“Trying to get Amelia to come up. She was upset.”
He looks concerned. “About what? Being stuck here?”
I scoff. “No. The opposite. She doesn’t want to leave. And now I feel like the bad guy for insisting on it.”
He leans against the counter. “If you could change it, would you?”
I sit and pour myself a glass of juice from the carton on the table. “In a perfect world, yeah. But the world is far from perfect, Carter.”
Amelia bounds up the stairs and beelines to Carter, wrapping him in a hug.Him. Notme, her own mother.
Christian comes into the kitchen, and Carter and I both look surprised. It’s too early for any teenager to be up on a non-school day.
“What’s got you up so early?” Carter asks, helping Amelia get situated at the table.
“You.” Christian parks his forearm crutches against the counter, drops heavily into a seat, and bites into a blueberry pancake. “Since when do you sing in the shower?”
I raise an amused brow and stare at Carter.
He chuckles. “Today seemed like a good day to start.”
Then it hits me. Oh, God. If Christian heard him singing in the shower, did he—my chest seizes—hearus last night?
My question is answered when I say good morning to Christian and he mumbles a return greeting but doesn’t make eye contact.
I pinch my brows, mortified, and slowly lower myself into a seat.
Five minutes later, all of us eating and talking and laughing, Carter turns to me. “This world seems pretty perfect to me.”
His words settle over me like a warm blanket, bringing hope for calm nights, a promise of protection from the storm, and the peace that normalcy provides. All the things I can only dream of.
Chapter Thirty
Kenna
“Mommy, I’m bored.”
I set aside the last of the clean breakfast dishes and cross my arms. “You’re always bored. We can play cards in a minute.”
Carter puts away the orange juice and cracks a smile. I know what he’s thinking. Slapjack. I’m not sure either of us will ever look at the simple game the same way again.
“I’m tired of being inside,” she whines.
“What are you talking about? We were outside every day last week.”
“But today is today.”
I have no idea what that means, but she’s four. To her, everything is about what we’re doing right now.
Carter scoops her up, twirls her around with some dance moves, then puts her down. “I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.”
Amelia’s giggle echoes in the room. She, too, loves it when he quotes Dr. Seuss. And based on Carter’s reactive smile, the sound may have just melted all the snow in a ten-mile radius of his heart. It makes me both happy and sad at the same time.
“Carter,” Amelia says. “Will you build another Frosty with me?”
“It would be my pleasure.” He glances outside. “How about this? We’ll play cards and board games this morning. I’ll make soup for lunch, and once we’re all nice and warm, we’ll head outside. By then there might even be enough snow to buildtwoFrostys.”
She squeals and runs off to the living room, presumably to get her favorite games.
