Adding Up to Marriage

“So you don’t like me.” “Whatever gave you that idea—?”

“Silas. Please.”

Somehow, she imagined him removing his glasses, rubbing his eyes. The hormones moaned. Shut. Up.

“I think it’s safe to say—” he exhaled into the phone “—that we have … different ways of approaching life. But that’s neither here nor there. Look, I’ll pay you whatever … whatever you think is fair. Name your price.”

Visions of paid bills and maybe a new pair of hiking boots danced in her head. Cautiously she tossed out a figure, Silas said, “Done,” and Jewel sucked in a breath. “And like I said,” he added, “it’s only temporary. Until October. So what kind of schedule would work for you?”

“Um … if you don’t mind being flexible, why don’t we take it day by day—?”

“Works for me. Can you start tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah … sure—”

“Then how about I swing by your place about eight-thirty to give you a set of keys to the house? And instructions?” “I guess. We don’t have any appointments tomorrow, so—”

“Great. See you then.”

Instructions, right, Jewel thought through the mild dizziness as she set her phone back on the counter. No doubt annotated and color coded. Like those scary Supernanny charts.

Her hormones scrambled for cover.

“Dad-dy! Where are you?”

Kids. Right.

Still clutching his phone, Silas walked back into the bathroom where his children—irrefutable evidence of his life having once included sex—had apparently decided why use a tiny squirt of shampoo when half the bottle was so much better? Or—he picked up the weightless plastic shell from the middle of the bathmat—the entire bottle. However, given the condition Silas and his brothers used to leave the bathroom in after their baths when they were kids, he was grateful most of the water was actually still in the tub.

“Look at Tad’s hair!” Ollie said, giggling and pointing to the Marge Simpson ‘do atop his youngest son’s head. Ollie, however, had gone more Marie Antoinette. All he needed was one of his plastic boats on top to complete the look.

Giving Silas a big, dimpled grin, Tad scooped up a mountain of froth. “We made bubbles!”

“So I see,” Silas said, sinking onto the covered toilet lid and thinking, God, I love these kids, his heart seizing up with a random attack of the what-might-have-beens. At least they didn’t happen as often as they did in the beginning. But they still came, sneaking up on him like ninjas in the middle of the night. Or like now, when the thought of entrusting them to some ponytailed, raspy-voiced, braless weirdo was making his brain hurt.

Figuring the suds made soaping them up redundant, Silas rolled up his shirt sleeves and turned on the handheld shower, a move that got a pair of “Awwww … not yets!”

“You want me to read?” he said as Marge, then Marie, dissolved into foamy streaks slithering down the boys’ chests. “Then you have to get out of the tub now.” Doughboy appeared at the open doorway, took one look at the Torture Weapon in Silas’s hand and backed out again. “And anyway,” he said, wrapping up each boy in turn like little mummies in their bath sheets, “I’ve got news.” He grabbed Tad to rub his curls mostly dry with a hand towel. “Jewel’s agreed to be your nanny.”

“Re-re-really?” Ollie said as Silas attacked his wet head, his grin enormous when he resurfaced, a blond porcupine pumping his fist. “Yes!”

“Yes!” Tad echoed, his still-damp curls bobbing as he, too, pumped his fist so hard he lost his towel. Then naturally both boys dissolved into giggles because, you know, life was go-ood.

Smiling, grateful, Silas hauled them both into his arms—was there anything better in the whole wide world than freshly bathed little boys?—and down the hall to their room, where he read three books and tucked them in with hugs and kisses and tried very, very hard not to think about Jewel Jasper’s voice.

Which he’d be hearing again in … less than twelve hours.

Hell.

The doorbell rang precisely at eight-thirty the next morning.

Waking Jewel up.

Muttering not-nice words, she fought her way out of the tangled covers—she’d always been a thrasher, had been told sharing a bed with her was like trying to sleep in a blender—yanking on her shorty robe as she lurched toward the front door.

The bell rang again. As did her cell phone.

She glanced at the display. Oh, joy.

“‘Lo,” she croaked as she tugged open the front door, assuming it’d be Silas on the other side and not an escaped convict. Or worse, somebody trying to save her soul. Got it in one, she thought as, nodding to Silas to come in, she pointed to the phone and mouthed, “My mother.”

“Oh, sugar, I’m so glad I got you.….” Hearing the tears in her mother’s voice, Jewel squeezed shut her eyes, only to realize when she opened them again that Silas was staring at the life-size pelvis complete with embryo and placenta sitting on the banged-up coffee table she’d picked up for next-to-nothing at a yard sale when she’d moved into the house. She shoved the front door closed with her bare foot, her mother’s “Monty broke up with me!” knifing through her morning groggies as she padded into the living room.

“Oh … I’m so sorry,” she said, thinking, Who the heck is Monty? On her way to the kitchen she poked Silas in the arm, distracting him from the pelvis. “Coffee?”

“Uh … sure,” he said, distracting Mama from Monty. For the moment.

“Honey? Who are you talking to?”

“A friend,” Jewel said, shrugging at Silas’s lifted eyebrows before yanking open the fridge for the Folgers, briefly considering snorting it instead of waiting for it to brew.

“Don’t you try to fool me, young lady, that was a man’s voice!”

“Nothin’ gets past you, huh?” Jewel said, carting the coffee over to the coffee maker, remembering too late when she reached up into the cupboard for the filters that she wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. Oops. “I can have men friends, Mama.” Although having them ogle her butt wasn’t on the list this morning. “Listen, I have to go, but how’s about I come down and go to lunch with you or something on Saturday? Cheer you up?”

“Oh … not today?”

Jewel sighed. Much as she truly loved her mother, all she wanted was for the woman to grow up. To be her mother and not that clingy chick in high school who tells everybody she’s your BFF when she’s not.

To give Jewel a chance to do some growing up of her own.

“I’d love to, Mama, really, but my day’s already full. But hey—why don’t you go shopping? You know that always makes you feel better.” For at least twenty minutes.

“Well … I suppose I could.” A delicate sniff sounded in Jewel’s ear. “But it’d be so much more fun with you along.”

At one point, that had been true enough. For Jewel, anyway. Nobody knew her way around a mall better than her mother, even if Mama was always trying to buy Jewel prissy, girly-girl things she’d never wear. “I know, but I can’t today. I’ll call you later, how’s that?”

After promising her mother she’d call as soon as she could, Jewel pocketed her cell and shut her eyes again, willing the coffee aroma into her veins. As usual the conversation was ripping her in two: she could be what her mother wanted her to be, or what Jewel needed to be, but not both. And the endless tug-of-war was making her bonkers.

Still, self-preservation kept her heels dug in and her bleeding hands tight on that rope, boy … or risk toppling right over into the Aching Void of Need she’d had to haul Kathryn DuBois out of more times than she could count, when yet another relationship fizzled out on her. On them both, actually, since losing three “daddies” and any number of also-rans hadn’t done Jewel any favors, either.

But if nothing else she’d learned from her mother’s example, having seen first-hand the vicious cycle of hope and heartbreak that were part and parcel of letting “love” blind you to reality. Hence her resolve to never let anybody do to her what so many had done to her mother.

Besides, if she didn’t stay strong, who’d take care of Mama?

“Let me guess,” Silas said behind her, making her jump. Because somehow she’d forgotten he was there. “I woke you.”

Jewel made sure she was smiling before she turned. “Only because I slept through my alarm.” She peered behind him. “You lose somebody?”