The plan had been to make them laugh. He'd thought all about it all through his bath, where he practiced just how he would say it. He knew if Shelagh laughed then Dad would laugh, too. But something had gone wrong. Timothy knew he was too old for bedtime stories, at least too old for an adult to read to him, and that's what was funny. Perhaps he had delivered the line wrong. Their faces were a little sad-looking when he turned the corner, and before even half the sentence was out of his mouth Timothy felt he had intruded upon their privacy.
Shelagh recovered first, smiling at him from the couch and slipping her hands from Dad's as though Tim would not see. Dad pretended not to notice, but Tim saw him squeeze one hand into a fist like it was empty without Shelagh's.
"A bedtime story?" his father asked skeptically.
Timothy shrugged. "You could read me your medical journals if you want. That would put me to sleep. Or Shelagh could read me the Bible!"
Dad cleared his throat and stood suddenly, blocking Shelagh from view. He seemed tense but then he smiled and growled, "All right, I'll tuck you in. Say goodnight to Auntie Shelagh."
"'Night, Auntie Shelagh. Thanks for the chocolate biscuits and playing chess."
"Good night, Timothy. We'll finish our game tomorrow."
He beamed as Dad crossed the room and turned him toward the hall with a hand on his shoulder. He was pleasantly surprised that it remained there all the way up the stairs, even when Shelagh wasn't there to see. Dad was a lot more affectionate now that Shelagh was around. He was always nudging Timothy or mussing his hair whenever he was within reach. He hadn't done that for a long time, and now he was even doing it when she wasn't looking. Outside his bedroom Timothy smiled up at his father, only to be met with a blank expression staring unseeing into the dark room.
"Dad? Is everything all right?" He tried to hide the concern in his voice, but it was evident that Dad heard it because he instantly changed his facial expression to a pleasant smile that could have fooled him if he hadn't known the man better.
"Yes, everything's perfectly all right, son. Just a bit tired, that's all." The unconvincing smile was forced upwards as his top lip folded under the bottom, and he squeezed Timothy's shoulder before releasing him and flicking on the light.
Timothy didn't move. "Are you sure? Because I thought you and Shelagh looked a bit cross just now and -"
"We're not cross, Tim, I promise."
"- and if you made her cross you should apologize, Dad, she's so great and it would be really terrible if you made her sad. Did you make her sad?"
Dad scowled at the floor and brought a hand up to rub his nose. Timothy knew he was thinking - Dad always touched his face when he was thinking - and he toyed with the tie of his robe for a time before his father spoke.
"Timothy, will you get into bed? There's something we need to talk about."
Oh, boy. Here it comes. Timothy felt a nervous flutter in his stomach as he took off his robe and slowly drew back the covers. He moved Cuthbert, hidden beneath his pillow, before sliding in and wiggling his bare toes against the cold sheets. Unable to look at his father, Timothy began playing with a loose string on his quilt, expecting the worst. Whenever Dad had "something we need to talk about" the something was almost always bad. Grown ups didn't know they did that: had some very neutral phrase that terrified children. If they just came out with it instead of prefacing it with whatever well-meaning introduction they chose, the weight of the blow could be cut in half.
He was still pulling at the string when Dad tugged his desk chair around and took a seat. A quick look told Timothy that this was very serious indeed. Dad's eyebrows were all mashed together in one bushy lump, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and continued to look at his shoes. When Timothy leaned over the edge of his bed to see that there was nothing interesting about his father's shoes, his hand stilled and he stared straight into his eyes.
Dad's fingertips all came together and he tilted his head to one side to look at Timothy. He did this sometimes, mostly when he thought Tim didn't see him, but he pretty much always did. If he caught him Dad would look away or smile. Timothy wondered if he was sad or happy when he stared like that, if he was remembering or predicting.
The two Turners sat for several quiet moments, eyeing each other, until at last Dad's eyes crinkled at the corners and he broke into a wide smile. Timothy released a breath he forgot he was holding and smiled nervously right back.
Dad let his eyes fall to his hands again and Tim's followed, noting the bare finger that once held his mother's ring, now naked since the day after they found Shelagh on the road together. Eight days it had been gone. He didn't mind too much that it was absent because he had never really noticed it before, yet it was still odd to see his father without a wedding ring, like any other unmarried man.
"Timothy, I'd like to ask you something. Or ask your opinion about something." Dad waited, then took a quick look at Timothy, who was still staring at his hand. When their eyes met it was enough invitation for the elder Turner to proceed. "What would you think about Auntie Shelagh coming to live with us?"
Timothy felt his eyes widen to the point of becoming dry in the inside corners. He blinked, letting his bottom lip come away from the top in astonishment. To say he was surprised would be an understatement; it was a surprise topped only by the knowledge that the woman in his living room right now used to be a nun. He wasn't so stunned that Dad wanted to marry her - that's what he was really saying, he knew - but what shocked him most completely was how quickly the subject had come up. Why, it had only been nine days since they picked her up and brought her to Nonnatus House! They had seen Shelagh every day since then, sometimes late at night and sometimes she spent the whole day with them, and it had all been really great. Dad hadn't seemed so glad for ages and ages, and Shelagh was so funny and clever and nice that he had soon forgotten that she was a nun less than two weeks ago.
This was the thought that came barreling through all others. "Live with us? But she's a nun!" He hated hearing the stupid words in his own voice, hated himself for saying them and making his father's face drain of all color.
