This story is a * Rating due to mild sexual reference.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

by KayRenee

Helen Belden looked out the kitchen window at Crabapple Farm to the cloudy, gray sky. Rain drummed a light tattoo on the rooftop and spattered against the window. April showers were in full swing today, forcing her nine year old son Brian, eight year old son Mart, and seven year old daughter Trixie to stay indoors. Their fascination with their two month old baby brother Bobby had helped keep them reasonably well behaved and somewhat quiet for most of the day, although Trixie and Mart had gotten into their usual squabbles with Brian playing referee. Helen had Bobby snuggled to her chest in a cloth baby carrier, and she smiled as she gently rubbed his back. "These have to be the best inventions since sliced bread," she softly murmured as she nuzzled the baby’s downy blond head. The radio on the kitchen counter was tuned in to an oldies station, and the DJ was paying homage to the wet weather by playing every song in their archive having to do with rain. Humming softly along with "Rhythm of the Rain", she went about the afternoon chores through the old farmhouse. Eventually, her calm, easy movements lulled Bobby to sleep, and she climbed the stairs to the baby’s room on the second floor and gently placed him in his crib.

Checking that the baby monitor was on, and securing her sandy blond hair back with a barrette, she headed back to the kitchen to take advantage of the relative quiet and get dinner started. As she passed the bathroom she glanced at her reflection, fussing with her newly trimmed bangs. "Not too bad for a mother of four," she told herself as she adjusted her short ponytail. "At least now the bangs don’t stick straight out!" Those bangs had driven her crazy when she took the plunge and had them cut, but now framed her face well and called attention to her china blue eyes. Peter had told her they made her look sexy, but as far as he was concerned she looked sexy while cleaning out the chicken coop! Grinning ruefully, she continued downstairs.

Tonight’s menu was chicken casserole and a green salad made from fresh vegetables from their small garden. Helen had begun preparing and freezing casserole dishes when she was in her last trimester of pregnancy with Bobby. Now, what had begun as a precautionary measure to keep her off her feet as much as possible, was now a time saving routine she couldn’t imagine doing without. Taking a chicken casserole she had pre-made earlier that week from the freezer, she placed it oven to re-heat and began gathering ingredients for the salad.

Presently, Mart and Trixie were at the kitchen table coloring and drawing; their matching sandy blond heads, so like her own, bent over their work. Several coloring book pages and a colorful array of washable markers were spread out over the table in the cheerfully decorated kitchen. Brian was on the living room couch, so absorbed in the book he was reading that all she could see was his brown eyes and the top of his black curls above the pages. Helen shook her head and grinned as she glanced at the title: ‘The Hobbit’.

She could hardly believe that at this time last year, she and her husband Peter had been contacted by the principal of Sleepyside Elementary School to recommend Brian for promotion from second to fourth grade, skipping third entirely. After much deliberation of the pros and cons, they had ultimately agreed with the principal’s suggestion and given their consent. His fourth grade teacher had suggested ‘The Hobbit’ as Brian’s Spring Break reading assignment, assuring the somewhat concerned parents the content wouldn’t be beyond his comprehension level. His expression of absorbed awe confirmed he was enjoying the story as much as she had when she’d read the books – when she was a freshman in high school.

"Rain, rain, go away! Come again another day!" Trixie sang forlornly. She was bored and cranky from being cooped up all day with only her two older brothers to play with. Picking up a blue marker, she carefully outlined the whale she was currently working on.

From the opposite side of the table, Mart jibed, "Your singing should scare the clouds away! AACK!" he covered his ears dramatically. "Cut it out! My ears are bleeding!"

Trixie stuck her tongue out at her brother and went back to her listless coloring.

"What are you making anyway, Mart?" Brian called from his perch on the couch, glancing up from the book he was reading.

"It’s gonna be a flat track for the Hot Wheels® cars. We can lay them on the floor any way we want and set up the other stuff around it."

"Whatsamatter? Did you jam the plastic track pieces again?" Trixie needled, a twinkle in her china blue eyes.

Mart flushed with embarrassment to the roots of his short cropped sandy blond hair, his blue eyes, identical to Trixie’s, flashing with temper.

"Did not!"

"Betcha did!"

"Did not!"

"Betcha did!"

