“One more glass of water, that’s all.” He lowered his voice to as deep a register as he could manage—a child’s version of a baritone.
“You were a good boy today.” He jiggled one of the toys, making it speak. “Tomorrow you can have a treat. We’ll go see Santa Claus. Would you like that?” he asked a figure lying on his pillow and in his own voice responded, “Oh, boy! And Mommy will make cookies. Them ones Santa likes.”
“Yes, pup,” he answered in the deep, manly voice again. “Now go to sleep. Mommy and I will watch you.”
Mommy and I? Dani leaned farther around the door. Timmy returned to his normal register. “Kiss Mommy,” he commanded the toy in his right hand—the father. Bringing the two figures together until they clacked heads, he made a noisy sucking sound. “Now tell Mommy you love her.” And once more in the baritone, “I love you. Now go to sleep.”
Walking his makeshift family across the bed, he seated them on the nightstand, positioning the plastic figures so that the two parents were standing protectively over their son.
Tucking himself beneath the quilt, Timmy curled up on his side, eyes open, curly head craned, watching his “family” watch him.
Frozen in the doorway, Dani forgot she was holding towels until the stack began to topple. Making a quick, noiseless save, she backed into the hall. Her steps to the closet were so automatic she barely registered she was taking them.
In the living room, her father’s snoring intensified to buzz-saw decibels. Dani stowed the towels, her hands shaking, her movements clumsy. Jelly seemed to have replaced the bones in her knees.
She remembered the promise she’d made her son the day they’d left the hospital together—she lonely and scared at twenty-three, he a tiny, defenseless bundle wrapped in her arms. We’ll be a family, you and I. I promise.
Pressing her palms against the oft-painted panel of the closet door, Dani touched her forehead to the wood and squeezed her eyes tight. Oh, God, had she failed? They were a family, weren’t they? She hadn’t blown it too badly yet, had she?
She certainly hadn’t meant to wind up broke in the boondocks of Idaho, in a house that was a paint job away from dilapidated, on a farm that barely supported itself. She hadn’t meant for them to be alone on Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s.
Hearing the sudden snort that signaled her father wakening from his nap, Dani pushed away from the closet, wiped her eyes and hurried into her bedroom. She closed the door softly behind her, moving toward the window without flipping on the light.
With the curtains drawn, moonlight cast silver beams into the room. Dani stood close to the cold glass, arms wrapped around her waist, staring out.
I should have moved to Los Angeles, some city where the local chapter of Parents Without Partners is bigger than the PTA.
This time her sigh was ragged and tired. It fogged the glass. Everywhere she looked, stars seemed to be winking.
“Whatever the joke is, I wish you’d let me in on it,” she whispered to the cosmos.
Somewhere under this very same sky were people who still made wishes, people who still believed. She’d been like that once, dreaming with her eyes wide open. That’s what she wanted for her son—enough innocence to believe that dreams came true. Five was too young yet to learn about life’s disappointments.
Shivering inside her thick sweater, Dani hugged herself more tightly. What, she wondered, could this nighttime sky with its moon and its stars and its mystery have to offer a not-so-young-anymore single mother who’d stopped believing in wishes long ago?
Letting her hands drift up until they were linked beneath her chin, she closed her eyes. And then, because she had no idea what else to do, for the first time in more years than Dani could remember, she prayed.
“Girl, you are out of your gourd!”
“Shh, Pop, Timmy’ll hear you.” From the kitchen doorway, Dani glanced into the living room to check on her son, who was still engrossed in running his dump truck up and down the legs of their sofa. His pliant lips sputtered as he made engine sounds.
Turning toward the oven, Dani removed a pan of oatmeal-coconut crunch cookies.
“Want coffee?” she asked her father. “There’s one cup left in the pot.”
Eugene Harmon shook his head. “Nope. I had three cups already. Too much caffeine.” He watched Dani cross to the fridge to pour herself a glass of orange juice. “’Course, I don’t want it to go to waste if you’re not going to have any.” He rose with his mug. “Pour it in there.”
Blinking rapidly behind his glasses, Gene hitched his trousers higher on his waist—his characteristic gesture when he anticipated something enjoyable. Dani smiled. Timmy had adopted the same habit of late.
“Want one of these?” Reaching for the giant cookies, she pulled her hand back abruptly and affected an innocent look. “Oh, sorry, Pop. I forgot, you’re cutting back on sugar, too, aren’t you?”
Gene pulled a dish from one of the cabinets. Brown eyes shining as he acknowledged the gibe, he tapped the center of the chipped china dessert plate. “Just put it right there.”
They settled at the breakfast table, and Dani began to fidget, plucking at a piece of orange pulp that was stuck to the rim of her glass.
“You know, it’s not such a bad idea when you think about it,” she said hesitantly, easing back to the topic at hand. She raised her eyes to her father’s. Behind wire-framed glasses, Gene regarded his daughter stonily, and Dani squirmed with the need to defend the decision she’d come to during the night “Pop, how many great marriages do you know of? I mean really great ones. Love affairs. Name three off the top of your head.”
Gene popped a piece of cookie into his mouth, taking an excessively long time to chew. “Antony and Cleopatra.”
“Live people.”
Reaching for his coffee, he frowned.
“See?” Dani countered. “Bet you can’t name even one.” Digging peanut butter from a groove in the pine table, she smiled sadly. “Me, either. Except for you and Mom.”
Rubbing his nose where long ago his glasses had left a permanent indentation, Gene nodded. He spoke infrequently of his late wife, but Dani knew he thought of her often.
“You and Mom used to laugh so much. I remember thinking you were telling her jokes.”
Gene smiled. “Sometimes I was.” They sat quietly a moment, then he offered, “You could have that, too. You’re so pretty, honey. And smart. Maybe I never.told you that enough.”
“Yes, you did.” Dani hated the look of uncertainty on her father’s face. “You did everything just right, Pop.”
“Then don’t rush into anything,” he cautioned, referring to the plan she’d related to him this morning. “Marriage is hard work. Without love—”
“I’d rather have commitment without love than love without commitment. And don’t tell me I can have both.” Already primed to utter exactly those words, Eugene’s mouth snapped shut. “I’m twenty-eight years old, and I have a child. I don’t have the time to chase rainbows. I don’t have the energy.”
“You could still meet someone…the natural way.”
Wincing at the clear implication that what she was about to do was highly unnatural, Dani countered, “Where