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Susannah was halfway through helping Kitty with dinner when the doorbell rang.
“That’s Derek with the groceries,” Susannah told her sister. “I’ll be right back.”
Blink.
She smoothed out her hair as she made her way down the hall and opened the door. “Hey.”
“Howdy, howdy.”
She tried to match her stepdad’s playful grin but got the feeling she failed pathetically.
“How you doing today? You ready for an early Christmas present?” Derek stepped past her and set the bags of groceries on the dining room table where Kitty was sitting in her chair. “Hi, pretty lady.” He tousled the top of Kitty’s head. “What’s for dinner tonight? Delectable vanilla or scrumptious strawberry?”
Kitty let out am amused snort.
“Thanks for the groceries,” Susannah told him. “What do I owe you?”
Derek ignored the question and picked up Kitty’s bottle of formula. “This all you’ve eaten for dinner so far?” he asked her playfully. “Come on. I know you can do better than that.”
“We got a later start than normal,” Susannah tried to explain, but he cut her off.
“Enough of that now. You bundle up and grab your boots. It’s a little icy, but not too bad. Remind me before I go tonight and I’ll salt the walkway for you.” He lowered himself into the chair where Susannah usually fed her sister.
“Are you staying for dinner?” she asked, wondering what she could possibly offer him. She’d finished off the last of the bean soup at lunchtime and hadn’t thought about what to make next. She’d probably grab a bowl of cereal for dinner and make herself a pot of something more nutritious tomorrow.
Or the next day.
“I’m staying,” he answered, “but you’re going.”
“What?”
Derek kept his back to her and uncapped the bottle of formula. “This is it. Your early Christmas present. Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some crisp twenty-dollar bills. “Go out. Take yourself shopping. Get one of those mandy-paddies or whatever you girls call those things. I don’t care. Just come back here with a story of how you spoiled yourself, all right? Tonight’s all on me.”
Susannah stared at the money he shoved into her hand. “You really didn’t have to ...”
Derek’s smile was ill-suited for the brusque tone he was trying to adopt. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you until you’ve come back and are ready to share all the ways you wasted my money on yourself, got that? And I better not catch you home before —” he gave his watch an exaggerated frown “— nine o’clock. Nine o’clock with none of the money left and at least two or three good stories of how you pampered yourself.”
“But I really have to ...”
“Get on, go.” He nudged her playfully. “Before I change my mind and give you even more cash.”
Susannah glanced back once at Kitty, who was thrilled to see her sister bested. Susannah couldn’t help but smile back. “All right. I’ll be ...”
“Yeah, yeah.” Derek waved his hands in the air. “You’ll be back later, goodnight, thanks so much, all that good stuff. Now get out of here, kiddo, before I tell Ricky Fields you’re free for a night on the town.”
The jocularity was too much for Kitty, who started to laugh and sprayed formula onto Derek’s shirt.
Susannah paused for a minute, wondering if he remembered where the rags were, but he wiped himself down with a corner of the tablecloth, turned to her, and said this time in a normal voice, “Go have a little fun, all right? Do some Christmas shopping, stretch your legs. It will do you good.”
Susannah nodded. “Ok, thanks.”
“Drive carefully,” he told her, and in their eyes passed the echoes of sadness they both shared.
“I will.”
“Watch out for the ice on the walkway!” he called after her, and then Susannah was outside and alone, with a hundred dollars in cash and no idea what she was going to do with herself for the next three hours.