The Daddy Survey
Page 20
“Real happy,” Janie confirmed. “We get a new daddy.” She grinned at Sloan. “And we get a great-grandmother.”
“You sure do,” Rose told them with a big smile.
“And we get uncles.” Janie looked pointedly at a beaming Caleb and Justin.
Justin leaned back in his chair and stuck out his chest. “Hear that, Caleb? We’re gonna be uncles.”
“Yeah. Pretty cool,” Caleb decided.
Then Janie frowned. “Do you know how to be uncles?”
The two men frowned and shared a brief look.
“Well,” Caleb said. “I guess we can figure it out as we go. Unless you want to give us a few pointers.”
Libby nodded. “Give ’em pointers, Janie. Tell them the rules.”
Justin chuckled. “There are rules for uncles?”
“Oh, yes.” Janie nodded vigorously. “Uncles are like playmates, only they’re already grown-up. They play with you and take you places and let you do things your parents wouldn’t let you do.”
Emily pursed her lips, wondering what else was coming, because after a speech like that, there was certain to be a bombshell.
“And they always take your side,” Janie added.
The two prospective uncles scrunched up their faces in thought, looked at each other, then nodded.
“Yep,” Justin said. “That sounds about right to me.”
“We can do that,” Caleb said.
Libby leaned over and whispered to Janie. “They gotta promise.”
“You promise?” Janie asked earnestly.
“Cross my heart,” Justin said.
“We promise,” Caleb said solemnly.
The two girls looked at each other, but they didn’t grin. Here it came, Emily thought. Whatever it was.
“Okay, then.” Janie reached beneath the table, pulled out a long skinny tube and held it across the table toward Caleb. “Then I guess you might want this.”
At the foot of the table Sloan choked on a sip of iced tea.
Next to him, Justin pressed his knuckles over lips that wanted to curve up.
Caleb blinked. “Well.” He blinked again. “You found the missing oil pickup tube.” Another blink, and what might have been a twitch of his lips, a sharp sideways glance at Justin. “Thank you,” he said to Janie. “Where did you find it?”
Emily gaped. “That’s the part that disappeared?”
“We found it on the tarp, underneath the car,” Janie said in a rush.
“You did?” Caleb took the tube and studied it, shaking his head. “Must have been there all along and I just overlooked it.” He cut another look at Justin, this one promising a reckoning. Caleb knew his younger brother. This thing had the kid’s fingerprints all over it, figuratively if not literally. “Thanks, Janie. I’m glad you found it.”
Janie and Libby looked at each other and let out a long breath of relief.
Janie grinned across the table. “You’re welcome, Uncle Caleb.”
Caleb beamed back at her.
“Young ladies,” Emily said in her mother voice. “I think—”
Justin cut her off. “I think that’s just great, the way you girls found that missing part. After supper Caleb and I can show you where it goes. We’ll make mechanics out of the pair of you yet.”
Libby giggled. “You’re gonna be a good uncle, Uncle Justin.”
He winked at her. “I’m gonna be the best.”
“Now, hold on,” Caleb protested. “I’m older than you. I get to be the best uncle.”
Sloan rolled his eyes. “Lord, help us. I think you’ve just lost control of your daughters, Em. Their new uncles are going to take over.”
“Not to worry,” Rose said cheerfully. “No one spoils little girls like a great-grandmother. You just leave everything to me.”
Sloan narrowed his eyes at his grandmother. “I know you. I know what you’re thinking. You are not going to buy them each a horse.”
“A horse?” Janie and Libby squealed together. “We get a horse?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Now you’ve done it,” she muttered.
“Of course you do, dears,” Rose said to the girls, her eyes narrowed at her eldest grandson.
“Of course you do,” Sloan said. “But I’m getting them for you.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest.
“We get horses!”
Emily looked across the table at Caleb and Justin. “Help.”
They just grinned at her. “Welcome to the family, sister.”
Sudden tears blurred Emily’s vision. “Oh.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. In all the excitement it hadn’t really dawned on her. Yes, she was getting married—that alone took her breath away. Her daughters were getting a new father, a great-grandmother and two uncles. But it hadn’t sunk in that Emily herself was getting brothers. She’d never had siblings. Now she would have brothers. Two of them.
