One Of A Kind Dad. Daly Thompson

guys usually have for breakfast?”

      “We have four different breakfasts.” Nick recited them. “Eggs and sausage, pancakes and bacon, oatmeal and toast and French toast with ham.”

      No cold cereal? “Which is your favorite?”

      He sighed. “French toast, but we had that yesterday and ate all the ham.”

      “Second choice?”

      “Scrambled eggs and sausage. J.J., do you like eggs and sausage?”

      J.J.? She’d ask about that later.

      “Oh, yeah,” Jonathan said.

      She opened the refrigerator. Three dozen eggs. Three wrapped rolls of sausage. She lifted an eyebrow. That should do it. A carton of buttermilk at the back of the shelf gave her a bright idea. “Where’s the flour?”

      “In here,” Nick said.

      In the cupboard she found everything she’d need. “Do you like biscuits?”

      “Yeah,” Nick breathed. “Jesse makes ’em sometimes.”

      “Okay, we have our menu,” she said briskly. “You two can set the table while I’m getting the biscuits started.”

      Jonathan was cutting out biscuits and Nick was shaping sausage into patties when the door opened and Daniel walked in. His shirt and jeans were filthy. His hair was uncombed, and it seemed to have bits of straw in it. He looked exhausted. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

      ALL HE’D SAID WAS “what’s going on?” But even that scared her. Her feet nearly left the ground.

      “Sorry I surprised you.” He tried to smooth his hair. “I can see what’s going on here. You’re cooking breakfast.”

      Then he took a second look at Lilah. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been the night before. Now, she looked clean, fresh and wholesome, well-rested. Pretty. Her hair swung around her shoulders, silky and shining, and her eyes, even bluer than her shirt, looked capable of sparkling. In fact, they probably had been sparkling until he’d walked in.

      Lilah gave him a faint smile, then went back to whatever she’d been doing at the sink. Nick had apparently been too excited to sense the tension in the air. “We’re making eggs and sausage,” he said. “Lilah’s making biscuits—and I slept all the way through the night!”

      Daniel leaned over to hug him. “I don’t know which one of those news flashes is the best one,” he said. Looking up at Lilah, he started to wink, then thought better of it.

      “Were you in a car wreck?” Jonathan asked.

      “Jonathan!” Lilah said.

      “I look like it, don’t I? But,” he sighed, “it was just piglets.”

      Jonathan swiveled with the biscuit cutter still in his hand, and a raw biscuit plopped onto the floor. “You were attacked by piglets?”

      “Of course not!” Lilah reached down for the dough, tossed it in the trash and vigorously scrubbed her hands.

      All at once, Daniel felt less tired. “No, I delivered them. Eight of them.”

      Nick said, “Can we have one?”

      “No,” Daniel said in synch with another “No!” trumpeted from the hallway. Daniel fell heavily into a kitchen chair and groaned. When Jesse saw his kitchen had been invaded, World War III was likely to break out.

      “No pigs in this house,” he insisted as he came through the door. “We have enough—” He halted when he took in the scene, and Lilah seemed to tense, as if she were seeing it through Jesse’s eyes.

      She was whipping eggs. Jonathan was cutting out biscuits. Nick occupied the remaining counter space with his sausage operation. This was Jesse’s kitchen, his biscuit cutter, his wire whip. Feeling as tense as Lilah looked, Daniel waited to see how it was all going to come down.

      Right before his eyes, she changed. “Jesse,” Lilah said, giving him a sunny smile, “I hope it’s okay for me to help with breakfast. My goodness. The way you keep this kitchen puts me to shame. I thought I was neat, but your refrigerator is in perfect order, and I found all the biscuit ingredients lined up in the same cupboard, so it didn’t take me any time at all to make them. Everything is spotless, and I promise you it will be, well, almost as spotless when we’re through.”

      Daniel nearly let out a whoosh of breath that would have given away his nervousness. Jesse grumbled a little, scraped his foot against the brick floor and said, “The military does that to you. Everything shipshape, you know.”

      “The military does wonderful things for young men,” Lilah responded earnestly. “Teaches them routine, and order, and a sense of responsibility. I could learn a lot from you.”

      “I’ll give you some kitchen management tips when we have some time,” Jesse said with the arrogance of a man who’s been told he’s perfect, which he knew anyway.

      Daniel couldn’t believe it. The tough marine was melting like butter on a hot griddle. “The boys know,” Lilah went on, “that breakfast won’t be as good as if you’d cooked it, especially the biscuits, but I wanted to say thank you and this was all I could think of.”

      “Mighty thoughtful of you,” Jesse said. “I have to admit my war injuries are kicking up this morning.”

      “You got hurt in the war?”

      Daniel figured Jonathan’s morning was getting off to a pretty exciting start. One man with piglet wounds and another with war wounds. Lilah was left to finish the cooking while Jesse entertained the two boys with a harrowing story of capture and escape due to the heroism of his buddies. Daniel wandered away to his room and made fast work of a shower and a change of clothes. The usual sounds of the morning began to fill the house, the clatter of footsteps, shouting, laughing, barking, and then the barbarian attack on the kitchen.

      Joining them, he glanced down at the table. To the left of each place setting was a paper napkin folded into the shape of a pig. Lilah saw his expression. “Origami,” she said. “We had a few extra minutes while the biscuits baked.” She looked ever so slightly defensive, as if she expected the pigs might make him mad.

      “Aw,” Daniel said. “You did it in Maggie’s honor.”

      “Maggie?”

      “Maggie the sow. You know, instead of cigars, piglet napkins.”

      She laughed, actually laughed. Her face lit up and her eyes sparkled. “Of course,” she said. “Congratulations, Dad.”

      He hadn’t felt this good since—since he’d delivered Maggie’s last piglet. It was fine, as all the others had been, and she was fine—which she wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t helped her out.

      Maggie trusts me. Why doesn’t Lilah Jamison?

      The boys were wedged in around the table, Jesse among them—any more boys and Daniel would have to turn this table into an oval—and when he pulled out his chair, he paused, looked around, counted and observed, “We need one more place setting.”

      “Oh, no,” Lilah said. “I have to be running around serving. It’s what Jesse did last night…”

      “But not what we’re doing this morning,” Daniel said. “Everybody crunch closer.”

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, when not a scrap of food was left anywhere except on the oilcloth and the boys’ shirts, Daniel said, “You guys have to get off to soccer camp, and I mean right now.”

      They were all wearing Fair Meadows Soccer Camp T-shirts. Lilah felt her face flush. “Jonathan and I must be going as soon as we clean up the kitchen.”

      “Jonathan’s going to soccer camp, too,” Daniel said.

      “Hop