She put her arms around the ball and tried again. It wouldn’t budge.
“You can do it, Mama!” Max cried. He was clapping and jumping, his navy blue cap sliding down over his eyes. He pushed it back with a mittened hand, snowflakes sticking to the yarn of his hat.
“We should get Nick! He could lift it!”
“He’s working. We probably shouldn’t disturb him.”
“But he hasn’t gotten to play in the snow at all.”
Abbey smiled. “I think he was probably up before us. If he’d wanted to, he most likely would’ve played in the snow already before we were even out here.”
“No he wouldn’t.”
Abbey looked down at him. “Why do you think he wouldn’t?”
“He’d be by himself. It’s hard when you’re by yourself,” Max said. “When I’m at Nana’s, I don’t play in the snow very much because no one is out there to play with me. I’ll bet Nick feels like that. We should tell him we want to play with him.”
Abbey felt a stab of sadness for her son. It was tough being an only child. She wanted to be able to fix it, to give him friends nearby and siblings in the house, but she just couldn’t. She felt sad because she knew that it was Max who wanted someone new to play with. That was why he’d suggested calling Nick.
“Can we text him?”
Despite her reservations, Abbey pulled her phone from her back pocket. What would one morning in the snow hurt? She typed: Max and I are trying to build a snowman, and Max wants you to help build it. Would you like to take a break, by chance? If not, I completely understand. I know you have work to do. But if so, it’s freezing. Dress warm.
Her phone lit up and she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. She read, Give me two minutes.
“The snowman’s gonna need buttons,” Max said.
“Maybe we could use rocks.”
Max ran off, the enormous grounds nearly swallowing him right up, and searched for rocks. Abbey watched him bend down, dig under the snow until he found one, inspect it, and then throw it on the ground. He did this a few times until she saw him put one in his pocket. When he had three, he returned. But as he neared her, a giant smile broke out on his face and he walked past her. She turned around.
Nick was standing in the snow, wearing some kind of large hiking boots, jeans, a dark coat, and leather gloves. Dangling from his fingers in his gloved hand was a black top hat. She’d only ever seen one in the movies.
“Where did you get that?” she said with a grin.
Max ran up to him and eyed it as he held it up into view. “It was for a costume party,” Nick said as his icy blue eyes met hers. “I thought Mr. Snowman might get cold without it.” He set it on Max’s head.
“We can’t get the snowballs stacked,” Max said, still wearing it over his stocking cap.
Nick looked at the enormous balls of snow. “That’s quite a snowball,” he said.
Max puffed his little chest out in pride.
Nick leaned down and hugged the snowball, bending his knees in anticipation of the weight of it. With relative ease, he lifted it, but it was big enough to block his line of sight so Abbey stepped in.
As he hovered over the other snowball, she said, “Move just a little to the left.”
Nick swayed left.
“No. Too much!”
He moved right.
“Left again. There!”
Nick attempted to set the ball down on top of the other one, but with a small misstep, the snowball teetered precariously, ready to roll back onto the snow and possibly break apart.
“Oh no!” Abbey cried and all three of them put their arms around the ball to keep it from falling. When they finally got it steady, Abbey said, “No one let it go. I’m going to pack snow around the base of it to glue it to the snowball below it.”
Nick and Max held the ball in place and Abbey grabbed a fistful of snow. She packed it against the base of the snowball until it was steady. As she did, she had to duck under Nick’s arms to pack snow on his side. She stole a glance at him, and he was grinning down at her.
“One more to go,” she said.
He lifted the smallest ball and set it on top. They put snow around that one, and Abbey pulled her scarf off and wrapped it around the neck of it. Max added rocks as buttons, still wearing the top hat.
“I can’t reach to do his face,” Max said.
Without even a moment to consider, Nick lifted him up and Abbey had to pull herself together. Max was sitting on Nick’s arm, his little legs dangling down against Nick’s body, as Nick helped him remove his top hat and place it on the snowman. Anyone looking would think the three of them were a perfect little family when things couldn’t be farther from the truth. She caught herself wishing for more time with Nick, and she knew it wasn’t right. What he did with his life was up to him, not her.