Family Treasures. Kathryn Springer

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СКАЧАТЬ toward the door as he formulated a slight variation of the lecture he’d been serving up like spaghetti over the past few months. A lecture he’d guarantee couldn’t be found in one of the numerous parenting books he’d been reading. The ones that gave advice on how to give children roots, wings and make them mind without losing his.

      Devon was beginning to think the reason he hadn’t discovered a fool-proof parenting technique was because his children didn’t exactly fit the typical “kid” mold….

      Sure, blame them. It’s not like you’re the poster child for Father of the Year….

      Not that he wasn’t trying.

      It’s just that three out of the four Walshes in the house weren’t cooperating.

      He decided to track down Josh and Brady, his nine-year-old twins, first. Just the fact there were two of them doubled the volume and usually made them easier to locate. Jenny was the tough one. Shy and introspective, she could make herself practically invisible when she wanted to be. And she wanted to be. A lot.

      Coaxing Jenny out of her shell was a challenge Devon didn’t feel prepared for.

      Who was he kidding? Parenting was a challenge he didn’t feel prepared for.

      Strength for the moment, right, Lord?

      It had become his mantra over the past six months.

      “Brady? Josh?” Devon veered to the right when he reached the foot of the stairs, assuming he’d find the boys in the parlor—a quaint, old-fashioned term for a drafty room with scuffed hardwood floors, uncomfortable furniture covered in itchy, burgundy velvet and heavy drapes that blocked out the light with the efficiency of an eclipse. For reasons Devon couldn’t begin to explain, it had become his children’s favorite room in the house.

      He’d only taken a few steps in that direction when the twins materialized in front of him.

      “Hi, Dad,” Josh said cheerfully.

      Too cheerfully, in Devon’s opinion. And even if the chapter on “pushing boundaries” he’d read the night before wasn’t still fresh in his mind, he would have been suspicious.

      Brady pulled his ever-present stopwatch out of his pants pocket and flipped open the cover. “You’ve got thirty-five minutes left to write, Dad. What’s up?”

      “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

      “Ah…nothing much. Just hanging around.” Josh casually tossed a miniature football into the air and scrambled to catch it again. He missed and it bounced off his shoe and hit the wall. “Playing football. You know.”

      Devon’s eyes narrowed. The boys had never shown an interest in any of the sports equipment he’d purchased. A decoy toy, no doubt about it.

      “Where is Jenny?” Devon took a step toward the parlor and found his path blocked by identical brown-eyed obstacles.

      “She’s…somewhere.” Brady shrugged.

      “Not here, though.” Josh’s ears turned red.

      Devon suppressed a smile. Those ears gave him away every time. More reliable than a lie-detector test.

      “Is she in the parlor?”

      “No!” The twins’ voices blended together in an ear-splitting, off-key soprano.

      Devon winced. He wasn’t in any hurry for the boys to grow up but he did look forward to the day their voices changed.

      “Will you help us put together the train track, Dad?” Brady asked.

      “You want to put together the train track?” Devon repeated. “Now?”

      The twins nodded vigorously.

      “Yeah.”

      “We want to get started.”

      “Let me get this straight. You’re talking about the model train that’s been sitting in the box since I brought it home? A month ago?”

      Josh and Brady exchanged is-this-a-trick question frowns and then reverted to the silent mode of communication that had unnerved Devon when they’d first moved in with him. It had taken Jenny to put it in perspective.

      “It’s a twin thing, Dad,” she’d said. “It’s like trying to figure out how peanut butter gets on the ceiling.”

      And because the whole peanut-butter phenomenon was another unsolved mystery in his household, Devon took his daughter’s advice to accept what he couldn’t explain and move on. It was easier—and maybe a little safer—that way.

      “We were waiting for the right moment.” Brady, official timekeeper for the Walsh family, grinned at him.

      If it weren’t for Josh’s ears, now a deep shade of crimson, Devon might have fallen for it.

      He decided right then and there to get a refund on every single parenting book stacked up next to his bed. Or maybe he should just chuck his next mystery novel and write a parenting book instead. At least it wouldn’t take long. He could probably finish the entire five pages in an hour.

      The door leading to the parlor flew open and Jenny appeared.

      “Is she here yet…?” A tiny squeak replaced the rest of the sentence when the girl spotted her father standing in the hallway.

      Devon frowned. “Is who here yet?”

      “Dad!” Jenny gulped. “What are you doing down here? It isn’t break time for—”

      “Thirty-one minutes,” Brady supplied helpfully.

      Devon’s gaze zeroed in on his daughter. “Did I miss something? Are we expecting company this morning?”

      “N-no.”

      “I’m not expecting company,” Josh interjected. “Are you expecting company, Brady?”

      “I’m not expecting company—”

      Devon’s head started to swim and he held up his hand. “Now that we’ve established the fact none of us is expecting company, maybe we should all go into the kitchen and rustle up something for—”

      The doorbell interrupted him and Devon’s eyebrows shot up.

      “Mmm. I wonder who that could be.” He took a step forward and all three children attached themselves to him like ticks on a deer.

      “It’s probably the mailman,” Jenny said. “I’ll get it.”

      “Yeah, Dad. You go upstairs and write. You still have…” It wasn’t easy but Brady managed to wrestle his stopwatch out of his pocket again and keep a death grip on his father. “Twenty-eight minutes until lunch.”

      “Oh, this is much more interesting than lunch—”

      A piercing shriek interrupted him, cutting through the last СКАЧАТЬ