Читать книгу Yours, Mine...or Ours? - Karen Templeton - Страница 7

Chapter Two

“Let me guess,” Kevin said as they made their way back to the car. “You’re about to bust something trying to figure out what to do about this new wrinkle.”

Rudy waited until Stacey, who’d run ahead, was out of earshot before he replied, “Yeah. Nothin’ worse than being the bad guy when it’s not even your fault. I mean, if there wasn’t a will—”

“Then I would think legally you’re in the clear,” his brother said, halting in front of a gated sports equipment store. “Not that I’m any expert, but like you said, you didn’t do anything wrong. Now, what I’m wondering is, what you’re gonna do about Violet?”

Rudy frowned at him, tempted to think he’d liked his brother better when he’d been a stoner and too out of it to stick his nose in. “What makes you think I should do anything about Violet?”

Kevin chuckled. Rudy sighed. Okay, so those damn pale green eyes were burned into his brain, along with all that I could fix you crap. Which was really stupid because maybe—maybe—Rudy could fix a house, but fixing women wasn’t part of his job description. Especially since, if memory served, women didn’t generally take kindly to being fixed.

But the more Darla, the other waitress, had yakked away about Violet’s situation, the more Rudy realized he had to do something. He’d had no idea, obviously, when he’d bought the place that the old lady had promised to leave it to Violet—

“Da-ad!” Stacey called, hopping up and down beside the car, her hands jammed inside her vest pockets. “Hello? Open the door?”

“Oh, sorry,” he mumbled, hitting the remote on his key chain. The car be-booped itself unlocked. Stacey yanked open the door and scrambled inside, slamming it shut again.

Somehow, he doubted Darla had exaggerated about Violet’s situation, even if she did have that gleam in her eye common to people taking comfort in other people’s troubles. She’d told him all about how Doris Hicks’s daughter had thrown Violet and her sons out of the house she’d believed would be hers in exchange for the eighteen months Violet had spent helping Doris to keep the inn open—an arrangement mutually beneficial for both an old woman determined to stay in her own home and a struggling young mother whose husband had taken a hike.

He could only imagine how blindsided she must’ve felt. Just like he’d been when Stacey’s mother had said, “Forget this,” leaving a rookie cop with a colicky six-month-old and a hole in his heart the size of the Grand Canyon. But at least Rudy’d had a safety net, in that huge extended family. There’d always been a home for his daughter, even if not one he’d envisioned.

He pulled up in front of the inn, shrouded in darkness save for the moonlight and the anemic ghosts of a half-dozen or so wussy, solar-powered yard lights standing lethargic sentry along the disintegrating walk. Armed with a flashlight, Stacey shot out of the car—bathroom call, Rudy was guessing. Kevin, however, stayed put, staring at Rudy’s profile. Noting, no doubt, that Rudy hadn’t killed the engine. Then he chuckled.

“I’ll start a fire, how’s that?”

Slamming the door shut behind him, Kevin started up the walk, warbling some country song Rudy didn’t recognize.

And Rudy drove back into the winter night, hoping maybe to put a fire or two out.

Rubbing her bottom—still tingling from the ice-cold toilet seat—Stacey crept back to the even colder, totally dark front room, where she found her uncle kneeling in front of the woodstove wedged into the fireplace. By the puny beam of his flashlight, he was trying to coax some kindling to catch fire. Stacey shuddered. Like it wasn’t creepy enough in here in the daylight. Sure, she’d gone camping and stuff, but this was different. Maybe because she’d wanted to go camping and she so didn’t want to be here.

“Wh-where’s Dad?” she said through chattering teeth.

“He had something he needed to do,” Uncle Kev said between puffs to the kindling. “He’ll be back soon.”

Stacey rolled her eyes, even though that was so juvenile. But honestly, why was it so hard for grown-ups to just be up-front with you?

“It’s so cold in here,” she said, rubbing her arms. She’d ripped off her coat when she’d run inside earlier, but now she found it again in the weak, fluttering light and shrugged back into it. Yeah, freezing to death was real high on her list. And without electricity or phone service or broadband or anything she couldn’t even log on and check her e-mail and stuff. What was the point of giving her a new laptop for Christmas—a bribe, she knew, for destroying her life—if she couldn’t even use it?

