Chapter 5

Nikki's turn:

Hauling another basket of clothes into the living room, I started folding clothes. Dan was at the other end of the sofa doing the same thing.

"It's gonna be a wild week, baby," he said to me. "We're gonna tow the travel trailer up there, park it, then catch a flight back with Cindy and Dan to pick up our plane."

"It's an adventure," I said. "We're entering a new universe. Baby, I hope you don't wake up one morning in a new place and decide that I'm not worth all the changes."

"What changes?"

"Look around us," I said. "This is your old family place. You built this house the way YOU wanted it. And I come along and we're leaving this behind. You haven't figured out if you gained a wife or you're raising a teenager. You're leaving a successful job behind. Changes."

My Dan smiled. "Family place. Yeah. A hundred years ago my great-great grandparents moved out here into a one-room house. Grandpa farmed with mules. Grandma had to go to the bayou to do laundry. And they were married sixty-something years. That's why this is the family place. Should I be any less dedicated to us?"

I tossed socks to him. He's doing socks now. "Just wanna keep you, that's all."

He smiled. "That's good. I sorta wanna keep you too! You're interesting!"

I can't help but smile. Dan finds me interesting and I find him just absolutely marvelous. And the rest of the bunch? I have a bunch. His family. My strange and wonderful sister hood, and ... the phone rings. Tina's step-daughter, Terri.

"Hi!" I said.

"Hi, Aunt Nikki! I got bored for a second so I thought I'd call you!"

I had a picture of a bored seven-year old. "So why are you bored?"

"TV's just soooo stupid. And I thought you said something about some books."

"Baby," I said, "I love to read, but my books're a little above..."

"Puh-leeze, Aunt Nikki! I don't think I can stand another "See Spot run" story."

"Tell you what, little darlin'," I said. "Why don't we try it backward?"

"Backward?" Terri said, sounding uncharacteristically almost puzzled.

"Yeah. Don't read. Write. Get your laptop and YOU write the story you want to read. Maybe not the whole thing, but at least the beginning. And when you do, we'll pass it around and see what we can do with it, okay?"

Giggle. "Okay. Ol' Spot's gonna get a make-over. I knew that if I called you..."

"Yeah, but where's Tina?"

"At the other end of the sofa, grinning at me the whole time. She said the same thing almost. Said to call you and see what you said."

"Oh, she did, did she? Did she tell you to call Cindy too?"

"Uh-huh. Cindy's next."

"Cindy's writing is impressive, at least her non-fiction. But she might be just the one to help you remake ol' Spot."

"'Kay, Aunt Nikki! I'll call 'er. Love ya! Bye!"

I turned to Dan. He was staring at me. My phone conversations with the other sides of the Sisterhood were sometimes almost surreal. "Terri's bored." I smiled. "Honey, you have to please understand how much I'm looking forward to this whole bunch of us getting together."

"And you just told a seven year old to start writing," he said.

"Under the eye of Tina and me and Cindy and Susan. She might be the next Mark Twain."

"I note that you read a lot of Mark Twain."

"Love the way he uses the language. Cindy and I talk. And I can't believe that in two days I have to meet Mizz Patel at Auburn."

"Cindy," Dan said. "You an' Cindy! I am astounded by your math discussions."

He was. He confessed to how difficult it was for him to grasp some of the things he needed for his engineering degree, and I just hugged him.

"I didn't have the foggiest idea of what I dragged out of the collapsed building," he said, hugging me back. Every day, I see more and more."

"I ... baby," I said, "I don't mean to make you think I'm weird."

"I don't think you're weird, Nikki. Just very, very smart. I know how the other Dan feels."

"You've talked? With Cindy's Dan, I mean?"

"Yeah, we've talked. Started out talking about my clients down here, and then we got on the subject of you and Cindy. Cindy makes him deliriously happy. I feel the same way. About you, not Cindy."

I punched him playfully. "You better not be thinking about Cindy. You're MINE!"

"And always will be," he said. "Plus, you can cook!"

"That's one of the things that Cindy wants me to work with her on. She wants to cook like her Dan likes."

"You could teach 'er. You saw the stove we're getting for our new kitchen?"

I thought about that. "Uh-huh. Even better than this one. I can't wait. We'll all be there together and instead of us having to cook four separate meals we can just gather at one apartment for dinner. And Cindy's all excited that an Indian restaurant is leasing a piece of our new strip mall."

"You're excited, baby. Just remember that when all the 'new' wears off and we're in the middle of life with you going to class and me going to work..."

"I don't fool myself, sweetie," I said, tossing him a sock. "I know there's gonna be work, sweat, even tears, but you know, we can handle it." I paused. "Oh, news flash..."

"What news?"

"Been talking to Maddie. It's killin' 'er dad, but she signed up for Auburn, too."

"No joke?" Dan said. "What's her major?"

