The holiday party in Miss Logan's fourth grade classroom was winding down. The kids had exchanged presents, played games, eaten cupcakes and guzzled cups of punch, and now thoughts were turning to early dismissal and a vacation from school that stretched out endlessly...or a couple of weeks, anyway.

Dan Callahan looked around for his daughter Roxie, not seeing her for a second in the crowd of kids and parents in the room. Then, before he even had time to get worried, he spotted her on the other side of the room, standing next to the cage that had the class's two pet mice, Brewster and Chuck, in it. Her blond head was leaned close to the cage, and she seemed to be talking to the mice, although with all the hubbub in the room, Dan had no chance of hearing what she was saying.

"It was a good party, don't you think?"

Dan looked over. Melissa Logan, Roxie's teacher, was the one who had spoken to him. She smiled, and he couldn't help but smile back at her. Most men would, since she was cute, 5'6", nicely curvy, green-eyed, chestnut-haired, smart, great with the kids in her room—all kids, really—and single.

She and Dan had met when school started, and the attraction between them was obvious right away. He wasn't sure about asking her out, and she had been reluctant to accept when he finally did, since Roxie was in her class, but there was no rule against it and in the end, Melissa had said yes.

They had dated pretty seriously for a couple of months, but then things cooled off between them. Dan knew why, too. It was his fault, entirely. But there didn't seem to be a blasted thing he could do about it.

Still, they got along well and things were pleasant between them, so Dan didn't hesitate to return her smile and say, "Yeah, you did a great job."

"Not me," Melissa said. "I have a couple of great room parents, and plenty of other parents pitched in to help, too."

"Yeah, well, I feel a little bad that I'm not a great room dad."

She shook her head and said, "That's all right. I know how busy you are."

"No guy should ever be too busy for his kid."

"And you're not, if that's what you're worried about. Roxie is one of the least deprived children I know."

Other than being deprived of a mother, Dan thought. He tried to push that out of his head, along with the sudden mental image of his late wife's smiling face, but it wasn't easy.

He took a deep breath and said, "I don't know. She's kind of a loner."

"Not really. She has two or three good friends." Melissa lowered her voice and moved closer to him, close enough that their hips brushed for a second. "Some of these kids are social butterflies, you know. They keep score with each other by how many friends they have. I think it's more healthy to be like Roxie is."

"I hope you're right," Dan said. The brief physical contact with Melissa had felt good, and to keep his mind off it, he went on, "Look at the way she's talking to those mice, though, instead of to the other kids."

"That's all right. She loves Brewster and Chuck. She's helped me take care of them more than anyone else in the class. She's probably just going to miss them over the holiday."

Dan nodded, but he wasn't really paying attention now. His thoughts had drifted back to Erica. Two years she had been gone now, and all too often it still seemed like yesterday that he and Roxie had lost her. The memories came on him, usually without warning, and when they did, they hit him hard.

Thank God the illness had been swift in its merciless course. Erica hadn't suffered long. Dan would have given anything for one more day, even one more hour, with her, but that would have meant she would have suffered that much more, and he wouldn't have wished that on her, no matter how much it hurt all of them to say goodbye...

Melissa touched his forearm with her fingertips and said, "Dan? Are you all right? You looked a million miles away...and it wasn't a good place."

He managed to summon up a smile again and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. I guess I'm just one of those folks who gets a little melancholy around holidays. I won't let it ruin things for Roxie, though."

"Of course you won't. I can't imagine you ever allowing anything to ruin things for her, if you could help it." She paused. "There's a lot about life that we can't help, though."

"Not at this time of year. It's Christmas, right? Season of miracles and all that?"

Before Melissa could answer, the bell rang, and chaos erupted. She gasped and said, "Oh, my! I should have been having the children get ready—"

Too late for that. Kids were already grabbing their presents and everything else they wanted to take home over the holidays.

School was over until after the new year.

o0o

Roxie was the last one out of the classroom. Nothing unusual in that, Melissa thought. She had seen it happen almost every day since the beginning of school. She had been teaching long enough to know that there was always one kid who lingered behind the others. The reasons varied. Some liked school so much they just hated to leave. Others had nothing waiting at home to make them want to be there; those were the sad cases. And some were the kids who just never got in a hurry about anything because that was their personality.

Roxie Callahan was a mixture of the first and third reasons. Melissa knew the little girl's home life was good, or as good as it could be for an only child of a single dad, a girl whose mom had passed away a couple of years earlier from a sudden, unexpected illness. Dan did the best he could to give Melissa everything she needed, but...well, he was a guy, Melissa mused as she watched the two of them standing on the other side of the room while Roxie gathered up her stuff. Little girls had problems that dads just weren't equipped to handle. Dan deserved credit for trying, though.

Yeah, he was a good dad...but not a very good boyfriend, as Melissa had discovered.

"You're going to date the father of one of your students?" That was the question her friend Kathy had asked. "That's not allowed, is it?"

"There's no rule against it," Melissa had said.

"Rule or no rule, is it a good idea? Isn't it like...conflict of interest or something?"

"Or something," Melissa had acknowledged. "But his daughter is wonderful, and he seems like a really sweet guy. Jerks generally don't raise good kids, although I've known it to happen."

"Annnd he's cute, right?"

"Well..."

Yeah, Dan was cute. Six feet, well-built, brown hair that never quite seemed to be tamed, the sort of rawboned good looks that made a person think about Navy SEALS or firefighters or cops. Dan wasn't any of those things. He was an architect, but he had started out in construction work as a young man. He had a lot going for him.

