'Tis the Season (2 page)

But until she did, until she attached a price tag to the place, the house and everything inside it were hers. She could live here through the end of the year, wander the rooms, clean the place and dress it up. Maybe for New Year's Eve she would invite a bunch of her friends up from the city, and they'd have a final bash, bidding farewell to the year and the house at the same time. It was what her mother would have done. Leila Albright had always loved a good party.

Filomena wandered out of the parlor and down the broad hall that ran from the front of the house to the back porch. She twisted the bolt and jerked several times on the knob to get the door open—it was sticky from years of disuse. The back porch had always been a shady haven where she could come to cool off after running around in the sun. She used to sit on the porch with a tall glass of lemonade and a plate of cookies and feel the sweat chill off her arms and feet. It was like hiding on the dark side of the moon.

She shoved on the screen door—shoved three times until it was jarred loose—and stepped out onto the porch. The grass beyond was so long and scraggly, the shrubs
so unruly, she was embarrassed. Her mother should have paid a landscaping service to maintain the grounds, at least. But the porch planks beneath her feet felt firm. No sign of termites or dry rot.

Turning back toward the door, she spotted footprints, a faint maze of swirls and wiggles, the sort of elaborate tread found on sneakers. Looking closer, she noticed two different sets of footprints, one pair of swirly treads larger than the other, both sets smaller than her own feet. They led to a window. The film of dirt on the windowsill bore a set of tiny fingerprints.

So she hadn't imagined the thuds. She'd had some young visitors.

Children from the neighborhood? she wondered. Not that the house sat in a neighborhood. The property was too big, the house set far back from the road in front and bordered by a forest in back. Children spying through her windows would not have simply come upon the house while passing by.

She hoped they hadn't committed any acts of vandalism. She observed no damage on the back porch, no broken windows, no spray-painted walls. Descending the steps, she peered into the forest, and saw nothing but leafless trees mixed with pine and spruce above a carpet of dead leaves and browning ivy. She tramped around to the side of the house, where she thought she'd glimpsed some activity through the window. She found more fingerprints on a windowsill—a young child's stubby hands—and below the window, lying in the grass, a small pink barrette in the shape of a butterfly.

All right, then. Children must have been peeking through the windows. No harm in that, she supposed.

That her childhood home would have attracted other
children pleased her in an odd way. Maybe they felt drawn to the house the way she had as a child. Maybe they liked to romp in the sun and cool off on the porch. Maybe they played hide-and-seek under the steps, in the holly bushes and behind the old shed that served as a garage at the end of the gravel driveway. Maybe, like Filomena, they understood the specialness of this grand old house.

She scooped up the barrette, then turned and walked back to the porch, her lungs filling with the raw mid-November air. Behind her the woods whispered in the wind.

Closing her fingers around the barrette, she found herself hoping that the children would come back.

I
F
E
VAN
M
YERS
'
S LIFE
were a movie, this would be the scene in which he pounded his fists on a locked door and screamed, “Let me out of here!”

He wasn't in a movie, though. He was in what had to be the most tedious meeting he'd ever endured—and since it had been arranged for his supposed benefit, he couldn't very well rise from his chair, yawn loudly and saunter out of the room. Being the boss meant having to behave himself. After all, the gentlemen making their presentation at the other end of the conference table had traveled all the way from Atlanta just to explain, earnestly and at great length, why Champion Sports ought to stock their cushioned insoles in all its stores. Rudeness wasn't called for.

Did everyone from Georgia talk so slowly? Evan wondered.

They'd brought charts with them. They'd brought slides, too, but Evan had declined to provide an overhead projector, so they were making do with an easel, a pointer and about a hundred meticulous poster-board renderings. The chart on display at the moment allegedly demonstrated that the cushioning of Pep Insoles, when inserted inside standard running shoes, reduced the likelihood of a runner's developing shinsplints by thirty-seven percent.

“Thirty-seven percent?” Evan interjected. If he kept
his mouth shut, the presentation might move along faster, but he couldn't resist. “How do you know it's thirty-seven percent, as opposed to, say, thirty-five percent? Or forty percent?”

Unfortunately, the gentlemen from Atlanta had an answer. In fact, they had a chart. “As you can see,” one of them drawled, propping the relevant chart on the easel, “we calculated thirty-seven percent through our performance tests. We tested a group of one hundred recreational runners using the Pep Insoles and a control group of one hundred recreational runners not using them. After both groups had jogged five miles a day for eight weeks on a crushed-asphalt track, we compared the number of shinsplint sufferers who'd been using Pep Insoles with the number in the control group who experienced shinsplints, and this produced the figure we've supplied—thirty-seven percent.”

Well, Evan had to give them points for precision.

