“We’re baaaack.” Austin was loaded down with a backpack that nearly dwarfed him in size, with a rolled-up sleeping bag under his arm. His father was pushing a small shopping cart with a lantern, blankets, a thermos, and a couple of folding soccer chairs.
“You call this camping?” Kerry plucked a bottle of champagne from the cart.
“This is how we do it in our neck of the Village,” Patrick said.
Austin struggled out of his backpack and settled into the smaller of the two chairs.
Patrick unfolded his own chair and sneezed.
“Bless you,” she said.
He sneezed twice more in rapid succession, and she noticed that his eyes were red and watery. “You really are allergic to pine trees,” she said.
“I really am.” He sniffled into a handkerchief he’d produced from his jacket pocket.
“Will you be okay?”
“I took a couple allergy capsules before we came down just now,” he said. “Just warning you, I may get a little drowsy.”
“Me too,” Kerry said, stretching her legs toward the fire in the oil drum.
Patrick unscrewed the cap of the thermos. “Hot cocoa, anyone?”
“I’m good. But I wouldn’t say no to some champagne.”
“Ahhh. A woman after my own heart.”
He made a show of uncorking the bottle, and she held out one of the flutes.
“Very nice,” Kerry said, sipping.
“Will you sing a campfire song?” Austin barely succeeded in stifling a yawn.
“Do you know this one?” Kerry hummed a little, then began to remember the verses.
“Puff, the magic dragon…”
“Lived by the sea,” Patrick chimed in softly.
“I love dragons,” Austin said, his eyelids fluttering.
Haltingly, Kerry and Patrick sang the rest of the song as Austin’s chin began to sag slowly to his chest.
Kerry stood and gathered the drowsy boy into her arms. “Hey, buddy,” she whispered. “You wanna go check out Murphy’s bunk?”
His eyes fluttered open. “In Spammy?”
“Yeah.”
“But I gotta watch out for the bad guys.”
“There’s a window right beside Murphy’s bunk. You’ll have a perfect view in case anybody tries to make trouble,” she said.
“Okay, but I need my light saber and my binoculars,” he said.
Patrick picked up the backpack. “Got it right here,” he assured his son, as Kerry transferred Austin to his arms.
She opened the trailer door and pointed at her brother’s bunk. Patrick deposited him on the bunk and she unzipped the sleeping bag and pulled it over him.
In a moment, the boy’s breathing slowed and softened.
“He’s out,” Patrick whispered, looking up at Kerry. “Hot cocoa for the win.”
chapter 33
“Did your whole family really live here for an entire month?” Patrick asked, stretching out on the opposite bunk, looking around the cramped trailer.
Kerry sat down on the edge of her bunk.“We did. As a little kid, it seemed fun. Back then the bathroom and stove worked. Mom fixed a lot of soups and stews in a crockpot. She made even the mundane seem magical. Once we went to the Macy’s at Herald Square to see Santa. We took the subway and I thought that was just the most awesome thing ever. Even better than our Santa back home in Tarburton.”
Patrick smiled and leaned back against a stack of pillows. “I’d like to have seen New York through the eyes of seven-year-old Kerry.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek and stroked her hair. Slowly, she turned her face and her lips met his. The first kiss was tentative, but slowly, things grew more fevered.
Kerry wrapped her arms around Patrick’s neck. Being with him like this felt so warm, so right. She sighed.
“What?” he whispered. “Are you sad?” He kissed her forehead and then pressed his lips to hers. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not. I’m thinking how nice this is. I’m … content.”
He pulled his face a few inches away from hers and frowned. “Is that supposed to be a compliment? My kisses make you feel … content?”
She touched a fingertip to his chin, tracing the stubble with her nail. “It’s definitely a compliment. This … snuggled up in here with you, it feels right.”
Patrick reached for the folded blanket at the foot of the bed, and stretched it until it covered them both. He managed to unzip her quilted jacket and started to slide his hands under her sweater, but paused.
Austin stirred slightly and mumbled something incoherent.
“It would feel a lot nicer if my kid weren’t sleeping two feet away from us,” Patrick grumbled, glancing over at his sleeping child. “When can we be alone?”
“Shh. He’s asleep, right?” Kerry kissed his frown away, and he tugged at the hem of the sweater, only to encounter the flannel shirt she wore underneath.
“Just how many layers of clothes are you currently wearing?” His whisper was urgent.
“I work outdoors, remember?” She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bunk. She leaned down and unlaced her work boots, then stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Just gonna step into the bathroom to remove some of these pesky clothes,” she said, giggling. “Maybe you could do the same while I’m gone?”
“Ahhhh.”
Kerry tiptoed into the bathroom in her stocking feet, shedding the heavy jacket along the way. Somehow, in the space that was smaller than a phone booth, she managed to extricate herself from her jeans. Next came the sweater, then the flannel shirt, then the thermal underwear top. Hopping on first one foot and then the other, she pulled off the thermal bottoms. Finally, shivering and dressed only in panties and her wool socks, she leaned into the mirror to check her appearance, and wished she hadn’t. Her hair was lank and she had dark circles under both eyes, and she hadn’t actually had a real shower that day. In desperation, she squeezed some toothpaste into her mouth and swished it around, then spritzed herself with the only thing at hand, which happened to be a can of Murphy’s Axe spray deodorant. She fluffed her hair, then dashed, in the cold, back to the bunk.
Patrick was still propped up on the pillows, with the blanket pulled up over his bare chest. And he was dead asleep.
She sat down on the bunk and tentatively touched his face. He didn’t move. She put her hand on his chest. It was a nice chest, muscled, not overly hairy. She lifted the blanket and peeked. He’d stripped down to his boxers. They were red, with a festive pattern of prancing reindeers.
“Patrick?” She put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Patrick?”
His eyelids fluttered.
Kerry went back to the bathroom to fetch the clothes she’d just struggled out of.
He was snoring softly when she joined him on the bunk. She shook his shoulder. “Patrick. Hey, wake up.”
“Huh?” His voice was hoarse with sleep, and he seemed confused to find her half dressed.
“You fell asleep,” she said.
He sat halfway up, and groaned as he sank back down onto the bed.