Other than the fact that he was the father of one of her students...and he was a widower. Everybody got over losses like that differently. Two years might be plenty for some people to be ready to move on. For others, twenty years might not be enough time.

The only way to find out had been to give in and accept one of Dan's invitations to go out. He'd been persistent, which was good, but not annoyingly so, which was also good.

The chemistry had been there between them right away. He didn't even kiss her on their first date. When he'd pressed his lips to hers at the end of their second date, her insides did flip-flops and the thought of inviting him into her apartment, to spend the night or not, had at least crossed her mind before she steeled herself against the idea. Things had progressed from that, to the point that Melissa was thinking not just about a long-term relationship, but a forever relationship.

Then Dan had told her it seemed to him like they ought to slow down for a while, and what could Melissa do but try to salve her wounded feelings by saying that she had been thinking the same thing?

"Any day now will be fine," Dan told his daughter, bringing Melissa out of that painful reverie.

Although his tone was stern, the way Roxie responded, "I know, Dad, I know," showed that she didn't take him all that seriously. She knew he wasn't all that bothered by the wait.

"I need to go on down to the gym and help out with bus duty," Melissa said. "I'm not officially assigned to it, but the last day of school before a holiday is always hectic."

"See, you're keeping Miss Logan from what she needs to do," Dan said to Roxie.

"Oh, no, it's all right—" Melissa began, then stopped as Dan grinned at her.

"C'mon, help a guy out here," he said.

I wish I could, Melissa thought.

Roxie closed the last fastener on her backpack and held it out to her father. "I think I have everything," she said. When Dan took the backpack, Roxie ran over to Melissa and gave her a hug. "I can't believe it's going to be two whole weeks before I see you again."

"You'll be having such a great time, the break will be over before you know it."

Dan came over, still smiling but looking a little uncomfortable now. He said, "Have a good Christmas and happy new year, Melissa."

"You, too," she told him. He reached out, put a hand on her shoulder for a second, then let it fall away, took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. That was certainly awkward, Melissa thought.

"'Bye!" Roxie called to her as they left the room.

"'Bye, sweetie," Melissa responded. She went to the door and watched them as they walked down the hall and out of the school, silhouetted by the bright December sunlight.

Then she turned the other way and headed for the gym.

o0o

"Oh!" Roxie exclaimed as soon as she had put her backpack in the car. "I forgot something!"

Before Dan could ask her what she had forgotten this time—Roxie leaving something at school was a pretty common occurrence—she had turned and started back toward the building, moving at a fast trot. Dan sighed and started after her.

He hoped Melissa had already gone to the gym to help out with bus duty. It wasn't that he didn't want to see her again. Lord knew, it had been hard enough leaving the first time without even a hug. That would have just made things worse, though. The thought of not seeing Melissa for a couple of weeks bothered him, too. He was used to seeing her every day either before or after school, sometimes both.

And that was a bad habit, he told himself as he hurried after Roxie, like picking at a scab so that a sore place never had a chance to heal. If things with Melissa weren't going anywhere—and he had realized that they couldn't—it would be better if he saw her as little as possible, rather than constantly being reminded of the time they had spent together and all the good moments they had shared.

His footsteps echoed hollowly in the corridor as he walked along it toward Melissa's room. When he reached the open door, he was relieved to see that she was gone. Roxie was on the other side of the room by the windows, and when she turned around, she had the cage with the two mice in it in her hands.

"I almost forgot about Brewster and Chuck!" she said. "I'm supposed to take them home and take care of them over the Christmas break."

"Wait a minute." Dan frowned. "What? I haven't heard anything about you taking care of some...rodents...over the holidays."

"Well, somebody has to," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, sounding like she was the grown-up and he was the kid. "They'd starve to death. Thank goodness I remembered them!"

"Oh, I'm sure if they'd still been here when Miss Logan came back, she would've just taken them with her for the break. In fact, are you sure that's not what's supposed to—"

"No, she picked me special to do this, Dad," Roxie said with a note of desperation in her voice. "I'm sorry I forgot to tell you about it, I really am. But look, there's the bag of the food they eat, right there on the shelf, and a bag of the shavings we put in the cage when we clean it—"

Dan held up a hand to stop her. "You mean when you clean it. I didn't sign up to deal with, uh, mouse droppings..."

"I'll clean the cage," Roxie said quickly, "and I'll feed them and make sure they have plenty of water and do everything else that needs to be done. Please, Dad." Her bottom lip came out a little. "It's bad enough I won't see Miss Logan for all that time. Having Brewster and Chuck around will help."

"All right, I suppose it won't be that big a deal."

"Thanks, Dad!"

He went to the shelves to get the food and bedding. "They can stay on that little table in the utility room, okay? And you'll take care of them."

"I promise!"

"Good. Because I intend to hold you to it."

They walked out of the school again, this time with a couple of furry little companions.

o0o

Melissa came back into the room forty-five minutes later. She had helped out not only with bus duty but with parent pickup as well, and finally all the kids were gone except for the handful who rode the late bus. She was ready to pack up everything she would be taking home for the holidays.

Almost right away she had the nagging sense that something was wrong, but it took her several minutes to realize what it was.

Brewster and Chuck were gone.

Melissa stood there for a moment, staring at the spot on the table where the cage with the two mice was supposed to be. It was empty, no doubt about that. The bags of food and bedding were gone, too, so whoever had taken the mice had known what they were doing.

She turned and hurried out of the room. The door of the next room was open, so she went to it and looked in to see her friend Shelby Winstead getting ready to leave.

