it some deeper shade of green to make it a bit cave-like, and yeah… it was a great space.
“Okay,” Charlie said as he came in. “Law says we can pick his colors; he’s not fussy. We should get the list from the kids soon, knowing Harper.”
He smiled fondly, his love for his niece, Harper Charlotte, who was named after him and was a mini-Charlie, clear as day.
A week later, as I finished painting Law’s room a foresty green, I felt satisfaction that I hadn’t in a while. Sure, cleaning the Inn was rewarding, but the monotony in that was different. Painting calmed my brain somewhat, and that was always nice.
I remembered being little, maybe around Marlie’s age, and painting a big barn wall with my older cousins. I’d loved it back then, and the memory surfacing now didn’t really surprise me.
I put the roller on the tray and went to the window. All you could see here was the trees. It was comforting. It looked nothing like my childhood home, the fields we’d been surrounded with had made everything flat.
The Yellow House, as we’d started to call it, was like a nest in the woods. If there’d been a gap in the trees, I could’ve seen my cabin from Law’s window. Only a patch of woods and the small clearing around the pond behind the cabin separated the buildings.
Again, my mind went back to Utah. I wondered what my siblings were doing.
I wondered where I’d be and what I would be doing if my youngest brother, Rudy, hadn’t outed me. Even at ten years old, that boy was vicious, always looking to please the elders no matter at what cost.
I could see our paternal grandfather in him to a degree that chilled me to the bone.
The others between us, Clara, Amos, and Sariah, were less… that. They weren’t like me, either, but they weren’t as bad as Rudy who was, no surprise there, Grandpa’s favorite.
“You okay?” Uncle Teague asked from the doorway.
Of course he’d see my posture for what it was, even without seeing my face.
“Yeah. I was just thinking about my siblings.”
His big boots clomped closer, his bigger, comforting body radiating heat to my side and back. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” he offered simply.
I huffed out a breath. “Thanks.” What else was there to say?
I’d found my family here. Both blood and not, they all accepted me in a way I’d never been accepted in Utah.
“Did you finish the kids’ rooms?” I asked to change the subject.
With another squeeze of my shoulder, Uncle Teague nodded and smiled. “Yep. The new beds and stuff should arrive tomorrow. I’ll start on the family room’s floor tomorrow as well.”
“Gramps doesn’t need you?” Uncle Teague worked at the little sawmill operation my gramps had. They cut and sold a lot of firewood this time of the year.
“I’ll work there through the weekend. Charlie will be busy here with you anyway, so it’s gonna be fine.”
“Oh, okay.” I turned to pick up the roller tray. “As long as you also take time off, you know. You’re not as young as you used to be, Uncle Teague.”
When he gasped dramatically and took a step closer to me, I brandished the roller as a means of defending myself.
Charlie called for him somewhere in the house, and he pointed at me, squinting. “I’ll get you yet for your disrespect, young whippersnapper!”
Just as he left the room, I called after him, “I’m pretty sure not even Gramps uses the word ‘whippersnapper’ anymore!”
Snickering, I started to clean up.
“What about Christmas?” I asked Charlie one morning as we sat at the Inn having breakfast together.
“What do you mean?” He cut into a hashbrown with the side of his fork, then shoveled into his mouth.
“I mean they’re coming here right before Christmas, right? There’s no time for them to get a tree and decorations and everything while they settle in. I doubt they’ll be bringing all their old decorations either, more like the most important ones?”
Charlie frowned in thought. “I think so. I spoke with Caitlyn the other day and she said they were doing a really drastic culling of things they own all in all.”
“Yeah, so how are they going to do Christmas? Should we get them a tree and some new decorations for it and the house?”
Charlie’s eyes lit up. “That’s such a great idea!”
That’s how Charlie, my grandma, and I ended up driving all the way to Plattsburgh to get some “proper ornaments” for them, because she took Christmas decorations Very Seriously. Luckily not in the insane “decorate every square inch of your house” kind of way though. I’d seen some of those TikTok videos and whoa boy did some people need therapy.
She insisted on treating us to lunch, and then, because she saw how I looked at the bookstore we were walking by, she practically pushed me and Charlie inside. It was good to see how comfortable Charlie was around her now, having seen how awkward he’d felt at first. Charlie and mothers weren’t the easiest combination, for sure.
We also visited a craft store and Charlie spoiled my Christmas present by getting me some yarn that I couldn’t get my eyes off but was a bit out of my price range at a local yarn store.
That was another thing that was new and exciting to me: having my own money. I saved most of it, of course, knowing better than to count on anything ever going my way long term. I never wanted to be in the situation I’d been when I’d started my drive from Utah, not knowing if my car would even last long enough to get to where I knew I’d be safe.
In the back of my mind, I was still kind of expecting for this family to reject me, too. I knew it was irrational; these people were all made of pure love and acceptance, but I’d studied enough psychology to get that even after all this time, I was scarred in the brain when it came to these things.
