Chapter 3

The kitchen had emptied some time later and only Amy sat still eating, working at her third serving. She was chewing slowly a sign that she was growing tired.

She sighed, knowing that the rule was: to take extra food was to eat extra food. She reluctantly shoved the last bit of lettuce into her mouth and watched Bryan and Silver at the other island, gathering up their dishes. She watched them as they carried them to the sink and began doing the dishes by hand.

Dish washing was a ritual that had been a part of the couple's evening since its inception. Every night they would stand at the sink, laughing and joking, one would wash, one would dry.

Amy watched them silently, chewing slowly. Bryan turned on a nearby radio and they hummed along with the music, washing the dishes. Presently Silver bumped her hip into Bryan on purpose, who turned and wiped soap suds on her nose. She laughed, then lashed out at his arm grasping a pinch of arm hair and twisting. He howled then pulled himself in closer, one hand lovingly on her cheek, the other full of soap bubbles.

Seeing that she was outgunned Silver began back-pedaling, attempting to form a truce before the battle went nuclear. She smiled sweetly and in on swift motion locked lips with him.

The maneuver had the prescribed effect. Silver averted a face full of dish soap. However, still not quite distracted, Bryan brought the hand around and splattered the soap between her shoulder blades. She squealed, in a mix of mock anger and frustration, mixed with a hint of humor and pleasure, the latter because of the kiss.

The songs changed and a slow song that they seemed to recognize came on. Hardly changing position the pair began to sway to the rhythm and very soon they were actively dancing in the kitchen. Bodies close, his hand on her cheek, looking into the eyes, looking into their souls. Lips parted only by a fraction of an inch.

It was at that time that Silver turned in time to the music and the splotch of soap bubbles came into Amy's view. The little girl, watching like a fly on the wall, giggled.

As two sets of eyes fell on her, Amy became suddenly aware that her presence hadn't been noticed. She swallowed the contents of her mouth, hopped down off her barstool, and carried her plate, cup, and fork over to the sink. Silver and Bryan watched her as she walked by, seemingly ignoring them as if she hadn't witnessed their antics. She then walked calmly to the door. When she got to about three feet from the door, her nerves overcame her and she scurried out like she had been scolded.

Behind her she could hear Bryan and Silver laughing to themselves at having been caught playing around and at the reaction of their youngest. "Busted!" she heard Bryan say as she rounded huge central fireplace and made a beeline down the hallway toward her room.

The children's rooms were separate from the rest of the house. They resided in a wing that sat uphill from the rest of the house to the Northwest. Down a long hallway, lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling she rounded the corner at the end and climbed the short flight of steps up into the common area.

The commons, as the room was known, was the first room that anyone came to when they visited the children's area. It encompassed the entire front of the wing, followed by two restrooms, one on each side of a hallway leading away toward the west side of the house. On either side of the hallway were three doors, containing the six bedrooms for the kids.

The commons itself was actually made up of two rooms. The first was at the first floor level, and it contained most of the furniture. Areas had been set up for specific purposes, such as the reading area where most of the kids' books were housed and served as a nook off of the rest of the room. A daybed sat there, covered in fluffy pillows and comfortable mattress. On cold winter days there would usually be at least one child lying back enjoying a good book.

Another area was a table with chairs around it. Normally any crafts or games that were attempted in the house were done so at that table. Sometimes the kids played among themselves, sometimes the parents joined as well.

In one corner of the commons was the laundry room. As the children got older, there was a push by Bryan and Silver to get them to take care of themselves. As such they had their own laundry facilities and everyone down to Amy had the procedure of how to do their laundry ingrained. Self-sufficiency was built into the kids because without it, such a busy household would be in a constant state of chaos.

Since the commons was two stories tall, with wide clerestory windows in the high gables above, there was space above the children's rooms and the two bathrooms. This loft, to which there was a staircase, served as the area for the television and any other entertainment equipment. Several bits of soft, threadbare, secondhand furniture clustered around the television in a semicircle. Dark curtains adorned the windows in that end, an attempt to minimize the glare.

The children each had their own room, but they were small and compacted, arranged to be highly space efficient. Each room was little more than a cubicle. Each room had a built in bunk bed (with an extra bunk for sleepovers), a built in desk, a window seat, and built-in storage. The amount of floor space was minimal, but the rooms were designed for sleeping, quiet study, and privacy, not for playing and exercising.

To alleviate the claustrophobic feel that such a small space could elicit, the ceilings were high and there were mirrors in nearly any open wall space, creating the illusion that the room was larger than it actually was. For activities which required extended space, the children had the commons.

Bryan had kept the rooms small to be utilitarian and Spartan and promote the children's interaction and playing together. Only Maggie, who was well into her teenage years, was reclusive enough to stay in her room for anything except dressing and sleeping.

Amy found the room a bustle of activity. Camie came out of the girl's bathroom wrapped in a towel and, smiling to herself, skipped down the hall, her bare feet leaving wet footprints behind her on the tile floor. She turned at her room, second on the left and closed the door behind her.