Eleanor Queen didn’t want a bath, but she helped run one for Tycho as Orla toweled off in her bedroom. Orla put on two layers of sweatpants and shirts, two pairs of socks. Before joining the kids in the bathroom, she ran downstairs and turned the thermostat up to seventy-two. Her bones ached from exposure and she wouldn’t have minded a few minutes submerged in the warm water, but the kids needed her.
As Tycho splashed in the bubbles, playing with a toy airplane, Orla sat on the closed toilet, with Eleanor Queen—cocooned in pajamas and a fleece blanket—on her lap. Tycho seemed undamaged by whatever had happened outside. He was back to humming one of his little tunes as his airplane made repeated crash-landings in the water. But Eleanor Queen trembled inside her cocoon in spite of Orla’s strong arms around her.
“It was just a bit of bad weather. Winter can be mischievous like that.” Orla didn’t fully believe her own words, but she cooed them into her daughter’s ear, hoping to ease her fear.
Eleanor Queen shook her head.
“No?” Orla asked.
Eleanor Queen shook her head again. “It wasn’t regular weather.”
“No, I’d say you’re right about that. It was very sudden and intense, but still—it’s just snow and wind. And it didn’t last. It scared you, but you’re okay. You weren’t going to get lost or—”
“It wanted to eat us.”
“Shhh.” Orla rocked her. “It didn’t want to eat you any more than the sun wants to kiss you or the rain wants to wash your hair.”
From the tub, Tycho giggled.
“It did, Mama—I felt it.” Eleanor Queen nestled even deeper against Orla’s body.
She’d never felt such a strong urge to dismiss her child’s feelings, but if she accepted Eleanor Queen’s bizarre explanation—so different from the very real and immediate things that usually frightened her—then Orla wouldn’t know how to reassure her. “You felt scared because it was hard to see with all the snow, and hard to breathe with all that wind. It’s okay to be scared—everybody gets scared. But it’s over, and you’re safe.”
Orla wished Shaw were home. He’d put their daughter at ease. Maybe he’d even put Orla at ease. She felt something too, a layer of fear she couldn’t explain. Shaw would set her straight just as she was trying to do with Eleanor Queen.
A lingering spindle of ice twirled along her spine. What if Shaw had been caught in it too? Maybe there wasn’t a cliff he could tumble over, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get hurt and need help. And she wouldn’t know how to find him. Come home. Come home.
“Okay my little loves.” She set Eleanor Queen on her feet and stood. “Before our little Tigger gets all wrinkly like a raisin.”
As she held open a fluffy towel, Tycho shot up out of the water. “I don’t like raisins. Can we have hot cocolate?”
“Hot chocolate—does that sound good?” she asked Eleanor Queen, still hoping to find a way to comfort her.
The girl nodded, the blanket up to her ears and clutched beneath her chin.
Orla quickly dried off her son. “Then it’s a plan.” At least it gave her a direction, a distraction. And the assurance that in this, at least, she could give her children what they wanted.
She kept the kids busy with small tasks. They took turns feeding crumpled newspapers and twigs into the wood-burning stove. Orla lit it, and they all watched, mesmerized, as the flames spread and grew stronger. Then she settled a dry log atop the blaze and shut the stove door, all the while babbling about how warm it would be, how cozy, how soothing on a cold winter day. The devil on her shoulder dissected her words, ready to pick a fight: It was barely winter yet, still November, how bad were things going to get? But she’d save those arguments for Shaw. She let the children fold up the card table’s legs, and the three of them made a production of carrying it into the living room—though Orla could have done it one-handed in a matter of seconds.
Eleanor Queen went on a search through the cabinets to find the newly unpacked mugs. Tycho tipped a packet of hot “cocolate” into each of them, spilling a halo of fine brown powder around the base of every one. Orla poured the hot water but let Eleanor Queen do all the stirring when she insisted she could do it without splashing even a single drop over the brim. And she was true to her word.
They hung out in the toasty living room for hours, playing Yahtzee, Uno, Chinese checkers. Orla heated up some canned soup for lunch—the freezer wasn’t yet stocked with homemade staples—and pretended she wasn’t worried that Papa hadn’t come home yet.
The day remained sunny and clear, though neither of the children asked to go back outside to play. Tycho ended up taking a nap on the couch. Eleanor Queen slunk off to her room, her books. Orla started washing up the dishes, but stopped when she realized that each member of the family was in a different place—three different rooms inside, and somewhere outside.
A new fear struck her.
Would they grow apart? Would they instinctively seek their own solitude and forget how it had been when they were always on top of each other? It was something they’d sometimes complained about, but now Orla could see the disadvantages of having more space—the slow stretching of their connections to one another. For years, making it work had been a daily exercise in compromise, new dances with new choreography—sometimes a waltz as she swept around the obstacles, the people, on her way across the room; sometimes a polka with an impromptu do-si-do to avoid a collision. Would they stop trying to read one another’s moves, moods, now that being in close proximity wasn’t a necessity? Instead, would they walk away and succumb to the silence and separation that seemed to reside like a feral entity in most family homes?
She wouldn’t allow it.
Orla abandoned the kitchen duties and returned to the living room. The boxes were already open so she started with the children’s books, and it took little additional effort to slide them noiselessly onto their shelves. Sometimes she glanced at Tycho as he slept, floppy like the baby he still was. What a sweet boy he was going to be. She could imagine him in school someday with equally sweet and curious friends. They’d talk about going to Mars in all seriousness, their future as astronauts never in doubt. He knew there was a real-life Tycho who’d been an astronomer, although her son was actually named after his papa’s best friend Lawrence’s parrot. The parrot-Tycho liked to count down from ten and squawk, “Blast off!” For a brief period, she and Shaw had silently cursed his astronomer-parrot namesake as toddler Tycho—well acquainted with the parrot—screamed “Blast off!” in answer to every question.
The memory always made her smile; while other two-year-olds said “No” to everything, her little boy was ready to shoot for the moon. He’d be a remarkable man someday. She’d do everything possible to make sure he retained his kindness, his easy comfort with loving and being loved.
Just as she was about to project Eleanor Queen into the future—a girl who, even by name alone, would never settle for princess status—something clattered at the back door. Her pulse quickened and she sprang to her feet, ready to gather in her children, or fight. The first irrational image that came to her mind was of a fox—or foxes—with nimble hands and small tools, seeking to break in and rob the place. You’ve been reading too many picture books. Her second thought was a black bear, ready to shove its paw through the kitchen window in search of leftovers.