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“Don’t encourage my mother-in-law.”
When Kelly left, Olivia put on her coat, scarf and gloves. She couldn’t find her hat, and she wondered whether one of her students had worn it home. Finally giving up the search, she headed for the diner, not a block from the school. The biting air made her wrap her scarf more tightly around her neck. Although the temperatures had been right for the season, there was still no sign of snow. A big disappointment, in Olivia’s mind. What were the holidays without snow? The skeletal tree limbs arching overhead appeared downright spooky, as if Halloween still lurked. The branches needed at least a light dusting to flip the calendar to the appropriate page. This is the famous New York snow belt, she silently reminded the leaden sky. So produce!
She pushed through the diner’s doorway into the crowded and steamy interior. “Olivia!” several people called out as she made her way to an empty stool at the counter. Ignatz, the ancient cook, winked at her from his side of the pass-through.
“The usual?” Maggie, one of two midday waitresses, asked from behind the counter, her Christmas bell earrings tinkling cheerily.
“Yes, please.” Although, suddenly, Olivia wanted something unusual. It was such a strange and overwhelming sensation. A craving. An itch. A nameless longing. For something she’d never experienced before. She couldn’t even tell if what she wanted was food or something bigger. Some adventure right out of a genie’s lamp.
But what she got was chili and a large glass of milk.
“Thanks, Maggie.” The odd feeling lingered as familiar voices around Olivia hummed in conversation.
“Who knows what your usual will taste like come Monday,” Maggie said. “Ignatz’s last shift is Saturday.”
“That reminds me, I have a little retirement present for him. I’ll bring it by Saturday afternoon. So who’s the new cook?”
“Marmaduke’s talking to him now.” Maggie nodded to a booth in the corner. “I know the boss is relieved to finally sit down with him face-to-face. He got so many responses to that Internet ad, but he hired this guy on his reputation and his connection to Hennings.”
“His connection to Hennings?” It couldn’t be.
“By way of New Orleans. He’s definitely easy on the eyes, but it’s anyone’s guess what the specials are going to taste like. Spicy, I’m betting.”
Olivia turned to see the owner of the diner in conversation with a man who had to be Gabriel Brant. His back was turned to her, but she could see the crowns of two small heads beside him. Justin and Jared. Someone had put crayons on the table. She could see a small hand coloring a place mat.
So this was the job Gabriel had taken until something better came up elsewhere. From the short interview they’d had in her classroom, she suspected he wasn’t thrilled about the opportunity. Why not? Marmaduke, who’d started out as a short-order cook himself and still worked the breakfast shift, was known to be an excellent employer. One who hadn’t forgotten his roots. One who prided himself on providing his employees with jobs that could actually pay the bills.
At that moment, Sasha, the second waitress, brought a tray to Gabriel’s table and began to clear dishes. Stretching out his arm, Marmaduke rose to leave. The two men shook hands. The twin on the outside of the bench seat turned around and spotted Olivia. His tentative wave melted her heart.
She ate her chili and drank her milk and wondered—for the umpteenth time—if she would ever have children of her own. After getting her degree, she’d turned down a more lucrative teaching position in a bigger system to come home and help her aunt as that extraordinary woman’s health began to fail. It was the least Olivia could do, after all her aunt had done for her.
Plus, she loved Hennings. Loved the big, old Victorian house in which she’d grown up, loved the small city’s quirky rhythms, loved knowing her contributions made a difference. Her students became her children for ten months, and although she enjoyed watching them grow beyond kindergarten, she always felt a sadness at the end of the school year, when she could no longer pretend they were hers.
Someone tugged at her shirttail. “Teacher?”
She looked down to see Justin and Jared standing next to her stool, colored place mats in hand. Their father, serious and eagle-eyed, watched from the booth.
“Hello,” she said. “I can see you’ve both been busy.”
“We want to give you our pictures,” Justin said. Olivia had determined that Justin was the twin who did all the talking. “Mine’s a dog. If I could have a dog, I’d want him to look just like this.”
Olivia took the picture and examined it. Two primitive figures cavorted across the drawing space. One, an obviously happy child, the other, an enormous dog. “This is very good, Justin. Do you know the story of Clifford, the big red dog?”
