“Good grief, Shay!” I said, startled. “You gave me a fright. I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.”
“What are you doing, Callie?” he asked, walking toward me and crouching down.
“Shay, look, Marie’s little booties. Remember when she came home from the hospital in this little outfit?” I held the little booties up.
“I always told you, Callie, I don’t need pictures to remember you and my babies. I remember it all. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
“Look!” I chimed. “Maggie even kept Wes’ things.” I pointed at the box.
As Shay was looking around the room I heard him start to laugh. “Callie, stand up. I want to show you something,” he said with a grin. “Look over there on that wall. See those three stacked boxes? Read what they say.”
I looked where he was pointing. They said from bottom to top, “Shannon’s Clothes,” “Debbie’s Clothes,” and “Becky’s Clothes.” What a riot! Maggie kept everything.
“What are you going to do with these two boxes?” Shay nodded towards Maries’ things.
“I can let go now, Shay. I don’t want to save all this old stuff like Maggie did. I’m going to re-box these two boxes so they’re nice and fresh, and I’m going to take them to the church and give them to Father Mike, someone could certainly use them.”
“Hey, Callie, we have a farmhand who’s wife is expecting a baby any day. What about giving these clothes and one of the cribs to them?” Shay suggested.
“Yes, yes, Shay. Take them down and give them to your farmhand!” I agreed. “We have our baby now. She just happens to be thirteen,” I laughed, “so, I’m thinking she needs a bigger size now.”
Shay took the boxes down the stairs and set them by the back door. I had lost track of the time. It was lunch and everyone was gathered at the table. Hulda had made roast beef sandwiches and potato salad, with pudding for dessert. Everyone was laughing and talking, when the phone rang. Hulda answered it in the kitchen and when she returned, she told Shay it was our doctor and he wanted to speak to Shay. He went to the kitchen to take the call.
When he returned, he told us, “The blood tests are back. Doc Sam wants us to come to his office.”
“Mom,” Kelly said, “I’m going along.”
“I’m going too,” said Wes, and with that we just left the table. We didn’t even eat the wonderful lunch Hulda had made, but she understood.
“Off with ya now,” she said, “I’ll put this all away and keep it fresh. My heart goes with you.”
I said, “Mom, come on, you’re coming with us.”
We were all off for Doc Sam’s office in Hudson.
***
When we arrived, the nurse said, “My, Kathrine, you have your whole family here for support; and let me add what a lovely family you have.”
She told us to follow her back to the private office area. There were three chairs in front of the desk. Shay told Mom and me to sit down, but I said, “Shay you have to sit here by me, I need you here, please!”
Shay sat down and my nurse said not to worry, she’d get the kids each a chair. They told her they didn’t mind standing, but the nurse was very gracious and got them each a chair. Where was Doc Sam? I couldn’t bear this. After what seemed like an hour, and was probably five minutes, Doc Sam came in. He walked around to his desk and sat down.
“Kathrine, you do have a lovely family,” he stated, as he sat there looking at all our eager, nervous faces.
I was thinking, ‘I already know all this, please tell me what I don’t know!’
Doc Sam opened the folder. He sat there reading with his head down for a moment, then closed the folder and sat there a second. Doc Sam was such a character. He reached in his shirt pocket and handed Shay a cigar.
“Congratulations, kids,” he broke into a grin, “you have a daughter.”
I just wept, as did Mom and Shay. Now the kids were crying. What a mess Doc Sam had on his hands, but, as he told us, it was the best mess he’d ever had in his office. As he got up, he shook Shay’s hand, squeezed my shoulder and left us to cry over our happiness.
Wes kept teasing through his tears. “Another sis? I’m outnumbered now! What’s this world coming to?”
After thirteen years of my heart aching, my baby was home with us where she belonged.
“You know what we are going to do now?” Shay asked. “Well today is June 14th. Which one of my daughters has a birthday in two days?”
We had totally lost track of the days. The results had come in sooner than we’d expected.
“I’m taking you all to lunch,” Shay said, blinking back tears.
At lunch Shay said, “Patty Cake, my little girl, you’re going to have my sister, your Aunt Becky’s, old room. From here we’re going to the paint store, and you can pick any color you want for your walls, and a new chandelier if you’d like. Then we’re going to the Homestead House Furniture store and you can pick out any bedroom furniture you want. Next week you and Mom,” Shay hesitated, then continued, “did I just say Mom?”
Everyone giggled. “Mom and you can pick out your bedding. Your home is with us, Patty Cake. From this day forward, I’m no longer Shay, I’m Dad, and this is Mom,” he squeezed my shoulder. Shay was brimming with joy. It made my heart warm.
Patty looked at us through eyes, puffy and red from crying. “Mommy and Daddy, can we just go home today? I want to go home to where I belong, my home where you really want me. Please take me home.”
