Little Wonders

by Kate Rorick

  “But coming home hasn’t been all roses. Has it, Daisy?”

  “What?” Daisy said, her eyes snapping back to Grandpa Bob.

  “You haven’t been very comfortable here, have you?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. And really, she didn’t. She’d done her utmost to hide her discomfort in Needleton from everyone. Especially Rob, Carrie, and Grandpa Bob—whose generosity had been above and beyond. She sent desperate eyes to Rob.

  I didn’t do anything, I’m happy here, I swear, she tried to say with her eyes.

  “Of course you do! Rack those brains I know you have,” he said to her. “Perhaps, back to Halloween weekend? And an . . . overly exposed encounter?”

  All of the blood in her body drained to her feet. Her eyes shot straight to a wide-eyed Shanna, who met her eyes with equal alarm. A single eyebrow raise asked the question, Did you tell him?

  An imperceptible shake of the head was the answer.

  How did he know about the video? Grandpa Bob had only just gotten the internet when they moved in! And why was he bringing it up now?

  “I . . . I . . . ,” she tried, but nothing would come out.

  “So, it seems to me that some kind of adjustment has to be made,” Grandpa Bob said. “An adjustment in our living arrangement.”

  Oh god. He was kicking them out. Because of her. Because of what she did to Quinn Barrett. She and Rob and Carrie would be out on the street, and Rob and his grandfather’s relationship would never be repaired.

  And it was all her fault.

  “I’m so sorry,” she blurted out. “I never thought it would cause so many problems.”

  “Daze,” Rob said, softly, but not softly enough to hide his alarm. “What is he talking about? What encounter?”

  “I’m talking about when she saw me in my undies in the kitchen, Robbie!” Grandpa Bob said, on a laugh, immediately dispelling all the tension in the room. Daisy sagged against Rob. Shanna practically drifted onto the sofa next to Jordan. When Jamie leaned down to ask if she was all right, she waved him away. “Just . . . pregnant.”

  “Uh . . . no,” Rob said to his grandfather, a gust of breath spelling his relief. “Daisy never mentioned that.”

  “Don’t say I blame her—my skivvies are better forgotten, lest they cause long-term trauma,” he said. “But it’s happened more than once”—Daisy blushed, because yes, it had happened more than once—“and it got me thinking about our living situation, and the fact that I’m not likely to live that much longer.”

  “Dad!” said Greg from behind him. “That’s not something you should be thinking about.”

  “Son, I’m past eighty, the life I have left is pretty much all I think about. And how I want to spend it. I also think about what I have left to pass on. And it occurs to me that the main thing I have to pass on is the house.”

  “Dad . . . what are you talking about?” Greg said.

  “Yes, Bob, what are you talking about?” Patty piped up, suddenly interested.

  “Well, here’s what I was thinking. And since it concerns everyone in this room, I thought it best to bring it up now. I have this house. It’s too big for me by myself, but a bit tight for the four of us at the moment. In my will, it passes to my two sons. Since Robbie’s dad is no longer with us,” Bob managed to say with only a slight hitch in his voice, “it will go to you, Greg, and to Robbie here. And I thought, why not hand it off now?”

  “Hand it off now?” Jamie asked.

  “The house is in a trust, and I pass the trust on to the two of you. And, Greg, you agree to sell your half of the house to Rob and Daisy. At the family rate, of course.”

  For a moment no one spoke. And another moment. And another moment.

  “Rob and Daisy need a place to live,” Grandpa Bob said into the silence. “They can’t stay in my basement forever. My master bedroom, however, is much more accommodating. And I know their budget. Rob, didn’t you tell me that Needleton’s gotten so expensive you could barely afford to buy half a house here? Well, here’s half a house. But it all depends on Greg.” He turned around and looked at his remaining son. “Greg, what do you think?”

  “I . . . I don’t like to think about you going anywhere, Dad,” he said. “Where will you live? A retirement home?”

  “Not my style,” his father replied. Then, with a smile, “You know my friend Donna?”

