by K. J. Emrick
It was a modern sort of family, and it worked for them.
Kissing Zane on the top of his head, she gave Colby a wink. “Let’s go call that father of yours. I want to see how he managed to get out of the house in this weather. Maybe he dug a tunnel. Or maybe,” she added brightly, “Santa Claus came and offered him a ride.”
Zane clapped his hands and sat up, bouncing on the bed again. “Santa! Santa! Santa’s gonna come on Christmas and that’s when we get our presents. I been good, right? I been good?”
“I have been good,” Darcy corrected him.
He looked at her funny. “Of course you been good, Mommy. You’re Mommy. You’re always good.”
Swinging her feet over the edge of the mattress, Darcy threw her arms around her son and squeezed him tight. “Now that is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day long. Know what? Santa always brings two presents for kids who say nice things about their mothers.”
Zane’s mouth opened into a wide O. “Really?” he breathed.
“Uh-huh,” Darcy promised. “Santa’s definitely going to be coming here on Christmas.”
“Even with all this snows?”
“Sure. He lives in the North Pole. He’s used to snow. As long as there’s good little boys in the house, Santa always comes.”
After hearing that, he was too excited to stay up on the bed. He slid down to the floor and started doing a dance that was mostly running in place and waving his arms up and down. He looked adorable. Darcy wished she had her cellphone up here to record it.
“Santa Claus is comin’ to town,” Zane sang, badly. “Santa Claus is comin’ toooo town!”
Colby slid off the other side of the bed, straightening out her pajamas as she rolled her eyes at her brother. “You are such a little boy.”
Zane stopped his dancing and looked across the bed at her. “How come?”
Clearing her throat, Darcy gave her daughter a warning glance. The secret of how Santa Claus really worked was not something she was allowed to tell her brother for several more years, and Colby knew it. She might be too mature for jolly old elves with rosy cheeks and jiggling bellies, but Zane was not. He still believed in the magic of it all, and his sister would get put on the naughty list for the rest of her life if she ruined it for him.
With a flip of her hand through her long hair, Colby skipped over to the bedroom door. “No reason, Zane. You’re just always going to be younger than me.”
“Well… duh,” Zane said when his sister was gone.
“That’s telling her,” Darcy agreed. “Ready for breakfast?”
“Uh-huh. Cha Cha already went downstairs. He said he was too hungry to wait for us peoples.” He pulled a face, wrinkling up his nose like he’d smelled something bad. “I don’t like his food. It’s kinda gross.”
Darcy looked at him sternly, trying to hide her sudden concern. “Zane? You haven’t been eating the dog food in Cha Cha’s bowl, have you?”
“Well, sure,” he said, “but just once. Cha Cha told me it was good and said try it, try it, so I did. Blech. Won’t try it again. Nope.”
He obviously had no idea why his mother would be worried about him eating food meant for a dog, from a bowl full of slobber and half eaten pieces and God alone knew what else. That was all well and good for dogs—and cats, for that matter—but she definitely did not want her son making a habit of eating after the four-legged members of the family. She didn’t care if Cha Cha told him to do it or not.
That was her son’s gift. He could talk to animals just like she could talk to ghosts. The difference was that his gift dealt with living creatures. For him, it was just natural to hear an animal talk and know what they were saying. He found it strange that no one else understood what Cha Cha was barking about. Why a bird was twittering at six in the morning. Why Tiptoe stared up at the corner of the ceiling with her kitty-cat whiskers twitching.
It might not be odd for him, but it was going to be plenty odd for everyone else he ran into. When he went off to school Darcy and Jon were going to have to remind him daily not to let the other kids know what he could do, for his own protection. Same as they had with Colby.
Darcy remembered her own experiences in school with her abilities, and how her friends thought she was weird whenever she told them a teacher was going to be absent before the substitute walked in the room. Or that it was Jackie Fenwold stealing the lunch money even though no one, including Darcy, had seen him doing it. Or to stay away from Mister Egars the biology teacher.
