Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
By the time Summer got back in, Gilbert had the griddle out and had poured batter onto it.
“There’s a chocolate and a strawberry. Do you have a preference?”
“I’m happy with either,” he said, glancing up from the griddle before looking back down and making sure that he poured the batter carefully.
“All right. I love them both too, but I’m partial to chocolate, so I’ll give you the strawberry, unless you hate it.”
“I love strawberry. I’d probably choose fruit over chocolate, although I know that that’s a bit of a controversial subject. And I could probably go to jail for that if I was in the presence of the wrong person when I said it.”
“I’m not going to send you to jail, but I am going to wonder a little bit about your sanity. Preferring fruit over chocolate? Now, chocolate-covered fruit? I can totally get that.”
“It’s like the best of both worlds?”
“Yep. Although, honestly, I prefer caramel and chocolate. Healthy stuff is wonderful, but if you can have a double shot of unhealthy, why not, right?” She looked over her shoulder, and they laughed together.
She knew she had left some paper plates in the pantry, so she felt a little conspicuous as she walked over, but if he truly wanted her to make herself at home, she couldn’t keep asking him if she could go places.
So, she opened the pantry door, walked in, and saw that it was almost as empty and bare as it was when she moved out.
Grabbing paper plates, she walked back out.
“Looks like you didn’t have a whole lot of kitchen stuff either.”
“I had some at our old house. I guess I should say Desire had some. But I didn’t move all that stuff when I sold the house. I did what you did, just left a good bit of it there for the next owners to either use or deal with.”
“I’m sorry. It was probably really hard with your wife and everything.”
He lifted his shoulder, almost as though he was saying it wasn’t that bad, but she didn’t question him, because he continued speaking.
“We were moving into Mom’s house, and I didn’t want to bring all of my stuff there.
I felt a little bit wasteful, because we were struggling for money at the time, and a yard sale would have brought in a good bit of cash.
I just didn’t have the brainpower or the energy level to do that.
I was trying to run the business, trying to figure out why it was losing money all of a sudden, trying to run my wife from appointment to appointment, and trying to keep up with the kids and not burden my mom any more than I had to. ”
“That sounds like a really black, hard time.”
“I think it’s a little bit like what we were talking about before, where it was a hard time, but I learned a lot of good lessons.”
“Such as?” she prompted, getting silverware out of the drawer and setting it beside the paper plates before grabbing glasses and filling them up with water from the tap.
“Such as I was afraid to be a parent without my wife. She was the one who took care of almost everything with the kids. And when she wasn’t around, I…
I guess I wondered if I could do it. Find shoes before school, get the kids breakfast, and get them on the bus without having a nuclear meltdown—that would be me, not them, and that’s a good thing. It just felt overwhelming.”
“Because you were dumped into it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you had your business to deal with, too. When she was doing it, she wasn’t trying to figure out what was wrong with the business and care for a spouse with cancer.”
“Good point.” He grinned up at her before flipping the pancakes.
“You look like you’re pretty good at that. So I guess that’s one of the things you learned, is how to cook.”
“Oh, I already knew that. Mom made sure that we all learned to cook before we left the house. I guess she heard horror stories of children who left home and couldn’t take care of themselves, to the point where they couldn’t feed themselves or even know how to wash their own clothes.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine serving your children to the point where they can’t do anything for themselves.”
“I know, right? Although kids spend so much time at school nowadays and then after school at sports and extracurricular activities that they really don’t have time to learn how to do those things.
Or, I guess more accurately, if you’re going to teach them how to do those things, you have to be very deliberate about it, because you’re not going to be able to just make it happen, most likely. ”
“That’s a good point. I guess I don’t have children, so that’s not really something that I understand, other than I know that equine therapy is something that takes kids away from the home and keeps them from having time to do those chores.
” She smiled and made sure that her gaze was understanding as he looked up with a guilty look.
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
“I know. We just are coming at it from completely different perspectives. Since I’ve never had kids, and I don’t really know what it’s like.”
“Well, you’ll be living with three, so you might have your eyes opened in a few ways that you weren’t expecting.”
“And I think that’s good.”
“Yeah.” He slipped the pancakes off the griddle and put two on her plate and two on his. “Think you’ll eat twice as much as that?”
“I didn’t have any breakfast this morning, so if you cook it, I’ll probably eat it.”
“All right. Let me put four more on here, and then I’ll say grace.”
He was going to say grace. That was not good for her heart, which seemed to be beating super hard in her chest, and the feeling of attraction just seemed to be amplified.
She watched as his hands held the spatula, and he moved about the kitchen like he knew what he was doing.
It was obvious that he wasn’t making it up, that he truly did know his way around the kitchen, and that he truly had learned to cook.
Of course, she knew that Larissa had learned as well and that teaching his kids the essentials of life seemed to be important to him.
She just admired and respected so much about him, and felt comfortable with him in a way that surprised her.
Especially since their interactions at church yesterday had been awkward.
But maybe that had been her, because she hadn’t known how to act now that she knew that she was going to be living here.
He set two more pancakes on her plate and then set two more on his before setting the butter and the syrup down in front of them and taking his seat.
