Filed To Story: The Lingering Kiss of Farewell Novel
She also packed a box full of Christmas presents for them so they’d have something to open on the day. The ones that didn’t fit she could leave here, and they could open when they got home. Most were already laid out under the Christmas tree in the corner of the room. They only got one present from Santa Claus. All the rest came from her, and they knew that.
The day he took them to meet his parents, that would be a full day trip she imagined, and she could sit and work, put on something warm and go and sit out at her writing spot, if of course, it was still there. She had no idea if Calvin had made changes to the grounds of Cliffside, or the house itself. She could only hope that the big oak tree was still there.
She took her suitcases out to the front door as she hollered to the boys to bring their suitcases downstairs, and realised her mistake nearly instantly as she turned at the sound of one of her boys squealing and laughing, only to see Vincent sitting on his suitcase as he slid down the stairs, and then it banged onto the floor with him tumbling off it.
“Bloody fools.” She shook her head. “It’s not a slide.” She told him only to hear and see Callum do the exactly same thing the minute Vincent was up and had moved his suitcase out of the way. They’d done it before, and thought it was fun, still did she could see. She watched him hit the floor and burst out laughing as he to came off and tumbled on the floor.
“One of these days, you’re going to fall off and hit your head, might forget who your brother is,” she stated, only to have them look at each other and shake their heads “Na ah.” As they brought their suitcases over to stand next to hers.
“Why do you have two?” Callum asked, pointing to her smaller suitcase.
“That is my writing gear.” She told him and watched the two boys roll their eyes.
“It’s Christmas, you can’t work,” Vincent told her.
“I write every single day, Christmas isn’t going to stop that. Just delay it until the evening, when you go to bed is all. Just like on the weekends, I wait until you go to bed and then either write or edit?
“No wonder you never remember anything, you work too much,” Callum stated. “Are we taking the phone?” he asked, looking at it.
“If we want it to be a complete surprise, we should leave it here,” she stated, because Calvin would likely freak out if she just switched it off. But if it was seen as they were on the move, that would hold his full attention regardless of what Wil had stated. She didn’t know how often Calvin still checked the app with all the contact he was having with the boys. The phone didn’t usually move, so there was no real need to check it, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t.
She had to think about that herself, because she did actually want to keep track of Calvin, so she could manage her own plans and time them out correctly, but how to do that was a problem if she didn’t have the phone with the tracking app on it?
Though she knew their flight time and so leaving was fine, he’d not know for four hours that they were on the move, but after that was the problem, she put much thought into that, to come up with a plan and realised the two albums were still on the table and hadn’t been packed, and a plan formulated inside her mind.
She packed them and then texted Wil, “Hi Wil, please tell Calvin I posted a photo album to his parents and now can’t find the phone. The boys were all over the parcel, and I think it got accidently shipped with the gift.”
“Did it really???” came right back.
“No, but that’s what I want him to think. We’ll be headed to Cliffside in the morning, leave when you two leave for California. So when he gets off that plane, he’ll see that it’s on the move, many hours from Bedford.”
“Alright, send me an email about it, that I can show him in person and add a line about you’ll promise not to leave the state and still be there for his Christmas visit.”
“Sure.” She smiled at Wil’s willingness to aid and abet her. “Thanks Wil.”
“Just don’t do anything that will get me a beating by Calvin. Enjoy your game, whatever it is, Marilyn.”
“I will. Though Calvin might find it a little uncomfortable at times, but let’s just see what he’s really made of.”
“I don’t want to know by the sound of that. Good luck,” was his final text.
She smiled it was Calvin that was going to need good luck, not her. She fired off that email. It read exactly what her text had and then added a line to make it seem more legit that read “Give my apologies to Mr Reeves, and tell him I’ll allow the boys to text him from my phone until we get that phone back. Please send me Mr Reeves’ number through for the boys to contact him like they normally would.”
She got a reply nearly right away, “Evening Marilyn, thank you for letting me know so quickly. I’ll tell Calvin in the morning.” And his number was attached to the email.
She was woken by the boys very early. They were too excited to even sleep in until the sun was up today, smiled and told the boys what she’d done to trick their dad into thinking they were here in Virginia still, in order to surprise visit him, but so they could take the phone and still track Calvin’s every move. But made sure they understood they couldn’t use that phone at all, or he’d figure it out, and let them send Calvin a text from her phone at sun up, just like they did every morning.
“You’re very sneaky mum.” Vincent chuckled.
“Mm, I got me a devious writer’s brain, likely one of the reasons you two are so very sneaky at times.” she pointed at them and smiled. They ate breakfast, packed the car, and they asked about the box she was putting in there. “They are your Christmas presents or some of them. So you get gifts on Christmas Day, we’ll not be home before then,” she told them, and they smiled at her as she locked the house up, then they were gone.
Calvin.
He woke up to find a message from an unknown number on his phone and stared at it with a frown. His number was private and not many had it, certainly not people he didn’t know or approve of and gave it out himself. He dismissed it and saw there was an email waiting for him already and groaned, sometimes his life was too busy. The sun wasn’t even up yet and work was waiting for him.
He opened the email to find it was from Wil, an email that he’d forwarded to Calvin from Marilyn herself late last night. He read it and sighed a little to himself, but then a moment later smiled as he realised that she had let the boys send a Christmas gift to his parents.
That the unknown message he’d not read and dismissed was likely from her, or the boys, he clicked into it and saw it was from the boys. Smiled a little to himself as he logged her phone number into his phone as Marilyn and then typed a reply to the boys. He now had Marilyn’s direct mobile number, something he never thought he would get, or at least he’d thought not for a very long time.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.