Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“ T hat wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Charity said as they walked out of the pastor’s house and turned right toward one of the many restaurants in town.
“Yeah, it could have been a lot worse. Like longer. Did you hear my stomach growling?”
Charity laughed and shook her head. “No. It was? I must have been too nervous to pay attention.”
“Yeah. I tried to suck it in to stop it, but that’s not exactly something you can shush. It wasn’t like I yawned.”
“No. A yawn probably would have been worse,” she said, appreciating the fact that Wilson was so easy to talk to.
“Do you have a preference about which restaurant you’d like to eat at?”
“I was serious when I told Pastor Connelly that I haven’t eaten out in years, maybe even a decade. I’ll go anywhere that will cook my food for me, serve it, and clean up after me.”
“All right. Then let’s go here. Maybe because it’s first and fastest,” Wilson said, again causing her to laugh. She appreciated his humor more than she could say. Definitely with the life that she led, a person had to have a sense of humor, otherwise it would be almost unimaginably bleak.
They went in and were seated right away at a cute little table near the window.
“Goodness. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a restaurant, I just feel like I need to sit here and enjoy it for a minute,” she said as she put her hand on the menu, just imagining all the good food that was in there waiting to be cooked just for her.
When was the last time somebody made something for her to eat and she didn’t have to do it herself?
Or cleaned up after her? Normally she didn’t just cook for herself but for her kids, and she cleaned up after everyone as well.
“I didn’t realize something this simple would make you so happy,” he said, smiling at her.
She was a little embarrassed because she was acting like a child, getting so excited about eating out. But it was a big deal to her. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be a little bit more mature.”
“No. It’s fine. I’m enjoying watching you.”
She smiled but tried to curtail her enthusiasm. She opened her menu and looked for something she couldn’t make at home herself.
The waitress came and took their orders, and maybe there was a little bit of surprise on her face to see the two of them together, but there was no comment.
That was something Charity was a little nervous about.
The townspeople would see that there was a huge discrepancy between herself and Wilson.
Wilson was successful and well respected, well-off, and a pillar of the community.
She, on the other hand, was the wife that her husband didn’t want, left saddled with five children, and she was barely keeping her head above water, and in fact she was on the verge of losing not just her house but her kids too.
She was hardly a respected pillar of the community, although she did have her integrity intact.
She wasn’t the one who cheated, she wasn’t the one who broke up her family, and she wasn’t the one who caused it, although her husband had blamed her.
That hardly seemed fair, but she didn’t want to think about that now.
“So, tell me about you? You’re a farmer. Is there something else you do too?” she asked as the waitress left to get their drinks.
“Well, I started a business in college. It was a cleaning company that morphed into a handyman-type thing. It grew, and grew, and grew some more, and eventually I hired people to run it, went public with it, selling the stock on the open market, and I make a tidy little profit on it, without the headache of managing it.”
“I see. Wow. So you do that in addition to farming?”
“There’s really nothing for me to do. It’s just a company that I own the majority of the shares in and makes a nice profit every year, and I don’t have to lift a finger. Plus, I have the money I sold it for, but I mostly used that to buy the farm.”
“It’s neat that you came back here to Mistletoe Meadows. You must really love it here.”
“I do. No doubt about it. But this is where my family is. I probably would have come back anyway, just because I wanted to be around them. That’s one thing I learned when I went to school. You can’t replace your family. And I wouldn’t want to.”
“I wonder if that’s because you had so many siblings? Do you think larger families tend to be closer?”
“Maybe. Are you not close with your family?”
“I barely talk to my older sister. I’ll probably get a card from her here today or tomorrow, and she may call on my birthday. Otherwise… There’s no contact.”
“What about your parents?”
“Same. They go scuba diving in the Caribbean on Thanksgiving. So obviously we don’t have a family Thanksgiving dinner, and this year for Christmas, they’re spending it in Jamaica.
I guess it’s nice and warm down there. So yeah.
I’ll probably talk some when they get back, but it’s not going to be a close family Christmas or anything. ”
“What about their grandkids? Don’t they want to see them?”
“I’m not sure they can even tell you their names.”
“I need to learn their names. I know you told me the little dude I was holding was Evans, but there are four other ones, and I need to figure those out too.”
“Well, I can run them through for you, but I don’t expect you to learn them all at once in like two minutes. I had them over eight years, so it’s a little bit different.”
