Eleven
Robert rushed to his father, who was down on one knee, waiting for him, and Dane squeezed him tight before he and Aja switched kids.
They both looked better—Aja rested, Dane smiling like he never did.
Dane was more of a habitual-scowl guy than cheerful.
They had needed the weekend alone, and I made the offer again—anytime.
Sam gave his slight nod so they knew that, really, it was fine.
Quickly, so no one else saw, Aja whipped back the collar of her blouse, showed me a hickey, and then covered it back up. Dane turned to look at us when he heard my cackle.
“What?” I asked him.
“What?” she echoed, taking Gentry back from him.
He gave both of us a look with furrowed brows before leading Hannah and Robert into the restaurant with Sam right behind him, holding Kola’s hand.
“So …” I smiled slowly at my sister-in-law, still carrying Gentry’s diaper bag as she patted his back.
She looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary.
“Nice couple of days? You sleep well?”
“Sleep?” She coughed.
I started laughing, and Sam glared back at us.
“Thank you for giving us a couple of nights off.” She smiled at me. “We don’t need it every week or even every month, but it’s nice to know we have the option.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And the same goes for you and the marshal.”
“Nah.” I shrugged. “We can just have a quickie in the car.”
And, of course, that came out right as we reached the table and were seated by the hostess.
Sam groaned and let his head roll back and hit the booth. Dane went face-first into the palm of his hand.
“What’s a quickie?” Hannah wanted to know because she had scary bat ears, and she turned to look at her uncle in anticipation of an answer.
The waitress, who appeared then, and the hostess started giggling. Aja choked, and I told Hannah that a quickie was going through the drive-through.
She looked confused, and her brother told her she’d understand when she was older. He looked very pleased with himself.
After brunch, after clothes and a backpack and the diaper bag got switched out, Dane told Sam how good it was to have him back and that he would expect to see him the following day in his office. Sam nodded, and then they were gone.
“What are you meeting Dane about?” I asked as we walked back to our van.
“Oh, you know perfectly well what.”
I had no idea, and then it blinked into my head. “Oh, the house.”
“Yeah, the house,” he grumbled. “I should know better than to ask him to keep a secret from you.”
“Yes, you should,” I said pointedly. “And so?”
He wrapped his arms around Kola’s legs, as my son was sitting on his shoulders, and I was carrying Hannah because her stomach hurt. “So, what do you think?”
“I think I love that house, but I don’t know if we can afford it.” I needed to be honest.
“You’ve always loved it.”
Yes, I had.
The large two-story Queen Anne, located in one of Oak Park’s historic districts, was bigger than the house we were in now.
It had close to 3,500 square feet of living space, a big attic, high ceilings, and an enclosed back deck, as well as a patio, hardwood floors, and a completely renovated basement.
When I had first seen it, years ago when Dane and Aja moved in after they were married, I had been sick with jealousy.
Of course, because it was my brother, I got over it, but when they moved …
the desire had kicked in all over again.
The fact that Sam and I were so in sync that he wanted it too—for me, for him, for the kids—made me deliriously happy.
And I knew Dane was basically selling it for a quarter of what it was worth, for a quarter of what he had paid, but I also knew, to him, that wasn’t the point.
“I’ve never seen you like this about something,” I said to Sam.
“I’ve never wanted anything for you guys like this.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for a while, huh?”
“Yeah, and I think we can swing it. The mortgage will be more than we’re paying now, but not by that much, not by, like, another grand. And the house is bigger, and it’s in a better neighborhood, and the schools are good, and most importantly, your brother is giving us a deal.”
I turned so I could see his eyes.
“I finally get that Dane really does say exactly what he means.”
“It took you this long?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but now I know if he says he wants me to have the house for you and the kids because he appreciates me taking care of you all—even though it’s not his place to reward me for doing something I love, for doing something that’s part of my nature—I get it.”
“An epiphany. I think I’m getting all verklempt.”
“I am trying to have a serious conversation with you.”
“Yes, dear.”
He draped an arm around my shoulders and hauled me close, and it was nice, the four of us together, my family.
“So, you were saying?”
“I want us to move. I want the house.”
“Okay.” I breathed in, leaning on him. “I do too. I’ve always loved that house. I was sick when they moved out of it.”
“I didn’t care that they had moved. I just wanted to get there before he sold it. I knew he had offers, even before they put the For Sale sign up.”
