My Better Life

Her face goes pale. “But we’re not…you’re not…”

I sigh. Enough.

“Alright. There’s an easy way to solve this.”

“There is?”

I grab her hand and pull her out of the door of the barn. The wind bites at us, and a few misty droplets are falling. I tug her toward the kids, putting together some sort of pulley lever basket system.

Tanner sees us, and when he does, he grins and runs over the grass toward us. When Elijah and Shay see where he’s going they hurry after him.

“You’ll never believe what we’re building.” Tanner points back at the pile.

“Bet we won’t.” I smile at him. “But first things first. I’ve got a question for you.”

Elijah and Shay come up next to Tanner, they nod their heads, listening.

“Okay,” Elijah says, sensing the seriousness in my tone.

“Your mom was telling me that my name isn’t Billy, it’s Gavin. And that before you picked me up at the hospital you’d never seen me before. That this has been one big ol’ prank. Is that true?”

I watch them carefully. Tanner frowns and looks between Jamie and me. Elijah’s face is solemn. Shay just stares at me, like she did when she was hugging me and telling me she loved me.

Jamie pulls her hand from mine. “Tell the truth, kids.”

Tanner and Elijah look at each other, the brother-to-brother communication passing between them. Then Elijah nods and turns back to me.

“Okay.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Okay what?”

“We did pull a prank.”

Jamie looks down at her feet. My heart skips a beat. “What do you mean?”

Tanner lifts his chin. “We’re sorry about dumping rotten eggs on you, and about blowing the chicken poop and the feathers all over you. We were mad ’cause you were mean before, so we were paying you back. But like you said, we won’t do that anymore.”

I smile at Tanner. “Good.”

He looks up at me with an earnest expression. “I’m real sorry, Dad.”

Elijah nods. “Sorry, Dad.”

Jamie’s head snaps up, “What did you say?”

Tanner lifts his chin. “We said we’re sorry.”

“I said tell the truth.”

“We are telling the truth, we didn’t pull any other pranks.” Elijah crosses his arms over his chest and glares at Jamie.

There’s a battle of wills going on between them.

Tanner shrugs. “Well, maybe we did rub Scooter in chicken poo ’cause we knew he was sleeping with Dad.”

I grin at him and he smiles back.

Then, Shay runs forward and throws her arms around my waist. “I love you, Dad.”