"She's not a nun anymore, Timothy. She's a regular person, a regular woman like... like..." It was rare for Tim to see his father grasping for words. He was such an intelligent man, so sure most of the time, that the sight was unsettling. "She's a regular woman now, Tim, and we've become very good friends, Shelagh and I..." There was that look of confusion on his face again. His mouth kept opening and closing with no words spoken.
"Do you want to marry her, Dad? Is that what you mean by her living with us?" Timothy wanted to hear the words himself instead of having to pick through generalizations. "Do you want to be married to her?"
The changing posture of his dad drew his attention and gave Timothy a better answer than any words ever could have. The man's shoulders relaxed and his mouth softened, the corners floating upwards. Again he stared without seeing at his feet, but the torment of a few seconds ago was replaced with an easy calmness. His eyes were smiling, and Timothy wondered if he was thinking about Shelagh now or Shelagh in the future or even back when Shelagh was Sister Bernadette. A smirk crossed Dad's face and he looked up at Timothy again.
"Yes, I think I do want to be married to her." He laughed a tiny soundless laugh and smiled in full, leaning back in the chair and clapping his hands to his knees. "What would you think about that?"
The words came before Timothy could stop them. "Oh, smashing, Dad! I think that would be really, really great! I can tell you like her and she likes you so much, you're all she ever talks about or asks me about! And there are loads of things she likes to do. And her cooking's gotten so much better even in a week so she'll be really good soon. Is she going to leave the boarding house tonight and stay here? She can have my room if it's only going to be a little while. I'll have to clean up though..."
And as he tossed the covers from his legs and leapt to the floor to collect pencils and paper strewn over many days, he heard his father laugh. It was a sound that had become so rare and unfamiliar until the last nine days that it still surprised Timothy. But the earnestness of the happiness in his favorite person in the whole world made Timothy light up inside like one of the firecrackers he wasn't supposed to play with. He was scooping things into a pile and shoving them under the bed and into drawers, so happy he thought he could burst. Shelagh, come live with them! There could be someone to come home to again, someone to cook and help with schoolwork and tuck him in at night. He didn't even mind that she might scold him every once in a while, since she had never been a stepmother before and probably wasn't very good at it.
"Now hold on, Tim, hold on!" Timothy felt a large hand on his shoulder and he twisted to see his father grinning down at him and could not help but smile himself. "You don't have to clean your room right now. I haven't even asked her yet!"
In the silence after his chuckle they could hear the crescendo of another Glenn Miller song on the album Shelagh had requested. She must have flipped it to the other side. Timothy rose from the floor and sat on the bed knee-to-knee facing Dad.
"You haven't asked her yet?"
The smile faded slightly from his face, replaced with a slight nervous look. "No, not yet."
"Are you going to get her a ring?"
"Oh, well... I suppose."
"You've got to get her a ring, Dad, to make it official. And girls like rings... I think." He hadn't put much stock in girls before, but a lot of ladies wore rings so they must like them, right? "When are you going to ask her?"
All of a sudden Dad blanched (that was a word from vocabulary lesson, and Timothy was proud to witness it firsthand). He seemed to be fighting some sort of battle in his mind. He turned his head toward the door and the music and the knowledge of Shelagh downstairs and then back to Timothy. "I'm not sure, Timothy, it's too soon after she left the church..."
Dad wasn't really talking to him, Tim realized, but he'd asked and would receive his opinion. "It's not too soon at all, Dad! You've known each other ages and ages, it's just now she's wearing different clothes. You should ask her soon. Ask her after the prenatal clinic tomorrow! I've got Cubs all day so she won't have to be here!"
His father's head snapped up in shock and he studied the child on the bed before him, squinting a bit and then grinning a bit. When he shook his head and laughed a puff from his nose Timothy knew he had made an effective point.
"All right, then. We'll talk about how to go about it tomorrow before you leave for Cubs."
"You mean I can help?" Timothy almost shouted.
Dad laughed heartily as he stood. "Yes, of course you can help. Now get into bed before she begins to suspect we're up here plotting."
Timothy slid beneath the covers for the second time that night and grinned crookedly up at his father. "Well we are, aren't we?"
There was more laughter as Dad tucked the quilt around him and made no comment as Timothy snuggled Cuthbert into his shoulder. Dad's big thumb rubbed his damp hair and smiled.
"Good night, Timothy."
"'Night, Dad. I'll dream up some really great way to get Shelagh to marry us, just you wait."
Dad was shaking his head and smiling with one hand on the doorknob and the other on the light switch. As the room plunged into darkness Tim's eyes adjusted to the black outline of the man in the doorway and heard a low rumbling voice that could not hide the smiling mouth from which it came. "Goodnight, son."
When the door closed softly behind Dad, Timothy breathed in deeply and exhaled through a grin. Shelagh, coming to live with them, wow! Dad would need some help, that's for sure. He was hopeless when it came to sentimental things, rubbish at gift-giving and stumbled over most loving gestures. But those who knew him knew he meant well by the effort he put into everything. Maybe Tim could help him with those things, with the words or the gift. He imagined pictures he could draw or poems he could write for the woman who would become his father's wife. There were so many things that reminded him of her: butterflies, bandages, churches, three-legged races, that picture she had painted and mailed to him that he had pinned to the wall above his bed. Pictures and words and even a little music began to run together in his young, excited mind, and when his eyes finally closed he was lulled into a deep and happy sleep, dreaming of clouds and diamond rings and mothers.