“But we'd like to emphasize that the reduction in shinsplints is not the primary function of Pep Insoles. As we can see in this chart—” Georgian Number Two flipped through the charts while Georgian Number One drawled on “—the primary function of Pep Insoles is to increase athletic performance. Now here we calculate the vertical jumping ability of basketball players using Pep Insoles as compared with a control group without the insoles. As you can see by the calculations…”

How about the losing-control group?
Evan wanted to snap. “This is all fascinating,” he broke in, “but I'll tell you what's really got me concerned. You said about a half hour ago that the insoles are being manufactured in Honduras. I want to know if they're being made by ten-year-old kids for a dime a day. Because if they are, I'm
not going to stock them, even if they give your average high-school basketball player the air time of a Michael Jordan.”

“We haven't gotten to our labor chart yet,” Georgian Number Two told him. “I promise you we'll address that very subject when we get to our discussion on our production facilities.”

“Right now,” Georgian Number One added, “we want to complete our discussion of the performance-enhancing abilities of the Pep Insoles. We prefer to give our presentation in order, Mr. Myers. It works better that way.”

It works longer
, Evan thought glumly. Next to him, Jennifer kicked him under the table. She was his vice president, and she knew him well enough to recognize apathy when he was suffering a near-fatal case of it.

She'd been the one to set up this meeting; she was the one wowed by the product, the one who wanted to carry it in the Champion stores. He, on the other hand, was the one who had to put together the Tank Moody promo to take advantage of the holiday shopping season, and he ought to be focusing on that right now, not on Pep Insoles. He was also the one who had to make sure inventory was high enough to cover the expected surge in shoppers at this time of year, and to confirm that the clerks at all his stores were maintaining good cheer despite the inevitably frazzled nerves and frayed tempers of the customers. And if that wasn't enough to distract him, he was worried about the kids. They'd been acting strangely ever since they'd come home from a hike through the woods yesterday afternoon.

Once they'd gotten home they'd stayed put and played quietly. During dinner, no bickering, no sniping, no fight
ing over the salt shaker, no competition to dominate the conversation. Gracie had looked so pale Evan had considered taking her temperature, but she'd insisted she was fine, and her forehead had felt cool to the touch. She and Billy had watched
The Simpsons
sitting side by side on the sofa in the den without tussling over the remote, and they'd gone to bed without a quibble.

There was pre-Christmas good behavior, and there was weird behavior. Billy and Gracie hadn't been exercising pre-Christmas behavior Sunday afternoon. They hadn't appeared to be suppressing their natural hostile instincts or struggling to mind their manners. After Gracie had vanished into her bedroom, Evan had asked Billy if anything unusual had happened to them while they'd been outdoors earlier, but Billy had sworn nothing at all had happened—and then he'd lifted his
Bunnicula
book and started to read.

Without Evan's telling him to turn off the TV and find a book, Billy had started to read. Definitely weird.

One of the Pep reps was elaborating on the comments of a U.S. Olympic track coach who believed the Pep Insoles might improve the performance of hurdlers. Evan sighed—not too audibly, but Jennifer obviously heard him, because she kicked him again. For a compact woman, she packed a wicked kick. Maybe she had Pep Insoles stuffed inside her stylish leather pumps.

He glanced at his watch and grimaced. Four-thirty, and the reps hadn't even gotten to the part that mattered most to him: Were the insoles manufactured by underpaid Honduran children? No way was this meeting going to end in time for him to pick up Gracie at her preschool by five o'clock.

He sighed again, this time not caring if everyone in
the room heard him. “Excuse me,” he said, gazing at the Georgian gents and ignoring the anger he could feel radiating from Jennifer. “We're going to have to take a break here. I've got to make a call. Or—” a pleasant idea struck him “—you can keep on going without me.” He sent Jennifer a broad grin.

She did not grin back. “I think we'll all take a quick breather,” she suggested. Heaven forbid Evan should miss a single scintillating minute of the presentation.

He liked Jennifer. More important, he needed her. She was yin to his yang, or however the saying went. She was the one who found new products, introduced them to Evan and helped him decide whether to stock them in the stores. She was good at her job. And for all he knew, these Pep Insoles might be a fabulous product—although even if they were, he wasn't going to devote precious shelf space to them during the pre-Christmas sales season, when people would be streaming into Champion Sports outlets throughout southern New England hoping to buy little Johnny or Susie or Uncle Mike a nice leather first-baseman's glove, a soccer ball, a pool cue, golf clubs, ice skates, free weights or whatever else might look suitably festive wrapped in red and green paper and planted under a Douglas fir in the family room. Somehow, Evan couldn't imagine little Johnny or Susie or Uncle Mike writing a letter that said, “Dear Santa, I've been really good this year, so please bring me some Pep Insoles for my sneakers.”

