“What’s wrong, hon?” Tanya Norris patted her hand.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m happy, I guess.” She swiped her cheeks, embarrassed.
“Happy as a fat tick on a skinny dog,” Marianne said, licking her fingers. Lindsay laughed.
“As a pig in shit,” Tanya agreed, shocking everyone at the table. She’d been a hard-core Baptist girl until she married Paul Senior. She’d once told Lindsay she joined his church because they liked to make love standing up, and she was afraid her church would think they were dancing.
A loud bang and a cry of pain broke up the happy party. “I’ll go see,” Tanya said, heading for the living room. Lindsay let her go. She was always the best mama to sort out a ruckus. She brought a sobbing Aiden with her. They fussed over him a while, gave him a dab of cookie dough and sent him out to rejoin the group.
“Dominic,” Tanya said, pouring herself more coffee. No more explanation was required. He’d taken it as his prime mission in life to torment his baby brother to tears at least twice a day. Antony had gotten to where he could manage it, usually by punching Dominic, which wasn’t really helping. But as a result, Aiden had latched on to Antony, which only seemed to anger Dom even more.
“That boy,” Lindsay said. “I don’t know what to do with him most days. Anton thinks he can whup the bad out of him, but it only seems to make him worse.”
They made the kids hot dogs on the stove and corn on the cob from Lindsay’s store of frozen vegetables. They were satisfied for about an hour after that, sprawled on the living room floor next to the crackling “campfire” in the fireplace, while Sesame Street played on videotapes Lindsay found at the secondhand bookstore. Then Dom threw his half-eaten corncob at Aiden, calling him a baby for not eating the bun of his hot dog, hitting him square in the eye, and sending him squalling into the kitchen once more.
“Let’s have a little separation time,” she said, picking her youngest boy up and loving the feel of his arms clasping her neck. She got him settled for a nap, the book she’d read him still clutched to his chest. Marianne had sent Antony to the bottom basement to fetch the Twister game, and was organizing that while Tanya cleaned up the camp meal by tossing paper plates and plastic ware into the trash, then wiping off faces and hands.
Lindsay put a tray in the oven, and soon the whole house smelled of chocolate chip cookies. Rosie and Antony took turns bossing the other kids through the game for a while, but Lindsay could sense that Dominic was getting too antsy to stay indoors much longer. Moments before she suggested the kids blow off steam in the bottom basement with the little indoor basketball hoop, the front door flew open, sending wind-blown swirls of snow into the lower foyer.
“Daddy!” Kieran shouted, and ran for his snow-coated father. Anton caught him, put him up on his shoulders and headed up to where the others were squabbling over whose turn it was to spin the wheel on the Twister game.
“Who wants to build a snowman?” he called out. The kids cheered and started shouting out ideas for clothes and decorations. Lindsay hauled out the snow gear, putting extra layers of Antony’s clothes on Paul and Rosie. She joined them once she and her friends were bundled up, just in time to catch a snowball to her shoulder.
“Look out, Mama!” Kieran called, ever her protector. She laughed and ducked around the corner, managing to nail Antony in the butt with one and Anton in the face with another. The snow was light and airy, so the balls didn’t pack much punch, which was a good thing, considering Dominic had deadly aim and hit everyone except the grownups in the face with his.
An hour later, the six or so inches of snow had increased to almost ten. They commandeered the trashcan lids, and Anton led an expedition to find a good hill in the neighborhood. Lindsay and the other moms demurred. When Anton grabbed her as she tromped by in the near-whiteout conditions and planted a cold-lipped kiss on hers, she’d pushed him away playfully. “Don’t you get my babies hurt, Anton Love.”
“No ma’am,” he said.
“No ma’am,” Antony parroted, glancing up for his father’s approval.
The women cleaned up the living room, and righted all the furniture, but left the tents up in case her boys wanted to sleep in them tonight. An hour later everyone returned, teeth chattering, fingers and toes freezing. Anton entered last, carrying Aiden, who was covering his left eye and sniveling.
“Dominic,” Anton muttered under his breath, shooting that son an evil eye worthy of Lindsay’s mother-in-law. “Damn kid.”
“Swear jar, Daddy,” Kieran said, shoving Dominic to the floor so hard the kid yelped—a first for him, she figured—before running to Lindsay so he could see what would be Aiden’s impressive black eye by morning. Anton dropped a coin in the huge jar on the kitchen table, and swatted Dominic’s butt as the boy ran by on his mission to find the next trouble and jump into it with both feet.
By about nine o’clock, the boys were passed out in their beds, Anton having vetoed the tent-sleeping plan, saying he wanted to watch the basketball game in peace and didn’t want the boys up that late. Lindsay was stretched out on the couch when Anton came down the steps from Dominic’s room after tucking him in-slash-warning him not to get up again. “That boy terrifies me, Linds.”
“I know, honey.” She was exhausted, but in a good way. “Would you take that game downstairs and bring me the clean clothes basket, please? I’ll fold while the game’s on.”
He leaned over and kissed her, grabbing her boob by way of gauging her interest. She let him, although she wasn’t sure what her interest level was at the moment. Four active boys in the house equaled very little private time for them lately. It’d been at least a month since they’d had more than quick, take-the-edge-off, middle-of-the-night, half-asleep sex.
He grabbed the Twister box and headed to the bottom basement, whistling the Wildcat fight song. Lindsay drifted, mesmerized by the dancing flames. When she blinked she realized she must have dozed and someone was calling her name. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, trying to figure out what time it was and why Anton hadn’t returned with the clothes basket and wasn’t in his chair, holding a beer and cursing the officials and coaches.
“Lindsay,” he called again. His voice had a strange edge that made her jump up and run to the basement, afraid he’d fallen or had a heart attack or something. The basement was dark, but a light shone in the laundry room. When she found him, he was leaning against the dryer, a sheet of paper and something else she didn’t immediately recognize in his hands. Her eyes flew to the cigar box on the washing machine. It must have gotten knocked to the floor when Antony was getting the game earlier.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said, his voice ominously low and brandishing the computer printout with her notes about blood types. “But I sure as hell know what this is.” He threw the Stockyards Bank bankbook at her. It smacked her chest and dropped to the floor, lying between them, opened to the page where she’d tucked the initial printed deposit receipt. “And you were going to tell me about this, when, exactly?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. His brown eyes glittered with fury. She stiffened and picked up the bankbook, mind spinning with possible explanations and scenarios whereby she deflected the fact of the two-hundred-thousand-dollar account with only her name on it by telling him that the printout proved he was not Aiden’s biological father. “I don’t know how carefully you studied it but if you did, you’d know I haven’t touched the money, at least not since that first day.”
“The first day,” he said, slowly. “That weekend you took off out of here like a bat out of hell, leaving my sons at your friends’ house and not answering me when I called Kathy’s number a million times. That first day?”
She put her hands on her hips, deciding to play the one card she’d kept tucked away for the past two and a half years. “Why, yes, Anton that would be the first day I had access to the money my family left me. I decided to accept it after I was privileged to watch you get your dick sucked by that whore, Isabella Josefi. In our brewery no less.”