“I don’t wanna go to bed,” Ellery wailed.
“Me neither,” Annie echoed.
Drawing in a deep breath, Lydia climbed out of the car. Jason did the same on the other side.
“Can you get Levi? I’ll get the girls.”
“No,” Ellery said obstinately. “I want Uncle Jason. I don’t want you.”
“Me too,” Annie said.
“I’ve got them, Lydia. You get Levi and the dog.”
By the time she got Jasper leashed up and Levi unbuckled from his seat, Jason and the girls had disappeared into her house.
As Jasper pulled her toward the porch, she tightened her hold on Levi and let her mind run through their sleeping options. For tonight, the girls could sleep either with her in her bed or she’d have to make a pallet of blankets on the floor. The second bedroom was where she kept her recliner, a desk and a desktop computer, not to mention the stacks of medical journals she swore she would read one day. She’d need to get a couple of twin beds for there. That solved the future sleeping arrangements for the girls, but where was she going to put Levi? She needed another bedroom. And probably another bathroom.
When she’d bought this house, she’d thought it a temporary stop before she married Jason and moved into his large, five bedroom, thirty-six hundred square foot house. She’d once asked him why he had such a huge house when he didn’t want children. He’d replied that he’d gotten a steal of a deal on it, something just too good to pass up.
At first she hadn’t believed him, sure that his protest of not ever wanting children was a ploy by a single guy to keep women at arm’s length. But over the years they’d been together, he’d never once wavered, and they’d had plenty of heated discussions on the subject.
The bedrooms at his house now held his office, a personal gym, a guest room and a storage room. He certainly hadn’t had any trouble converting those extra bedrooms into usable space.
House hunting wasn’t, or hadn’t been, high on her to-do list. She might need to readjust her priorities.
Her home had been pretty much a mess when she’d left for Gainesville last Friday. She dreaded facing it. However, she walked into a spotless living room, not a dust bunny in sight. She also noticed her furniture had been rearranged. Her first thought was that someone had broken in, but why would thieves redecorate?
She frowned and turned in the circle, effectively wrapping Jasper’s lead around her knees.
“Here. Stop turning,” Jason said. “Give me Jasper and I’ll turn him loose in the backyard.”
“Okay.” She did, but she was still confused.
“Aunt Lydia. Come see,” Ellery said, grabbing hold of Lydia’s pant leg.
“Come see what?”
“Our new beds.”
New beds? She followed a skipping Ellery down the short hall to her office. The office was gone. The desk, computer, chair and all the magazines had disappeared. In their place were two adorable twin beds with frilly pink bedspreads. A matching curtain framed the only window in the room.
“What does this say?” Annie asked, holding up a white envelope.
“I don’t know. Let’s see.”
“Here,” Jason said, walking up beside her. “Give me Levi.”
She happily passed the sweaty and heavy baby over and took the mysterious envelope to open. It was addressed to Ellery and Annie Hardy. Inside was a brightly colored card.
Welcome to your new home, it proclaimed in big letters.
The inside was signed by every person in Jason’s family. At least she was pretty sure everyone had signed it, but she’d have to wait until the tears in her eyes subsided to be able to read the writing clearly.
“It says welcome to your new home,” she said. “It’s from Jason’s mom and dad, his brothers and sister, his cousins and his uncle and aunt.” She looked at Jason. “I believe your family might have done a little home remodel while we were gone.”
“Seems like,” he agreed. “It’s very pretty,” he said to the girls. “I love it. Don’t you?”
“Yay,” they both said.
“I can’t believe they did this,” Lydia muttered. “I’m so…”
“Hey,” he said. “My family adores you. Of course they’d do anything to help.”
“Still…this is…wow. I’ll write every one of them thank-you notes. I’ll owe free medical care to them all for the rest of my life.”
He chuckled. “We already get free medical services.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
Knowing that the hours in the car combined with spilled food meant the girls had to have baths before bed, Lydia said, “Why don’t we find the bathroom so you two can take a bath? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“I don’t want to take a bath,” Ellery stated flatly. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Me neither,” said Annie and assumed the same defiant stance.
“Are you kidding?” Jason asked, widening his eyes as though surprised. “I can’t imagine that Ariel would turn down a chance to get wet, can you?”
“No,” they each replied slowly.
“So why would you?” he asked.
The girls looked at each other and it appeared some form of nonverbal communication passed between them.
“Okay,” Ellery said. “But I want you to bathe me. Not her.”
“Me too,” said Annie.
Jason passed Levi to Lydia. “Seems I’ve been ordered into service.”
She smiled, but her heart was breaking from the girls’ words. They didn’t want her. They wanted Jason. They didn’t like her.
Battling against another round of useless tears, she brightened her fake smile. “Great. Get to work then.”
The three of them marched down the hall with Levi and her following. Jason got the water filling the tub while the girls undressed, only helping them when required. Ellery and Annie climbed into her tub and sat.