“Ready?” he asked, lifting a brow as she nodded.
He bowed his head and said a simple prayer as she listened, thanking God that she’d met him. Whatever it was, she admired him, and even if this Darla person really was perfect for him, and…that would be awkward. She hadn’t even considered that. What if he and Darla got serious, and—
“Amen,” he said, in such a way that she could tell he was saying it for the second time.
“Oh my goodness. I am so sorry. But I had a thought while we were praying that kind of shocked me.”
“Yeah?” he asked, and she could tell he was interested.
“Okay. Hear me out. Because I haven’t thought about this much, since it just occurred to me just now.”
“All right.”
“What if you and Darla, or you and someone else, get serious. And you get married. I…live here in your house. What is your wife going to think about that?”
He had already shoved a bite of pancakes in his mouth, and he lifted a shoulder, like it didn’t matter, before he chewed and swallowed.
“We’ll deal with it. We’ll figure it out.
Whoever it is, whatever she is, she’s going to have to understand that I gave my word to you, and that’s the way it’s going to be. ”
He speared two more pieces of pancake, dipping them in syrup and then holding them up before he said, “I did hear from someone that it might be a little bit…not good for the town to look at us and see that we’re quote, unquote, living together?
” He made it sound like a bit of a question.
He held his pancakes steady and didn’t put them in his mouth, as though he wanted to make sure he saw her reaction.
“Does that bother you?” she asked, running that over in her head. She definitely had thought of that, but just in passing.
“I don’t know. I know we want to avoid all appearance of evil, but at the same time, there’s no evil going on here.
It’s just me giving you a place to stay so that you can continue to run your equine counseling business from this farm.
I guess I look at it as a good deed. And honestly as I was thinking about it this morning, I just had a sense of peace about it.
Like this was all part of God’s plan. I certainly didn’t buy the farm thinking that you were going to stay here, and I was actually kind of castigating myself because I didn’t help you stay on the farm, instead of trying to buy it for myself. ”
“We’re not socialist here. You’re not supposed to try to help everyone else at the expense of yourself.”
“No. But I’m a Christian. Christianity is an individual thing, socialism is something that’s forced on a society by their government.
I definitely do not believe in socialism at all.
The government doesn’t have the right to tell citizens what they may and may not buy or what they may or may not have, or to institute controls regarding those things.
However, me as an individual is completely different. ”
“But it sounds to me like you feel comfortable that you’re doing what God wants you to do, and I told you, you lifted the burden of stress and worry off my shoulders and have given me the best of both worlds.
I think it’s turned out perfectly. By the way, these pancakes are amazing,” she said, waving her fork around before she put it in her mouth.
“Thank you. The kids didn’t seem to have any trouble eating them, but they didn’t tell me that they tasted okay. So I was left wondering if they’re just bottomless pits, or whether the pancakes just tasted that good.”
“I can’t really speak to the anatomy of your children’s stomachs, however, I do believe it’s a genetic thing, so perhaps you can think about your own stomach and answer that question without my help. As for me, the pancakes are amazing.”
He smiled and nodded, and they ate a little bit more.
“I guess, now that you brought it up, if there comes a point where I get serious about someone, I’ll have to talk to them about you. Because you’re here. And I’m not making you go anywhere. The offer stands.”
“Well, we did say that you would give me two months’ notice if I had to vacate the premises.
It makes sense that if you get married, your wife probably wouldn’t appreciate having me around.
So maybe I can just plan on moving out if you get married.
” It would be awkward to stay. Especially with the way she was fighting her feelings.
He obviously was completely oblivious, but the idea of getting married to someone else was something that he was considering.
Something told her that she wasn’t going to be able to stay here if he was with someone else. Maybe it was a woman’s intuition, or maybe it was just her being realistic, but regardless, she was almost one-hundred-percent sure that was true.
“Maybe by the time I find someone, we can have the apartment over the stable finished, and that might be an option as well.”
“Possibly,” she said, and she maybe would be able to do that. If she lived above the stable, she wouldn’t have to come to the house at all, although it would be hard to see Gilbert with someone else, enjoying his family and being affectionate with another woman.
She was an adult though. She could handle it.
She wanted to think that, but she wasn’t entirely sure it was true.
They finished the pancakes, gobbled down the scones, and got up to do the dishes themselves.
The trash was where she always had it, in the most obvious place between the sink and the refrigerator.
It was funny how things changed but didn’t.
“It looks like we’re going to have another gorgeous fall day, which probably is the best time for fixing fence.”
“I agree. I’ve fixed fence in some inclement weather, and it’s not fun at all. In fact, the last time I did it, I’m pretty sure I smashed my thumb and lost my nail over it.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. It’s the hazards of the job, I suppose.”
They finished up the dishes and walked out together, with Summer feeling torn.
On the one hand, she was having a great time and possibly falling in love with this man who didn’t seem to notice her in that way at all.
Maybe their discussion about how much older he was than her, and how she didn’t have any children and was from a different age group, who couldn’t understand people who did have kids, had made him decide she wasn’t worth looking at.
Regardless, that feeling was tempered with the enjoyment she felt being with him.