Single with Children

Robbie punched her in the arm. “It isn’t yours! It’s all of us’s. Isn’t it, Laura?”

“Yes, but you mustn’t hit your sister. Hitting isn’t acceptable behavior. Make apology please.”

Robbie had “made apology” several times already that day, and he screwed up his face at the effort it took to make another. “Sor-ry.”

Wendy patted him companionably on the head. “That’s all right, Robbie. It didn’t hurt, anyway. Tomorrow,” she said to Laura, “can we play knights and princess in our castle?”

Laura laughed. “If the weather’s clear, but we’ll have to be very well bundled up knights and princess. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They sat hunched together on a piece of cardboard on the cold ground. Laura had drawn planks on it to represent a wooden floor. She shivered, knowing they would have to go into the house soon, but wanting to give them as long as possible. With luck, Adam would be home before they had to go in and would be able to look over their handiwork and make appropriate noises of praise. At least she hoped he would. She decided to gauge the likelihood. “Won’t Daddy be impressed with our snow castle?” she asked no one in particular.

Robbie and Ryan looked at Wendy, who shrugged. “Dunno. He might not notice.”

“Well, sure he’ll notice.” How could he not notice an eight-foot-tall snow sculpture in his front yard? “I bet he’ll be sorry that he wasn’t here to help us.”

Wendy shook her head. “No, he won’t.”

“No, he won’t,” Ryan echoed.

Laura swallowed a lump in her throat and put on a smile. “Why, sure he will. Um, h-hasn’t he ever…played in the snow with you?”

Wendy dropped her gaze. “Daddies don’t play,” she said. “’Sides, he wasn’t never here for snow before.”

“Never here for snow?” Laura mumbled. “I don’t understand.”

“He didn’t never live with us,” Wendy said, “until Mommy went away.”

“No?” Laura tried to bite back the question, but it tumbled out before she could. “Were they divorced?”

They were clearly confused by the question, looking to one another for clarification. Finally Robbie threw up his arms and said, “No! Daddy, he lived with the army!”

“The army? You mean, he was a soldier?”

“Yes, with the awmy!” Ryan said, clearly exasperated with her lack of understanding.

Well, that explained the haircut and his superb physical condition. But it didn’t explain why he’d never spent a winter with his own children. She looked to Wendy for answers. “Why didn’t you all go with him?” Wendy merely shrugged. Laura tried again. “Well, I’m certain he came home often. I mean, he wouldn’t have missed your birthdays or the holidays…would he?”

“Daddy was home Chwistmas!” Ryan said, adding with relish, “he and Gwandpa Jake got in a fight!”

A fight. At Christmastime. Laura gulped. “That’s too bad,” she murmured, “but it was just one Christmas in many.” She looked at Wendy. “Wasn’t it?”

That shrug again. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t know. She didn’t remember whether her father had spent other Christmases with her. What was wrong with that man? Laura blinked to cool hot eyes, and tried to put the best face on the situation. “Well, he’s here now, and I’m sure that he spends every minute with you that he can.” Wendy made no reply, but her little face was simmering with suppressed anger. Oh, Adam, Laura thought, what are you doing to your children?

Ryan said, “I’m cold!”

Laura snapped out of her reverie. “I bet a cup of cocoa would warm you up, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah! Cocoa! Cocoa! Cocoa!”

Laura flipped over and led the way out of the snow structure. The temperature had dropped in direct proportion with the descent of the sun, which had now dipped beneath the horizon. Adam’s four-wheel-drive was nowhere to be seen. Laura swung a shivering Ryan up onto her hip, then took Robbie and Wendy each by a hand. Together they went into the house, stopping in the entry to let tingling body parts adjust to the sudden warmth and divest themselves of a whole closetful of outer garments. The next stop was the big bathroom, where everyone washed up. Then it was on to the den for the kids, while Laura went into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said to Beverly, who was stirring a pot at the stove and flashed her a smile over her shoulder. “Is that cocoa ready?”

“It is, but so is dinner.”

“Smells great. What is it?”

“Stew. Should I serve it up now?”

Laura shook her head. “We’ll wait on Mr. Fortune.”

Beverly shot her an odd look. “Oh, I forgot. He called a little while ago. He said not to wait for him. Something came up.”

