28 February 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3028: dinner for one

“Look, y'all know I ain't never scared! I'll ask him – hey, Papa!”

“Incoming,” Col. H.F. Lee said to his cousin Capt. R.E. Ludlow as his slightly keener ears picked up eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow's declaration from the next house over. “Edwina has a question, and she's not scared.”

“Oh no,” Capt. Ludlow said, and Col. Lee laughed gently.

“I see Grandee Leedlow has everybody trained,” the colonel trained.

“Why does she have to be so much like my grandmother, though?” Capt. Ludlow said. “I thought the universe could only hold one feminine force like that!”

“At a time,” Col. Lee said. “Hilda 'Grandee' Lee has been with the Lord for quite some time, so, He saw that it was time to shake up the family and Virginia again. Aunt Hilda was three generations out from Robert E. in the time of four because she was from her Horatio Lee's second marriage, and Edwina is four generations out from Aunt Hilda, so, it all makes sense.”

Capt. Ludlow started laughing.

“I'm glad it makes sense to someone!” he said, “because I guarantee you in about five seconds –.”

“Hey, Papa!” Edwina said as she came into the room with her best friend eight-year-old Gracie Trent. “Gracie was doing quality eavesdropping and overheard her grandfather telling her big brother Melvin that when the divorce happened, he once dated 90 women in a single month trying to get a new wife by Christmas to show he wasn't messed up about the divorce. If Grandma left you, would you try that hard to get us a new grandma?”

“Say what?” Capt. Ludlow and Col. Lee said.

“See, when you speed date as a billionaire, September has 30 days,” Gracie said, “so, it all makes sense when you do the math.”

The captain and the colonel looked at each other.

“I'm glad it makes sense to someone,” Capt. Ludlow said. “This is just not my day to know what is going on the world.”

“Well?” Edwina said.

“I have never given any thought to the possibility,” Capt. Ludlow said. “I think a lot about making sure I don't have to think about the possibility, and to make sure Grandma wants to stay.”

“That's good because temporary insanity is never fun,” Gracie said. “That's why Pop-Pop and Dad were telling Melvin to stay single until he knows God and himself well enough to find a woman doing the same so they can be sane and boring.”

“Sane and boring is definitely underrated,” Capt. Ludlow said. “It makes for a happier home.”

“Yeah, because the drama we were living in because our parents didn't do right was all kinds of messed up,” Edwina said. “I'm into sane and boring and fashionable – more time to look cute.”

“Yep,” Gracie said. “Got to have our priorities straight.”

“Thanks, Papa – let's go look at the fall magazines to see what we are going to get our adults to buy us for the fall cuteness!” Edwina said.

“Sure – actually, let's go talk to Grandma Jubilee first because she be making stuff that the magazines just don't have,” Gracie said.

“OK!”

The two little girls started to run off.

“WALK,” Capt. Ludlow ordered, and they slowed down until they hit the yard.

The captain and the colonel looked at each other and broke out laughing.

“You handled that well,” the colonel said.

“Always got to be ready,” Capt. Ludlow said. “The real answer is whatever is true, put forward in a way that increases these kids' sense of security. There has been drama enough.”

“There has been,” Col. Lee said. “Sane and boring sounds really good.”

“But tell me this, H.F.; how would you have answered that?” Capt. Ludlow said.

Col. Lee thought about this.

“I would have found a way to gently demur the question by getting them to tell me the whole story, and then distracted them with something else,” he said, “because no child could handle my answer. I scarcely outlived Vanessa – if my grandfather had not been a medic, I might not have survived her interment. I do not expect that I will outlive Maggie – I don't think any man could go through that level of pain twice and live.”

“I realize that – it took you 27 years to get over that loss,” Capt. Ludlow said.

“It's the little things … I thank God for no longer having to find a way around dinner for one … if I can't sleep early in the night I will sometimes just be in the kitchen cooking and thanking God that I can sit down and eat and have a desire to do that again, so Maggie will get up and find breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just because I don't have to distract myself from looking at an empty chair.”

“Putting the insomnia to good use, eh?” Capt. Ludlow said.

“Yes, indeed – it does not afflict me as often now, but I make use of it when it does,” Col. Lee said. “Like you I don't plan for a future without Maggie – I occupy my time and thought to making sure she doesn't need to plan a future without me.”