Turkey in the Snow Read Free Page B

have pink!”
    Hank swallowed back a tightness in his throat that felt embarrassingly like tears. He remembered Amanda saying that exact thing when she was seven or eight. How wonderful that she’d taught it to her four-year-old daughter, and then gone off and left that kid in the hands of Hank, who had liked Christmas trees best when they were in the house a week before Christmas and not the night before.
    “Yeah, I get it,” he said, his throat raw. “Your mommy knows best. You know, Josie, all this great stuff your mom knows might carry a little more weight if she was here. ”
    Josie had started to cry then, helplessly, and Hank picked her up and carried her to the bathroom, and held her—crying—while he ran water and bubbles in the tub. He undressed her—still crying—and set her in the water, soaping her hair and rinsing her off, and the whole time, her mouth was open as a low, pulsing wail was striated out, and Hank couldn’t think of a damned thing to make it go away.
    She finally stopped and was down to sniffles and deep, shuddery breaths when he had her dried off and in her nightgown and in her bed.
    “I hate this bed,” she told him. “It’s too big.”
    “I hate it too,” he told her, because it was a reminder of all the ways in which he was ill-equipped for fatherhood at this particular moment in his life. It was meant to be a guest bedroom/den, so he had the bed and bookshelves and a desk and a laptop—all of the things a little girl didn’t want in her room. The bookshelves had big, thick, boring books on finance, and the walls were a stark white. There had been a beautiful, boldly colored print of two naked male torsos—no butt-crack, no peen, but very obviously non-hetero. Hank had taken it down before Josie even entered the room. The blank wall just sort of stared at them now, and Hank wiped his cheek with the back of his hand without thinking, and remembered his plan for Saturday.
    Saturday, they would make this room better. They would. And now, thanks to the kindness of one very swishy, sweet-faced twink, that would be a whole lot easier.
    “Are you crying, Uncle Hank?”
    Hank shook his head no, because crying meant drama, and he absolutely, positively refused to do fucking drama. Not right now.
    “No, Bunny. I’m just ready for a shower right now.” One of the first things he’d gone and bought her was one of those squishy fleece blankets, the kind that were impossibly plush and soft. This one had a pink rabbit on it, realistically done, in spite of the color, with the ears at helicopter position. It sat on top of the white comforter on Josie’s bed—yet another thing Hank was planning to change in two days.
    “Sleep tight, angel,” he said, and bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. She turned unexpectedly and kissed him on the lips instead, and brought her tiny hand up to his own wet cheek.
    “I’m sorry I made you cry,” she said in a small voice, and he shut his eyes really tight.
    “Grownups get tired,” he told her, weary from his knees to his navel and all points north, south, and in between. “I…” He tried to keep his voice steady. “I was really looking forward to that workout, you know?”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice even smaller, and he hugged her tight.
    “It’s okay. We’ll try for a better day tomorrow.”
    “Can we make more cookies?”
    Sure, since I think I may eat half of them tonight. “Yeah. That’s a plan.”
    “Are you going to work out tomorrow?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Good. I can see Justin. He’s nice.”
    Hank had heard this a dozen times before, but this was the first time his entire heart was in it when he said, “Yeah. Yeah, he really is. We’ll see him tomorrow. Good night.”
    He escaped then, practically running to the shower. He turned the water on, hot and full, and left his clothes in a puddle as he stripped and jumped in. He hadn’t even soaped his hair before the day caught up with him, and the frustration and