The Kids Grow Up, Trish Hanan [books you need to read .txt] 📗

he told them he had work to do and they should all go and visit their dad. They all nodded and drove away.
“I don’t care what Harry said about being fair and not taking sides, you know that Jake didn’t just decide one day to leave Harry for Violet, he must have been cheating on him for years, that son-of-a-bitch,” Adam spat. All the kids nodded.
“Violet’s been working for Jake and granddad for ten years at the clinic, I wonder how many of those years the affair’s been going on?” Emma asked. They all looked sad.
“Poor Harry, he can’t have anymore children so Jake trades him on a model who can, that’s not right,” Sean said and all the boys looked angry. Cassie laughed and they all looked at her.
“If any of you think for a minute that Violet is going to give Jake children then you’re barking up the wrong tree. That selfish bitch would never in a million years have a baby, she’s afraid of getting fat. She’s too much like her best friend Gloria to get pregnant and have a child,” she informed them. Emma giggled.
“And we all know how well she did with a child,” she retorted and Jackson grabbed her hand and kissed it. She smiled at him.
“Well, she’s got Jake convinced that she’s going to give him children, he’d never divorce Harry unless it was for the sake of children,” Danny said wisely.
“She’s playing Jake for a fool then but why?” Adam asked but no one knew. They got to the clinic and went in. Violet saw them and smiled her sweet smile.
“Your dad is free, why don’t you all go in, he’ll be so happy to see you all,” she gushed and ignoring her they walked past her and walked into Jake’s office. She kept the smile on her face until the door was shut and then she stuck her tongue out at them and made a face.
“Jake, what the hell is going on, Harry just told us you divorced him and you’re going to marry Violet, is that true?” Jackson demanded in lieu of a greeting. Jake smiled and stood up to greet them. Both girls rushed into his arms like they usually did and he took this as a good sign.
“Now, kids, what happens between Harry and me is between us, it doesn’t affect you kids and you shouldn’t take sides,” Jake told them. They all nodded slowly.
“So it’s true, you did divorce Harry to marry Violet,” Emma said and Jake nodded.
“What happened between me and Violet just happened, we didn’t mean for it to, but we just fell in love and I knew how much Harry didn’t like her so we had to keep it a secret,” he told them. Danny snorted.
“So you cheated on him,” he accused and glared at his dad. Jake sighed.
“I didn’t intend to, Son, but if Harry had known about Violet he would have been very angry and hurt and I didn’t want to see him hurt,” he tried to explain but none of the kids were buying it.
“He looks pretty hurt now, Jake,” Adam remarked. Jake sighed.
“He’ll get over it and one day we’ll be friends again, you’ll see, me and Harry have been friends for a long time, one day we’ll be friends again,” he said and they could see he actually believed what he was saying. Then he grinned.
“Now, who wants to help me build a house?” Jake asked and they all nodded.
“Sure, Jake, we’ll help you build your house,” Jackson said and Jake smiled with relief. They’d come around and they wouldn’t pick sides. Then he looked at Danny’s angry face and sighed again. That son would never come around and, of course, he’d take Harry’s side, he was always Harry’s special one from the beginning and he probably always would be.
The kids all helped Jake and their grandparents build their new houses and Violet was nice and sweet to them all and they found her a changed person. She took the two girls shopping and to get their nails done and they had a good time. She joked with the boys and took them to dinner and they had a good time. Everyone seemed to like her except for Danny, he remained polite but no matter how nice and sweet Violet was to him, he kept his distance. Of course, living next to Harry, he saw him every morning and he saw the constant pain his dad was in so sweet little Violet and the beaming Jake didn’t stand a chance of convincing Danny that Harry would eventually get over it.
Once Harry got his house separated he tore up all the floors, tiles, sinks, toilets and fixtures until all that was left was an empty shell. Then he chopped down some trees and ran them through the Saw Mill 5000 and made beautiful hardwood floors for all of his rooms and put all new tiles in his bathrooms and kitchen. The pantry shelves were replaced with new ones but the food service elevator he left alone, the new one was exactly the same and there was no need to replace it. But the basement stairs were different so they got replaced.
He did keep the extra windows in the front room and took off the stupid looking awning that he had put up to keep Violet from peeking in so many years ago. There was no one living in that house anymore and he doubted that when there was that they would think to have a telescope in the attic and use it to peek into his living room like she had.
