“That’s the taste of sunshine,” she told him.
He frowned. Space was one of his favorite things, and he took it seriously. “The sun is made of gas.” He watched her for a moment, looking ready to argue if she had anything else silly to say. She confined herself to eating berries, and his attention drifted.
Hers did, too. Back to the damp-legged man at the museum. He must be new. She didn’t remember seeing him before, and she couldn’t have seen him and forgotten. It was years since she’d noticed a man, noticed in a way that made looking at his chest to read his name tag uncomfortable. That kind of feeling—the sudden awareness, the catch in the throat—she had thought belonged only to Duncan.
Of course Duncan had noticed her at the same time. He’d given her a slow smile that started small and got bigger until his eyes sparkled. That was it for her, she was a goner. David Whoever, on the other hand, had chosen to talk about mammoth steaks.
Chris was still playing with his dinosaur. He walked it along the table, leaving tiny chocolate footprints on the plastic. It sniffed the berries, and growled, then picked a fight with a paper napkin. Maybe he hadn’t found the museum visit as upsetting as it had seemed. He looked like her pre–Day After Tomorrow Chris, all about animals and space. Thanks to the strawberries and the filtered sunlight she felt more cheerful herself.
“That dinosaur’s headed for extinction,” she said when she noticed the footprints getting bigger and stickier. “You’d better eat it while you can.”
Chris bit off its head. He chewed and swallowed, then licked his fingers.
“Well,” he said slowly, after finishing another mouthful, and from his preoccupied tone she knew he hadn’t been thinking about dinosaurs after all, “people live way up north where it’s always winter.”
She had to remind herself not to mention elves or toy shops. “The Inuit.”
“In igloos.”
“I don’t think they live in igloos anymore.”
“But they did. So we could keep warm and get food even if our house was ice.”
She’d never seen so much uncertainty in his eyes. “We can do anything we have to do, sweetheart. But our house will never be ice.” She put the remaining strawberries and drinks back in the shopping bag and handed Chris a napkin to rub the melted chocolate from his hands.
On the way home he went back to telling her the plot of The Day After Tomorrow. She listened more to his voice than to the story. It was higher pitched than usual and every sentence finished with an uncertain upswing, an unasked question. Maybe it would help if they spent the afternoon reading fairy tales. “The Little Mermaid,” “Hansel and Gretel.” He’d heard those often enough without believing they were true. Or maybe a complete change of pace would be better. They could go to the park and try to skip stones on the river.
“That man was a scientist, right?”
She saw the pitfall immediately. “The one who talked to us at the museum? I don’t know what he does there.”
“The actor wasn’t a scientist and the screenwriter wasn’t a scientist but the man we talked to today, he was a scientist.”
“We don’t know,” she repeated. “All kinds of people work there. Even artists, to make the displays. And accountants to work on the budget.”
Chris gave her another of those looks. She didn’t blame him. David Whoever hadn’t sounded like an artist or an accountant. She tried to think of something more convincing. “And tour guides.”
“And scientists, I bet.”
She had to agree. Scientists definitely worked at the museum. Distracting Chris with stories and outings wasn’t going to work.
CHAPTER THREE
TWELVE-THIRTY, and Chris wasn’t ready for school. Wearing only Spider-Man briefs, he stood on top of a brand-new shirt in the middle of his bedroom. A narrow line of red trickled down his heel.
He looked at Gwyn guiltily. “I’m bleeding.”
It was almost a week since their visit to the museum and Gwyn was still wishing they hadn’t gone. She’d tried to keep Chris’s days low-key. They’d walked along the river, curled up on the sofa reading and played games like Snakes and Ladders, but nothing had kept his attention from the idea of an impending ice age.
The point he’d fixated on was that the frozen mammoth from the movie was real. If it was real then maybe other parts of the story were, too. Like the field of ice that collapsed under one of the “scientists,” like glaciers melting and filling the oceans with too much fresh water. If he wasn’t miserable enough trying to get his five-year-old head around those questions, Mrs. Henderson—following Gwyn’s instructions—had encouraged him to play outside a couple of evenings ago, but she had ignored the bottle of mosquito repellent kept by the door. Chris was covered with bites.
He had been cantankerous all morning, scratching fiercely and challenging Gwyn at every opportunity. After falling asleep in the rocker on the porch she wasn’t in the best of shape herself. At five-thirty she’d woken to crickets so loud she couldn’t believe there wasn’t a bylaw against them and a monster kink in her neck that no amount of massaging had fixed.
Holding his foot away from her clothes she carried Chris to the bathroom. “You said you weren’t going to scratch those bites.”
“They got itchy.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I could have got the calamine lotion for you.”
“I hate that stuff!”
“You sound mad at me. I didn’t bite you.”
He was in no mood to smile. Gwyn sat him on the narrow vanity with his foot in the sink. Cool running water diluted the trail of blood, then washed it away. She dabbed peroxide on the spots of broken skin and stuck on a web of Band-Aids.
“We’re going to be late.”
Chris was silent. If he missed the second bell he’d have to take a note from the teacher to the principal’s office. After a moment he said, “I didn’t get blood on the carpet.”
It would have been nice if he’d kept it off his new shirt, too. “You did your best, right?” They nodded at each other. “Off you go. Get dressed as fast as you can.”
While she waited she kept checking her watch, as if that would help her get to the bus on time. Sooner than she expected Chris came to the door, dragging his backpack behind him. He wore a long-sleeved button-up shirt that looked silly with his shorts.
She hesitated, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding her keys. “Go back and change into a T-shirt, Chris.” He didn’t move so she added, “You know, short sleeves, over the head?”
“I like this shirt.”
“That one goes with long pants. You might get teased at recess.”
“I don’t care.”
Gwyn put her head to one side and stared at him. He stared back, unblinking. He was younger and smaller than most of the boys in his class, more verbal, and not the least bit interested in sports, unless chess counted. Not that he could play it, yet. He just trotted the knights across the squares and had the bishops confer with the king and queen. The other kindergarteners weren’t exactly tough guys, either, but what would happen next year, or a few years from now?
“Chris, do as I say.”
He sighed, and trailed back to his room. She heard drawers scraping back and forth, then he returned wearing a T-shirt that looked as if it belonged in the laundry hamper. The mood he was in, maybe he had got it from the hamper.
“Let’s go. Quick as you can.”