Chapter 36

Saturday, February 23 - Sunday, February 24, 2002

Over the past couple weeks Dave and Shae had had several long, careful discussions on what the best way to break the news to the boys would be, how to answer their questions, and things of that nature. They'd talked it out from several angles, and had worked out what they felt was a pretty good strategy.

The effort was totally wasted.

Since back around Christmas, Dave and Shae had been able to spend the night in bed together based on the simple fact that Tyler and Cameron were hard starters and slow to warm up. On any normal day Dave had to get them going well before school so they could stumble around, have some breakfast and generally wake up before they headed off to class. That meant he had to get up earlier to get them moving; on the weekends when Shae was there all he had to do was set his alarm and both of them could be up and running well before the boys.

It had worked like a charm -- until this morning, when in his excitement to see Shae he somehow failed to pull the button on the alarm clock. Dave had a pretty good built-in alarm of his own, but he and Shae stayed awake much later than they'd planned, just alternating talking and making love. Besides, after a more eventful than normal week, it felt so good to just sleep in...

On top of that, the boys knew their Aunt Shae was coming -- and as soon as they began to stir right around their normal time, remembering she was supposed to be there got them going just about as soon as their eyes opened.

Thus, the first notice both Shae and Dave had that the boys were awake at all was when Shae was buried under the hugs of a couple of excited pajama-clad small boys. Fortunately, she was under the covers, because all she was wearing was her fingernail polish, which was more than Dave was wearing.

It was Cameron, the younger and usually shyer of the two, who figured things out and went right straight to the point: "Aunt Shae, are you going to be our mommy now?"

One of the great things about youth is at that age it's not easy to realize just how awkward that question could be when directed at an adult who had been in a sound sleep less than sixty seconds before. Fortunately, Shae caught it about as well as could be expected. While Dave was still struggling with the concept of what the Sam Hill to say, Shae just smiled, gathered both the boys in her arms, and said, "No, Cameron, Tyler. I'm never going to be your mommy, and you want to always remember that. I'm always going to be just your Aunt Shae, even though your daddy and I are going to get married sometime, and you're going to have a little brother or sister."

"Wow! Neat, Aunt Shae!" two excited voices replied as she cuddled the boys both close to her.

Dave just lay back and shook his head. He'd anticipated a long, reasoned session with the boys, but Shae did better in just a few words than anything he'd been able to think of in weeks.

He rolled onto one side, just to watch the tableau in front of him. Thanks to Cameron, the world had just taken on a different shape, and he knew it. The pieces were still coming together, but for the first time in months, it seemed like the world was closer to something resembling its proper form. True, Shae was not Julie and would never be, but she was going to be the best replacement for Julie he could imagine. For the first time, the four of them felt like a family. Lord knew, he missed Julie and probably always would, but now he felt like he was ready to move past the sorrow and the emptiness toward a new future.

Dave continued to lay there and watched the three of them until the boys wound down a little. "Hey, kids," he said finally, "Why don't you two go get dressed, and then we can all get together and have some breakfast?"

"Sure, Dad," Tyler, the normal leader said. "What are we going to have for breakfast?"

"I don't know," Dave shrugged. "How about pancakes and sausage?"

It was an easy one to get his attention; Dave knew it was his favorite, and he'd be able to hurry Cameron along. "I'd like that," Tyler smiled. "Are you going to make them or is Aunt Shae?"

"We'll both work on it," Dave grinned, seeing his tactic was going to work.

"OK, we'll go get dressed," Tyler replied, leading Cameron out the door.

Shae shook her head as they left. "That was sneaky, Dave," she smiled.

"I don't know," he said casually. "I figured it was best if we at least started to get dressed without their help. I'm not quite sure I wanted them to discover we're both lying here with no clothes on."

"Yeah, it probably wouldn't be the best idea just yet," Shae agreed. "I really don't have problems with them catching me in the nude, but I didn't know if you'd have any."

"I really wasn't expecting it to come up quite like that," Dave said, turning back the covers on his side of the bed and reaching for the underwear he kept in his bedside stand. "That's one of those things we ought to talk out sometime. It would never have happened with Julie -- she would have freaked out. But you're more of an exhibitionist than she was."

"I have to admit, it's a question I never thought about," she said, getting out of her own side of the bed and heading for her suitcase on the dresser. "I mean, when I was that age, I already had a pretty good idea of how boy bits were different from girl bits, and the reasons why."

Dave shook his head. "Not to take anything away from Mom, but I was a lot older before I figured it out, and there was a lot of misinformation along the way. I guess I always figured I wanted to do it a little different with my kids, but Julie, well, I knew she didn't see things the same way, so I never brought it up to her."

"That's a shame," Shae sighed. "I guess my feeling is I don't mind being a little casual about it. What they see, they see. If they have questions, I'll answer them. That is, if you want me to play it that way."

