Starla plugged the knife into the outlet and flicked the switch. The electric buzz of the vibrating blade cut through the air. “I’d say now is the perfect time for you to start a new relationship. Your life is clean.” She brought the blade down into the tender flesh of smoked meat. “All the extraneous parts are gone.” The teeth of the knife chewed through the crispy browned glaze-coated outside of the ham. “The fat’s all cut away.” She jammed a meat fork into the slice she’d just cut and transferred it to a serving plate. “Everything you thought you couldn’t live without—” The blade grated against the hambone as she made a second cut. “—is out of the way. You’ve got room for change. Figure out what you want to be important, now that all that ‘important’ stuff is gone.”
~*~
Bailey opened the door to the basement and they entered the large, concrete-floored open space. They were immediately greeted by two pint-sized figures that darted around a corner at warp speed.
Jack’s mouth went to ashes. Nonono, not them! Not here!
“Daddy!”
“Daddy-dad-dad-dads!”
“Hey rascals! What are you doing down here?”
Jesus. They’re his kids. Over the hammering of his heart, Jack heard Bailey’s kids telling their father about a fort they’d built with couch cushions. Jack sagged against the bare studs that framed the door leading back up the stairs and tried to quiet his shaking hands. Oh God. Not Oddlings. Not imaginary otherworldly creatures.
“Who’s that, Dad?” Mason glued himself to Bailey’s leg.
Bailey glanced down. “That, rascals, is Mom and Daddy’s friend, Jack. He was there when you were born.”
Little Mason stuck his hand out towards Jack. “Hello.”
For a moment, Jack stood frozen, terrified of touching the small person. Did he still have his gloves on? Were you supposed to shake a kid’s hand?
Maggie clasped her chubby little hands behind her back and stuck her belly out, making her Christmas dress bell out in front of her. Her green eyes, so like Starla’s, watched his every move.
Jack clasped Mason’s hand. The thin kidskin shielding him from the little boy’s tender skin seemed at once a thick barrier, and at the same time, not nearly enough protection. The little boy gave his hand a firm shake. “Um, hi.”
Maggie was still watching him. He held out a hand to her. “You must be Maggie.”
She didn’t move, save for the slow, sage nod of her head. Blonde curls bobbed from a hair clip with a sparkly bow at the top of her head. She was the picture of adorability, the spitting image of a young Starla.
“Relax, Jack,” Bailey muttered. “They’re kindergartners, not terrorists.” He scooped up Maggie in a sudden move. “Well, maybe this one is.” He tickled the little girl, who lost the serious expression and squealed. “Say hi to your uncle Jack.”
Uncle? “Is he Uncle Owen’s brother? ‘Cause that would make him your brother, and we never see him over at Grandma’s.”
Not a terrorist? Over my dead body. The kid knew how to stick a knife where it would bleed. Old guilt about losing contact with Bailey’s parents—who parented him nearly as much as they did their own kids in his teen years—leaked out of the place in his spirit where he’d shelved it along with other past regrets. He licked dry lips and tried to swallow some of the ashes in his mouth. “Does your Uncle Owen still give nuclear head-noogies?”
Maggie’s gimlet-gaze held steady. “Maybe.”
Jack glanced at Bailey. “Does Owen still give great advice about women?”
Bailey grinned. “Well, Em still puts up with him so…yes?” The lack of a father figure in Jack’s own life, and the frequency with which he found himself in the midst of Bailey’s family meant that much of his ideas on how to be a man came from watching the McMorrissey boys interact. Owen McMorrissey hadn’t made a big deal about it when he taught his little brother Bailey how to shave, and just happened to do it when Bailey’s skinny best friend was around. Owen just happened to give Bailey one or two important life lessons—delivered via ‘nuclear head-noogie’—in the presence of the skinny Winters kid—with the head-noogies on two-for-one special.
Owen had refrained from the head-noogie at Jack’s wedding, but still made good on the advice. Always deliver what you promise with this one, Jacko. While he was signing his divorce papers, Jack wondered if Owen’s advice hadn’t been more of a warning.
