“You are not a bitch and I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself a name like that again! Listen to me now, Carolena.” Oliver moved her chin with his hand so she was looking right into his face, “There is nothing wrong in this world with a woman setting levels of acceptability for herself. If some mega-fuck brain rugger bugger does not live up to those ideals that is entirely his problem. Girls who lower their standards or have none at all, for that matter, marry boys who abuse and misuse them. You are my child and you are worthy of respect. Don’t request it. Expect it. Demand it. Always.”
Caro’s dark eyes were glittering in the afternoon sun as she stared into her father’s face. “I love you, Dad!” She hugged him around his neck. “Why can’t I meet a boy like you?”
“I love you, too, Muffin.” He patted the back of her head. “And maybe one day you’ll meet a boy who’s even better than me. But don’t ever have one that’s any worse, yeah?”
About three days later Nigel wound up in Oliver’s office after he clothes-lined Connor Stuart during rugby practice. “He kept getting in my way!” Nigel proclaimed as Oliver wrapped his shoulder in ice, “He slammed right into me, causing me to nut him the first time!”
“He’s got a hump the size of a walnut right in the middle of his forehead,” Oliver mumbled, weaving the bandage to hold the ice under Nigel’s arm.
“Well, yeah! Our head’s collided! As far as the alleged clothes-lining, well…I dunno how that happened. It was an accident!”
“Yes, Nigel, and you accidentally kicked him in the ribs and accidentally stepped on his face as well as he lay in the grass gasping for air, right? Put down your arm now.”
“Well, yes,” Nigel grimaced as he lowered his arm, “Exactly.”
Subsequently, he was not so accidentally suspended from the team for his lack of control.
“I was in control!” He argued, “I was in perfect control! He’s alive, ain’t he?”
It was not the first time that they’d shown that when they’d take the time to quit bickering, Carolena and Nigel were the best of friends. The most obvious example I can remember of this was when they were eleven and they both ended up sitting after hours in Oliver’s office bleeding after Caro jumped in on a fight that Nigel was coming out on the bad end of.
“I’ll do him again!” Caro told us as she sat on the examination table.
“Sit still!” Oliver demanded, gently prodding her face, “That’s a whopper of a bruise! Hitting a girl! That boy should be ashamed!”
“She was pounding the sense out of him, she was!” Nigel said proudly from his seat off to the side, “He got me down, so’s I couldn’t get up and here comes Carolena just a blaze of red hair and flying fists! Bloody magnificent she was, Uncle Ollie!”
Caro grinned, “It was fun. Is he still here?”
“No, no. I sent him off with his mother.” Oliver turned her face in his hand, “It was fun, yeah? You two shouldn’t fight!” He scolded them responsibly, and then added, “But I’m right proud you both for taking up for Natalie. Your dad’ll be having words with his father, I‘m sure…two on one, he said. Well, who came and put our little Nattie into a bin? She’s got bruises all over her!” He turned, “Lucy, is Nigel’s numb enough for stitching yet? I’m through here. Take Caro for an x-ray of this cheek. It looks like it’s all swollen tissue, but I want to make sure there’s nothing broken to be safe. ”
After the twins were born, Lucy had found her calling in life. She went back to school and became a nurse. Oliver hired her straight away, of course, and she helped him run the office. I did the accounting and managed the labs, but mostly I just looked after Oliver and the children, as I always had. Me, with all my degrees, knowing all I knew, and all I ever wanted to be was a mum! But Lucy could juggle a career and her home life with me taking care of the kids. I was very proud of my sister, little Lucy Cotton, who’d grown up to be a dedicated mother, a wonderful wife who was adored by her husband and a damned good nurse to boot.
Little Nattie was sitting quietly outside the door in the hallway. I really did not want to see my Nigel getting stitched, so I came and sat beside her. “You all right, Muffin? That was a right nasty thing that boy did. I’m sorry it happened to you.”
“I was just walking and he picked me up and tossed me in the rubbish bin,” She said softly. Natalie often got the brunt of bullies because she was so unusually small, “I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. Are they hurt?”
She was the sweetest of all the children. Blue eyed and golden haired, she had her mother’s gorgeous looks and full mouth. In fact, she looked nothing at all like Alexander, except often mocked his expressions, “Ah, Nattie,” I told her, “Caro and Nigel will be just fine. Don’t you go feeling bad about what happened to them. You did nothing wrong. Some bully came and decided to throw you into a bin and your brother was having none of it. Be glad he was there for you. He takes after your daddy, you know?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah! When your dad was a lad he had an awful temper. And he especially hated it when someone would dishonour a lady.” I heard the front door to the office open and close, “I think that’s your dad now. Go see!”
She jumped off her chair and raced to the waiting room. “Daddy!”
“I don’t want another shot!” Nigel yelled, “I don’t want another shot! Mum, make him stop! I don’t want…Oy! Get away from me, Uncle Ollie!”
“Do you want to feel a needle coming in and out of your brow over and over again or just once?” Oliver asked seriously.
“Shush your noise,” Lucy told him gently, “It’s just a little sting!”
I cringed as he screamed anyway. Nigel had a flair for drama.
I could hear the excitement of children down in the waiting room now that Alexander had arrived. “Oy, you little munchkins! Natalie, my love! Come here, I heard you had a rough afternoon!” He grunted as he lifted her from the floor, “Oh, you look fine! Beautiful, in fact! Hello! Hello, all of you! Hello, Warren! Hello, Gryff! How are you, Little Bessie? Hi, Annie!”
“I’m not Annie, Daddy,” I heard a tiny voice, “I’m Bess!”
“And I’m your Uncle Ollie,” Alexander returned, “You can’t play at that one with me! I invented some of those tricks!”
“We got you the other day!” One of the chirped.
“For about three seconds!”
The twin girls giggled.
“Uncle Xan!” It was Gryffin, “Can you draw a cat for my new story I’ve written?”
I stood alone in the hall with my eyes closed and I listened to all of their voices mingling together. It was chaos, all of them talking at once and Alexander trying to lend an ear to each one. I let the sound of them fill my ears and swell my heart until I thought that I would burst from all the love inside of me.
As she got older, Natalie did not grow any less lovely in her disposition. It took my breath away sometimes how much she looked like Melissa, she was stunning, but that was where any reminder of her mother ended. Natalie was anything but an unbalanced air head. She was calm and kind and she had a spirit that was impossible to sink. Natalie was close with Lucy. Never having known her mother, she had absolutely no interest in seeing her when Melissa came to Wales.
“It’s nice that she’s here,” Nattie told her father, “But I don’t know why she’s bothered to see us now. I suppose I can sit with you and Nigel, but I don’t have anything to say to the woman.”
“I’d appreciate it if you did,” Alexander said calmly, “And you don’t have to say much.”
“Good, because I’m not going to.”
Nigel, on the other hand, was very excited. He had vague recollections of his mother and was eager to see if anything about her matched his memories. He was concerned, on the other hand, that his eagerness would somehow insult Lucy. Lucy, however, was not threatened in the slightest. “I’d like to beat the shit out of her, Sil,” She told me privately, “But knowing that she lost out on her children and I got both of them and Alexander, too, is enough revenge for me. Her stupidity and selfishness were my gain.”