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she blinked them back. No way was she going to let her dad and Uncle Kev think she was some dumb little crybaby. Not that she had any idea yet how to convince Dad that moving here had been, like, the lamest move ever, but acting like a whiny brat—tempting though it was—wasn’t going to do it. Probably.

“It’ll warm up pretty quick now,” Uncle Kev said, sitting back to admire his handiwork through the open stove doors. Stacey glanced around, shuddering again. Nothing like dancing shadows to up the creep factor. She inched closer to her uncle, now sitting on a superthick, unrolled sleeping bag in front of the fire. Grinning up at her, he patted the space beside him.

She sighed and joined him, cross-legged, elbows on her knees, chin sunk in her palms. One of those heavy silences fell between them, the kind right before the adult says something Really Important.

What now? Stacey thought as her eyes slid to the side of his face. The flames made him look older, she decided. More serious, maybe. Not like the goofball who usually hung out in her youngest uncle’s body. Objectively speaking—a phrase she’d picked up from a book or something—she’d have to say that Uncle Kev was the best-looking of the five brothers. Her grandparents had only had one girl, her aunt Mia, who was marrying this superrich dude in Connecticut the following summer and had asked Stacey to be her junior bridesmaid—

“I know you’re pretty unhappy about this move,” Uncle Kev finally said, interrupting Stacey’s daydream about dresses and shoes and stuff.

“Let’s see,” she said, her chin still propped in her hands as she again stared into the hissing, sputtering fire. “I had to leave all my friends, start in a new school in the middle of the year, I’m guessing there’s no mall within five hundred miles, and this house is like, totally disgusting.”

“Okay, the leaving your friends and new school in the middle of the year—yeah, those really blow. But I happen to know there’s something even better than a regular mall, not ten miles away.”

“Like what?”

“A two-hundred-store outlet mall.”

“Yeah, right. Dad taking me to an outlet mall? Get real.”

“So you’ll make new friends, Stace. Friends with moms who love nothing better than goin’ to outlet malls. And the house isn’t gonna be disgusting forever, because your dad and I are gonna get it all fixed up, get rid of the sucky carpet and wallpaper… You’ll see,” he said, nudging her with his shoulder. “It’ll be great. So you think you could just, you know…give it a chance? Because this is really important to your dad.”

Stacey sighed, wishing the fire was one of those Harry Potter things that sent you someplace else. In her case, back to her grandparents’ nice, warm house in Springfield. Of course, they weren’t gonna be around all the time anymore, she knew that. That’s one of the reasons she couldn’t stay behind, because they were gonna do some traveling and wouldn’t be there to take care of her. And her aunts’ and uncles’ houses were too full of their own kids, and maybe she could’ve gone to live with Aunt Mia, but then she would’ve still had to go to a different school….

“I just don’t get why things couldn’t stay the way they were,” she said, still staring. “Why we couldn’t stay where we were.”

“Because your dad was unhappy, Stace,” Kev said softly, and Stacey’s eyes shot to his. Yeah, okay, her uncle was definitely a hottie. Objectively speaking. Her dad was okay-looking, she supposed, but nothing like Kevin. Women went stupid when they saw Kevin. Okay, so sometimes women went all zombie around her dad, too, but that’s probably because he was so freaking big he scared ’em.

She looked back at the fire. “He never said anything to me about being unhappy.”

“No. He wouldn’t. And he’d kill me if he knew I was saying any of this to you, so you gotta promise to keep your yap shut, okay?” When she nodded, secretly thrilled to be part of a conspiracy, Kev said, “The thing is, from the minute you were born, everybody’s been hot to give your dad advice on how to raise you, what he should and shouldn’t do, stuff like that. He finally got tired of all the interference. Well, actually, he’s been tired of it for a long time. He just couldn’t do anything about it before now.”

Stacey felt her brow knot. “Interference?”

“You know, not being able to make his own decisions. About you. If you want my take on it, I think he was afraid of losing you. That it was getting harder and harder for the two of you to have your own thing, you know?”

“That’s nuts,” she said, her jaw crunching from her holding it in her hands. “Nothing’s ever gonna come between Dad and me.” This was one of those things she simply knew, the way she knew she’d never, ever like Brussels sprouts. “And anyway,” she added, still crunching, “so why couldn’t he just, I don’t know, get us our own apartment or something in Springfield?”

