Page 1 of Suddenly Entwined

Chapter one

Berg

Istumble over a rogue rug corner, catching myself on the wall before I fall and squash one of my children. My blood pressure is ticking up and we aren’t even out the door yet.

“What do you mean you think you left your shoe at school, Louisa? How would you leave school with only one shoe?” I ask my youngest daughter, running my hands through my hair.

It’s situations like these that really make me realise I am in full on dad mode.

“Daddy.” She gives me a stern look. “You promised you wouldn’t use your loud voice this morning.”

Tiny shoes, backpacks, and papers that have fallen out of said backpacks litter the front entrance of our home. It’s a step beyond “lived-in” and, hopefully, one step before a pig sty.

“This isn’t my loud voice, Lou.” I take a controlled breath. “It’s my incredulous voice.”

She wrinkles her freckle smattered nose. “What’s crincredulous?”

“Incredulous. It’s the word of the day,” I say, gesturing to the table where the tiny calendar that gives us a new definition daily sits.

“But it’s the first today,” Louisa says.

I glance at my watch, confirming my six-year-old child has a better grasp on our schedule than I do.

“Darn it.”

Not only do I not know what day it is, I didn’t realise it’s a whole new month either. How is it February? I swear Christmas just passed, but that could also be because I only stuffed the decorations in the storage shed at the back of the yard a couple of weeks ago. Time is speeding up lately.

Sometimes the girls climb into my bed in the morning and I can barely recognize them with their long legs and cheeks free of baby fat. Natalie, who is eight already, is my mini me with dark auburn hair and green eyes. But Louisa? Well, she’s resembling her mom more each day with those wavy brown curls and dimpled smile. There are some moments where she’s looking at me like I’m her entire world, and it’s as though Trudy is still right here.

With Lou’s birthday right around the corner, it’s also the anniversary of my late wife’s death, so February is always a little dark for our family. Grief has a way of reappearing aroundsignificant dates. As I’m tearing off squares from the calendar so we’re back on track, shoving the paper in my pocket, Lou emerges from the hall closet with the missing shoe in hand.

“Found it!”

“Oh. Whaddya know? I guess it isn’t at school,” I tease as she dodges my attempt to give her a noogie, protecting the hair I hastily pulled back into a lopsided ponytail while she ate breakfast.

My smile is strained as I wait for Lou to adjust her sock, then her pant leg, and then put on the shoe.

“What's today's word?” asks Natalie.

“Uh. Denouement.”

“What is that?”

“It says: the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.”

“Huh,” Natalie says, nodding like she approves of the definition.

“Listen, I’ll use it in a sentence. After a crazy search for the shoe, the denouement of another chaotic Monday morning arrived, and the MacMillan family was on time for once. The End. Let’s go.”

“That’s a boring story,” Natalie declares.

I glance at my watch, frowning. “It’s not true either.”

“Ready!” Lou chirps, unaffected by the fact we’re running late.

When we’ve departed the house, arms laden with bags and coats, the girls climb into the backseat of my truck and buckle into their boosters. I back out of the sloped driveway toward their elementary school to the soundtrack of them bickering over their personal space.

Creeping along through the morning traffic, lifting my hand in greeting to a few neighbours, I do a mental run through of my day. I’ll drop the girls off, race through the closest drive thru for coffee and a breakfast sandwich, then go check in on the Pebble Beach house. The beachfront home owned by my former tenant, Chris, is a bit more of a fixer upper than he thought.

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