Chapter 2

Silver opened the kitchen door and found Amy, their youngest daughter sitting at the kitchen bar with a coloring book and a pile of crayons strewn all over the surface. The determined look of concentration on her face was comical. She was peering at the paper before her moving a green crayon in maniacal circles, sticking her tongue out of one side of her mouth, and twirling her strawberry blonde pigtail with her other hand.

Oblivious to Silvers' approach she held her tiny pose long enough for the camera phone to get a good snapshot before being distracted away by the clicking of the shutter.

A grin spread across the girls face like a sunrise. It had often been commented that she didn't really smile with her mouth so much as with her entire face. She squinted her eyes, wrinkled her nose and grinned from ear to ear. If her hair could have smiled in some way it would have too.

"Mama!" she cried. "Why did you take my picture?"

"Cause you're cute!" Silver replied, grasping the four-year old by the waist and tossing her into the air before catching her with a grunt and hugging her. "Ugh," she moaned. "You are just about getting too big for Mama to do that anymore." The little cherub smiled again and wrapped her arms around Silvers' neck, making straining sounds as she squeezed. "Ugh squeezer!" Silver cried hugging the child back, imitating the sounds that the girl made.

"Hey sweetheart there's something on your shirt," Bryan appeared through the open door, and in one fell swoop, sat down the bag of freshly washed lettuce and scooped the girl up with his arm. He turned the girl upside down and expertly tickled her eliciting incessant giggles. "Stop Daddy!" She cried in between giggles. He sat her down right side up on a bar stool, still giggling. "Now pick up your crayons and go get ready for supper," he said.

The girl grasped the paper that she had been meticulously annihilating before he had arrived and held it up to him. Smiling he took it and placed it on the refrigerator with a magnet. Amy leaned over, scooped all of her crayons into the nearby ice cream bucket where they were stored and scurried off into the next room to wash her hands.

Bryan looked at the picture on the refrigerator door and smiled. "I think she colored everywhere BUT inside the lines," he stated, amused.

"Hmmph," Silver remarked. "She's definitely YOUR daughter."

"Hey," he retorted. "I resemble that remark."

The kitchen area was shaped as an elongated octagon, the elongated area orientated to the southeast so that the breakfast nook in that area caught the morning sun. The ceiling of the room, like all in the house was sloped rising toward the center of the structure, and the exposed post and beam construction gave the room a rustic feel. A gable on the southeastern end opened clerestory windows toward three directions and let in an immense amount of light when the sun was still up.

Bryan had constructed cabinets all the way to the ceiling all the way around the room despite the odd angles and ceiling slope, so there was a certain eclectic quality to the jumbled arrangement of doors drawers and shelves. There were slate counter tops over standard, though rustic-looking cabinets on three sides of the room.

The counter tops were broken only by the appliances and the bar area which was near the breakfast nook but looked out over the family room. Two islands resided in the middle of the room, and it was on these two islands where the family joined to eat each night.

The two islands were only two feet wide and a little over 6 feet long. The best arrangement was to either sit two people at each end and at each side, or stagger people along the length. To seat people across from each other invited disaster as the narrow width of the islands made for very close proximity to one another.

Bryan had seated himself at one end of the nearest island to the front of the house and was facing Silver. Their daughter Maggie sat to the right of Bryan. Maggie was the eldest by five years. Having been an only child for several years born to her then teenage mother, she had totally different attitudes than the rest of the children. Maggie looked like a spitting image of her mother, though at fifteen she looked as though she really hadn't yet discovered how to bring out her innate beauty.

She was a bit of a tomboy and tended to dress in tennis shoes, sweats, and wear t-shirts that had humorous sayings on them. On rare occasions though, she had begun to emulate her mother, with whom she had grown up and dress to kill. Bryan feared he would have to kill some amorous teenage boy at some point if she was too much like her mother.

The two acted more like sisters than mother and daughter and were often mistaken for such. Silver found it humorous, and Maggie found it mortifying.

Maggie had never known her real father, who had been an irresponsible teenager at the time, and was an irresponsible adult somewhere at the present. Custody had never been a question and she viewed Bryan and Silver's first husband as her dads. Carrying a bit of her mother's spunk, plus a strange but quick sense of humor which she had apparently inherited from her paternal roots she was quite a force to be reckoned with.

Maggie was tall, almost three inches taller than her mother, and she carried a mop of dirty blond hair which seemed to be untamable, but which seemed to scream "I am MAGGIE!" from its perch atop her head as if it personified her. She wore glasses and her baby cheeks had permanent smile lines etched into them around her dimples.

Across the island from Maggie and to the left of Bryan sat Jake. Jake was Silver's baby from her first marriage. He was the youngest of their boys but by far the most athletic.

Jake had discovered early on that he had skills not usually befit a boy his age. At six he could throw a regulation football in a perfect spiral and had regularly played catch with both his birth father and Bryan. As Jake was now nine he was a team captain for his soccer team and was waiting impatiently to be old enough to play pee wee football.

Bryan hadn't found anything that interested Jake to be beyond his capabilities. What Jake lacked in size, he had in creativity and was able to compensate most of the time. Whatever else Jake lacked, was made up by his personality. Jake had never met a stranger. Jake had never shied away from anything in his life.

The only thing Bryan knew Jake was afraid of was thunder, which he found crazy since the boy had no other natural fears. Jake's hair personified him as well. Jake had close cropped blonde hair with a rooster tail in the front that had been aptly named his "Jake thing."