“Because sometimes a person can’t figure out who they really are until they break free of everything they’ve known before. Am I making any sense?”

Not really. But another thrill made her shiver, that Kev thought she was mature enough to handle what he was telling her. Not that she liked it, necessarily, but you can’t have everything.

She sat up straight to look at him. “Is that why you left home?”

“Basically, yeah. But some of the stuff I was into… Trust me, Stace, you don’t wanna know. I was a mess. Your dad, though—he’s always been solid as a rock. Dependable. Selfless. Always puttin’ everybody else first. Like you. No matter what, it’s always been about you. You first, then everybody else, then—maybe—him.”

He got up to stoke the fire, setting off a miniature fireworks display before he shut the doors with a screechy clang. Then he straightened, his hands in his pockets. It was finally beginning to warm up a little, enough for Stacey to open her coat. She wondered where her uncle was going with this.

“That’s kinda the point I’m trying to make,” he said, “in my own convoluted way—that on the surface, this might seem to be all about him. Except…” He sort of laughed. “Except your dad’s not capable of making anything all about him. So this whole crazy scheme—it’s about you, kid. You and him. See?”

But before she could say anything, her uncle’s cell rang—thank God they at least could get a signal out here—and he excused himself to answer it. Stacey wondered if it was a girlfriend. As cute as he was? He probably had girls up the wazoo. As opposed to Dad, who never had any. At least, not that Stacey was aware of. Thank God. She used to watch these movies or read books where the kids were all about trying to get their single father or mother hooked up with somebody, and Stacey had always thought, Why? Because she and Dad were fine, just the two of them. There was no way anybody else would ever fit in.

And, ohmigod—stepbrothers or stepsisters? Lots of her friends were part of these blended families, and they all totally hated it. So, yeah, she was cool with things, just the way they were.

But then, as she sat there, combing her fingers through her long hair, trying to look for split ends in the firelight, some of what Kevin said sank in. About how Dad always put her first.

For the first time since they’d arrived, she felt her lips curve into a smile.

Finally, she thought. Something to work with.

“It’s not fair!” George said, all elbows and indignation as he stood, arms crossed over his new SpongeBob jammies, in the Texas Hold ’Em–themed bathroom that made Violet’s eyes roll in their sockets. “Why do I hafta go to bed the same time as Zeke? He’s five years younger’n me!”

“Hey!” Violet said over the giggling, wriggling, terrycloth-covered mound that was her younger son, her mood perking up at the small miracle that had just taken place in this hideous bathroom that was not, thank God, hers. A small miracle that was somehow enough to momentarily blot out the cloud that was losing her job and having no home of her own and Rudy Vaccaro, with his damn strong jaw and kind blue eyes and his obvious penchant for helping the helpless.

And the letter, waiting for her on the entry table downstairs.

“What?” George said, damp red hair standing in spikes all over his head.

Violet grinned, heartened, and Rudy’s strong jaw and blue eyes faded a little more, even if the letter didn’t. “You just subtracted!”

“I did not,” he said, skeptical.

“You certainly did. You said Zeke was five years younger than you. Which means you subtracted his age—four—from yours—nine—to figure that out.”

“I did?”

“Uh-huh. Without even thinking about it.” She gave him a thumbs-up. Unfortunately her son was no fool.

Unlike his mother.

No. No, she was not going to believe that the occasional foolish choice made her a fool, kind blue eyes and strong jaws be damned.

“You didn’t answer my question,” George said.

“Since the answer’s no different than it was last night, or the night before that, or the night before that,” Violet said, yanking a Thomas the Tank-Engine top over Zeke’s damp, honey-gold curls, then kissing a soft pink cheek, just because she could, “there didn’t seem to be much point. Get your teeth brushed.”

Skinny bare feet stomped across the damp, slightly musty-smelling carpeting to the sink. Wall-to-wall in a bathroom? Let alone one used by small boys with delusions of Olympic glory in the hundred-meter freestyle? Not to mention lousy aim? Insane. But that was Betsy for you, Violet thought as, on the floor below, two of her best friend’s little boys launched into yet another brawl—

Her stomach clenched as It’s over, somebody else bought the house, nothing you can do about it now sailed through her head, along with the blue eyes. And the smile. One of those kick-to-the-nether-regions smiles, deep creases carved into slightly bearded cheeks…

Violet plopped her butt on the closed toilet lid with Zeke on her lap, tugging down the back of George’s pj top where it had stuck to his damp skin. “Have I told you recently how crazy I am about you guys?” she said, suddenly overcome with love and gratitude, despite the sensation of trying to dig out of a hundred-foot-deep sandpit with a teaspoon.

