The Plan (3 page)

“I still can't find Luke anywhere! Where on earth could he be?” She smiled at the giggling she heard coming from somewhere down the hall as she hung up three pairs of pants in his closet.

“Maybe he's under the bed,” Claire said, with mock loudness, as she placed some underwear and socks in their appropriate drawers. The giggling was getting louder, and Claire wondered if the kids might just burst if she didn't put a stop to it soon.

Sitting down on the vacant bed, she paused to catch her breath before walking into the chaos she was sure was ahead of her. She'd never realized having three children would be such an exhausting task. When she was a little girl, and even as a teenager, she used to tell her mom she wanted to have eight kids when she grew up.

“Eight?” her mom would ask, her face a mixture of shock and humor. “Are you sure about that? Eight is a lot.”

“Eight is enough,” Claire would say, chuckling as she remembered the Dick Van Patten television series she'd enjoyed so much growing up.

“Okay, well then,” her mom would say, “you have one child and get back to me on whether or not you still feel that way after a few months of sleepless nights and endless diapers.”

Claire had always rolled her eyes at her mom. After all, what did her mom know about having a big family? She'd only had Claire and oftentimes, seemed overwhelmed by just her. Her mom wasn't cut out for a lot of kids, but somehow, Claire had always thought she, herself, was.

Of course, her mom had been right—up to a point. Eight kids had no longer seemed like such a brilliant idea after Claire had had three. Three children, in fact, had almost done her in. She remembered how, after the twins were born, Jack would come home from work, look at her, still in her pajamas from the night before, her hair a wild mess and food and booger stains on her clothes, and say to her, “Are we drowning?”

“Oh, we are
so
drowning,” she'd say to him. And mean it. There were days when she wondered what she'd been thinking getting pregnant again after Luke. One child had been so manageable. In retrospect, so
easy.
But three? Forget it. She was just doing her best to make it through each day.

When people would ask her, “Do you think you'll have any more kids?” she'd always laugh and say, “Oh, no, the twins were our grand finale.”

She understood now the amusement of her mother when Claire had said she wanted to have eight children. Though she'd had only one child, her mom had realized that, along with the immense joy of being a parent, came incredible struggles, frustration, and exhaustion. Claire sighed as she once again felt a pang of regret that she'd never been able to tell her mom how she now understood what she'd meant.

Neither her mom nor her dad had had the chance to see Claire as a mom to even one child. Both of her parents had died while she was in college—her mom of cancer her freshman year and her dad of a heart attack three years later. Though Claire always tended to believe he died less from an attack of his heart than from a break in it. The happy-go-lucky father she remembered from her childhood couldn't be reconciled with the man he became after they lost her mom. He hadn't known what to do without the wife he'd loved faithfully and so completely for twenty-eight years. And, though Claire missed them both terribly, she also tended to believe it was best they were together. She'd been able to forge a life of her own after they were gone, but she never truly believed her dad, even if he'd lived until the age of eighty, would've been able to do that without her mom. Some people were meant to be together, whether it be in this life or the next.

Claire sighed and called out again, her voice thick with exaggerated sorrow. “I guess Luke must've run away. That's too bad. I'll miss him. He was such a nice boy. I think I'll go kiss Ella and Lily goodnight now.”

She stood, gave the room a quick once-over and then turned out Luke's light, making her way down the hall into her girls' room.

A mound of covers, apparently hiding three little bodies, awaited her as she walked into her twins' pink and yellow room. Claire might have thought the girls had piled all of their stuffed animals underneath if she couldn't visually see the mound shaking and shuddering with each little giggle.

“Oh, no! The girls are gone, too!” Claire said, trying to muster as much agony as was possible in her voice, as she made her way to the bed. “Boy, am I tired, and this bed looks so comfy! I think I'll just lie down for a little nap.”

Claire plopped her body right on top of the enormous pile, careful to not injure anyone underneath.

“Mommy! Get off!” a muffled voice cried from beneath her.

