Chapter 71

We got Myra cleaned up and she started to leave. Laurie asked where Annette was and she told her the kids were down in the car. That meant getting a sweater on Laurie and going down to the car so she could say hello to her friend. Billy seemed happy to see me and Bozo. Yes, Bozo had to go down, too. And Posie.

When we got back upstairs, Daddy and Mom were still talking at the kitchen table. I got the pot of coffee and topped everyone off. Again, I got the 'can't believe this coffee' comments.

Daddy said, That's the one you had for dinner last night?"

"That's her."

"How did it go with her kids?"

"It went fine."

"Come on, Jill. Three of them around Laurie's age?"

"Look around here, Father. The kitchen is still standing. There aren't any pieces of broken dishes on the floor, no major stains and there aren't any holes in the wall. It went fine. Actually, they are both very well behaved kids. If anything, Myra's too tough on them. They had a chance to breathe last night and enjoy their meal, as did Myra. As a matter of fact, you'll get to witness their behavior next Thursday."

"I won't get a chance to see much. They'll be at the kids' table."

"Not unless you want to sit at the kids' table with them. They're still kids, not angels. They do require some supervision." I looked at Mom. "Although it might be a good idea to put some plastic on the floor near Billy. It probably wouldn't hurt to do it with all three of them."

She said, "How did you work it out for dinner? Did Myra watch all of them?"

"Oh, no! She took Laurie, I did Annette and Jack was in charge of Billy. I thought I was going to have to hold Myra down for a bit when Jack let Billy shove a hot dog covered in ketchup into his face. He got it all over his cheek and Jack let him eat the rest of his dinner that way. But Billy let Jack clean him up without a fight, which is unheard of around their house, from what I hear."

"I'll bet he appreciated having a man to relate to."

"He did. But he was fine with me, too. I think he likes attention from anyone. He sat on my lap and pretended to play Chutes and Ladders with the girls. And he loved sitting on my lap and pointing at the pictures while I read to them."

"Don't tell me. The Little Train..."

"That Could," we both said together before laughing.

Daddy said, "I swear, you'd think that child would be bored to death with that book by now."

"There are a lot worse messages in children's books these days," I said.

"Don't get me started," Mom answered me. She glanced down at her watch. "Oh, my. I've got to tend to my roast or it will be ruined."

"Anything I can do, Mom?"

"Maybe later. You can help make gravy. And you can bring that coffee pot down with some beans."

"Are you serious? I will if you want me to."

"Heck yes, I'm serious. That will go great with dinner."

"OK. When do you want me down to make the gravy?"

"Oh, that will be just before we eat. Say twenty minutes?"

"OK. I'll see you then."

"I think I'll go down with her and see if I can sneak any previews of dinner," Daddy said, standing up.

"You do and I'll smack your hand," said Mom.

"Are you taking Laurie or do you want me to watch her?"

"Do you mind?"

"Go ahead. I'll see you in twenty minutes."

Jack was going through his files, programming the numbers of the girls he'd done interviews with on his phone.

"I was thinking, Jack. Maybe I could get Charlie to take me shopping while you're doing your shoots tomorrow and I could pick up a laptop for you. I'll take it out of my savings and you can pay me back when you get the money."

"No thanks."

"Come on. I know you're good for it."

"Not interested. First, I want to choose my own laptop. I will love to get your advice while I'm looking, but I want it to be my choice. Second, I am not a government entity. I refuse to go into debt because I think something will happen that will allow me to pay it off. The proper sequence is to earn the money and then purchase something."

"OK, then. How come you let me buy the accounting program for Myra?"

"I didn't say there wouldn't be exceptions. And I appreciate that you were able to help make that happen. I know that the only logical day to do it was yesterday, with the holiday and Liz's pregnancy, not to mention that the sooner we start keeping track of our money, the better. And I do have the money to pay for my part now. I figure the bookkeeping program, the time with Liz and Myra's pay for her time with Liz should come from the corporate kitty, which means 50/50 for the two of us. All the other time Myra's been putting in is part of Jack's Pics. I'll get Myra to work on it early in the week and I'll give you what I owe you after she lets me know what it is."

"OK." Talking about laptops reminded me it had been a while since I checked my email. I went to my desk in the bedroom and booted up.

The first thing I saw was an email from graphinmaniac. It had an attachment and I was all set to delete it. The subject was Test and I decided to see if was junk. It's a good thing I checked it. It was from Mr. Barnhurst, my Excel 101 teacher and the attachment was the test he told me I could do at home to test out of the class. He said to email it to him before Tuesday's class. If he got it early enough to grade, he'd let me know if I had to go to class or not. I opened it up and it looked pretty simple. There was some work to it, but I knew a few shortcuts that would allow me to cut and paste most of the data, saving me hours of data entry. I left it for Sunday, while Jack was out on his shoots.

There were six emails from girls on the team. Most said they were sorry I bashed myself up and hoped I'd get better soon, but every one of them congratulated me, said I really deserved it, they agreed 100%, that kind of thing. Not one said what she was congratulating me about.

The more I read, the more I thought Mr. "We weren't talkin about nuthin" in the living room had something to do with it. I went out but he wasn't there. I found him sitting at the kitchen table, drinking some coffee.

"I'm sorry. I should have offered you some."

"That's OK. I was able to squeeze the filter and get a few drops."

"I can make fresh if you want it."

"No, I'm OK."