“Okay, this time I want to see some washing behind those ears. I’m pretty sure I can see french-fry dust and catsup back there,” Jason said, sounding stern but making the girls giggle.
Lydia turned her back and rolled her eyes. She watched him help the girls wash while she gave Levi a sponge bath in the large bathroom sink.
How could this man not want children? He was a natural with them, unlike her, who was floundering and making mistakes at every turn.
“I need to set up Levi’s Pack ’n Play so he has somewhere to sleep tonight.”
She’d found a portable crib slash playpen in Levi’s room and added it to the pile of clothes and diapers she’d packed.
“Can’t believe the folks wouldn’t have thought of something for him too,” Jason said.
“Yeah. You’re probably right. You okay in here?”
“Absolutely. We’re good, right, girls?”
“Yes,” they answered.
Since she’d already discovered that her office had been converted to a bedroom for the twins, she headed to her room wondering if there were changes there also. Sure enough, there was a new crib erected in the corner where there had been a dirty clothes hamper. As she’d found in the living room, her bedroom was spotless. Even the fan above her bed shone with its freshly cleaned blades.
She put Levi in the crib with a pacifier and waited the sixty seconds it took for him to fall asleep. Man, she envied him. Some nights it took her hours to shut down her brain and drop off. Since Friday, her sleep had been comprised mostly of short naps with bad dreams.
The giggles of two little girls and the booming laughter of a grown man resounded down the hall. She hurried toward the sound, needing the break from her gloom.
The next day, she took the girls and Levi to her office to show them off and make sure the staff was aware that she wouldn’t be in the rest of the week. The rest of the week? As she
’d spoken the words, the reality of how much her world had changed hit her again. What would she do with the children while she was at work? And what about the nights and weekends of being on-call? Who would take care of them if she had to go rushing into the night?
She thought about asking her parents to move to Texas to help her, but they were in their seventies. As her father’s recent heart issues had reinforced, neither of them were in the best of health. Besides, they’d done their job raising Meredith and her. It wasn’t right to ask them to take on raising another set of young children.
The funerals were scheduled for Thursday. She and her parents decided that the children were too young to understand what was happening at the funeral and made the decision to not bring them. Magda Montgomery, Jason’s cousin-in-law, volunteered to sit with the children at Lydia’s home and Lydia grabbed that lifeline.
Magda arrived early, about nine a.m. The funerals weren’t until one.
“Magda,” Lydia said as she opened the door in response to Magda’s knock. “You’re early.”
“I know, but I thought it might be a good idea if I spent some time with the girls before you left, so they’d know I was an okay person.”
Lydia blinked. “Of course. What a good idea. I should have thought of it myself.”
“Plus,” Magda continued, “with me here, you can get dressed without a lot of interruptions.”
“Thank you again. You’re so thoughtful.”
Magda smiled. “I want to tell you again how very sorry I am about your sister and her husband. If she was as wonderful a person as you, then she was special indeed.”
Lydia teared up. “She was so much more than I can ever hope to be. So funny. So smart. And you can’t believe how organized she is.”
She is. As she’d uttered the phrase, reality gave her a solid punch in the gut. Her sister was, not is.
She shut her eyes and drew in a stuttered breath. A pair of arms encircled her.
“You’ll be okay,” Magda whispered in Lydia’s ear. “Whatever you need, all you have to do is ask.”
“Thank you,” Lydia whispered back.
The twins took to Magda like a long-lost friend. The three of them sat cross-legged on the floor of the girls’ room and played dolls. Lydia felt comfortable that she could leave and the girls wouldn’t miss her.
She met her parents at the B&B where they were staying. Her parents had aged a decade since Friday. The creases in her mother’s face were deeper and more pronounced than Lydia could remember. Her father’s shoulders were slumped as though carrying five tons on each side. Until that moment, she’d let the idea of having them move to Texas from Florida continue to float to the top of her options. But one glance effectively erased that.
A black limo from the funeral home picked them up thirty minutes before the start of the service. Her father was recovering from his stent so her help was required getting both of them into the backseat of the limo. She’d asked Jason to meet her at the mortuary, not wanting her parents to feel pressure to put on a good front for him. She realized now it wouldn’t have mattered if he was with them or not. Her parents were walking shells of their former selves.
As sad as Lydia had thought herself before, the magnitude of her grief was endless as she sat through the funeral and then rode behind the hearses to the cemetery. Jason’s mother had picked out a couple of beautiful plots under a spreading oak tree. Lydia might have given cremation more serious thought had it not been for the children. They needed a place to help them remember their parents, except for Levi. He would never know how wonderful his mother and father were. How excited they’d been when he was born. And the memory of Meredith and Jim would fade for the twins too, replaced by more recent events in their lives.
And that made her sad.
I’ll bring them to visit, she promised Meredith as she watched the casket being lowered into the ground. She would regale the kids with stories of growing up with their mom and all the funny things she’d done. They would remember their mother, even if the memories were the ones Lydia gave them.
