Page 65 of Mack

She pointed at him. “Maxwell Reinhardt, do not make excuses for his behavior.”

He held the door open. “Come inside. We’ll get some coffee and then we’ll get started.”

“We?” She raised an eyebrow. “You promised him a snowman. I was not included in that promise. I’ll be watching from the window seat.”

He leaned down close to her ear. “How am I supposed to warm you up later if you stay inside?”

She looked at him. “I suppose I’ll have to warm you up instead.”

He grinned. “Deal.”

****

Mallory sat in the window seat with her coffee and watched them through the glass and laughed until her sides ached.

They were not building a snowman.

T.J. had ambushed Mack with a snowball before they’d even agreed on where to build it, and things had deteriorated from there. Mack took the hit to the back of his legs with great dignity, turned slowly, and scooped up a handful of snow while T.J. shrieked and ran. The snow was too deep for three-year-old legs, and he couldn’t get any traction, his boots churning uselessly while Mack closed the distance in about four strides.

He scooped T.J. up and tossed him into the air.

The scream of laughter that came through the glass made Mallory press her hand to her mouth.

She watched Mack catch him, hold him upside down briefly while T.J. howled, then set him back on his feet in the snow. T.J. immediately reached for more ammunition.

She shook her head and took a sip of her coffee.

The snowman was going to have to wait.

She watched them for a while longer, Mack patient and unhurried even while being pelted with increasingly ambitious snowballs, T.J. narrating his own attacks with great seriousness.

At some point Mack crouched down and started showing T.J. how to pack the snow properly, hands over small hands, shaping it into a ball that held together. T.J. studied this with the focused intensity he gave everything that mattered to him, then tried it himself. The snowball held. He looked up at Mack with an appearance of pure triumph.

Mallory felt something move through her chest that she didn’t try to name.

She’d worried, once, that T.J. would never have this. A man who showed up consistently, who got down in the snow, taught him things, threw him in the air, and caught him every time. She’d told herself it didn’t matter, that she was enough, that plenty of children grew up without a father and turned out just fine.

She was enough. She believed that.

But watching her son look up at Mack like that, like he’d just been shown something important by someone who mattered, she let herself admit that this was also good. That T.J. deserved it and so did she.

Outside, Mack said something that made T.J. dissolve into giggles, then pointed at the snow with great authority. T.J. nodded seriously and they both got to work.

The snowman, apparently, was back on.

Mallory smiled into her coffee and stayed right where she was.

Twenty minutes later a snowman stood in the front yard, lopsided and proud. Mack dug through the snow for pebbles and pressed them in for eyes and a mouth, then lifted T.J. up so he could place the carrot nose.

It fell off immediately.

T.J. dissolved into giggles. Mack retrieved the carrot, handed it back, and held him steady for another try. It fell off again. More giggles. Third try, same result. By the fourth attempt T.J. was laughing so hard he could barely hold the carrot, but it went in and stayed, and he let out a victory sound that probably carried halfway down the road.

Mallory watched from the window as T.J. said something to Mack, who nodded and they disappeared around the side of the house, and she got up to meet them in the kitchen.

She heard them on the porch, stomping snow off their boots, and then the door opened and they came in on a gust of cold air, both of them red cheeked and thoroughly frozen.

“You look like you’ve been out there for hours,” she said.