“You can’t,” he said to his reflection. “She can’t.”
He yanked open the cupboard door under the sink, found a whole mess of cleaning supplies. Dumping a thick layer of cleanser into the tub, he set to scrubbing it, thinking it’d been a long time since he’d entertained the idea of wanting something he couldn’t have.
Chapter 3
The Monday before Thanksgiving, Mala lay in bed, half-asleep, trying to fight off that itchy, icky feeling you get when Something Bad is about to happen.
“Mama! Guess what!”
She burrowed down farther into the pillows. “Unless there’s a van outside with balloons all over it,” she said, “go away.”
“Ma-ma!” Like Tigger, Carrie boing-boinged up the length of the bed, and it occurred to Mala that the only time her bed shook these days was when small children were jumping on it. Which, while a dispiriting thought, didn’t qualify as the Something Bad because that wasn’t something that was going to happen. It already had. “It’s a snow day!”
That, however, definitely made the short list. But after marshalling a few more brain cells, Mala decided that, nope, that wasn’t quite it, either.
Not that this wasn’t bad enough—if it were true—since that meant, being as the kids were already off for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday…and Saturday and Sunday…she’d only have two kid-free days to do five days worth of work. Swiping her hair out of her face, Mala hiked herself up on one elbow, trying to get a bead on Carrie’s beaming, bobbing face. Her curls were a radiant blur in the almost iridescent glow in the many-windowed, converted porch she used as her bedroom.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Uh-uh. We got like a million feet of snow in the yard! You can go look! I already listened to the radio and they said the Spruce Lake schools were closed! We don’t have any scho-ol, we don’t have any scho-ol!”
Mala suppressed a groan as she glanced at the clock radio by her bed. Seven-ten. Far too early for so many exclamation points.
In footed, dinosaur-splashed jammies, Lucas unsteadily tromped across the bed, dropping beside Mala with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m cold,” he said, wriggling underneath the down comforter next to her, his beebee—as he’d christened his baby blanket at eleven months—firmly clutched to his chest.
“It’ll warm up in a few minutes,” Mala said.
Carrie skootched down on Mala’s other side, planting her ice-cold feet on Mala’s bare calf.
“Cripes, Carrie!”
“The heat’s not on.”
Damn. The furnace pilot must’ve gone out again. That made the second time this week. Not that it was that big a deal to relight it, but she supposed she couldn’t put off having somebody come out to give the ancient furnace a look-see any longer. Especially as she had a tenant. A tenant who, bless him, hadn’t yet complained about freezing his butt off in the mornings.
A tenant who, bless him, had made himself scarce since the night he moved in.
Except in her dreams.
Lucas snuggled closer, smelling of warm little boy and slightly sour jammies. Ah, yes…reality. As in, kids and clients and recalcitrant furnaces and laundry and meals to fix and mother’s and brother’s and well-meaning friends’ worried looks to dodge. And vague, itchy-icky feelings of impending doom.
Running away sounded pret-ty damn attractive, just at the moment.
Just at the moment, she wondered what it would be like to be able to come and go whenever you pleased, not having to answer to anyone, not be tied down to any one place for longer than a few months.
Carrie threw her arm around Mala’s middle, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Not having a child—or two—to come get in bed with you on a cold, snowy morning and remind you that you were the center of their universe.
She hugged and kissed first one kid, then the other, then gently swatted Carrie’s bottom through the bedclothes. “C’mon, move over—I gotta get up.”
“C’n you make pancakes?”
“Maybe. After I get the furnace going.” Mala struggled out from underneath the covers, static electricity crackling as she yanked at her flannel nightgown to dislodge it from the bedding. Half hopping, half stumbling, she stuffed her feet into her old shearling slippers as she made her way across the carpet to the window to see just how generous Mother Nature had been.
Yup—she rammed one arm, then the other, into her terry cloth robe, glowering at the vast expanse of white outside her window—it had snowed, alrighty. Not a million feet, but at least one, gauging from the pile of the white stuff on the picnic table. Oh, joy.
It was still flurrying, although the faint blue patches in the distance meant the storm would probably break up before noon. But with this much snow already on the ground, Mala thought on a huge, disgusted yawn, nobody was going anywhere, at least not until some kind person took pity on them and plowed the street. Which could be Christmas, with her luck. Whitey was probably sitting in the nice dry attached garage, chuckling. Man, she’d sell her soul for something with all-wheel drive.
The ceiling creaked slightly under the pressure of Eddie’s heavy, deliberate footsteps overhead. She heard the upstairs door slam shut, followed by the sound of boots clomping down the outside stairs. She edged back from the window and watched him plod through the soft snow toward the second garage out back in just his jeans and that denim jacket of his, and she felt her brow furrow in concern that he wasn’t dressed warmly enough.
Lord. She was such a mother.
He had the day off—the restaurant was closed on Sundays and Mondays—and she found herself wondering what he’d do, since his Camaro wasn’t any more snow-worthy than her sissy little Escort. Not that it was any of her business. She just wondered.
Mala suddenly realized he’d come back out of the garage and was looking in her direction through the light snow, his gaze steady in an otherwise expressionless face. She doubted he could see her, not from that distance and with it still snowing, but it was as if he knew she was standing there.
Heat dancing across her cheeks, Mala backed away, just as a sudden shaft of sunlight turned the flurries into whirling, glittering confetti. And as if in a dream, Eddie began trudging across the yard toward her window, the sparkling flakes settling onto his thick, curly hair and broad shoulders like fairy dust, at such odds with the serious set to his mouth. When he got to within a few feet of the window, he stopped, then mimed shoveling.
Mala raised the window, the brittle cold instantly goose-bumping her skin. Lucas crawled out of the bed and wedged himself between her and the windowsill. One little hand arrowed into the soft drift. “Honestly, Lucas—” Mala snatched back his hand, then wrapped him in her enormous robe and hugged him to her stomach, like a mother hen enveloping her chick. “You could just come around to the door, you know,” she said to Eddie, her breath a cloud.
His gaze snapped back to her face. “Waste of time, seeing’s as you were already standing there. So, you got a snow shovel?”
“You don’t have to—”
“I need to dig out my car.”
“Oh, of course.” She shivered. “Yeah, there’s one in the shed.”
He turned, glanced at the wooden shed huddled against the back fence, then angled his head back to her. “It locked?”
She shook her head. He nodded, then trooped away.
A half hour later, she was standing in her living room after her shower, staring at the TV and contemplating the possibility of being sucked into the perpetual springtime of Teletubbieland—but only if one could exterminate