"Business stuff like I talked about before. Maybe heading for a CPA or something. Anyway, I told 'er that we were gonna be right there and if she didn't stay in touch I was gonna be very hurt."

"Maddie's a good kid," Dan said.

"Kid? She's a year older than me," I laughed. "And I'm your happy little wife." We stuffed stacks of folded laundry into the basket. He picked it up and headed to the bedroom. I followed. Bedroom is a happy venue after the clothes are put away.

Got even happier when I tugged on Dan's belt and pulled him onto the bed on top of me. We kissed and giggled and started to get... "Stop that! Maddie's coming over! She'll be here before we have time to do this right!"

He gets this sad puppy look sometimes. Forty year old guys aren't supposed to be adorable, but he's my guy and if I want to think he's adorable, I get to think that. "You put a pot of rice on. I'm gonna do something with pork chops." And we went to another happy place in my life with Dan, the kitchen.

"Is Maddie bringing her buddy?" he asked. Dan and I occasionally talked about some of the members of our study group. Maddie was the one who was obviously unattached. From time to time she seemed to connect with one of several guys at school.

"She didn't say she was. Just herself."

"Maddie's an anomaly in the dating thing," Dan said.

"I don't think so, really, honey," I said. "There are a few like her who never let high school relationships get past a simmer. You know, friends of the opposite sex who might be good for a kiss or two after dinner and a movie. If you want, I'll get 'er started and let her tell you about it."

Waiting for dinner, Maddie did indeed 'get started'. "High school. It's just high school. And I'm going to college. Why should I get all involved and head over heels in love with somebody and then go off to college and meet a whole new circle of friends and spend my time wondering if associating with guys there is being proper to my one and only back home or at another college?"

Dan just shook his head.

"Mister Dan," Maddie said, "you think I'm right, don't you?"

"Yeah," he said.

"There's more than just me like that. We just don't show up on the radar, that's all. And what about Kellen and Slade? D'you think that's for keeps? Or Holly 'n' Bret?"

Dan laughed at the mention of Holly and Bret. "If Holly hangs around, Bret's gonna be into her for the rest of his life."

A giggle escaped Maddie's lips, coinciding with my own. Maddie said, "Oh, I KNOW! He fell like a lead balloon."

"And they're both going to college here in town and living at home," I added. "I'd be surprised if they make a year without getting married."

"They're into each other. Most high school romances aren't like that. I know it can happen," Maddie said. "I just didn't find the one. And Mom says 'don't settle and don't get a 'fixer upper' or something'. So I didn't."

"You have good parents, Maddie," Dan said.

She smiled. "I know. I know it's not cool to say that, but I know. Nikki explained that to me in detail."

"I just told her how NOT to be a mom. I learned from mine."

Maddie smiled. "And back to the original thought, I have lots of friends. Some of 'em are guys, and occasionally I go out with one. But I'm not into 'I love you' when I know it's just words."

The rice cooker chimed and it was time to eat dinner. We filled our plates from the kitchen and populated the table. Maddie was still talking.

"When are you moving to Auburn for good?"

"Not a big hurry," I said, "but we're close. We're towing that travel trailer up there this week and flying back with Tina and Alan, then we're flying our plane back. Sometime in the next month or so the new apartments will be ready to move in, but we can do the travel trailer if we need to. And with the plane, being back here is a matter of a few hours, not an all-day drive."

I said, "And you're free to hitch a ride any time, you know..."

"Mom and Dad'll love that," Maddy said. "Just so you know, the fact that you're gonna be there sort of eases their minds about me being there."

"You'll fit in with the rest of the gang, Maddie," I said. "I know you will."

"I dunno, Nick," she said. "You and that Cindy, y'all are kinda scary." She smiled when she said it.

"What's scary?"

"Uh, come on, Nick," she said. "You have that THING in the back room that you hooked up to the internet. Coach Gary's eyes rolled back in 'is head when you tried to explain it to 'im."

The 'thing' was an old process control computer that Dan brought home, and we plugged it in and fired it up, just to satisfy my curiosity. And when Cindy said she knew about programming one, I just did a little bit of interfacing and now it's accessible if you know an IP address and you have a login and password, and we started learning together. Dan showed me enough about electricity to keep me from killing myself and showed me what a 'breadboard' is outside of the culinary venue. Between me and Cindy, with the occasional little bump from one Dan or the other, we had a lot of fun learning about control inputs and outputs and ladder logic and all sorts of things that most people never see.

Dan says that a lot of people also never see two teen girls screaming through forests of hardware like Cindy and I did. And if you can program and hard-wire that control system to the internet for remote access, then you can add a couple of cameras and then call up Susan and Tina and get them in on the fun. Except now, Susan's still honeymooning and I don't think making little lights blink in Louisiana is a high priority in her life.

Like the phone call I got. We all got a phone call or two from Susan on her honeymoon.