"Shelby, did you see anybody messing around in my room?"

"When?"

"It would have had to be in the past forty-five minutes or an hour," Melissa said.

Frowning, Shelby walked toward her and asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Brewster and Chuck are missing."

"Brew...Wait a minute. Those are your rats, right?"

"They're mice," Melissa said, "but yes, they're the class pets. I have a schedule set up so the kids take turns feeding them, giving them water, and cleaning out the cage. You know, to teach responsibility."

"Well, there you go," Shelby said. "One of the kids was taking them home for the holidays, right?"

Melissa shook her head. "No, I intended to take them myself."

"Maybe a kid took them anyway."

"They were still there when I went down to the gym, and all the kids had already left."

"One of them could have come back," Shelby suggested. "Your door wasn't locked, was it?"

"No, not yet."

What her friend was saying made sense, Melissa decided. It was almost impossible to predict what nine- and ten-year-olds would do. Some of the time they were fairly reasonable, and some of the time their actions made so little sense—at least to an adult—that you never knew what to expect.

"But you didn't see anybody over there, or going in or out?" she asked again.

"No, 'fraid not," Shelby replied.

Melissa nodded, thanked her, and went out into the hall again. Donny Caldwell, the head custodian, was at the far end of the fourth-grade hall, already cleaning so the custodial crew could get out of here like everybody else.

Melissa walked down to where he was and asked, "Donny, have you been working in this hall for very long?"

"I dunno, fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess," the grizzled, middle-aged man said.

"Did you see anybody going in or out of my room?"

Donny pursed his lips, frowned in thought, and then shook his head. "Nope. Not sayin' there wasn't anybody, but if there was I didn't notice 'em. You're not missin' anything, are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I am. Brewster and Chuck, the class mice. It appears that someone's taken them."

"Oh, is that...I mean, I'm sure sorry, Miss Logan."

Melissa knew perfectly well what he meant. He wasn't worried about Brewster and Chuck being missing. To Donny they were just rodents. Varmints. Potential pests, if they ever got loose in the school. She supposed she couldn't blame him for feeling that way.

"You sure they didn't just get outta their cage somehow?"

She shook her head and said, "No, the cage is gone, too, along with their food and bedding."

"Oh. Sounds to me like one o' the kids must'a took 'em. Probably didn't want to be separated from them over the break."

Melissa nodded and thanked him. She went along the fourth-grade hall, talking to all the other teachers who were still there. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary during the past hour, but they had been busy with their own preparations to leave. They all advanced the same theory as Shelby and Donny: one of the kids from Melissa's class had taken Brewster and Chuck.

They hadn't gotten on the bus with the cage, the food, and the bedding, however. Melissa would have spotted that. Which meant that it had to be one of the kids who left with a parent. She could imagine a harried mom or dad being told that their child was supposed to take care of the mice over the holidays. It was a reasonable scenario, and a parent would be more likely to accept it without a lot of questions if the student waited until after they had left the school, then suddenly "remembered" about the mice. Melissa nodded slowly to herself as she thought over that theory.

Maybe what she ought to do was just wait and see who brought the mice back after the break, and deal with it then. She knew if she did that, though, she would worry about the two little guys the entire time. She really wanted to be sure they were all right.

That left her with the option of calling around to the various parents and asking them if they had the mice. At least she could narrow it down by eliminating the bus-riders.

What a way to start Christmas vacation, she thought as she started packing up the rest of her stuff.

o0o

When Dan had decided to move after Erica's death, he had spotted a listing for an old house that interested him immediately. Built about a hundred years earlier, it was really too big for just him and Roxie, but he was fascinated by old houses. That fascination was what had led him into construction and then architecture. According to the listing, the house was a "fixer-upper", which could mean anything from a shack on the verge of falling down to a fine old structure with a solid frame that just needed a little work. The only way to find out was to take a look.

That one look was enough to tell Dan that he wanted to spend the rest of his life here.

The house was two stories with a couple of finished attic rooms that formed cupolas. The wood floor was still in good shape and would be spectacular with some repair work and polishing. The wiring and the plumbing had been updated in the Sixties but needed it again. Dan could handle those things himself, although he would have to call in licensed tradesmen to do enough to make sure everything would pass inspection. He looked over the whole place carefully and didn't see any signs of mold. Time had taken its toll on the house, but generally it was in good shape.

"My great-grandfather built it mostly by himself," the man who was selling the house had told Dan. "He and my great-grandmother moved in here right after they were married. They raised their family here, then the oldest son, my grandfather, took it and he and his family lived here, and then my dad. I grew up in this house."

"And you don't plan to keep it?" Dan hadn't been able to stop himself from asking the question. If he had inherited this house, he sure wouldn't have wanted to part with it.

The man spread his hands and said, "I moved away twenty years ago. I'm not going to uproot my family and force them to come back here just so I can live in the house where I grew up. Besides, it's falling apart. I really don't feel right about even selling it, that's why my brothers and sisters and I have it priced to move." He had laughed. "I'm not doing a very good job of giving you the hard-sell, am I? I just want to make sure you know what you'd be taking on if you bought it."

"I know," Dan had said. The fact that the guy thought the house was falling apart told him a lot. If anybody was being taken advantage of here, it was the heirs getting rid of the house. "I'll pay your asking price. No haggling."

"You have a deal, my friend."

"What was your great-grandfather's name, if you don't mind me asking."

That question seemed to surprise the man, but he had said, "His name was Lewis Collins. Why? Have you heard of him?"