Or, that she really was talking to people they couldn’t see, or at least their ghosts…
But that was then, and this was now. She would prepare her children for the world as best she could. Kneeling down to be at eye-level with her son, she said, “Let’s not eat out of Cha Cha’s bowl again, okay? Tiptoe’s either. Can you be a big boy and promise me that?”
He nodded, very proud of himself for being a big boy. “Uh-huh. No more. Wasn’t no good anyway. It was yucky.”
“Wasn’t any good,” she corrected him.
“Any good,” he repeated. “Okay, Mommy. Can we get breakfast now?”
“Yes, we can. No dog food, though, right?”
He laughed and tried to roll his eyes like his sister. He didn’t quite have it. He looked more cute than sarcastic. “Dog food’s for dogs, people food’s for people. Promise.”
“Good. Now, you go on downstairs while I put on some pants. Go on, you.”
She shooed him with her hands, and he spread his arms out wide like an airplane, making noises for the engines as he sailed his way out of her bedroom and then down the stairs. Darcy cringed until she could tell by the sound of his laughter that he was safely at the bottom. A mother never really got over worrying for her children, is what she’d found out. Every day when Colby went to school, Darcy worried until the bus brought her back. So maybe when Zane was a teenager, she’d stop worrying about him making it down those stairs without tumbling and breaking a bone. Maybe, but she doubted it.
Where was Jon, she wondered? While she picked out a pair of jeans and a sweater to keep warm, she chewed on her bottom lip. She worried about her husband just like she worried about her children. It wasn’t like him to leave and not tell her. He always left a note or left her a text, or… oh. Maybe he had. Her phone was downstairs still. Probably there was a text waiting for her.
Well. Time to get down there and make breakfast. She was going to need to check the weather report, too. School had already been cancelled for today, but she needed to see about tomorrow. Then it would be the weekend, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. Next week was the Christmas vacation. The kids were getting an extended break.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, she found Colby already at the little round table with a bowl of cereal. Zane, on the other hand, was marching around in a circle in the middle of the floor, his little legs pumping up and down and his fists pounding out a rhythm with every step. He was making up a song as he went, ba-ba-di-da-dum-dum-dum, his face tense with concentration.
Behind him, keeping pace with his every move, a tan Bassador hound trotted on his stubby legs, tongue hanging out one side of his mouth, tail wagging furiously back and forth. Cha Cha was obviously enjoying this impromptu parade, following his boy with the sort of enthusiasm that only a puppy like him could manage.
On the countertop just to the right of the entryway from the living room, a beautiful gray cat with one black-tipped ear watched the whole thing. Tiptoe’s tail was curled around her paws. Her whiskers twitched as she turned her pearl green eyes Darcy’s way. Then she sneezed.
Darcy could read that expression easily enough. She didn’t have any of Zane’s gift, but any good furbaby mother knew how to interpret their pet’s nonverbal cues. Dogs, Tiptoe was saying with exaggerated torment. Why are dogs so dumb?
She reached over and scratched between the cat’s ears, just like Tiptoe liked, and that seemed to make things better. Her cat knew she wasn’t supposed to be up here on the counter, but
Darcy had given up trying to stop her. Tiptoe insisted she belonged up there, as the queen of her domain. As long as she stayed away from anything they were making for dinner Darcy had learned to live with it.
“You hungry, Tiptoe?” Her cat blinked, and Darcy took that as a yes. “Let’s get you some wet food this morning, what do you say to that? Looks like Cha Cha’s bowl could use a top-off, too. Hey, Colby? You didn’t want to wait for me to make pancakes?”
“You’re not going to have time,” was her daughter’s cryptic response.
“Oh really? I can whip them up pretty fast. Pancake mix, a couple of eggs, some milk, and then two minutes on each side. Won’t take me any time at all.”
Colby put another bite of Berry Magic cereal—They’re Magically Fruity!—into her mouth and chewed while she talked. “You won’t have time,” she repeated. “Look.”