On the drive back home, we chatted about random things, until Charlie and Grams started to talk about something that didn’t interest me, and I leaned my head against the side window and stared out at the scenery passing by.
They mentioned Uncle Teague, and Grams teased Charlie about something or other, and his laugh was everything, suddenly.
I envied him so much. Both him and Uncle Teague. They were such great people and they deserved all the happiness and love they could squeeze out of life, but… yeah. I envied them.
Part of me still thought I didn’t deserve to have someone to love like that. Not because I was a bad person, I knew I did my best, but because I was gay. Which, if you asked people back where I’d grown up—I couldn’t bring myself to consciously think of that place as “home” anymore—was what made me a sinner. Someone not worthy of good things, especially happiness and love. Sometimes it seemed the only way I’d get that kind of loving forever was if I stepped through one of the fairy doors I’d collected.
I sighed, glad when the sound was hidden by the rumbling of the SUV. I didn’t need Charlie and Grams asking why I was feeling gloomy.
Instead of talking about it, I sat with it, surrounded by their conversation, the shopping bags that hadn’t fit in the back, and just… let my mind wander until it caught on to something happier.
It took a while, but eventually I was smiling again and could join the conversation. I made crocheting plans with Grams and cat-sitting plans with Charlie—he was going to take Uncle Teague to Lake Placid for a little getaway for a weekend after Christmas—and soon enough, we were home.
In the couple of weeks we had until Law and the kids would arrive, we worked every spare moment we could on the Yellow House.
We had a plan to make sure everything that needed to be ready, would be, so that they could just settle into their new home and then Law could take care of whatever else there was to do around the house.
There was a lot. I knew everyone would pitch in, because there were things like redoing the wallpaper, checking the roof, figuring out what to do with the downstairs floors, making sure the windows were all okay and so on and so forth, that we couldn’t really leave for Law alone.
But for now, the important bits were done. The kids had their bedrooms upstairs, Law downstairs, and the bathrooms in the house were all serviceable, though in need of an update.
The kitchen would do, as well. Uncle Teague called a friend who did a lot of kitchen renovations in the area, and the guy had some appliances from when they upgraded stuff for those clients who just must have the newest model every few years. That meant that we got an incredible deal on a very little used stove, dishwasher, and double fridge with a freezer.
“They aren’t quite as nice as the stuff they had in their place in Phoenix, but it’s damn close,” Charlie said as he watched Uncle Teague and the friend install the appliances.
Nic, being a carpenter, had helped where she could, too. She’d made a custom island that would work as a breakfast bar, too. She’d also dug out a bigger dining table from somewhere in the Inn’s storage, and Felix donated six chairs for it. He also worked the front desk a couple of days toward the end of our timeline, just so Charlie and Nic could finish up at the house.
By the time we were done, the house looked a bit scruffy but clean, and there were plenty of rugs on the floors—Charlie was right about those—to cover the not-so-nice bits and to provide cushioning for the kids to run on. Uncle Teague and Nic had triple-checked the staircase and fixed the banister, and the front porch was also safe for everyone.
The family room now sported a tall fir that had boxes of decorations underneath for the kids and Law to put up. There was a large second-hand sectional couch that was comfy enough that I’d fallen asleep on it once already.
The kids kept sending us messages from Law’s phone, asking for updates and photos, which we weren’t giving them, because where was the fun in that?
The day they were going to arrive, we stocked the fridge and the cupboards using money Law and his ex-wife had sent Charlie—they hadn’t taken no for an answer and finally Charlie had given in—and everything was… done.
“Come summer, we’re gonna have to paint this house,” Uncle Teague said thoughtfully as we stood outside, looking at the gorgeous, faded yellow house.
Charlie cuddled to his side and nodded. “Yup.”
Nic and Dana’s dogs were there, too. Cricket, because this was her territory and she made her rounds every day, and Steve, because he liked to be where things were happening. Salem was at my cabin, asleep after “helping” us all morning. The kitten adored the big house and knew every inch of it by now. Cricket sighed and lumbered away through her special shortcut through the woods and to my cabin. She’d go lie down by the front door to watch over her best friend.
“We have about an hour, and Dana has a late lunch ready for us,” Charlie announced. “Let’s go eat and prepare for the travel cranky, yet enthusiastic children invasion.”
Uncle Teague chuckled and kissed Charlie’s temple, then took his hand.
Steve and I followed them along the narrow road and then down to the parking lot of the Inn.
Suddenly I was excited about seeing the kids again. And their dad, of course. Law was a good guy. I wished my own father had been half the guy Law was, but it was what it was.
I smiled as I walked, my fingers touching the big black dog beside me. We’d done a good job, I felt like, and I couldn’t wait to hear what Law and the kids thought about it all.