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  Mitch growled at them. They shrieked in response. He tickled Timmy’s belly and tried to protect himself as best he could when Teddy started bouncing on his stomach. Lord, they would be able to hurt him before too long when they played this way.

  Then Teddy stopped moving, stopped howling. He just stood there in the middle of the bed, staring. Mitch snagged Timmy a whole two seconds before he would have plowed into his distracted brother and probably knocked him off the bed.

  “Dat?” Timmy said, pointing toward the doorway.

  It was a generic expression the twins used to ask, “Who’s that?” Or “What’s that?”

  Mitch saw Leanne standing in the doorway. Plainly, they’d woken her up, maybe even frightened her, because she seemed to have been in a hurry to get there.

  He watched as she impatiently pushed a hand through her hair, which was loose now and hung just past her shoulders. She was wearing what he suspected were a pair of men’s pajamas, the cuffs of the oversize, long-sleeved shirt rolled up to accommodate the length of her arms. Briefly, Mitch wondered whose pajamas they were, before he told himself it was none of his business anyway.

  Her cheeks were flushed. Embarrassment, he decided. He was certainly embarrassed himself at having to face her this morning. The boys had been enough of a distraction that he hadn’t even begun to figure out how he felt about what had happened last night or how he might explain himself to her.

  So he took a minute to study her, instead. Her eyes had dark circles under them, maybe of hint of redness in them, too. Had she been crying again? Not this morning, he concluded.

  “Sorry we woke you,” he said, watching her as she stifled a yawn. “The boys have seen the Lion King a few times too many. Their favorite game is pretending they’re lion cubs wrestling in the jungle.”

  “Oh.” She looked relieved. “What’s the Lion King?”

  The boys heard the name of their favorite movie and started chanting their own mangled version of the title and marching around in a circle on Mitch’s bed. Leanne looked so perplexed Mitch wanted to laugh, and he was grateful for the distraction of his sons this morning.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Mitch said. Hard as it was to believe, a few years ago he would have been as clueless as she was about the title of a popular kids’ movie. He’d seen this one so many times he could practically recite the dialogue line for line.

  “I should warn you,” Mitch added, “the boys can get the VCR cabinet open all by themselves now. If the TV’s already on, all they have to do is put the tape in the VCR and the machine turns itself on and automatically starts to play.”

  “You have toddlers who can operate a VCR?”

  Mitch nodded. “Scary, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, watching the boys and not him.

  Mitch couldn’t blame her, not after what had happened downstairs the night before. Time enough to talk about that tonight, when the boys were in bed, he decided. It wasn’t a conversation he cared to have with the boys present.

  “The twins get up at the crack of dawn,” he warned her. “Sometimes even before that.”

  “I thought I’d woken up in the middle of a war zone.”

  Mitch found himself wondering if she’d actually done that and thought he might ask her sometime. He was probably going to need all the neutral topics of conversation he could find. Then he turned to the boys and asked them to hold the noise down.

  That brought the boys’ attention back to Leanne once again.

  “Dat?” Timmy said again, pointing at her this time.

  Mitch caught them close, hoping to keep them still long enough to make introductions. “Timmy, this is your aunt Leanne. Can you say hello?”

  “Wee-Ann?” Timmy said.

  “Wee-Ann, Wee-Ann, Wee-Ann,” Teddy chanted as he bounced.

  “Close enough,” Mitch said. “They always mangle their L sounds, but I’m told that’s normal at their age.”

  Leaning against the doorway, Leanne nodded and tried to smile, but it was obviously a struggle for her. She looked so serious and so hesitant, as if she had to tell him something, but didn’t want to.

  Mitch didn’t know what she was thinking, but something warned him he probably wasn’t going to like it. “You’re not having second thoughts about staying, are you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I was just watching the boys. They’re talking and walking and playing as if they were baby lions. I guess I’ve been gone longer than I realized.”

