“You can have tomorrow off. It’s my poker night, so I’ll be leaving work early. I’ll be able to pick up Gracie at preschool.”
She almost protested. She didn’t want the evening off. She wanted to pick up Gracie, and then circle over to Billy’s school and get him, and drive them here, and putter in Evan’s kitchen until he arrived home. But he was listening to her, and if she had half an ounce of sense in her brain she would be grateful for that.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll see you Wednesday.” And before she could say anything more, before she could spend another instant staring into his mesmerizing eyes, she swung open the front door and stepped out into the dark, chilly night.
SHE DIDN’T SLAM the door, but she might as well have. He stood in the foyer, the quiet click of the door latch echoing in his mind. Through the sidelight, he watched her bustle down the front walk in her bulky boots, climb into her car and back out of the driveway. Not until the taillights had disappeared did he turn from the door.
He’d wanted her to stay, to talk to him. The Daddy School class had pumped him full of all kinds of ideas, and he’d wanted to discuss them with her, to see if she thought he’d learned the right lessons.
He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed adult companionship until he’d had the chance to experience it with her. He had his friends—Murphy, Levi, Brett and Tom—and his colleagues at work, and reliable neighbors. But a true friend, a woman friend, someone not just beautiful but smart and interesting and eager to share her thoughts with him…
He needed Filomena.
He recalled what she’d said at her house on Saturday: she didn’t want to become dependent on him. He couldn’t let himself become dependent on her, either. She was all set to leave town, and unlike Debbie, she’d given him notice of her impending departure. She wasn’t going to abandon him on a whim. He knew exactly how long he could count on her, and it was nowhere near long enough.
But being forewarned that she was planning to leave at the start of the new year didn’t make him desire her any less.
Maybe what he needed wasn’t Filomena but just a woman in general. He’d been single more than two years. Of course he would enjoy spending an evening with a woman—and without the kids. Just him and a lovely lady dining out, attending a non-kiddy movie, returning to her place or his, and…yeah, sex would be nice. Maybe it didn’t have to be Filomena. Maybe any decent, intelligent, reasonably attractive woman would do.
Except that he knew decent, intelligent, reasonably attractive women. He worked with two—Heather and Jennifer. He’d dated a few others. But none of them had ever infiltrated his mind and taken it over the way Filomena had. None of them had ever given his son a book or his daughter a bath.
Damn. What kind of guy had he turned into, judging a woman’s appeal by her willingness to shampoo Gracie’s hair and expose Billy to a novel about a talking pig? Being a single father definitely skewed a guy’s concept of the perfect woman.
He wandered back into the den and flopped onto the couch, feeling the weight of a long, overstuffed day on him. Billy peered up at his father, then closed the book, using a Pokémon card to hold his place. “This book is cool,” he told Evan.
“It was nice of Fil to lend it to you.”
“Yeah.” Billy pushed off the floor and joined Evan on the sofa, evidently buying a few extra minutes before Evan sent him to bed. “She’s cool, Dad.”
“I know.” Even his son was smitten, Evan thought disconsolately. “Did you have fun with her tonight?”
“Well, mostly we just shopped for Thanksgiving. We got four cans of cranberry sauce, so each of us can have our own can.”
“That sounds like about three cans too many,” Evan said with a laugh. “Did you get your homework done?”
“I did it at the after-school program,” Billy said. “Scott said you’re supposed to spend Thanksgiving with relatives. Do you think it’s okay that we’re having it with Fil?”
“Sure. You can spend it with friends, too.”
“Scott said only family.”
“Scott’s wrong. You can share Thanksgiving with anyone you want.”
“Good.” Billy sighed happily. “’Cuz I really want to spend it with Fil. How was that thing you went to tonight?”
Evan was touched that Billy had thought to ask. “It was very interesting. The teacher is a nurse at Arlington Memorial Hospital. She knew her stuff.”