The end of her spoon pointed over to the refrigerator, and Darcy looked over to find a piece of yellow notepaper held in place there by a pig magnet. She took it off, and plopped the magnet back in place, and read Jon’s strong, blocky handwriting.
Got picked up early. Home for dinner probably. Didn’t want to wake you on a snow day. Love you. Jon.
Darcy could see where he had added in the “probably” after the fact, writing it over the period at the end of “Home for dinner.” She knew what that meant. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to be out in the storm, out there doing police work in weather that should have had everyone snug in bed and watching reruns of Christmas movies.
What it also meant was that something had happened. Something that needed the attention of the police chief urgently enough to have him picked up early. That was never good. It always meant trouble.
And it usually meant another mystery for them to get involved in.
“But how did he get out?”
Darcy still didn’t understand. A quick glance out the window showed her that both of their cars were still here, both of them doing a passable imitation of a snowbank at the moment. Nothing but the windshield was visible on hers, and Jon’s was buried up to the hood under massive drifts, with more snow continuing to pile up. She couldn’t even see where the lawn ended and the road started. The big tree out front was holding massive amounts of snow up in its bare branches. If she looked up the definition of ‘snowbound’ on Google right now, there would be this exact image right next to it.
“What did he do?” she asked herself, letting the curtain fall back into place. “Tunnel out? Fly? He sure didn’t drive.”
“Vroom, vroom,” Zane said, still marching in his circle. “Daddy went vroom, vroom.”
“Bark,” Cha Cha agreed.
“Uh…” Darcy didn’t know what to make out of that.
“Heard it this morning,” Zane insisted. “Vroom vroom came in, and Daddy left.”
Colby tapped her spoon against the bowl. “He means a snowmobile,” she whispered to her mother. “I saw it go by earlier. I didn’t realize Dad was on it until I saw his note.”
“Oh, a snowmobile. Okay, that makes sense.” She’d been joking last night about how the police officers must be on foot patrol. Apparently they were a little smarter about it, and were using vehicles designed for the snow instead. Well that must be interesting.
“I guess that makes sense,” she said, mostly to herself. “No one could get through all this snow unless they—”
There was a knock on the door, interrupting the rest of what she was going to say. Apparently, people were getting around all over, no matter how much snow was out there.
“See?” Colby said as she pushed the rest of her cereal around in milk that had turned pink. “You won’t have time to make pancakes.”
Darcy smiled. Her daughter really was getting comfortable with her gift. “Don’t suppose you could tell me who’s out there?” she teased.
“Mo-o-om, I’m not psychic. I’m just me.”
“’Just you’ is plenty for me,” Darcy told her. “Can you get your brother some cereal for me, please? And then get the furries the food I promised them?”
“’Kay. Can I have a cellphone?’
Darcy was partway to the front door when that question brought her up short again. “I’m sorry, a what now?’
“A cellphone. Everyone in my class has a cellphone of their own. Audrey has one, and she keeps asking me to Snapchat with her at night and I can’t because I don’t have one and yours doesn’t do anything but get texts.”
“And take photos.”
“Well, sure.”
“And go on the internet.”
“But you don’t have snapchat.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Colby huffed. “Mom. Nobody uses their phone as a phone anymore.”
“So what do people use it for?”
“Hanging out and stuff.”
“Huh. In my day, we hung out with people, not our phones.”
With a sigh, her daughter rolled her eyes. “You’re so old.”
“Yes, I am. Breakfast now. We’ll talk about phones later?”
That made Colby perk up at least. She’d never been told ‘maybe’ about getting a phone before. She didn’t dare say anything more for fear her mother would change her mind.
This wasn’t the first time Colby had asked about getting a phone. No way would it be the last, either. Darcy had to admit, she was old enough now to have one. There was nothing to say she would have the same problems that Darcy had with hers. Ghosts kept finding her number and calling her. That might not happen to Colby.
Or it might.
Well. She’d talk to Jon about it later, whenever he got home. For now, she wanted to see who was knocking on her door.