  Mitch felt sorry for her then, because she’d missed so much.

  “They look so happy now,” she continued.

  He hugged the boys closer and felt the need to defend himself and the job he’d done with them. “They are happy. Quite often, at least.”

  He realized it was true. Despite the fact that they didn’t have a mother, despite all the problems he had raising them on his own, the boys were surprisingly happy.

  Maybe they were just that way by nature. Maybe most kids were. But it didn’t take much to please them. Bouncing on their father’s bed as if it were a trampoline. Splashing in a puddle of water a half-inch deep. Sinking their fingers and toes into the mud hole that after each rain formed in that corner of the backyard where grass refused to grow.

  They were happy here.

  And he was thinking of giving them up.

  Once again, tension settled like a ball of fire deep in his stomach when he thought about living without the boys.

  He’d never been certain he could do it.

  Then he glanced at Timmy’s poor, bruised face, the bandage. covering the cut on his eyebrow—the result of leaving his sons too many times with someone who shouldn’t be taking care of them.

  He thought about leaving them today with Leanne and not knowing whom he might leave them with next week or next month, thought about what kind of position they’d be in if anything ever happened to him and they had only him to depend on. They would be left with no one then.

  Just imagining it had Mitch mad all over again.

  He glanced up and saw Leanne still standing in the doorway. She looked as if she expected him to lay into her at any moment.

  “Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said. “It hasn’t been the best of weeks.”

  “I know,” she said softly as she stood huddled against the door.

  Mitch remembered how often Kelly had asked him to cut her sister some slack, and resolved to do just that. “I’ll try not to take out my bad days on you.”

  “It’s all right,” she insisted.

  But Mitch knew it wasn’t.

  “I didn’t mean to imply that they were miserable here or that you weren’t taking care of them,” she added. “I just worried that they might be sad about losing Kelly.”

  “They never knew her,” Mitch said, wondering once again if that was a blessing or a curse. Was it easier for them because they’d never had a mother and therefore didn’t know what they’d lost? Or had they simply been cheated out of any memory of Kelly?

  He tried to reason it out sometimes, using himself as his guide. Would he have been happier if he’d never known Kelly?

  A few people he knew who had lost a spouse had told him that eventually he’d be grateful for the time he’d had with Kelly, that his happy memories would far outweigh the pain of losing her, and he’d be grateful that she’d given him the boys.

  Mitch was grateful for his sons. Teddy, curled up against him, looked as if the morning’s wrestling session had made him tired again. And Timmy tugged on his brother, trying to get Teddy to come play again before they got kicked off Mitch’s bed.

  They were so sweet, so precious, such an incredible gift.

  For a minute, he could barely breathe just thinking about living without them.

  What had he been thinking these past few months ever to imagine he could give them up?

  He couldn’t, he realized. They were everything that was good in his life, the only thing he had left of his wife.

&
nbsp; There was no way he was giving up his boys.

  The boys were perfectly happy until they figured out their father was leaving. Timmy was angry, and he yelled and stomped his feel Teddy just cried and clung to his father. Leanne felt like the worst kind of monster when Mitch literally pried his sons’ hands off him so he could get out the door.

  Once he was gone, nothing Leanne said seemed to make anything better. Timmy remained defiant. He wouldn’t let Leanne near him. And Teddy laid his head against her shoulder and sobbed as if the entire world were coming to an end. And then Timmy started babbling in something that didn’t sound like any language Leanne had ever heard, and she’d heard a great number of languages. When Teddy stopped crying long enough to answer his brother, Timmy nodded in understanding, then started talking again in the same gibberish. Leanne knew she was in trouble.

  They’d made up their own language. She’d heard of twins doing that, but seeing it and hearing it was an incredibly unnerving experience.

  “Hey,” she said to Teddy, because she suspected he’d be more sympathetic to her than Timmy. “What about me? Talk to me?”

