“You must be Sam,” the woman told him. “I’m Elaine, and you look exactly the way you did in my dream last night.” She walked right up to him and gave him a big hug, surprising both Sam and Carrie. One by one, he met her four sisters and one sister in law.
Christie introduced herself last, grinning up at him. “It’s nice to put a face to that voice of yours,” she told him.
“Yours too, Christie.”
Sam leaned forward to the tow-headed toddler hanging onto Christie’s leg. “And this young man must be Max.”
“
Yeth
,” Max told Sam, giving him a gap toothed grin. He pointed to Carrie.
“
That’th
Aunt
Cawee
.”
“I sure am, buddy boy,” Carrie said, as she scooped him up and kissed him on his neck, until he chortled with laughter. “Max, can you shake Sam’s hand and tell him hi?”
The toddler reached out to shake hands.
“Hi
Tham
.”
Elaine took his arm and led him to a chair at the kitchen table. “I see you were able to follow my driving directions?”
Sam nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I found her just fine, and thanks again.”
“There was something in your voice that made me think you were sincere, and to tell you the truth, Carrie’s been smiling more in the last couple of weeks than she has in years. I have a feeling you’re the reason. Sam, are you hungry? We’re about ready to eat.”
Sam lifted his nose to breath in the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen. “Yes ma’am! My mouth’s been watering since I walked inside this place.”
Carrie elbowed him as they lined up to fix their plates, buffet style. “Just like you to get an early start on buttering up my mother. She’s a sucker for a hungry man.”
“I’m a sucker for good cooking, so we should get along fine.”
“Butt kisser,” she accused.
“Pain in the ass,” he countered. “Besides, I needed all the help I could get to find you.”
“Yeah, well I may turn out to be such a big pain in the ass you’ll wish you’d kept yours in Kenton.”
He slid his hands around her waist and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Not in this lifetime, Baby.”
The two of them sat in the dining room with several other family members, feasting on the delicious turkey, oven roasted to succulent perfection, various rice and vegetable dishes, as well as wild goose gumbo. Carrie’s siblings had lots of questions for Sam about his work, his home, his children, his parents, and the ultimate question, asked by none other than Carrie’s mom.
“So, Sam, what are your intentions concerning my daughter?”
Carrie kept her eyes on her plate, obviously not inclined to run interference on this particular subject. Both the dining room and adjoining kitchen grew quiet as everyone stopped to hear his answer.
Sam set down his glass of tea and cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t think it’s a secret how I feel about her—”
A female voice from the kitchen table interrupted. “Not anymore.” Giggles and snorts of all genders accompanied the comment, before someone shushed them all into silence.
Sam heard one of Carrie’s favorite movies,
It’s a Wonderful Life
, playing on the small television set in a room next to the kitchen. Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sang the last strains of ‘
Buffalo Gal’
as he got his thoughts together.
“Ma’am, the ultimate decision is in your daughter’s hands, of course, but as far as I’m concerned...” he turned to look at Carrie. “I’m in this for good.”
Seated next to Sam, Carrie swallowed audibly then glanced up as all eyes fixed on her. “What?” she asked. “We’ve only been on one date. I can’t help it if he finds me irresistible.”
Jen’s resounding snort was the first of several comments and noises emitted by her family as they began teasing the couple.
Elaine placed a hand on Carrie’s shoulder. “I don’t mind telling you the antics of that husband of hers were hard to swallow sometimes. But he did have a hand in giving me three gorgeous grandchildren.”
“Okay, y’all need to lay off poor old Dave when he’s not around to defend himself,” Lonnie chimed in. “You just never appreciated him, Carrie,” he added, using the sarcasm he was known for. The statements brought on a chorus of ‘
Poor
Daves
’
that ended in laughter.
Sam glanced over at Carrie. “I guess he didn’t have time to establish much of a fan base among your family, did he?”
Katie answered for Carrie. “He had plenty of time, just no inclination. Trust me, Sam. That divorce was way past due.”
Carrie looked up, her gaze scanning the room to encompass her family. “I needed a plan, okay? When you have three kids, no education, and no place to go, you have to wait until the time is right. You’re supposed to be picking on Sam today, not me.”
“Is that why you brought me here? So they could pick on me?” Sam asked her.
