2 - Pier and Beam
Here’s to the ones who decided to become human lighthouses anyway, even after all the times they’d been shipwrecked they still became a safe harbour. – Stacie Martin
Helen sat at the large table in the back corner of the restaurant that looked out over the lake. Jolene held her baby brother while Cheryl held Jaina and Dean was showing Janelle the deck outside. She couldn’t hear what the young woman was saying to the one-year-old, but they both seemed to be enjoying the rocking chair outside.
Jolene, Helen’s oldest daughter, leaned over and laid her head on her mother’s shoulder; Jagger held a fistful of his sister’s hair. Every time that she got him to let go, he simply grabbed another clump. Giving up, she let him hold her hair and gave up on it looking good.
“Let go, little one.” Helen placed an arm around her grown daughter and tried to pry the small fingers free.
“No.” Jagger declared to their mother. “Jo my.”
Smiling at the oldest of the triplets, she hugged him close. “Yes, Jag, I’m your Jo-Jo.”
“Jo my.” He repeated as he settled against her chest and sucked on his thumb.
Rubbing his back, she kissed the top of his head, now covered in soft brown waves much the same color as the rest of Helen’s six biological children. Jaxon, now twenty-five, worked full-time at Paxton trucking as a diesel mechanic. Then there was twenty-three-year-old Jolene, a full-time student getting her master’s degree in teaching. And JD who joined the Navy last July.
Just before the end of JD’s junior year, their father officially moved out of the house and filed for divorce. He had only been involved in his children’s lives when it was required. Otherwise, he left it all to his wife. Meanwhile, he had his mistresses and other children. None of his children received much attention from him until they became pawns in his plans.
A few months after moving out of the house that she had struggled to make a home for her three children, Helen got a new job with an accounting company, TRAAC. While working there, she met Reese. Helen’s eyes moved over to the large, muscular man and smiled. Owen Reese loved all the women in his life, his princesses.
But his queen, his wife, held his heart.
Much the same way that he currently held Jaxon’s daughter. Jaxon stood next to his stepdad with an arm around his partner, Bunny. Her husband was at work today, on shift with the fire department as was Cheryl’s husband. Cheryl was Reese’s only biological child until he and Helen had triplets last year.
She also had two half-brothers from her mom’s second marriage that Reese had stepped in and became a father figure for after her stepdad died in a car crash. Reese’s own parents had been married and divorced so many times that Helen couldn’t keep it all straight. He had a lot, and she did mean a lot, of sisters and a few brothers from all their marriages.
There were steps, halves and full blooded and the sisters that he claimed were all part of what they called the Princess Club. There were a few sisters and brothers that he did not associate with or claim. But after he became a millionaire, they tried to claim Reese.
Helen didn’t know all the details and assumed that it truly was not any of her business. Her daughter’s fiancé, Neo, had told her that there were a few steps that he did not acknowledge. One had tried to use Reese’s name to get a business deal, this was something that she learned happened frequently. And something that Reese and his close friends stopped quickly. And effectively.
There were times that Helen wondered if there was more to Reese and his construction companies. Neo always laughed and asked if she thought that they buried people in the foundations or the walls.
Jolene finally decided to set aside the dark romances with the morally gray main characters and she and Neo were now deep in a romantasy series about dragons.
Helen knew that the couple read together almost every night, after they ate dinner and cleaned the kitchen together, they sat on the couch, and she read a book. She was pretty sure that there was more to their reading sessions. Other than acknowledging that sex was how she would be getting grandchildren, Helen preferred not to think about any of her kids having a sex life.
Movement on the deck caught Helen and Jolene’s attention and they looked over to see JD and his friend approaching JD’s wife. Dean had been through a lot since she had entered their lives. She had been living with her uncle, Reese, while her mother, Mary, one of Reese’s many stepsisters, was deployed to Syria with Doctors Without Borders.
During an attack on the hospital several doctors were killed, Mary was one of them. It had taken nearly a week to get her body home. Dean’s father had died before she was ever born, and it had been just her and her mom. The princess club had formed while Reese was still in the Navy and Mary needed a support system. Many of his sisters answered his plea to help a young single mother.
Sixteen years later, they flocked to the grieving orphan along with Helen and her three children. JD and Dean had been dating for a few months, living a few rooms down from each other. She had clung to him, right up until her grief became anger and she pushed him away.
Since they were married this past Christmas eve and planned to have a real wedding on their first anniversary, the couple obviously moved past their problems. Or at least, past the issues of that time.
Jolene lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and shifted her youngest brother. Nodding her head to the window, she motioned to how Cooper, JD’s fellow Seabee, took the baby from Dean and even through the thick glass, they heard the baby squeal in excitement.
“I think someone has a crush.” Jolene laughed softly.
Watching the young man hug her baby and bury his face in her neck, Helen smiled. “Pretty sure it’s mutual.”
“Dean tell you what this is about?”
“No.” her mother admitted as she still watched the small group outside. “I don’t think that she knows all the details. Just that today is the anniversary of when he lost someone. She said that at the anniversary of her mom’s death she needed that balance of all of us and the silence.”
“He had the silence today.” Jolene murmured.
“Yeah. And she thought that he needed the noise to remind him that he was not alone.”
“So, of course, she called the family. And canceled your date night.”
Helen shrugged. “I’ll try to keep Reese from devouring me in front of our children. You and Neo going to the club tonight?”
“No.” she blushed at her mother asking if she was going to a sex club. Even with her mother being a member of the club, and her stepfather owning it, Jolene still got embarrassed over it. She even blushed when her older brother, also a member, asked about it.
“Did you go to the gym this morning?” Jolene asked and her mother knew that she was changing the topic of discussion.
Helen gave a soft laugh. “I did not. I had a rather intensive workout last night.”
“Eww.” Jolene shuddered but was glad that her mom was happy. “Are you still in a twenty?”
“I’m actually between an eighteen and a twenty. What about you?”
“Fourteen. But I feel healthy and Neo….”
“Uh-huh.” Her mom chuckled as Jolene’s voice trailed off.
“Loves her curves.” Neo said as he sat down next to Jolene. His long mohawk was braided down to his back and he shrugged out of his motorcycle jacket. “Can I get a kiss or is Jag going to tell me no?”
“Would it stop you if he did?” Reese asked his friend as he sat down next to his wife.
“Delay, possibly.” Neo grinned around the two women. “But definitely not stop.”
Carefully, he leaned in press a kiss to Jolene’s lips. A small hand pushed him away as large hazel eyes looked up at the man.
“No, neck. Jo my.”
Laughing, Neo moved his hand with the giant open mouth snake tattooed on it. “I thought you like Betty.”
“Neck!” Jagger exclaimed and bounced in his sister’s arms. “Neck!”
“Snake.” Jolene said, emphasizing the S and A. “Snake.”
“Neck!” jagger grabbed the hand with the snake tattoo and wrapped his little chubby arms around the man’s large muscular arm. “Neck my!”
“You get a little bit bigger; you can have your own Betty.” Neo promised as he took the toddler from his fiancé.