LITMIR.BIZ

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know, Scout. I hope so.”

      “I got you something. Me and Cathy.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Something good. You’re gonna like it.”

      “I know I will.”

      “Cathy don’t think we’re getting a puppy, but I asked Santa.” They’d been over the dog thing a dozen times. Ryan had been told over and over again that it wasn’t possible. The lease didn’t allow it. Besides, it was hard enough to get someone good to live in and take care of the kids while he was away. If the job required cleaning up after a non-housebroken animal in the bargain—

      “Uncle Sean?”

      “I’m here. Look, we talked about the puppy. Maybe next summer. If we can find a house with a fenced-in yard—”

      “That’s what she said.”

      “Well, she’s right. I explained all that.”

      “I still asked Santa. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

      Sean closed his eyes, wishing he weren’t several hundred miles away. Wishing he had answers for that kind of question. Wishing most of all that this wasn’t the kind of fucked-up world where somebody could murder a little boy’s mother.

      Makaela would have known how to respond to that wishful tone. She would probably have been able to juggle a full-time job and a puppy. When all he seemed able to manage—

      “Uncle Sean? You still there?”

      “Yeah. It’s okay to ask Santa, Scout, just as long as you’re prepared for him saying no.”

      “Like when you pray.”

      “What?”

      “That’s what Maria says. It’s okay to pray for something, but that don’t mean you’re gonna get it.”

      “Doesn’t mean,” Sean corrected.

      “Doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it. Santa’s like that, too?”

      “Something like that.”

      “But sometimes you do.”

      Get what you pray for, Sean thought, automatically filling in the missing syntax. “Sometimes.”

      “I wish you were home.”

      “Me, too.”

      “You want to talk to Cathy?”

      “Sure. You be good, now. Mind Maria.”

      Maria Alvarez had been a godsend. She was older than he’d been looking for, but she had become the grandmother the kids had never had. Despite her references, when he’d first hired her, Sean had thought about setting up one of those home-surveillance cameras. It had quickly become apparent by the way the children responded to her that wouldn’t be necessary.

      “Hey, Uncle Sean.”

      “Hey, Princess. How are you?”

      “Fine. How are you?”

      Where Ryan was withdrawn, Cathy was the proverbial chatterbox. She never met a stranger, something that occasionally gave him nightmares, too. Only, her radar seemed pretty good in detecting the good guys from the bad.

      The same thing you thought about Makaela.

      “Missing you guys. Wishing I was home,” he said aloud. That was the truth. There was no need to prevaricate.

      “Maria and I are making a fruitcake.”

      Visions of the brick-shaped, perennial butt of holiday jokes flashed through his mind. “Yeah? Sounds good.”

      “My job is measuring out the fruit.”

      As far as Sean was concerned, the word fruit when used in conjunction with fruitcake was a misnomer. The artificially colored bits of red-and-green gunk it usually contained bore no resemblance to the real stuff.

      “Your grandma used to make fruitcakes.”

      The memory was just suddenly there in his head. Unexpected. And unwanted.

      “Really? Cool. Did Mama help?”

      “Yeah,” he said, fighting the rush of memories that had accompanied the first. “Yeah, she did.”

      That was the problem with allowing any of them in. It opened the door to the rest. The ones he had fully intended never to think about again. Another reason the interview Jenna Kincaid had given had bothered him.

      “We’ll save you a piece, but you have to promise that you’ll be home in time for Christmas.”

      He swallowed, fighting two sets of emotions. Determined to give in to neither.

      “I can’t promise that, Princess. I told you.”

      “But you’ll try, won’t you? Ryan really wants you to be here. He needs you to. He’s started all that stuff about wanting a puppy again.”

      “I know. He told me. You keep talking to him, okay? Make him understand that…That now just isn’t the best time for something like that.”

      “I will. He’s just a baby.”

      The gulf between Cathy’s seven-going-on-thirty maturity and Ryan’s immature four-almost-five seemed immeasurably wide. At least it was better than it had been three years ago when family services had handed the kids off to him.

      He’d had no idea what to say to a four-year-old who had just lost her mother in the most brutal way imaginable. And no clue in hell what to do with a two-year-old.

      That initial panic had, in the intervening years, given way to more normal concerns like whether or not he was providing all the right things for them. Child-care issues. Keeping up with vaccinations and checkups. Just getting them to bed at a reasonable hour sometimes seemed Herculean.

      At least it had before he’d found Maria. And if it all worked out here…

      He destroyed the thought, realizing how far from those concerns the one he was currently embarked upon was. How foreign to his problems with childcare.

      “Gotta go,” he said, glancing at his watch again.

      It was already four-thirty. With traffic, making it to Jenna Kincaid’s office before five would be a close-run thing. And it would mean doing without dinner again.

      “But you’ll think about it, won’t you?” Cathy said, bringing his attention back.

      “The puppy?”

      “No, I know we can’t have a dog. Getting home before Christmas. You’ll try, won’t you?”

      “I told you the last time. It just depends on how things go down here.”

      “In Birmingham.”

      “That’s right.”

      “That’s where that killer is, right?”

      The question caught at Sean’s gut, twisting it. He hesitated, wondering if someone could possibly have said something to the little girl about those deaths here.

      “Who told you that?”

      “I saw it on the news. Maria turned it off, but they said ‘Birmingham.’ I’m pretty sure.”

      “And it worried you?”

      “Yeah. A little.”

      “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Princess. You can quit worrying about that.”

      There was silence on the other end. It lasted long enough that he felt that same squeeze of dread in his belly.

      “You hear me, Princess. I’m taking care of business down here, and then I’ll be home. I swear to you.”

      “Okay.”

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