'Tis the Season (16 page)

He had to learn to listen. Not just to his children, not just to Jennifer and his other colleagues at work, but to everyone else in his life: the staff at Gracie's preschool, Billy's Cub Scout leader, Filomena.

Filomena.

His eyes still closed, he conjured a vision of her leaning over the tub, washing Gracie's hair. Her own hair spilled down her back, held away from her face by a silver clip. He pictured her graceful fingers sifting through Gracie's hair, searching for hidden pockets of shampoo in the waves. He imagined her soft voice, her steady arms propping Gracie as she climbed out of the tub.

He shouldn't be giving his daughter baths anymore. Filomena should be doing it.

But he had to listen to her. He had to pay attention to what she was saying—which was that she didn't want a romance with him. Friendship and a job. Those had been her words on Saturday when he'd kissed her: friendship
and a job, and independence. That was what she wanted from him.

He had to listen, even when what he was listening to was the last thing he wanted to hear.

W
ELL, AS FAR AS
Billy could see, there were a few problems with this Thanksgiving. For one thing, Filomena only had a tiny little television, which she kept in an upstairs bedroom. And the room was kind of cold, and it was hard to watch football on such a small screen. Not that his dad had one of those wide-screen TVs like the one in his friend Scott's family room, but at least it was a reasonable size. Filomena's was pitiful.

When he complained about it, she wasn't sympathetic, either. She told Billy no one had ever watched TV during all the Thanksgivings her parents had hosted in this house, and if he wanted to watch it, he'd just have to make do with the TV she had. He offered to hike through the woods to his house to watch the game there—he promised he'd be back in time for dinner—but his dad said no.

Then she had this music going, Beethoven or somebody like that, a bunch of violins in an orchestra. Dad said it was great music and Billy ought to give it a chance, but it sounded really boring to him.

And then he was stuck playing with Gracie, because Dad insisted on helping Filomena in the kitchen and there was no one else to play with.

But Gracie actually came up with a good idea: “Let's see if we can find the spirits.”

The last time they'd been at Filomena's house, on Saturday, he'd been inside for only a few minutes, long enough to eat some cookies and watch Gracie fall asleep on the couch. He'd asked her when they'd gotten home whether she'd bothered looking for a spirit after she'd woken up, but she said she hadn't. She'd probably been afraid to go snooping through the house without him.

They wouldn't really be snooping today. Filomena had given them permission to go upstairs to watch TV on the little set in that cold bedroom, so he figured it was okay to go upstairs and look for spirits. Not that he actually believed in things like that, but for Gracie's sake, he'd pretend he did.

He and Gracie climbed the stairs. It was a long staircase, longer than at home, because Filomena's ceilings were higher. The upstairs hall was drafty and dark, even when he found a light switch and turned it on. There was just one lamp illuminating the entire hall, and it didn't shed much light. But he liked the shadows. If they were going to find any spirits, there would probably have to be shadows.

The first room they came to was the one with the TV in it. There was a big bed, no sheet or blanket on the striped mattress, and heavy wood furniture. The TV seemed out of place sitting on the dresser. Dark-green curtains hung at the window. Gracie immediately crawled under the bed.

Billy checked the closet. He wondered if this was snooping, but it wasn't as if he was poking around in her closet to see what was in it. He was just searching for spirits. If any existed there, though, they were invisible. The closet was empty except for a few boxes on a high shelf that he couldn't reach.

“There's dust under here,” Gracie reported, crawling back out from under the bed. Little gray puffballs of lint stuck to her hair. “What do you think the spirit's gonna look like?”

“I don't know. Maybe we won't see it,” Billy said. “Maybe we'll
feel
it. Like a cold hand on the back of your neck.”

“Yuck,” Gracie said, but she obviously wasn't scared. She brushed the dust off her corduroy overalls and headed out of the room.

The next room was more promising. Large white cloths covered the furniture, just like the cloths that used to cover everything downstairs when Billy first found the house and peeked through the windows. Gracie immediately dove under one of the cloths. Billy lifted another. There was all kinds of furniture and stuff here. It was like a storage room. Chairs, small tables and chests of drawers lurked under the cloths.