His mouth full of toothpaste suds, George looked at her, eyes bright with worry, and she thought, So much for falling back on maudlin sentimentality as an antidote to stress.

But she smiled anyway, inhaling her four-year-old’s berry-scented shampoo and innocence, and she cocooned him more tightly, cursing Mitch. Cursing herself, for finding herself attracted to another blue-eyed man, one who’d bought her inheritance out from under her. By rights she should have been heaping Irish curses upon his head. Not that she knew any, but she could probably find one or two on eBay, if she tried.

Her eldest eyed her for a moment, thankfully derailing thoughts of curses and sexual longing and such, then spit out his toothpaste. His front teeth were beaver teeth, enormous, one of them crooked. Braces, she thought, almost drowning in panic.

“You lost your job, huh?” George said, eyes huge in the mirror, beaver teeth glinting against a toothpaste-slicked lower lip. “Because of us?”

Swear to God, she would kill Maude Jenkins with her bare hands.

“Yes, I lost my job,” Violet said, being brave. “But no, not because of you.”

“But Maude said—”

“Maude’s a big fat poopyhead,” Zeke piped from Violet’s lap, and she bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

“We don’t call people poopyheads,” she said, kissing damp curls.

Zeke twisted around to look up at her, a single tiny crease marring that wonderful, perfect forehead. Mitch’s forehead, she thought, barely dodging the stab of regret in time. “What do we call ’em, then?”

Bitches, Violet thought with a sigh, getting to her feet, Zeke molded to her hip like a baby monkey. “Come on, you two—let’s get to bed.”

“Aw, Mom…”

She took George’s chin in her hand, which, she realized with a start, wasn’t nearly as low as it used to be. “Tomorrow, you can stay up later. Tonight, I need you to go to bed at eight-thirty.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m about to keel over.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sometimes life doesn’t make any sense,” Violet muttered, steering him out of the steamy bathroom into the chilly, wallpapered hallway lined with photographs of somebody else’s children. “Suck it up.”

George griping and moaning the whole time, they made their way down the stairs of the tiny two-bedroom house, to the half-finished basement they’d called home for the past six months. Betsy’s husband, Joey, had originally fixed it up as a place where he and his buddies could watch games and not get in Betsy’s hair, which Betsy finally figured out was Joey-speak for hiding out so his sons wouldn’t get into his. It was what it was. Stained carpeting over the cement floor. Fake knotty pine paneling on two walls. A pair of small, grimy, shrub-choked windows hugging the ceiling that let in neither air nor light. An ancient, slightly musty pull-out couch on which all three of them slept.

True, Joey had grumbled a bit at first when his wife so generously offered his refuge to Violet when her life took yet another in a very long, very boring series of tumbles. But he was a good man, that Joey, the best in his price range, so he’d come around. Sometimes he even took Violet’s two with his three to McDonald’s or someplace, just so both women could catch their breaths for an hour or so.

Mitch had been like that, too, once upon a time.

Ignoring the temptation to wallow, Violet tucked both boys into bed like a normal mother, blinking away the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. At times like this, all she wanted was to reverse the clock, to return to that brief period of her life when things actually made sense, when she knew she was loved.

Or at least believed she was.

Especially the weeks leading up to Mitch’s vanishing act, so she could study them, dissect them, figure out what had gone wrong. Because that’s what bugged her the most, that unanswered “Why?” The letters, filled with apologies without explanations (what the hell was she supposed to do with those?), weren’t helping, either.

Upstairs, Betsy’s boys went for each others’ throats, as usual. Joey worked second shift at a nearby machine factory—he wouldn’t be home before midnight. Violet’s kids, however, were nearly out before she doused the light, leaving only the night-light on so a sleepy boy wouldn’t break his neck tripping over forsaken skateboards and soccer shoes and badminton sets if he needed to go potty. They could sleep through anything, thank God. Unlike her, Violet thought wearily as she glanced up at the vibrating ceiling, thinking, For cripes’ sake, Betsy, put your kids to bed.