“Ow! That hurts!” a boy's voice complained.

“Mom! We're under here!” another little voice cried out.

Claire jumped up, her hand to her chest.

“Oh! There's something under there!” Claire exclaimed. “Whatever could it be?”

With a single motion, Claire grabbed the comforter and yanked it to the floor. Three small faces peeked up at her.

“What are you doing under there?” Claire asked, with such surprise in her voice that she, herself, almost believed she was startled by their appearance. “I thought you'd run away!”

“We wouldn't run away, Mommy,” little Ella said. “We like living here.”

“Well, that's a good thing,” Claire replied, tweaking her daughter's nose. “Because I like you living here, too.”

Claire picked the comforter up and straightened the covers over the three children. They each got comfortable, snuggling deep into the pillows as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Now, what are you all doing in here?” she asked her babies. Despite the fact that Luke was ten and the twins had just turned six, she still viewed them as just that—her babies—and had a feeling she always would. “If I remember correctly, Daddy and I bought each of you your own bed.”

Lily yawned. “We like to sleep together.”

“I'm not scared at night if Luke and Lily are with me,” Ella replied.

Claire glanced at Luke. “And what about you, mister? What are
you
doing in here?”

“I'm not scared like the girls,” he said defensively. “I just stay here to protect them.”

Claire tousled his hair. It was hard to not smile at this child, part little boy, part little man.

“Well,” she said gently. “That's what big brothers are for. Do you know how lucky you all are to have each other? When I was a kid, I'd have done anything to have brothers and sisters.”

With a look of disgust directed at his sisters, Luke said, “You were lucky. You didn't have little kids to drive you crazy!”

“No, I didn't,” Claire replied softly. “But I also didn't have anyone to play with or talk to when my parents were busy with grown-up stuff. You three will always have each other.”

The girls smiled at her words, but Luke rolled his eyes at Claire, in much the same way she used to roll her eyes at her own mom. Claire smiled at him. She knew he loved his sisters dearly, even if it was no longer cool in fifth grade to admit it.

“Now then,” she said. “It's bedtime. No one in my room before seven a.m. You hear me?”

“Okay,” they all said in unison.

“And, if you go downstairs to watch TV, it had better not be loud enough to wake me and Daddy.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“Whose turn is it to pray?” she prompted.

“Yours,” Luke said.

“Are you sure?” Claire questioned, as the kids all nodded.

“Okay, then. Dear God. We thank you for our blessings and that we had a great day as a family. Please take care of those we love. Amen.”

“Amen,” the children said in unison.

“Mommy,” Lily said sleepily. “Can you sing to us?”

“Sure,” Claire whispered, with a smile. This was one of her favorite parts of the bedtime ritual, though, as the kids had gotten older, she found she didn't do it as often. It wasn't that she didn't still like to sing to them, or that they didn't still love to hear her. It was that once all three kids started school, bedtime had become more hectic. There were teeth to be brushed, hands to be washed, homework that was left to the very last minute. Sometimes, bedtime consisted of nothing more than a quick goodnight peck on the cheek and an “I'll see you in the morning.”

But on weekend nights, such as tonight, when there was no rush to make sure those little eyes closed quickly, Claire enjoyed taking a few extra moments with the kids as she put them down for the night. She paused for a moment as she thought of what to sing, and then decided on their favorite. It was an old, classic Irish lullaby she'd been singing to the children since they were each in her belly. The twins closed their eyes as she began, but Luke stared straight at her.

“Over in Killarney, many years ago, me mother sang a song to me, in tones so sweet and low. Just a simple little ditty, in her good old Irish way. And I'd give the world if she could sing, that song to me this day.”

Claire's voice drifted softly through the room, beautiful and pure. There was a time when people had paid money to hear her sing, but these days, she sang solely for her children.

“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don't you cry!

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby.”

Claire was fairly certain the girls had fallen asleep by the second line, but Luke's eyes had stayed open, til nearly the very end, when, despite his best efforts, his lids dropped, and he turned to get more comfortable next to his sisters.

