he had nothing to worry about on the first score, despite the near-constant ache in the center of her chest. But she knew there was no way of predicting a child’s reaction to a recent—or even not so recent—loss, what might set him off. Which was why there was no way she’d disrespect Aidan’s wishes, whether he trusted, or believed, her or not.
One more day…
“And up there on those shelves,” Robbie said, “are all the Lego sets I built. Cool, huh?”
Her gaze lifting to the high shelf that hugged the ceiling along two whole walls, Winnie nodded. “Very cool,” she said, thinking, Boy, kiddo—you really, really lucked out. Light poured through a pair of huge windows into a child’s dream of a room, three times the size of hers at home, a cross between a video arcade, museum and library. Not that she imagined Robbie had a clue how fortunate he was, since he had nothing to compare it to. Nor, it occurred to her, would he have known what he’d been missing, if she’d—
Uh, uh, uh.
She stopped in front of an eight-by-ten photo of Robbie and his parents, taken a few years ago. Like those Russian nesting dolls, a grinning Aidan had June wrapped in his arms from behind; an even more broadly smiling June held an obviously giggling Robbie the same way. Winnie’s gaze touched each one in turn, lingering a little too long on Aidan’s image.
“That’s my mom,” Robbie said beside her, holding some sort of flying contraption built out of a gazillion interlocking plastic bits.
“I figured. How old were you?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Like five? She wasn’t sick then, I know that.” He spun and sank with a bounce on his bed, the twin-size mattress covered with a wool blanket ablaze in a bold geometric pattern of bright oranges and yellows and reds. As the scent of browned butter drifted into the room from downstairs, he said, “Mom painted the stars and stuff on my ceiling all by herself.”
Winnie dutifully looked up. “Wow. That must’ve taken her a long time.”
“I guess. I was in the hospital with ‘pendicitis, she had it all done by the time I got back.”
A dull knife twisted in her own belly, that he’d had appendicitis and she hadn’t known. That if she hadn’t turned chicken, she would have. Annoyance churning around the knife, she looked over at his bookcases. “That’s a lot of books. Have you read them all?”
“Some. Mom and Dad read the others to me. Mom, mostly.” He paused. “Even when she was too sick to get around very much, she still read to me.”
The ache of loss in his voice brought tears to Winnie’s eyes, even as it hit her what this was all about. “It feels good to talk about your mom, huh?”
Turning the plane or whatever it was over and over in his hands, Robbie finally nodded, further confirming her suspicions when he said, “Dad doesn’t like it when I talk about her.”
“What makes you think that?”
The boy’s shoulders jerked. “I just know, that’s all.”
Winnie lowered herself to sit beside him. “What about Flo?” she said gently. “Or…maybe somebody at school?”
“Flo always looks like she wants to cry. And at school it’s like…” On a pushed breath, he set the plane down and looked at her. “Ever since Mom died, nobody treats me normal anymore. The grown-ups all act like I’m gonna go weird on ‘em or something, and the other kids…sometimes I think they’re scared if they say something to me about Mom dying, it could happen to them, too. It sucks,” he added on a long sigh.
“Yeah. It does.” It had been a lot like that for her, too, after her own parents died. Especially the part about not being treated normally, when the one thing a child most craves is exactly that—for things to start feeling normal again, as much and as soon as possible. She hesitated, then folded her arms across her midsection. “You really should talk to your daddy about how you feel.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” She ducked her head to look into his face. “Would you like me to say something to him for you? Would that help?”
A shrug.
“But if you can talk to me—”
“That’s diff’rent.”
“Can you tell me why?”
Another shrug. From downstairs, Aidan called them to lunch. “Robbie,” she said gently, getting to her feet. “I’m not…” She stopped, cleared her throat. “I’m not gonna be around much longer. You’ve gotta find somebody to talk to, okay? And maybe, now some time’s passed, your dad’s more ready than you think?”
“He’s calling, we better go,” Robbie said, tossing the plane onto the mattress and sprinting toward the door, leaving Winnie behind.
In more ways than one.
Ladling out the soup into three brightly painted bowls, Aidan glanced up when Winnie came into the kitchen. Alone.
“Where’s the lad?”
“Washing up,” she said, clearly avoiding his gaze.
“So…how did it go?”
“Give me a minute,” she said softly, picking up the sandwich plates from the counter to set them on the plank wood table taking up most of the room, then reaching over to fiddle with the dried flower arrangement that had been there forever. On a sigh, she straightened, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets, her gaze drifting toward the patio doors and the forest beyond. “Great house.”
“Is that your attempt at steering the conversation into safer waters?”
He heard a short, humorless laugh. “Right now I’ve got a hole the size of Montana in my chest. And I have no earthly idea how to fix it. So humor me. I say, Great house. And you say, Thanks. Or whatever, I don’t care.”
Even though there was no reason to feel even remotely sorry for her—after all, none of this would be happening if she’d stayed in Texas—some rusty, unused part of him did, anyway. At least enough to play along. For the moment. “I’m afraid it’s a bit messy—”
“Forget it, it just looks lived in, that’s all. Miss Ida’d have a hissy fit if her house wasn’t spotless at all times, but all that cleaning and polishing and straightening up always seemed like a huge waste of time and energy to me. What’s the point of putting things away if you’re just gonna use ‘em again in a few hours?”
“Exactly,” Aidan said, feeling better. Over the sound of running water from the hall bath, Robbie started singing at the top of his lungs. Winnie smiled.
“He always do that?”
“He used to,” Aidan said, pouring milk for Robbie, tea for them. “All the time. What he lacks in talent he makes up for in enthusiasm.”
Winnie quietly laughed, then fiddled with the end of her sleeve for a moment before saying, “Um…if it’d help, I’d be glad to hang around while Robbie has his friend over. Just until Flo gets back, I mean. To free you up so you can get back to work?”
“I couldn’t ask you—”
“Just to make sure the boys stay out of trouble. Believe me, they won’t want some dumb girl getting in their way. So there’s no ulterior motive here, I swear,” she said, her cheeks pinking. “And anyway, it’s the least I can do after all your help with my truck.”
Aidan watched her for a moment, then said quietly, “This is the first time since June’s death Robbie’s asked to have a friend over, didya know?”
“Ohmigosh…no. I didn’t.”
“So it won’t bother me to have another child in the house. Still…”
“Let