One Frosty Night. Janice Kay Johnson
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smile as they both watched Carson give a cheerful wave and hop into the red Jeep Cherokee. “There’s not much he can run into between there and here.” She turned on her heel. “Except the garage doors, I guess. Mom might not appreciate that.”
“Yeah, and us.” Ben’s hand on her arm drew her up the driveway. “Although I have taught him to brake.”
“You were such a stodgy driver for a teenage boy.” Olivia cursed herself the minute the words were out. Reminders of their past were not a good idea.
“That’s a compliment, right?” he said, deliberately echoing her from a minute ago.
She had to laugh.
“He’s doing okay for a kid. In fact, he’s sure he has it all down pat, which means he’s cocky.”
She wondered at the shadow that crossed his face after that. What was he thinking as he watched Carson carefully maneuver the Cherokee up the driveway, braking neatly in front of the garage only a few feet from them?
“He’s on the basketball team, right?” she asked.
“Huh?” He turned his head. “Carson? Yeah. He’s not real happy because he didn’t start Friday night. There’s something going on with the team. I don’t know what.”
“You can’t exactly go berate the coach because your kid didn’t get enough playing time, can you?”
He made a sound in his throat that she recognized as frustration. “No, I have to step carefully. In this case...”
The driver’s side door slammed. Carson ostentatiously stashed the keys in his own pocket. Ben’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Did your dad tell you he helped me learn to parallel park?” Olivia asked.
“Sort of,” Ben muttered, and she elbowed him.
“I passed the driver’s test, didn’t I?”
“Pure luck.”
Her elbow brought a sharp exhalation this time. “Skill.”
Carson watched them with obvious interest. “You guys, like, hooked up when you were in high school, didn’t you?”
“A very long time ago,” Olivia agreed, not looking at Ben as she led the way onto the front porch. “I got together with a bunch of old high school friends Friday night. Nicki was in town,” she said as an aside to Ben. “It got me thinking. I was sixteen years old when your dad and I broke up, and that was sixteen years ago.”
“You were my age?” The horror in the teenager’s voice made both adults laugh, although Ben’s was more subdued than Olivia’s.
“Well, I was a little older.” Ben’s tone was cautious. “Eighteen.”
“Weird,” his kid pronounced.
They stamped the snow from their boots, stepped inside and took off their parkas, hats and gloves in the entryway, laying them on the tile floor. Leaving boots there, too, they padded in stocking feet to the kitchen. The spicy smell of baking worked like a beacon.
“Mrs. B.” Ben went to her mother and kissed her cheek. “Good to see you under better circumstances.”
Marian’s smile dimmed at the reminder that their last meeting was at the funeral, but she relaxed again when he introduced Carson. She cut generous slabs of a cinnamon-flavored cake, and they sat talking while they ate it and sipped coffee. Perhaps inevitably, Olivia’s mother remarked on how proud she’d been of Ben for starting the initiative to bury that poor girl.
Carson ducked his head. Death, it occurred to Olivia, didn’t often become quite so real to kids.
“It’s so hard to believe no one at the high school recognized her,” Marian said. “Are kids talking about it still?”
Ben’s gaze rested inscrutably on his son’s averted face. “Not as much as I’d have expected. Carson?”
He gave a jerky shrug. “There’s not that much to say. I mean, since no one knew her.”
“I suppose it wasn’t all that different from reading in the newspaper about something like this happening elsewhere in the country.” Marian gave a small laugh. “Or should I say, reading online?”
“Probably.” Ben smiled at her.
“I almost wish people would quit talking about her.” Not until she saw the way the others all stared at her did Olivia realize how vehemently she’d said that.
“What do you mean?” Ben asked.
“Oh...I get the feeling a lot of people don’t care about her at all. They’re too busy congratulating themselves for their generosity to bother imagining her as a real person. Someone scared. Cold.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Carson’s body jerk and she wondered about that, but not much. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t shuddered herself. “And then there are the ones who got to see themselves on TV and haven’t gotten over it.”
Creases in Ben’s forehead had deepened. “Don’t you think it’s normal for people to feel good after they’ve done something a little above and beyond?”
“Oh, I suppose.” She knew he was right. The people who didn’t want to talk about the girl at all bothered her just as much, but she knew that was dumb. Not everyone was given to brooding about a tragedy that didn’t directly impact their own lives. A couple of times lately she’d caught herself speculating, though... But that was dumb, too. Just because someone was brusque to the point of being rude when the subject arose didn’t mean a guilty conscience. “Where do you hear people talking?” Ben asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“Mostly in line at Bowen’s.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear sometimes our regulars come in to pick up something they don’t even need just to have a chance to gossip.”
Ben’s expression lightened. “Aren’t women supposed to be the worst gossips?”
She made a face at him. “Don’t believe it.”
“Come on.” He was definitely amused now. “Men are strong and silent. You know that.”
Olivia snorted. Ben laughed, but Mom didn’t. In fact, she looked strained, making Olivia remember the silence that had run so dark and deep between her parents. Maybe this wasn’t the best of topics.
“We were thinking about going sledding,” she announced. “Although now that I can feel my toes again, I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t be a wimp.” Ben smiled at her with warm brown eyes. “It’ll be fun.”
“I’ll probably be the oldest person on the hill.” Oh, she was pathetic, wanting to be talked into going.
“Nope. That’d be me.”
“I don’t suppose you want to come and be the oldest person?” she asked her mother, who shook her head firmly.
“Not a chance.”
New widows probably didn’t appear in public playing in the snow, it occurred belatedly to Olivia. Did grieving daughters?
Dad wouldn’t mind. And the truth was...she’d been mourning him for almost a year already, knowing full well they were losing him.
Which was true of Mom, too, of course, which made it more reasonable for her to have decided already what she wanted to do about the house. Olivia discovered she didn’t feel that forgiving, though.
And I won’t think about it right now.
Instead, she was going to let herself have fun.
“Oh, fine,” she said, getting up to take her dishes to the sink. “Do you know if we still have a sled out in the garage?”
“I think so,” her mother