“So…what? She taught you, like, first aid?”
“No. It was a class to help make men better fathers. She taught us how important it is to listen to our children. She said fathers aren’t always good at listening. Do you think that’s true, Billy? Am I a bad listener?”
Billy considered the question for a minute, which pleased Evan. He didn’t want his son blowing him off with an easy answer, one he thought would please his dad. “Sometimes,” Billy admitted. “Like when you’re rushing to broil something for dinner, you really don’t listen to us at all.”
“Because I’m rushing. I think it’s better if you save the important things to tell me when I’m not rushing. I guess I should communicate that better.” That was one of the things Allison Winslow had discussed in class: When it was impossible to listen to your children at a given moment, you had to schedule a time when you could give them your full attention, and then be there and listen.
“Or, like, if something happens at school and I tell you about it, sometimes I feel like you’re just sitting there, waiting to lecture me about what I should’ve done or what I should do next time or something. It’s like you’re telling me what happened, instead of listening.”
“You’re right.” Evan curved an arm around Billy and gave him a hug. “It’s because I want to help you. But you’re right. I should keep my mouth shut and listen more. If you catch me doing that, I want you to point it out to me, okay?”
“You won’t be mad?”
“No. I might be mad if you say you did something you shouldn’t have done, but I won’t be mad if you ask me to shut up and listen. Just don’t say, ‘Shut up.’”
“I’ll say, ‘Put a lid on it, Dad.’”
“I think I can handle that.” He gave Billy another hug, then nudged him off the couch. “It’s bedtime for you.”
“Put a lid on it, Dad,” Billy said, then grinned and scampered off before Evan could take a swipe at him.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. In a few minutes, he would go upstairs to tuck Billy in and make sure Gracie was all set for the night. But first he wanted to unwind, to let the tension seep from his shoulders, to assimilate everything he’d endured since his alarm had roused him that morning.
There had been a snafu with one of his suppliers—a train derailment; no injuries, but a whole lot of hockey sticks and pucks destined for his stores had been on that train—and he was going to have to spend the entire day tomorrow making sure trucks picked up all his hockey inventory and delivered it to his stores. He’d told Jennifer that because of the derailment, she’d have to accompany Tank Moody to New London tomorrow, and she’d thrown a fit, although finding out that Tank provided his own stretch limo and was actually a nice guy had mollified her. “He’s just an overpaid jock,” she’d sniffed, “but the limo might make the whole thing bearable.” Evan had come home, broiled hot dogs and then headed out to the YMCA to attend the Daddy School class.
He’d gone expecting it to be a waste of time. What could a neonatal nurse from Arlington Memorial teach him? His kids were long past the days of diapers and strained peas.
But she’d been good. She’d addressed the eleven men in the room not as a nurse but as the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, as someone who’d observed a father and his child at close range—and as Molly Saunders-Russo’s best friend and cofounder of the Daddy School. Most of the other men in the class seemed to be married, but Evan had gotten as much out of it as they had.
He had to learn to listen. Not just to his children, not just to Jennifer and his
other colleagues at work, but to everyone else in his life: the staff at Gracie’s preschool, Billy’s Cub Scout leader, Filomena.
Filomena.
His eyes still closed, he conjured a vision of her leaning over the tub, washing Gracie’s hair. Her own hair spilled down her back, held away from her face by a silver clip. He pictured her graceful fingers sifting through Gracie’s hair, searching for hidden pockets of shampoo in the waves. He imagined her soft voice, her steady arms propping Gracie as she climbed out of the tub.
He shouldn’t be giving his daughter baths anymore. Filomena should be doing it.
But he had to listen to her. He had to pay attention to what she was saying—which was that she didn’t want a romance with him. Friendship and a job. Those had been her words on Saturday when he’d kissed her: friendship and a job, and independence. That was what she wanted from him.
He had to listen, even when what he was listening to was the last thing he wanted to hear.
