Janice Johnson - Kids by Christmas

Tom had intended to run errands tomorrow, but to hell with them. He’d stick around until the kids had come, find an excuse to be out in the yard so he could meet them, maybe be out in the yard again after they left in case Suzanne wanted to talk some more. Tell him how the visit had gone.

Taking his plastic-covered dinner out of the microwave, he issued himself a warning. For God’s sake, the woman was afraid of him! She wasn’t likely to go from that to wanting to share his bed.

His bed? Who was he kidding? Suzanne Chauvin was a marry-or-nothing kind of woman if he’d ever seen one.

Nope, stick to admiring from afar, he told himself.

But he was still going to be out there tomorrow, both to meet the kids and because he’d decided he liked Suzanne the day she’d hauled that son of a bitch’s stuff out to the driveway.

MRS. BURTON DROVE a rattle-trap of a car, even worse than Suzanne’s. It gasped and coughed as she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.

Suzanne hurried out even before the car doors had opened. After the foster mother laboriously cranked her window down a few inches to greet her, Suzanne smiled. “Thank you so much for bringing them. You take your time with your errands.”

“I’ll do that.” She fixed a stern gaze on Sophia and Jack, who had come around to Suzanne’s side of the car. “You two do what Ms. Chauvin asks you to do, hear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Burton,” they chimed, heads swiveling as they tried to see the yard and house and street all at once.

“I’ll be back around two-thirty.” She rolled up her window again and backed out of the driveway.

Glad it wasn’t raining today, Suzanne said, “Do you want to see the yard quick before we go in?”

“Sure,” Sophia agreed.

Jack nodded. His eyes were wide and he was sticking close to his sister.

Suzanne led them toward the back gate. As she did so, Tom’s garage door began to roll up.

He stepped out and glanced their way as if surprised to see them, which didn’t fool Suzanne for a minute.

“Your visitors are here, eh?”

“Yes, Sophia, Jack, this is my closest neighbor, Tom Stefanec.”

They both nodded shyly.

He smiled at them, once again startling Suzanne. Had he always looked so kind? How was it she’d never noticed?

“Good to meet you. Suzanne is excited about you coming.”

“I’ve been sitting by the window for the last hour,” Suzanne admitted.

“We could have come sooner,” Sophia offered. “But Mrs. Burton kept saying no, that we’d said one so it was going to be one.”

“She probably didn’t want to take me by surprise.” Suzanne opened the side gate. “Mr. Stefanec was nice enough to mow my lawn this fall. My mower wasn’t starting.”

He looked over the two kids. “You two ever mowed before?”

They both stared at him, their heads shaking in unison. “We never had a yard before,” Sophia told him.

“Might be a good chore for you to take on.”

“Jack never had chores,” Sophia said with a sniff. “I did everything.”

“Did not!” her little brother protested, if quietly. “I helped, too!”

“Did not,” she repeated under her breath.

He smouldered.

Laughing, Suzanne laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. Here, you’ll both have to help, because we have the whole yard and house to keep up.”

“Well, I’m glad I met you,” Tom said again. “Suzanne, you let me know if I can help haul anything you’ll need for the kids with the pickup.”

Letting the kids go ahead into the backyard, she turned back. “Really? You’ve been so nice already about the lawn….”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

She smiled at him, thinking again what a nice face he had. “I can get mattresses delivered, but I’ll probably scour thrift stores for other furniture. Just in case I buy something too big for my car, I’d really appreciate it if you’d pick it up for me.”

“Glad to.” He nodded toward the excited voices that came from around the house. “You’d better catch up with those two.”

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “Thank you.”

His answering smile was friendly, his stride relaxed as he walked away.

She’d felt really comfortable with him there for a minute, as if they were old friends. Shaking her head in bemusement, Suzanne headed into the backyard.

Jack was standing under the apple tree staring up at the gnarled dark branches, bare of leaves at this season. “I could climb it.”

“Do you like to climb?” Suzanne asked.

He stole a shy glance at her. “I never had a tree. But I like the monkey bars at school.”

“When he was real little, he climbed on top of a dresser and freaked Mom,” Sophia said. “And he used to get out of his crib. I remember that.”

“In the summer, I eat out here sometimes,” Suzanne said. “The patio furniture is in the garage. But we can go in that way.”

The sliding door led directly into the dining area and kitchen. The kids crowded behind her, craning their necks again.

“It’s not very big,” she began apologetically, before seeing the expressions on their faces.

They looked as excited as if her modest house was a mansion.

“Pretty.” Sophia touched the quilted runner on the table. “You even have flowers.”

She’d bought the bouquet on impulse at the grocery store yesterday, a spray of showy blooms in yellow and lime-green and hot-pink. They weren’t fragrant the way flowers from her own garden were, but Sophia was right. They were pretty.

“And here’s the living room.” Suzanne trailed behind them.

Sophia sat briefly on the sofa and bounced. “Your TV is little.”

“I don’t watch very often.”

She received two identical, dumbfounded stares.

“Mom had it on all the time.”

“But she was bedridden, wasn’t she?”

“She didn’t ride anything.” The ten-year-old looked at her as if she were stupid.

“I mean, she was in bed most of the time. So she didn’t have much else to do.”

“I guess not.” She lost interest. “Can we see the bedrooms?”

“You may.”

She’d expected them to race down the hall. Instead they went slowly, wonderingly, Sophia touching the frames of pictures she had hung on the wall, then hesitating for a moment before turning into the first open doorway.

This bedroom was at the front of the house and was slightly the larger of the two.

“I used to store yarn in here, until I opened my own yarn shop.”

“Can it be mine?” Sophia asked. She turned in a circle, taking in the bare, off-white walls, the empty closet, the scuffed wooden floor.

“You haven’t seen the other one yet.”

“I like this one.”

“Then if everything works out, this one will be yours.” Suzanne smiled at Jack. “Let’s go look at the one right across the hall.”

She could tell he didn’t want to leave his sister, but he did follow Suzanne. “I’ve used this one for my guest room,” she told him, “so it already has a bed in here. You’d probably want a twin size instead, so there’d be more space to play in here. And for a desk and a dresser and…”

He’d gone directly to the window and looked out. “I can see the tree. It’s practically touching the glass! I like this room.”

“I’m glad. If you could pick any color for the walls, what would it be?”

He turned, thin face serious. “Green is my favorite color in the whole world.”

“I like green, too.”

Sophia jostled past Suzanne. “This room is way cool, too!” Her eager gaze turned to Suzanne. “Can we decorate our own rooms the way we want?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”