Pleased by those memories, Sunday muttered, “Just wait, little Cross. You’ll be getting a big whiff of me before you know it.”
Chapter
88
Sitting at the dining room table amid the laughter Ali’s comment had triggered, I said, “He really told you he grew up on a pig farm?”
My younger son bobbed his head enthusiastically. “He said he hated it, but it was all good because he used the hate to get out of the pig poop.”
Jannie grinned and punched Ali in the shoulder. “He did not.”
“Did so!” Ali shouted at his sister before turning his protesting face in my direction. “Or something like that, Dad. Ask Mrs. Hutchins.”
I gestured his way with my fork, said, “You know what? I just might do that.”
Ali stuck his tongue out at Jannie, who groaned, “You are such a little brat sometimes.”
“I am not, and you should go sit in pig poop somewhere,” he shot back.
“That’s enough!” Nana Mama cried, then stared at me. “The night that Jesus prayed in the garden and was betrayed and we’re talking about pig poop?”
I stifled the urge to smile but threw a quick glare Ali’s way and said, “Nana’s right. That is enough. And if you want to finish your show before bedtime, you’d better get along with Jannie long enough to wash and dry the dishes.”
“I hate washing dishes in the bathtub,” Ali grumbled. “It’s dumb.”
“Think of washing dishes in the bathtub as pig you-know-what,” Bree said. “Use it to be a better student.”
“Wait, what?” Ali said, throwing up his hands. “How does that make any sense?”
I winked at my wife, said, “Nice try, but you should have quit while you were ahead.”
Later, as the kids washed dishes in the bathtub, I couldn’t help thinking again of the tub in the old root cellar and what might have happened if Bree hadn’t discovered a trapdoor and a second way down from the barn.
I felt my wife’s arm come around my waist. “Want to check the progress on the addition?”
Inspecting the new work was a welcome change, something normal, not deviant, something understandable, not a mystery to solve. So I nodded and gave her a long, deep kiss.
“I didn’t know you liked women who look like the Phantom of the Opera.”
I looked at the bandage covering part of her face and laughed, said, “I think it’s kind of sexy.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“Get a room, you two,” Nana Mama said, chortling as she went by us toward the living room.
Ninety-something years old and she still had a wicked sense of humor. Another reason I loved my grandmother so much.
We went back into the dining room. While Bree separated the Velcro strips that held the big plastic sheets in place, I plugged in the extension cord and the work lights.
The builders had come a long way in the past two or three days. The windows were in and they’d begun to frame in the bases for the kitchen cabinetry. For the first time, I could see clearly what the added space was going to mean to our family.
“I’m beginning to like it,” Bree said. “A lot.”
“Me, too. A hassle with the cooking and the dishwashing, but I think we’re going to be very happy when it’s all said and done.”
My wife nodded and looked around with a satisfied smile. “Nana said the electrician will be here on Monday and we need to mark where we want all the plugs and switches before then.”
I’d never had anything built before, so this surprised me. “Contractor doesn’t figure that out?”