Bailey gave Maggie a squeeze. “Remember the game that Mom and Daddy made? Uncle Jack helped make that game.”
“Daddy says I can’t play it until I’m old enough not to drop peanut butter crackers into the keyboard.” Maggie still regarded him as if the jury were still out. “But Daddy does not know that Mom eats peanut butter crackers at the computer too. With jelly, sometimes.”
His lips twitched. How much would Starla love to know she’d been ratted out by her own offspring? Still, Maggie didn’t smile, so he didn’t either. “You are an uncle who is not a real uncle, then.” She pondered that thought.
“Like Aunt Linny. Who’s upstairs even now.”
Mason perked up. “Aunt Linny’s here? I bet she has gum!” He darted around Jack and up the stairwell. Maggie wriggled out of her father’s grasp and took off after him, her scrutiny of Jack forgotten in the quest for gum.
Jack shared a look with his best friend. “Well. Did I pass the test?”
Bailey shook his head. “Hard to say. Maggie…I can already see she’s going to be a handful. But let me give you a hint—they’re like tigers in the wild. They can smell fear.”
“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”
Bailey re-focused on their original reason for coming down to the basement and showed off his whole-house sound system. As Jack gazed at the coated cabling hanging in loops and running in roughly-drilled holes through two-by-four studs, a hole opened up inside him and exposed his internal organs. I should have been there.
“Yeah,” Bailey was saying. “It was a real pain in the ass, but it’ll pay off when the media room is finished.”
“You did this all yourself?” He should have been helping frame in the half-finished space. Should have had a hand in the plans—it was his freaking job, for crying out loud. Would have done it for free, filed the permits, and helped with the labor.
Bailey held out his beefy arms. “Like I could get these hammy things in between the walls. Shane spent so much time over here, I thought he was going to move in. Or get stuck in one of the walls.”
“Shane helped you run the cabling?” To his own ears, his voice sounded faint. Shane. Who was not in the Winterlands when we looked earlier. Who was probably en route right now with a date and a valid excuse for standing Lin up at their brunch. “He’s coming over tonight, right?”
Bailey checked his watch. “Nobody misses my wife’s ham. He should be here within the hour.”
But what if he wasn’t? A bargain has been made. A trade for a trade. Human-tribe resides where even I cannot invade.
~*~
Starla finished mangling the ham into slices while Lin helped Mason and Maggie put mini-marshmallows over the hot sweet potato casserole without burning themselves. The twins had erupted from the basement with their usual exuberance. “Aunt Linny!” Mason flung himself at her and she caught him just in time. She should have known it was a distraction when she felt a tug at her pocket, immediately followed by Maggie’s triumphant crow.
“Found it!”
“Gotcha!” Lin grabbed the little girl and started tickling her. Maggie’s giggles rang through the kitchen.
“Hold it right there!” Starla’s Mom-voice engaged and the twins stopped.
“I counted four seconds.” Lin smirked. “They’re getting better.” She crouched down. “But you were sloppy. I felt your hand in my pocket.” She winked and held up the gum she’d slipped from Maggie’s hand while tickling her.
Mason tugged on her sleeve. He held up her phone with a shy grin. “Was I better, Aunt Linny?”
She shared a loo
k with Starla. “I never even felt it.” She held out her hand. He placed the phone in her hand. She unlocked the phone and handed it back to him on the games screen. “Keep it in here, okay?”
The phone reminded her that they had yet to hear from Shane. Starla didn’t seem too concerned. “We’ve got people coming over all night long. Some before bedtime—” She glanced in the direction of the children. “—and some during grown-up time.” She raised her voice. “Hey, hooligans! Are you guys washed up and ready to eat?”
Mason returned with Lin’s phone before dashing to the powder room. She heard running water a few seconds later. She helped Starla carry the bulk of the food into the dining room, where she’d set up a buffet.
“It’s such a mild night that I don’t even know if there’s a point to having a fire.” Starla glanced out the window where Jack and Bailey were moving wood. “But it’s sort of a tradition for the kids now. We get bundled up and put gifts for the elves around the yard.”
