Ch85 Huge Score

In quick order the kitchen was once again spotless and Wendy had only to put the cooled bread in bags and store them away while Donny looked through his mail.

“Anything in there for me?” Wendy asked, hanging up the damp kitchen towel.

“Pretty sure there isn’t. Sorry,” he said, smirking. 

“Better take a second look. According to Janet I’m Occupant. So….”

He laughed. “That so? Wish I had known that years ago. I’ve tossed away tons of your mail then. My bad. Here, you can have that and this, and heck, you can even have that,” he said tossing her a circular for a craft store, a card offering a free first visit from a new dentists’ office and a thick envelope with calligraphy-type writing on it.

Ch84 To New Friends

“I can’t believe you actually got me cooking,” Donny said, as he put foil wrap on a small baking dish. “You really are a great new friend, Wendy, and the best teacher.  I might be able to do this on my own thanks to you…I hope.”

“You will. It’s all written down and it’s super easy and if you have any questions, I’m only a phone call away,” she said as she placed two other baking dishes, labeled and covered in foil, into the freezer.

“But what am I going to do with all this food?”

“Eat it with your kids, you goof. Have family meals like you used to,” Wendy replied, as she labeled another baking dish and placed it in the fridge. “Now you have several nights’ worth of meals. You just have to pop them in the microwave, make a salad, warm up some crusty bread and there ya go!”

Ch83 Odd How it Works Out

“Hey, kids, homework done yet?” Wendy said, before getting to Cindy’s bedroom door. 

Good thing she did, too, because Stevie had been kissing Cindy. As it was, he had to let go of her hand and move slightly away from her.

“Yeah, I think she’s got it now,” he said, looking adorably guilty as he stood up.

“Really good of you, Stevie, to help Cindy as much as you do,” Donny said, completely oblivious to the potent undertone in the room.

“He is a very good boy. I am allowed to say it even if I am his mother, right?” Wendy said.

Ch 82: Looking Forward

“Thanks for coming to my game, Dad,” Stevie said, giving his father a huge hug. “Come to the next one, okay?”

“Looking forward to it, Buddy. Love you,” Jeffery said, holding on a bit longer than Stevie might have wished, especially in front of his friend.

“Love you, too,” Stevie said and he quickly jumped into the car beside Cindy.

Jeffery stared at the two kids in the backseat for a minute, his fists stuffed into his front pockets.  How he longed to be going home with them. He then shifted his gaze to Wendy.  How he wished he could go home to her bed!

“Jeffery, may I have a word before we go?” Wendy asked.

 “Yes,” he said on automatic.

Wendy moved toward Jeffery’s pickup and he followed. He stood on pins and needles waiting for her to say something, but all she did for about a minute was look at her shoes and kick at the gravel.

“Wendy, what is it?” he said, anxiously. How much worse could this situation be anyway? Would she now ask for a divorce?

Ch81: Biggest Mistake of Your Life

Wendy’s first instinct was to push Jeffery away, shocked as she was to being kissed most ardently and held so closely, right there on the bleachers in front of the Skylerton middle school’s soccer field. The shock wore off quickly, however. How could it not? This was right, this was how it should be.

Oh, how Wendy missed being held like this, kissed like this, loved like this. She clung to Jeffery fervently kissing him back. Her fingers tangled in his hair drawing him closer until she thought she would melt right into him…a part of her did. 

She forgot all else. They both did. The crowd moved about them, alternately cheering the winners of the game and lamenting the losers, but Wendy and Jeffery noticed none of this. They were in their own world.

“Um…I’ll go find Stevie,” Cindy said, slipping past the kissing couple and weaving through slow moving parents and lingering kids to get down off the bleachers and onto the field.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. and Mrs…oh, wait, isn’t that Wendy Meadows now? But this is strange. Aren’t you supposed to be separated? I’m all confused.”

Ch80: Pivotal Point

Jeffery had been watching the game—okay, only some of it. Mostly he stole glances at his beloved wife.  Just like Wendy and unknown to him, his mind had drifted back in time—to the exact same time, in fact. It was, to Jeffery—and to Wendy if you bothered to ask her-- the pivotal point in their lives—the point at which they fell irrecoverably in love. 

For a solid month before that day, however, Jeffery had begged and pleaded, needled and bugged Dawn to please, please, please introduce him to her new best friend, the sassy southern belle who everyone was talking about and wanted to get to know--some more ardently than others, but none so much so as Jeffery. Finally, after the spectacular win over Skylerton’s junior varsity football team, Dawn gave him the best gift any friend could.  That was the day he first met and spoke to the love of his life, Wendy Meadows.

Ch79 Something Bittersweet

“Cindy, would you mind taking this to Stevie. He hates plain water and I know he’s dying of thirst,” Jeffery said, holding out a bright blue sports drink bottle.

“Okay,” she eagerly said. She then ran down the bleacher steps and sprinted to the goal post where Stevie and his team were resting and listening to the coach at half time.

“She’s quick to please,” he said handing Wendy a box of Cracker Jacks.

She stared at the box and an unaccountably bittersweet feeling swept over her. “You didn’t have to get this for me, Jeffery.”

“Sure I did. It’s tradition. Since Stevie was this high on the U-6 team, “ he said holding his hand three feet off the floor, “We’ve shared a box while he played.”

“Perhaps it’s time for new traditions,” she replied, giving back the unopened box.

Ch78: Sweet Sixteen

Cindy started at the beginning. She told Wendy that when she and Steve entered school that day everyone assumed they were now going out, mostly because Steve followed her to her locker, to Spanish class, to Math class and they even had lunch together.

“We’re like…best friends now…kinda,” Cindy said, blushing slightly. “But…I don’t know why everyone thinks we’re like…you know…boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s because Stevie doesn’t usually hang out with girls unless he’s romantically interested in them. That’s gotta tell you something,” Wendy replied. 

 “But you don’t like Stevie like that?”

“I…uh…I like him a little,” Cindy said, again trying for casual, but failing miserably.

Wendy hid her smile. “Well, I know he likes you,” she said.

“You really think so?”

Ch77 Make My Dreams Come True

“I’ll take it!” Wendy said excitedly.

“Don’t you think you ought to ask your sister first?” Donny said following her from the dirty back room to the even messier front half. “It is for her, after all.”

“Please! If I left it to May, it’ll never get done. I’ll just get it for her.”

“Wendy, there’s more to it than that,” he said. “There is the lease to be signed and she’s the one who has to do that, not you.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s for her business. If you sign it, you would be responsible for it whether or not you got her to move here.”

“No worries there. She’ll come when I tell her I have the perfect spot and then we can switch it to her name.”

“Not that easy, Wendy. The person who is going to be renting the space has to sign the lease. That’s how it works. And it doesn’t matter that she’s your sister. You’re going to have to get her to come up and see it for herself, and if she likes it she can take it.”

Ch76: I could kiss you!

“I could kiss you!” Donny shouted.

He had just waved goodbye to the Escaleras…the very happy soon-to-be-new-owners of the house Donny had just shown them. Yes, the very same couple who thumbed their uppity noses at every house they were shown thus far. Only thing different this time was Donny left the selling primarily to Wendy.

The Escaleras finding this house irrisistable was all due to Wendy’s useful prattle as they wandered throughout the house. She couldn’t help spot the deformities of the house, all that made it a bad choice for her sister and commenting on them.

 Such were her mutterings: