“We still have the Christmas tree up. Maybe we could have Christmas again!”
Patrick smiled; Christmas was in danger of becoming a year-round event. “Welcome-home presents are fun, Maisie. We could put them under the tree without having it be a full-blown holiday.”
“But then we don’t get presents!” Grant was not falling for this.
“You just got presents! You both got presents all summer. Bikes, swim attire, pool floats, wisdom, time with me. A DOG. You must be so sick of presents by now.”
“MORE PRESENTS!” Grant hollered, and Marlene looked up from her nap and yipped, as if she understood the suggestion that she was herself not enough.
“If you get any more gifts you won’t be able to take them all home with you,” Patrick argued, hoping reason would win out. “You’ll have to leave them here with me, and then they’ll be mine.”
Grant took his hand. “No, mine. For when we come visit you.” The accompanying look he gave his uncle was so sincere, Patrick felt his heart swell three sizes, smashing some invisible Grinch-like box that had kept him stunted until now.
“We could get a cake,” Maisie suggested. “And make a wish for Dad.”
“Jeez, you kids like all the greatest hits.” Yet, cake was a celebration food—it set a positive tone. And it was a whole lot easier than another round of presents. Sometimes the greatest hits are great for a reason. “Okay. But your father likes pie.”
Maisie’s face soured. Even with her unorthodox taste in desserts, pie seemed like a bridge too far. “Pie is hot. Too hot for summer.”
“Not key lime.”
“Chocolate!” Grant yelled.
“Okay, good grief. One of every cold pie we can find and then everyone will have a choice. Satisfied?”
“Thnowman pie.”
“Snowman pie? What’s that?”
Grant shrugged, it just sounded good.
“Here’s what I was thinking,” Patrick offered. “We could do a number.”
“What number?” Grant asked. “Eleven?”
“An eleven o’clock number, bravo!”
“I don’t underthtand.”
“A musical number. You know, a song that we choreograph. And sing. Something up-tempo to perform for your dad.”
“Like what?” Maisie asked, with the slight disgust she usually reserved for girl’s clothing.
Patrick thought about bribing them with an offer to film it and put it on YouTube, but this was the end of his reign. Their father was coming home, and it would no longer be up to him. He shouldn’t insert himself so heavily in their reunion; now was time for him to step back. As much as he delighted in the image of the kids belting, “I’m Still Here” from Follies, wearing oversized oxfords like Elaine Stritch, it probably wasn’t in the cards. “Remember you asked me once, when is the last day you’re a child?”
“No,” Grant said, unconcerned. The kid asked so many questions Patrick wondered if he even tracked them as they came out of his mouth.
“You asked me the first week you were here. I was just curious if you thought you were still kids. After this summer.” Patrick swept his hair back from his forehead.
“Oh, yeth,” Grant replied without so much as thinking. “I’m only in firtht grade and I like to sleep with a night-light.”
“Some adults like to sleep with night-lights.”
“They do?”
“Sure,” Patrick offered.
“But they’re not in firtht grade.”
“No. I’ll give you that. Maisie? What about you?”
“What about me what?”
“Do you think you’re still a kid?”
Maisie stared at the sky as if the answer would pour out of the Big Dipper. “I think so,” she said. “But not a little one.”
“I couldn’t agree with that more.” Even he had noticed a marked change in her over the past couple of weeks, a fearlessness. The way she spoke out. How she jumped in the pool. It was hard to pinpoint, but she had faced the very worst and Patrick saw in her a glimmer of recognition: she was a survivor.
“What about you?” Maisie asked.
“Am I still a kid?”
“You don’t look like a kid,” Grant offered.
“Gee, thanks.” He didn’t know how to answer Maisie’s question exactly. Kid as a word is open to interpretation; there were, for example, kids at heart. “I’m not a kid. But I’m not like most grown-ups, am I?”
Maisie took her uncle’s hand, the two of them now connected as if they were in danger of floating apart. “What are you going to do after we leave?” she asked.
Grant gazed up at his uncle as if he were the sky full of stars.
“Oh. Well. Go back to doing whatever it was I used to do before you showed up.”
“What wath that?” Grant asked. “What did you do before we got here?”
“You know, in this moment I’m not really sure.”
“I’m scared,” Maisie said.
Patrick was taken aback. “To go home?”
“A little.”
“Me too,” Grant added, floundering on his float. “Do you have any rules? Guncle Rules. We haven’t had any of those in a while.”
“Yeah,” Maisie agreed. “How come?”
Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve taught you the important ones. At a certain point you have to make up the rules on your own.”
And just then they saw it—a ball of fire light up the sky. This was no mere shooting star, this was something trying to penetrate the atmosphere. To get to earth. To get to them. Even Patrick scrambled to a seated position, pulling himself up by inflatable claws. Maisie screamed in startled delight, but it was gone before they could do much more.
Patrick’s heart pounded in his chest. “Did you see that, Grant?”
Grant yawned as he nodded, and the way he leaned against the Pegasus’s neck, its head bobbed up and down, too. “That was Mommy.”
Maisie sat up on her float. “Do you think?”
Grant expressed certitude, even though