  Donna was Bob’s “lady friend.” She was in her late sixties and dressed in loud animal-print jackets and shiny pants. Daisy had adored her the few times they’d met. She’d brought a lot of color into Bob’s life, ever since they’d met about a year and a half ago at Grandpa Bob’s bridge club.

  “Well, Donna decided she’s done with Massachusetts snow. She’s got a condo out in Arizona and has asked me to come with her for the winter. I was planning on going right after Christmas.”

  “You’re moving to Arizona?” Rob blurted out. “But we just got here!”

  “I’ll only be gone till May. Which should give you enough time to convert the basement into a nice little grandparent suite,” Grandpa Bob said. “I’m told you’re a fairly handy guy—and you work with some handy guys, too. And when I’m there, I’ll pay you rent, to help out with whatever outrageous mortgage Greg decides to soak you for.”

  Grandpa Bob chuckled to himself. Then, he turned to his son. “This is what I want to do, Greggy. Think you can help me out?”

  All eyes turned to Greg, whose own eyes were a tad shinier than before.

  “I don’t like thinking about you dying, Dad. Even though I know it’s going to happen. When mom passed, and my brother, you were the only person we had left. I want things to stay as they are. But,” he continued, stopping any interruption, “I also want you to be happy. And, from a practical standpoint, when Patty’s parents passed, it was traumatic dealing with dividing up the estate and putting the house on the market, and everything else. So maybe, it’s a good idea to take care of a large portion of that stuff now.”

  “Dad, what are you saying?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m saying . . . ,” Greg said, with a deep sigh. “I think we can make this happen.”

  Finally, finally, someone made some noise in the room. Patty took her husband’s hand in hers, kissed it, in a kind of red-faced, tear-streaked prayer. Jamie came over and clapped Rob on the back. But Carrie jumped up off the couch and said, “YAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!”—she might not have followed the minutiae of the very adult conversation going on in front of her, but she knew people were happy, and that made her happy.

  “We will do it through a bank, so everything is aboveboard,” Greg said, as he came over to shake Rob’s hand, give Daisy a kiss on the cheek. “If you kids can get a down payment together, I think it would help expedite things.”

  “Yes, absolutely, Uncle Greg. Thank you. And, Grandpa Bob—you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.”

  A house. They were going to have a house. One with seventies plaid wallpaper in the den, and appliances in the kitchen that smoked, and likely some foundation issues given the moisture that came through the basement walls . . . But! It was a house. Their very own house.

  And it was in Needleton.

  Daisy’s stomach lurched. And not just because Rob had grabbed her about the waist and hugged her tight. What this meant was . . . they were truly staying. An apartment would have been a lease, for a year. And at the end of the year they could see if they really wanted to stay on the East Coast, like they’d planned.

  But this house was . . .

  This house was for the rest of their lives.

  “Can you believe it? Grandpa Bob’s house will be our house!” Rob was saying in her ear, then he let go of Daisy to lift up Carrie. “What do you think, sweetie—do you want to stay at Grandpa Bob’s house?”

  “Forever?” she asked.

  “Forever,” he replied.

  Carrie threw her arms around her father’s neck and squeezed him tight.

 
“Wow,” Shanna’s voice broke through Daisy’s haze. “It looks like you’ll have a house.”

  “I guess so,” she replied, subdued.

  Which Shanna honed in on. “Most of the time when people give you a house, it’s a good thing.”

  “It is! It is,” Daisy said. “It’s just a little overwhelming. You know, there’s all the details to work out with the trust, and . . . there’s still the down payment . . .”

  “A down payment on half a house?” Shanna said, a little scoffing in her tone. Then, “And, hello? Lawyer over here. I can help out with all the legalities of the trust. Right, Grandpa Bob?” Shanna called out loud to the room, but Grandpa Bob probably couldn’t hear her over Greg and Jamie and Rob enthusiastically talking about the house.

  “We’ll take the basement down to the studs, repair any damage, vapor-barrier the walls before we put in new insulation—” Rob was saying as he balanced Carrie on his hip. “The show actually has all this extra equipment . . . Jamie, you can come by next weekend to check it out?”

