The Tale of Zachary Willowbrook: A Leap Day Paradox

Chapter 19: Changes

Toward the end of January, sales of My Precious Little Gift of Time exceeded 12 million, and moved up further on the New York Times bestseller list. After seeing that, Stacy closed the laptop. Emma's eighth birthday party was today, so she didn't want to keep Audrey waiting.

Stacy took Audrey over to the Robinson's to celebrate Emma's eighth birthday. After doing this, and talking to Gina for a while, she came home alone, since Audrey was spending the night at the Robinson's. Gina agreed to drop Audrey off with Emma at school the next day. That left Stacy with just Timothy to drop off.

Towards the beginning of February, David was promoted to CFO at Lawson & Wager, since the current CFO was retiring. In addition to that, David got a $1,000,000 bonus, for his hard work and dedication to continued record profits at Lawson & Wager.

When David received the check, he shook his head. "I'm giving this to Nimbleburg Community Church," he told Stacy.

"Why, Davy?" Stacy said, gasping.

"I'm giving back what belongs to God," he told her. "Do I really need an extra million dollars on top of my increased salary? God has blessed me with this position, so I feel that it is only right to give back what belongs to him."

Stacy nodded. "You're right. He blessed us, so we must return the favor by giving back what is due. I made $12 million off my book last month, but I ended up giving $5 million of that to NCC."

A few days passed. It was now March 1st. Zachary was now aged at ten, with the appearance of a 30-month old. Unlike last year, Zachary's vocabulary did not change very much. Since the book tour, Stacy felt that he was starting to improve, but at a very slow rate. However, this improvement would make him no better off than he was a year ago. While he could open doors and jump with both feet, some of his motor skills deteriorated. He had trouble understanding descriptions and could not draw a vertical line at all. He even forgot the first three letters of the ABC's. Whenever Stacy showed him any of the letters, he did not recognize them.

In staying true to Dr. Langdon's suggestion, Stacy tried toilet training Zachary again. Like last year, he showed no interest in it at all. Stacy showed him videos and encouraged him.

"Let mommy know when you have to go potty, okay?" Stacy told Zachary.

Zachary never did.

The worst thing that Stacy discovered was that Zachary did not show any interest in the potty at all. Last year, he thought it was a toy and played with it. This year, he did not even show any interest.

After two weeks of trying to toilet train Zachary, Stacy gave up. "Sooner or later, he will get trained, but I'll leave that up to him to decide."

With that, Stacy threw another dirty diaper away and placed a fresh one on Zachary.

"Fourth one today," she whispered, making another mark in her tally book.

During that month, David did a lot of driving around, to find some land to build a new house. After a couple weeks, he ends up finding some land in a town near the outskirts of Nimbleburg. It was mostly forested land, so he was able to get it for a bargain. Altogether, David bought 600 acres of land for $480,000. The search was over.

Following the purchase of the land, David hired some people to clear most of the trees, to allow enough room for the house.

In April, Audrey turned eight. Like every year, there was a big celebration with a couple of her friends, including Emma. For her birthday, she got her first makeup set, with some cheap jewelry for her to play dress-up with. To complete the theme, she got three cute dresses. She also got a couple toys, like a coloring book.