She Sins at Midnight Read Online Free Page B

lie-down in three years turned out to be two hours of passed out bliss. She only woke when she heard Titty cooing away in her bassinet. Her nap was so deep that she didn’t immediately process that the chatty baby belonged to her. Still a little disoriented, Jilly opened her eyes and after a moment she recognized the bed. Then she remembered Bill and smiled thinking that she and Bill had a baby. But didn’t they have other children? Five-year-old Trevor, sweet and loving, popped into her mind. Then she remembered Jack. Racking her brain she wondered where Jack was. Did her mother have him? No, she knew that wasn’t the case. Why did she actually get to sleep then? Jilly bolted upright so fast she got a wicked head rush and screamed, “JACKSON MATTHEW SPARKS!!! Where are you?”
    The little bugger innocently walked into her room with a big grin on his elfin face, “Right here, Mommy.” he said. Jack crawled into bed with her and gave her a big hug, “Sleep good, Mommy?”
    Jilly hugged the biggest challenge in her life and answered, “Yes honey, I did. But what I’m wondering is why did I sleep so well? What have you been up to?”
    Batting his big blue eyes, her middle child answered, “Nothin, Mommy. Just a little fixin.”
    Jilly lay very still, feeling the onslaught of impending doom rush over her and asked, “What were you fixing, honey?”
    Snuggling in, he answered, “Just stuff.”
    When Jilly finally screwed up the courage to get out of bed, she discovered that Jack, with the super human hand/eye coordination of a ten-year old, let alone a three-year-old, had dismantled every lock mechanism in the house, including the front and back doors. They were all heaped in a pile adjacent to his next project, the television.
    With three kids, a staggering mortgage
    and a septic system from hell, Jilly and Bill hadn’t bought a new television in over ten years. The sad truth was that the one they had purchased then was used and already twelve years old. Jilly eyed the remnants of her ancient set in stunned silence. Apparently Jack had decided to remove the back panel of the old behemoth and take out as many components as he could, which upon closer inspection, appeared to be all of them.
    In near tears, Jilly went to the telephone to call Bill and commiserate about their little Einstein. That was when she encountered his next project. Her youngest son had taken all her nail polish colors and used them to paint a psychedelic rainbow on the phone. Not only that, but he changed their outgoing answering machine message to include every bad word that he wasn’t allowed to use. She discovered this when the phone rang seconds later. Jilly was too stunned by her boy genius’s accomplishments to answer right away, so when the machine clicked on, she heard his sweet little boy voice say, “Fuck, damn it, shit, piss…” He repeated the litany about five times before the beep finally came.
    As Jilly sat at the kitchen table recounting all of Jack’s escapades, a reluctant smile crept over her face. She did love the little stinker to distraction. She was just afraid that he would be the death of her. After all, what if he discovered the gas stove the same day he learned how to light matches? Jilly decided to stop torturing herself with what-ifs. She and Bill had already decided they would probably be packing Jack off to Harvard by the time he was ten. Now all they had to do was survive the next seven years.
    Jilly found the notion of her ten year old in college a little disconcerting. Then her eyes landed on the invitation to her reunion. Nothing could be more unnerving than going back to that. How was she ever going to hold her head up and explain that she didn’t make good on her dream of becoming a powerful executive. She imagined telling Paige Loehman that she was the president of dirty diapers and had recently been appointed chairman of the board of teeth brushing. She compounded her agony by continuing, vice