“Uncle Ma-son!” rang out through the air before he could finish that sentence. Straight in front of us rose a grand staircase. A little girl in a white dress with pink hearts flew down the steps and across the floor, her bare feet totally silent.
He scooped her up and spun her around and planted a big kiss on her cheek. She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I missed you soooo much.”
“You did?”
She pulled back and nodded vehemently before sliding down him.
“I had breakfast with Greer this morning,” Mason said. “So much to miss.”
I turned back toward the elaborately set dining room table and looked down at my scrubs again. I was going to make my excuses to leave, but before I could, the door flew open and a couple walked in, four exuberant boys of all ages pushing by them. The two largest seemed to be fighting. “Go outside, boys!” called a small woman with platinum-blond hair cut bluntly in a way that accentuated the lovely angles of her slim face. “Do not get blood on Aunt Amelia’s carpet!” Amelia and I looked at each other and laughed. She sighed but looked completely unruffled.
“That’s what Mason and Parker’s mother always said to them growing up. It’s just funny that it’s been handed down to a new generation,” Amelia explained.
The smallest boy, shirt half-tucked, half-untucked, screamed, “George!” at the top of his lungs and then sprinted up the stairs, as the fourth boy, who looked to be five or six, said, “?’Sup, Uncle Mase.”
“?’Sup.” Mason fist-bumped him.
“This is Robbie and Trina,” Amelia said. “My brother and sister-in-law.”
I looked at Mason. “So, biologically, no, I am not their uncle.”
“Just their love uncle,” Trina crooned, kissing Mason on the cheek.
“Love uncle. That’s precious,” I said.
“I’m so happy to meet you!” Trina said. “Mason said we’re going to be fast friends.” She peered at me. “Do you play mahjong?”
“Well, a little, but I’m not—” Before I could finish, a voice, in an old-school Southern drawl that you hardly ever heard anymore,called, “Is anyone ever going to ring the dinner bell? I am positively famished!”
A woman in a hoopskirt with an updo that looked like it required quite a bit of work made her entrance at the top of the stairs. I felt as though I should applaud or something. Robbie ran to the top of the stairs and said, “Let me help you, Aunt Tilley,” offering her his arm.
Mason whispered, “Sometimes she’s just, like, regular Aunt Tilley in khaki pants and sometimes she’s this.”
“Seems kind of helpful that you can tell right away which one you’re getting,” I whispered back.
He grinned at me, and my stomach erupted in butterflies. As Aunt Tilley made her way toward us, I did the thing that felt most natural. I curtsied, pulling out a pretend skirt. My cheeks burned. Were they going to think I was making fun of her? But she curtsied back and said, “Tilley, charmed.”
“Daisy. The pleasure is all mine.”
A woman I would learn moments later was Mason’s mother said, “Sugar pie, this one’s a keeper.” Mason was the “sugar pie.” I was the “keeper.”
Mason introduced us, and I felt less sheepish than before, as a fully grown man jumped on Mason’s back and put him in a headlock. “Parker, you don’t want to do that!” Mason said, his voice raised slightly.
Ah. Mason’s brother. I saw why their mother had to make the comments about not getting blood on the carpet.
“Daisy, you’ll sit here,” Amelia said, leading me to the table as, miraculously, everyone began to sit down.
“Oh, but, um, I’m just going to…” I pointed to the door.
“We’ve lost the fight,” Mason chimed in. “Just, please, make this night a compartment in your mind, and put me as ‘hot coach’ in another compartment.” I burst out laughing.
“Hey, who’s that woman?” I whispered once I’d taken my seat, as someone I didn’t know began to speak.
“Ms. Theodora. Pastor’s wife.”
I nodded as the pastor’s wife said grace. And I thanked God for, on my first week in a new place, making me feel so very much at home. This was total chaos of the very best kind, and everything inside me was buzzing with joy.
I thought about our sweet little Jane Doe back at the hospital. I wondered what would happen to her, if her parents would come forward, or if she would get adopted. Either way, I hoped against hope that that little girl would get to be a part of a family just like this.