Carrie grinned. “Yep, throw you to the wolves, and see if you come out standing like a man, or cowering like a mama’s boy. I had to see if you could handle the pressure.”
“Oh, I think I can. The previous competitor doesn’t appear to have been too stiff...” Sam treated everyone at the table to a devilish grin. “Or maybe he was.”
“You must have met old Dave,” Susan answered, joining in the others’ laughter. “Personally, I’ve always thought of him as our own Stanley Kowalski. You know...Brando, drunk and yelling ‘Stella!’ at the window.”
He gazed somberly at Carrie as he answered. “I’ve only seen Dave in passing, but haven’t had the particular pleasure of meeting him yet.”
“Whatever she’s told you about him, it’s probably worse than that.” Katie said, lowering her voice. “Sometimes, I think little sister has kept a lot of what went on in that part of her life to herself.”
Sam’s gaze lingered on Carrie, as she cleared her throat. “We’re not here to talk about Dave.”
“Apparently, we’re here to talk about me,” Sam said.
Carrie’s siblings spent the next hour or so regaling Sam with hilarious family stories and anecdotes. Carrie’s mom told him about the time when two year old Carrie used a stool to climb onto her counter top.
“Did you get a spanking?” he teased Carrie.
“No. Mom was so impressed, she snapped a picture then moved the stool and walked out of the room, without taking me off of the cabinet. Of course when I tried to get down without the stool, I fell on my butt.”
Sam laughed then asked the obvious question. “What were you looking for up in that cabinet, Nosy Rosy?”
Fudge, of course,” she commented. “Mom always kept a plastic container on the top shelf with fudge in it.”
“She’d hide it from us so we couldn’t get to it,” Mack added.
“It sounds like she didn’t hide it good enough,” Sam answered.
“Aw hell, we
all
knew where to go to find the fudge,” Christie answered.
“That was my PMS stash...back before PMS had a name, of course,” Elaine admitted. “Good Lord, I blamed your father for years!”
And now you know why the very first thing I learned to cook was fudge,” Carrie told Sam before turning to face her mother. “It was in self defense.”
Sam laughed along with the others as the stories continued.
After a while, the women got up to clean the kitchen and the guys migrated to the living room to watch some football. Sam hung around the kitchen with Carrie and the women.
Elaine turned to her daughter. “Carrie, before you got here this morning, Ruth called wanting to know when you needed that furniture. She’s studying for exams this week but said she’d be free after lunch if you wanted to go take a look at what she had. I told her I didn’t know if the furniture was going to Gardiner or Kenton. “Which is it?”
Carrie chewed her lower lip thoughtfully and dried her hands on a dishtowel. She grabbed hold of Sam’s belt loop and pulled him gently toward the doorway leading out to her mom’s back yard. “Come on, we need to talk.”
When they got out to the deck Carrie let go of his belt loop and walked down the steps and out behind her mom’s house for a little privacy.
Sam followed in silence, stopping behind her as she stood with her arms crossed tight across her chest, staring out toward the back pasture. Other than a few muffled thumps coming from inside the house, the only sound came from the north wind rushing over dry, frozen grass.
The sigh Carrie emitted was deep, long, and sad-sounding. “I don’t think I can do this, Sam.”
Carrie felt
Sam place his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low and pleading.
“Come on, Babe, can’t we talk about this?”
She turned to face him. “There’s nothing to talk about. Unless you can tell me right now that you’re willing to help me pick up some furniture and bring it to my new place in Kenton.”
Sam cocked his hooded gaze to the side. “What did you say?”
Carrie hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. “I said, I was wondering if you’d be available to help me pick up some furniture and bring it to my place. You know; that cute little house just across from that cop and his crazy neighbor in Kenton?”
Sam threw his head back with a shout then reached out to pull her close. “Nothing would make me happier right now, except this.”
He placed both hands on her face and kissed her long enough and deep enough to make her toes curl.
Back in Elaine’s kitchen, every woman in the family was pushing for a space at the only window with a view of them.
“Would you look at that,” Christie crooned. “Well ladies, it looks like Carrie’s moving to Kenton.”
“Wow,” Jen murmured. “Look at them go. I so envy that.”
“God, can y’all even remember what that felt like?” Katie added. “When you thought you’d die if you were away from your man for even one night?”