Overhead, something crashed; Betsy started yelling; somebody burst into loud tears.

That’s it, I’m outta here, Violet thought, dragging her old down coat on over her bathwater-splotched sweats. Not that she could actually leave, but even standing outside in twenty-degree weather was preferable to grinding her teeth for the next two hours until, one by one, her friend’s children passed out.

From the closet-size living room, she could see Betsy’s short, gelled, multitoned hair poking out over the top of the sofa, like a spooked tortoiseshell cat. “CSI’s on,” she yelled as Violet passed, cramming her own insane hair into the first hat she could find, a SpongeBob deal she’d given George for Christmas. Under normal circumstances, Violet loved CSI, in all its permutations. Tonight, however, she was feeling anything but normal.

“Thanks, I think I need to get some air,” she said, yanking open the door.

“You’re not leaving the kids with me?” Betsy called out over the shrieks of her youngest, a two-year-old who communicated mostly through punching and screaming.

“Of course not, Bets, I’m just right here in the yard.”

“You get the letter?”

Violet turned, eyeing the plain white envelope on the entryway table, addressed in Mitch’s microscopic print. She picked it up, shoved it into her coat pocket. “Yeah, got it.”

The front door shut on the chaos inside, Violet inhaled deeply, savoring the cold, sweet air against her skin, the relative silence soothing both her eardrums and her tender, shattered soul. She wavered for a moment, then dug the letter out of her coat pocket, yanking off her mitten with her teeth to rip open the envelope. Like all the others, it only took a second to read, the usual warp and weft of apologies and vague promises, fringed with a plea for forgiveness.

Eyes burning, she crumpled it up, the sharp edges pricking her lips when she pressed it to her mouth.

He’d sent money for the boys from the beginning, not regularly, but when he could. If he said anything at all, it rarely went beyond, “I’m okay, hope you and the boys are okay, too.” The actual letters, though, hadn’t started until after the divorce a year ago, when Betsy had finally convinced Violet she’d be better off financially as an official single mom. As much as it hurt, she’d taken Mitch’s not contesting the divorce as a sign that that chapter of her life was indeed over and done with. That there wasn’t enough love and patience in the world to fix whatever had gone wrong between them.

Except no sooner had the hole in her heart begun to close up than the letters started coming, from a P.O. Box in Buffalo. At first, only with the monthly money order for the boys. Then every other week. Now almost weekly, even though he never called, not even to talk to the boys, even though he swore he loved them—that he still loved her—in every letter.

The hardest part was writing back. Not knowing what to say, other than to thank him for the money, his concern, letting him know what the boys were up to. Not knowing what she was supposed to feel, other than hugely conflicted. What do you say to a man who saved you from a living hell, only to ten years later plunge you right back into another one?

A hot tear streaked down Violet’s cheek as she planted her butt on Betsy’s front porch steps to glower at the front yard, nearly bald save for the occasional patch of leftover, dully glistening snow. The tear track instantly froze; Violet wiped it away with the mitten, then stuffed her freezing hand back into it, giving in to a wave of self-pity she’d kept barely contained for months.

At the lowest point of her life, Mitch had been as close to a knight in shining armor as someone like her was ever going to get. But white knights aren’t supposed to bail when things get tough, when kids get sick and cry all night, or a half-dozen things break at once and have to be fixed.

Nor were they supposed to dangle half promises in front of you, making you want to believe in second chances, that the past two years had only been another in series of bad dreams.

I know I screwed up, Vi. And I’m working on fixing that…

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet muttered, cramming the letter back into her coat pocket. She shivered, her breath clouding her vision the same way this newest setback was clearly clouding her good sense. She didn’t need no steenkin’ white knight, from the past or otherwise, she needed a plan. Something to keep her moving forward instead of constantly glancing over her shoulder at the what-might-have-beens. Elbows planted on her knees, she breathed into her mittened palms, warming her face, rallying the weary, mutinous tatters of her resolve.

Because, dammit, was she simply going to curl up in defeat, or take charge of her own destiny? Was she going to sit on her fanny for the next thirty years boo-hooing into her Diet Pepsi about the dearth of white knights in the area, or was she going to get up off that fanny and go make her own opportunity?

