“Mary, you’re an angel.” Joel hurried to the kitchen, tickling Adam as he did so.
Dave noticed that Rachel followed them but Isaac was still petting the bird. “Don’t you want a slice of your mother’s pie?” he asked his son.
Isaac looked up at him. “Can Richie have some of it?”
“No. Pies aren’t good for birds,” Dave replied.
Isaac frowned. “In that case, I’ll just take him outside. Maybe we can find a worm for him to eat instead.”
Dave waited until Isaac was out of the house before he rolled his eyes. He didn’t know what was worse: Isaac having him read the article several times a day or the way Isaac kept fussing over the bird he’d named after Richard.
“Are you coming?” Mary asked as she came back into the room.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Dave grabbed the cane but took a tentative step forward without it. His leg wobbled a bit, so he decided to use the cane to walk over to her.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, but it’s shaky.”
“I suppose it’s like when the children learned to walk. They had many falls before they could walk with confidence.”
“Let’s hope I don’t end up falling like they did.”
She put her arm around his waist and kissed him. “If you take it easy like Joel said, you should be fine.”
He didn’t know if her intention was to help him walk to the kitchen, but he found himself leaning more into her than the cane. When they reached the kitchen, Adam was in a high chair, and Rachel was giving him a cookie to eat. Dave glanced over at Joel and saw that he had already finished one slice and was working on another one.
“Feel free to leave some of that pie for the rest of us,” Dave joked as he sat in the chair across from him.
Joel shot him a pointed look. “You get her pies whenever you want them. I only get them when the family gets together or when you break a leg. I think I’m entitled to stuff myself silly.”
“Are you going to share the pie you’re taking home with your family?” Dave asked as Mary put a slice of pie on a small plate and gave it to him.
“Sure. Why do you think I’m eating as much of this one as I can?” Joel replied.
Mary poured coffee into a cup and put it in front of Dave. “Don’t give your brother a hard time. It’s always good to see a man with a good appetite.”
“Dave, Mary is your best quality,” Joel said. “I’m forever thankful you married her.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Dave accepted the coffee from her. “The day I married her was the best day of your life.”
“Don’t be silly. The day I married April was the best day of my life. Having my children were the second. But, the day you married Mary was the third.” He glanced around the room. “Isn’t Isaac coming?”
“No. He’d rather be outside with his bird.” Dave tried to hide the resentment in his voice, but he didn’t quite succeed.
“And that bothers you because…?” Joel asked.
Dave sighed. “We got the newspaper with Richard’s interview weeks ago. He should have forgotten it by now.”
“You’re not jealous of Richard, are you?”
“No, I’m not jealous of Richard. I have no desire to design and build houses or businesses. I’m happy working with the land.”
“But you are jealous. You don’t like all the attention Isaac is giving Richard.”
“Are Nora or Hannah talking nonstop about Richard?”
Joel swallowed a piece of his pie. “No.”
“Then how can you know what it’s like to hear about Richard all the time?”
“I don’t think Isaac means any harm in it,” Mary interrupted as she sat next to Dave.
“I know he doesn’t mean any harm in it,” Dave replied. “He’s too young to know what he’s doing.”
“So why are you worried?” she asked.
Dave shook his head. He really didn’t want to talk about it. He should never have even mentioned it. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” He put his fork into the pie, and for the first time since he’d had one of her pies, he didn’t even taste it.
“He’ll grow out of it,” Joel said. “He’s a kid. He’s going through a stage. All kids go through a stage where they admire someone. It’s part of growing up. I remember when the circus came through here, and I saw the ringmaster. I thought of little else but him for the longest time.” His gaze went to Mary. “I imagined what it’d be like to do the same thing he did. Get up in front of an audience, tell them jokes to make them laugh, introduce new acts…” He grinned. “I even stood in the middle of the barn once and pretended the cows and horses were my audience. I even pretended that Tom was the clown.”
“You didn’t!” Mary laughed.
“He did,” Dave said. “And Tom was milking a cow at the time.”
Mary shook her head in amusement. “Why do you give Tom such a hard time, Joel?”
“Tom goofs up so much that I have to do it,” Joel replied. “I mean, he squirted milk in his eye that night. How could I not comment on it?”
Despite himself, Dave felt a chuckle rise up in his throat. “Tom went to the well screaming that he was going to go blind.”
Mary laughed harder. “Oh, poor Tom. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”
“You should have been here when he was courting Jessica,” Joel said. “He was tripping all over himself to impress her.”
“That’s sweet,” Mary replied.
“Yeah, maybe it was,” Joel said. “But you’ll never get me to admit that to him.” He finished the second slice of pie then stood up. “I should go. I promised my assistant I’d be back