Starla’s words reminded Lin of Friday night. Was Starla aware that her children’s tradition was more than just amusement? “Listen. If you did something you thought was…” She searched for the right word. “—casual, would you want to know if it had more meaning?”
Starla cocked her head. “That depends.”
“It depends?” Lin frowned. She’d expected a firm “yes” from Starla. Her friend moved into the dining room and started preparing two plates for her kids. Ham sandwiches, sweet potatoes, pickles and olives. “Five each,” she instructed when Lin moved to help her out. “One for each finger of one hand. And the pickles have to be even, but no mustard for Mason.”
Even the food her friend prepared had significance. Would she have bothered with olives at all if they couldn’t just be those incidental nibbles?
“The stuff we do changes meaning over time. Having campfires used to be a way to just get out of the house, even if we could only go to the backyard. Now it’s a tradition in itself. But we had no idea it would turn out that way when we started.”
Lin wasn’t sure if she was talking about Starla’s magic circle or something else. “Would you want to know ahead of time? Would you want to know when it changed from something just fun to something…more?”
“I don’t think it’s something you can force.” Starla took Mason’s plate from her her. “And some things, like ham, and new relationships, have to have time to cure before you can understand their impact.” She set the plates at the kitchen counter. “Kids, come eat.”
When the kids had settled into their meal, Lin followed her friend back into the dining room and finished setting out the tiny dishes of gourmet mustards for more grown-up palates. “What if you have suspicions that their impact is going to be bigger? Can you stop it? Rush it along?”
“You can see anything you expect to in a crystal ball.” Starla said. She picked a few olives out of the tray. “But only what you already expect to see. If you want to get technical, don’t discount the effect of time on your impact analysis. Time’s passage changes things, shows you new meanings where you never expected to find them. Like using olives for fingertips.” She stuck the olives onto her fingers. “You and Jack are both inordinately stubborn about making reality conform to your expectations. But reality—” She waggled her olive-tipped fingers. “—is bigger than your expectations.”
If Starla only knew. “I might be getting a little more flexible on that.”
~*~
After the “tour” and before his urge to volunteer to start basement renovations right then and there, Jack followed Bailey outside to a stack of wood under the deck. Bailey handed him a canvas wood carrier. “Fill that up. We’ll likely have the fire going for hours. We invite some neighbors over every year after all the family stuff is done and the kids are in bed.”
“Adult entertainment, huh?”
Bailey nodded and began stacking split wood on top of another piece of canvas. “The girls enjoy their wine, and we break out the tools and start assembling bikes and dollhouses and go-carts and space coasters.”
Jack felt a pang. “You’ve been well and truly domesticated, haven’t you?” He patted the nylon cover of a riding lawn mower.
Bailey smirked. “That was my Christmas toy last year.” He made a face. “Of course, it’s not all roses and sunshine. The couple down the street damn near came to blows last year over a BB gun. Makes you long for the un-mundane.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Jack finished filling his wood carrier and lifted it. The exertion of a purely physical activity felt good. “You know, when you’re ready for that reno…” As soon as he said it, he realized the offer might entail more than he was prepared for. If getting up here for a visit involved international negotiations… Fuck it. I’m goddamn tired of neglecting my friends. I’ll make it work. Somehow.
Bailey glanced back and a smile split his face. “I was hoping you’d say that. That’s probably enough to keep us going.” He shouldered his own, considerably larger, wood carrier and led the way up the stairs to the main deck.
Jack remembered the cluster of lawn furniture from the party Friday night, but he hadn’t gotten a good look at the portable fire dish before. “Of course.” He smirked down at the large, three-legged cauldron held up by a stand. “Do any of the neighbors get the reference?”
“Are you kidding? If they didn’t, Starla’d hand them a printed tri-fold brochure. You should see us at Hallowe’en.”
Jack dropped his wood near Bailey’s load. Bailey started stacking the split logs in the cauldron, Jack passing him first the small ones, then increasingly larger pieces. “Sounds like you guys are really living the dream out here.”
