“Well?” Claire demanded as Austin lifted his head. “What did he say?”
“He said yes. Hang this up, would you. If you’re thinking of what to get me for Christmas, I’m fairly certain I could manage one of those large-buttoned phones they have for seniors.”
“Austin.”
“Just think of the time you’d save if I could order my own food.”
“Austin!”
“What?”
Claire managed to avoid throttling him but only just. “He said yes, and?”
“And I expect he’s folding his underwear into his hockey bag even as we speak.”
“He folds his underwear?” Diana snickered.
“He folds everything,” Austin told her, fastidiously smoothing a bit of rumpled fur.
“Austin…” Claire ground the cat’s name out through clenched teeth. “…what does Dean’s underwear have to do with anything? And you…” She turned a warning glare on her sister. “…can just shut up and let him answer the question.”
“It has to do with packing.” When she continued to glower, Austin sighed. “Packing to come here. And you’re welcome,” he gasped as jubilant Claire scooped him up into her arms. “But I’m old, and you just drove a rib through my spleen.”
“Do cats have a spleen?”
“I think you’re missing the point.”
“Sorry.” She set him back on the bed and, suddenly conscious of her sister’s smug expression, stiffened. “What?”
“Don’t you have appreciation to show to someone else? Someone who, oh, made the initial contact?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And I would have told him without your help.”
“Oh, sure. And Babe would’ve been nominated for that best picture Oscar without my help.”
“Diana!”
“I was a lot younger then! And it’s not like it won…”
It was not possible to drive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Kingston, Ontario, in seventeen hours. For reasons unknown to mortal man—although most mortal women were aware of them as they involved asking for directions when trying to get out of Montreal—the trip from east to west took eighteen hours. Dean actually had to drive past Kingston through Toronto, to London, then north to Lucan. The whole trip took him twenty-three hours. He saw one police car parked at a doughnut shop. He saw no moose.
FOUR
“THAT’S HIS TRUCK. He’s here!”
“Claire…can’t breathe…”
“Sorry.” She loosened her grip on the cat, who squirmed out of her arms and stalked to the other end of the couch, tail lashing from side to side. Brushing drifts of cat hair off her sweater, she murmured, “I can’t believe how nervous I am.”
“I can’t believe how nerdy you are,” Diana sighed. “You love him, he loves you, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house.”
“Keepers don’t…”
“What? Make spectacles of themselves with Bystanders in public?” Diana’s mimicry of her sister was cuttingly accurate. “If you wait until he comes up to the house, you’ll have to invite him in. If he comes in here, he’ll have to make nice with Mom and Dad. If, on the other hand, you meet out there, you can take him directly to your place and make nicer with each other. Your choice.”
Eyes locked on the figure getting out of the truck, Claire hesitated…
“You know Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.”
…and decided.
“Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house?” Austin snorted as he walked over to stand beside Diana at the open door. “I never knew you were such a romantic.”
Fireworks! Claire thought with the small part of her brain still functioning. Then she realized it was just the Christmas lights on the front of the house reflecting in Dean’s glasses. He tasted like coffee and toothpaste. Or coffee-flavored toothpaste.
After a moment, she pulled her mouth far enough away from his to sigh, “You’re here.”
He smiled down at her, finding it just a little difficult to focus. “I’m here.”
“I’m glad you came.”
“I’m glad you called.”
“I can’t hear them.”
“Lucky you,” Austin muttered, moving away from the open door. “If I have to hear any more, I’m going to hork up a hairball. That dialogue is so banal she should have run into his arms in slow motion.”
“There’s a foot of snow on the path,” Diana reminded him. She took another look. “Or rather there was.” The snow beneath Dean’s work boots and Claire’s running shoes had melted and the cleared area was spreading fast. Peering through fog created by the sudden, localized heat, she grinned and yelled, “Get a room!”
“Diana?”
“Mom.” Diana pulled the door closed as she turned. There were some things that shouldn’t be shared across the generations. Third Eye Blind and bicycle shorts topped the list, but watching Claire suck face with a hunka hunka burning love in the front yard followed close behind. Most of the time, Diana tried to be sensitive to parental feelings. “What can I do for you?”
“Was that Dean’s truck I heard?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Has Claire gone out to meet him?”
“Yes, she has.”
“Is she going to bring him inside to say hello to the rest of us?”
“I somehow doubt it.”
Martha Hansen studied her younger daughter’s expression. “I see. It’s like that, is it? Well, good.”
“Good?”
“Yes, good. I like Dean, and I hope he and Claire will find happiness together. Not many Keepers manage to find someone to share their lives with,” she added, shooting a pointed look at her younger daughter. “Most of you are such arrogant know-it-alls that you end up old and alone.”
“Yeah, yeah, if we end up old at all.” Diana waved off the warning. Since she had every intention of going out young in a blaze of glory, it was moot. “So you don’t mind about the hot monkey sex in the front yard?”
Martha’s smile grew slightly wistful. “Your father and I were like that when we first got together. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
“Eww, gross!” The list of not to be shared was hurriedly revised, parental coupling confidences now moved into the primary position.
“Shouldn’t I go in and say hello to your parents?”
Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.
“No.”
Dean pulled back reluctantly, tracing