  Teddy merely ignored her and resumed his cryptic conversation with his brother.

  Finally, Leanne said, “Anyone want to watch the Lion King?”

  “WioKee?” Timmy said, his interest clearly piqued.

  Leanne nodded, because she thought that was what Timmy had said. Then she whispered excitedly, “It has baby lions in it.”

  “I know dat,” Timmy boasted.

  She smiled and turned to Teddy, whose sobs had been reduced to hiccups and shakily drawn breaths. “Teddy, want to watch the Lion King? We can pretend to be baby lions.”

  Teddy’s lower lip was trembling. His face was still wet with tears, but he was clearly interested, too.

  “Maybe you could help me with the VCR. To make the movie play. I don’t know if I can make it work by myself.”

  “Me do dat,” Timmy said.

  “Me!” Teddy shouted.

  And then the race was on to get to the TV. Leanne saw that the boys could indeed operate the VCR. She spread a blanket across the living-room floor in front of the TV and fed them breakfast cereal there. They had little cups with the weighted bottoms to keep the containers upright, and plastic tops to keep their juice from spilling. Leanne spooned their cereal into their mouths. So the mess was minimal.

  After breakfast, the boys wrestled with and growled at each other along with the cubs on the screen. Leanne sat back and watched them, then got caught up in the movie herself.

  An hour later, the phone rang. Leanne answered it. Wanting their turn to talk, the boys gathered around her.

  “Shh,” she told them, then tried to keep her voice even and calm as she spoke into the receiver. “McCarthy residence.”

  “His.”

  A deep, familiar voice greeted her, and for some strange reason, it sent shivers down her spine.

  “It’s Mitch. I wanted to make sure the boys calmed down after I left.”

  “They’re fine now,” she said, her voice breaking only a little. “They’re right here. Do you want to talk to them?”

  “I’d better not They might get upset again.”

  “Oh, of course.” She cleared her throat. “You didn’t tell me they speak their own language.”

  “Only when they’re mad or when they don’t get their way. Leanne, are you crying?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “What is it?”

  Obviously, Mitch was ready for the worst. She felt silly, but she couldn’t let him worry for nothing. “We watched the movie. You didn’t tell me the daddy lion died.”

  Mitch laughed, damn him.

  Leanne had been devastated. She hadn’t been expecting that little plot twist at all.

  “It was so sad,” she told Mitch. “And I was worried that it would upset the boys, but it went right over their heads.”

  “But not yours?”

  She must have been mistaken in what she thought she’d heard. Mitch McCarthy never teased her. He antagonized her and criticized her and tried his best to protect his family from her—as if she’d ever do anything to harm anyone in his family. They were, after all, her family, too.

  “Why do you find this so amusing?” she asked, glad that they were capable of having a civilized conversation.

  “Because Kelly had exactly the same reaction.”

  “Oh.” And he must have teased his wife about being too sentimental, as well, Leanne decided.

  “Hannah was watching that movie one day at our house when Kelly was baby-sitting, and Kelly just bawled. Then she lit into Marc for not warning her. But the boys have always loved the movie,” Mitch reassured her.

  “I could tell. It was the only thing I could think of to get them to stop crying this morning.”

  “I’m glad you thought of it,” he said. “Leanne, I’m going to have to go now.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry about the boys. They’re fine.”

  Leanne hung up the phone before she realized that was the most pleasant conversation she’d ever had with her brother-in-law. And maybe, with luck, he’d never bring up what had happened the night before, and they would never have to talk about it.

  That afternoon the day turned warm and sunny. Leanne and the boys went with Ginny and her children to a nearby park. The twins and Will Dalton ran for the big sandbox in the corner. And Hannah, pouting because she hadn’t been allowed to wear her high heels to the park, sat on the swings, looking absolutely dejected and waiting on her mother to take pity on her and indulge her in some other way.

  “Oh, her little heart is broken,” Leanne said.

