“Paradise is a place, not a name,” Lottie answered.
“I’ll try to make the story as short as possible,” Knox said. “I have a twin brother, Tripp, and we were adopted. My mother had an older son, Brodie, who’s about two years older than us. He doesn’t belong to my father and only found out who his biological father was a few months ago. Just before my mother passed away, she told all of us about our biological fathers. Mine and Tripp’s was no longer living, but Brodie’s father was alive and well in Spanish Fort, Texas, living at the Paradise,” Knox answered and took a sip of his coffee.
“They came to Spanish Fort to the Paradise where Joe Clay and Mary Jane live to see Brodie’s blood father and decided to stay in the town,” Lottie continued. “Joe Clay is retired military, and Mary Jane writes romance novels as Mary Jane Simmons. They adopted all three of the Callahan brothers into the already large family.”
“I’ve read Mary Jane Simmons books for years. My favorites are the ones about the ladies who worked in the old brothel…” Darlene clamped a hand over her mouth. “That’s the Paradise, isn’t it? The one that she wrote about and where she lives.”
“Yep, and if you read her biography, you know that she raised seven daughters there,” Knox answered. “She and Joe Clay are in the process of adopting Ivy, a teenage girl whoneeded a home. So, the short version is that there are seven, soon to be eight daughters, seven sons-in-law, and my two brothers are newly married, so there are two daughters-in-law. Plus, a handful of grandkids. That means I have a very, very large family. Maybe someday you can come up to the Paradise and meet them.”
“Do you think Mary Jane might sign some of my books, or would that be intruding?” Darlene asked.
“Not at all,” Knox answered and pushed back his chair. “She’d be glad to sign them for you. Looks like my crew is ready to go to work. Nice visiting with y’all. We’ll be putting down the sill plates this morning. Why don’t y’all stop by? We could even let Zeke hold the plate or drill in a bolt so he can say he helped build his new home.”
“I’d like that,” Zeke said. “Hurry up, Darlene. I want to brag to all the others that I had a hand in building our cabin.”
Knox stood up, took a couple of steps, and then blew Lottie a kiss. “You don’t have to rush too much. We’ve still got to cut the boards.”
She caught the kiss and pretended to shove it into the pocket of her bibbed overalls.
“Now that one is a keeper,” Zeke whispered. “Don’t let him get away.”
Lottie’s mother shot a look across the table that made her feel even worse than she already did. “He is a wonderful guy, Daddy.”
“I can see that,” Zeke said. “You ready to take us on thetour of Jack’s cabin and then show us all around this place? Until last night, we had only seen pictures and mock-ups of what the cabins will look like when they are finished.”
Darlene got to her feet and looped her arm into Zeke’s. “And we decided that the pictures didn’t do justice to any part of this place. I can’t wait to plant roses around my house.”
“And I’m planning to till up a garden on part of my land. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at growing vegetables. If the apples make good, we might even make our own pies for Thanksgiving,” Zeke said.
Lottie followed behind them. “I guess this means y’all are pretty well finished with traveling the world?”
“Absolutely,” Darlene answered. “This cruise will be our last. We are ready to settle down and grow old together.”
Lottie giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Zeke asked.
“I didn’t think y’all would ever get tired of traveling,” Lottie answered. “But since you have, I’m glad you are moving here. Uncle Jack told me why you named the place that, but it sure doesn’t go with the cabin idea.”
“No, but we all loved the name,” Zeke said when they entered the first cabin with only the framework finished. “Would you look at this, Darlene? It’s the bare bones of what our new place will look like.”
“I can see now that I’m going to have to size down a lot,” she said as she wandered from what would soon be two bedrooms into an open living space for the living room, dining room, and kitchen. “But I love it. The kids can bring theirtrailers when they come visit since Jack already has places set up for that kind of thing. The second bedroom can be my hobby room where I’m going to make quilts.”
Good Lord! Her parents who had been city people her whole life were going back to nature.
“And we can use the rec room for meals when the family is here,” Zeke mused. “I’ll need a shed out back for my gardening equipment and lawn mower.”
“It’s all going to be perfect,” Darlene agreed.
Lottie hoped her mother was right. That her parents lived to be a hundred years old and died happy right there at Swan Song Estates. After the epiphany she had the night before, she sure intended to spend more time with them—even if they upset her at times—than she had in the past.
“What do y’all think?” Jack came through what would be the back door. “Sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I just dropped off the doughnuts and hurried down to the lumberyard to put in an order in time to get it delivered tomorrow morning.”
Darlene gave her brother a brief hug. “No problem. We love all of it. The place. The cabins. The lake. And especially the room between the places. I didn’t realize how much land two acres covered.”
Lottie’s mind wandered off to think about the section of land that Knox had bought—six hundred and forty acres—and how many houses would fit on that big of a place. Then it jumped track to think about moving to Spanish Fort to what Knox said about having connections for her to work in that area. She would be close enough to her parents to drivedown on Sunday morning, go to church with them, and then spend the afternoon visiting all her relatives.
Right away, she banished the idea from her head. She probably couldn’t make enough money to survive, much less be running back and forth from Spanish Fort to Swan Song Estates.
