“Maybe so and maybe not, but recovering from pregnancy is no joke. And it’s breakfast and lunch for six kids. Onceyou’re home, it’s dinner for four, and everything else, too. You can do it all yourself? Yeh, right.”
Scarlett wandered into the room. “What are you talking about? I can fold these with Dad, Skylar. You should go lie down.”
“You see?” Zane said. “Everyone agrees with me.”
“I feel fine,” Skylar said. “I don’t need coddling. So I get a bit weepy still. So what?”
Scarlett said, “Dad said the doctor said you had to rest, though. You’re as stubborn as Dad.Honestly.”
Zane said, “I have an idea. I need time and space to work it out, though. Go back to bed, please, Skylar.”
“I don’t need to—” she began.
“Go back to bed,” he repeated. “Or lie on the couch in the family room, if you’d rather. You can read a book. You can watch TV. Plan your lessons for the new term. Doomscroll on the internet, if masochism appeals. But I need this space. Want a cup of tea?”
“I can make a cup of tea,” she said.
“I told you, I need the space. I need to focus. We’ll bring you the tea. Go lie down. Please.”
“Scarlett?” Skylar said.
“Yeh?” Scarlett asked, as she folded shorts.
“You know how I said that you should tell people what to say if they called you bossy?”
“Of course,” Scarlett said. “That I have excellent leadership skills.”
“Your dad has excellent leadership skills too. But sometimes, he’s also bossy. This would be one of those times.”
When Skylar had left, Zane told Scarlett, “Go get me that big pad of drawing paper and some markers. And then go getFinlay. I have an idea, and I need both of you to help me work it out.”
Five minutes later, both kids were back, and he said, “Let’s get these folded and put away first, because we’re going to need the space.”
Finlay said, setting to without argument—Skylar’d trained her kids better than Zane had, he had to acknowledge—“Folding on this table is a good idea. You could even have a system where people stood around it and everybody folded a different kind of thing. That would be heaps more efficient than the way Mum does it. You could set up the ironing board beside it and one person could do all the ironing, too. Mum’s the only one who knows how, but she could iron and we could fold.”
“Good ideas,” Zane said. “And along the lines of what I’d like to discuss.”
Ten minutes later, he had them seated at the table and the block of art paper and markers in front of him. “Right. I’m going to outline a problem and then some possible solutions, and we’ll brainstorm.”
Scarlett and Finlay looked at each other and shrugged. “OK,” Scarlett said.
“When you said the two of you could be co-captains,” Zane said, “when I was with Skylar in hospital, that gave me the idea. Skylar’s going to try to do too much this next week, and the two weeks after that, too, once the new term starts, unless we have a firm plan in place. Let’s think about the things that need to be taken care of, during the holidays and after them. I’ll be home for another week after those first two weeks of term, but we have to get there first.”
“Before you leave for Europe,” Scarlett said.
“That’s right. So let’s think about this. What needs to happen at home during the day?”
“Meals,” Finlay said.
“Good,” Zane said. “We’ll put all of them down separately.” On his pad, he wrote,
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
“Helping the little kids get ready comes before breakfast,” Scarlett said. “Making sure their hair is combed and their backpacks packed and all of that. If you want to say all the things.”