"Not until now," Dan had answered honestly. "I was just curious."

He didn't try to explain the real reason he had asked. As he stood there looking around the house, resting a hand on the staircase banister, feeling the place around him, he seemed to sense another presence. Dan was much too level-headed to believe in ghosts, but he did believe that when somebody created something, especially with their bare hands and sweat, something of their essence remained with it. It was almost like Lewis Collins was still here in a way.

"My great-grandmother's name was Beth."

"Lewis and Beth," Dan had said as he looked around. "I'll bet they had a good life here."

o0o

In the year and a half since then, Dan had done a lot of work on the house. He had taken up carpet and linoleum, laying bare the wood floor that had come to life under his touch. He had painted, paneled, sheetrocked, scrubbed, polished, replaced, and repaired. Roxie had been right beside him, doing whatever she could to help. She could handle a hammer and a paint brush better than some grown-ups Dan knew. A shared project like this was just what they needed to keep them busy, so they didn't think too much about the loss they also shared.

Even so, Dan sometimes heard her crying, although those occasions were less frequent now. And sometimes he still felt like his guts were being ripped out. Again, it didn't happen as often as it had in the past.

For some reason, that bothered him almost as much as the grief. How could losing Erica not hurt as bad as it once had? It was supposed to hurt. The pain wasn't meant to go away. If it did, that meant...

He didn't want to think about what it meant.

Sometimes he thought about the upper hall instead. Something was off about it. His architect's eye—or maybe his construction guy's eye—had noticed that almost right away, but he had never been able to figure out exactly what it was. To be honest, he hadn't devoted a lot of time to the question. Raising Roxie and taking care of work kept him busy. But there were moments when the little mystery was a welcome distraction.

He wasn't thinking about it at all today. He was thinking about mice and Melissa Logan, and about Christmas. This would be the third Christmas since Erica's death. Since she had passed away not long before the holiday, the first one had been miserable for both Dan and Roxie. They had tried to carry on but had wound up ignoring the occasion for the most part. Then the second Christmas had come not long after the first anniversary of Erica's death, so that one had been very subdued as well.

Dan was determined he wasn't going to let his daughter keep on moping through every holiday season from now on, though. This year they would do it right. They would have a tree in the living room, as soon as he got around to getting one, and they had been putting up lights and decorations outside. As he pulled up the driveway next to the house, he said, "You ought to get a couple of little Santa hats and put them on those mice. That would be really cute, don't you think?"

"Brewster and Chuck wouldn't leave them on," Roxie said, shaking her head.

"They might for a minute or two. Long enough for you to take their picture. It would make a good Christmas card. We could make 'em on the computer."

"It kind of would, wouldn't it?"

"We can give it a try," Dan said.

The past two years, they hadn't sent out cards. That had always been one of Erica's favorite Christmas activities. The three of them had always sat down together to sign the cards personally, just as soon as Roxie was old enough to print her name. It was time to start doing that again.

Holding on to the pain in his heart and soul might be the right thing for him to do, but Roxie had to get past it. She still had her whole life in front of her.

The one-car garage wasn't attached to the house. Dan parked and got out. He took the bags of food and bedding and Roxie's backpack while she carried the cage into the house. She didn't seem to want to let go of it. She smiled at the mice and asked, "Do you two want to be Santa's elves? You're going to look so adorable!"

Dan had to grin at the joy he heard in his daughter's voice.

He had already wrapped up his work for the day, so he didn't have to go back to the office. Most of the time he was able to work from home anyway, so during school breaks like this he took Roxie with him when he had to go in. She didn't mind sitting in his office reading or playing games for a couple of hours. He had managed to almost entirely avoid leaving her with babysitters, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"Take Brewster and Chuck into the utility room," he told her. "Then come back and get their stuff. I'll leave it here on the hall table with your backpack."

"Okay, Dad." She went toward the utility room in the back of the house, still talking animatedly to the mice.

Dan was a little surprised he had come up with the idea of dressing up the mice for a Christmas picture. That was the sort of thing that Erica would have done. She'd loved Christmas and once Roxie came along, the holiday was even better. Christmas and kids just went together.

He went into his home office to check his email, and as he did, he opened one of the websites playing Christmas music and started humming along with it. He had to answer several emails, and between that and the music, an hour went by without him really noticing.

Roxie came into the office and asked, "Can we go to the mall?"

"What for?"

"To look for Santa hats or elf hats for Brewster and Chuck. You were the one who suggested it," she added as if he were trying to get out of taking her.

"Sure, we can do that," Dan told her. He closed the computer and stood up. "Come on. We'll pick up some pizza for supper while we're out."

Dan tried to see to it that they ate healthy most of the time, for Roxie's sake...but there was no point in being fanatical about these things.

Most of the stores in the mall had had their Christmas merchandise out since before Halloween, so things had already been pretty well picked over. Also, Dan didn't really have any idea where to start looking for mouse-sized Christmas headgear. They wound up going to one of the stores next to the mall that sold pet food and accessories, and that was where they found a couple of Santa hats that Roxie thought would fit Brewster and Chuck. By the time they picked up the pizza and got home, night was settling down. That was all right with Dan, because it meant some people had already turned on their Christmas lights, and he always enjoyed looking at the brilliant, festive displays. So did Roxie, who ooh-ed and ahh-ed at decorations she had already seen a dozen times.

When they walked into the big old house, Dan carried the pizza to the kitchen while Roxie went to show the mice the hats she had bought them. Dan had just set the pizza box on the counter, or else he would have dropped it when Roxie screamed.

