Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Charity tossed the wedding magazine, which she’d purchased on impulse in the grocery store earlier that week, onto the coffee table with a sigh.
“Nothing good?” Dominic asked, coming around the back of the couch to sit beside her, a big bowl of popcorn in his hands.
“It’s not that.” She looked at the glossy photo on the cover. The dress that the model wore was beautiful. It wasn’t entirely Charity’s taste, but she could envision how she might alter it to make it something she’d feel happy wearing.
“It’s more like—I guess it’s more like everything is good, but nothing is great ,” she explained. “I see all these pictures and think ‘hm, that’s nice’ but never ‘wow, let’s do that!’ Does that make sense?”
“It does,” he confirmed while she munched on a few salty, buttery kernels. “I keep trying to ask myself the bigger questions and get nowhere. Do we want a big event or a small one? Do we want to go fancy or casual?”
As he spoke, Milo zoomed through the room, the two laughing kids on his heels. Addie appeared to have a feather stuck in her glossy black curls… goodness only knew where that had come from.
“Um…” Charity chuckled, pointing a thumb at the madness their offspring were wreaking. “I think we can agree that casual, at least, might be the best way to go.”
Dominic laughed too. “Okay, yeah. That’s one question down.”
Charity sighed. “And only about a million left to go.”
“Okay.” Dominic shook out his arms like he was a prizefighter gearing up for the big match. “Just give me your first instinct. No thinking. Answer as fast as you can. Big or small?”
It was a good question and a good strategy, but it was, alas, ineffectual because at that moment, Lucas spotted their snack.
“Do you guys have popcorn?” he asked, his tousled head peeking over the back of the couch. “Can I have some? Dad, move over!”
Charity glanced over at her fiancé to see him fighting back tears.
A few weeks prior, totally out of the blue, Lucas had started calling Dominic “Dad.” Though Charity had caught her son darting a look at her expression the first time, as if checking to see that this was okay with her, Lucas had continued with the practice after rightfully deducing that it was more than okay with her. By contrast, she was overjoyed that her son finally had a decent father figure in his life and that he felt comfortable enough to use such a personal name to refer to him.
Addie didn’t call Charity “Mom,” and Charity didn’t expect her to. The situations in the two halves of their family were very different, after all. While Charity’s ex-husband Sid had been a terrible father, one who had chosen selling drugs over being present for his own son, Addie’s mother had passed away in a tragic accident. Susannah Reeves would always be Addie’s mother, and Charity didn’t want it any other way. In fact, they had a few pictures of Susannah, Dominic, and Addie hanging in their house.
Charity knew some people were surprised by this, expecting her to be jealous of the woman who still held such a strong place in Addie’s heart. But Charity felt nothing but gratitude for the woman without whom Addie, who Charity very much considered her daughter, would not exist.
She did so love hearing Lucas call Dominic “Dad” though… and she loved seeing the way Dominic still got teary-eyed every time.
Lucas, by contrast, seemed to think his parents’ emotional response meant that they didn’t respond quickly enough.
“Dad!” he said again, this time more insistently. “Can I please sit with you and have some popcorn?”
“Sure, kiddo,” Dominic said, scooching aside so Lucas could slide between them. Instantly, the boy crunched his full fist into the bowl of popcorn.
“What’cha talking about?” he asked through a mouthful of kernels.
“Swallow before you speak, please,” Charity said. A mom’s work was never done. “And we’re talking about wedding planning.”
“Cool,” Lucas said. “Do I have a job?”
“In the wedding?” Dominic looked down at Lucas. “Do you want a job?”
Lucas shrugged. “Addie said sometimes girls are flower girls and sometimes boys are ring carriers, but then she said Milo should carry the ring, and that would be cooler for sure.”
The two adults exchanged an entertained look.
“The ring’s a pretty important part of the wedding, bud,” Charity said gently. “We might need to give Milo a job that’s more on his level.”
Lucas frowned for a split second, then shrugged again. “Okay, as long as he has a good job, that’s okay with me. Addie said she saw a movie where the dog helped at the wedding. Milo saw the movie with her, I think, so he might feel left out if we don’t give him a good job.”
“Maybe we should hire Addie to be our wedding planner,” Charity joked. “She seems to have a lot of good ideas.”
“Only if you’re okay with a giraffe-themed wedding,” Dominic said. Giraffes were Addie’s latest obsession. Either Charity or Dominic took her to the library nearly every other day for her to get a new book to read about the animals, which she devoured immediately.
Monica, a former librarian, had been texting Charity recommendations, for which Charity was endlessly grateful. There was no other way for the adults to keep up with the little bookworm in the family.
As if she’d known they were thinking about her, Addie took her turn to pop her head into the room.
“Hi,” she said. “What are you talking about? Ooh, is that popcorn?”
Charity stifled a chuckle. Kids were unique in so many ways, but she’d found there was one thing they all had in common: they had superpowers when it came to sniffing out snacks that their parents were trying to eat.
“Sure is,” Dominic said, this time moving over without being told so Addie could join them. She, like her brother, dove right in.
“We were talking about giraffes,” Lucas said, to answer Addie’s other question.