“What's this?” Gracie asked, standing and pulling back one of the cloths to reveal a machine built into a table.

“I think it's a sewing machine,” Billy said. He'd seen something like it at Scott's house.

“How come we don't have one?”

“I think only moms have them.”

“Fil isn't a mom.”

“Maybe this is her mother's.”

That explanation seemed to work for Gracie. She nodded and they moved on to the room across the hall.

This had to be Filomena's bedroom. It was larger than the other two rooms, and it had a nice wide bed made up with linens and a quilt and two fat pillows. The dresser had a strip of lace across it, and on top of that were fancy
silver-handled brushes and hair clips and a polished wood box with the lid up, filled with jewelry.

Gracie's eyes got big. “Ooh, look! Here's her moon,” she said, lifting Filomena's moon necklace from the box.

“Don't touch that!” Billy yelled, afraid they'd get in trouble if Filomena realized they'd gone through her things.

“But it's so pretty. I think it's magical. I'm not gonna hurt it—I just want to wear it for a minute.” Before Billy could stop her, she put it on.

The moon shone silvery-white against her chest. It practically seemed to glow.

“It
is
magic,” Gracie murmured, taking it off, her eyes as shiny as the necklace. “You try it, Billy.”

“It's a girl's necklace,” he muttered—but he wanted to feel the magic, too. Even though he didn't really believe in magic, he wanted to feel it.

Sucking in a breath, he looped the cord around his neck and let the moon fall against his chest. It was surprisingly heavy—yet he felt lit up inside. Just the way he felt when Filomena smiled at him, or when she laughed.

He took it off and placed it carefully back in the box. Then he looked at Gracie. He still didn't believe in magic, but he felt different somehow. Better. Warmer. Even the symphony music drifting up the stairs sounded nicer.

“I think she's a witch,” Gracie whispered. “A good witch. I think we should get her to marry Daddy.”

Billy snorted. “I don't want Dad marrying a witch.” He wasn't even so sure he wanted their dad getting married at all. Dad had been married once, and maybe he forgave their mother for leaving them, but it couldn't
have been a happy thing for him to go through. Like when Billy broke his wrist last year after falling the wrong way during a soccer game. He'd survived and his wrist was as good as new, but he sure wouldn't want to break it again. Just because you healed didn't mean you wanted to get hurt a second time.

“But Fil's a good witch. Remember how she read our cards? She said I was stubborn and wonderful.”

“You don't need a deck of cards to figure that out. The stubborn part, anyway.”

“And she said you were very smart and could do great things in the world if you didn't get distracted.”

“Anyone could do great things,” he argued. He'd loved what Filomena had said about him as she'd read his cards, but when he was being sensible, he wasn't sure he believed she was actually seeing into his future.

“Hey!” Gracie squealed, moving past the box with the jewelry in it and lifting a bright turquoise silk scarf. Underneath it was a deck of cards. “Maybe she'll read these cards for us.”

Billy edged closer, curious in spite of himself. The cards looked big, like the deck of cards his grandparents had given him when he was five, designed bigger so they'd be easier for a kid to handle. He lifted one of the cards and saw that it wasn't a regular card, though. It had a weird picture on it of a queen with a bunch of what appeared to be gold trophies.

“These are magic cards, I bet,” Gracie said. “I'm going to read your cards with these.”

“You can't. You don't know how.”

“If they're magic, I can.” She pulled them down from the dresser and plopped onto the rug. It was red and
black, green and white, with patterns woven into it that resembled tiny flowers. “Sit down. I'll read your cards.”

She had no idea what she was doing, but he figured having her read his cards would be more fun than trying to watch football on that little TV set. He settled onto the rug facing her while she struggled to shuffle the cards. He didn't think big cards were easier for little hands, not after seeing Gracie wrestle with them.

“Here, let me.” He took them from her. They were way too stiff, but he did a better job of mixing them up than she could have done. He handed them back to her. “Okay. Go ahead.”

