LITMIR.BIZ

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I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.

      Micah praised their teamwork.

      The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.

      “Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.

      Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”

      “It’s an idea, a way of—”

      Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.

      So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.

      “We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.

      “Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.

      Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.

      Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.

      And every time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.

      Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.

      “Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.

      “Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.

      “Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.

      “‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.

      The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.

      “No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”

      There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.

      Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”

      “Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.

      “To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.

      “That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.

      Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.

      “Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”

      Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.

      “Come back and tell me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.

      “Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”

      “Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.

      Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.

      “They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”

      “And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.

      Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”

      “Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”

      “Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.

      “Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.

      Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.

      “Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.

      Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.

      They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, Micah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.

      Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”

      “Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”

      “She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”

      “When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”

      “Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.

      Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”

      “But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”

      Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?”

      “I’ll

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