Page 8 of Dancing in Lake Mistletoe

Josie grins at him as I lift her back onto the seat.

“I bet you worked up an appetite, learning that. Do you need a double cheeseburger tonight?” he asks.

She giggles. “No, silly. My tummy isn’t big enough for a double cheeseburger.”

He nods. “You’re right. Your dad over here is the one with the big belly. I’ll make him a double and get you the usual petite cheeseburger and fries,” he says.

She scrunches up her nose as she looks at me. “Daddy doesn’t have a big belly. He’s just big and tall and strong.”

Joe shrugs. “Oh, that’s why he can eat so much.”

He winks at me and goes to make our food.

“Mindi,” the girl behind the cash register calls out.

A girl in white running tights and a long-sleeved shirt, covered by a hunter-green down vest, approaches the register. Her brown curls with caramel highlights peek from under a white cable-knit cap and fall around her shoulders. Pink, caused by the chilly air, tints her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

She hands the cashier a credit card and pays before taking the brown paper sack. She turns to leave, but she stops and gracefully swivels back around on her toes.

She looks at Josie and smiles. “That was an excellent échappé.”

Josie beams at the compliment. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” the girl says before her eyes come to mine. She smiles, and then she takes her to-go order and disappears just as Joe returns with our plates.

“Joe, who was that?” I ask as I watch her cross the road through the window.

“I haven’t seen her before. She must be a tourist,” he says.

Pity.

On our way home, we stop at the mercantile to purchase a few bags of Halloween candy.

“Daddy! Can we get these too?” Josie holds up a package of ghoulish temporary tattoos.

“Tattoos, huh? Sure, put them in the basket. I’ll be everyone’s mom’s favorite,” I mutter.

“Everyone’s mom already loves you, Daddy,” she says as she tosses the cellophane bag into the basket.

“Is that right?”

“Yep, they ask about you all the time, and they think you’re handsome,” she tells me as she skips over to the next aisle.

I chuckle as I follow her.

There aren’t that many bachelors in Lake Mistletoe, so my relationship status has been a matter of public interest since I arrived back in town with my two-year-old in tow.

My wife, Lexi, and I had only been married three years when she started getting bad headaches with blurred vision and drowsiness, which kept her in bed for days. We assumed they were post-pregnancy migraines. Her mother had suffered from them. She even stopped breastfeeding in hopes of leveling her hormones and easing the frequency.

But after a month of her in constant pain and then the added nausea, her doctor sent her to get an MRI, just to be safe. Within days, we had a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme, which I had never heard of. It’s a malignant tumor that affects the brain and spine, and it grows and spreads rapidly. By the time we gotin to see an oncologist and decided on a treatment plan, she had suffered two separate strokes and was very weak.

Before they could schedule the first radiation treatment, she was gone.

It was quick, which was a blessing, I guess.

But it left me reeling. Grieving and with a toddler who wasn’t quite two years old.

My mother and sister rushed to Boston to help me with Josie. They took turns staying a month at a time while I coped with the loss. As much as I appreciated their presence, I knew it wasn’t fair to keep pulling them from their lives. So, after Josie’s second birthday, I packed us up and moved back to Idaho.

---