Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“Sam!”
He grunted.
“Dear Jory, one of the other mothers in my son’s play group verbally chastised my son the other day. She didn’t physically touch him, but I feel like she overstepped. What are your thoughts?”
I crossed my arms. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”
“He said that you need to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with that mother and let her know that if your kid does something wrong, to tell you, and you, and only you, will deal with it or you are going to kick her ass.”
“Kick her ass?” I asked Sam.
“In this instance, violence is the answer.”
“You’re terrible.”
More grunting greeted that statement.
“Dear Jory, my husband just recently had his DNA analyzed, and it turns out that he cannot possibly be related to his father. After confronting his mother, she told us that she had an affair. I am torn about whether or not to talk to my father-in-law or respect my mother-in-law’s wishes that we wait. What are your thoughts?”
“I don’t even want to know,” I said, smiling at Hannah.
“Dad said that this is what comes of mucking around in areas that only forensic labs should have access to. Everyone was perfectly happy, and now everything is crap because your husband spit in a tube. Secrets are supposed to come out the old-fashioned way, blurted out at funerals and other family gatherings when everyone is drunk as balls. That’s how we found out my cousin Levi has a daughter in Reno.”
Hannah gasped and I groaned. Sam only shrugged.
“Uncle Levi has a daughter in Reno?”
“Yes,” Sam told her. “And this is by point—that’s the only way any of us should doe that, because he got drunk and spilled. I bean really, why the hell would I take a DNA test to doe anybore about my fabily? I doe too buch dow!”
“Sam––”
“So Dad told her that since it’s your husband’s situation, and not yours, just keep your nose out of it.”
“Charming.”
“What?” Sam grumbled.
“I’ll fix it,” I said, shaking my head. “Go get your dad some more water.”
“He said the water tastes funny. He wants Gatorade.”
“Uh no,” I said, walking over to the side of the bed and leaning over to kiss his forehead. “You can have a cup of tea, water, water with lemon, water with melon––”
“Water with lemon,” he grumbled, and grabbed my arm and yanked me down beside him, hauling me up against his chest.
“What’re you doing?” I asked him, smiling.
“I’m gonna go get the water, and I’ll slice up a lemon and put it in there.”
“Not wedges,” I told her as Sam nuzzled my hair. “Slices. Thin ones.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shall I put some raspberries in there too, and some mint?”
“Oh,” I said, nodding, “now you’re talking.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she assured me, but I knew she’d do it anyway. She liked things to look pretty just as much as I did.
Sam kissed my temple, and my attention was focused again on him. “What are you doing, crazy sick man?”
“I want you to sleep in the bed again.”
“When you’re sick, you snore, and if I can’t sleep and I get sick too—then this whole house will come to a grinding halt.”
“Yes, I doe. If the caretaker goes down, the hobe crumbles. I got it,” he said, but he held me tighter, rubbing his chin in my hair.
I snuggled in, head on his shoulder, draped across his massive chest that rose and fell with each breath, no longer racked with bouts of coughing.
“I don’t sleep well when you’re dot in the bed, and I didn’t snore last night, did I?”
I hadn’t heard him through the floor as I had the first couple of nights. “Perhaps not.”
“So could we just try? If I rattle the walls, you can bail.”
“You really miss me,” I said with a sigh, because it was nice to hear.
“I should tell you bore often. You bake this place hobe for be, and I love you and I appreciate you.”
This was why I dealt with a surly creature from hell, because eventually, the fiend turned back into the scuffed-up angel I loved with all my heart.
“Try and rest for a bit before dinner,” I suggested, and only then did I realize that he was already asleep.
Until next time, all, stay healthy.
APRIL 2019
Hello, all, welcome to He Said, he said, April 2019. I had planned on talking about what we did to help Kola with the ACT and college prep stuff, but then my father-in-law took a tumble in his home last Thursday.
It’s no big secret that I’m closer to my husband’s mother than my husband’s father. It’s not like he doesn’t think of me like family, or me him, it’s just that we’re very different people.
He’s quieter than I am—unless he’s watching football or his beloved Cubs—and he’s more of a “sit back and watch before he gives you his opinion” kind of guy. I’m more of the blurting type, though I’ve tempered that quite a bit in my later life. He’s stuck up for me many a time in arguments and during situations with other family members who try to steamroll over me because I’m “too nice,” as he calls it, and on more than one occasion he’s told my kids to climb down off my back. And when your grandfather tells you to do something, you just do it, no questions asked. So when Sam called to tell me that his father fell in the house, I felt my heart in my throat. He was getting on a plane flying back from where he’d been, overnight in Manhattan for a meeting, and would go from the airport to the hospital. I told him I’d go immediately. “Thank you,” he croaked out, and I could tell he was scared.