If I were a Carpenter

"Sweetheart, listen. You're the one who said you want the best possible education for your son. You do remember telling me that, don't you?" he said still using his patronizing voice.

"And you just assumed that meant somewhere where I couldn't see my son every day?"

"Monroe. Darling. Please. Come on. I'm marrying you, not the boy," he said with a smile that was even more patronizing than his voice.

"I...I don't believe you just said that," she nearly hissed. "We're a package deal, Peter. You get me only if you take David, too. How could you not have understood that from day one?"

His tone of voice changed to snide as he said, "You've got to be kidding. I'm nearly 45 years old, for Christ's sake! I'm not going to raise someone else's kid! He's damn lucky to be able to go to a school like St. Albans. And you're damn lucky to have found someone like me willing to take a chance a woman your age!"

Monroe was shaking with rage as she said very loudly, "Lucky? Are you kidding me? Being with you is more like a prison sentence than a relationship! I don't consider being told what to wear and what to think, say, and to be 'lucky', Peter. I'd call it...bullshit!"

"Lower your voice!" he said as he grabbed her arm.

"Get your hand off me right now!" she said in a slow, measured voice that still managed to attract attention.

"I'm leaving now, Peter," she informed him. "For good."

"Fine," he said letting it go. "Leave. Go.Do you have any idea what you're giving up? Do you really know who I am? You'll never find another man like me who'll take you in and give you—and your kid—everything you could ever want. No, you walk away and you're on your own again."

"I know exactly who you are and what I'm giving up, Peter. You're a controlling...bastard and I'm giving up a life sentence in hell! That's what I'm giving up!"

By now, nearly everyone in the room had migrated toward them and were standing in stunned silence listening to the fireworks from a 'respectable' distance.

Monroe tried getting the ring off her finger when Peter moved closer and said quietly, "Please. Don't do that. Not in front of all these people. Keep the ring. I don't care. Just don't humiliate me in public any more than you already have."

"I don't want your ring," she hissed. "I don't want anything from you."

"Then just...just keep it. You can sell it for all I care. Just...I'm begging you. Monroe, please. Don't give it back to me. Not here."

"Fine," she said quietly. "I'll do that. Then I'll send you a check to cover the cost of all the repairs and for everything you've bought me. Will that be sufficient...counselor?"

"Yes. That's fine. Yes. Thank you, Monroe," he said in an almost conciliatory voice. "Shall I call the car for you?"

"Don't bother. I'll get a cab," she told him in an icy voice.

She opened the clutch she was carrying and found the black credit card and handed it to him not caring who was looking.

"Keep your money, Peter," she said before walking to the door feeling free for the first time in months.

She texted the limo driver to let him know she wouldn't be needing him then called a cab. It wasn't even 8 o'clock when the taxi pulled into her driveway. She gave him the last $30 she had in cash and thanked him for the ride.

Neither of the guys heard her come in, and when she found them they were sitting on the couch together eating popcorn and watching the Science Channel.

"Cool!" David said when what looked like a big glowing marble smashed into a larger marble.

"No kidding!" Axl said. "That's how the moon was formed. It hit at just the right angle, pretty much disintegrated, then over a very long time, those tiny pieces coalesced and formed into a small planet we call the moon."

"Kind of like Pluto, right?"

"Um...kind of," Monroe heard him say before mussing up her son's hair again. "But not exactly."

When he did, he turned just enough to see Monroe and immediately stopped then stood up. He turned to face and said, "Hi."

"Hi," she said sweetly.

"You're home early."

"It didn't take very long," she said.

"To?"

"To find out the answer to the question you wanted me to ask."

"Oh. So did you find out the answer?" he asked, his hopefulness showing.

"I did," she told him.

"And?"

She moved toward him then stopped at the back of the couch. David had turned around and was watching his mom and listening to them talk. So far, nothing had made any sense to him.

"And...if your offer still stands, I...I'm available," she said just as sweetly. "To get to know better. If you still want to."

"Really?" he asked, his smile growing as he moved around the end of the couch toward her.

"Yes. Really," she told him with a big smile of her own.

He was right in front of her and said very quietly, "I so want to kiss you right now."

She looked at her son, smiled then said to Axl, "He really likes you."

"I really like him, too," he said as he took her hands in his. He saw the huge 'rock' and let them go along with his smile.

"No. It's stuck. I tried, but I can't get it off," she explained. "It's over, Axl. And thank...God."

Axl remembered his prayer and smiled.

"Yes. Thank...God," he said as much as a prayer of thanks as a statement.

"David?" she asked her son.