"Dad!" she cried. "They're gone!"

Dan ran into the utility room and found her staring in horror at the empty cage. The door was open a few inches, plenty wide enough for a couple of small mice to have climbed out.

"What in the world—wasn't the door fastened?"

"I...I thought it was! I had it open earlier because I...I wanted to play with them, but then I put them back in the cage and I thought I fastened it..."

She dissolved into sobs.

Dan knelt beside her, put his arms around her, and cradled her against him. "It's all right," he told her. "They've got to be around here somewhere. We'll find them."

"But the utility room door was open! They...they could be anywhere in the house! They could have gotten out!"

"No, all the doors and windows were closed. They have to still be in here—"

"They could have run out the door when we came in, and we never noticed them! A cat's going to get them, or a dog!"

Well, probably, if they had been unlucky enough to escape, Dan thought, but he wasn't going to say that to Roxie. Instead he said, "Let's just start looking, okay? The sooner we start looking, the sooner we find them, right?"

"But...but...you don't understand," Roxie said miserably. "I'm not even supposed to have them!"

Dan put his hands on his daughter's shoulders and moved her back a little. For a long moment, he looked at her in silence, then he said, "What do you mean you're not supposed to have them?"

Sniffling, she said, "I...I couldn't stand not seeing them for two whole weeks. So I thought if I told you that I...I was supposed to bring them home with me..."

 

"You mean you thought that if you lied to me, I'd be stupid enough to believe it."

"No! Honest, Dad, I—"

"Little bit late to be claiming honesty," Dan pointed out. That was true, but he immediately regretted saying it anyway since Roxie started to sob.

He went on, "All right, all right, honey, take it easy. We'll worry about why you did it and why you thought you could get away with it later. Right now, you start looking for those mice, and I'll call Miss Logan and tell her what happened."

"Do...do you have to?"

"Well, yeah. She's bound to be worried about the little guys. She doesn't know you took them. All she knows is that they disappeared from her classroom."

Roxie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and said, "I never thought about that."

"Everything you do affects other people. You want to make sure you help as many as you can and don't hurt any more than you have to."

She nodded and wiped away more tears. Dan rose to his feet and was reaching for his phone when it buzzed in his pocket.

"Timing," he muttered when he took it out and saw that the caller was Melissa. He thumbed the answer icon and said, "I was just about to call you."

"Was it about the mice?" she asked.

"Great minds think alike."

"Please tell me you have them."

Dan looked at Roxie, who was scurrying around a little like a mouse herself, moving everything she could in the utility room to look behind it. He thought about telling Melissa that Brewster and Chuck were with him and Roxie and that everything was fine, but that would mean lying to her.

He had already lied to her—and to himself—when he asked her out and made her think he was ready to move on after Erica's death. He didn't want to lie to her again.

"They were here—"

"Oh, thank goodness! Did Roxie tell you she was supposed to bring them home for the holidays?"

"How did you know that?" Dan asked.

"I didn't really know it, but when they disappeared, that seemed like something that could have happened. And I'm not surprised that Roxie was the one behind it. I know how fond she is of those little guys—Wait a minute. Did you say they were there? Where are they now?"

Dan grimaced even though Melissa couldn't see that through the phone. "Well, they're still here in the house somewhere—they have to be—but they're not exactly in their cage anymore..."

"You let them out?"

Dan bristled slightly at the accusing tone in her voice. "They got out. It wasn't intentional. Roxie and I are looking for them right now. I'm sure we'll find them any minute..."

Roxie turned to him with a look of despair on her face. They're not here! she mouthed.

He turned the phone away for his mouth and whispered, "Well, go look somewhere else."

Of course, that didn't keep Melissa from hearing what he said. "I'm going to come over there and help you search," she told him.

He started to say that wasn't necessary, but then he thought about how she probably had a sentimental attachment to the mice, too. He said, "Sure, that would be fine. Thank you. And I'm really sorry about this."

"You didn't know any better. Roxie fooled you."

"Yeah, well, I should have checked with you before we left with the little...with the mice. But don't worry, they can't have gotten far. We'll probably find them before you even get here."

"I hope so. I'll see you in a little while."

Dan slipped the phone back in his pocket. Roxie had hurried out of the utility room. He went after her and called, "Roxie? Where'd you go?"

"I'm up here!" she called from the upstairs hall. "I thought I heard something!"

He started to tell her that the mice couldn't have gone upstairs, but then he thought, why not? Mice could climb. Those stairs would have been a pretty formidable ascent for them, but if they had gotten out of their cage soon after Roxie left them in the utility room, they would have had plenty of time to reach the second floor.

Then Roxie let out a little shriek and cried, "There's a mouse hole!"

They hadn't had time to chew a hole in the wall, Dan thought. Had they? Surely not. But honestly, he didn't know how long it would take a mouse to chew through the wood, and there were two of them, so they could take turns or maybe even work at the job at the same time, if they were smart enough. Who knew with mice?

It was worth taking a look, he decided. He started up the stairs and called to Roxie, "All right, I'm coming."

He hoped it was just an old hole he had overlooked. If Brewster and Chuck were in the walls, that wouldn't be good. He might not ever be able to find them.

Roxie was on her knees at the far end of the hall, bent over trying to look through a tiny hole in the baseboard. She had moved aside the table that usually sat there with a vase of artificial flowers on it. She glanced up at Dan and said excitedly, "I think they're in there!"

"Let me take a look," he told her. She moved aside, and he hunkered in front of the hole.