“Em?” Sloan took her hand in his. “Em, what’s wrong?”
Her smile might have wobbled, but it came straight from her heart. “I love you.”
Someday she hoped to make him understand just how grateful she was. Not only was he giving her himself, but an entire family, as well.
Thank you, her heart sang.
Epilogue
Five weeks later Emily Nelson married Sloan Chisholm at the Rose Rock Baptist church in what was to have been a small intimate ceremony. Nearly fifty people showed up.
Brenda and Tommy drove in from Fort Smith. That was the extent of Emily’s contribution to the guest list. Everyone else had come for Sloan.
Emily had known that Sloan had a lot of friends—she had met a few of them. She and Melanie had even become friends in recent weeks. But Emily had had no idea about the Chisholm relatives. Aunts and uncles and cousins came from all over the country. Farmers and ranchers, doctors and soldiers, and a few she was just as glad not to know about.
The groom, all agreed, was a handsome devil in his black tux, his head held high with pride. His brothers, serving as his groomsmen, were no slouches, either.
The bride wore an off-white dress that fell in graceful folds to her ankles. Everyone agreed that she glowed with a special beauty. But it was her bridesmaids dressed in pink who stole the show. Libby and Janie were full of their own importance, excited at taking part in their mother’s wedding and absolutely adorable.
They stood beside their mother and stared at her, and at Sloan, in wonder, their young minds not sure what to make of all the fuss, but understanding that it might be the most important thing that had ever happened in their lives.
Their mother was marrying Mr. Sloan. He’d been the best daddy candidate they had found, and, as far as they were concerned, he was wonderful.
To Janie’s mind, they had stated their goal—a new father. They had made a plan and surveyed every man they met. In the end, it was a matter of adding up the numbers, totalling the scores. Everything logical, sensible. If you kept things sensible, you could have what you wanted.
Libby looked at things differently. To her this wedding was proof that if you squeezed your eyes shut tight enough and wished hard enough, good things happened.
They had argued about their opposite views and decided that maybe, just maybe, they were both right.
When the I-dos were said and the groom kissed his bride, Libby and Janie shared a look.
“Now?” Libby whispered, her eyes alight with excitement.
“No.” Janie shook her head and held on to her sister’s arm. “We have to ask first.”
The instant the kiss was over, as the newlyweds turned to face their guests, Libby tugged on her mother’s dress.
Misty-eyed, with her heart full to bursting, Emily turned to her daughters.
“Mama,” Libby asked, “is Mr. Sloan our daddy now?”
Emily shared a look with Sloan, then touched a hand to each daughter’s cheek. “That’s right. Sloan is your new daddy now.”
“Does that mean we don’t have to call him Mr. Sloan anymore?” Janie asked.
Several guests in the front rows chuckled.
“No,” Emily said. “You don’t have to call him Mr. Sloan anymore.”
Sloan slipped his arm around Emily’s waist and smiled at his new daughters. “So, what are you going to call me?”
Janie and Libby moved to stand before Sloan and looked up at him. “If it’s okay,” Janie said, taking her sister’s hand in hers and squeezing, “I mean, if you don’t mind…”
Sloan’s heart started pounding. “What is it you want to call me?”
Libby stepped up and craned her neck to look up at him. “Can we call you Daddy?”
For an instant, Sloan’s heart stopped, his vision blurred. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, hugging his new daughters to his chest. He looked up helplessly at Emily.
Emily’s own vision blurred. She gave him a wobbly smile.
“I’d be honored,” he said in a voice that shook, “to have you call me Daddy.”
Then all he could do was mouth the words thank you to Emily. Someday he hoped he could make her understand just how grateful he was that she had come into his life. For, not only had she given him herself, she had given him two precious daughters. He prayed that he could fill the shoes Michael Nelson had left and be the type of father these girls needed to see them through childhood, through the awkward teen years and on into womanhood.
But, for now, they were little girls, and they were his. And so was their mother.
Life, he decided, could not be better.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2933-4
THE DADDY SURVEY
Copyright © 2004 by Janis Reams Hudson
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*Wilders of Wyatt County
†Men of the Cherokee Rose