Playing the 'Son' Card by Wilson James Page A

my pack, just in case
I needed them for something, although I could not imagine
what.
    On the way out, I decided to see if
my mom was busy, and she wasn’t.
    I stood at her open door. “Hi,
Mom.”
    She looked up. “Troy!
Hi.”
    “We’re just passing through, Mom.
We’re going to the pool, and I wanted to show Trevor and Jesse my
office.”
    She gave me a smile. “Well come on
in, boys. Welcome.”
    Trevor and Jesse kind of slid into
the room, not wanting to be a bother.
    Trevor greeted her. “Hi, Aunt
Liz.”
    Now she showed that she was my
mother first, and the head of the office second. She got out of her
chair, and came over to give all of us a hug. “I’m glad you stopped
by, guys. It’s great to see you.”
    I signaled that it was time to go.
“Okay, Mom. We’ll see you later. By the way, will we see you for
supper?”
    “Sure will. I’ll see you
later.”
    I was just about out the door when
she stopped me. “By the way, Troy, what time does your bus leave to
got back tomorrow?”
    I’d been thinking about
this.
    “Well, Mom, I was thinking I’d see
if I could go back by plane. I was checking out flights, and I can
leave here mid-afternoon tomorrow and get into Spokane by just
after seven. That’s a whole lot fast than by bus. For that, I’d
have to leave before noon, and I’d bet into Spokane well after
midnight.”
    She was thoughtful for just a
moment. “Hmm. That sounds like a good idea, Troy. We should have
done that before, too.”
    “Yes,” I agreed, “But that was
before I sold a house, and got a little extra income for the
family.”
    I hurried on to show my
understanding of how it works. “Oh, I know we don’t get anything
until closing, but at least we think there’s a good chance the deal
with go through, right.”
    “Absolutely right, Troy. There’s a
very good chance the deal will go through.”
    I returned her smile. “Okay, Mom.
See you later.”
    The boys were already ahead of me,
and Trevor even was pushing me tab back to ‘out’ as I reached the
reception desk.
    “Okay, lets go swim,” I
said.
    We headed over to the pool, and had
a great afternoon. Towards the end of the swim, it got really
quiet, so we spent the last hour on the diving boards, working on
our skills. I didn’t let either of them try anything new, but I let
them do lots of lead-up skills, and gave them lots of feedback
about positioning, just as Jonathan had.
    We were pretty tired, but happy, as
we made our way home. Sally pointed out that it was a school night,
so it was regular bedtime. After just a little complaining, the
boys went to bed really well, and I promised that I’d be up soon
myself.
    With the boys gone upstairs, Mom
asked if I’d join her, Sally and Jack in the living room, to ‘catch
up on things.’
    She pointed out that we had not even
looked at houses while I had been there, and suggested there might
be an alternative. At this point, Sally spoke up, and said that
they really felt like both Mom and I were part of the family, and
perhaps it might keep the family together if we all stayed
together.
    I felt three pairs of adult eyes on
me. After a moment to consider, I voiced my opinion that it might
be okay.
    “It’s not like I don’t like you all,
or anything,” I observed, “But it’s just that we are a little
cramped here. I mean, we’ve even got Jesse sleeping on the
floor.”
    “That’s quite true, Troy, and we
were thinking that if you did this, we’d turn the unfinished part
of the basement into a very large bedroom for you three. We’d fix
up their old room for your mom, and we’d have our guest room back.
We’d also put a new bathroom downstairs, so that would help that
situation out.”
    I thought for a moment about how
nice it would be to be part of this family. If the boys kept up
being so nice to me, it would be a wonderful setup.
    I looked at mom, who was looking at
me with a hopeful expression. I was a little surprised that she had
not mentioned it