“But I want to.”
That made her heart smile. That he thought that her children were important. And learning their names was a priority for him.
“I really wanted to know about you.” She felt like she talked nonstop. He figured out her views on birth control, which was a rather private thing, before they barely even knew each other, and she hadn’t even known what his job was until just now. Definitely she’d been talking too much.
“All right, I’ll tell you what. I’ll ask a question and you answer it, then you get to ask a question and I’ll answer it. Is that a good deal?”
She loved that he tried to make things fair. Not that everything could always be fair, but it was nice that he gave a nod to her concern. It made her feel seen and valued. “That sounds fine.”
“All right. I answered your question about what I did, in addition to farming. I guess I could tell you some about my farm. I have beef cattle, and I make hay for them to eat over the winter. I don’t grow corn, although sometimes I’ll buy it, if I don’t feel like I have enough hay to make it through.
I grow some vegetables and sell some of that stuff, but that’s a lot more labor intensive, and I’ve veered away from that over the years. ”
“Sounds like a dream,” she said, meaning it.
She would love to grow all of her own food, although…
The work involved made her rethink that idea.
Going to the grocery store was so much easier than weeding in the garden then harvesting then putting it up.
Then she had to figure out her meals based on what was already in the freezer.
“Is it my turn?” he asked, seeming to watch her as she thought about things.
“Of course. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about how much I would love to grow my own food, but then I thought about how much work it was, and…maybe going to the grocery store isn’t so bad.”
“Well, you have five kids. You don’t need to take on more work. And here’s a question. Tell me their names and ages if I can do that in one question.”
She laughed. “We’re not keeping score. I can tell you their names and ages.”
“All right. I’m listening, or maybe I should take notes.”
“I’ll tell you as many times as you need me to. I don’t expect you to remember it the first time you’re told.” She certainly had trouble with other people’s kids’ names, so she could understand the issue. To her, it was easy, but everyone said the kids all looked alike.
“Gifford’s the oldest, he’s eight. He is the one that probably has had the hardest time with his dad leaving, other than Banks. He’s really struggled too. He’s five.”
“Gifford and Banks. Gotcha. Struggling with their dad. I think five is a really bad age.”
“Yeah. I probably could have sent him to kindergarten this year, but with all the other changes in our life, I just felt like it might have been too much.”
“That’s probably a wise decision, although I feel like it’s better to graduate early than late. You only have so much of your life to live, and you don’t want to waste it on school.”
“No. But it is nice to be able to stay home. You have an extra year with your family and an extra year to get grounded in what you believe.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Lavinia is four. She was the one with all the playdough. She’s very artistic and particular about what color she gets. I only let them play with one color at a time, otherwise we would have a great big glob of dark gray playdough. I know that’s mean, but I’m a mean mom.”
“That’s not mean, that’s wise, and good for you for sticking to your guns.”
It was nice to hear someone say that she was doing something right. It was hard not to just stop there and smile for a little bit.
“The two youngest are Serafina, who’s two, and then Evans, who’s one.”
“All of your kids are pretty close together. That was eight, five and four, then two and one.”
“Yeah, Gifford just turned eight at the end of August, and Banks turned five just after the cutoff for kindergarten. That’s the biggest gap.”
He seemed thoughtful, and she debated about asking him why. Finally, she decided that she was going to be married to him, she couldn’t be afraid to ask him questions.
“Does it bother you that they’re so close together?”
“I guess I was just thinking about birth control and how many children we might end up having if it’s not a thing, but…
If I trust God, it shouldn’t matter. I hate to say that though, because there’s a lot of people who use birth control, and they consider themselves Christians who trust God as well.
I just…think that it might be wise to pray about that some more. ”
“That’s fine.” He was thinking about it. That was all she needed to see. If he made a decision against it, it would be fine, and if he was supporting her and what she believed, that would be just as well also. She gave him a thoughtful glance.
“You know whatever you decide will be okay with me?”
“Really?”
“Yes. I mean, I don’t really want to be forced to take birth control that I feel is causing a fertilized egg to not implant, because I don’t feel like that’s right.
I know that happens at times, that an egg naturally gets fertilized and just doesn’t implant for whatever reason, but I don’t want to do that chemically on purpose. ”
“Gotcha. I agree with you on that. That’s a definite no for us.”