“The bookmobile lady read it to us.”
“Well, we have that book in our classroom. On Monday, when you come to school, I’ll find it for you. In fact, we’ll read it together.”
As Justin’s eyes grew wide with anticipation, Olivia felt a fairy godmother pleasure at being able to grant this simple favor.
“So, Jared,” she said, turning to the quiet twin, “let’s look at your picture.”
Silently, he handed it to her. In the corner, three sad circle faces peered out of a tiny car. A swirl of brown and black and blue covered the rest of the paper, threatening to engulf the travelers. Stick figures floated in the deluge.
“Tell me about your drawing, Jared,” she said ever so softly.
“It’s what he experienced during Katrina,” a deep voice replied, equally softly. Gabriel stood over his sons. “It’s all he draws, in one variation or another. I figure if I let him get it out on paper, the nightmares will eventually stop.”
And he’ll eventually talk again, Olivia thought. She’d watched CNN, horrified as the hurricane had devastated a city. But that was two years ago. Evidently, to this little boy, the horror still hadn’t diminished.
“Maybe I’m wrong, though,” Gabriel said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong,” she replied, looking into adult eyes that held a world of pain. “Now that the boys will have the structure of home and school, I think you’ll see a marked improvement.”
The set of his jaw told her he wasn’t convinced, and made her wish she could offer him a guarantee.
She turned to the boys. “Thank you for my pictures. Would you like me to hang them in the classroom or on the refrigerator in my house?”
“In your house,” Justin said. “So you won’t forget us.”
“It’s not likely I’ll ever forget you two,” she replied, placing a hand on each twin’s shoulder. Every kindergartener who walked through her classroom doorway needed her, but clearly these two were special. Their needs ran deep, maybe deeper than a single teacher could or should explore. Would she be able to help? She looked into the wary eyes of their father. Would he let her?
Suddenly, for Gabriel, the air in the diner was too close. He nudged the boys toward the cash register, but they wanted to linger with Olivia. She’d won them over already, which was a good sign they’d settle into school. If the memory of his own schoolboy crush on one pretty second-grade teacher rang true, his sons would be head over heels in love with doe-eyed Ms. Marshall before next week was out.
He wasn’t certain he wanted the boys to form that great an attachment to anyone or anything in Hennings. The diner job was fine for starters. Knowing the difficulty of getting and retaining good cooks, Marmaduke paid well. Wanting to distance himself from fast-food places, he served traditional comfort food, but he was open to new ideas. Experimentation. Although he wouldn’t change his long-established menu, he’d promised Gabriel the daily specials would be his to play with. Even so, Gabriel planned on using his off time to use the public library’s Internet hookup to find a better position. Most likely an out-of-town position. And that would mean a commute. Or a move.
As he stood in line to pay for his lunch, he watched his boys with Olivia. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d approve of him uprooting the twins again. She seemed like the quintessential kindergarten teacher—sweet, traditional and rooted. But he firmly believed he and his sons could make it anywhere—hadn’t they already?—as long as they were together.
When his turn at the cash register arrived, Marmaduke refused to let him pay. Gabriel fought the urge to insist, but his new boss matter-of-factly told him all employees got one full meal per shift. He should consider today a signing bonus. Finding it almost impossible to regard the act as a handout, Gabriel switched his attention to Jared and Justin. “Ready to shop for turkey day?”
“Grampa says we need more PasgettiOs,” Justin said, waving goodbye to Olivia.
“Oh, I think my leftovers will replace the Grampa Walter special for a few days. Then we’ll think about buying more O’s.”
“I like SpaghettiOs,” Olivia said from her stool as Gabriel opened the diner door.
“Heaven help us,” he muttered, stepping out into the cold.
“When are we gonna see snow?” Justin asked, trudging alongside his father as the three made their way the few blocks back to Walter’s house and their car.
“Any day now. And if it snows enough, I’ll take you sledding on Packard Hill.”
The boys, who’d spent their short lives in a climate that didn’t require winter gear of any sort, gave him puzzled looks.