  “I wish I could, but work—I’ll be there every weekend after the holidays, all right?”

  Shanna’s face pinched, but when she turned back to Daisy, she had a smooth smile on her face. “I think I need to go check on the turkey. Come finish all the vegetables for the ratatouille . . . when you get a chance?”

  Shanna excused herself to the kitchen, leaving Daisy alone in a room full of people, talking above one another, ecstatically making plans.

  Rob was happy. Carrie was happy.

  Everything else was incidental.

  Even a down payment on half a house.

  Now . . . now they just had to figure out how to get the money.

  Chapter Seven

  The Thanksgiving table was a perfect Quinn Barrett production, from start to finish. The china was a hundred and fifty years old and handed down from Stuart’s mother at their wedding (she had several heirloom china sets handed down through her family, so she wouldn’t miss this particular Wedgwood pattern, or so she often told Quinn). The table runner was reproduction lace, in a Belgian pattern from the late 1700s. The centerpieces were a long row of seasonal plants and flowers in thematic robust colors but varying heights, allowing the eye to travel. Quinn had made the napkin rings with Hamilton out of card paper by tracing turkey cookie cutters, and they added a touch of whimsy. The candles were hand-dipped, and she had found a shop that made their own dyed cement candleholders, a splash of cutting edge to the traditional beauty of the set table.

  Martha Stewart would cry if she saw this table, Quinn thought. She would beg to include it in the magazine’s pages and ask Quinn for tips on how to put together the look.

  Meanwhile, the kitchen was a wreck. Pots and pans caked in grease. Dirty dishes everywhere. But that didn’t matter. She would set to cleaning that once Ham went to bed. She couldn’t leave it all for Gina, their newly hired housekeeper, who would be coming in tomorrow. She was the same age as Alba with the same grandmotherly charm—and best of all, Ham had taken to Gina with the same grand-nephew type vibe of reverence and adoration.

  But she’d started just that week and didn’t have the hang of everything yet.

  Quinn could hear Hamilton and Stuart in his playroom, just off the dining room. Stuart was in there with him. Deep laughter punctuated Ham’s boyish giggles.

  Quinn’s mother was due to arrive any minute, loud and garish and interrupting everything. Thank goodness she was due to return to her Florida condo to get warm and pretend she was a painter in pastel colors. Or take up quilting, or tropical gardening, or alligator rearing—whatever would hold her attention for a few months. And Stuart’s parents would not be back in the States until they grew bored along the south coast of France, usually sometime around Christmas. So, for this brief moment, everything was perfect—as well as being picture perfect.

  Instagram perfect.

  Quinn had her phone raised and was choosing her format before she remembered that her Instagram was shut down, as well as her Facebook, and every other social media account she had. Sadly, she lowered the phone. It had been three and a half weeks without checking in. Without browsing the internet. Without knowing what all of her friends and family and colleagues were saying about her.

  Three and a half weeks since her life had changed forever.

  And to be quite honest, those three and a half weeks hadn’t been so bad. Like with any crash diet, the first week or so was absolutely miserable—the stares, the whispers, the in-person gossip that is so much worse than anything the internet could ever do to you—but she was used to it now. And then of course, there were all her responsibilities to fill her time.

  Yes, true, she was no longer working on the Little Wonders Parent Association, and she was sidelined from all of her major projects at Crabbe and Co., but in a way, it was a blessing. Because without having to maintain a split focus (which she was absolutely capable of, and would have executed everything perfectly on all fronts), she would be able to execute what had been left on her plate even MORE perfectly.

  And the first of those things was the Greater New England Children’s Hospital Charity Ball.

  She was determined that this was going to be the charity ball to end all balls. The very basics of the planning had already been in place—indeed, they’d been in the works since last year’s charity ball. Now, she was determined to bring the charity ball into this decade and was spending Crabbe and Co.’s budget accordingly. Her invoices for red velvet alone would give Jeremy a heart attack.

