kitchen.
“I’m all ready,” he said gleefully. She heard a snicker of laughter, quickly quashed, from Winnie and turned around from the sink to find that Christopher had the pants on backward and his boots on the wrong feet.
Maybe she should have been supervising him a little better instead of angsting over spending the evening with Ethan.
“Good job, bud. You might be more comfortable if we reposition things a little. Come on. You can help me get ready.”
She took him back to their bedroom.
“I like Ethan. He’s nice,” Christopher informed her as she was helping him out of his boots so they could twist the bib pants around.
“He seems to be,” she agreed. Not to mention a great kisser.
“Do you like him, too?”
Too much. Far more than she should. She forced a smile. “Sure. He’s Winnie’s grandson, so of course he’s nice.”
“I love Winnie. And I love her dogs. I wish we could live here all the time.”
“But then we wouldn’t be able to move into our new apartment in Texas, and you wouldn’t be able to start at the new school we looked at already.”
“I guess.”
She tried to ignore the little pinch in her heart as she finished helping him into his snow clothes, then put on her own borrowed snow pants and boots. When they were sufficiently bundled, she returned to the kitchen.
“You two look like you’re ready to hit the slopes,” Winnie said cheerfully. “You should be warm all night.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?” Abby asked.
Winnie didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but her expression said the same thing. “I’ll be alone for all of thirty minutes before a half dozen of the Silver Belles drop by to practice their number. I’ve lived here alone for almost sixty years. I think I could manage not to burn the house down in thirty minutes.”
“What about falling down the stairs?” Ethan asked pointedly.
Winnie sighed. “I’ll sit in my comfortable chair in the great room and read a book until everybody gets here. Will that make you happy?”
“As long as you don’t get a paper cut.”
She laughed and shooed him away. “Don’t worry about me for a minute. Go on and have a great time.”
“Are you guys ready?” Ethan asked.
“When you are,” Abby answered.
“All right. Let’s go play in the snow.”
* * *
A short time later, Abby stood with her stomach in knots, looking at the enclosed moving sidewalk that carried both people and inner tubes up the tubing hill at the ski resort.
Everyone here seemed to be having a great time. People laughed and shrieked with excitement as they sailed down the hill.
All she could think about were the ER visits that might result from those few minutes of fun.
“If you’re not into this, I can take Christopher up the hill and you can wait for him down here.”
Her own fear frustrated her so much. She found it so odd that she had never been bothered by heights until around the time Kevin died, which made no logical sense. He hadn’t fallen any great distance. He had been shot by a mentally unstable patient in a random assault on what had otherwise been a routine night in the ER.
She had been at work that night at the children’s hospital, tending to Sami. Maybe somehow her subconscious juxtaposed those two things—Kevin’s attack and the girl she had been caring for when she found out about it.
The two things had to be related. She should probably ask the grief counselor she had seen for the first year after his death.
None of that helped her right now when her son was waiting for her to take him tubing.
“Seriously. I don’t mind,” Ethan said.
She shook her head, swallowing hard. She could do this. “I can’t simply dump my child on you.”
“I’m happy to take him. You can watch us the whole time from down here. They’ve even got a covered seating area there by the fire pit, where you can keep toasty and warm.”
Was this her future? Always afraid to take risks for fear of some nebulous consequence?
She gazed at Christopher, who was just about jumping out of his snowsuit with excitement for the coming adventure. She wouldn’t disappoint him. Not about something as silly as tubing down a small mountain.
She released a breath and forced a smile. “Let’s do this.”
Ethan wasn’t fooled by her attempt at cheerfulness. “Are you sure?”
She really wasn’t sure of anything, other than that her palms were sweaty inside her gloves and her knees would