It certainly appeared to be a mouse hole. Dan was no expert at such matters, but it seemed to him the hole wasn't new enough for Brewster and Chuck to have gnawed it out.

"What did Miss Logan say?" Roxie asked, sounding worried again. "Why was she calling you? Was it about the mice?"

"That's right, she was looking for them. She'd figured out that one of you kids must have taken the mice, and I got the impression she was calling the parents of everybody she thought might have done it."

"Oh." Roxie looked down at the floor. "I'm in a lot of trouble, aren't I?"

"You're in some trouble. Just how much, Melissa and I will have to figure out later. Right now, let's just concentrate on finding Brewster and Chuck."

Roxie pointed at the wall and said, "They're in there, I just know they are."

"How'd you find this hole?" he asked her. The table had been here since shortly after they had moved into the house. Dan thought putting it there with some flowers on it would brighten up the hall, which came to an odd dead end here. In fact, this was the area that hadn't really seemed right to him ever since they moved in.

"I don't know, I was just looking behind everything, and I moved the tablecloth, and there it was. Do you think they did it, Dad?"

"I don't know." Dan leaned over and pressed his ear to the wall, then rapped on it like he was knocking on a door. He thought the noise might make Brewster and Chuck scurry around if they were in the wall, and then he'd be able to hear them.

What he heard wasn't what he expected. He knocked again, just to be sure, then straightened up and frowned at the wall.

"What's wrong, Dad? Did you hear them?"

Dan shook his head and said, "No, but it sounds hollow in there, more than it would if this was a regular wall." He rubbed his chin. "I think there's a hidden room behind there."

o0o

Roxie answered the door a few moments after Melissa pressed the old-fashioned brass button attached to the bell. The little girl looked excited about something as she said, "Oh, hi, Melissa...I mean, Miss Logan."

"That's all right. We're not in school. You can call me Melissa." She looked stern. "Just don't get too much in the habit of it."

When Melissa and Dan had been dating and the three of them had been together, it had seemed too stiff and formal to insist that Roxie call her Miss Logan. Especially since it had seemed possible to Melissa for a little while that she might wind up being Roxie's stepmother. If Dan had ever asked her to marry him, she planned to suggest that they wait until the school year was over and have the wedding during the summer. That way, Melissa would be able to concentrate on being Roxie's stepmom—and Dan's wife, of course—without having to complicate things by being the little girl's teacher as well.

Of course, that was all moot now, since Dan had decided for some unfathomable reason that they ought to cool things off between them. Actually, that was probably the smart thing to do, since Roxie was in her class, but Melissa had been hurt by it anyway and missed the time she and Dan had spent together.

Now she looked at Roxie, still sternly, and went on, "You and I are going to have to have a long talk, young lady."

"I know, about Brewster and Chuck and what a bad thing I did, but not right now."

"What do you mean, not right now? Where's your father?"

"He's upstairs, tearing down a wall."

Well, that was...not the answer Melissa had expected. "Tearing down a wall?" she repeated. "Why in the world is he doing that?"

"Because there's a secret room behind it!"

Melissa didn't know what to make of that. It sounded like something out of an old black-and-white movie.

"I'm going to have to see this for myself," she said.

"Yeah, I know. It's really cool. When the doorbell rang, Dad said it was probably you and told me to bring you upstairs. Come on!"

Roxie turned and ran to the staircase, clearly caught up in the excitement of whatever was going on. Melissa followed at a slower pace, but she was intensely curious herself.

"Have you found Brewster and Chuck yet?" she asked.

Roxie stopped halfway up the stairs and looked sheepish. "Not yet," she admitted. "We've been looking for them. That's what we were doing when we found the secret room."

She started climbing again. Melissa followed, torn by a mixture of curiosity and worry over her little pet friends.

Dan stood at the far end of the hall with a crowbar in his hands. He had already pulled off the baseboard and the trim. He looked over his shoulder at Melissa and said, "Hey. You got here just in time to watch me be destructive."

"What are you going to do?"

"The sheetrock's got to come off, and there's no way of doing that without busting it up. So here goes."

He brought the crowbar back and then slammed it into the wall, knocking a hole right through the wallpaper-covered sheetrock.

Melissa said, "Oh!" She couldn't contain the exclamation. She hated to see the old house being damaged, but obviously Dan was determined to find out what was on the other side of that wall. He could repair whatever damage he did.

"I've known all along that there was something off about this hall," he said as he prepared to strike again with the crowbar. "I never took the time to work out the dimensions in my head, though, or else I would have known that it wasn't long enough. There are eight or ten feet unaccounted for back there, and I want to see what's in it."

"Could it be something...bad?" Melissa asked, thinking about some of the movies she had seen. If Hollywood had taught her anything, it was that usually it wasn't a good idea to go around opening up secret rooms in old houses.

Of course, those movies were all just fiction. There couldn't be any monsters or evil spirits lurking in that hidden space.

Could there?

The crowbar slammed into the wall again. Dan set the tool aside, reached into the hole he had made, and started breaking out large sections of sheetrock.

"There used to be a door here," he said, "but somebody walled it up."

"Dad, this is startin' to feel a little creepy," Roxie said. "Maybe we should have left it alone, unless you're sure Brewster and Chuck are in there."

"I don't see any sign of them." Dan tore another large piece of sheetrock out of the wall. "It's just a room with some boxes in it. A storeroom of some sort, it looks like."

"Then why was it walled up?" Melissa asked.

