A Family Christmas. Carrie Alexander

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      She managed to keep away for a week. After all, for most of the summer she’d had only glimpses of Danny—at the car wash, biking along Vine Street, hanging with his friends at the Berry Dairy ice-cream stand. She told herself that she should be able to wait another month for the basketball season to begin, when she could watch him to her heart’s content. No one but the coach would notice her at the games.

      Except Danny’s adoptive parents—who had far more reason than the coach to be suspicious of her motives.

      The thought of them asking her to keep away from their son sent a shiver through Rose. She had made no demands. No self-serving explanations, or attempts to meet Danny. No contact at all, even when they’d reluctantly approached her. She only wanted to see him from a distance now and then and know that he was happy.

      Rose despised the skulking, but she was used to it. She’d been raised to skulk. Her father, Black Jack Robbin, had been a dominant personality with a loud voice and a mean streak. Her two rowdy older brothers and shrill, fractious mother had taken the household noise level even higher, making Rose the silent, forgotten one of the family. Until she’d grown up, fallen in love and all the troubles had begun….

      Escape, Rose thought as she worked her way through the trees that ringed the school field. She’d done it once before. But in the end it hadn’t worked. She’d never stopped remembering. And now she was back home, freed of her father but just as stuck with her mother. The one light in her life was being able to see Danny—

      “What are you doing?” said a small voice.

      Rose let go of the branch she’d been bending out of the way so she could scan the track. It snapped back, into her face, swatting her in the eye.

      “Ouch.” She pressed the heel of her palm against her stinging eyeball.

      The small blond child who’d startled Rose came closer to stare up at her. “Say zipperzap.”

      “What?”

      The girl smiled slightly. “Saying ‘zipperzap’ makes it stop hurting.”

      Oh, I want to stop hurting. Tears were leaking down her cheek. She rubbed at her eye.

      “I say it all the time,” the girl encouraged.

      “Does it work?”

      Her face puckered doubtfully.

      Rose blurted, “Zipperzap.”

      “Better?”

      “Yeah.” She blinked the tears away. “It worked.”

      “Princess Ella Umbrella Pumpkinella Fantabuzella says zipperzap to make her wishes come true.”

      Rose didn’t get children. “Uh. Sure.”

      The girl came closer, stepping off the mown field into the underbrush. “It’s a very good story. You should read it.”

      “Maybe I will.”

      “The liberry has all the Princess Ella books.” The girl stared. “You go to the liberry?”

      “Yeah, I do.”

      “I saw you there. But I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.” The girl came closer, though she stayed on the other side of the sapling that had struck Rose. She was thin and pale and seemed very delicate, almost weightless. An unzipped pink windbreaker flapped on her small body and her pants had cartoon characters on them. She wore frilled anklets under her pink jelly sandals. Clean, tidy and quiet. Not much like the boisterous kids who came tearing into the Buck Stop, the only type of youngsters Rose usually encountered. Families didn’t stay at Maxine’s Cottages.

      “My name is Rose.”

      The girl’s eyes were blue marbles. “Lucy,” she said in a whisper.

      “Hi, Lucy. Nice to meet you. But you’d better go back where you came from now.”

      “My dad said I could play in the woods if I wanted.”

      “Then I’ll go.” Rose looked through the screen of yellowing poplar leaves as runners approached. The boys of the basketball team wouldn’t be running outdoors much longer. Soon all their time would be spent in the gym, where watching Danny was impossible for her.

      Rose faded back. “Is your father nearby?” she asked Lucy.

      Lucy nodded and pointed toward the open field. “Coach Grant.”

      Of course. Rose remembered that she’d seen him with a little girl. She just hadn’t paid a lot of attention to faces or names, tending to be occupied with her own concerns whenever he was around.

      Rose winced to herself. Lucy would tell Evan about her encounter with the woman in the woods. Asking the girl not to say anything would make the situation even worse.

      She had come here with a cover story—the usual, sketching in the outdoors, which wasn’t even a lie. But it was best to leave immediately, even if she hadn’t managed to get a long look at Danny. She could wait. Good training for the years ahead, when she’d be plunged back into the void of no contact at all.

      Sneakered feet pounded the track. Rose drew deeper into the woods. Above the heavy breathing of the laboring runners, she heard Evan Grant’s voice, urging them to keep up the pace. He was a good coach, even-tempered, disciplined, encouraging, yet still intense enough to rally the team at game time.

      “Where’s your mom?” Rose asked Lucy after the runners had gone by. She couldn’t remember there being a Mrs. Grant at the games. A proper citizen recognized every face in small-town Alouette, but Rose kept to herself.

      And skulked.

      Lucy had caught at her bottom lip with a row of small white baby teeth. One gap. Her narrow shoulders sloped. “My mom’s in heaven.”

      Rose gulped. “Sorry.”

      Lucy’s shiny lip pooched out a little. “She’s there for a very long time. Daddy says she won’t ever come back.”

      There was a pause between them, awkward on Rose’s side.

      “No, she won’t.” Rose had no talent for talking to children. She hoped it was okay to tell the girl the truth. “My dad is in heaven, too.” Most folks would say Black Jack had gone straight to hell, but even Rose knew that Lucy didn’t need to hear that particular truth.

      “Then he could be an angel, like my mom.”

      Rose smiled at the thought of Black Jack in flowing white robes. She’d never seen him wear anything but worn work clothes topped by a smelly fishing vest and hat. Soap couldn’t touch his grime. A halo was out of the question.

      Lucy had followed Rose deeper into the trees. She pointed. “What’s that?”

      “My sketchbook.”

      “I have one, too. But it’s in my backpack. I left it in the car. My baby-sitter is getting a root canal. That’s an operation СКАЧАТЬ