He nodded to the Pep Insole guys as he passed them on his way to the door. It wasn't locked; he didn't have to pound on it and scream, “Let me out!” Even so, when he crossed the threshold, he felt liberated. He had to stifle the urge to sprint to the elevator and make his escape.

Exercising exemplary self-discipline, he crossed the hall to his office, reached for the phone on his desk and pressed the memory-dial button for Gracie's preschool. After two rings, a familiar voice came on the line: “Children's Garden, may I help you?”

“Molly? It's Evan Myers.”

He could almost picture the school's director cringing. “I hope you're not calling to tell me you're going to be late.”

“I'm calling to tell you I'm going to be late,” he said, seasoning his voice with contrition and brave cheerfulness. “I'm really sorry. These people flew up from Atlanta to pitch their product, and they're running long. I can't get them to shut up. We've got at least another half hour here before we're done.”

“Evan.” Molly sounded stern. He could understand how she managed to keep a school full of rambunctious toddlers in line. She didn't even have to raise her voice to make him quail in his loafers. “This is the third time in two weeks you've been late.”

“I'll pay the late fee, Molly. I'm really—”

“—sorry,” she finished for him. “Not good enough. The late fee is supposed to be a deterrent, Evan. It doesn't seem to be deterring you.”

He raked a hand through his hair and scrambled for a strategy to soften her up. She was a petite woman, cute and warm and wise in the ways of children—but she was also tough. Very tough.

He decided to make a play for pity. “You know, it's hard being a single father. I've got a business to run, I've got two kids to raise and I'm doing it all by myself.”

“You shouldn't be,” Molly said simply. “You ought to hire a nanny or a baby-sitter. Or an au pair. Someone
to help you out in the afternoons. I know you've got a system of after-school arrangements for your son, but you can't keep leaving Gracie here after hours and expecting us to take up the slack.”

“I know, but—”

“And while I've got you, Evan, Gracie's been very quiet today. Almost withdrawn. She hasn't been herself.”

“I know.” Even though she didn't have a fever, she could be coming down with something. If he was any kind of father, her health would be his top priority. And it was. But he was stuck in the middle of this god-awful meeting. “All right. I'll send someone over to pick her up,” he said, guilt devouring him. “I'll send my secretary.”

“Make sure she has a note from you and photo ID,” Molly reminded him. “I don't like turning Gracie over to someone I don't know.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it, Evan. These jerry-rigged child-care arrangements aren't good for your kids or for you. If you need help, get it.”

“Okay.” If he were twenty-five years younger, he'd be hanging his head in shame.

“You're a wonderful father,” Molly added, tossing him a sop before she said goodbye.

One self-abasement down, one to go. He hung up the phone and hurried from his office into the one next door. “Heather, I need an extremely big favor from you,” he said, reaching for the pad of Champion Sports memo paper on her desk.

Heather was young, gorgeous and endowed with an abundance of attitude. She burned through boyfriends the way Pedro Martinez burned through batters—it seemed
as if every guy who went up against her wound up striking out. She alarmed Evan with her high-potency beauty and her sheer nerve, but she was so proficient at her job he was grateful to have her.

“What favor?” she asked, flashing a smile that would fell a weaker man.

“Drive over to the Children's Garden and pick up Gracie for me.”

“I hate children,” Heather said laconically.

“I'm not asking you to love her. I'm asking you to pick her up. I'm being held hostage by Jennifer and those guys from Pep Insoles, and can't go get Gracie myself.”

Heather hesitated, nibbling her lush lower lip. “Picking your daughter up at preschool isn't part of my job description.”

“I know it isn't. But flexibility
is
part of your job description. And don't forget, we're getting close to yearend bonus time.” He scribbled a note to Molly Saunders-Russo on the memo pad, identifying Heather as his official emissary.

The word
bonus
clinched the deal. “All right,” Heather muttered, plucking the note out of his hand. “But this is the last time.”

The last time this year, Evan amended silently. Next year another bonus would be at stake. He watched her pull her purse from a desk drawer and saunter past him to the door, her chin held high, her ash-blond hair falling in a perfectly swinging pageboy.

He waited until she was out of sight, then felt the air seep from his lungs. How could it be that he'd come so far, accomplished so much more than anyone would have predicted, building a business and raising two magnificent kids—and yet he felt like a total failure?

All right. He wasn't a failure. He just happened to have a few people exasperated with him right now: Molly at the preschool, Heather, Jennifer. The three women on whom his entire existence depended, he thought glumly.

But he hadn't gotten where he was by surrendering to circumstances. He would tighten the controls on his time at work—as soon as the Christmas retail season was over—and be out the door by ten minutes to five every day, even if it meant taking work home with him in the evenings. He could stick to a rigid schedule from January until June. In the summer the kids had camp, and in the fall Gracie would start kindergarten. Evan could get her into the after-school program Billy was enrolled in.