CHAPTER NINE
WELL, AS FAR AS Billy could see, there were a few problems with this Thanksgiving. For one thing, Filomena only had a tiny little television, which she kept in an upstairs bedroom. And the room was kind of cold, and it was hard to watch football on such a small screen. Not that his dad had one of those wide-screen TVs like the one in his friend Scott’s family room, but at least it was a reasonable size. Filomena’s was pitiful.
When he complained about it, she wasn’t sympathetic, either. She told Billy no one had ever watched TV during all the Thanksgivings her parents had hosted in this house, and if he wanted to watch it, he’d just have to make do with the TV she had. He offered to hike through the woods to his house to watch the game there—he promised he’d be back in time for dinner—but his dad said no.
Then she had this music going, Beethoven or somebody like that, a bunch of violins in an orchestra. Dad said it was great music and Billy ought to give it a chance, but it sounded really boring to him.
And then he was stuck playing with Gracie, because Dad insisted on helping Filomena in the kitchen and there was no one else to play with.
But Gracie actually came up with a good idea: “Let’s see if we can find the spirits.”
The last time they’d been at Filomena’s house, on Saturday, he’d been inside for only a few minutes, long enough to eat some cookies and watch Gracie fall asleep on the couch. He’d asked her when they’d gotten home whether she’d bothered looking for a spirit after she’d woken up, but she said she hadn’t. She’d probably been afraid to go snooping through the house without him.
They wouldn’t really be snooping today. Filomena had given them permission to go upstairs to watch TV on the little set in that cold bedroom, so he figured it was okay to go upstairs and look for spirits. Not that he actually believed in things like that, but for Gracie’s sake, he’d pretend he did.
He and Gracie climbed the stairs. It was a long staircase, longer than at home, because Filomena’s ceilings were higher. The upstairs hall was drafty and dark, even when he found a light switch and turned it on. There was just one lamp illuminating the entire hall, and it didn’t shed much light. But he liked the shadows. If they were going to find any spirits, there would probably have to be shadows.
The first room they came to was the one with the TV in it. There was a big bed, no sheet or blanket on the striped mattress, and heavy wood furniture. The TV seemed out of place sitting on the dresser. Dark-green curtains hung at the window. Gracie immediately crawled under the bed.
Billy checked the closet. He wondered if this was snooping, but it wasn’t as if he was poking around in her closet to see what was in it. He was just searching for spirits. If any existed there, though, they were invisible. The closet was empty except for a few boxes on a high shelf that he couldn’t reach.
“There’s dust under here,” Gracie reported, crawling back out from under the bed. Little gray puffballs of lint stuck to her hair. “What do you think the spirit’s gonna look like?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we won’t see it,” Billy said. “Maybe we’ll feel it. Like a cold hand on the back of your neck.”
“Yuck,” Gracie said, but she obviously wasn’t scared. She brushed the dust off her corduroy overalls and headed out of the room.
The next room was more promising. Large white cloths covered the furniture, just like the cloths that used to cover everything downstairs when Billy first found the house and peeked through the windows. Gracie immediately dove under one of the cloths. Billy lifted another. There was all kinds of furniture and stuff here. It was like a storage room. Chairs, small tables and chests of drawers lurked under the cloths.
“What’s this?” Gracie asked, standing and pulling back one of the cloths to reveal a machine built into a table.
“I think it’s a sewing machine,” Billy said. He’d seen something like it at Scott’s house.
“How come we don’t have one?”
“I think only moms have them.”
“Fil isn’t a mom.”
“Maybe this is her mother’s.”
That explanation seemed to work for Gracie. She nodded and they moved on to the room across the hall.
This had to be Filomena’s bedroom. It was larger than the other two rooms, and it had a nice wide bed made up with linens and a quilt and two fat pillows. The dresser had a strip of lace across it, and on top of that were fancy silver-handled brushes and hair clips and a polished wood box with the lid up, filled with jewelry.
