Page 28 of Calling the Play


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The four-year-old little redhead in the chair at the table nervously fingered the one long lock of hair that remained hanging from her head.

“What have you done to Corrine’s hair?” Lorna cried as she stalked over and carefully took the scissors from our daughter.

“She came to my salon, Mommy,” Caroline explained, her bottom lip trembling. “I just wanted to make her look pretty.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and I gulped, slowly moving backward.

I hated it when any of my girls cried.

“Cole O’Hara,” Lorna growled. “Don’t you dare take another step.”

Busted.

I cleared my throat and tried to look stern. “Caroline, sweetheart, what have we told you about playing with the scissors?”

“Pwetty!” Another little redhead came running into the room from the jack and jill bathroom attached to it. Cara twirled around, then fell on her bottom and laughed hysterically. “I so pwetty!” The two-year-old jumped up and pointed at her head proudly. “Right, Daddy?

Son of a bitch.

Her copper locks were chopped short on the left side of her head, and the hair on the right was cut in a jagged diagonal line, the back being longer than the front.

“Of course you do, baby,” I told her.

Lorna looked horrified but forced a smile onto her face. “You both look…um, very pretty. But Mommy will have to finish for Caroline since she shouldn’t be using scissors.”

“Especially not to cut her sisters’ hair,” I said, giving Caroline a hard stare.

“Sorry, Mommy and Daddy,” Caroline mumbled. “I just wanted to be like Mommy. She makes everybody look so beautiful.”

Lorna sighed and knelt beside our eldest daughter, pulling her into her arms. “How about this? Next weekend, we can play salon, and I will bring some dolls to work on and help you learn to cut hair.”

“Really, Mommy?” Caroline squealed, dropping the scissors to clap her hands.

“Really,” Lorna agreed, hugging her softly.

“But,” I interjected firmly, “you still disobeyed us by playing with those scissors. So you’ll have to do a few extra chores this week. I’m very disappointed, sweetheart.”

Caroline hung her head and sniffled. “Okay. I promise not to do it again, Daddy.”

“Thumb deal?” I asked, squatting down and holding up my thumb.

When Caroline had been little, I’d made deals with her to get her to do things she didn’t want to do. And any time she did something I was proud of—which was often—I’d give her a thumbs-up.

One day, when she was three, she asked me to promise her something, and I said, “Deal.” She’d toddled up to me and put her thumb up. “Thumb deal?” she’d asked. I chuckled and put my thumb up as well.

“Thumb deal, I guess,” I’d responded.

She’d nodded firmly and wrapped her thumb around mine, looking completely solemn, as if I’d just made a blood oath.

Now, she brightened and pranced over to me, wrapping our digits together again and exclaiming, “Thumb deal!”

I pulled her in for a hug, careful not to jostle my sleeping son.

“Okay, go get your overnight bags, girls. Grandma and Grandpa will be here in a half hour to pick you up.”

My mom and stepdad had retired to Florida a few years before I met Lorna, but after our wedding, they’d announced that they were moving back. They were incredible grandparents, and we loved having them close by. Especially when they were taking the little ones overnight the same day that Lorna got the okay from the doctor to have sex again. Not that they were aware of why we’d asked them to have a sleepover.

An hour later, the older four kids were off being spoiled by their grandparents, and our infant son was fast asleep in his crib.

I brushed a kiss over his fuzzy head and grabbed the baby monitor before shutting his door and practically running to our bedroom.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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