Chapter 15

Chapter 15
“What happened?” My sister is looking at their faces and then she looks at mine.
“Well they were fighting over a toy and Alexa slapped her brother across the face. I don’t know how many times I have told that girl to never hit her brother or anyone for that matter. Well she knows what the punishment is for that which is why she is looking all sad and pitiful right now. Nicholas on the other hand won’t be watching television or playing with his toys for two weeks.” She just nods her head and we all go back to our shopping. Once we’re all finished we decide to go out for dinner. We decide on going to a place called Big Daddy’s Diner after googling family friendly restaurants online. The kids really seem to enjoy themselves and quite frankly so does everyone else. We all seem more relaxed than we were during the trip here and I am very thankful that my children haven’t noticed that the grown-ups, mainly their parents, were very nervous in the beginning. The situation doesn’t seem to have affected them at all.
Suddenly I remember that there is something that I want to talk to Jay about, so I lean in and tell Jay that later tonight we have to talk about something important and she just nods her head and continues eating her fries. Once dinner is finished we pay the check and head back to the house. Everyone is stuffed and exhausted from the long night and day that we’ve had so far, so everyone says good night before heading to bed. I kiss my mother on the cheek and tell her I love her before she goes off to her room. Jay tells her good night as well before grabbing my hand as we walk to our bedroom. We decide to take a shower together and I start remembering how I used to be terrified to even do this with her and now look at us. We have definitely come a long way over the years thanks to therapy. After our shower we each get dressed and climb into bed. Immediately she turns on the television to the news channel but I grab the remote from her and put the television on mute and she looks up at me and I can tell that she is wondering why I put the television on mute.
“I have something to talk to you about and now is as a good a time as any. I wanted to talk to you about the house back in Lake Charles.” She turns to face me more, so I keep going.
“Well I know that you’ve had that place for a while and love living there and I did to at first, but with everything that’s happened I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind moving. I know that it would be a huge change for you but we could use the room now that we have two children and they are going to need their own rooms soon.” I’m sitting here waiting for her to be mad or interrupt me but she doesn’t. We both sit in silence for a few more seconds before she takes both of my hands in hers.
“Renee’, if moving will make you happier then we can move. I thought about it but you never said anything so I never brought it up. I figured you were fine where we were living. Would you want to still live in Lake Charles, or do you want to move out of Louisiana completely?” I hadn’t thought about whether or not I wanted to move out of Louisiana completely or not, but now that she is asking I guess I should give the idea some thought.
“How about we not worry about that for right now and try to focus on the mess that we’re currently in, and try to think about the rest later. Do you have any idea who this person could be? I’ve been thinking about the last message I was sent and I’m wondering if this is a person that knows you personally. I mean the words this person used made it seem like they were mad at you for something” She sits back against her pillows and I can tell that she is thinking hard about what I just told her. I wonder if anyone else has thought the same thing or if I’m the only one that thinks this person not only knows Jay, but is also mad at her for some reason.
“You may be right. I never thought about the wording of the message before now, but now that you have brought it to my attention it did sound kind of personal. I’ll call Mr. Fontenot in the morning and let him know about your idea. Maybe he can get something else out of the message if he hasn’t already. Is there anything else that you want to discuss tonight?” I can see the glint in her eyes and knows what she is up to, but that will have to wait because there is one more thing to discuss.
“Yes, actually there is one more thing.” She sighs and I just roll my eyes at her and her one track mind.
“Look we have all night for that, but right now we need to discuss our children. What are we going to do about Alexa? She hit her brother in the face today over a toy.” Her expression looked shocked as though she didn’t know what happened.
“Renee’ I know that hitting is wrong but they are kids. Siblings fight sometimes and sometimes those fights are physical.” Is she serious right now? Yes I know that children fight and that they can even become physical, but she’s acting like there is nothing wrong with them fighting.
“We will discipline them tomorrow and talk to them about how wrong both of their behaviors were today. Nicholas taking that toy does not give Alexa the right to hit him, and Nicholas taking something that he knew his sister wanted was wrong as well and we’ll explain to him why it was wrong.” Now she’s talking more like my wife and not that stranger that was speaking a minute ago. After talking a bit more about punishments and the house we are both yawning and decide that we will finish talking in the morning. We kiss each other good night and we cuddle until we both fall asleep to the sound of the news.