A Forever Family. Mary Forbes J.

much. Want to put it in some water?”

      The child shook her head shyly. “In your hair.”

      “My hair?” With a self-conscious hand, Shanna pushed a thick chin-length clump behind her ear. “Why?”

      “’Cause Octavia wears flowers in her hair. They make her happy.” Jenni tugged Shanna’s hand. “Bend down.” Little fingers whispered like leaves in a breeze at her temple. “Mommy told me Octavia means eight.”

      “Yes, it does.”

      “Octavia’s my dolly. Her hair’s the same as yours…kinda messy and all over the place. Tavia—that’s what I call her when she’s good—has a bad time combing it. Do you?”

      Shanna kept a sober expression. “Sometimes. Especially in the morning after I wake up.”

      The little girl stepped back to survey her handiwork. “Tavia doesn’t like getting up.”

      Tavia or Jenni? Reverse role playing was common among children experiencing severe trauma. After her mother left, Shanna had done it herself—heaping daily problems on a fictional friend. Hers had been Anne Frank. At school, she’d read the girl’s diary and followed Anne’s resigned, courageous year concealed in a narrow back annex of the now famous house on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht. Shanna had been Anne’s age when Meredith left.

      Anne, Shanna’s partner in austerity in a small notebook.

      The calico purred around their ankles. “See, even Silly thinks it’s nice.”

      There on the stone walkway, with the smell of a sun-warmed child saturating her senses, Shanna leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Jenni’s brow. “You’re nice.”

      The child stiffened.

      “What is it, sweetie?”

      Jenni’s button lip quivered. “I want to go in now.” Whirling, she scrambled up the steps and fled into the house.

      Shanna stared at the door. She should have kept her heart wrapped completely in its cool detached cocoon—the one self-preservation had driven her to create nine years ago. The one she never allowed to chip or splinter for fear of what could happen.

      Like now.

      Ten minutes and she’d formed a sweet covenant with a sad little girl. One kiss and she’d ruined it. The child hadn’t been ready—and Shanna too anxious. “It’ll serve you right if she never comes near you again,” she muttered.

      Heart heavy, she rose. She had to set things right.

      But how did one go about trying to explain to a six-year-old that a peck on the head meant nothing more than thank you? That it didn’t mean a stranger wanted to replace her mother?

      Michael flung a second stack of Leigh’s jeans into a large cardboard box sitting outside the door of the walk-in closet. A month after the accident, he had removed his brother-in-law’s wardrobe from this same closet, heaped the clothes into his truck and driven to the Lady of Lourdes church.

      Easy street compared to this.

      This was ugly.

      A sacrilege.

      And the reason nearly three months had elapsed before he’d dared enter the bedroom a second time.

      He hadn’t been able to touch her things. Hadn’t been able to look at them without the ache in his gut doubling him over.

      She wasn’t supposed to be dead, his only sibling, his twin. Here is where she belonged. Laughing, her rich voice invading the rooms. Giving Bob those foxy looks—

      “But why, Uncle Michael?”

      And answering her daughter’s questions about this horrible after-death ritual.

      “Uncle Michael?” His niece’s tiny voice quivered.

      “I’ve already told you, Jen. She won’t need them any more.”

      “Mommy’s never coming back, is she?”

      “No. She’s not.”

      He glanced out of the walk-in closet. Leigh’s daughter stood near the packing box, clutching her shabby doll to her chest. The large L-shaped bedroom with its pine furniture and its queen bed spanned out behind her. In the toe of the L was a vanity and chair. Soon, he’d eradicate all of it. Brushes, makeup—

      “Ever?”

      One word, filled with confusion, trepidation and disbelief. In his twelve years at the hospital he’d heard those emotions often, but he recalled the first time best. When he was ten and they’d brought his parents home from Canada, broken and burned and no longer alive. Leigh had asked the same question of their grandmother, in this very room. He’d stood next to his sister, their hands clasped tight, and Katherine had shaken her head and walked out. Leigh had started crying. In his brain, the sound shattered him once more. And once more he felt the cool welcome of loathing what he could not change.

      Jenni stared at the box. Leigh’s silver, pearl-buttoned shirt draped over a flap, in a beam of sunlight.

      “No,” he said brutally, grief molding his anger into an invisible defensive sword.

      The child sniffed and buried her face in the doll’s drab hair. He wanted to go to her, apologize for his tone, try and—

      “Jenni?” A woman’s voice. Her voice.

      In the dim closet interior, Michael’s hands froze on a cluster of hangers. What was she doing here? He watched his niece pivot, eyes swimming with hurt and fear.

      “Uncle Michael’s taking away Mommy’s clothes, Shanna. He says she’s never, ever, ever coming home.”

      “Aw, peachkins…”

      Jenni’s mouth trembled. She darted a look his way, then dropped her doll and ran from his line of view. An instant later he heard her muffled whimper: “I hate him.”

      “Jenni—”

      “Please, make him stop. Please, Shanna. Please.”

      Michael closed his eyes and released a sigh. When would life be normal again? Never, he thought and stepped out of the closet.

      His lanky-limbed employee stood five feet inside the doorway with Jenni wrapped around her thighs like a tiny tenacious wood nymph. Tears crept down the little girl’s uplifted face and rolled into the curls smoothed by mothering hands.

      Shanna raised her eyes. He hadn’t anticipated the fury in them. Or the pain.

      “So,” he said, ignoring a snip of guilt—and jealousy. “Three days ago you introduce yourself to my horse. Today, my niece.”

      “She was wandering around outside. By herself.” The last two words hung like stone pendulums.

      He stepped around the box and picked up the doll. “Jen, take…” What did she call it? “Take your doll downstairs and feed her some of your favorite tea.”

      The child gave him a teary, pouty look. “Don’t want to.”

      “Jenni.” Ms. McKay pushed Leigh’s daughter away gently. She knelt and cupped Jenni’s small shoulders. “It’s okay. Do what Uncle Michael asks. He’s…” She threw him a quick, cool look. “He’s worried Tavia might be hungry. It’s nearly lunchtime, you know.”

      Rubbing a palm up the side of her nose, the child shot him another look. “’Kay.”

      “That’s a sweetie.” Without so much as a glimpse his way, Shanna McKay reached for the doll. When he laid it in her hand, she straightened its frilly dress and delivered it to Jen. “I’ll be down soon,” she whispered.

      She watched the girl head out of the room. Annoyed that he studied his employee with her sun-gilded thighs and patched denim shorts, rather than his niece, Michael said,