"Yes?"

"Would you mind if Axl and I...kissed?"

His eyes got big as saucers followed by a smile that was just as big. He stood up on the couch and jumped over the back not caring if he got in trouble for standing on the furniture.

He put his arms around both of them and said to Axl, "Go ahead, Axl. Kiss her already!"

Axl mussed his hair again causing David to laugh then he looked into Monroe's eyes and said, "I didn't say it earlier but I may have already fallen in love with you."

"I'm glad you waited to tell me," she said smiling happily at him. "Because I couldn't have said it back until now."

"You don't have to say it," he told her. "Just kiss me, okay?"

"With pleasure," she said before kissing him softly and slowly for several seconds.

"Wow. That was so worth waiting for," he told her as they looked down and saw David grinning from ear to ear.

"You know I'm poor, right?" she said, still smiling brightly.

"Don't worry. I'm almost finishing with school and then the 'big bucks' are gonna really start rolling in," he said very seriously.

"I love you," she told him, her eyes full of meaning.

"Even if I'm still just a carpenter?" he asked trying not to smile.

"Even if," she told him.

She had no idea he could also sing let alone quite well, so when he smiled then started singing, it surprised her.

"If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady? Would you marry me anyway? Would you have my baby?"

Tears filled her eyes as Monroe looked at him.

She blinked twice then told him. "One step at a time, okay? Today you're a carpenter and I'm just a lady. But yes, I do love you, and if things go the way I think they will, then the answer will be 'yes' to both of those other questions."

"Then let's get started finding out, shall we?" he said. "Who wants more popcorn?"

"Me!" David called out immediately.

A little butter from the kitchen was all Monroe had needed to get the ring off her finger which felt more like it had been stuck in her nose.

Several minutes later David was sitting between them as they each stretched an arm over his shoulders so they could hold hands."Mom? Does this mean we don't have to go live with Peter?" David asked.

"Yes, it does," she told him.

"So are we gonna stay here?"

"Well, after all the work you and Axl put into it fixing it up, it seems like a terrible waste to sell it. So how about we stay here for a while?"

David smiled then said, "Mom? This is the best day ever!"

Axl looked over at Monroe then said, "Yes, it is."

The next day Monroe asked him if he'd like to stay 'for a while longer' after David fell asleep, and when he woke up next to her the next morning she said, "Why don't you just stay here?"

He moved in three days later, then two months after than, Axl finished school and was hired immediately starting at $62,500 a year plus overtime. Monroe had gone back to work, and between the two of them they'd have more than enough to live on and maybe even be able to send David to college someday.

He'd never have the kind of money Peter Bentley did, but he had something far more valuable to the woman who loved him. He had the kind of love she'd experienced once before and thought she'd never experience again. And for Monroe Hastings, that was worth more than all the money on earth could buy.

Three months later, she married Axl Kibler with Bacall serving as her Maid of Honor and young David as his best man as their parents stood beside them. Two months after that, he adopted the boy who looked up to him like no one else David Hastings-Kibler had ever known. In turn, Axl spent as much of his free time as he possibly could with the two people he loved more than anyone else on earth.

That was true until the following year, when Monroe gave birth to their second child, a baby boy they named David Axl Kibler. In the end, they decided to call him 'Dax' which both of them loved as it perfectly combined both of his given names. Then again, Monroe would have been happy with any name they'd chosen as long as it wasn't Peter.

Never once did their difference in age even come up because both of them knew that the kind of love they had was stronger than any number—or anything else for that matter.

Monroe had experienced disaster in her life once before, and she had come so close to causing one that it scared her every time she looked back and wondered what might have happened had she not asked her handsome, younger husband to be her carpenter. But she had, and as a result, she now had the most wonderful family she could ever imagine.

Two years later, Peter's firm reached a settlement with the brake company, and a month after that, a check arrived with a personal note attached.

"Dear Monroe, I hope this in some small way will help make life better for you. Looking back, I realize how poorly I treated you, and when I'm willing to be brutally honest with myself, I know you made the right choice. Not long after you walked out of my life, I married our maid and that lasted all of ten months before she left me, too. You deserved better, and I offer you my sincere apologies for the way I treated you. I wish you and your new family all the happiness and success you deserve. Peter."

The money didn't change their lives, but it did let them pay off their home and free up enough cash to allow Monroe to stay home and raise their children, a blessing for which she was very grateful.

Neither she nor Axl ever knew whether or not the world or life itself was designed, but both of them now believed in miracles, and it took nothing more than a look or a smile or a glance at their beautiful children to know miracles were real.