When the funeral was in the rearview mirror, Lydia sent her parents’ home to Florida. Her dad needed to recover and see a doctor down there about the other stents he would require. Her mother needed to be with the group of women friends she had. Both of her parents had excellent emotional support systems around them in Florida. In Texas, they would look to her to provide that support, and frankly, she didn’t have any left to give.
Friday evening, she was standing in the kitchen heating soup and cheese toast for dinner when Ellery can busting into the room.
“Guess who’s here? Uncle Jason,” she said before Lydia could venture a guess.
“Where is he?”
“Levi was crying so he went to see what was wrong.”
Lydia turned off the flame under the soup and jerked the cookie sheet with the cheese bread from the oven.
“Why didn’t you come get me when Levi started crying?”
Ellery shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You know I can’t hear him when I’m back here.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I told you that when I’m in the kitchen, I can’t hear Levi.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.” She felt foolish arguing with a three-year-old, but Ellery and Annie had to learn to listen to her.
Ellery’s bottom lip quivered. “No, you didn’t,” she screamed. “I want my mommy.”
Lydia dropped to one knee. “Come here, Elle.” She pulled the crying child into her arms. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”
The little girl’s tears were like acid dripping directly onto Lydia’s heart.
“Hey,” Jason said from the doorway. “What’s going on back here?”
Ellery shoved out of Lydia’s arms and ran to Jason. Wrapping her arms around his knees, she said, “I wanna go home. I want my mommy.”
Lydia looked up into Jason’s eyes and then shut hers with a slow shake of her head. This is too hard, Meredith. Why did you leave us?
Pushing herself to her feet, Lydia pressed her lips into a semblance of a smile. “Hey, you. I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”
Jason walked toward her, Ellery riding on his leg with each step. “Got done early. Thought I’d see how it was going.” He dropped his gaze down to Ellery and back up. “Where’s Annie?”
“Oh, crap. I don’t know. Elle, where’s Annie?”
“With Jasper.”
“And where’s Jasper?” Lydia asked.
“In the front yard.”
Her heart momentarily stopped. The front yard? The unfenced, open-to-the-street front yard?
“Shit.”
“That’s a naughty word,” Ellery announced. “You can’t say that.”
“Did you come in the front door?” Lydia asked as she hurried past Jason and Ellery. “Did you see them?”
“I did, and I didn’t see them anywhere.”
Holy hell. She hadn’t had her sister’s children for a week and she’d already lost one.
Lydia raced out the front door calling Annie’s name. The small yard was empty. “Maybe we should call the police,” she said.
Jason picked up Ellery and sat her in a rocking chair on the porch. “Do not move,” he said and followed Lydia down the steps. “No police yet. Let’s look for a minute.”
They walked around to the corners of the house calling Annie and Jasper, all the while keeping an eye on Ellery, who hadn’t moved from the chair.
“Have you been in the backyard yet?” Jason asked.
“No. Ellery said the front yard.”
“Little girls can get confused.”
“Maybe.” She bounded up the steps. “Stay with Elle. I’ll go look.”
She ran through her house like she was moving with weights
tied to her ankles. Her heart slammed against her chest. Her lungs didn’t want to inflate. In the kitchen, she slid to a stop at the backdoor and jerked it open.
“Annie? Jasper?”
A woof came from the back corner of her yard. She raced out and through the fresh spring grass. In the far corner, Annie was curled up asleep, the big dog sitting beside her.
“Good boy,” she whispered to Jasper, stroking down his back. Tears of relief trickled down her face. “Good boy.”
She carried the sleeping child into the house.
“Where was she?” Jason asked. He and Ellery were standing in the kitchen.
“Backyard, not front. I’m going to let her sleep for now. I can always reheat the soup later.”
“Ms. Ellery and I will set the table for dinner, okay?”
Ellery nodded.
Lydia got Annie settled in her bed, sans shoes and dirty socks, but she elected to ignore the girl’s clothes for now. She pulled the sheet over Annie’s tiny body and whispered a prayer of thanks.
When she returned to the kitchen, she stood in the doorway observing the scene in front of her. Ellery stood on a chair beside Jason, who’d relit the burner and was stirring the pot of homemade chicken noodle soup.
“And so,” he was saying, “we never ever touch this stove without an adult being with you, okay? We wouldn’t want anything to ever happen to you.”
“Like what happened to Mommy and Daddy?”
Lydia’s heart cracked.
“Well, not like that,” Jason said. “But this fire can hurt you, and you’re too special a little girl for us to let anything bad ever happen to you.”
“Okay.”
“So tell me again. What are you not supposed to do?”
“Touch the stove.”
“That’s right. You hungry?”
Ellery nodded.
“Okay. Hop down and scoot the chair back to the table.” He turned around with the saucepan in his hand and noticed Lydia. “Hey, beautiful.” He lifted the pot higher. “I’ve got soup.”
“I’m starved,” she said. “You too, Elle?”
“Yes. I’m starved.”
Texas Lullaby (Texas Montgomery Mavericks Book 7) Page 4