Gracie held the cards and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Like the ceiling was going to tell her what to do. “Okay,” she said once she lowered her eyes. She set the cards down in a pile on the rug and peeled off the top three. One looked like a pile of sticks with a ten on it. Another looked like a juggler or something, one of those old royal court jesters, wearing a pointy hat with bells on the points. The third was a big smiling sun. “Okay,” Gracie said again. “This means you're gonna build a house. In the daylight.”

“Well, I sure wouldn't build it at night,” Billy said scornfully.

“The sun means the weather will be good. You'll do it in the summer.”

“What about the juggler guy?”

“You'll prob'ly drop stuff while you're building it. This means you have to be very careful with your tools and nails. You don't want to drop any nails because you might step on one and it'll stab you in the bottom of your foot and you could die.”

He wasn't sure he liked this fortune. “Let's do another
one,” he said. “I'll do yours.” He took the deck from Gracie, shuffled the cards a bit and turned over the top three. One of them had a bunch of gold coins on it, and the number seven. Another had that woman with the gold trophies. The third showed a guy hanging from a gallows. “Oh, man,” Billy said, trying to add drama to his voice. “First you're gonna get rich. Then you're gonna buy a bunch of bowls. Then you're gonna die.”

“I don't want to die,” Gracie argued.

“Well, check out this card.” He jabbed at the picture of the guy hanging. “You tell me, does this look like you're gonna die?”

“That's a man. I'm a girl.”

“Hey, don't blame me. I'm just saying, this is a man hanging by a rope. He looks dead to me.”

“But I'm a girl. I'll buy the gold bowls. Some other guy will die. He's a robber. He tried to steal the bowls from me, but I caught him and the police came and killed him.”

Billy had to admit Gracie's story was better than his. She could be dumb, but she had a good imagination. “Okay. He's the robber. Only, the police didn't come. You bopped him over the head with one of the bowls. Then you strung him up yourself.”

“Cool!” Gracie's eyes glowed. Billy was pleased he'd come up with a story at least as imaginative as hers.

“What are you doing in here?” Dad's voice broke in.

“Put the cards down,” Filomena said, her voice softer but firmer than Dad's. Billy glanced toward the door and saw them standing there, side by side. Filomena had an apron on over her skirt. Dad had his sleeves rolled up, and his hair was messy. He was frowning.

Billy quickly straightened the cards into a neat pile and
got to his feet. So did Gracie. He felt guilty, but he wasn't going to say anything. Filomena had told them they could go upstairs, right? She hadn't said anything about staying out of certain rooms.

She entered the bedroom, her hand outstretched, and Billy placed the cards in her hand. “These are called tarot cards,” she told him and Gracie. “They're not a regular deck. If you want to play cards, I'll give you a regular deck. But not now, because dinner is ready.”

Wasn't she going to yell at them? Tell them they shouldn't have been in her room, shouldn't have touched her things? Dad would have yelled. He was still frowning.

“Come on, guys—are you hungry? Because we've got at least six tons of food on the table,” Filomena said calmly. Dad turned his attention to her, as if he wanted to explain that she was supposed to rip into Billy and Gracie. But she didn't seem at all upset. She waved them out the door and down the hall, falling back to talk to Dad for a minute. When Billy glanced behind him, he saw them murmuring to each other, their voices too soft to make out.

He figured he and Gracie had dodged a bullet. He wouldn't press his luck by hanging around in the hall, eavesdropping on them. The way they were huddled together, Filomena's hair so thick and black Dad's looked almost blond when they put their heads together, gave Billy the clear impression that they were talking grown-up stuff, something private that they didn't want him and Gracie to hear, and that he and Gracie wouldn't understand even if they did hear it.

Was Gracie right? Was there something going on between his father and Filomena, something that might
make them get married? He honestly didn't think his father wanted to get married again, even if he had forgiven his mom and all. Why bother?

But the way they were whispering, the way Filomena rested her hand on Dad's arm and smiled at him, a smile that made his scowl melt away…well, maybe she
was
a witch, putting him under a spell. Working a little magic on him.

And maybe it wouldn't be such a terrible thing if they got married.