Separate Lives Pt. 03

"What's wrong?" she said sorrowfully. "Did I do something wrong?" she asked plaintively.

"No, baby girl," I answered softly, "you didn't do anything wrong at all." She looked at me for a long moment. Then she gave me a hug and started patting the back of my shoulder with her tiny hand.

"You don't have to be sad, Uncle Daddy," she said in her child's voice. She pulled back in my arms and covered her little mouth with both hands. She giggled.

"I called you Uncle Daddy," she said as if sharing the silliest joke in the world. I couldn't help but chuckle along with her. I kissed her cheek. She looked doubtfully at me for a second.

"Don't you want to kiss me like Uncle Cal does baby Jeanie?" she asked. I nodded. With a pleased look on her face, she leaned in to give me a quick peck on the lips. I couldn't help it now. My throat was choked tight and my manly eyes were betraying me with even more tears. I had to turn away and clear my throat several times before I could face everyone again.

"Ohhhhhhhh," Courtney said, her young voice brimming with excitement. Her eyes were dancing. "I gotta go tell Ben and Li'l Cal…and Jeanie," she said enthusiastically. She started squirming in my arms. "Let me down Unh…Daddy…please?" she asked sweetly. I did and she ran toward the back of the house.

"BEN…CAL…GUESS WHAT? UNCLE RONNIE IS MY DADDY!" she shouted. She hadn't made it out of the house, nor was she anywhere near her playmates when she started yelling. We could hear her repeating her news over and over at the top of her lungs all the way across the big back yard. Cassie had deserted her mother's arms a second or two after Courtney left mine. Cassie ran after her sister to share it with the other children. A moment later, she tore back around the doorway and ran up to me.

"Kiss," she demanded. I dropped to both knees and gathered her small body in my arms and squeezed her tightly for a moment, then gave her a quick kiss as I had her sister. She wiggled free and ran for the door, screeching happily the whole way. I stood up, watching her until she disappeared outside. I turned back to Sherrie. She was standing there quietly with a little smile on her face. She stepped into my open arms and we held each other, rocking back and forth, for a long while.

"Ron…honey," she said at length, "I'm sorry for not telling you, but things kept getting in the way…and I couldn't find the right time…sometimes I was going to and…like today…the phone rang or something—!" She stopped because I was pressing two fingers to her lips. I replaced my fingers with my lips.

"It's all right," I told her. "I may spank you later for not letting me know…but it's all right now." She choked up a little. Then she bent down and picked up her purse from where she'd dropped it when Cassie jumped in her arms.

"Ron…it's all here," she said quickly. "I got DNA tests done so you wouldn't think—." I had to shut her up with another kiss. She was trying to shove the bundle of papers she hauled from her purse into my hands.

"You keep these," I told her. "I don't need to see them." Another kiss was in order and delivered. The sound of someone clearing a throat brought us out of it.

"Hey, Ron," Cal said. "Ya'll okay?" he asked. I nodded, snaking my arm around Sherrie's waist.

"I have two daughters, Cal," I told him wonderingly. He snorted.

"Yeah, how 'bout that?" he said irreverently. "What do you think of Sherrie's young "roommates," huh?" He grinned at nothing in particular. "I don't know why it was any big surprise to anyone," he added. "Heck, anyone looking at the three of you together could tell they were yours."

Melissa swatted at him with her left hand. With her right, she was hauling him in close for a hug. She'd been there, crying silently the whole time.

"Awwwwww, honey," he said consolingly. "You've been wanting this for months; you don't have to be crying like that." All the time, he was hugging her tight and patting her back with his left hand. He didn't quite know what to do with the long-handled spatula in his right.

Abruptly, I knew Cal was right. I'd thought the twins reminded me of someone when I first met them and it was true. Around the eyes, across the bridge of the nose, my daughters looked so much like my sister that it was uncanny. And now…now that I knew…I could see everything else about them was totally Sherrie. How could I have not seen? I shook my head in consternation.

"Men," sobbed Melissa, "are so dumb sometimes."

********

After we ate, we played six different kinds of games with the kids and then turned them loose to amuse themselves while we played cards. Cassie and Courtney came back every so often just to touch my hand, my face, whatever was within reach, and grin at me—just making sure I was still there, I guess.

