try it, Doc,” he warned, without looking at her.
She tossed the snowball from one hand to the other. “Try what?”
He straightened and gave her a glance that succeeded in making her mouth feel parched. It also made a mockery of her innocent claim. “Here.” He handed his latest snowball off to Chloe. “You can do this one on your own. It’s going to be the head, so it doesn’t have to be as large as the base.”
Chloe knelt down and began scooping snow around her assignment. The tip of her tongue peeked out from between the corner of her lips.
Before Mallory even knew he’d moved, Ryan plucked the snowball from her hands. “I’ll take that,” he said, and began adding to it.
Within minutes, both he and Chloe were rolling their snowballs across the yard and right into the neighbor’s property, picking up snow as they went. Mallory smoothed her coat beneath her and sat down on the porch steps, watching.
But Chloe wasn’t having any of that. “Mom, you gotta help!”
So Mallory dutifully rose again and walked over to her daughter.
“Not me,” Chloe said. “Him.” She waved toward Ryan, who, in Mallory’s estimation, needed no assistance whatsoever with maneuvering his snowman-middle even if it were already twice the size of Chloe’s somewhat sausage-shaped head.
It was only the flash of amusement she caught on Ryan’s face—as if he fully expected her to refuse—that made Mallory move over beside him and plant her hands next to his on the snowball. “For someone who didn’t seem very enthusiastic about today,” she said under her breath, “you seem to be ending up quite entertained.”
“And we haven’t even left your neighborhood, yet.” His hands steered the snowball toward the left, circling back in the direction of her house and the snowman’s base.
“Are we really going to find a Christmas tree today?”
“I said we would.” His shoulder brushed against hers. “When I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it.”
“Even if you didn’t want to,” she concluded, her voice just as low.
His jaw tightened. He stopped pushing the snowball, which was easily the size of three watermelons. “What do you want from me?”
She looked at him. The answer should have been so easy. A father for Chloe. Better yet, an…interested and caring father for Chloe.
So why wasn’t it easy?
“Mom. Mr. Ryan. Look at my head!” Chloe stood over her lopsided snowball with pride. “Is it big enough?”
“Looks great,” Ryan answered. He rolled the snowball he and Mallory had formed the last few yards, then picked it up and settled it on the base before adding Chloe’s to the top. “There you go, kiddo. Your first snowman,” he told Chloe.
“I wanna get his face now,” Chloe said, dashing up the stairs and disappearing through the front door that she threw open.
“If I hadn’t wanted to take you out to find a tree, I wouldn’t have offered in the first place,” he told Mallory the second Chloe was out of earshot.
She shoved her hands inside the side pockets of her coat, hiding the fists they had curled into. “Then why did you tear out of here yesterday the way that you did after offering?” Her voice had risen, and she swallowed, looking around.
But Chloe hadn’t come back outside, and the houses flanking hers were as still and silent as they’d been since Mallory had come outside.
The only one around listening to them was the faceless, limbless snowman.
She sighed and pulled her hands out of her pockets again. “Look. I know I dropped a bombshell on you yesterday. Of course it’s going to take some time for you—for all of us—to adjust to that. But—”
“It’s not Chloe that bothers me.” He grimaced. “Well, yeah, but not in the way that you probably mean,” he amended.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” He looked at her, only this time his focus was turned inward. “And it’s not something I’m going to explain.”
His choice of words caught her. He wouldn’t explain. Not couldn’t. Not shouldn’t.
“I got his face stuff.” Chloe reappeared and the door slammed behind her, sounding as loud as a gunshot. She was clutching a handful of items against her coat. “Grammy said we could use these cookies for his eyes.” She dropped the rest of her collection onto the snow next to the snowman, and held up two round, chocolate-flavored cookies. “I guess I want him to have eyes more ’n I want to eat them,” she admitted with a giggle. “Here. Put ’em on.”
Ryan nearly winced. Chloe was holding the cookies toward him with such trusting faith in her face that it was painful.
Mallory didn’t say anything. Just continued watching him with an expression that seemed to ride the rails between caution and expectation, hope and compassion.
He wanted to tell her not to expect anything. Not from him. It would be safer all the way around.
But he couldn’t make himself do it.
And he was damned if he knew whether that was because he didn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes the same way he saw disappointment in the eyes of his family, or if it was because he, himself, didn’t want to feel the loss when that disappointment inevitably occurred.
Instead of taking the cookies from Chloe, he simply went over behind her and lifted her up by the waist so she could reach the snowman’s head. “Give the poor guy some eyes,” he told her.
She giggled again and worked the cookies into the snow. “What’s his name?”
“He’s your snowman,” Ryan reminded. “Think that gives you naming rights.”
“I don’t know no snowman names, though, except Frosty.” She craned her head around to look up at Ryan. “Everyone names their snowman Frosty.”
Mallory picked up the carrot and handed it to Chloe. “You don’t know any snowman names,” she corrected. “And yes, you do. Use your imagination.” She shrugged. “Besides. Maybe your snowman is actually a woman. Have you thought about that?”
Chloe screwed the root end of the carrot into the snow. “Nope,” she said surely. “He’s a snowman.”
Ryan wondered how she made the determination, but figured he was better off not knowing the finer points of how a six-year-old came to such a conclusion. He tipped her almost upside down so she could reach her pile on the ground and she squealed with laughter that didn’t stop even when he turned her upright, again.
“Didja see that, Mom?” Chloe’s feet swung freely, nearly knocking him in the knees and he swung her to his side, holding her against his hip.
“I