Shay couldn’t argue with that. I saw his eyes well up as he grabbed Patty with his gentle Shay-hug, that just radiated love. “Everyone,” he said, “let’s go home!”
I remember driving down the little road toward the house. Complete, I finally felt complete. Our little girl was home. It took thirteen years and large amounts of pain, but my baby was home.
When we got to the house, Kelly and Patty changed clothes and headed out to ride the horses; Wes went three wheeling. It was just a beautiful day.
“Callie, I’m not going to work today,” announced Shay to my delight. “Let’s go swimming.” And with that we were off to the pool house to put on our swimming suits.
When we were in the water, I wrapped my body around Shay’s, and said, “Someday I’m going to want to know what kind of life my child had, but I don’t think I could handle it right now. Do you think that’s okay?”
“Callie, when the time is right, we’ll do some investigating, but for now, I am so happy just to have her home. Let’s give her some time to adjust and feel secure. She’s my little girl and I’m going to love and protect her from now on. We need to make sure she knows how safe and secure her life is going to be now, and that we’ll never leave her.”
“Shay, darlin’, I think we are so blessed,” I said making a little curl with his wet hair. “Just think how much those three kids like each other, how well they get along, how they accept each other—and our parents love her!”
Shay was holding me in his arms, swirling me gently from side to side in the water.
“Ya know why she’s so lovable, Callie? Because she’s so much like her mommy. I loved it when she called you Mommy, and me, Daddy. She may be thirteen, but she is innocent, like a newborn, she really needs her mommy and her daddy. We need to hold her and love her, Callie. I’m sure she never got any of that special love. We’re going to give it to her. Patty is going to feel our love,” he said tenderly, a little sadness in his voice. “We’re going to make up for lost time.”
I looked at him tenderly. I just loved that man.
***
Patty’s birthday landed on a Saturday. We decided we were going to have a big family dinner. The whole family was out in top form. Kelly invited Randy, Wes had a new little girlfriend coming out—one of a hundred to follow, I was sure. The aunts’ families and grandparents were there. Patty would get to know her new extended family.
Everyone brought Patty gifts. Hulda baked a birthday cake and made what Patty told us was her favori
te dish for dinner: fried chicken with all the fixings. We told Patty she could invite Levi and her grandmother if she wanted, but she said she’d rather it was just family.
It amazed me how easily Patty walked away from the family that raised her. That in and of itself told me a whole lot. She had taken to us immediately. I think she was adjusting well to calling herself Patricia Suzanna Westover. Kelly was thrilled to be the one to tell her that the horse she loved and had been riding and training with Kelly’s help was now her very own horse: her birthday gift from Kelly and Wes. Next week she’d be redoing her room. She told me she kept pinching herself.
“It feels like a dream! I can’t believe I’m living in this beautiful, amazing house with parents that love me,” she kept saying. “Parents who really love and want me.”
She had grandparents, aunts and siblings now; she’d have her own room and be going to school in the fall in Larimer. Patty Cake was truly a happy camper, as Shay would say.
What a wonderful dinner it was, everyone had such a good time greeting the new family member. All of our guests, except for the teens, left by 3:30 p.m.
Around four, Shay decided to wash his Impala. He brought it up the circle drive and got out his car washing cloths and the hose. I had on my tight blue jeans, a tank top and little white Keds. I thought I’d take my walk while Shay washed the car.
I usually walked the big circle drive ten times. That was probably about a two-mile walk. I had so much to be thankful for as I circled that driveway. With each step I thanked God for my blessings. I picked up a small branch that had fallen from a big oak tree. The night before it had been real windy. I was walking and counting the leaves, looking at their beautiful veins, and remembering that there is beauty in everything. If you have beauty in your heart, you can find beauty anywhere.
How sad Dane Dalton must be, I thought suddenly. With what he said to me, his own little own child in my womb, he must have viewed the world with an ugly heart. Dane’s ‘I want the best and we both know that’s not you’ statement still echoed in my heart. But as I thought about it then, holding the oak branch, what he had said to me reflected more on who he was than on who I was.
I had no idea the kids were all watching Shay and me from the big window. It must have been about then that Shay started watching me walk. I was to learn this from Kelly later that day. She told me what they observed: Shay laid the hose down, came running across the circle drive, and with one big soft tackle had me on the grass, sitting on me with my arms pinned outward.
“Who’s the king?” he demanded, neither of us knowing we had a window full of a giggling teens watching us.
I said, “You are! King Shay!”
“Well, it might have taken fifteen years, but I’m glad you finally get it,” he grinned. “Must have finally sunk in…” he caressed my face gently. “And you’re my beautiful queen! Only...” he bent down, nuzzling my neck, “you’ll always be princess to me.”
Kelly said that she and Wes had told their friends in embarrassment, ‘They’ll never grow up.’ “But Mother,” she continued, “nothing was more embarrassing than when Dad carried you in through the front doors, kissing you, totally oblivious to us!”