Claire stared down at her children. Somehow, no matter how much love she felt for them during the day, it always seemed to intensify as she watched them sleep. She rose and walked to the door. Pausing, she glanced back at her sleeping babies, turning off the light to the girls' room. She was blessed, and she knew it. Life with three kids wasn't ever easy, but she also couldn't help but wonder how a girl like her had gotten so lucky.

“I love you,” Claire said softly into the darkness, as she turned and walked away.

“Hurry up, Luke!” Claire called up the stairs as she slapped peanut butter and jelly on two pieces of bread, shoving them into a small plastic baggie. “The girls are already in the car.”

Luke ran down the stairs, jumping over the last three as he reached the bottom.

Claire slit her eyes as she glared in his direction. “I've asked you to not do that. One of these days you're going to break a leg.” Luke shrugged.

“Did you grab your jacket? It's gonna be cold at Grandma and Grandpa's.” Claire threw the pile of sandwiches she'd just made into a small cooler, alongside six juice boxes and a baggie full of sliced apples. If she'd learned anything about traveling with kids over the years, it was they were always hungry.

“I already put it in the car,” Luke said, as he opened the refrigerator and examined its contents.

“Hey, get out of there,” Claire said, softly slapping his hand away from the door and closing it. “You already had breakfast and I'm packing food for the car. You don't need anything else to eat.”

She handed him the cooler and a bag of pretzels.

“Here, you can carry this to the car for me,” Claire said. “Don't eat anything out of it! And make sure to bring some games and books. It's a long drive.”

She laughed as she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and he attempted to free himself of her embrace.

“Come on,” she said to him softly. “You can kiss your mama. No one's looking.”

Luke sighed, but turned his cheek so she could peck it.

“See, that wasn't so bad, was it?” Claire asked him.

Luke shrugged.

The two of them made their way out the front door, just as Jack was heading back in.

“Do you need anything else from inside?” he asked her. “I'm about to lock up.”

“I think I have it all,” Claire said, as Luke ran to the minivan, throwing the cooler onto the front seat before jumping into the back. “Anything we forget, we can buy once we get to your mom's.”

She walked over to the car and peeked her head in the side door. Though they hadn't even left the driveway, all three of her kids had their headsets on and were immersed in the music on their iPods. The MP3 players had been the kids' big gifts for Christmas this year. Claire was fastening her seatbelt as the driver's side door opened, and Jack slid into his seat.

“All locked up,” he said, calling into the backseat, “Everyone ready?”

“Yes!”

Smiling at Claire, Jack put the car into reverse and said, “Are
you
ready?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling back at him. It was hard not to smile when looking at Jack. He was just so…handsome. That's the only word that came to mind whenever she thought of her husband. At six feet four inches, and built of nothing but lean muscle, Jack was better-looking than most of her friends' husbands. Okay, he was better-looking than
all
of her friends' husbands. And their gardeners. And their plumbers. And their local firemen. Jack was unbelievable looking. The first time Claire had laid eyes on him in college, she'd wondered if he was for real.

“Who
looks
like that?” she had whispered to her college roommate, Gia.
“I mean, in real life—not in a movie. Who actually looks that incredible?”

The answer, of course, was Jack. And, in the fifteen years since college, he'd never become one bit less attractive.

But it wasn't just his external features Claire found so appealing. No, it was who Claire discovered he was inside that had made her fall deeply in love with him.

It'd seemed to take forever for Jack to ask her out, but in reality, it was only a few weeks from the first time she and Gia had spotted him across the crowded college cafeteria. It didn't take long for them to strike up a conversation in the library one night. (She
just happened
to be working in the study carrel next to Jack's and
just happened
to need to borrow a pen, because hers
just happened
to run out of ink.) After an evening spent chatting over their respective molecular biology and educational psychology textbooks, he finally asked her out. And she was thrilled.