Who Sleeps Where

Walter rushed through the terminal’s automatic glass doors as if running late. But his entrance was so on time that Amanda immediately turned from the luggage carousel. Her happiness at seeing him lifted her high, defying gravity. He was wearing hiking shorts, sturdy boots, and a zip-up windbreaker.

Amanda vaguely heard Evie and DeeDee giggling as if they had stepped inside a transparent chamber: “He looks like David except not so mean.”

She pushed her palms toward them, meaning, hush-up. But the girls were tugging at each other, watching their mother glide toward the man.

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Perhaps in his rush, perhaps fooled by the crowd, Walter scooped Amanda up, lifting her from the waist. If he hadn’t momentarily lost his bearings, he wouldn’t have twirled her in circles. She held his shoulders and he, disoriented, lifted her higher with one hand, the other cupping the back of her head.

Momentarily lost, for less than a moment, really, they stopped. Never had they kissed on the mouth before. Let alone, as in this one unnatural moment—which didn’t count!—had they kissed so that his tongue touched her palate.

“Good Lord, Amanda!” Embarrassed and bemused, he released her gently. “Never let me do that again,” he pleaded. Now their fingertips touched, another moment, this one at arms’ length. “Never, ever.”

Ecstatic, she nonetheless realized:  He won’t let that happen again. He just won’t. So don’t hope!

That insignificant moment, which wasn’t even a moment, had mysteriously lasted long enough for the crowd to thin, and for Evie and DeeDee to haul their bags off the conveyer.

Amanda turned toward them, without quite seeing them, and said, “Evie, DeeDee.” They took shape, standing in front of her. “This is Walter.”

“Your grandfather,” he said, bending down toward them, sober and respectful as he shook their hands.

“Hello, grandfather,” Evie said with such super-cute, mock-coyness that Amanda blushed.  Could Evie have possibly watched old Shirley Temple movies? Weren’t they extinct? And if not, why hadn’t anyone slapped them with a warning—provocative behavior throughout?

Walter grabbed their bags, two in one hand, the bigger one, Amanda’s, in the other.

The Adirondack house charmed Amanda immediately. Such beautiful trees in front; the lake surrounded by mountain peaks in back. A wrap-around, screened-in porch, a stone fireplace Walter had used last night: “It gets cold after sunset.”

They climbed the stairs and in the hallway Amanda glanced at Walter, the descending sun casting urgent shadows.

He had set up his stuff in a small room, its big windows facing east. Next to it was a bigger room with a double bed. The other two, arranged and decorated similarly lay at the end of a hallway.

Amanda dutifully chose the one of the rooms down the hall. When Walter put her oversize bag by the double bed and cracked one of the huge, clean windows, she asked why he’d chosen a single bed; after all, he was 6’3”.

“Because of the twin herons that pose beneath the farthest window.” He cleared his throat and gazed outside at the glinting lake. 

Amanda stared at the braided rug, resisting an urge to touch him before the girls joined them. 

Since ten-year old Evie was already teasing her new grandfather, Amanda suggested DeeDee sleep in the room next to him.

“Unless, little girl, you’d rather sleep closer to me.” But Amanda knew how DeeDee pushed to keep pace with independent Evie. The seven-year old, who had suddenly lost any vestige of her baby face, naturally preferred the room next to Walter’s.

“In Bermuda,” DeeDee said, “I slept in a whole other wing of the hotel.”

Traitorous Evie whispered to Walter, “That’s because she still sometimes wets the bed.”

“Evie,” Amanda scolded. “ If DeeDee wanted, she could tell us about your secrets.”

“Like what? What secrets, Mom?”

Amanda indicated not now.

“We’re settled,” she said. “And Walter,” she opened her arms but remained across the room, since he had stepped back and held still while studying his boots. “Thank you. It’s incredible.”

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