style="font-size:15px;"> A snowmobile pulling a sled came around the corner of the house. A man drove the snow machine; the sled had a woman and two little girls in it
“My neighbors,” Emma said, and a smile of pure delight lit her face. “The Fenshaws. That’s Tim driving, his daughter-in-law, Mona, and his two granddaughters, Sue and Peggy.”
Relief washed over Ryder. She wouldn’t be alone, after all. She had people who cared about her. Cared about her enough to be here at first light making sure she was all right.
He was free to leave.
The Fenshaws didn’t so much come into the house as tumble in, laden with thermoses and a huge basket wafting the incredible smell of homemade bread. Flurried introductions were made.
The girls, perhaps nine and eleven, spotted Tess and put the baskets they were carrying down.
“A baby,” they breathed in one voice.
The older one, Sue, came and took Tess from him with surprising expertise, put her on her hip, danced across the foyer to her mother.
“Look, Mom. Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? Oh, I can’t wait to comb her hair!”
As tempting as it would be to stay for that, and to sample whatever was in those baskets, now would be the perfect time to make his getaway, leaving Emma amongst all this energy and love.
“Actually, Tess and I were just getting ready to leave,” Ryder said, amazed by his own reluctance, knowing, though, that that very reluctance was telling him it was time to go. He had to bite his tongue to keep himself from reminding her about the hot dogs again.
“Were you now?”
The man, Tim, weathered face and white hair, was kicking off his boots inside the front door. He rounded on Ryder and eyed him, taking in the pajamas and the mattress on the floor in the other room in one sweep of his gaze which was deeply and protectively suspicious.
“We got stranded by the storm,” Ryder said, pleased by the older man’s suspicion rather than put out by it. He was happy Emma had someone this fiercely protective of her, someone to look out for her. It relieved him of a burden he had taken on without wanting to. “But we’re leaving now.”
Tim had one of those faces Ryder could read. Loss was etched there, and yet calm, too, as if Tim had made peace with what was, didn’t even consider asking the world to take back its unfairness and cruelties.
“You think I’d arrive on my snowmobile if the driveway was open?” the man said. “Trees all over the thing.”
Ryder stared at him. He’d been so anxious to go he had not seen what was right in front of him.
“You better have yourself some grub, son, and then we got us some work to do. You look like a city boy. You know how to run a chain saw?”
Ryder wanted to protest being called son. He wanted to rail against fate keeping him here when he was desperate to get out.
“We’ll eat in the living room,” Mona said, as if it was all decided. “It’ll be too cold in the rest of the house.”
“Tess doesn’t like the living room.”
But he was ignored and Tess, clearly enamored of the little girls, only cast a suspicious look at the fireplace before taking her cue from the other children and allowing herself to be put in the place of honor at the very center of the picnic blanket they were laying out on the floor.
The basket was unpacked, and soon they were tucking into homemade bread and jam, steaming mugs of coffee.
The magic seemed to be deepening in this place, as the two little girls fussed over Tess…and over him.
“This is my doll,” Peggy told him, wagging a worn rag doll in his face. “Her name is Bebo.”
“Uh, that’s an unusual name.”
“Do you think it’s pretty?”
It rated up there with Holiday Happenings on his ugly-name list, but he couldn’t look into that earnest face and say that. Considering it practice for when Tess would be asking him such difficult questions, he said, “I think it’s very creative.”
Peggy frowned at him, not fooled. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means pretty,” he surrendered, and shot Emma a look when he heard her muffled laugh.
The attention of the little girls made him feel awkward. Mona said to him, softly, “My husband, Tim junior, is in the Canadian Forces. The girls seem to crave male attention. I’m sorry.”
Ryder was sorry he’d made his discomfort that visible. He was glad he was leaving as soon as the driveway was cleared. He was no replacement for a hero. Not even close. “It must be very difficult for you.”
She lowered her voice another notch, as Tim senior left the room to check the water pipes. “It’s hardest on him. He lost his wife a while back and seems to age a year for every day Tim is gone.”
Losses. Ryder had read the elder man’s face correctly. This family was handling their own fears and troubles.
“Do you have power at your place?” Ryder asked, changing the subject. He tried to sound casual. In actual fact, he hoped the fresh-made bread meant the Fenshaw house had power because he would feel better if Emma went there when he left.
“No,” Mona said. “I have a great old wood-burning stove, the kind the pioneers had. You can cook on it, it has an oven. It’s fantastic. It heats the whole house, though the house isn’t as large as this one.”
Again, there was the sense of needing to go, the momentary helpless frustration, and then surrender.
He wasn’t going anywhere until they got the driveway cleared. He might as well enjoy the mouthwatering bread, the homemade jams, the hot coffee. He might as well enjoy the innocence of those children, the fact that they liked him without any evidence that they should.
“Would you like to hold Bebo?” Peggy asked him.
He heard Emma laugh again as he tried to think of a diplomatic response, and then she rescued him by saying, “I’d like to hold her, Peggy.”
“Me,” Tess yelled, and Peggy surrendered her doll to the baby even though Tess was covered in jam.
Of course, surrendering to enjoyment was like surrendering to the magic that was wrapping itself around him, trying to creep inside him. Somehow as he filled up on breakfast and giggles, he became aware something was changing. He felt not trapped, somehow. Not ecstatic, either, but not trapped.
“Water’s fine so far. What do you think we start clearing first?” Tim asked Emma, coming back into the room. “Pond or driveway?”
“Driveway,” Emma said.
And Ryder might have appreciated how practical she was being—since no one could even get to the pond without the driveway, except that she looked right at him, and smiled sunnily. “Mr. Richardson is anxious to go.” She didn’t say