Once all of the floors were in, he put in all of the new tubs, sinks and fixtures. The new ones were much more elegant and of course, pretentious as hell but he giggled as he installed them and wished there were someone other than himself to enjoy the new look.
“They’re going to start calling me crazy Harry if all I talk to are a couple of dogs, Gertie,” he told her one day. She barked and wagged her tail. It was his day to weed the fields so he climbed on his tractor and put on some country music, turned on the air conditioning and drove off at the amazing speed of three miles an hour. He was on his fourth row when he saw the women with long red hair standing at the end of the next row. Harry paused and she jumped behind him and he began the fifth row.
“How are you holding up, Harry?” Kathleen asked softly. He shrugged.
“I’m remodeling the house,” he informed her. She nodded.
“I know, I’ve seen you working, you’re working too hard, you need to slow down some; why don’t you come over for dinner and relax,” she said. He shook his head.
“I’m not ready to face anyone yet,” he told her. She shook her head.
“You can’t hide forever, you’re got to get back to normal as soon as you can, we’re still your friends, we love both of you,” Kathleen told him. He said nothing for a minute then he sighed.
“Did you know?” he asked her softly. She didn’t say anything for a minute then she sighed.
“Steve and I saw them together at the Bird Cage one night with David and Gloria when you had told me he was having dinner with his mom,” she confessed. He nodded.
“Was that before or after the anniversary party?” Harry demanded to know. She sighed again and he knew it was before. “Why didn’t you tell me, Kathleen, you let me make a big fool out of myself in front of everyone, dancing with Jake looking all lovey-dovey and all of them laughing at poor stupid Harry, he doesn’t know his wonderful husband is sleeping with the woman he hates. God, those people from Farm One must have been laughing all night and you knew and you didn’t say a word.” He shook his head and turned the tractor around and stopped where he had picked her up.
“Harry, try to understand, Jake is our friend too, we didn’t want to interfere,” she pleaded. He shook his head.
“You knew it was wrong not to tell me, Kathleen, even though Jake is your friend too, you should have told me and you know it,” Harry stated and she nodded.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said. He turned the tractor around and began his weeding again without saying another word. She frowned. “Harry, don’t be like this, we’ve been friends too long for you to do this to me.” He just waved at her but didn’t turn around. Frustrated, Kathleen walked back to her house, wiping tears from her eyes. Steve watched her come in.
“How did it go?” he asked. She shook her head.
“Now he won’t talk to me, he’s right, we should have told him Jake was cheating,” she said sadly. Steve sighed and hugged her.
“Then Jake would hate us right now, Kathleen it’s a no-win situation, if we’d told Harry, Jake would hate us, so we kept our mouths shut and now Harry hates us, we were in the shit no matter what we did,” he reasoned. She shook her head.
“I think I’d rather have had Jake hating me than Harry,” she admitted and he nodded.
“Me too, honey,” he said sadly.
Harry laughed when he opened the bin for the furniture and found it in neat little boxes and it had to be put together, and then he cried because Jake was the one who was handiest with the screwdriver. But he persisted and soon had a whole house full of really elegant furniture and it was really lovely stuff. He would have never in a million years picked out any of it himself but that was the whole point of a whole new you, you changed your whole way of thinking and being.
Phillip Montgomery’s clothes were more elegant and stylish also. Even his casual clothes were stylish with little alligators monogrammed on his shirt fronts and creases in his shorts. Harry even let his hair grow so long he could put it in a little ponytail and grew a mustache; he was a brand new Harry. Danny laughed and said it made him look like a hippie but Harry said that was exactly the look he was going for.
Once his house was in order Harry took all of the bins over to Sherwood and stored them. Then he didn’t have anything to do so he decided to go exploring by himself since everyone was still busy selling everything they had to the alterians. He wondered when they were going to realize that that was a pointless occupation. They were going to run out of stuff to sell before they ran out of alterians.
In the twenty years since they had arrived the eighty thousand alterians had expanded to over a hundred and twenty-seven thousand some alterians and there was no stopping the population growth. They loved large families and Bali their God insisted they produce as many children as they could. It was the scared duty of every alterian woman to procreate and they took their duty seriously.
Harry decided that day trips would be stupid when he could just take a week and relax and see everything so for