Hold Me Close(78)

“I didn’t know he was coming over.”

“No. Of course you didn’t.” Heath shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. He scuffed a trench in the couple of inches of snow on the walk. “Have him shovel this for you before it gets too heavy.”

“Heath.”

He leaned suddenly to hug her, but not long enough and clearly as though it were a duty, not desire. “Later.”

She watched him get into his car and drive away, and by the time his taillights had blinked red one last time, the snow had almost filled in the furrow he’d made. It also covered her hair and shoulders, and she brushed it off before she went inside. She stamped her feet on the mat. Mitchell and her mother turned.

“Hey,” he said with a slowly widening grin that lit his hazel eyes. “I was just thinking I needed to send out a Saint Bernard with a barrel.”

“You’d think she’d have more sense to come in out of the weather,” her mother said.

Effie smiled at them both. “You’d think so, huh?”

“They’re about ready for the cake,” her mother said.

Effie nodded. “So, Mitchell. Do you want to help us sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”

* * *

The snow hadn’t stopped. Effie’s mom had insisted on heading out to get home, but the two girls who were supposed to leave ended up staying so their parents didn’t have to come out in it. Now they were all settled in the den in sleeping bags with bowls of chips and cans of cola, watching episodes of whatever the currently popular teen show was.

Effie and Mitchell were in the living room. He’d helped her clean up the kitchen after dinner, moving around her kitchen with an easy efficiency that had unsettled her. By the time they’d finished, his car had vanished beneath a blanket of snow.

She’d invited him to stay.

She regretted it now, with the rise and fall of voices from the other room reminding her they were anything but alone. He’d lit a fire in her cranky fireplace. He’d suggested they play cards and offered to teach her to play gin rummy. He hadn’t tried to kiss her, but what would happen later, when even the girls in the next room started to fall asleep? Was he expecting to share her bed?

“They’re being really quiet,” Mitchell said as he dealt another hand. “My sister and her friends were always so loud my parents had to holler at them.”

“They’re a good bunch of girls. We can just hope there isn’t going to be any drama. So far, so good.”

“Uh-oh. Are you expecting some?” Mitchell looked at the cards in his hand, fanning them out.

Effie took her own cards, sorting them. “You never know. There’s been a little bit already with one of the girls, but hopefully it’s resolved. But they’re preteen girls. Drama happens.”

“My sister used to have frenemies. Hell,” Mitchell said with a thoughtful pause, “I think she still does.”

“How old is she?” Effie studied her cards, trying to strategize.

“Twenty-two.”

She looked up, surprised. “Oh. So she’s much younger than you.”

“Yeah, about fifteen years. I had an older brother who died in a boating accident when I was pretty young.” Mitchell said this easily, an old pain that had diminished enough to be made casual. “My parents never quite got over it. Then when I was fifteen, lo and behold, a baby sister.”

“That must’ve been a surprise.”

Mitchell smiled faintly and shrugged. “It was a surprise to my dad, for sure.”

Ah. So there was a story. Effie put down a card, picked up another. Laid down a set. “Am I getting the hang of this?”

“Yep.”

They played in silence for a minute or so, until Mitchell won. Effie tossed down her cards in mock disgust, though she didn’t care about winning or losing. As she leaned to gather the cards to shuffle for her turn as dealer, Mitchell leaned, as well.

He kissed her. Effie didn’t pull away. Mitchell was the one to withdraw first. When she opened her eyes, he’d gotten to his feet to go to her mantel to look at the framed pictures arrayed there. He ran his finger along the wood, pausing at the large collage frame Effie had put together years ago when she and Polly had moved into this house from Heath’s apartment.

“Is he Polly’s father?”

“No.” Effie gathered the cards and tapped them into a tight deck, then slipped them into the box. She closed it and went to stand beside Mitchell.


There was a photo of her with baby Polly, wrapped in a pink blanket. Tiny face screwed up on the verge of tears. Heath next to them, making a face. His hair had been long then, past his shoulders, and tied at the back with a shoelace. Effie had been fat in the face and soft in her belly, the remnants of pregnancy. There was a picture of Polly in a baby swing on the playground, Heath pushing her. A photo of the three of them she’d had taken at one of those mall stores, the background a covered bridge and trees with brightly fake fall leaves. She hadn’t looked at any of these pictures in a long time, but she could remember when and where each of them had been taken.

Mitchell turned. “He might as well be, though. Huh?”

“Yes. I guess so. He’s been in Polly’s life since before she was born.” Effie looked at the picture next to the collage. That one was Polly’s school picture from last year. She’d changed so much in those few months.