When she opened it, there was an immediate blast of cold air and whipping snow. The front steps were buried in white drifts. She blinked her eyes against the weather and pulled in the person standing there in a big puffy coat, heavy gloves and a full ski mask knitted with pink flowers.
It took both of them to close the door against the wind.
Darcy knew who it was behind that mask. She should have known that it would be her neighbor, even if Isabelle McIntosh was never one to wear a heavy jacket in the winter. She was ‘cold blooded,’ in her words, and she loved it when the temperature dropped. Apparently she’d found her limits.
“For Pete’s sake, Izzy, get in here where it’s warm.”
“Brr,” she said as she stripped off the mask and the gloves and stamped her heavy boots on Darcy’s welcome mat. She fluffed her hair, tipped purple now in her current ombre style. “I swear, that is the worst winter storm I’ve ever seen. Like, ever. Colby, did you order all this weather?”
Colby giggled as she wrestled the dog food bag out of the cabinet. “I wish! I’ve never had so many days off from school.”
“Snows days!” Zane said, sitting up at the table now, thumping his spoon next to the bowl of cereal his sister had poured for him. “Snows days! Snows days! Snows days!”
“That’s right big guy,” Izzy told him, with a wink for Darcy. “Snows day all around.”
“Uh, it’s ‘snow day’ actually,” Darcy said with polite sternness. “We want him to say things the right way. Don’t we Zane?”
“Yes, Mom.” Her son sounded disappointed about goofing, again, and started eating his cereal with an intense concentration.
Izzy unzipped her jacket, now that she was inside. “Oh, come on, Darcy. He’s only going to be young once. Youth is the time to make mistakes. When you can still enjoy them.”
Colby laughed. She tried to hide it behind a cough, but Darcy caught it. She reminded herself to talk to her very grown-up young daughter later, so she could clarify just what mistakes were acceptable and which ones weren’t.
“Yes, Zane is young,” she said to Izzy, “but I need to prepare him to be a grownup, which includes using the right words at the right times. I don’t want Zane to be the only kid in kindergarten who doesn’t know when something is plural and when it’s no
t.”
Zane chewed his cereal. “Mom? What’s, um, plerro?”
“Plural,” Darcy told him. “Plural. It means, when there’s more than one of something. When something is plural you add the letter ‘s’ to the end of it. Like, you can see one tree, but when there’s lots of them there’s tree-suh,” she said as an example, emphasizing the ‘s’ sound.
“Ooooh,” he said, although he sure didn’t look like he understood it.
“It’s like this,” Colby told him, sitting next to Tiptoe on the floor and stroking her fur as the cat ate. “We have one cat, but some people have lots of cats. Uh, one shoe,” she said, pointing to her left foot, and then to her right, “two shoes. One hand,” she said, waving her left hand, then waving both, “two hands.”
Zane nodded like the whole world suddenly made sense. “Okay. So there can be one snow, or lotsa snows. We have lotsa snows out there, don’t we?”
Izzy had to put her hand up over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Her eyes danced with humor at the logic of a little boy.
Darcy cleared her throat. “No. When there’s lots of snow, it’s still snow. Just lots and lots of snow.”
Looking out the window at the swirling flakes falling from the sky, Zane scrunched his eyebrows down tight. “That don’t make sense. I see lotsa snows.”
“Hard to argue with that,” Izzy whispered to Darcy behind her hand.
“Fine, I relent,” Darcy said with a sigh. “I guess part of being a parent is knowing when to back off, too. Snows it is. Snows, as far as the eye can see. Speaking of mothers and their children, Izzy, how’s Lilly doing?
“She was supposed to have two weeks off from her new job to come home for Christmas. Connor couldn’t come but she was excited to come back home. But, then I got a message from her this morning saying something came up and she might not make it.” She looked so disappointed. “If I don’t hear from her by tomorrow, I’ll assume she isn’t going to make it.”
“How long’s it been since you saw her?”
“Too long. But, what can you do? That’s why I say enjoy the time when they’re young.”