"You know, a funny thing just happened."

He got this smug look on his face. "Oh? What was that?"

"I just got a bunch of emails from the girls on the team. And every one of them congratulated me but not one of them happened to mention what for."

"How rude. You'll have to ask them about it at school on Monday."

"No, I don't think I want to wait that long."

"You could call them up."

"No. Daddy told me to take it easy after I hit the boards today. I wouldn't want to risk any damage by dialing too hard."

"What do you suggest, then?"

"I thought maybe you wanted to tell me."

"What makes you think I know anything about whatever it is they're talking about?"

"Oh, I have a pretty good idea you know exactly what they're talking about."

"I'd really have to think about that for a while. Why don't you go check out the volleyball page and see if there's been an update."

"Jack! You know darn well I haven't made any updates to the page since I designed it."

The look on his face got smugger.

It finally got through my thick head that my answer might be on that web page. I ran back to our room and sat down at my desk.

The front page was completely different. Jack had figured out how to bypass the home page and land on the one he must have put up earlier today while I was talking to Daddy.

Two pictures took up most of the page. The top one was a shot of me stretched out on the boards, my hands held together, made into fists. The ball was moving away from them, about 4" off the ground. My face was a study in concentration; that ball was the only thing in my world at the time.

Underneath the picture in huge type, it said, "Jill O'Hara — Highpoint Player of the Year."

The other picture was a shot of the scoreboard as seen from the court. The final score was displayed. The caption for that one was "Highlanders Nudged out of Playoffs by Two Point Loss."

I noticed the hand come up as I rolled the cursor over my picture so I clicked on it. It took me to another new page. The caption from the front page was on top now and the same picture was below it, maybe a third as large as the front page. To the right of it was text. It told how I'd worked with the team to improve them, how I was so single mindedly into the game I actually got suspended for a few days for disagreeing with my coach, how I'd put in my own time to design this web site. There were several other shots of me taken when we originally designed the page and from the two playoff games. There was also one of me napping on the living room floor, using Bozo as a pillow. And another of me sitting on the couch with Laurie between my legs as I brushed her hair. I knew about the original web page shots but I had no idea he'd even taken the others. How he got that one of me doing Laurie's hair, I have no idea. He must have snuck it while he was working at his computer.

There were statements from three girls on the team underneath their pictures, telling how I'd made a difference in their lives in the two seasons I'd been there. Beth had things of her own to say, ending with a statement that she knew I could become an excellent volleyball coach if I wanted to but that I had so much potential, she saw much more challenging things ahead for me. She didn't say anything anyone could point to, but I know she was saying goodbye.

Jack came up behind me and rested his arms on my shoulders. "Find anything interesting?"

"You goober. How did you come up with all this so soon after I dove into the boards this afternoon?"

"I didn't. This has been planned for weeks. Beth called me a couple of days after we got the web page up."

"Where did you learn how to do all this? I don't even know how to do some of this stuff."

"I got together with Mr. Douglas."

"My HTML teacher?"

"Yup. We probably spent three hours putting this together. We hid the pages on the web site. You wouldn't even know they were there and couldn't get to them without your password. I figured they were safe enough since you wouldn't think of looking for something you didn't design. The idea was to post it after we either won the championship or lost in the playoffs. Most of your stuff was already written. Beth and I were talking about what she wanted on the page about the last game. I didn't want to let you in on it because you'd want to update it yourself and would end up ruining everything."

"I haven't even gotten to the page about today's game."

I went back one page and clicked on the picture of the scoreboard. The header was "Congratulations Basset for a Game Well Played." There were several pictures of the game, including one of the two lines of players shaking hands. He'd taken it from his knees, the angle making it look like they were towering over us even more than they actually were. There was that shot of me, saving the spike. Next to it Jack had written how I had been taken out of the game because of my injuries but that that play worked to bring the rest of the team back to life.

I stood up and took him in my arms. "Thank you."

"I didn't have anything to do with it. I just put it together."

"I don't think anyone else could have done as good a job. Maybe technically, but not with the warmth you put into it. You can feel the love you have for me. And the pictures are fantastic. All of them. You did a couple of things I don't even know how to do."

"I know. Mr. Douglas said he'd be happy to be your tutor and give you private lessons so you can learn how to do them after I mentioned you were planning on making some money at this."

"Wow. That would be fantastic."

I leaned into him and closed my eyes. He pulled me tighter and brought his lips to mine, maneuvering them in ways only he could, melding with me.

I leaned back, slightly breathless. "We need to do that more often."

"I've got plenty of time."

I looked at the clock. "I don't. I'm supposed to be making gravy right now."

I gave him a quick kiss that I had to pull away from to end, then went into the living room.

"Come on, Laurie. Time to go downstairs. Put on your sweater and get Posie."

Bozo heard the word 'downstairs' and the next thing I knew, he was waiting at the door. I helped Laurie get her second arm in and opened the door for her. She picked up Posie and followed Bozo's trail to the bottom. Posie ran under the stairs as soon as Laurie put her down.

"Jeez, it smells good in here," I said as soon as I opened the kitchen door. I could smell the lamb but there was something else I wasn't familiar with.

"What's that other smell?" I asked Mom.

She went over to a large pot, put an oven mitt on and lifted the lid. The steam that came out was bursting with that smell. I looked in the pot and saw what looked like some strange kind of potato chopped into pieces that would probably fit on a tablespoon.