When they came back together one time, hand in hand, I gathered them up in my arms and sat them on my lap. After I got hugs and kisses from both, I told them that I was never going to leave them again. When I used the magic phrase "I promise," they understood and didn't come back so often. They kept watching me, though, from wherever they were in the yard. They were probably wondering about the next step.

Well, I had a good idea what I wanted for that step. I was pretty sure I could make it happen too. Well, almost sure.

In the heat of the afternoon, the children were put down on sleeping mats for a short nap. While the kids napped, the four adults sat talking quietly in the shade of the old pecan tree at the far end of their huge backyard. After a while, Cal and Melissa went inside to check on the children, leaving Sherrie and me alone for the first time in several hours. We looked at each other for a long moment.

"Take a walk?" I asked. She nodded.

When she was standing, I pulled her close and kissed her. The tinge of concern on her face disappeared. We walked slowly around until we were in the deep shade of a cottonwood that marked the other rear corner of the yard. There, I backed her up against the trunk and kissed her long and deep. I had my hands on her waist; her arms were slung comfortably around my neck.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked simply. She sighed. She was ready for the question, as I knew she would be. I had a couple of ideas, but I wanted her to tell me what her reasons had been.

"I almost did when we talked that time just before we got divorced," she said. "But later I didn't because I was being selfish again," she said quietly. That surprised me, but this seemed to be a day for such things. I cocked my head to one side but didn't say anything.

"I wanted you to come back because you wanted to," she explained. "And if we started getting back together, I didn't want you to think I was trying to pressure you." I thought about that for a moment, and then nodded. She looked a little taken aback.

"To me, it's like when I was trying to get you to cut up that photograph last night," I explained. "With the kids, you were afraid that somewhere down the line, I would come to resent you…or them…for tying me down with the dreaded "responsibilities," right?" She nodded.

"Well," I mused, "being a weekend father…or a father every few weekends. Heck, it might have been months between visits and that wouldn't have done them much good. The disruption in their lives would have been rough…on all of us." I thought for a few moments. "I guess it was for the best, but I still feel a sense of loss when I think about the things I missed. Sometimes a lesser pain has to be accepted to avoid a greater one, huh? Is that what you were thinking?"

"Something like that," she answered. "Close enough," she added. "But mainly I wanted you to love me for me. I thought that if you couldn't do that, then we weren't going to be a real family and, well…that would hurt my babies even worse in the long run."

"Yeah, I know what you're talking about. But…we are going to talk about this a lot someday," I told her. "I'm not sure yet that I'm not going to spank you real good for it; but for now, I think you probably were right." She kissed me tenderly.

"I knew you'd understand," she said. "I was going to tell you when they were four, anyway," she added.

"Hmmmmmm," I said, trying to juggle dates in my mind. "You were cutting it awfully short, weren't you? Isn't their birthday in nine days?" She nodded.

"I figured you'd work about as fast as you did when we first met," she said teasingly. "Back then you had me whisked off my feet and into bed in three weeks flat."

I chuckled. We'd talked about that last night. What we had done after we first met hadn't struck us as odd at the time. The three weeks back then, between meeting and first making love, had seemed like an eternity.

"You know me so well," I whispered. Then I remembered what I'd brought with me.

"We haven't said much about the future," I said, "but we need to now; there's two little girls to think of." She smiled warmly, contentedly.

"Honey, we've got all the time—"

I shushed her with a quick kiss. I was learning it was a fast way of silencing her…fun too. I pulled my hips back to get to my front pocket. She couldn't see me fumble the little box open and pick out one of its contents without looking myself.

"Uh…Sherrie," I said softly. "I brought this with me—I was going to ask you if you'd take it anyway…but with the girls…well, it's just that much more important to me." I took her left hand in mine and gently pushed the engagement ring I'd bought for her so many years ago back into place on her ring finger.

"Sherrie, honey," I whispered, "will you marry me?" She looked up at me disbelievingly, an expression of profound shock on her face. Then her eyes were awash, the tears coming all at once. She tried to say something but couldn't get it out.

"Will you?" I asked. She tried again but couldn't speak. She nodded firmly, even violently. Suddenly, her mouth was on mine, her tongue searching out mine and weaving a twirling, flicking dance with it.

