Carrie grinned at the memory of Olivia spinning her circles. “What does she like to talk about?”
Adam took a sip of his beer, the skin between his eyes creasing slightly. He set the glass down onto the table slowly, his face showing contemplation. He was quiet for a minute before he said, “Oh, little girl things, I suppose.” Then, with an awkward look, he broke eye contact.
Her thoughts went back to that moment in the playroom when he’d popped in on them and they hadn’t run to him. It occurred to Carrie that perhaps Adam didn’t know his children very well. Did he ever spend time with them? He’d asked her to buy their presents, and he wasn’t even tucking them into bed at that very moment; he was sitting there having supper with Carrie. He seemed like such a nice person, so why was he so standoffish with them? She didn’t press him any further.
Carrie had spent the last hour in the early morning tossing between the starched sheets on her new bed. The kids weren’t up yet, nor was the sun, but she was. She was thinking. Adam hadn’t stayed at the table very long last night at supper, but she didn’t blame him. He’d said he had work to do. She’d probably bored him to death. She ran through the handful of things she’d said, her gestures, wondering what he thought of her. She wanted to make a good impression on him, and she worried that she’d made herself look ridiculous. The bed creaked as she rolled over, clicked on the lamp, and grabbed her book off her nightstand. She opened to the spot where she’d marked her place and read. Trust yourself. Believe in your intuition. Go with your instincts. These are traits of confident people…
Those words were easier said than done. Adam’s family was coming into town in three days. They were all staying at his house, he’d said, because he had the room to have them all, and because he had the kids this year. Between the fact that Adam made her crazy with anxiety and an entire houseful of strangers, she was about as worried as she’d ever been about getting things right. How could she be confident with all of that going on? Then she thought about the one area of her life where she was the most comfortable, the most successful: children. She decided, right then and there, that she was going to focus on David and Olivia. Everything else—she hoped—would fall into place.
She crawled out of bed and peeked through the window. The snow was still falling, the streets so covered that she couldn’t tell where the yards ended and the road began. The trees were topped with piled snow, their branches like black sketch marks on a white canvas. The frigid air made the panes of the window so cold that just standing there she had made them foggy from her breath. It had been a long time since she’d seen snow like this. As the gray clouds lightened with the day, she decided she’d better get ready. The children would be up soon.
Her room had an en-suite bathroom with a closet full of huge, fluffy white towels. She turned on the water, the steam filling the room, and got in. As the water sheeted over her, she thought about the day ahead. She pictured David and Olivia standing by their block tower. Had they ever gotten dirty? Had they ever been allowed to let their creativity run wild? She hoped that they had, but watching them yesterday, she wondered. Carrie decided that today they should play in the snow. What children don’t like to play in the snow? And there was certainly enough of it.
When she got out of the shower, she dressed, got herself ready, and grabbed the food-coloring bottles from her suitcase. She hadn’t heard from the kids yet. Were they with their father? Maybe she had been wrong about him. After all, it was only one night, only a snapshot of life in the Fletcher household. Perhaps they were all downstairs and he was making them pancakes or something.
She walked quietly down the hall until she reached their rooms, and checked on David first. He was in his bed, playing with a stuffed animal dinosaur.
“Hello, David,” she said with a smile. “Have you been up very long?” He looked over at her shyly, his eyes darting down to his dinosaur. He didn’t say anything so she asked, “When did your dinosaur wake up?”
“When the clock said six-oh-oh,” he said.
Six o’clock? she thought. That was an hour ago. “Have you really been up that long?” she asked. He nodded. She didn’t know what rules Natalie had put in place, but the last thing Carrie wanted was to have the children sitting alone in their beds for an hour. They were probably starving. “David, as soon as you wake up in the mornings, will you come and get me in Natalie’s room? Even if I’m asleep. Would you do that for me?” He nodded again. “Why don’t we go and check on Olivia?”