“Don’t apologize to me,” Aidan said. “This day does bite.”
“Why? What happened with you? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just a stupid trip to the doctor’s.”
Raven was glad Aidan stopped there and didn’t reveal that someone had gone through his things at Earl’s place.
“Yeah, that su—bites as bad as math,” Fox said with a quick look at Raven to see if she’d caught his ‘s’ word slip-up. She let it pass.
“What’s the matter with math?” she asked. He usually did well in the subject.
“I don’t get how anyone can find a value of x.” Fox looked at both of them. “Two plus two equals four. I get that. But 5x minus 2 equals 0? Give me a break. How does someone wrap their mind around that?”
Aidan chuckled. Raven shot him a “be quiet” look. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“I’ll help you with your homework later,” she said. “You’d better get on your chores before it gets any darker. It’s supposed to drop to twenty below tonight. Might want to give the dogs extra bedding.”
“All right.” Fox eyed Aidan’s leftover sandwich. “Are you going to finish that?”
“Help yourself.” Aidan pushed the plate toward him.
Fox picked up the sandwich and took a large bite. “Yum.” He opened the sandwich to see what was in it. “I like this mustard. Spicy,” he said around the food in his mouth. He swallowed. “What is it?”
“Dijon. Your grandmother had some in the fridge.”
“I like it.”
Great. First Reubens and now Dijon mustard. Dimples weren’t going to be her only problem.
Fox swallowed another bite and glanced at Aidan. “You wanta see my dogs?”
Raven cleared her throat, trying to get Aidan’s attention, but he ignored her.
“Yes, I’d like that,” he said. “I used to have a sled dog when I was a few years younger than you.” He looked off to the side, his expression sobered. “She was my best friend.”
Raven remembered. Earl had shot Aidan’s dog one night in a fit of rage. Right in front of him.
“What was her name?” Fox asked, his tone reverent as he picked up on Aidan’s sorrow. Her kid was a sharp one. Another reason she needed to keep him and Aidan apart. What if Fox guessed the truth? She’d explained to him, when he was younger, that circumstances prevented his father from being a part of his life. He’d been four and hadn’t brought up the subject again until he was seven. Then he’d suddenly stopped asking her questions and seemed to have accepted that he didn’t have a father in his life. The dogs, she figured were a huge part of that. She’d gotten him a husky around that time, hoping to take his mind off the subject. It had seemed to work because she hadn’t been plagued with questions since.
“Her name was Nugget,” Aidan said. “She was a golden Malamute with the deepest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“She sounds beautiful.”
“Yeah, she was.” Aidan straightened his shoulders and collected himself. “You want to show me your dogs now?”
“No,” Raven said a little too loud. Both of them turned and stared at her with surprise. “You can’t. You need to put that leg up. Rest.” Anything but spend time with her son.
“I’m fine. I took some of the pain pills the doc gave me.” He studied her curiously. “Checking on dogs isn’t going to do me in.”
She wanted to object further but knew if she did it would only raise more questions. “I thought you wanted to head back to Earl’s?”
Aidan turned to Fox. “That’s another thing. Can you draw me a map on how to get past the booby traps? The snow covered up the tracks.”
Fox’s face brightened. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” Raven said, her tone hard. “I don’t want you out there.”
“Neither do I,” Aidan agreed. “It’s too dangerous. Until I can find all the traps around the place, I don’t want anyone out there, but I do need you to draw me a map.”
“But—”
“No buts, Fox,” Raven said. “And I want to know how you knew where the booby traps were to begin with?”
Fox swallowed the last bite of his sandwich, looking from Raven to Aidan. “Uh…”
She waited. Fox glanced from both of them again, looking for an escape that wasn’t coming.
“Fox?” she prompted with her no-nonsense mother’s tone.
“Uh…I watched him…a couple of times.” He looked down at his plate.