“Good. You just seemed a little weird with him back there.”
I didn’t bother to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Because I haven’t seen him in a decade and he’s changed, a lot. Plus, I didn’t recognize him when he came to pick me up. It’s embarrassing.” And he’s hot, and I didn’t want Hal to know I was having those kinds of thoughts about his little brother. I wasn’t sure I wanted Dominic to know I thought that, either. What were the odds that he was gay?
Actually, from what I remembered of him, the odds weren’t terrible. He hadn’t dated, he’d never been interested in girls—or in guys, honestly—but he’d been young. Fifteen to twenty-five was a huge jump in a person’s development. Probably almost nothing I knew about “Nicky” could apply to “Dominic” now.
“It’s a fuckin’ godsend that he’s back,” Hal confessed, turning his truck out of Dinah’s parking lot and onto the main road. “He’s real good with the girls, and he wasn’t around a lot before this, so he’s still kinda novel to them. Makes them want to listen to him, better than they listen to me sometimes.”
“He sounds like just what they need.”
Hal jammed the shifter into third gear. “What they need is their mother, but me and him are what they got. It’s better than nothing, I guess.”
I remembered how hard it had been to go from having two parents to rely on to just one. It hadn’t been easy on my mother to go it alone, either. I hated that she and Hal had that in common now. “The girls adore you,” I said firmly. “You’re their rock. You always have been.”
Hal didn’t speak for a few minutes, just kept his eyes on the road and drove. I let the silence linger and looked out at the kitschy streetlights, the thick, clean snow glowing in heaps beneath them, and listened to the sound of the truck’s tires navigating us safely through the mess of it all. “I worry about them,” he said right before we turned down his street. “I worry all the time I’m not doin’ enough. Those kids ought to have more than me. How can I—I’m not their mom, Max. I can’t be what she was to them.”
“Ariel wasn’t able to keep being that, either,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “And that’s not on you. They’ll get used to things being different, as long as some things stay the same. That’s you, Hal, you and Dominic.”
I’d moved on after my father’s immense screw-up and the subsequent divorce, if leaving town and not returning for ten years counted as moving on. The girls would, too, especially with a dad as doting as Hal on their side.
And I’d do my part as well, making sure this short visit was the most fun they had this Christmas.
…
Hal’s house looked very little like the Christmas pictures I used to get from them—the inflatable Santa in his sleigh was missing from the front lawn, there were no reindeer made from fragile white branches perched on the porch, and the only lights illuminating the house were a single strand of blue icicles hung over the door, which was lacking its usual wreath.
Shit. Things were different.
“It’s late, for the girls,” Hal said as he shut the engine off. “They might be asleep.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” I replied, seeing two little faces peeping through the corner of the big bay window. They vanished when I got out of the truck, and a moment later, the front door opened.
“—phanie! Marnie! Shoes!” a woman’s voice called, but the girls were already down the porch steps, grinning as they ran onto the snowy front walk toward us.
“My feet!” Marnie squealed, bouncing from foot to foot dramatically. “Save me, Max!” She threw herself at me hard enough that I almost fell over, and I was grateful she was too close to see the pained wince that twisted my face for a second. I was going to be hurting for the next few days for sure. I barely had a chance to pick her up before Steph, younger than her sister by three years and a lot slower, caught up, her little hands pawing at the edge of my jacket as she whined.
“My little hellions,” Hal said with a smirk as he came around the truck with my bag in one hand. He picked up Steph and tucked her against his side, managing to keep a hold on her tiny body despite her wriggling. “What were you girls thinking, runnin’ out in the snow like this? You should have stayed inside with Phee!”
“But then we couldn’t have said hi to Max,” Marnie said, her voice full of duh undertones.
“You could have said hi to him once he was inside.”
“It’s not the same! And he always meets us in front of his building in New York!”
I did, but only because they wouldn’t make it up to my apartment any other way. I hadn’t realized it had become something of a ritual in the girls’ minds. “Thanks for coming out to say hello,” I said, kissing Marnie on top of her head. Steph made an unhappy sound, so I leaned over and kissed her, too. “I’m freezing out here, though! Let’s go inside, huh?”
“Okay!” Marnie pushed out of my arms and ran back inside, mincing the whole way and groaning about her too-cold toes. I exchanged a look with Hal that encompassed a whole conversation, starting with I would have carried her.
I know, but she apparently wanted to walk through the snow. Kids, huh?
Yeah, seriously. With that, Hal passed me Steph, who stopped struggling as soon as she was in my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck and turned her face into the fleecy collar of my jacket, and my heart melted.
Mrs. Jackson, Hal’s longtime neighbor, met us at the door. She was an older woman around Dinah’s age, her hair mostly white, wearing a Christmas tree sweater with actual glowing lights on it. “Sorry about that,” she said to Hal with an eye-roll. “I’d have gotten them into their boots before you showed up if I’d known they were going to try and turn themselves into little snow angels.”
“They’re wily that way,” Hal agreed, setting my bag down in the foyer before pulling the lady into a hug. “Thanks for lookin’ after them. I really appreciate it, Phee.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.” Her sigh was a little melancholy. “It’s the other grandparents’ turn to have Vanessa and her kids for the holidays, you know. I miss the chaos.”
“Come over anytime you want some more of it.”
“I’ll do that.” Mrs. Jackson looked my way, but thankfully she didn’t ask any questions. I’d had enough interrogation for one night. “It’s nice to see you again, Max.” There was nothing but real welcome in her voice, and tension I was barely aware was painfully stiffening my shoulders and neck flowed out of me. I had to stop freaking out inside when I met anyone in town who wasn’t Hal or his family.