“Trust me,” Gabriel said, opening their car door so the boys could pile in, “you’re going to love it.” Hey, that was the first positive thing he’d said about the return to Hennings. Maybe Ms. Olivia Marshall’s quiet optimism was contagious.
At Wegmans, they made an “I spy” game out of shopping for their Thanksgiving groceries. The boys were wide eyed at the hustle and bustle, the colors, the choices, the piped-in music and the employees stationed throughout the store, handing out food samples.
For his part, Gabriel was glad to finally feel anonymous. Sure, he was a hometown boy, and a couple of people recognized him. But as far as being a Katrina evacuee, he didn’t register on anyone’s radar.
When the national media and the public at large had reached saturation point with the devastation and the hard-luck images, they’d moved on to the next breaking story, and Katrina—the good, the bad and the ugly—became a continuing reality only for New Orleans and the cities that had taken in the majority of those who’d had to flee. The lack of interest elsewhere was a curse, but at this particular moment in Hennings, it was also a strange blessing.
Back at 793 Chestnut, Walter met them at the door. “I got a surprise for you boys.” The old man looked like the proverbial cat with a canary in its craw.
Gabriel suddenly felt uneasy, but as Justin and Jared dashed up the porch steps, he began to unload the bags of groceries from the car. By the time he made it through the front door, the twins were on the living-room floor, playing with a fleet of Tonka trucks. Brand-new construction equipment. Shiny yellow dump trucks, bulldozers, cement mixers, cherry pickers, earthmovers. You name it, Walter had bought it.
“The set you and Daniel had,” Walter explained, all puffed up and looking proud of himself, “was metal. Pretty dinged up and rusted. Tetanus shots in the making. These are the same brand, but they’re plastic. They’re safer, plus they’ll last longer.”
Gabriel knew he should be thankful Walter was warming to this new role of grandfather, but…“Would you get the rest of the bags from the car?” he said. “I have stuff here that needs to go in the freezer.”
Walter narrowed his eyes, paused a fraction of a second and then headed outside.
When the two men came together in the kitchen, Gabriel had curbed his initial negative reaction. “It’s great you wanted Justin and Jared to feel at home,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully. “But let’s not go overboard with the toys. The boys are going to get bombarded with advertising between now and Christmas, and they’ve had so little these past two years, I don’t want them to have unrealistic expectations.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been buying a truck here and there for the past four years. Ever since I knew I had grandsons. Four years I’ve been waiting to meet them. There might be eight trucks out there. One a piece, for each birthday I’ve missed. So don’t give me any crap now about overloading them with gifts.”
Gabriel had no answer for that. In a tense silence, the two put away the groceries.
“Did you register the boys at school?” Walter asked at last.
“I did.”
“Who’s their teacher?”
“Olivia Marshall.”
“That’s good. She was an orphan—she’ll understand the boys.”
Gabriel felt the anger rise, hot and wild. Trying to keep his words from reaching the twins, he felt his voice come out thin and strained, like steam under pressure. “What are you talking about? My boys are not orphans.”
“Their mother abandoned them.”
“She brought them to me. Their father.”
Only four years ago Gabriel had found out he was a father. Morgana, a woman with whom he’d had a brief affair, had shown up in New Orleans out of the blue and deposited one-year-olds Justin and Jared on his doorstep.
She’d been an exotic dancer when he’d first known her. When she arrived in New Orleans, she was an exotic dancer with a drug problem. But at least she’d had her head on straight enough to realize she couldn’t continue to take care of the twins. His sons, she’d claimed. She’d even put his name on the birth certificates. So he’d taken a paternity test, and the boys were clearly his. As soon as the test results were in, Morgana had disappeared.
“Let’s get this straight,” Gabriel growled. “I’ve done some things I’m not all that proud of. You can beat up on me, but you are not to judge Justin and Jared for anything their father’s done. Understood?”
“I understand you’ve got a burr in your boxers. Always have. And I’ll be damned if I know why. But where your sons—my grandsons—are concerned, I was just stating a fact. Those two youngsters have had hard times to last four lifetimes. But they’re home now. Me, I’m just glad they’ll have a teacher who’ll show them some kindness. Don’t read any more into what I said than that.”
His speech ended, Walter stomped out of the kitchen. Gabriel could hear the La-Z-Boy creak as the television came on.
