Page 26 of Big Santa | AllFreeNovel

six

Maverick

By week three, I know what time Noelle gets Shiloh ready for bed.

I don’t mean to.

I simply notice that if my phone hasn’t buzzed by seven-thirty, I start checking it.

In the middle of dinner meetings. In the back of cars. Once, embarrassingly, in the middle of a site walk-through in Atlanta, standing in two inches of red clay mud in a hard hat while the project manager explained a drainage problem I should have been listening to.

This is practical. I’m his father. I want to know how his day went. The fact that Noelle tells me about hers too is incidental.

Tonight I’m in another hotel room. Miami this time, though they’ve started to blur. Same king bed. Same muted television playing a game I’m not watching. Same view of a parking garage and a strip of orange sky going gray. It’s eighty-one degrees outside, and somebody has wrapped the palm trees by the hotel entrance in white lights, which fjust looks dumb. Frankly it feels like a personal insult to December, Christmas and palm trees.

At 7:34, my phone buzzes on the nightstand.

I’m reaching for it before the second vibration.

Noelle: Shiloh wore his dinosaur rain boots to school today.

There’s a picture attached.

Shiloh is standing beside the front door wearing jeans, a red sweater, and bright green rubber boots. The boots have little spikes down the back of the calves and googly eyes on the toes. One of the eyes is missing—which Shiloh always explains that it’s because he’s winking. His hair is sticking up in the back, and his backpack is on upside down.

He’s grinning. Wide open, every tooth showing.

I run my finger against his image. God, I miss him.

Me: It’s not raining.

Noelle: I mentioned that.

Me: And?

Noelle: He said dinosaurs don’t care about the weather.

I nod. That’s reasonable.