Snowbound With The Best Man. Allie Pleiter

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       Chapter Five

      Bruce and Carly managed to have a pleasant “vacation” day Monday. Visiting Darren and his elk herd up at the national park, they’d had a whole long, unhurried day out in nature. Darren’s elk had always fascinated Carly; he’d often wondered if they were the source of her imaginary unicorn thing. She’d “seen” one of her unicorns in the forest, playing among the elk herd. Was that good? Or bad? Whatever it was, the sighting had put her in a good mood, which at least meant his plans to spend quality time with Carly might succeed.

      Until Tuesday morning anyway. The first words out of his daughter’s mouth were a whiny, “I’m tired of outdoor stuff. I wanna go play with Lulu today.”

      Had anyone ever thought about bottling a five-year-old’s bored whine as a deterrent? To anything and everything? He loved Carly, but that girl had a pitch to her whine that could set his teeth on edge. He’d been expecting a request for a repeat visit to Lulu’s, but he’d thought it would at least come after breakfast. Not his daughter’s first waking words. “Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” he said.

      “Can I?” She padded over in bright yellow pajamas covered in rainbows.

      He put down his newspaper and pulled her up onto his lap. “Lulu has school today, remember? I thought you and I could have fun.”

      “Is it gonna snow today? Can we go sledding?”

      Bruce turned to the weather page at the back of the paper and pointed to the pictures that showed the week’s forecast. He pointed to the big snowflake on the box marked for Thursday, the one after the box with the big heart on Wednesday for the holiday. “The snow isn’t coming until after Valentine’s Day.” He noticed, but didn’t explain, the warnings about significant snowfall for the weekend. “But there are lots of other fun things we can do before then. We haven’t gone to see the bakery, or the fishing store, or visited the frozen waterfall yet.”