Free A Family for Christmas by Kate Welsh Page B

eyes widened. “Uncle Trent. You aren’t supposed to talk with anything in your mouth.”
    â€œGirls are so dumb!” Daniel pronounced. “He has to talk with his teeth and tongue in there, you know.”
    â€œYou know I meant food, dummy!” Rachel yelled.
    â€œAunt Maggie asked him a question. How was he ’sposed to answer?”
    â€œHe could have waited to answer,” Rachel retorted.
    Trent swung his head back and forth from one child to the other, looking like a spectator at Wimbledon. “Time!” he said at last, his mouth empty but for his teeth and tongue. “I really think we need some rules here. First one. No arguing at the table. Everybody agree?”
    Daniel and Rachel were clearly shocked at the idea of rules or agreeing to abide by them. Maggie knew it was a new idea, because though Sarah and Michael had been wonderful parents, they were lenient at times.
    â€œWhat’s a rule?” Daniel asked.
    â€œSomething you either always have to do or it’s something you must never do,” Maggie explained.
    Daniel and Rachel looked blankly at the adults who had taken over their world. “Like…” Trent hesitated, thinking, “you have to brush your teeth before bed and in the morning. And you shouldn’t fight with your sisters, especially at the table where you’ll ruin everyone’s meal. Aunt Maggie works hard to cook for us. We shouldn’t ruin her meal with bickering. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”
    Maggie watched the byplay and wondered, not for the first or even the hundredth time, why Trent wasso convinced he didn’t want to be a father. He was so good at it!
    It was several hours later that Maggie pulled up her mother’s long drive. Maggie’s mother, Ester, and Sarah’s mother, Nancy Merritt, were out on the front lawn waiting for the children. Nancy was no longer a maid, but her mother’s friend and companion. Their relationship had changed over the years from employer and employee to friends. Her mother had taken on a caregiver’s role for her former maid after Nancy collapsed and was diagnosed with a serious heart condition.
    It was because her condition had been aggravated by the news of the accident that Nancy hadn’t been able to travel to Florida to be with the children. This was the first time she’d see them since losing Sarah.
    The two older women were sitting in the shade of the towering old elm tree, one of a few still alive in the Philadelphia area. Hanging from one of its tall limbs was a tire swing just waiting for the children. Under the same tree, on a similar swing, Maggie’s lifelong friendship with Sarah had begun nearly thirty years earlier.
    It was clear by the way the older women stood and waved that they were both waiting anxiously for the same thing: their grandchildren.
    â€œMom-mom! Grandmom!” the children shrieked as they spilled out of the van. Maggie unbuckled Grace from her car seat and put her on the ground, then grabbed the bag that held emergency clothing changes for all three before heading across the lawn.
    Even from a distance Maggie could see that as Rachel and Daniel went into their grandmother’s embrace, it was a tearful reunion. Ester soon had Grace in her lap, and it seemed that to the little girl this was just another visit. Maggie didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned that Grace had already begun to forget her parents and the tragedy of their passing.
    By the time she reached the two older women under the tree, it was Maggie’s turn for a hug. To her everlasting chagrin, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked furiously, trying to stem their flow, but Grace, who was talking more every day, blew the whistle, so to speak. “Why Aunt Maggie crywin’?” she asked.
    Both Nancy and her mother pulled back, and the looks of love and support on their beloved faces opened the floodgates that Maggie had kept