“Oh yeah? Played what? Baseball?”
She giggled. “Hockey, of course.”
I laughed with her. “Are yousure, Molls? Because I know how much you love baseball.”
Thirty minutes later, after Molly and I finished watching another cartoon, Nathan bumped into my wedged-open door. “Christmas came early for someone,” he announced.
He placed four cardboard boxes on the floor. Cappie and Bebe immediately moved from the bed to investigate.
“Hey Molly, I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk on Thanksgiving, yeah?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” Nathan attempted to leave the room.
I held up a finger, telling him to wait.
She smiled. “Mom says we’re going out to eat.”
Huh. Not what I expected.
“That’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll talk to her to figure out a time, all right? I love you, Molls.”
“Love you, too,” she sang before ending the call.
I turned my attention to Nathan. “Well, winter came early.” I shifted underneath my mountain of blankets. “The weighted blanket you got me is a lifesaver, by the way.”
“You said you missed yours, so…” Nathan cleared his throat. One hand scratched behind his neck. “Glad you like it.”
Our conversations had been stilted since Jack came to town. Every word exchanged was pleasant—toopleasant, as if neither of us wanted to step one toe out of line. The topics Nathan and I avoided piled to the ceiling at this point. Nathan’s eyes drifted to my ringless finger every day, usually when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. But I wasalwaysaware of him.
“Did you confirm our appointment with the real estate agent?” I asked to end the suffocating silence.
Nathan’s arms flexed as he propped them over his unconscionably fit chest and crossed one foot over the other, leaning into the doorframe. “Yeah, she’ll be here Tuesday to do the walk-through.”
All the rooms had been painted, except the two we slept in. We’d sold most of the furniture, aside from what we needed to live here. The appointment with the real estate agent would give us a sense of the listing price and ideas for other projects to tackle before putting it on the market. We didn’t have the budget to pay anyone to do the work, so whatever projects we undertook had to be simple enough to do ourselves.
“What’s that?” My eyes snagged on a large duffle bag in the hallway outside my door. Nathan shifted on his feet. “Are you… doing laundry?”
“Not exactly…”
“Wait, are you leaving?” I pushed myself to a sitting position. Mia growled at the sudden movement. “I’m sorry, baby,” I sang to her in the soft, high-pitched lilting tone I reserved for the cats.
Nathan nodded.
“You didn’t… why didn’t you say anything?”
Nathan blew out a breath. “I didn’t realize I needed to.”
“I mean, it’s common courtesy.”
“Common courtesy,” he repeated with a half laugh, though I wasn’t sure what was funny. It wasn’t like I didn’t knowif he’d come back. We were stuck together until our work in Middlebury was finished, but…
But I no longer wanted that to be the only reason he came back.
“Where are you going?” I asked, battling to escape layers of blankets. Once I kicked off the last one, I sprang to my feet.
Nathan stared at me with a bemused smile. “Home for a few days.” Then he broke into laughter. “Bren, I can’t take you seriously right now. You look like a snowman.”
“I’m cold! And it’s going to get colder with the storm— Wait! Nathan, you can’t leave, not with the storm.”
