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“Grandma said we’re going to stay here forever. Is that true?” she asked, as though she couldn’t really believe it.
“That’s true. Your grandma wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Yes, she would,” Annabelle said, her face dropping.
“All right. I would not lie to you, and you have a home with me forever,” she said with confidence, brushing over the painful truth that her grandma had lied to her.
Of course, there were times when an adult was physically incapable of keeping their word. Sometimes things came up that they just couldn’t anticipate, and kids sometimes were very harsh in their judgments.
Mabel knew all of this from the teenagers that she’d helped Lark to raise, but still... It was sad to hear a child say that she couldn’t trust her grandma to tell her the truth.
“Miss Mabel!” Caren said as she popped out of the back of the car and came running to Mabel, hugging her the same way Annabelle had.
Bernice was always the one who hung back a little; she was a bit more shy and more reticent than her more outgoing sisters. She was the serious one and the one who reminded Mabel the most of herself, since she was quiet but thoughtful and seemed to take everything in with her big brown eyes.
She hugged Caren and waited for Bernice to come around the car. Even Bernice’s usually stoic features were shining, although her movements were not nearly as quick and excited as her siblings.
“Bernice! It’s so good to see you too. Can you give me a hug?”
Bernice was not nearly as demonstrative either. Mabel knew she wasn’t allowed to have favorites with her children, but if she were, Bernice would be the one, just because she seemed to need a little bit extra, even though she was the one who seemed to be the most self-sufficient and independent.
Maybe it was because Mabel could see so much of herself in her.
“So this is the man you married,” Janice said as she got slowly out of the car.
She was not quite sixty, but she looked ten years older. A hard life would do that to a person, and Mabel felt bad for her and grateful as well, that she was willing to do a good thing for the girls. Although, she had acted like they were more of a nuisance to her than anything. So maybe she was just happy to get rid of them. Mabel wasn’t sure.
Then her words registered, and Mabel remembered James, her husband.
“Oh my goodness, girls. I forgot all about Mr. James. I got married yesterday. And this is my husband. He’s going to be living with us as well, of course, and if you feel like you want, he’ll be your dad.”
She kinda stumbled a little. Because the girls had never actually had a father that she knew of. They’d never called anyone dad. James wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes, but a parent could be a touchy thing, and not every child was eager to give an adult a name that meant so much.
Mabel might be wrong, but she figured Bernice was probably the one that would be the slowest to accept him.
As she figured, Bernice hung back as Mabel turned slightly toward James and introduced them.
“Hey there, girls. Mabel told me so much about you, and I have to admit I’m nervous, because I want you to like me.”
James admitting that right off seemed to melt Annabelle’s heart, and she said, “I’m sure we’re going to like you. Miss Mabel married you, so you must be pretty special. I didn’t know that she was ever going to get married. I thought she’d just be a vet all of her life and never have a boyfriend. Let alone a husband.”
Annabelle always said whatever was on her mind. She was the most outspoken of the girls.
James grinned. “I guess I’m one lucky fella then, since she not only decided she wanted a boyfriend, she decided she wanted a husband.”
“And you’ve been an excellent husband,” Mabel had to add.
James looked up, gratitude in his eyes, that she would give her stamp of approval to him, to help ease the way and encourage the girls to like him as she did, even if it had only been a day.
“Is this your house?” Caren asked, looking up at the big white house beside them.
“It’s actually James’s house,” Mabel said, hoping that would endear him to them even more.
“That worked out pretty well for you. Marry the man and get a house,” Janice said, and her comment sounded a little bit snide. Not that she was jealous, but just that sometimes life seemed to work out for some people and not for others. Mabel was sure that was true, but sometimes life worked out because you worked hard at making it work out.
And sometimes it didn’t work out because a person made bad choices that they couldn’t recover from.
Sometimes people were just handed a bad deck. Still, the point of life was not to win, necessarily, but to make the best of what a person had been given.
