Jenny (Babysitter's Club 5)

I hadn’t given much thought to mom’s story about the ring’s history, but now that I think about it, it fits right in with my girl. My girl, I like the sound of that. Yeah, this is definitely the right thing to do. I’m not sure if she’s telling me the whole truth when she says that her parents know about us, but either way, it doesn’t matter. There’s still the fact that she’s living under her parents’ roof, and let’s not forget her age. If her dad doesn’t kill me, it will be a miracle.

I’m asking his eighteen-year-old daughter to take on not only a divorced man but a once-married man with two kids under the age of one and an ex-wife that may or may not be crazy. I’m sure they have questions.

I took a deep breath and rung the doorbell. I could hear more than two voices coming from beyond and remembered too late that her family had guests for the holiday. Too late to turn back now. Her dad answered the door with a big smile on his face, and an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. He looked over my shoulder for the rest of my little family before looking back at me.

“Where’s Jenny?”

“She’s back at the house with the girls. I need to have a word with you alone, sorry, I forgot you had guests.” He gave me this odd look before stepping back to let me in.

“It’s alright come on through here let’s go up to my office. They won’t miss me for a while, damn thieves.” He called out to someone to take his hand, and I took that to mean he’d been playing some kind of card game.

I followed him up the stairs and down the long hallway. There were portraits of Jenny all over the place, on horseback, and pictures of her in every stage of her life from a newborn to what I’m guessing was a year ago.

My heart trembled at the one with the little angel with two missing front teeth because as I looked at it, I swear I saw our daughter. Where the hell did that come from?

The image was so real I almost tripped over my feet. Her father opened the door to his office, and I followed him inside, taking the offered chair across from him as he sat behind his desk. “I think I know why you’re here.” That’s all he said, leaving the rest of it hanging.

I didn’t know where to start now that I was here, but he’d given me an opening I could walk right through. “In that case, I had a whole speech planned, but that seems too contrived, so I’ll just say it. I’m here to tell you that Jenny and I are getting married.”

Okay, I’m pretty sure I was supposed to pose that as a question. But since I’d already made up my mind that there was no force on earth that was going to stop me from having her, I didn’t see the point. I was feeling more relaxed than I’d expected to once the words were finally out there. Everything else is up to him now the ball is in his court.

A long awkward silence followed my little reveal. Well shit, he’s not saying anything, just sitting there, looking at me, like he’s trying to decide where to put the body. “Is that it?”

“Pardon?” Is her whole family, nuts? Wrong choice of words.

“Boy, you took me away from a thousand dollar cribbage game to tell me something I already knew?”

“I don’t understand, what do you know?” He sat back in his chair and swiveled it from side to side while studying me. I was trying hard to figure out just what he meant by his words and coming up short. Maybe she had indeed told him and his wife about us, but given the situation, I’d expect him to be a lot more forceful than he was being.

I’d probably have had my hands around his throat by now if I were in his shoes. But he was just as calm as could be. We could’ve been discussing the weather for all the inflection in his voice, just like his daughter. I wonder if this is where she gets that calm reserve of hers? It’s not from her mother, that’s for sure.

“Let’s see. When my daughter was oh, say, eight or nine, she told her mother and me that you two were going to get married when she grew up. If you know anything about my daughter, you should know that she doesn’t say things just for the sake of saying them.”

“After I got through asking her for the particulars of why she was so sure about that, we had a whole discussion about how old eighteen was and how far away it was to the little girl she was back then.”