  But it was necessary. It would be her masterpiece. Her calling card back to the world. And once the Martha Stewart feature on the now finished Beacon Hill house came out, she would be completely redeemed—and the video all but forgotten.

  Yes, redemption was within her grasp.

  The second thing that Quinn decided to laser-focus on—which was really first in her mind and heart—was Hamilton.

  She had been neglectful. She had not been the awesome parent she knew herself to be. Because if she was an awesome parent, surely her son would be completely 100 percent potty trained by now. So, she determined to redouble her efforts.

  So far, she had spent at least four straight Parcels—a full hour—every day after work reading potty books to him, talking to him about how to identify the heavy feeling in his bladder, going over basic gastrointestinal anatomy, and making up songs to be sung to the tune of the infernal earworm “Baby Shark”:

  When you feel, do do do do do do

  That you need, do do do do do do

  To go pee, do do do do do do

  Go Potty!

  The fact that “feel” “need” and “pee” did not technically rhyme irked Quinn greatly.

  Her goal was to have him completely accident free by the time he crossed the stage to sing “We Gather Together” dressed as a Pilgrim in the Thanksgiving Pageant.

  Which, he had been! For three whole weeks! Except for when he took the stage, there was that telltale wet spot on the front of his costume, and Quinn could feel, next to her, Stuart’s jaw tightening.

  It was at this inopportune time that she spied Shanna and Jamie across the aisle. Shanna kept her gaze forward, but Jamie . . . Jamie met her eye and gave her a friendly little wave. She ached to return it . . . but couldn’t.

  Excepting that small moment, the whole week before Thanksgiving had been blissful. Like a family vacation. It was just the three of them. Stuart only left the house to go to his spin class in the city. And when he came back it was to Hamilton, who practically glowed under his father’s attention. When it began to snow, Stuart rushed out to the store—an hour later, he came home with a plastic disc sled. He and Ham spent hours going up and down the hill behind the house, coming in with pink noses. He did that several times—running out to the store and coming home with something that lit Ham’s eyes up like Disney World.

  During the week, Ham went to school Monday through Wednesday . . . and Quinn decided that she could easily place her or
ders for the charity ball from her home office. So she and Stuart had spent luxurious, stolen hours together.

  It was exactly what she needed. What they needed.

  And it had led to this perfect moment. Ham and Stuart in the playroom, playing. And Quinn admiring her handiwork, setting and decorating the table. Pots bubbling away. Before the guests arrived.

  Why shouldn’t she mark this perfect moment?

  No reason she couldn’t take a picture. Just a picture, to save the moment for herself. Not every picture she posted went on social media.

  She moved around the table, trying to find the perfect angle.

  Oh, but after a few clicks, she knew this was just so beautiful—the well-dressed table in the focused foreground, the father and son very fuzzy in the background playing together—it was crying out to be seen!

  What if?

  Her Instagram hadn’t been deleted all the way from her phone. She had merely disabled it and could easily reactivate it. With trembling fingers, she went into the app.

  Before disabling, she’d deleted every single post that featured Ham (or spaceships)—keeping it entirely design oriented. So there was no “parenting” post to take the brunt of the bile. And she’d always had blocks active on her phone, hiding the comments that were offensive, or violated Instagram’s terms of use. But that was apparently so easily circumnavigated. Also, she blocked all commenters that weren’t mutual “friends.” But then people would tag her and just rag on her that way, so they knew she saw it in their feeds, if not on hers. So she logged on, trepidatious.

  The first thing she did was search her name. And then searched the “Halloween Mom” video. And much to her surprise, she didn’t find anything new. Nothing had been posted about it, or, really, her, that she hadn’t seen before.

  Maybe, just maybe, it had faded away completely. Or at least enough that she could post one Thanksgiving table and not make any waves.

  She loaded the picture up. She wrote a quick description. The wonderful calm before the storm. Then she immediately deleted it. Surely some snarker would comment, “I hope *you’re* keeping calm!” Or, “Just don’t storm all over the table like you did your kid’s Halloween costume, LOL.”