One Year Later
Timmy squirmed on Cassie’s lap as she unbuckled her seat belt and looked at the menu board. Flurries dusted the windshield, blades methodically reaching up to slide them out of the way.
More dashing than ever in his black tuxedo, Jett cast a glance to Cassie, his voice rich with anticipation. “Ready?”
She took a deep breath then looked to the back two rows of the minivan. Car seats covered every available space, barring Star’s seat in the captain’s chair, where the green taffeta of her dress overflowed. “Ready, guys?”
The explosion of cheers was enough for Cassie to nod her head.
Jett rolled down the window, where a woman waited at the drive-thru. “One order of your Let’s Just Do It, please,” he said to her.
The woman smiled to the group, her eyes falling particularly on the infant wrapping his hands around the lace of Cassie’s dress. Deidre rolled down the back window, and the woman saw the rest of the kids. She gaped. “My, aren’t you all just the Brady bunch?”
“We’re not the Brady bunch. We’re the Bentleys,” Deidre corrected, her grin a mile wide.
Cassie grinned back to her middle daughter, adopted legally a mere two weeks ago.
“Oh, then,” the woman trilled. “My mistake. Well, for ten dollars more you can have the ceremony and a high-quality five-by-seven photograph to memorialize this special occasion.”
“No, thanks,” Jett said. “We have photography covered. And witnesses.”
Jett jutted his thumb back. Her gaze followed and eyes widened. Sunny and several others were already spilling out of the rumbling fire truck behind them, car paint and string in hand. A trail of cars that looked a mile long led from the Drive-Thru We Do on the side of the parkway. Bree, her red hair high and polished in a bun, was already snapping away with her camera. Edie and Donna Gene, the kids’ adopted grandparents, stood three feet off blubbering into handkerchiefs. In between sprays of hand sanitizer, Edie threw rice at the van.
The woman chuckled as she tapped on the register. “You know, I’ve worked in this business twenty-two years. And I’ve seen a lot of unique people come my way. But now? Now, I’ve seen everything.”
Three minutes and twenty-three seconds later, aluminum cans scraped along merrily behind the van, The Bentley Bunch in foam paint across the window.