“I don’t know. I know I’ll never do that because I’m married, so I haven’t given it much thought.”
By the time supper was ready it was late. “I’m sorry I’m serving supper this late. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’m happy to have sustenance, and a beautiful wife serving me supper, whether it’s early or late.”
After putting his plate on the table, she leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You may just be my favorite husband.”
He laughed. “I’d better be the only one.”
Early the next morning, Alyssa did what she’d told Kendrick she would do. After cleaning the cottage, she walked to Bonnie’s house and visited for a bit, and then she began her walk. This time she started in the woods again, but she went out and around the village on the other side, enjoying herself immensely.
As she walked, she thought about how happy she was with Kendrick. Maybe they had different ideas about whether she should go out alone or not, but she loved him. He was a goodman. Heather and Holli had been right when they urged her to marry him.
She got back to the village just in time to join Heather and Holli for lunch, though this time her mood was very different than the day before. It had been all she could do not to sing the song, “Sound of Music,” in her very offkey voice as she walked. She had spun like Maria Von Trapp a couple of times, though, as she hummed the song to herself.
As they ate their baked potatoes with all the good fixings, Heather told a story about her twin sons. “They couldn’t have been more than five or six, and they kept trying to go into the loch all summer, even though neither of them had any idea how to swim. It seems that Bryson had decided if they got into trouble in the water, he would just call the fish to bring them to the surface.”
“Did it not work that way?” Alyssa asked.
“Thankfully, I never found out. When I pulled them out of the water for the fifth time that summer, I set them down and asked them why they kept getting into danger. Kendrick told me it was always Bryson’s idea, which didn’t sound quite right, but I asked Bryson next. Bryson told me that his friends the fish were watching him and ready to float him to the surface of the water. ‘Don’t worry, Mama. The fish friends will keep us safe.’ I wanted to spank them both and make them sit in an inescapable room for hours. Instead, I held them close and begged them to never do that to me again.”