"Trixie," Helen gently interrupted, "why don’t you draw some lakes and fields of flowers, and you can use the pages Mart’s making when you’re playing with your Polly Pocket® dolls. And Mart can use your pages when he’s making a bigger Hot Wheels® city." While her words sounded like a suggestion, her soft yet firm tone clearly said it was a direct order.

Both children ducked their heads sheepishly with a chorus of "Yes, Moms!" Brian wisely went back to his book.

She savored the thirty seconds of peace and reflected on the day.

The new Irish Setter puppy, Reddy, had found and taken off outside with one of Trixie’s brand new Easter Sunday shoes, dragging it through several puddles. The cheerfully teething dog would gnaw anything he could wrap his puppy-lips around into tiny bits. When the dog came tearing back inside with his prize, the shoe was so muddy and tooth-punctured it didn’t remotely resemble its pristine white mate. The fact that Helen had reminded her daughter several times to put the shoes away and that they had only been worn once to church for Easter services last Sunday made the necessity of throwing them away even more difficult. Trixie had received a severe scolding for not doing as she’d been asked in the first place, and Mart had zeroed in on his younger sister’s chagrin and ‘thrown gasoline on a raging fire’, so to speak, with his incessant teasing.

The ensuing bickering was forgotten when Brian challenged both Trixie and Mart to a game of hopscotch on the front porch. The game had kept them all off each other’s nerves for awhile, and lunch came and went without incident. Trixie loved to drink her strawberry soda with a twisty straw, and Mart had even made sure his sister had a brand new one while they munched on ham and cheese sandwiches.

That peaceful interlude was short-lived. Disaster struck when Reddy knocked over the kitchen garbage and gobbled down a half-eaten cupcake that had been thrown away. Helen assured the children the puppy had only eaten a small bite and would be fine. Thirty minutes later she was quickly cleaning up evidence to the contrary which the Irish Setter had so helpfully left in an old bicycle helmet.

In order to give the poor pup a chance to recuperate from his cupcake adventure, Helen suggested that the children get started on their individual homework assignments. Brian happily grabbed his book and ran to the living room to claim the couch. Trixie’s "homework" was coloring several color-by-numbers pages sent home by her very understanding teacher, and she went to the kitchen table with her markers without complaint.

Mart, however was in panic-mode. He had drawn several pictures based on a story his class had read, and his "homework" was to put them together into a small book. The pictures were missing, and Mart was nearly inconsolable. A rapid search of the house turned up nothing; a check of Reddy’s bed revealed no shreds of paper. Trixie was the hero of the day when she triumphantly called from upstairs "Found ‘em!"

Mart nearly mowed her down as he barreled into the bedroom he shared with Brian. "Where were they?" he demanded, out of breath from his mad dash up the stairs.

"You stuck ‘em inside your new Cosmo McNaught book," she answered with a smug grin. Mart snatched the drawings from his sister, hugging them to his chest for a moment before racing back downstairs to finish his project.

"How did you know where to find them?" Helen had asked. "I never would’ve thought to look there."

"I dunno, Moms." She shrugged as followed her mother and Brian back downstairs. "All I hear is ‘Cosmo McNaught this’ and ‘Cosmo McNaught that’ from both Mart AND Brian, so I just figured I’d check with dumb old Cosmo. It just made sense to me."

The screen door slammed amid joyful shouts of "Daddy’s home!" from all three children, startling Helen out of her reverie. Catching her mother’s wince as the door bounced against its frame, Trixie hollered "Sorry, Moms!" Luckily, Bobby was already used to his rambunctious, vocal siblings and didn’t wake as the older children ran out to the front porch to wait for their father. Helen looked outside and saw Peter’s car heading up the long driveway.

"He still takes my breath away," Helen thought as she watched him park the late model Taurus and hurry to the house. He didn’t bother to open the dark green umbrella he carried, and his jet black hair and dress clothes were quickly dampened by the steady rain. A grin lit up his handsome face when he saw the children waiting impatiently to greet him.

As soon as he was in the shelter of the porch roof Brian, Mart and Trixie leaped into his arms, hugging and kissing him in welcome. He pretended to stagger under their combined weight, eliciting happy giggles from the threesome as he carefully maneuvered through the doorway.