Maybe he did have a burr in his boxers. After seventeen years of being on his own, of supporting himself, of building a reputation as a chef, he didn’t find it easy starting over. Or coming to his dad, hat in hand. Walter, who’d never believed Gabriel could make it in the restaurant business in the first place. Thank God his boys were too young to understand the comedown.
Maybe this whole direction he’d decided upon was wrong. Maybe Hennings wasn’t the place to regroup.
“I need to get some air,” he said to the living room at large. “Boys, do you want to go for a walk with me?”
“Jared and I want to stay with Grampa and play trucks,” Justin answered. “It’s nice and warm in here.”
Walter didn’t take his eyes from the TV screen.
Outside, Gabriel walked in no particular direction, the low gray clouds matching his mood. He soon found himself standing outside the boys’ school. Lights were on in one of the classrooms, and he could see Olivia Marshall gathering up her belongings. Why was she still at school well after dismissal on the afternoon before Thanksgiving? Didn’t she have a better place to be? In fact, why was she still in Hennings at all?
When he’d hung out with her as a kid that one summer, she’d seemed so adventurous. As if the town wasn’t big enough for her imagination. His friends had felt sorry for him, when they’d heard how he’d spent his vacation. With a girl. Two years younger than him, no less. He’d never admitted it, but it was one of the best summers he could remember. Olivia was smart as a whip. Fearless, too. He’d kind of expected the daring Olivia he knew then to grow up to be more than a demure hometown kindergarten teacher.
“Did you forget something?” Her grown-up voice at his side startled him. Not as much, however, as the very real, very close, very pretty woman’s face that replaced the freckle-nosed girl he recalled.
He looked at the school and saw her classroom was dark now. How long had he been standing here? “Actually, I was remembering something.”
“Good, I hope.”
He didn’t answer. The past didn’t matter. The present didn’t mean much to him, either. He was working on the future.
“Out for a walk?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you have cabin fever already. Winter hasn’t even begun.”
“Being closed inside against the cold is going to take some getting used to.”
“Well, when you’re outside, you’re going to have to remember to keep moving. Walk me home—I’m only a couple blocks out of your way.”
How could he say no? He fell into step beside her, the soles of his shoes making crunching noises on the frozen sidewalk. He found it hard not to glance at her. Not to notice that the tip of her nose was already turning red and that the wisps of condensation as she breathed made her lips look soft and muted, as if she were an actress in a film and the director had called for the gauze over the camera lens. As if the mood aimed for was romantic.
Get a grip, Gabriel, he told himself. You’ve been too long without.
“I only know New Orleans from books and travel shows,” she continued, her voice dreamy. “But with the warm climate and all the verandas and balconies and sidewalk cafés, I imagine the inside and the outside just melt one into each other.”
“They did. Before the storm. Now…there are pockets. But the ease is gone from the Big Easy.”
“You don’t want to talk about it.”
“No.”
“Okay. Change of subject.” Was she always this amenable? This upbeat? Didn’t it exhaust her? “Are you bringing the boys to the Turkey Trot on Friday?”
“Turkey Trot?”
“It’s a 5K road race up Main Street to the park. Race is a bit of misnomer, although I think they still give out a prize for the first person to cross the finish line. The real fun comes with the informal parade that tags along after the racers. It’s kind of evolved over the years. People dress up. There’s a prize for best seasonal costume. Parents push strollers. Kids ride decorated bicycles. Carl Obermeyer always walks on stilts, and his wife juggles.”
Olivia picked up a stick and ran it, as a kid might do, along a wrought-iron fence that fronted a neatly kept yard. “One year,” she continued cheerily, “a group of men from the Shamrock Grill attempted a synchronized lawn-mower routine. Turkey Trot’s always a little nutty, but it’s a good way to meet your neighbors and walk off the previous day’s food. At the park, the outdoor skating rink officially opens. The whole thing’s a lot of fun. Your boys would love it.”
He stared at her. Slightly out of breath, she actually seemed as excited as a child at the prospect of this civic goofiness. “I don’t know.”
“Got better things to do?” There was mischief in her eyes. And a challenge.