"Beats the heck out of me." He kicked another piece out of the wall and now had an opening large enough to step through. Some light from the hall slanted into the room beyond, but for the most part it was shrouded in gloom. "There's a light," he muttered. "Must be a switch somewhere..."

"The bulb won't burn after all this time, will it?"

"Only one way to find out," Dan said. "Ah, there it is. Here we go."

He flipped the switch he had found, and light flooded out from the bare bulb screwed into a fixture mounted on the ceiling of the hidden room.

Like he had said, there was nothing in here but a bunch of dusty cardboard boxes.

"Well, that's a letdown," Dan said dryly. "I thought there would be a ghost, at least."

"Don't joke about things like that, Dad," Roxie told him.

"Sorry." He took a look around. "And sorry to say, I don't see any mice, either. That hole didn't really look recent enough for them to have done it, but I figured it was worth taking a look."

"You just wanted to see what was in this room," Melissa said.

"Yeah, that, too, I guess." He chuckled. "Hey, with my background, things like this interest me." He stepped closer and studied one of the boxes. "There's writing on here. Lew and Beth's pictures, it says."

"Who are Lew and Beth?"

"The young couple who lived here when the house was built a hundred years ago. They spent their whole married life here, so I guess they weren't young the entire time."

Melissa stepped into the room, turning sideways to go through the opening so the rough sides of it wouldn't snag her clothes or get dust from the broken sheetrock on them.

"Do you think we should check inside them?" she asked. "It's not likely the mice got in any of those boxes, but you never know."

"Yeah, that's true. I guess it won't hurt anything."

Dan opened the top box on the stack. Inside were half a dozen old-fashioned photo albums wrapped in plastic to protect them from dust. It looked like the coverings had done a good job of that. Dan pulled the plastic back and took out one of the albums.

"What are you doing?" Melissa asked. "Those don't belong to you."

"I know, but...it sort of feels like they go with the house. According to what I was told when I bought this place, Lew Collins pretty much built it with his bare hands."

"Really? That must have been a lot of work."

"People were more willing to work back then. I can tell from the way the house is built that Lew took a lot of pride in it, too."

"You talk about him almost like you know him."

Dan looked at her, frowned slightly, and said, "You know, sometimes I feel like I do."

He opened the photo album.

o0o

That just couldn't be right, he thought as he looked at the photographs carefully mounted in the album's first pages. They showed a dark-haired man in a suit, standing next to a pretty woman with wavy blond hair. Both of them looked fairly solemn, but that was the custom of the time. Judging by their clothes, the photo had been taken in the early Twentieth Century.

On a piece of paper underneath it, written in the same feminine hand, were the names Lew and Alice.

But Lewis Collins' wife's name was Beth, Dan recalled. Maybe this Alice was his sister.

There were other photos of the couple, though, less formal and posed, with both of them smiling or holding hands or embracing. They were definitely a couple, Dan thought. In some of the pictures, their left hands were visible, and both of them were wearing wedding bands.

Roxie had overcome her nervousness and come into the hidden room as well. She opened the top box in another stack and said, "Dad, there are Christmas ornaments in here!"

Dan placed the photo album back in the box with the others and turned to look. Melissa did the same thing, and their shoulders brushed as they leaned toward the box Roxie had opened. The contact was brief, but it felt really good.

Roxie was right. Inside the box were dozens of what appeared to be homemade wooden Christmas ornaments, small enough to be hung on a tree.

Just because they were small didn't make them any less elaborate, however. A lot of highly skilled work had gone into carving these figures, and as Dan studied them, he knew instinctively that Lew Collins was the one who had made them. There were snowmen, candy canes, Santas, wreaths of holly, snowflakes, and stars. They had been painted by hand as well, by someone with a delicate touch. Dan thought they were beautiful, even though the paint had faded with time and they were chipped here and there from being used.

"Can I touch them?" Roxie asked in a hushed voice.

"Yeah, just be careful with them."

She picked up one of the snowmen and turned it over in her hands, smiling as she ran her fingertips over it. She said, "Look, there are names on the bottom."

"Let me see."

Lew and Alice, Dan read. The two of them must have worked on these together, he thought. Lew had carved them, and Alice had painted them. That made sense.

Other than the fact that Lew was supposed to have been married to Beth.

Melissa took a Santa Claus figure out of the box and turned it over. "This one has Lew and Beth written on the bottom," she said.

"Keep checking them," Dan said as he turned back to the box with the photo albums in it. "I want to look at something."

About three-fourths of the first album had pictures of Lew and Alice in it. Then, abruptly, came photos of just Lew. They were all labeled neatly in the same handwriting as the first ones.

Dan paid particular attention to the pictures where Lew was by himself. Even over the gulf of years between them, he saw the pain in that other young man's eyes. Something had happened, and Dan could make a pretty good guess what it was.

The second album started out the same, Lew Collins by himself. But then there was a picture of him standing beside another woman, this one a brunette. Lew looked a little shy and awkward, but his eyes weren't as haunted in this photo.

Under it, still in the same script, was a label reading Lew and Beth – Our First Date.

Dan flipped quickly through the rest of the pages, which were filled with pictures of Lew and Beth, at first just the two of them...then with a baby cradled in Beth's arms. Dan checked the other albums and saw the entirety of their lives playing out before his eyes, other children, dogs, older children, babies—grandchildren?—and all the while Lew and Beth got older but never lost the expressions of adoration on their faces when they looked at each other.

Beth had written names and sometimes dates under each photo. Over the years the writing grew shaky but was still unmistakably hers.

Melissa said, "A few of these ornaments have Alice's name on them, but most of them say Lew and Beth. Dan, what's going on here?"