Bailey glanced back. “You could, too. There’s a house for sale, just down the street. Letting it go for a song.”
“The couple with the BB gun?”
“Heh. No, they’re expecting another one in June. Different couple. He got a promotion in DC, she got a transfer to LA. They put the kids in boarding school and bought stock in the cheapie airlines.”
That didn’t sound like living any dream. At least his downtown loft and freelance life let him live where he wanted. As long as it was within Winter territory.
“It’s a steal.” Bailey tapped him on the arm. “You could settle down, learn the joys of parenthood. It’s not too late.”
“Genetics can be harsh.” Jack couldn’t tell his best friend that he was even more terrified now of passing whatever freakish Oddling traits he had to some poor kid down the line. He picked up another split log and handed it to Bailey.
“Your mother’s condition had just as much to do with chance as it did genetics.”
He couldn’t be sure. Did Oddlings get diseases like everybody else, or were their diseases just as weird as they were? Were there Oddling doctors? Jack dropped the next piece of wood as a thought occurred to him. He hadn’t been to a doctor in three or four years, but prior to that...back when I had good insurance...Mom’s doctor recommended mine...
He lifted the bundle with suddenly-shaking hands, trying hard not to think about the issues of trust a guy had to share with his doc after a certain age, and—
“Wow. You’re a million miles away.” Bailey snapped his fingers in front of Jack’s face. “I think that’s enough for now.” Bailey threw his head back. “Looks like Santa might be bringing a little snow. Or more likely rain.”
“Will the kids be disappointed?” A feeling of vague responsibility nagged at him. Ridiculous. He couldn’t do anything about the weather! Could he?
Bailey smiled. “A little, but Starla’s great at distracting them. She dusts a little cornstarch and glitter around the tree in the morning and puts prints in it. Tells the kids it’s the Yule elves.”
Jack fumbled his wood bundle. “Elves?”
“Yeah. Maybe you could give us a hand this year?”
Cold sweat prickled at Jack’s back. “Uh...what do you mean?”
“That’s what they’re doing upstairs. Get
ting the kids dressed up so we can stomp around the yard and leave treats for the elves and fairies.”
Mild panic bloomed in his chest. “Won’t that attract more of them?”
Bailey laughed. “That’s the idea.” He shook his head. “You haven’t been around kids much at all, have you?”
And you haven’t been around Oddlings. Jack snorted. Starla’s easy motions around the children, her sense of wonder, infected him. Made his own fears seem at once groundless, but at the same time, as monumental as the sense of his own fragile mortality. “How do you do it?” He finally asked. “How do you not wake up in cold sweats every night, knowing there’s so much out there in the world that can destroy them?”
To his credit, Bailey took his questions seriously. “I don’t,” he said simply. “At least once a week I hear of something new someone’s dreamed up to ruin a child, some incredibly creative way to ruin the world we leave for them. Some new way for people to be horrible to each other.”
Bailey watched his wife through the window for a long, silent moment. “And then they laugh. Maggie does something clever and daring. Mason gets one over on me in his quiet, sneaky way. I worry, because they don’t. There will be time enough for them to worry later. By that time, if I’ve done my job right, they’ll have the means to address those worries. They’ll have each other, and the smarts to fix a world we’ve screwed up.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “With kids, you learn quick that you can’t control everything. So you learn to deal with what’s in front of you.”
“You know Nan and I never wanted kids. It wasn’t in her long-term goal-setting plan.”
“Yeah, but you’re not with Nan anymore.” Bailey threw a pointed glance inside, where the soft golden light flowed out onto the deck. “Plans change.”
Jack faced the yard, the black fingers of trees arching up into the night sky, and looked for things in the shadows.
~*~
Shane hadn’t shown by the time Starla called them up to eat. When Lin remarked on his absence as they moved through Starla’s amazing buffet spread, Starla seemed unconcerned. “He said he might wait to bring his date around until after the kids are in bed. We’ll be having people in and out until well past midnight.”
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 26