"Well, if you don't mind," he nodded as he pulled on a T-shirt. "I wouldn't mind having a shower right now, but maybe I'd better press on ahead with getting some breakfast."

"Probably," she said, then hesitated a moment before continuing. "Dave, I know there are going to be some things about raising the boys where I'm just going to look at things different than Julie did. I get the feeling she was more conservative about some things than I'm likely to be."

"Oh, no doubt about it," Dave nodded. "There were a few places where I was easily more liberal than she was. Shae, it's pretty obvious things are going to be a lot different than they were, and we're just going to have to work them out as we go along. We got caught flatfooted this morning, but you pulled it out nicely. Let's just try to talk this stuff out, before we get caught out again. I don't know if we're going to get any more questions about being caught in bed together, but maybe not. I mean, to them it's sort of the normal thing for a mommy and a daddy to do, so no big deal. My question is, do we just let it be natural? Do we talk to them about it, tell them to say nothing? Do we try and avoid getting caught again? I don't know; I'm flying blind."

"Well, me too," she smiled as she fastened her bra in front of her, then twisted it around to put her arms through the shoulder straps. "You have the advantage of a few years of fatherhood. It's all new to me. I'm going to have to learn how to be a parent the hard way, but at least I'll have you to help me get a running start."

"Not that I'm any great expert," he sighed. "I'm learning this stuff as I go along and the tough questions are the ones I don't have an answer to. This is one of them."

"So what's your gut feeling?"

"I'd guess I'm just happy they're not old enough to know the difference. Plenty of people live together without the benefit of a preacher, and it's not really a big deal anymore. Hell, it happened enough when we were in school, and it wasn't a big deal then. Maybe I'm making it a bigger deal than it is."

"You're saying, just act natural about it, and not acknowledge we're a little out of line?"

"Something like that," he shrugged. "Maybe it's just the conservative Bradford kid in me that makes me want to cover it up."

"That's not how you sounded the last time we talked about telling the boys about us," she smirked.

"So, that was before we got caught this morning," he smiled ruefully as he buttoned up the flannel shirt he'd decided to wear. Julie would have split a gut if he'd planned to sit around the house on a Saturday in something as unfashionable as a flannel shirt, but that was then, and this was now -- and Bradford, at that. "Like I said, I'm learning this stuff as I go along."

The boys predictably were quicker getting dressed than Dave and Shae, but rather than coming back to pester the adults, they headed into the living room, and were deeply involved in Spongebob Squarepants when the adults made it to the kitchen and started in on breakfast. While Dave was about as big a fan of letting the TV babysit the kids as Shae, a limited amount of it was all right, in his opinion -- and this morning, it gave the two of them the chance to talk about adult things. "I was a little surprised last night when you said you'd pretty well made up your mind to move to Bradford to be with me," he observed as he started mixing pancake batter.

"Well, yeah," she said, trying to help in an unfamiliar kitchen, but trying to stay out of his way, as well. "There's a tough decision involved. I'm going to miss the hell out of being able to spend time with Eve and her kids. It really isn't a big deal to run down to the north side of Philly from Staten Island. Well, the traffic is a bitch if you catch it at the wrong time, but that's neither here nor there. We've been so close for so long that it's going to be tough going back to seeing her only a couple times a year."

"I wondered about that," he said. "The two of you have been such incredibly close friends; it's bound to leave you feeling a little lost."

"Yeah, and there's Eve's side of it, too," Shae nodded. "For a while, she pretty well had family right in there close, her folks, her sister, Cheryl and Chad, and me. Now, her folks are discovering they're no longer as thrilled with Bucks County and would rather spend more time in Florida. Her sister has transferred out, and Chad and Cheryl are in Chicago. I'm wondering if it might not feel a little lonely for her."

"I kind of got the feeling once, with Chad and Cheryl in Chicago, they might be coming this way a little more often than they have in the past, especially if you're here."

"Yeah, that's true," she conceded. "I guess we're just going to have to wait and see how it plays out."

"Did I just detect a hint of something you haven't said?"

"Yes. No. Hell, I don't know. She's never come out and said it in so many words, but I get the feeling that if the right offer were to come along, she'd be willing to walk out of Matthews, Barkley at the drop of a hat. She's just an employee, after all, and not a partner, and there are some disagreements on some fundamental issues as pertains to the clients she works with. On top of that, John is a sharp guy, and I get the feeling he's not very happy designing culverts, either. I know they're both a little envious of the way Cheryl and Chad got all that shit dumped on them and came out of it smelling like roses. So, your guess is as good as mine. I don't want to say they're looking, but at the same time, I wouldn't put it past them, either. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Let's not even talk about it and get my hopes up. Changing the subject on you, is there anyone we're going to have to tell about us now that we've come out of the closet with the boys?"