"It's pretty simple," he said. "Lew Collins was married to a girl named Alice before he was married to Beth. He must have built this house for her. You can see it in the background in some of the photos of them. And they worked together to make those ornaments, probably the first Christmas they spent together. Maybe the only Christmas they spent together."

"Oh," Melissa said, her eyes widening. "She died."

Dan nodded solemnly. "That's the only thing that makes any sense. They didn't split up, not the way they felt about each other. You can see that in all the pictures of them. Something happened...maybe that big flu epidemic that killed so many people back then...and Lew was left by himself."

"Then Beth came along," Melissa said.

"Yeah." Dan laid a hand on the first album he had opened. "She's the one who mounted all these pictures and wrote the labels. She didn't leave Alice out. She made sure all the pictures of her went in, too, and were just as important as any of the others. Because Alice was part of Lew's life."

"Beth sounds like a very smart, generous woman."

Dan looked at her and swallowed hard. "Yeah, she does. Seems like...I know a woman like that."

In a voice that was little more than a whisper, Melissa said, "One who would never try to replace anybody in your life who was important to you? Who would never insist that you forget about everything—and everybody—who made you...who you are?"

"Yeah, that's...who I mean."

Then, without wasting any more time or breath on talking, Dan took her in his arms and kissed her. Hunger, need, admiration, affection, everything that added up to love welled up inside him and flowed through the sweet heat of their lips as they molded together.

"Guys," Roxie said plaintively after a moment, "I don't mind this, I really don't, but we still have a couple of mice to find!"

o0o

In the end, it was Melissa who found them. She came into the living room carrying a shoebox with some holes punched in the top and straw bedding inside.

"I thought I heard some squeaking in Roxie's room as I went by in the hall," she explained. She lifted the box's lid. Brewster and Chuck were inside, their noses and whiskers twitching as they peered up at the humans.

Roxie said, "I fixed up that box so I could keep them in it in my room part of the time. They must have found it, pushed the lid up, climbed in, and then couldn't get back out again when the lid fell down."

"Uh-huh," Dan said, eyes narrowing. "Sure. That must be exactly the way it happened."

Roxie looked away and shifted her feet a little.

Melissa handed the box to her and said, "Why don't you take them and put them back in their cage for now? And make sure the door is fastened properly."

"I will, Miss Logan...Melissa. I promise." She hurried out of the room.

Dan and Melissa sat down on the sofa. It felt completely natural to her as she leaned against him. Just like it was natural for him to slide his arm around her shoulders.

"You know what happened, don't you?" she asked quietly.

"Of course I do. Roxie's smart as she can be. She knew you'd figure out that she'd taken the mice. She hoped that if she 'lost' them, you'd come over to help us look for them, and you and I would have to spend time together again."

Melissa nodded and said, "Smart girl. As her teacher, I'd know that."

"But finding that hidden room upstairs, and what was inside it, and the way it opened my eyes to things...well, nobody could have predicted that."

"No, I don't suppose. But you said yourself that you've always felt some sort of connection to Lew Collins ever since you moved in here. Who's to say that he didn't lead Roxie somehow to that mouse hole...?"

"That's a pretty fanciful notion. I thought teachers were supposed to be level-headed."

She laughed and said, "Are you crazy? We're just as messed-up as anybody else, in all sorts of different ways."

He kissed the top of her head and said, "I won't argue about that."

"Hey!" She punched his arm lightly, then snuggled against him again. "Seriously, Dan, I meant what I said. I'd never try to make you forget about Erica. You never could, anyway, as long as Roxie's around to remind you of her every day. But the happiness you lost...doesn't mean you can never find happiness again."

"I know," he said softly. "Roxie figured that out before I did. I guess she knew somehow why I broke things off with you, even before I figured it out myself."

"She wants you to be happy."

"That's all I want for her. And you."

"I think it all sort of goes together..." Melissa whispered.

After a while, Dan said, "So...a June wedding?"

"Aren't you moving a little fast?" Melissa asked with a laugh, not mentioning the fact that the same thoughts had occurred to her.

"Maybe. But when you know something's right..."

Melissa turned her head, reached up, and kissed him again. After a long, delicious moment, he moved back a little and went on, "Roxie's still going to have to be punished for taking those little guys without permission. I'm thinking maybe two weeks' worth of grounding."

"A week," Melissa said.

"You don't have to be easy on her just because you're going to be her mom."

"I'm not. She'll miss...three days of recess when we go back to school. After all, she was at school when she did what she shouldn't have."

Dan nodded and said, "Yeah, that makes sense. Deal. And she can be grounded then, too, so it won't interfere with the holidays."

"We're just a couple of old softies."

"She's a good kid."

Melissa changed the subject by asking, "What are you going to do with the things we found upstairs?"

"I'll have to get in touch with the Collins descendants, I suppose. Although I have a hunch they won't want any of it. They'd just think of it as old junk. But I won't do that until after Christmas, too." He pointed. "Tomorrow we're going to get a tree and set it up right over there in the corner, and those ornaments Lew and Alice and Beth made are going on it."

"That's a wonderful idea. It'll be lovely."

"Not half as lovely as you."

"Flattery is always welcome. Dan...why do you think Lew Collins walled up that storage room?"

"We'll probably never know," he replied with a shake of his head. "Maybe he did it after Beth died. Maybe he wanted to put it all away because it was too painful for him. Or maybe he was just saving it...for when the time was right for it again."

"You think the time is right again?"

"I know it is," he said.