Let's go.

Part 18: The Gallery

Layne looks down at the black garment bag he is carrying and chuckles. He begins to slowly climb up the stairs to us.

"I'm not Santa, Lily, but I'll make sure he brings you both everything you ask for this Christmas," Layne says as he reaches the top step.

He bends over and kisses me on the cheek then looks behind me to where Annie is shyly clinging to my skirt. "What do you want for Christmas, Annie?" He asks her softly.

She smiles and says sheepishly, "I want an Easy Bake Oven and a yellow Polly Pocket house."

"A yellow Polly Pocket house?" He asks and winks at her.

She giggles and says, "Yes, it is bigger than the pink house and has a pool."

"Can Polly swim?" He asks her. She begins to feel more comfortable with him and steps from behind my legs to tell him more about the house.

After she finishes her description of the Polly Pocket house, he looks over at Lily in my arms and grins. She has covered her face in the coconut ice cream bar and is looking at him with a huge smile on her face.

"Do you like ice cream?" He asks her.

She nods her head exuberantly and he laughs. He leans over and takes a big bite off the top of her coconut ice cream bar and she squeals with delight and surprise.

"Hey!" She says through her laughter, "That's my ice cream!"

Annie giggles next to me and says, "You can have mine," and hands it up to him. I smile down at her and think: Annie is definitely related to me, already eager to give Layne anything he wants.

He takes the bar from her and licks it, and she giggles at him. He places the garment bag down on the porch and then offers her his hand. She places her small hand in his.

"Let's go inside and you can tell me more about this yellow Polly Pocket house," he says to her and winks at me over his shoulder.

Ben is standing at the bottom of the porch smiling up at me.

"What?" I ask and laugh.

He just shakes his head and begins to climb the steps.

He stops when he makes it to the top step and says, "I like you two together."

I give him a half hug with my free arm as I try to balance Lily on my hip. She reaches out for him and he swings her up and then plants her on his hip. She giggles and offers him some ice cream. He shakes his head no and says, "I don't want the sticky ice cream your dirty little hands have been touching."

Lily finds this hilarious and begins touching his face with her little hands as he pretends to be disgusted.

We all enter the house and Layne and Annie are at the kitchen table emptying out a box of toys and Play-Doh I keep at the house for the girls.

Layne rises from the table as I enter and hugs me tightly to him. He holds me against him for a moment then whispers in my ear, "That was quite a sight to come home to." He leans back from me slightly and looks down at me, his eyes searching mine. And then I remember, that he had told me that warm summer day when we were sitting outside the rest stop waiting for Jerry that he wanted a family, and that he wanted to come home to the woman he loved waiting for him on their porch with a child on her hip and one holding her hand.

I don't know what to say to him. I want to tell him that I love him and like Annie, he can have my coconut ice cream and anything and everything else that's mine. Instead I just mumble, "I missed you, what's in the bag?"