Krys had already fallen back asleep. A little murmur escaped her and she rolled on her side, hugging her pillow.
Vicki crept out. At the top of the stairs she sagged until she sat on a riser, and let hot, silent tears fall.
* * *
“Your grandniece is cute as a button,” Dan said as he helped clear the table. Lena put on some coffee and invited him to stay.
“She certainly is,” Lena agreed. “Now stay for a few minutes, Dan. I know how you love your coffee, and it’s the least I can do after all your help.”
“Any neighbor would have helped,” he said dismissively. “Glad to do it.”
“Stay anyway. What are you going to do? Head home and sprawl in front of the TV with some soccer game?”
Dan laughed. “You have me pegged.”
Lena arched a brow at him. “Yeah. As a man who works hard and wants to relax when he gets home. Instead you moved half a house.”
He shook his head. “Don’t make too much of it, Lena. I had an easy day and the workout felt good. As for sprawling in front of the TV, I do less of that than you think.”
She laughed. “Maybe so. I don’t exactly keep an eye on you.”
“Thank goodness. My reputation probably wouldn’t survive it.”
They carried their coffee into the front room. “That’s a really nice couch,” he remarked. He’d like one himself, a dual recliner such as that. But he didn’t sit on it. He wasn’t a dullard, and he was willing to bet one end or the other had been Vicki’s husband’s seat. Dan didn’t want her to see him on it when she came back down.
He picked his way to Lena’s old sofa and took his usual place on it. She often invited him over for dinner or dessert, especially when he did some little thing for her around the place that she couldn’t do herself. And Lena could do quite a lot herself, so it wasn’t as if she imposed.
Boxes, shoved to the side, made the room feel tiny, which it never had before.
“How much are you planning to get rid of?” he asked. This house had been the same the whole time he’d known Lena, and even in its current jumbled state he could see the place he knew. He wondered if she was going to find it more difficult than she was letting on.
Lena waved a hand. “As much as I need to. Probably won’t be as much as it looks like right now. Everything I have are hand-me-downs. I never got a chance to do this place the way I wanted, except for some curtains and small things. I feel like the caretaker of a museum sometimes. The Winston Family Museum. There are a number of things I’m attached to, but most of it is just here. No history, no old memories, no meaning.”
“I don’t know whether to say that’s good or that’s sad.”
“Both,” she said wryly. “Vicki gets it next. It might as well be more to her liking.”
Dan leaned forward, holding his mug between both hands as he rested his elbows on his knees. “Hey, you’ve got a lot of good years left. Don’t be talking like that.”
“Like what? I’m almost fifty-five, young by the reckoning of most. I might have another thirty years. Then again, I could slip on ice this next winter and be done. You never know, Dan.”
“No.” This conversation was taking a maudlin turn, and he wondered if it had to do with Vicki. Not that she had started it, but maybe what had happened to her niece had caused Lena to start thinking about these things. He sought another avenue.
“So Vicki is your sister’s daughter? I know you told me, but I’ve never had the instincts of a genealogist.”
Lena barked a laugh. “That’s right. She took off out of here when she was eighteen, and never came back. I used to go visit her, the way I went to visit Vicki.”
He began to remember stories from over the years. Shortly after Vicki had graduated from college, Lena’s sister had died. Vicki’s father had apparently vanished from the scene before she was born. “Lou, wasn’t it? Your sister? Skydiving accident?”
Lena smiled faintly. “Live it while you have it, that’s my motto. I just chose a less risky way of life. Lou, on the other hand, had a whole bucket list of wild things she wanted to do once Vicki was old enough.”
Dan hesitated, but for some reason he wanted a clear picture of the situation. Maybe it was just the cop in him. “And no family on Vicki’s husband’s side?”
“Hal grew up in foster care. Near as I could tell, he felt closer to the Police Athletic League than any of his foster families, and there were a lot of them.”
“So that leaves you.”
“It sure does. And since I was never blessed with a family of my own, I’m considering myself blessed right now.”
Dan grinned. “I don’t get why you weren’t snapped up.”
Lena arched a brow. “Oh, there were snappers. I just kept throwing them back in the river.”
He unleashed a belly laugh. “I love you, Lena.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just not like that. I get it.” Then she joined his laughter.
* * *
Upstairs, Vicki heard the laughter and decided that she needed to go down. After all, she’d made this move, wrenching her daughter away from the only home she’d ever known, so they could start fresh. That meant she had to rejoin the world again.
She stopped in the bathroom, wiped away the tears and applied cold water to her eyes. After a couple minutes, she realized that she couldn’t erase the puffiness. They were going to know she had been weeping.
Oh, well. She’d do it again countless times. Grief was nothing to be ashamed of, and if it made Dan uneasy...well, he didn’t have to stay. She took a brush to her hair, smoothing it back into a neat ponytail, then stiffened herself to face the world.
She entered the living room and found Lena sitting on a rocker and Dan sitting on the old couch. Habit led her to take her usual end of the recliner sofa, where she curled her legs under her.
“Want some coffee?” Vicki asked. “Just made a pot.”
“I’ll get it. Thanks, Lena.”
Her aunt stood. “Stay right there. I’m not the one who spent weeks moving. Be right back.”
Which left her alone with Dan. He sat with his legs splayed, the mug cradled in both hands, his elbows resting on his thighs.
“How long did you drive today?” he asked. “Austin’s quite a piece.”
“We broke it up. There’s just so long you can keep a four-year-old cooped up in a vehicle. We left Laramie this morning.”
“Not too bad, then.”
“No.” Which kind of ended the conversation.