"Yes," she finally murmured in my ear when we left off kissing to breathe.

We kissed again and walked back to the house. Melissa and Cal had just come outside. Melissa watched us climb the little slope up to the patio with our arms around each other. She smiled happily. Melissa was about to say something when Sherrie stuck out her left hand palm down.

Melissa shrieked her surprise. It made Cal jump and he spilled part of his beer in his lap. Looking up, he saw the glint from the diamond on Sherrie's ring finger and immediately knew what had happened. He smiled and gave me a quick thumbs up.

"Durn it, 'Lissa," he complained while he examined the big wet spot on the front of his pants. "If it ain't one thing, it's another." But he was grinning broadly.

********

I took my fiancé and our two daughters home to our new house that evening. The girls slept on air mattresses in their new room pending the rental of a truck to get all of theirs and Sherrie's stuff moved. They thought this was about the neatest thing in the world until about 2:00 AM when a thunderstorm rolled across town. Sherrie and I woke up to hear two little girls crying down the hall because they couldn't figure out where they were and they were scared.

They slept between Sherrie and me for the rest of the night and I know I spent half the night just watching their sweet, angelic faces as they slept. In the morning, we played tickling, wiggling and, most of all, giggling games until we had to get out of bed for a late brunch.

Over the next few months, I was introduced to the whole gamut of father and daughter interactions, such as temper tantrums, fussiness, getting them to bed on time, reading books at bedtime, having them fall asleep sitting on my lap, hugs and kisses galore…you name it, we did it.

Sherrie and I had to learn to close and lock our bedroom door on those occasions when we wanted to make love. I'd never had children around and she'd had no lovers while we were divorced, so it was something new for both of us. She laughed for weeks at how I scrambled to get under the covers the first time we heard little voices getting closer down the hallway. I just didn't think the sight of my hairy ass was something they should have to deal with at the tender age of four. Well, anyway, we also worked out an agreement with Melissa and Cal to watch each other's kids for a night or weekend every so often. Mommies and Daddies needed a little time alone together too.

Oh, I'd like to say that it was all honey and roses, but the truth is Sherrie and I had a lot of things still left to work out and some of it was hard work. Sherrie had problems dealing with the fact that I'd had a long-term relationship with Karen. She understood it was while we were either on a court-recognized separation or actually divorced, but it still bothered her. The ritual cleansing we'd done in the shower the first night we'd made love since I came home helped, but it didn't completely eradicate her feelings about Karen. I had trouble seeing her point but I didn't dispute the fact that it was a heartfelt one.

And then, one afternoon, Sherrie and I pulled in the driveway seconds apart and I happened to look down from my SUV into her car. For just a split second, the image of the day I'd seen her and her lover at a downtown stoplight came back to me. I shook it off, mostly, but I was shocked something that long ago could come back strong enough to give me cold chills.

In the end, we recognized we needed to get some counseling to help us put everything back in perspective. The counselor helped us put the man I'd caught her with and Karen in the same place where we put Sherrie's boyfriends and my girlfriends before we met. They were behind a door in our minds labeled "don't go there" and we found we could respect those boundaries. It worked, but it took some time.

We had some trust issues left to resolve—not many, but some. Sherrie understood it would be a long time before I trusted her as unreservedly as I had in our first marriage, but she also understood that I would work on getting to that point just as hard as she was laboring to assure me of its legitimacy.

It was a difficult and sometimes painful, process reforging the trust between us but we knew wewere going to do it. There were no options we would accept. We had made an irrevocable commitment to each other with our ritual cleansing and that, plus our children, were too precious to let what we had together die. We worked hard getting "us" back on track.

********

Seven months after I asked her to marry me again, our four-year-old twin daughters padded barefooted and in satiny white dresses down the aisle between two rows of hardwood pews. They were tasked with scattering rose petals here and there. They did it with remarkable self-confidence and energy. Courtney, in particular, felt it her duty to see that there was no area larger than a square yard without at least one petal in it. Sometimes that required backtracking to make sure the coverage was adequate.

Every so often, some smiling face would catch Cassie's eye and she would solemnly tell him or her "My Mommy and Daddy are getting married."

And so we were.

End