The possible solution poked at her, carefully, cringing in anticipated rejection. And indeed, No way was Violet’s first, immediate reaction to the absurd suggestion. Except the idea poked again, more insistently this time, demanding she look it full in the face instead of automatically dismissing it out of hand.

So she did, partly to shut it up, partly because it wasn’t like there were any other ideas around, begging for an audience. And after she’d listened with an open mind, and considered the pros and cons, she finally conceded that—as a temporary measure only, just until she figured out her next step—it might work.

The issue barely settled in her mind, a white Bronco, ghostlike in the halogen glow of the streetlamp, turned the corner and rumbled down the street, pulling up in front of Betsy’s house.

And when Rudy Vaccaro got out, he of the square jaw and solid everything and searing blue eyes that saw far more than Violet probably wanted him to, she glanced up at the sin-black sky, studded with a million trillion suns, and thought, This is a joke, right?

If it hadn’t been for the streetlamp setting on fire the wisps of orange sticking out from underneath that silly hat, Rudy would have never recognized her. As Violet, as a woman, even—sad to say—as a human being. Since, unfortunately, in that puffy pink coat she looked like one of those awful coconut-covered marshmallow things his mother used to occasionally stick in their lunch boxes when she hadn’t had time to bake.

She stood as he approached, her expression uncertain. But only for a moment. Because almost instantly her gaze turned direct, purposeful, as though she’d tracked him down, not the other way around. Interesting.

“I asked Darla where you lived,” Rudy said, preempting.

“Because…?”

“Because you left before you got your tip.”

“I never actually served you, as I recall.”

“Technicality,” he said.

“I see. Well, then…” Unsmiling, she stuck out her hand.

Half amused, half unnerved, Rudy dug his wallet out of his back pocket, concentrating on fishing out a bill as he closed the gap between them. When he laid the bill in her mittened hand, however, he caught the smudged streaks on her cheeks. Despite the bitter cold, everything inside him melted.

She glanced up, surprised. Pleased. Clearly not in a position to protest his generosity. “Thanks,” she said, pocketing the twenty. “So. Was that it?”

Rudy crammed his own hands in his pockets, his ears fast-freezing by the second, even as he had this weird thought about how she was somehow like the house, neglected and closed up for far too long, her true potential hidden under umpteen layers of bad history. “Actually, no. I…we need to talk. About the inn.”

An odd mix of hurt, despair and determination flickered in her eyes. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Look, Darla told me you’d expected to get it, and…” A breeze nudged inside his jacket, salsa’d down his spine. “Is there someplace we can go? To talk? Someplace warm?”

“I can’t leave the boys,” Violet said, glancing back at the house. From inside, he heard a woman yell. Her gaze returned to his, eerily silver in the half-light. “They’re asleep.” Don’t ask, her eyes said.

“Can we at least go inside?” She shook her head. “My car, then.”

“Oh, right. Like I’m gonna get into a car with a complete stranger?”

“Dammit, Violet—I feel like crap about what happened, okay? All I want is a chance to at least try to make amends. But I’d rather not freeze my nuts off while I’m doing that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Amends?” A wary curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Like how?”

“Like a job offer. Sort of. And a place to live.”

At her intake of breath, he moved in for the kill. “The car’s at least got a heater. And hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“I passed a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way over.” He shrugged. “I took a chance.” When her gaze drifted over to the car, he said, gently, “I was a cop. A good cop. I swear, you’re safe with me.”

He thought he might have seen one corner of her mouth twitch. “I only have your word on that, you know.”

Rudy flipped up his collar. His thighs were stinging, his butt was going numb and he didn’t even want to think about what was happening to other parts of his anatomy. “Okay, so yeah, for all you know I could be some raving weirdo. Actually my kid probably thinks I am, dragging her up here to live and everything. But that’s beside the point.”

He bent slightly to see her face, pretty and soft and round and pinked with the cold. Like one of those old porcelain-headed dolls his mother liked to collect. “So why don’t you go tell your friend inside to keep an eye out, and we’ll stay right where you can see the house.”

“I don’t know…”

“Violet. Please. Let me at least try to make this right, okay?”

She wavered for another several seconds before, with a sharp nod, she skipped up the porch stairs, opened the door and spoke to whoever was inside, then marched back down the walk, her coat swishing slightly in the still night air.

“This had better be some damn good hot chocolate,” she muttered as he opened the door for her.