Tyler wanted to help, too, so she had him carry in their new two-foot-high, red-velvet-clad Santa with its price tag still attached while they brought in the bins filled with the lights and ornaments she’d need for the tree.
The only other thing she needed, other than for the heavy caution between them to ease, was to start a fire in the fireplace to take the deepening chill off the room. While Erik went back for the last bin, she crumpled newspaper under some of the kindling she and Tyler had found by a cord of split logs in the lean-to behind the garage.
Erik had barely walked back in when he shot a narrowed glance at the parka she still wore. Tyler hadn’t taken his off yet, either.
“Did you turn off the heat?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t gone that far in her efforts to conserve.
“I turn it down when we leave, but it’s always colder when the wind blows. It just hasn’t been this windy. Or this cold. It’s freezing out there.”
The house had always been drafty. As his grandmother had done on especially cold days, Rory had closed her heavy drapes over the big expanses of glass to insulate from the chill. With the wind that blew the rain against the windows stirring the fabric, he figured he should probably check the weather stripping.
Just not now. For now, all he’d do was make sure she had enough firewood and get out of there.
“There’s plenty,” she assured him when he said he’d bring some in. “Tyler and I carried a load into the mudroom this morning.”
“Can we decorate now?” Tyler asked. “If you don’t have a tree,” he said to the man checking his watch, “you can help decorate ours. Mom said she’d show me her magic ornaments. You want to see ’em?”
“Magic ornaments?”
“Uh-huh. They’re in here.” With his arms still wrapped around the Santa, he bumped his little boot against a bin she’d brought in that morning. “She showed me a heart and a bell. I get to see the rest when we put them on the tree.”
He looked eager and hopeful and was still running on a sugar high from the hot cider and big candy cane he’d been given at the tree lot.
“We’ve kept Erik long enough, honey.” She hated to burst his little bubble, but with Erik frowning at the time, it seemed apparent he was anxious to go. She felt anxious for him to go now, too. Every time she met his glance she had the uncomfortable feeling he was wondering how she would ever manage there on her own. Or thinking about how much longer the project had taken than he’d probably planned. “He said he had to leave by four,” she reminded him. “Remember?”
“But he doesn’t have his own tree, Mom. We’re s’posed to share.”
They were indeed, which left Rory at a loss for a reasonable rebuttal. She didn’t doubt her child’s disappointment. Yet that disappointment didn’t seem to be only for himself. It was as much for the man she sincerely doubted needed anything from them at all.
“I suppose I could stay a little longer,” he said to Tyler, touched by the child’s concern, ignoring her. “How much do you think we can do in thirty minutes?”
“We have to put the lights on before we can do anything,” she pointed out to them both. Thirty minutes would barely get them going.
“Then I guess that’s where we start.” He looked to where she suddenly stared back at him. “Unless you hadn’t planned on doing this right now.”
He had accomplished his mission: delivering the tree. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d even want to stick around and decorate the thing. Especially with Rory stuck somewhere between grateful for his help, not wanting to have needed it and uncomfortable with his presence. Her little boy’s excitement with the process, though, and his innocent desire to share that experience with him held far more appeal just then than heading home to get ready for yet another evening of schmoozing and champagne. Even if he didn’t leave for another half hour, he’d barely be late. He just wouldn’t stop by the boatworks.
Both males expectantly waited for her reply. That Erik seemed to want to stay caught her totally off guard. Considering how he’d practically bolted out the back door the last time he’d been there and how annoyed he’d sounded with her on the phone yesterday, she’d thought for sure that he’d be on his way as soon as he’d delivered Tyler’s tree.
Not about to deliberately disappoint her son, and determined to not upset the precarious equilibrium between her and her mentor, she lifted both hands in surrender. “If we’re doing lights, we need a chair,” was all she had to say before Tyler started pulling off his coat and Erik started heading toward the dining room table.
On his way, he pulled his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans.
“I need to tell Pax I won’t be in today,” he told her, punching numbers. They didn’t need the parts until Monday, but his partner would be expecting him. “Just give me a minute.”
Taking her animated little boy’s jacket, she slipped off her own and headed into the mudroom to hang them up. As she passed Erik, she heard his easy “Hey, buddy” before he relayed his message, told him where he was and added that he’d see him “later at the party.”
Marveling at the man’s social life, and unsettled to find herself wondering yet again about the woman he’d taken out last week, she walked back into the kitchen moments later to see him still on the phone.
“No, I’m not ‘seriously preoccupied,’” he good-naturedly defended. “I’ve just been getting a tree into a stand. What are you talking about?
“You’re kidding,” he muttered, and headed for the dining room window.
The moment he pulled back the closed drape, she heard a soft ticking against the glass. Little was visible in the gray light beyond. Blowing rain obscured the view.
His brow furrowed. “Turn on the TV, will you?” he asked her.
“What’s going on?”
“Everything’s closing down,” was all he said before she grabbed the TV’s remote.
With Erik joining her on her left, still listening to Pax, and Tyler smashed against her right leg, hugging Santa, the three of them watched the churning weather map on the screen while the authoritative voice of the weatherman warned everyone to stay off the roads. The ticker on the bottom of the screen listed temperatures in various degrees of freezing in Seattle and surrounding areas as the voice went on about predicted accumulations of freezing rain or sleet. Another voice took over as the picture switched to a weather cam with a blurry image of a multicar pileup on I-5.
A viewer video showed the sleet-shrouded image of a ferry rocking at its landing.
“What about the Narrows Bridge?” she heard Erik ask Pax.
The furrows went deeper. “Got it. Sure. You, too, man,” he concluded, and ended his call.
Sensing the adults’ concern, Tyler pressed closer as he looked up. “Is this a bad thing, Mommy?”
It wasn’t good. “It’s okay, honey. The weather is just causing a few problems,” she explained even as more personal complications dawned.
“Nothing you need to worry about, sport.”
Peering around his mom, Tyler looked to the man smiling over at him.
“All you need to worry about is finding a place to put that big guy.” Erik nodded to the Santa that was nearly half Tyler’s size. “Then we can start on the lights.”
His concerns appeased, Tyler plopped his Santa on the floor beside him. Suggesting he put the decoration somewhere a little more out of the way, Erik turned to Rory.
“Pax said they’re closing the