Addie perked up at that. “Did you guys know that giraffes’ spots are like fingerprints? Every single giraffe in the whole world has different patterns. Isn’t that cool?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “But I still like dogs best.” He barely took his eyes off the bowl of popcorn as he spoke. Charity knew that she and Dominic were never getting that bowl back.
“I can go pop some more,” she offered when she saw that her fiancé was coming to the same conclusion.
“Ooh, if we’re eating popcorn, can we watch a movie?” Addie asked. “Movies and popcorn go together.”
Charity spared the wedding magazine only the most fleeting glance before giving her answer. She and Dominic did need to make decisions about how, where, and when they wanted to get married…
But those decisions weren’t as important as spending time with their kids, not by a mile.
“Sure thing,” she said. “Family movie afternoon. You guys pick something good, and I’ll go get the snacks.” She headed to the kitchen, leaving the kids to debate which of their favorite films, which they’d each seen a dozen times at least, should get today’s coveted time slot. She heard the murmur of Dominic’s gentle mediation as she went into the kitchen to find them some treats to eat.
Maybe her struggles to plan a wedding weren’t a bad thing, she decided. Maybe she was just having a hard time because she already had everything she wanted right here with this lovely, wonderful family of hers.
“Okay, Corinna,” Xavier said to his longtime receptionist. “I’m off for lunch. See you in about an hour.”
“Enjoy your chicken salad on whole wheat with extra lettuce and half mayo,” she chirped back with a winking smile.
Despite the good nature of the teasing, Xavier winced. That was what he had been planning to get for lunch from the deli counter at Harvest Grocery Store. It was a good lunch, packed with protein, veggies, and flavor. And, since it came from the grocery store instead of from one of the local restaurants, it was cost-effective too. Everything he could want in a workday lunch.
But it still stung a little to think he’d become so predictable.
Even with this thought in his mind, his feet still led him to Harvest Grocery Store. He waved to a few people as he passed, like Millie Rafferty, who worked at Seastar Espresso, and Burt and Flora from Magnolia Street Home Goods. Rick was too far to greet, working down near the docks with his coworker Antonio. He even stopped for a brief chat with Avery Maxwell, the local veterinarian, who had been something of a mentor for him when he’d first come to Whale Harbor… even though his brand of medicine was for humans only, while she focused on the four-legged friends of the town.
Instead of settling him, however, the regular patterns of a winter workday left him feeling off-kilter.
As a doctor, Xavier was accustomed to taking uncertainties and transforming them into known factors. A kid had a stomachache, and nobody knew why? Run some test, try some different strategies, and voila! A diagnosis: Peter Kennedy had lactose intolerance. Rose Smith was feeling achy in her knees? Well, she was the owner of Clown Fish Eatery and spent most of her days on her feet, so maybe the problem wasn’t starting at her knees after all. He’d referred her to a clinic that made custom insoles, and now Rose could serve deliciousness all day without so much as a twinge.
He liked that, liked making order out of disorder. And his life was very orderly.
So why did he keep getting the nagging feeling that it was too orderly?
It was perhaps not the grand act of defiance he imagined it when Xavier decided to take his sandwich to go, instead of eating at the little cluster of tables near the deli in Harvest Grocery Store, but he still felt good about the deviation from his norm. He would eat back at his desk, he decided. And he would spend the rest of his lunch hour going to the bank, because he had a deposit to make that he’d been putting off.
It wasn’t the world’s most exciting shift in plans, he admitted, but maybe it was okay to take baby steps too.
The bank was busy, full of other people who had shared in his idea to get their financial business squared way over their lunch breaks. Xavier let the peaceful sounds of people going about their days wash over him as he waited patiently in line. It wasn’t until he was about three people back in line before he looked up and really took in his surroundings. He looked toward the teller window and paused.
He knew the customer to the left, he realized as she shuffled forward another place in the line. Or, rather, he didn’t know her, but he recognized her…
It took him a few moments to place it. She was the pretty woman he’d seen walking, the one he’d kept trying to get up his courage to speak to. He almost hadn’t recognized her in her sleek work clothes instead of that practical puffy jacket of which he so vehemently approved. Suddenly his spur-of-the-moment decision to come to the bank didn’t seem so tame after all.
He ducked his head, feeling a nervous grin cross his face. Finally learning the name of a pretty woman might not be a huge event for some people, but for Xavier it was pretty exciting. The anticipation mounted as he moved up another place in the line. Maybe this would be like the chance encounter with Rick, Liam, and Dominic at the dog park and he would make another new friend. Or, no, wait, this wasn’t exactly the same feeling…
“Sir! Sir, I can help you!”
Xavier’s head jerked up when he realized the voice was talking to him. He stifled a flash of disappointment as he crossed to the other teller’s booth. He knew the person who was working there, a friendly young man who was a long time Whale Harbor resident.
“Oh, hey, Doctor Lofton! I didn’t realize that was you at first,” said the young man, Gabriel, warmly. “What can I help you with today?”
Xavier dug into his pocket. “Oh, I just have a simple deposit.”
He finished his business and headed back to the office, where he ate his sandwich at his quiet desk and tried to fight the lingering disappointment that he still hadn’t learned that woman’s name… and tried to resist the voice in the back of his mind that wondered if he’d end up stuck in this rut of his forever.