I remember how Shay stopped dead in his tracks, standing there holding me in his arms with six teenagers standing there looking straight at us.
“Uh, uh, Mommy hurt her ankle,” he stammered. “So I’m going to go rub it for a while.”
They just looked back at us with goofy grins on their faces that said, ‘Who do you think you’re kidding?’
“Yeah, okay, we get the picture!” said Wes.
With that Shay carried me to our master suite and closed the door. “Where did the good old days go, Callie, when I could take you into this suite and make love to you without an audience on the other side of the door?”
As he let my legs loose and they went to the floor, he pulled me close to him and whispered, “I love you so much, Callie, my princess; I can’t understand how this love, this excitement I have for you, just keeps growing. I hear guys say after a few years of marriage it’s old hat. With you, Callie, every time I touch you, it’s like I’m touching you for the first time.”
I looked into his beautiful brown eyes and touched his face.
“I look at you and I am so sexually aroused,” he continued in a sexy voice, “I have to be careful who’s around when I stand up. God, woman, you do it for me!”
Shay slowly undressed me, then I him. He picked me up, carried me to the bathroom, and turned on the shower. When he stepped into the shower he was cradling me in his arms like a child. I always said I was glad that shower was big.
He sat me down under the full stream of warm water and put his lips on mine, and our bodies became one. There wasn’t a spot on each other’s bodies that we didn’t know by heart, knowing exactly where to touch each other, kiss each other. We were engulfed in love right there in the shower.
Teens today may experience sex; anyone can experience sex. But to experience sex with immense love, that’s real sex! That’s what our teens are missing out on. It seems it’s been forgotten that sometimes an extremely gentle touch to the face is far more sensual than a kiss.
Shay took us to the bed, still wet from the shower. He didn’t even dry us off, he was so aroused. He had me right there with him. I held my head back as he kissed my neck, moving his soft lips downward, kissing my breasts. I knew this was going to be a loud, uncontrollable climax for me. Shay sensed it before it happened, because as I cried out in ecstasy, he was right there to put his hand over my mouth, and it was a good thing. He became as carried away as I was, burying his face in my shoulder to muffle his own sounds.
We had reached the fullest of contentment.
Shay sank down right next to me. “Callie, you fill me completely. I love coming inside of your life,” he paused, “and oh gosh, I hope the kids didn’t hear us.” Then he smiled. “Never thought I’d be saying that to you the first time I made love to you in this suite, princess… when we had the whole house to ourselves.”
We lay there, basking in the afterglow of the erotic experience we had so completely shared. After a while, we finally made our way back into the shower. Shay and I made sure we put our same clothes back on for the sake of the children. We didn’t want them thinking we had had our clothes off. (Yeah, right!)
When we left our suite, the kids were gone. The house was emptied of teens.
“Listen, Callie, the house is so quiet,” Shay paused, “they all went somewhere.”
“Shay, I don’t like the silence. I don’t like it quiet, I love the hustle and bustle of the children.”
Shay took my hand and we walked out on the big front porch.
“Let’s go see Samson and Sunset,” Shay said.
We walked slowly together, each with an arm around the other, to the new white corral fence Shay had just finished building. We stood there watching Samson and Sunset in the field. They were still as beautiful as ever, and as soon as they saw us they trotted over to the fence. Their foals, from weanlings to two-year-olds, were galloping behind them in the grass with all the vim and vigor of youth.
“Shay,” I said, “Kelly’s going to college next year. Wes will be a senior in high school, and our little Patty Cake is growing up right behind them. I don’t know what I’m going to do without a child in my arms. I feel so incomplete without a baby to love and care for. I’m just not whole without a child. Every night I pray and ask God how I’m going to survive when my children grow up and leave. I ask Him for His help and blessings.”
Soft tears were forming in my eyes. “Shay, you have given me more love than I ever thought existed. I want you to know how much I have appreciated all of your love. It’s more love than I could ever have anticipated in this lifetime.” The tears were starting to slowly work their way out of my eyes and down my cheeks.
Shay turned me toward him and put one arm on my back, the other cradling my neck, his sensuous fingers in my hair. He
bent down and placed his gorgeous lips on mine, kissing me gently for a long time. Then he lifted his hands and brushed the tears from my eyes and off my cheeks. I stood there looking up at him and saw that Shay-grin I’d seen but twice before. “Princess, you know, your body was extra warm and twingey tonight when we made love. I felt it when I came inside of your life.”
My eyes widened. Dared I hope? “Tell me, Shay, please tell me!”
Shay held me in his arms, looking down into my eyes with those big beautiful brown eyes I’d first seen in King’s Drive-Thru.
“Well, princess,” he said, “I don’t think you should be giving away those baby clothes right now. Because, darlin’, I, Shay Westover, am telling you, Callie Westover, that you are headed for a delivery table.”
Samson and Sunset Page 38
