Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,53
to you.”
“That’s not true. You have many, many choices.” Missionary work in a tropical island sans telephones. Volunteering to redecorate for the homeless—because they’d be the least traumatized by the effort. Vows of silence. “Many, many choices. And you certainly don’t owe me anything.”
“Don’t we?” Jacqui asked.
“No!”
“We owe you our gratitude, and certainly we owe you our services,” the other sister said.
“I couldn’t possibly impose.”
“Impose? No.” Jacqui began and Cydney rushed to finish. “No! We want to do this.”
“Do what? Exactly?”
“The Christmas pageant!” they chorused.
Hannah’s heart sank.
“Cydney Snowden, volunteer set designer reporting for duty, madam chairperson!”
“Set designer?” Images of flocks of big-tooth sheep sprang to the forefront of Hannah’s jumbled thoughts.
“And costume mistress,” Jacqui interjected with determined yet perky forcefulness. “Already have some sketches drawn up, and as soon as I find my sewing machine under all the paint tarps and scraps of wood and those three spare ceiling fans in my guest bedroom, we’ll be in business for sure.”
“Wow.” Hannah muttered.
“I knew you’d love it. Didn’t I say she’d love it, Cydney?”
“Love it. Jacqui’s exact words. We’ll talk more about this later.”
“Guess I better go start excavating my guest room!”
She thought they said goodbye. She thought she’d replied in kind, but if pressed about it, Hannah wouldn’t have gone on record regarding anything about that phone call except to say it left her feeling woozy.
She rubbed her temple as she hung up the phone and wondered aloud, “Maybe Payt can prescribe motion sickness pills to keep everyday life from sending my head spinning.”
“What?” Sam poked his head around the wall dividing the front room and the kitchen.
“Oh, it’s just a joke I made to Aunt Phiz once. How long have you stood there listening in?”
His eyes grew wide. “Uh, n-not long.”
“Too bad.” She reached out to ruffle his hair. “I hoped maybe you could tell me if I sounded more like a complete fool or just a half-wit.”
He laughed, his eyes filled with light when he looked up at her. “You’re so funny.”
Another compliment.
She put her hand to her chest and met his eager gaze. “I ever tell you that sometimes you just make my day?”
“No, ma’am.” He blushed the way boys that age do—across the nose and in the hollow of his freckled cheeks.
If she had thought it wouldn’t send him running to get the dog to lick his face clean, she’d have bent down and given the kid a big old smooch on the forehead. “Well, I should tell you, and more often, too.”
Grown men who accepted the highest honors given in their most fervent fields of endeavor could not have looked more proud or pleased…or surprised—than this dear, humble, cast-adrift little boy did.
And to think, a year ago at this time she was still telling her sisters she didn’t think she could ever relate to any little boy, much less a stranger’s child who would need so much. She had almost talked herself out of taking the child at all. But then Payt had promised the life of leisure as a doctor’s stay-at-home wife and that she’d have everything she ever dreamed of.
On that point he was so right.
She curved her hand under Sam’s chin. “I love you, Sam. You know that, don’t you?”
He blinked. His eyes hinted at getting all watery—but only for one fleeting second. Then he squirmed loose, sniffled and scrunched up his nose. “Aw, that love stuff, that’s so girly.”
He darted down the hall.
“Is not!” she shouted after him. “I happen to know that Payt loves you, too. And Aunt Phiz. Grandpa Moonie loves you and—”
“And Jesus,” came back down the darkened hallway that led to his bedroom. “Jesus loves me.”
“And Jesus,” she said softly. He gets it. Sam understood it was not about a baby in a basket and boys in bathrobes. Jesus loved him.
She didn’t care if it was all girly—she didn’t feel one bit ashamed when a tear rolled down her cheek.
No matter what else this roller coaster of a day held in store for Hannah, she felt certain she could deal with it—even without motion-sickness pills. Nothing could spoil the knowledge that for all the things that went awry, that she didn’t seem to have any control over, that she wanted so badly to do and be and always failed, in this one thing, where it mattered most, she had done well.
“Maybe this is a turning point,” she murmured to Tessa as she passed the baby working a frozen water-filled ring over tiny swollen gums. “In fact, I’m