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“The waitlist is six years long. We were lucky for Sophia. Someone I knew fell off and my dad made a sizable donation, so we were able to sneak her in. Olivia, on the other hand, I’m afraid she may have to go to public preschool.”
Lila next to her gasped as if that was the worst idea she’d ever heard. “Wouldn’t you think of the Montessori school at least?”
“There’s a wait list there too. Sadly, Olivia wasn’t planned, so we will have to take what we can get.”
I looked at Anna with my best WTF face and she responded by mouthing, “I’m sorry.”
Noah, finally having calmed down the girls, turned back to me and said, “You didn’t answer my question, Levi. Are you wanting to start a family?”
“I honestly don’t know.” And that was the God’s honest truth at that point. Worrying about getting them into prep preschools and whatnot had never even occurred to me, nor did it sound enjoyable in the slightest.
“Well, you have some time,” Noah said. “I mean, Anna isn’t getting much younger but–”
“We have plenty of time,” Anna interjected, her voice dry. “If we decided to have kids, that is. Which we haven’t even discussed because we just started dating, Noah.”
“Well, you know as soon as I saw Candace, I knew I wanted to put babies in her.”
“Eww,” Anna responded. “That was a little too much information for me, big brother.”
Candace and Noah shared a look of love between them, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Sophia loading up another spoonful of mashed potatoes.
Before she could hurl it at her sister, I reached over and asked her, “Hey, can I have this? I’ll show you a magic trick.”
The little girl looked at me with wide eyes, and I thought she might start screaming. But she surprisingly handed the spoon of mashed potatoes to me. I cleaned out the potatoes with a napkin and said, “Now, watch this.”
I moved my hands around, held a napkin up, and with a switch of my hands, made the spoon “disappear”. I removed the napkin and Sophia’s eyes lit up.
“Wow!”
Olivia was also staring, as were the other children, all of them with big, curious eyes. One shouted, “How did you do that?”
“It’s magic,” I said with a smile. “I’ll make it reappear if you promise not to use it to throw mashed potatoes at your sister.”
Sophia nodded vigorously.
I did the same thing with the napkin, and with a switcheroo of my hands, the spoon appeared seemingly out of nowhere
“WOW!”
I handed the spoon back to her and she stared at it for a long time before resuming eating.
“You’re good with kids, Levi,” Mrs. Berkshire said, beaming proudly. “Very good.”
“I have a lot of siblings, and now nieces and nephews. I’ve picked up some tricks over the years,” I said with a shrug.
“So about your brother, Dylan…” Mr. Berkshire started to say.
“Stop questioning him, Dad. He’s not here to be interrogated,” Anna said.
“I’m just curious since he left the business and moved away. I was curious what happened there. Family feud?”
“Not at all,” I said.
“Dad, stop,” Anna warned. “I love you, but please, can we let Levi enjoy his meal.”
“Fine,” her father said dryly.
The rest of dinner went pretty smoothly, and as soon as dessert finished, the children seemed to be wiggling from their chairs. When they were free to leave, I found all five of them by my side.
