“Yes, Dad”, Jake said.
Brie carefully rubbed her back as she stood there and listened. “Maddie was where?”
“She had JUST finished a massage and had come in to wash her hands to get a bottle of water when I asked her to see if anyone was in the living room with Miri. She checked, no one was there, and I asked her to feed her for me. Not too long after that, Jake walked in and ended up feeding her”, Delilah said.
Both Brie and David sighed. “Did you give them a piece of your mind, Jake?” David asked.
“I did, and I also damn near went against everything you taught us boy and almost knocked the HELL out of Jordan when she rolled her eyes at me when I apologized for jumping the gun like I did.”
They exchanged a look and sighed. “What are we going to do about this, David?” Brie asked.
“I’m going to have a talk with Malachai. I’m sure that he would have responded the same way had that been one of his children when they were seven months old.”
“I’ll talk to Jordan. If she wants to be a mother she needs to understand that small children can’t be left unattended, especially when they’re at the age when they’re up and getting into all kinds of trouble like Miri’s trying to start doing.”
“I’ll take Malachai and Mandy into the kitchen.”
“And I’ll take Jordan and Davina in the living room.”
David chuckled. “Ready… break!” he said and turned toward the living room to get Malachai and Amanda.
“Malachai and Amanda, Kitchen”, he said and walked into the kitchen. His son and daughter in law were right behind them.
Before going into the living room to talk to Jordan and Davina, Brie looked back to Jake and Delilah. “Why do you two leave Miriam with Dad and me and go out to your little house in the back and do what husbands and wives are supposed to do together?” She winked at them and held her hands out for the baby.
Delilah handed the little girl to her Gramma. “Should you be carrying her with your back being in the shape it’s in?”
“I’ll be fine and so will Miri. I’ll just take it slow and easy so that I don’t risk dropping her or hurting myself. You two need to just go out back and, pardon my language, but just FUCK. Have the hot and wild sex you have before Miri was conceived.”
“How do YOU know we had hot and wild sex, Mom?” Jake asked with a laugh.
“Two words, Jacob: naughty nurse… remember that?”
Jake did a face palm and shook his head. “Good night Mom. I’ll see you in the morning when I get up for work.”
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Once they were in their little house, they flopped down on the couch. “A night without the baby”, Delilah said with a sigh.
“Second time in seven months”, Jake laughed. “So, what are we going to do?”
She put herself in his lap and faced him. “I can think of a couple of things”, she giggled and pressed her lips to his.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, really? Would any of those things involve my carrying you to our bedroom, stripping you of all your clothes and doing naughty things to you?”
“Or here on the couch”, she said and pressed her lips to his. “Then again, there’s the bathroom. We have yet to christen that shower, you know.”
“Hmmm… well, seeing as we have ALL night”, he said as he kissed her softly, “so, here’s what I was thinking. We could start on the couch, move to the shower, and end on the bed.”
She didn’t speak. She just pressed her lips to his and fed softly at her husband’s mouth.
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“Malachai, if it had been Eli at seven months old and he’d been left alone like that?” David asked his oldest son.
“I’d have been pissed”, Malachai answered.
“And you, Mandy? How would you have reacted?”
“I’d have been upset too”, she said.
“So, it’s ok for YOU TWO to be upset about the situation but not for Jake and Delilah to be? Do I sense a little hypocrisy here?”
“But, Jake chewed our asses over it, Dad”, Malachai said.
“Are you going to sit here and tell me that you WOULDN’T have chewed someone else’s ass if it had been one of your kids?”
Malachai and Mandy exchanged a look. “Guess you’re right, Dad”, Malachai said with a sigh. “But, we’re also adults. We don’t have to inform someone if we’re leaving to take our kids to the doctor.”
“If you’re a seven month old child unattended by doing so, yes the fuck you do. If Miri had gotten hurt, Jake would have been in his rights to beat the shit out of both of you and though I taught all of my boys never to lay a hand on a woman, I would have sat back and let him.” The look on David’s face showed that he wasn’t playing. “A child’s safety is important. If you two would have flipped out over it being one of your kids, then Jake has the right to flip out since it was his. I know you two don’t have babies anymore and it’s doubtful that you’ll have any more children at all. Everyone understands that. But, you can’t just leave a baby unattended because your kids aren’t babies anymore. It just doesn’t work that way. You would have felt like shit if you’d have come home and Miri was in the hospital because she cracked her little head open on the coffee table when she tried to pull herself up, right?”
“Well, yeah”, they said in unison.
“The understand where your brother is coming from. Miri may very well be leaping over all of the milestones that babies reach within the first year. We can all see it. She’s conquering all of them with no problem even though she had such a rough start in life. But, the fact of the matter is that she DID get a rough start and she’s still smaller than her doctors would like as far as her height goes. Jake keeps saying that she’s going to be a little bitty thing like your Mom, Maddie, and her mother. She’s still small enough to get seriously hurt in that living room if left by herself. At least warn Delilah if there’s a next time. Common sense, children, common sense.”
---------------
“Jordan, cut your twin some slack. How would you have felt were you in his shoes?” Brie said to her oldest daughter in a calm voice.
“I would have been pretty pissed to be honest.”
“Then how can you hold it against Jake for being upset that he walked into the house to find Miri alone in the floor. Granted, she was sitting and playing like she should have been and not messing around on the table, but had she been and had she gotten hurt, I would have had NO control over your brother’s reaction to that.”
“You and Dad taught all the boys to never lay a hand on a woman and you taught us girls not to tolerate a man hitting us.”
“True, but, at the same time, when you have an injured child, instinct takes over. Especially if your child was injured by someone else’s neglect. Jake would have ripped your heads and Malachai and Mandy’s head clean off your shoulders and there’s nothing that your Dad and I could have done about it”, she said to Davina and Jordan. “Now, I know you two are looking into becoming Mommies, so, you’ve got to understand where Jake is coming from as a Daddy. If this baby gets hurt”, she motioned to the play pin that held the sleeping Miriam Rebekah, “then Jake and Delilah are going to trip because she’s so tiny and because she got such a rough start. None of you kids were premature, thankfully, or your father and I would have had a rough time of it because all but Malachai and Jessi and Marc were born during the Utopian Occupation and after Maddie, there were just so damn many of you kids. Just imagine how Jake was. I know you guys didn’t see it, but your father and I saw him fall apart. We saw your brother, who hasn’t shed a tear since he was a baby, cry and feel weak.”
Jordan’s eyes grew wide. “Are you serious? Jake cried the day Miri was born?”
“Several time, Jordan. On the elevator ride from the ER to the OR, in the N-ICU twice, and in Delilah’s room as he waited for her to wake up from the anesthesia.”
“Whoa, I didn’t know that. I knew that Miri had a rough go of things when she was first born because she was premature, but I didn’t know that Jake actually cried. I can understand now why he reacted the way he did when he found her alone in the living room. I’ll apologize to him in the morning.”
“Good idea. He and Delilah are a little preoccupied at the moment, I’m sure”, Brie said with a laugh.
Great chapters, Vikki! This thing's getting to wrap up soon, isn't it? All in all, a damn good story, and I can't wait for the next installment.
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