  Ginny smiled easily. “It happens a half-dozen times a day, and she just can’t accept the fact that I’m immune to her pouting. I’m afraid she’s just rotten. Has been from the day she was born. And if you think she’s bad with me, you should see her with Marc. He just can’t say no to her, and she knows it.”

  Leanne smiled, too, thinking that Ginny Dalton had just about everything. The stab of envy Leanne felt ran deep, and she wasn’t very proud of herself for feeling this way. But from what little Leanne had seen of this woman’s life, it looked perfect.

  Leanne watched Hannah pout. “How long will this last?”

  “For hours sometimes. Hannah’s quite stubborn.” Ginny put her hand on Leanne’s arm. “Do you mind if we talk about Mitch?”

  Before last night, Leanne would have given an unequivocal yes. But now she wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. “What about Mitch?” she asked, instead.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m prying. Honestly, I think of Mitch as practically family.” Ginny led her to a park bench and motioned for Leanne to sit down, then sat herself. “Marc told me you’re staying for a few days to give Mitch some breathing room.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m glad. I can’t bear the idea of him giving the boys up, and I’m not sure Mitch would survive it. He’s been through so much already.”

  “I saw him playing with the twins this morning.” Saw him in his bed without his shirt, actually, but Leanne didn’t feel the need to mention that. “He’s wonderful with them.”

  “I think so.”

  Ginny obviously cared about Mitch and was worried about him and the boys. Leanne told Ginny what she knew.

  “Mitch said he doesn’t want to give them up, and I believe him. But he thinks they need stability in their lives, and he doesn’t think he can give them that. He’s also worried that if anything happened to him, the boys wouldn’t have anyone.”

  “Oh,” Ginny said. “Marc told me about the incident with the gun last month. He said it really spooked Mitch.”

  “It did.” Leanne thought of what that incident had led Mitch to consider. “I won’t stand by and watch the boys go to Rena. I’ll fight Mitch on that.”

  “Maybe it won’t come down to a fight,” Ginny suggested. “Maybe the two of you can work together.”

  Leanne wasn�
�t sure if she and Mitch could cooperate on anything. “Mitch doesn’t like me very much,” she confessed.

  “Mitch likes everyone.”

  Leanne laughed nervously. “Not me. He thinks that over the years I did some unforgivable things to Kelly.”

  Ginny looked quite serious. “That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you that really isn’t any of my business. But Kelly’s gone, and I may be the only one left to say it. She missed you terribly.”

  “I know.” Leanne braced herself, not sure if she wanted to hear anything else Ginny had to say.

  “Do you know what she wanted more than anything for her whole family?” Ginny smiled, as if to soften the words. “Kelly told me she wanted you to find a way to start over again with her and Alex and Amy. Maybe even with your father.”

  Instantly, Leanne was fighting back tears, and Ginny put her hand on Leanne’s shoulder before she continued.

  “The last year she was alive, we spent New Year’s Eve together. It’s a tradition that just before midnight, we all gather in the same room and take turns making some public resolutions for the coming year. Kelly didn’t say anything about it then, but she was in the kitchen with me later, and she seemed so sad. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me she wished you were comfortable enough to spend time here. She wanted her family back together.”

  When Leanne looked up, Ginny had tears in her eyes, too. “I thought you’d want to know,” she said. “I thought it would be important to you, that you might find a way to do what Kelly wanted.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” Leanne confessed, choking on her own words. “Maybe if Kelly were still here, she could show me how. But she’s not, and I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

  “Maybe you could stay awhile. Maybe if you were here, you’d find a way. Maybe Alex and Amy would help you,” Ginny suggested.

  “Maybe.”

  “Kelly’s death could be the catalyst to bring you all back together. Maybe your brother and sister want the same thing, but they don’t know how to make it happen, either.”

  “I wish they wanted that,” Leanne said wistfully.

  “Have you told them how you feel?” Ginny inquired gently.