She hugged him tight. He’d always had the capacity to astonish her. “Thank you. I guess, with the flurry of preparations, I haven’t really figured out what I’m going to do. Next.” She leaned back a little, fingered his paint-streaked hair. “I mean, be with the kids more. Help Eleanor Queen with her schooling this year. Maybe, if you strike it big, I can be your personal assistant.”
“I like that!” His fiddly hands tapped a rhythm on her hips as he bellowed an impromptu aria: “My canvases you’ll stretch, and my brushes you will fetch—”
“I was thinking more of scheduling your interviews and answering your fan mail.”
“Now you’re talking.” He gave her a loud smack of a kiss on the lips.
Orla released him, watching as he went to his desk, scooped more tubes of paint from the box, seemingly without a worry in the world.
“But just in case,” she said, downplaying how important it felt, “could you teach me how to shoot?”
Up early the next morning, bothered by the downstairs mess, Orla stacked glassware and mugs in an upper cabinet, enjoying the challenge of making little or no noise. She smiled as she put away her favorite mug. Covered with crooked hearts, Eleanor Queen had painted it as a six-year-old for a Mother’s Day gift. It was extra-special for the memories it evoked: Shaw arranging furtive trips to the Paint-a-Pottery shop in the days when he took baby Tycho everywhere in a kangaroo carrier. Some of her “memories” were things described to her by Shaw, moments she’d missed when the children were little. Now she wouldn’t miss any more of those moments.
The kitchen, though fully functional and with lots of counter space, had no appliances younger than thirty years old. But the linoleum floor had recently been replaced with tile, and the rustic cabinets were hickory with antique door pulls that she rather liked. The real estate agent had told her the original kitchen had been half the size and with a much lower ceiling, as if the fact that it had been worse fifty years ago made its current state a selling point. Once they got a proper table and matching chairs, it would be a homey place to prepare and eat their meals. Though first they needed to get something to stop the draft that was leaking in under the back door. The cold air swirled around her ankles, made her feel like something mischievous was grinning as it tickled her.
Upstairs, a door squeaked open, the sound followed by a shriek. “Papa! Mama! We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla chuckled. Another door squealed on its hinges—probably Tycho expecting to find her in bed beside Shaw. She imagined Shaw with the pillow folded over his ear, his preferred position for sleeping.
“Ten feet, Papa! Ten feet!”
She heard a rumbly, deep voice but couldn’t decipher Shaw’s reply. A moment later, Tycho came galloping down the stairs. “Mama!”
“In here, love.”
He raced into the kitchen. “We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla scooped her little boy into her arms. She carried him on her hip and went to look out the living room’s front window, where she could get a better sense of the accumulation. Snow covered the first two of the four steps leading up to the porch.
“I think maybe…ten inches? Twelve? Maybe a little deeper where it drifted?” she said.
Shaw lurched down the stairs in sleepy thuds, pulling on his raggedy tartan bathrobe. “Please, tell me we didn’t get ten feet—that wasn’t in the forecast.”
“Inches, not feet,” Orla assured him.
Eleanor Queen came down next, nimble as a sprite. She sprang on her toes toward the window, rested her fingertips on the glass.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Beautiful, huh?” Shaw asked, untangling the sleep nests from his daughter’s hair.
The previous day’s clouds of doom, depleted of their heavy burden, had dissipated. Orla couldn’t explain it, but the house felt more solid in the sunshine with a blue sky above. The snow, now that it wasn’t whipping through the air, looked less menacing. It struck her that the place was welcoming them, laying out its blanket of white wonder, enfolding them in its charm.
“What do you say I make us a nice hearty breakfast,” she said, “then we go play in the snow!”
Both of the children cheered. Shaw gave his toothy grin.
The children had played in snow before, of course, in the trampled communal spaces of the city’s parks. But never in their own yard. They’d never been able to build something that would last unmolested until they went to play again.
“We can make a snowman,” Tycho said.
“A snow woman,” said Eleanor Queen.
“A snow dragon!” Shaw roared. Tycho hopped down from Orla’s arms so he could join his sister as their father chased them around the room, roaring.
Orla caught that flicker again of a moment from the past. The family home. Her father making her little brother laugh. Though none of them ever chased delicate Otto, lest he stumble and break.
6
Long underwear. Sweaters. Thin socks beneath thick socks. Tycho hopped on one foot and then the other as Orla helped him into his snow pants; Eleanor Queen shimmied into hers on her own. Orla was grateful she’d taken Julie’s advice and invested in a pair of proper—tall and warm—snow boots for herself. Tycho tried fastening his boots, then gave up and plopped onto the floor in front of the door to let Orla do it. Next came the coats, scarves, hats, mittens. Orla didn’t bundle up quite as well—she wasn’t planning on being fully immersed in the snow—and when they were all ready, she opened the front door and the kids went out, bounding off the porch.
“Shaw? We’re heading out.”
“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
She didn’t know what he was doing in his studio—she’d expected him to join them on their first adventure in the snow—but she couldn’t keep the kids waiting after they were all suited up.
As soon as Orla stepped off the porch, she lifted a hand to her eyes to shield them from the blinding brightness of the sunlight on the white expanse. The kids, giggling with the pure joy of creatures at play, were already scooping the snow into mounds. They’d get up and stumble a few steps, then fall into the cushioning white, their hands touching every unblemished surface as if they couldn’t claim it quickly enough.
Orla strolled a few paces away from the house, enjoying the crunch beneath her boots. It warmed her heart to see Eleanor Queen so carefree, so lost in the moment that her active mind finally gave her a few seconds of peace.
“Is Papa gonna help us make the snow dragon?” she asked.
“I think so.” Orla looked back toward the house. Shaw was just inside, pulling on his coat.
“What’s that?” Tycho shrieked, excited. He pointed at something several feet away. Orla tramped over to take a look.
“Huh. Isn’t that interesting?” Her son had spotted what looked like a rolled bundle of snow, like a Swiss roll, or the giant bales of hay she’d seen on rare drives in the country, although this was less than a foot across. “Eleanor Queen? Come look!” When her daughter was at her side, she pointed at the flat patch of snow behind the rolled-up part. “See? It’s like the wind blew it into that shape.”