There didn’t appear to be anything special about the house when we first moved in. We thought it was just another house.
“I’m going to go pick out my room!” Charlene dropped her suitcase and ran up the front staircase as fast as her 8-year-old legs would carry her.
“Not if I get there first!” Jamie, her older brother by four years, raced past her, taking the stairs two at a time.
“No fair! I called dibs first!”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply as I lamented the fact that we couldn’t even make it two minutes in the new house without a fight breaking out.
“I’ll go and make sure they don’t kill each other,” my sister, Tanya, said as she came up behind me. “You start unpacking.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to convey with my eyes all the gratitude that couldn’t fit into two monosyllabic words. As she followed the kids upstairs, I headed to the kitchen to start unpacking the things we would need for dinner. Tanya and I were both too exhausted to cook, but we could order in and use our own cups, plates, silverware, etc. Plus, I wanted to get everything ready to cook our meals in the coming days. I didn’t want the kids to get used to eating out all the time.
By the time Tanya came down with the kids, I had everything put away and the kids had picked out their rooms and calmed down. Knowing them, Jamie had probably chosen the master bedroom, Charlene had gotten the second-largest bedroom, and Tanya and I would be stuck sharing a broom closet.
Shelving that discussion for later, I pulled out my phone and said, “Who wants pizza?”
The response wasn’t exactly a chorus of applause, but it wasn’t in the negative territory either, so I went ahead and clicked on the first result that popped up in my Google search. It had a decent rating and was closest to us, so I figured it would be good enough to celebrate our first night in the new house.
“OK, it says our pizza will be here in 40 minutes. Who can get the most unpacking done in that time?”
The kids raced out of the kitchen and Tanya and I went to pick out our own bedrooms. “I managed to save the master bedroom for you,” Tanya said, nodding towards a bedroom door. “I’m just down the hall.”
“Thanks. You really didn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I did.”
“Are you gonna be OK? I only had a chance to look at the blueprint of the house, so I have no idea how big these rooms actually are.”
“It’s plenty big. Don’t worry about me. You have enough on your hands.”
“Thank you. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this divorce without you.”
“Oh, you would have managed one way or another. We Miller women always do.”
We went into our separate rooms to unpack, and were only about halfway done before Charlene burst into my room, announcing she had finished unpacking. I looked at my phone to check the time, wondering what could be taking our pizza so long, and just as I did, the doorbell rang.
Jamie ran down to get it, and as he took the pizza, Charlene and I went into the kitchen to get the cups, plates, and silverware. Everything was where I remembered putting it except for the knives. The silverware drawer had the silverware separator, and the forks and spoons were in their places, but the section for knives was completely empty. I checked the box I had packed them in to see if I had somehow forgotten them, but no. That box was empty.
“Tanya, did you grab the knives?”
“What knives?”
“The butter knives. The silverware drawer is completely empty of knives and I could have sworn I put them in with the forks and spoons. You didn’t take them by any chance, did you?”
“Why would I take all of the butter knives?”
I looked at her and shrugged.
“Did you check the packing box?”
“Of course. They’re not in there.”
She joined me in searching the kitchen and we finally found them in a drawer on the other side of the kitchen. “Now, why would I have put them all the way over there?”
“You’re tired,” said Tanya. “Maybe you were putting the silverware away and stopped to put away something else and forgot about the knives.”
“Must have,” I said, not quite believing that to be the case, but unable to come up with a better explanation.
To be continued…