One Of A Kind Dad

скачать книгу бесплатно


All at once, Daniel felt less tired. “No, I delivered them. Eight of them.”

Nick said, “Can we have one?”

“No,” Daniel said in synch with another “No!” trumpeted from the hallway. Daniel fell heavily into a kitchen chair and groaned. When Jesse saw his kitchen had been invaded, World War III was likely to break out.

“No pigs in this house,” he insisted as he came through the door. “We have enough—” He halted when he took in the scene, and Lilah seemed to tense, as if she were seeing it through Jesse’s eyes.

She was whipping eggs. Jonathan was cutting out biscuits. Nick occupied the remaining counter space with his sausage operation. This was Jesse’s kitchen, his biscuit cutter, his wire whip. Feeling as tense as Lilah looked, Daniel waited to see how it was all going to come down.

Right before his eyes, she changed. “Jesse,” Lilah said, giving him a sunny smile, “I hope it’s okay for me to help with breakfast. My goodness. The way you keep this kitchen puts me to shame. I thought I was neat, but your refrigerator is in perfect order, and I found all the biscuit ingredients lined up in the same cupboard, so it didn’t take me any time at all to make them. Everything is spotless, and I promise you it will be, well, almost as spotless when we’re through.”

Daniel nearly let out a whoosh of breath that would have given away his nervousness. Jesse grumbled a little, scraped his foot against the brick floor and said, “The military does that to you. Everything shipshape, you know.”

“The military does wonderful things for young men,” Lilah responded earnestly. “Teaches them routine, and order, and a sense of responsibility. I could learn a lot from you.”

“I’ll give you some kitchen management tips when we have some time,” Jesse said with the arrogance of a man who’s been told he’s perfect, which he knew anyway.

Daniel couldn’t believe it. The tough marine was melting like butter on a hot griddle. “The boys know,” Lilah went on, “that breakfast won’t be as good as if you’d cooked it, especially the biscuits, but I wanted to say thank you and this was all I could think of.”

“Mighty thoughtful of you,” Jesse said. “I have to admit my war injuries are kicking up this morning.”

“You got hurt in the war?”

Daniel figured Jonathan’s morning was getting off to a pretty exciting start. One man with piglet wounds and another with war wounds. Lilah was left to finish the cooking while Jesse entertained the two boys with a harrowing story of capture and escape due to the heroism of his buddies. Daniel wandered away to his room and made fast work of a shower and a change of clothes. The usual sounds of the morning began to fill the house, the clatter of footsteps, shouting, laughing, barking, and then the barbarian attack on the kitchen.

Joining them, he glanced down at the table. To the left of each place setting was a paper napkin folded into the shape of a pig. Lilah saw his expression. “Origami,” she said. “We had a few extra minutes while the biscuits baked.” She looked ever so slightly defensive, as if she expected the pigs might make him mad.

“Aw,” Daniel said. “You did it in Maggie’s honor.”

“Maggie?”

“Maggie the sow. You know, instead of cigars, piglet napkins.”

She laughed, actually laughed. Her face lit up and her eyes sparkled. “Of course,” she said. “Congratulations, Dad.”

He hadn’t felt this good since—since he’d delivered Maggie’s last piglet. It was fine, as all the others had been, and she was fine—which she wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t helped her out.

Maggie trusts me. Why doesn’t Lilah Jamison?

The boys were wedged in around the table, Jesse among them—any more boys and Daniel would have to turn this table into an oval—and when he pulled out his chair, he paused, looked around, counted and observed, “We need one more place setting.”

“Oh, no,” Lilah said. “I have to be running around serving. It’s what Jesse did last night…”

“But not what we’re doing this morning,” Daniel said. “Everybody crunch closer.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, when not a scrap of food was left anywhere except on the oilcloth and the boys’ shirts, Daniel said, “You guys have to get off to soccer camp, and I mean right now.”

They were all wearing Fair Meadows Soccer Camp T-shirts. Lilah felt her face flush. “Jonathan and I must be going as soon as we clean up the kitchen.”

“Jonathan’s going to soccer camp, too,” Daniel said.

“Hop to it, men,” Jesse barked, moving away from the breakfast table and herding the boys out the door. “Brush your teeth, comb your hair, get your gear.”

Three seconds from chaos to silence. Lilah was alone in the kitchen with Daniel. She got up and began to load the dishwasher with lightning speed. “Daniel, Jonathan, unlike every other child in Serenity Valley,” she said, cold on the inside and cold on the outside, “isn’t signed up for soccer camp.”