The Pink Dinosaur’s Father
Copyright© 2025 by OmegaPet-58
Chapter 3: Thanksgiving
MIKE
A few weeks later, the five of us gathered for Thanksgiving. We were well on the way to merging our two households into one, and my mother was our special guest for the holiday. She was enjoying a warm relationship with Grace, as close as the one she once had with Lindsey years ago when my daughter was still a baby.
A few days earlier, we learned that Willie Carson was taking a plea bargain for a 15-year sentence, meaning he might be out on parole in about eight years.
For Grace and me, we were in a process—that’s what we called it. Our circumstances quickly drove the two of us together in practical ways. We decided to find a house we could share, reducing our cost of living as joint tenants. Tricia and Lisa were eager to share a bedroom, while Jon thrived in finally having the “boy’s bedroom” he always wanted.
The place we found had another bedroom that we planned to use eventually as a guest room for when my mother came to visit. But for now, that bedroom is where I slept, and Grace used the master.
Why did we choose this arrangement? Grace and I had many discussions together about our future, including our intimate lives. We’d come together in the middle of a terrible situation with Grace’s ex, and we had no chance to get to know each other the “normal” way.
Thrown together by expediency, Grace and I missed out on the usual stages of a relationship’s development. By that, I mean restaurant meals, movies, travel, picnics, concerts—all the ways people learn about each other’s preferences and peculiarities and how they can make each other happy partners.
The two of us were traditional and sentimental, even though we were fully part of our contemporary tech world. I explained our thinking to my mom at Thanksgiving.