“And you asked him to do what?”
“Just hold on to it until I could get some capital together.”
I waited.
He sighed deeply. “Which your pain-in-the—”
“Carrying a kid,” I reminded him.
“Which your brother took to mean”—Sam coughed—“doctor the reports so the marshal could afford it.”
I leaned my head back so I could kiss under the man’s jaw.
The contented rumble made me smile. “He’s really something.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I mean, he went off about a house needing people the same as people needing a house … what is that?”
“He’s an architect. He believes houses need to be loved to become homes.”
He groaned. “This is not about stature for me; it’s about the place I plan to raise my kids, where we’re going to spend our holidays and put lights up and take them down.
It’s where I’m gonna be until I die. We’re not moving to Florida or Arizona or someplace like that when we’re old.
This is gonna be the place our kids will come back to after they go off to college, where they’ll bring their families for holidays. You get that?”
“I do.”
“I just … it feels like home.”
“Then let’s do it. Tomorrow, go sign whatever you need to with Dane to get things started, and I’ll call Mrs. Souza, our realtor, and get our place listed.”
He was really happy, and when I saw the joy, my stomach flipped over.
“You should have told me you wanted this so badly.”
“Yeah, I know. I promise to tell you next time.”
It didn’t matter. The way I was being hugged, his warm breath caressing my ear, and the lips sliding over my cheek—that was all my brain was processing.
As we made our way back down the Magnificent Mile toward the loft, we stopped at Water Tower Place because I needed a new lunch box for Hannah, a dress for her for Thanksgiving, and a new backpack for Kola.
“What happened to the old one?” Sam asked me.
“Chilly,” Kola and Hannah said together.
“Really?”
“You saw how he killed that pillow the other night,” Hannah told her father.
The pained expression I got made me throw up my hands.
“What? He’s a destructive force of nature. What do you want me to do?”
Sam shot himself in the head with his finger.
I rolled my eyes at him.
Shopping was fun for me, and Kola was a fan as well. Hannah and her father wanted to sit and eat ice cream. I finally gave up and told them we had to call it quits on the fun shopping because we had to go to the grocery store. Not surprisingly, they were no more excited to do that.
When we got home, I made the mistake of lying down on the couch and getting snuggly with Hannah instead of simply grabbing the car keys and heading right back out to go to the grocery store, which was not within walking distance.
“Are we going?” Sam asked me, but I could hear the humor in his voice.
“In just a second,” I promised, even though it was cold and overcast outside.
We were having a weird little few days of cold, which was unusual for September, and all I wanted to do was curl up and not move.
“Your cat is in a ball in the middle of our bed.”
He had the right idea.
Sam made a fire and turned on the TV, and when he was done, he shoved both Hannah and me off the couch and took our spot.
“Daddy!” She was indignant.
He grunted at her.
I got back up and lay down on top of him, draping myself across his chest, my head under his chin.
Hannah snuggled down in his left arm. Kola joined us, PSP in hand, head on the other end of the couch, his legs between mine, on top of Sam’s.
We were a warm pile, all crushed together, and I could not keep my eyes open.
“I like it when there are other people here,” Kola said after a few minutes of only the sound of football. “But I like it when it’s just us too.”
“Me too,” Sam said, and I felt the rumble of laughter deep in his chest.
“What?”
“Your daughter,” he said, and his grin was wide when I opened my eyes.
Head back, eyes closed, mouth open, my sweet little angel was snoring like a drunken sailor.
“I told you,” Kola grumbled from the other end. “She’s really a boy in there. She farts too, you know.”
Yes, I knew.
Waking up from a nap in the middle of the day is never good. You rise grouchy and ready to go back to bed. So, I was in a foul mood as we headed over to the grocery store.
Once there, Sam and Kola went to get milk and bread and the rest of the essentials, and Hannah and I went to grab fruit.
I had apples and grapes, and I was picking out some bananas when someone said my name.
Before I could turn, I felt a hand on my shoulder and then a gun—and I knew what one felt like firsthand—pressed to the middle of my back.
“Come with me.”
“Okay,” I said because I just wanted to get the man away from my girl.
“Pa.” Hannah looked up at me, tugging on my hand, trying to move me forward, only then seeing the man and trying to step around me to see my back. “Come on.”
“No, love,” I told her. “Go find Daddy.”