Peter paused long enough to drop his briefcase and put his umbrella in the stand by the front door before pulling his wife into his arms.

"Hey there, Beautiful," he murmured before bestowing a lingering kiss to her upturned lips. They broke apart laughing as three young voices groaned "EWWWWH!", "GROSS!", "Cut it out!"

"You guys quit picking on me, or I won’t tell you who’s coming to visit," Peter teased. He caught Mart around the waist, picking him up and turning him upside down. While the boy shrieked with laughter, his father grunted, "Good Lord, what have you been eating? Lead?"

"Nope, I had ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch!" he chirped as his father gently lowered him, right side up, to the floor.

"He means he had TWO sandwiches! He’s gonna be as big as a horse if he doesn’t quit it!" Brian snickered.

Helen smiled fondly at their antics. The kids always went a little wild for the first few minutes when their father came home from work, eager to hear stories of the funny things that happened at his job as Senior Teller at the bank in Sleepyside. "Well, I’m not picking on you, so why don’t you tell ME who’s coming to visit?"

"Jarrod and Joyce Riley."

Helen actually squealed in delight as her children stared in open-mouthed shock.

"Who’s that?" Trixie demanded. She figured they had to be someone important to make Moms act so funny.

"Do I know them?" Mart sounded off.

"Your mother and I have been friends with them for quite some time. Jarrod was my roommate when I was in college, and Joyce is his wife."

"I remember them!" Brian piped up over the din. "That’s Uncle Jarrod and Aunt Joyce! When I was little I thought he really was related to us because he kind of looks like Dad," he explained to his brother and sister.

"That’s right, Brian." Peter smiled at his son. In college, he and Jarrod had indeed at times been mistaken for brothers, or at least cousins. The four adults had had quite a time explaining to a five year old Brian that there was no blood relation between the two black-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned men. Jarrod’s black eyes, slightly wavy black hair, and bronze skin had proclaimed his Celtic/Native American heritage; while Peter’s eyes were a warm brown and his skin more honey-toned. The resemblance between the two men had certainly been more than passing, especially to an inquisitive child. Brian had adamantly remained unconvinced. It was Joyce who had suggested they let Brian call them ‘Uncle Jarrod’ and ‘Aunt Joyce’ for simplicity’s sake

"Uncle Jarrod’s the black-haired guy standing next to you in your wedding pictures, right Dad?" Mart interrupted.

"Yes, he is," his father answered.

"And Aunt Joyce is the brown-haired woman standing next to me," his mother continued. "He was your father’s Best Man and she was my Maid of Honor," she explained further. "His family owns a horse ranch in Central Florida, and Jarrod makes trips around the country buying new horses and selling the horses they raise."

"When are they coming? Are they coming right now? Are they bringing some horses with them?" Trixie babbled excitedly. She loved horses more than anything else in the world, and planned on saving all her birthday money so she could buy one when she was way, way older, like twelve or thirteen.

Peter chuckled as the children fairly danced in their excitement. "Hold on, hold on! They’re coming by tomorrow morning and he’s bringing his two youngest sisters with him; Kyla’s eight, and Maureen’s five. But first things first. Trixie, why don’t you and Mart put away your artwork so Brian can set the table for dinner. I’ll go upstairs and check on Bobby."

Just then, a baby’s wail came over the monitor.

"Feeding time at the Belden Zoo! Take charge of downstairs duty! I’ve got upstairs covered." Helen handed Peter a pot holder, grinning from ear to ear. "You’re not properly equipped for baby duty, anyway," she whispered wickedly in his ear as she went to rescue her squalling son.

Peter shook his head to dispel the image of his lovely wife upstairs in their bedroom, breastfeeding their infant son while gently rocking in the antique rocking chair. The beauty and intimacy never ceased to amaze him. And later tonight,  just before Bobby’s 2am feedin, when all the kids were asleep...

"Daddy? Hey, Daddy! What did Moms say, Daddy? Why are you smiling so funny?"

His daughter’s piping voice helped bring him back to the present. Being caught having a romantic fantasy about the mother of his children BY one of those children was hilarious in the extreme, and with a rueful chuckle he went about putting dinner on the table. Having a sex life with three curious children in the house was difficult, but not impossible. After all, there was always later tonight…

To Be Continued

TBH Main