you tell her it’s a man’s work she’ll be trying to find her own chain saw. Stubborn as a mule.”
But he said it with clear affection.
“It runs in her family.” That was said without so much affection.
Don’t ask, Ryder said. He hoped to begin the process of disengaging himself, but somehow he had to ask.
“What’s her family like?”
“There’s just her and her mother now that her grandmother died.” He hesitated, stared hard at Ryder, weighing something. “Lynelle ain’t gonna be takin’ home the Mama of the Year award.”
“But she’s coming for Christmas, right?” Why did he care? Why did it feel as if it relieved him of some responsibility? He had to get out of here. He was not responsible for Emma’s happiness. How could he be? He couldn’t even be responsible for his own anymore. He was broken. Broken people couldn’t fix things, they could only make them worse.
“Humph,” Tim said crankily, “Emma’s mother, Lynelle, doesn’t give a lick about this place, never will.”
“It’s not about the place,” Ryder said, aggrieved. “It’s about her daughter.”
Tim looked troubled, and Ryder could clearly see in his face he wasn’t sure if Lynelle gave a lick about her daughter, either, though he stopped short of saying that.
“Ah, well,” Tim said. “You can’t choose your family.”
Since Tim clearly didn’t feel that way about his own family, it was a ringing indictment of Emma’s. Ryder had fished for more information about Emma, but now he was sorry for what he’d found out. She was as alone as he was. Maybe more so. She didn’t have Tess.
Tim’s revelations made Ryder see Emma’s need to make a perfect Christmas in a new light. It was as if she thought that if she could create enough festive atmosphere, help enough people, she could outrun her own pain and loneliness.
In a way, he and Emma were doing the very opposite things to achieve the same result.
Troubled, he focused on the tasks at hand, but despite working steadily they had made almost no headway on the driveway by noon. A bell rang, and Ryder realized Mona was calling them for lunch, and that he was famished.
“Mama!” Tess crowed when she saw him. She was seated in her high chair in front of the fire, both little girls standing on chairs beside her, patiently working combs and gentle fingers through Tess’s wet hair. She had obviously had a bath, been dressed in fresh onesies from her baby bag, and was proudly sporting a pure white Christmas bow in the center of her chest.
Emma came in behind him stomping snow off her boots.
“Isn’t that cute?” she asked. “She looks like a pint-sized queen commanding her attendants.”
He kicked off his own boots, walked in and inspected Tess’s ’do. The worst of the tangles were out of her hair. Experimentally, he reached out and touched.
Tess screeched.
The older girl said sternly, “Tess, that is enough of that!”
And Tess stopped, just like that. He touched her hair again, and the baby gave her captors a sly look and made a decision. She cooed, “Mama.”
“He’s not your mama, silly,” the older girl, Sue, said again. “Papa.”
“I’m her uncle.”
“Uncle,” the child said, not missing a beat, pointing at him. “That’s your uncle, Tess.”
“Ubba.”
Three months he’d been trying to coax his niece to call him anything but Mama.
And he hadn’t been able to.
Girls, women, knew these things. They knew by some deep instinct how to deal with babies. How to raise children. What did he know of these things? How could he ever do this job justice?
Really, in the end he just wanted to know he was doing a good enough job, and for one moment Emma had made him feel that way. Made him feel that he didn’t have to be an exquisite baby hairdresser, or nominated for guardian of the year.
In Emma’s eyes in that moment this morning when he had rescued Tess from her fire-breathing dragon, he had felt certainty. His love for the baby was enough.
Or was it? What about moments such as these that his brokenness, his unwillingness to reengage in the risky business of loving others would deprive Tess of?
And he wondered, even if he never gave Emma his e-mail address, just how completely he was going to be able to leave this behind.
Peggy, the smaller of the girls, approached him while they ate.
“Would you like to see my drawing?”
“Uh, okay.”
She handed it to him. A little blobby baby, obviously Tess because of the hair, smiled brightly in front of a Christmas tree.
“That’s very nice,” he said awkwardly. “I like the way you did Tess.”
“It’s before we fixed her hair.” Peggy beamed at him as if he had handed her a golden wand that granted wishes. As if he was enough.
Then he had to admire Sue’s drawing, too. Sue had drawn a picture of a man in a uniform in front of a Christmas tree.
“That’s my dad,” she said.
Something about the way she said it—so proud, so certain her dad could make everything right in her world—made him ache for the moment he had not made right and could never bring back. It made him ache for the moments of fatherhood his brother was never going to have, for the moments Tess was never going to have. His sorrow fell over the moment like a dark cape being thrown over light.
It was light that Emma, with her innate sense of playfulness, her ability to sneak by his defenses with falling mattresses and flying snowballs was bringing to his world.
He got up quickly, without looking at Emma, went outside and back to the soothing balm of hard, physical, mind-engaging labor.
“No Holiday Happenings again tonight,” Emma said, as they finally reached the base of her driveway. They had spent the whole afternoon clearing it. It was now late in the day, the sun low in the sky, a chill creeping back into the air.
She was so aware of Ryder, the pure physical presence of the man, as he stood beside her surveying her driveway where it intersected with the main road. The sun had been shining brilliantly up until a few minutes ago, and he had stripped down to his T-shirt. His arm muscles were taut and pumped from the demands of running that chain saw. She could smell something coming off him, enticing, as crystal-clear and clean as the ice falling off the tree branches and telephone wires.
From the way he’d been dressed when he arrived last night, she
