was Russian for beet soup.” Freddie managed not to say she thought it sounded gross, but Natasha got the idea.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make any,” she said, straight faced. “I made another traditional dish instead. Spaghetti and meatballs.”
It was easy, surprisingly so. They ate at the old gateleg table by the window, and their talk ranged from Freddie’s struggles with arithmetic to Neapolitan opera. It took only a little prodding for Natasha to talk of her family. Freddie wanted to know everything there was about being a big sister.
“We didn’t fight very much,” Natasha reflected as she drank after-dinner coffee and balanced Freddie on her knee. “But when we did, I won, because I was the oldest. And the meanest.”
“You’re not mean.”
“Sometimes when I’m angry I am.” She looked at Spence, remembering—and regretting—telling him he didn’t deserve Freddie. “Then I’m sorry.”
“When people fight, it doesn’t always mean they don’t like each other,” Spence murmured. He was doing his best not to think how perfect, how perfectly right his daughter looked cuddled on Natasha’s lap. Too far, too fast, he warned himself. For everyone involved.
Freddie wasn’t sure she understood, but she was only five. Then she remembered happily that she would soon be six. “I’m going to have a birthday.”
“Are you?” Natasha looked appropriately impressed. “When?”
“In two weeks. Will you come to my party?”
“I’d love to.” Natasha looked at Spence as Freddie recited all the wonderful treats that were in store.
It wasn’t wise to get so involved with the little girl, she warned herself. Not when the little girl was attached so securely to a man who made Natasha long for things she had put behind her. Spence smiled at her. No, it wasn’t wise, she thought again. But it was irresistible.
“Chicken pox.” Spence said the two words again. He stood in the doorway and watched his little girl sleep. “It’s a hell of a birthday present, sweetie.”
In two days his daughter would be six, and by then, according to the doctor, she’d be covered with the itchy rash that was now confined to her belly and chest.
It was going around, the pediatrician had said. It would run its course. Easy for him to say, Spence thought. It wasn’t his daughter whose eyes were teary. It wasn’t his baby with a hundred-and-one-degree temperature.
She’d never been sick before, Spence realized as he rubbed his tired eyes. Oh, the sniffles now and again, but nothing a little TLC and baby aspirin hadn’t put right. He dragged a hand through his hair; Freddie moaned in her sleep and tried to find a cool spot on her pillow.
The call from Nina hadn’t helped. He’d had to come down hard to prevent her from catching the shuttle and arriving on his doorstep. That hadn’t stopped her telling him that Freddie had undoubtedly caught chicken pox because she was attending public school. That was nonsense, of course, but when he looked at his little girl, tossing in her bed, her face flushed with fever, the guilt was almost unbearable.
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