Laura’s spirits plummeted, but it wouldn’t do to let the children see that she was upset. She closed her eyes and made herself think. “We’ll have the cocoa first, anyway,” she decided. “Why don’t you put the stew pot in the oven to keep warm, and go on home? We’ll serve ourselves when we’re ready.”

Beverly was untying her apron strings before Laura finished speaking. “Well, if you’re certain.”

Laura nodded. “Absolutely.” The cook was gone before Laura got the cocoa poured into cups.

Laura put the cups on a tray, sprinkled them with small marshmallows and carried them to the door, where she put a determined smile on her face. No one should know that inside she was grieving, grieving for the father she’d never known, grieving for what Adam’s children should but did not have, grieving and beginning to get angry.

Adam walked tiredly down the hall and into the kitchen. Beverly had promised to leave him some dinner in the oven. Not that he was hungry, really. He’d eaten earlier, with an old friend from high school and his wife, but it was politic not to offend the household help, especially when one depended upon that help for survival. He swallowed a few bites of the stew at the kitchen sink, then put the rest down the garbage disposal and rinsed out the bowl. It was good stew, but he just wasn’t hungry. He went to the cabinet, took down a bottle of brandy and poured a measure into a small snifter, which he warmed with his hands as he walked into the den.

Laura was sitting on the sofa, her legs folded beneath her, poring over the family photo albums. Adam felt a quickening that he could only have called interest. “Hello,” he said, stopping in the middle of the floor to sip his brandy. She was amazingly attractive, her long blond hair swept onto a shoulder bared by the droop of the wide collar of her pale yellow nubbly-knit sweater. The slender length of her legs was not diminished either by her position or by the thick black leggings she wore. Likewise, heavy wool socks in no way disguised the delicate turn of her ankles or the petite perfection of her feet. Her graceful hands abandoned the book to her lap. She sat upright and folded long arms beneath breasts almost too ample for her slender frame. When she turned her face up to him, his first thought was that not even anger could make her seem less than pretty. Anger. The realization was secondary, but correct nonetheless.

She dropped her gaze once more to the pair of photo albums overlapping on her thighs. “You aren’t in any of the pictures,” she said. Her oddly husky voice took on a hint of challenge. “Have you noticed that you aren’t in any of the pictures?”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, or why it affected him as it did. He only knew that something clutched at his heart, sending rills of panic surging through him. Instinctively he stepped into the firm, indifferent role that had served him so well in the military. “I don’t recall giving you permission to go through my family keepsakes.”

The gaze she jerked up at him was first wide with shock, then lax with contrition, and finally narrow with hurt. She closed the books gently, the glossy gold-embossed navy blue one first, then the ragged hemp-colored one. “My apologies,” she muttered softly, sliding the books onto the coffee table. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She got swiftly to her feet and weaved her way past the table, a displaced footstool and him. He couldn’t help noticing that, though her grace rivaled that of a ballet dancer, she managed to stub her toe twice.

His indifference fled, and he didn’t have time to question why. He only knew that he didn’t want her to go, and his body reacted to that desire. Stepping back and to the side and throwing out an arm, he managed to block her path and catch her against him at the same time.

“I, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark. It…it’s been a long day.”

She bowed her head, standing very still in the curve of his arm. “Yes, I know.” The gaze she lifted to him this time glittered with accusation. “They waited until after nine o’clock.”

They? His children, of course, though why they would bother to wait up for him, of all people, was pure mystery. Most of the time, they ignored everything about him, including his commands. He dropped his arm, put his head back and swallowed his brandy in one hard gulp that burned all the way down and hit his belly with the force of a fist. He inhaled cooling air through his mouth, bit down on the fiery aftertaste and sighed with satisfaction. He immediately felt better. “Suppose you tell me what they wanted,” he said smoothly, loosening his tie with one hand. Suddenly her anger was back. It leaped like bolts of clear blue lightning in bright green eyes.

“They wanted their father!” she told him sharply. “We built a snow castle in the front yard today, and they wanted to be told what an amazing structure they’d made, what brilliant children they are.”

“A snow castle,” he repeated dully. He hadn’t noticed. He stepped over to his chair and sank down upon it, all at once weary beyond bearing. “I’ll tell them in the morning,” he said, pressing the brandy snifter to the ache beginning between his eyes.

Laura shook her head slowly from side to side, but he was too tried to ask what it was all about. This time, when she muttered, “Good night,” and stalked away, he let her go.