Lori’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “It’s tempting. I don’t really want to go back out to the middle of nowhere, especially now. And I could do that heavy cleaning you talked about, probably by next week.”
“Oh, no. We’re not going to go there for a while. Just having somebody in the house will make Mom feel better. She is sure somebody’s going to break in over there when it’s empty. Kids partying or something.”
“And a widow with two babies is so much better than kids partying.”
Tyler looked up. “I’m not a baby. An’ what’s a widow?”
Lori got paler and swallowed hard. “Oh, boy. Here comes the hard part. Ty, come up here on my bed, okay?”
“Okay.” He slid off Mike’s lap, taking his warmth with him. Mike didn’t know what to do next. Did he stay, to give Lori support? Or would it be better if he slipped out of the room to let her do this alone? He tried to convey his confusion without saying anything. Lori wasn’t watching. She was reaching out a hand to stroke her son’s blond hair.
“He looks so grown up after the baby. But not grown up enough for this.” There was a pain in the depth of her eyes that Mike could only imagine.
Is this what his mother’s face had looked like when she broke similar news to him? He hadn’t been much older than Tyler when his dad died.
“Mind if I stick around?” It took him a moment to force out the words. “I kind of have some experience here. From Tyler’s perspective.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.” It all came rushing back. At least Tyler wouldn’t have the guilt Mike had borne for years. At six he was sure he’d killed his own father. It had taken years more maturity than a first grader possessed to know that his father’s fatal heart attack hadn’t been Mike’s fault.
Tyler cocked his head. He was an astute little kid, and he knew something was going on. “Where’s Daddy? When we looked at that place where some of the new babies were, when Carrie was bringing me up here, there were some other kids looking. They were all looking with their dads.”
“That’s what we need to talk about.” Lori stroked his hair again. “Remember when Carrie came this summer? With the truck and the other guy?”
“Mr. Bart? Yeah. He was cool. He let me play with the siren.”
Lori swallowed hard. “That’s right. And remember they told us something about Daddy? Something I tried to tell you?” Mike could hear her voice shake.
“Right. That he wasn’t coming back. But last time he went away it was different. You said he wasn’t coming back for a long time, but then he did. Isn’t he coming back to see Mikayla?”
“No, Tyler, he isn’t. Not the way you mean it. Daddy had an accident on the way to work. His car went into a lake, and he couldn’t get out by himself.”
Tyler looked at him, and Mike felt his heart make an elevator ride to his shoes. “Did you help get him out? You and Carrie?”
Mike leaned forward. “No, Tyler, we didn’t. We got there too late to help him get out.”
“Daddy’s dead, Tyler.”
“Like Max?”
“A little like Max.” “A puppy,” Lori mouthed in Mike’s direction. “It will be like Max because Daddy won’t come home again. The part of him that made him walk and talk and be Daddy isn’t here anymore. Being dead means he went to heaven to be with Jesus.”
That wasn’t an assumption Mike would have made about Gary Harper, but Mike forgave Lori for the fib. After all, this was Harper’s kid.
“Do you think Max bited him when he got there?”
“No, I think they’re friends. In heaven nobody remembers the bad things you did,” Lori said simply.
“So Daddy’s still in heaven with Max and Jesus? Can we call him on the phone there?”
“No, Tyler, we can’t.” Lori was fighting tears now.
Tyler looked puzzled. “Last time he went away, we could talk to him on the phone.”
“That’s true. But this time is different.”
This was raising a lot of questions. Mike felt an ache in his chest at what Lori was facing. “I think I’d better leave both of you alone for a while. Can I go talk to my mom about the house?”
Lori looked up from the bed. “I think you’d better. I’m going to need more help than I thought. Maybe you’re going to be the answer to a prayer twice in one day, Mike.”
The answer to a prayer? It was the first time he’d ever been called that. Mike wasn’t sure it fit. But looking at the glowing eyes of the young woman in the room, he was willing to be the answer to any of her prayers. He’d never been part of a miracle before. But for somebody like Lori, trying to explain the finality of death to a child too young to understand, he could try. She needed all the miracles she could get.
Chapter Four
Mike rehearsed his speech to his mother while he drove home. It earned him a few strange looks from Dogg, who sat in the cab of the truck with his head tilted sideways. True, he’d told Lori everything was worked out and Mom would be fine with her renting the house next door. Now he just had to make sure of that.
He pulled into the drive that circled the house. Parking the truck in his accustomed spot off to the side, where he could pull out any time night or day that a volunteer fire call sounded, he held the door open until Dogg leapt down. He still looked mightily relieved to be rid of those antlers.
“Wipe your feet,” he told the beast as they both entered the kitchen. Dogg looked as tired as he did, except the animal’s tongue was hanging out farther. Still, he didn’t have to worry about the dog’s manners; Mike swore Dogg was better about neatness indoors than he was.
The kitchen smelled wonderful. There had to be either veal stew or beef Stroganoff in that pot on the stove for Christmas Eve dinner to make his nose twitch like this. My mother loves me was his first thought. She showed it in a variety of ways, but as a savvy woman, Gloria Martin knew how to get to her son through his stomach.
“Hey,” Mike called through the house, knowing where he’d find her anyway, even on Christmas Eve.
“Hey, yourself.” Gloria was in stocking feet, black pantsuit made festive by an enameled pin in the shape of a holly sprig. As she stood up from the desk in her office, Mike marveled that this tiny woman had borne a big brute like him, and put up with him for all these years.
“I was beginning to think we had to call out the search party. Except you usually are the search party, so that didn’t leave me with many options.” Her red lipstick was unsmudged even this late in the day. Her lacquered nails were the same glossy red. She looked the picture of the successful middle-aged woman.
Mike shrugged. “Well, we had plenty to do. Remember that water rescue we did in August? The department decided his widow should be our Santa Claus case this year. When we went to tell her, we nearly delivered a baby that was a surprise to everybody involved except the mother.”
Gloria’s hand flew to her mouth. “So what will that woman do? Are there other children? And didn’t you tell me that man was a drug dealer? Obviously there’s no insurance or anything…”
Mike knew his job would be far easier now. “There’s another kid, a little boy about five. He and his mom and his new sister are all as well as can be expected. And as far as what they’re going to do now, I think I solved that, as well.”