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“You’ll never take me alive,” she says in a pirate voice and then jumps into the enclosed corkscrew slide until she is spat out with all the grace of an adult using a child’s play set.
“Hello.” I laugh as Harper lies at the bottom of the slide and grunts in pain.
I imagine she’ll need a chiropractor after that stunt.
“Oh… hi,” she says in surprise, picking her injured body off the slide and limping toward me. “You made it.”
“Of course, we wouldn’t miss it.”
I’m a little confused as to why she thought we might not come.
“After last night, I half expected Ryker to lock you up in that house of his and never let you out.” She snickers.
I can see why she would think that considering he locked us in a bathroom at the bar. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d decided to stay in bed all day.
“Yeah, well, we discussed it and we figured we had to eat sometime,” I say sarcastically.
She chuckles at my joke. My chest fills with a little pride in getting Harper to laugh.
“Breakfast is ready. Your mom wanted me to tell you,” I tell her.
“Yum, ok. The kids will be happy to hear it,” she says, and then turns around, putting her hands on either side of her mouth, and yells, “Food is ready! The last one to the kitchen walks the plank of doom after breakfast.”
She watches over her shoulder to make sure the kids heard her and are all getting off the play set and then she follows me back into the kitchen.
A few minutes later, the kitchen is packed with noisy bodies all moving around the space. People grabbing drinks or something out of the fridge and others working through the well-thought-out buffet line.
We eat while twenty different conversations are taking place at once. It’s loud as everyone talks over one another and children run around our feet… and I swear I’m holding three conversations all at once, but this right here... this is bliss.
A completely different kind of bliss to meeting Jerrin’s triumphant gaze as he wins another round of poker. Or the bliss of sitting with my mother at her kitchen table, talking and laughing and sharing secrets late into the night.
But bliss all the same.
After breakfast, I walk in to find that all four brothers have cleaned the entire kitchen. Ryker and Austin finish hand washing the last plates and Camden and Everett are putting away condiments and wiping down the countertops.
I have to give it to Annie, she trained them well.
Camden finishes putting away the salt and pepper and then walks past me to the dining room where the rest of the family are sitting.
“All participants of the sledding competition,” he starts. “It’s time to head out to Haynes Hill.”
“Haynes Hill?” I turn to ask Everett, who's the closest to me.
“It’s the hill in the backyard. Our dad coined it Haynes Hill to make it more exciting.”
“Did it work?” I ask him as he finishes wiping down the island next to me.
“Dad made everything more exciting.” He nods with his head down, finishing his task.
“I wish I could have met him,” I say.
“He would have loved you,” Everett says back, looking up at me for a moment.
That simple statement. So minor—so few words, but the impact of it hits me. The thought that Ryker’s father would have loved me even though my father didn’t is something I never knew I needed to hear.
I can feel Ryker’s eyes on me from the sink. He heard what his brother said.
Ryker’s eyes lock on mine, and he nods in agreement to Everett’s statement. I swallow down the emotion that wants to show itself in the form of moved tears.