Gracie’s eyes got big. “Ooh, look! Here’s her moon,” she said, lifting Filomena’s moon necklace from the box.
“Don’t touch that!” Billy yelled, afraid they’d get in trouble if Filomena realized they’d gone through her things.
“But it’s so pretty. I think it’s magical. I’m not gonna hurt it—I just want to wear it for a minute.” Before Billy could stop her, she put it on.
The moon shone silvery-white against her chest. It practically seemed to glow.
“It is magic,” Gracie murmured, taking it off, her eyes as shiny as the necklace. “You try it, Billy.”
“It’s a girl’s necklace,” he muttered—but he wanted to feel the magic, too. Even though he didn’t really believe in magic, he wanted to feel it.
Sucking in a breath, he looped the cord around his neck and let the moon fall against his chest. It was surprisingly heavy—yet he felt lit up inside. Just the way he felt when Filomena smiled at him, or when she laughed.
He took it off and placed it carefully back in the box. Then he looked at Gracie. He still didn’t believe in magic, but he felt different somehow. Better. Warmer. Even the symphony music drifting up the stairs sounded nicer.
“I think she’s a witch,” Gracie whispered. “A good witch. I think we should get her to marry Daddy.”
Billy snorted. “I don’t want Dad marrying a witch.” He wasn’t even so sure he wanted their dad getting married at all. Dad had been married once, and maybe he forgave their mother for leaving them, but it couldn’t have been a happy thing for him to go through. Like when Billy broke his wrist last year after falling the wrong way during a soccer game. He’d survived and his wrist was as good as new, but he sure wouldn’t want to break it again. Just because you healed didn’t mean you wanted to get hurt a second time.
“But Fil’s a good witch. Remember how she read our cards? She said I was stubborn and wonderful.”
“You don’t need a deck of cards to figure that out. The stubborn part, anyway.”
“And she said you were very smart and could do great things in the world if you didn’t get distracted.”
“Anyone could do great things,” he argued. He’d loved what Filomena had said about him as she’d read his cards, but when he was being sensible, he wasn’t sure he believed she was actually seeing into his future.
“Hey!” Gracie squealed, moving past the box with the jewelry in it and lifting a bright turquoise silk scarf. Underneath it was a deck of cards. “Maybe she’ll read t
hese cards for us.”
Billy edged closer, curious in spite of himself. The cards looked big, like the deck of cards his grandparents had given him when he was five, designed bigger so they’d be easier for a kid to handle. He lifted one of the cards and saw that it wasn’t a regular card, though. It had a weird picture on it of a queen with a bunch of what appeared to be gold trophies.
“These are magic cards, I bet,” Gracie said. “I’m going to read your cards with these.”
“You can’t. You don’t know how.”
“If they’re magic, I can.” She pulled them down from the dresser and plopped onto the rug. It was red and black, green and white, with patterns woven into it that resembled tiny flowers. “Sit down. I’ll read your cards.”
She had no idea what she was doing, but he figured having her read his cards would be more fun than trying to watch football on that little TV set. He settled onto the rug facing her while she struggled to shuffle the cards. He didn’t think big cards were easier for little hands, not after seeing Gracie wrestle with them.
“Here, let me.” He took them from her. They were way too stiff, but he did a better job of mixing them up than she could have done. He handed them back to her. “Okay. Go ahead.”
Gracie held the cards and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Like the ceiling was going to tell her what to do. “Okay,” she said once she lowered her eyes. She set the cards down in a pile on the rug and peeled off the top three. One looked like a pile of sticks with a ten on it. Another looked like a juggler or something, one of those old royal court jesters, wearing a pointy hat with bells on the points. The third was a big smiling sun. “Okay,” Gracie said again. “This means you’re gonna build a house. In the daylight.”
“Well, I sure wouldn’t build it at night,” Billy said scornfully.
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