LITMIR.BIZ

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she might not, he thought as he backed the van out onto the street. Judging by the newspaper article, things must have been difficult for her there. The article had included a rude comment from an old boyfriend of hers and his suggestion that she wasn’t the beautiful, sweet woman she appeared to be on television.

      “Can we keep her till she wakes up?”

      “She’ll be awake in the morning,” Ben assured his daughter.

      “If you don’t kiss her, she won’t.”

      “She’s not Sleeping Beauty,” Vanessa told Roxie. “She’s just a lady that’s asleep. Grandma said she’s on television.”

      “Right.” Ben took the turn that would lead them home. “She does the news at night. Like Peter Jennings.”

      In the rearview mirror he saw Roxie wrinkle her nose. “The news!”

      “It’s an important job,” Vanessa informed her. “Daddy watches it all the time. That’s how you learn what’s going on in other places.”

      To Roxie, who cared mostly about her room, her house and Marianne’s Day Care, that seemed irrelevant.

      “She can sleep in the other twin bed in my room, Daddy,” Vanessa offered. “So she isn’t afraid when she wakes up.”

      He’d told his mother that he intended to put Natalie on the sofa, but he’d just repainted the fourth bedroom upstairs and put the futon from the family room in it. She’d be comfortable there, and he’d be more likely to hear her if she woke up in the middle of the night, wondering what had happened and where she was.

      He turned into their driveway, which was lit by floodlights at the front of the house. He hit the garage door opener and pulled into the dimly lit interior.

      The girls scrambled out and went ahead of him to open doors.

      He scooped Natalie Browning out of the front seat and into his arms. She lay limply against him, the scent of gardenias intermingled with the smell of a mentholated rub.

      He remembered her looking into his eyes and telling him that he was “the one.” The one her dream had sent to give her a baby.

      He walked into the house with her, as Vanessa held the kitchen door open. He couldn’t help wondering why a beautiful young woman would have gone to a sperm bank in the first place. Unless the boyfriend quoted in the article was right and she was cold and forbidding.

      It was hard to tell when he’d spoken to her only while she’d been incoherent. But she didn’t look like a cold-hearted woman.

      Roxie held open the door to the fourth bedroom upstairs. Vanessa, running along behind him, asked him to wait while she got a sheet and blankets out of the linen closet.

      She and Roxie spread a flannel sheet over the plain red futon.

      “I’ll get one of my pillows,” Vanessa said, and ran off.

      “She should have something to sleep with,” Roxie said. She took Betsy out of her pocket, studied the doll with a worried frown, then placed it beside Natalie. But before she could even remove her hands from it, she reconsidered and pressed Betsy to her chest.

      “I’ll get Starla for her!” Roxie said, clearly pleased to have come up with a solution that did not involve parting with Betsy. Starla was a large stuffed bear who’d lost his right button eye. Julie had covered the large hole with a star-shaped piece of yellow felt stitched into place. Roxie loved the bear’s new personality and had even renamed it appropriately.

      When Ben had suggested that the name was feminine and not masculine, Vanessa had taken her sister’s side. “Only girls have stars in their eyes, Daddy, so she must be a girl.”

      Well, he’d learned something new.

      He lay Natalie down on the flannel sheet and the blanket she’d been wrapped in. Vanessa arrived just in time to put a pillow under her head. Roxie put Starla beside Natalie and made sure that Ben covered her, too, when he opened out the top sheet, then a pink thermal blanket and spread them over the bed. Not certain one blanket would keep her warm enough, he sent Vanessa to the linen closet for another.

      Natalie stirred restlessly as Ben spread the second blanket. Her brow furrowed and she moaned as though something hurt.

      “What’s the matter with her?” Vanessa asked worriedly.

      Instinctively, Ben put a hand to Natalie’s cheek. “Probably just a bad dream,” he guessed. He noticed with a start that her skin was like satin to the touch.

      She smiled, just a very small curve of her lips. Then she reached out, as though groping for something, her fingers spread wide.

      Again, instinctively, he caught them in his. Her hand tightened around his with a strength that demonstrated how desperate she’d been for that contact. At least in her sleep. Loneliness, he knew, was a powerful enemy.

      “She likes you, Daddy!” Roxie whispered loudly.

      Vanessa looked at him a little worriedly, and he was just wondering himself if he was going to have to lean over this bed for the rest of the night when Natalie made a contented little sound, freed his hand and rolled onto her side.

      He felt enormous relief as he readjusted her blankets.

      He ushered the girls out into the hallway and pulled the door halfway closed.

      “Can we have our ice cream now?” Roxie asked.

      “We had ice cream at Grandma’s,” Vanessa ratted, to Roxie’s chagrin. “And cookies, too.”

      “Then I think we’re finished for tonight.” Ben picked up Roxie under one arm and Vanessa under the other, to their squealing delight. He had to keep reminding himself to play with them more often, to remember that they needed him to be cheerful and hopeful.

      He tended to get bogged down in work and memories and forget that a child learned a lot by having fun.

      He dropped Roxie onto her bed and, with Vanessa still tucked under his arm, leaned over her to kiss her good-night. The girls collided and giggled hysterically.

      He carried Vanessa out with him across the hall to her room and dropped her in her bed.

      “Can she stay for dinner tomorrow?” she asked, sitting up in bed.

      “Roxie?” he asked, fluffing the one pillow Van had left. “Yes, we have to let her stay for dinner. It’s part of the family deal. You have to feed the kids.”

      “Daddy!” Vanessa slapped his arm. “I mean the lady. Can she stay for dinner? If she isn’t awake when I go to school, I won’t even hear her talk or anything.”

      That confused him for a moment. “Hear her talk?”

      She hunched a shoulder. “Yeah. You know. I bet she has a pretty voice, ’specially if she’s on television. And I miss Mom’s voice.” She looked at him from under thick dark lashes. “Is it okay to say that?”

      He sat down on the edge of her bed, anguished by that question. “Van, it’s okay for you to say whatever you’re feeling. I asked you to tell me when you miss her and feel lonely.”

      She nodded quickly. “I know. And I do. But I had just turned six then. Now I’ve been seven for a while and it doesn’t make me cry anymore when I miss her, and I know I have to make believe everything’s okay.” She gave him a look that told him she understood far more than he realized. “That’s what you do, ’cause you’re the dad. So, I do it, too, ’cause I’m the big sister. But it would be nice to hear the lady’s voice, if we can’t ever hear Mom’s again.”

      Her perception always amazed him. He didn’t know why he was surprised that she’d understood he pretended cheer and hope when he didn’t feel it.

      “Sometimes,” he said, ruffling her short, shaggy hair, “if you pretend

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