Dating for Two. Marie Ferrarella

her as she continued talking to the “occupant” of the valise. “I’m afraid if you want to come out, Tex, that’s the deal I’m offering. Otherwise, you’ll have to stay in the suitcase until we leave.”

      There was another, louder sigh from the inside of the valise. Then the voice said, “Oh, okay, I guess. I promise.”

      “That’s all I wanted to hear,” Erin told the voice.

      Snapping the locks open, Erin quickly took out the valise’s mysterious occupant. The latter turned out to be a large green dinosaur whose head was bigger than his body, in direct contrast to an actual model of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

      This T. rex was also wearing a white cowboy hat, which was in keeping with his Southern twang.

      Once in her arms, Tex did an exaggerated long visual sweep of the boys and girls seated at their desks. “I know I said I’d behave, but can I just nibble on that little one over there?” The puppet nodded vaguely to his left, pretending to drool.

      “No, you cannot,” Erin insisted. “We came to talk to these nice kids.”

      “You talk, I’ll nibble,” Tex said, leaning over as he eyed certain children.

      Erin drew herself up and gave the dinosaur a very stern look. “Tex, do you want to go back into the valise? Think carefully now.”

      The puppet hung his head, ashamed. “No, ma’am, I do not.”

      “Okay, then no nibbling,” she pretended to order him sternly. Her eyes swept over the eager young faces on the other side of the room. As always, a feeling of gratification washed over her.

      Tex, however, was ever crafty, ever hopeful. “Then how about—?”

      She shot the T. rex down before he could mention a single name—she’d taken care to ask for a seating chart and the names of all the children when she’d agreed to giving a talk. Using names made everything ever so much more personal.

      “No.”

      The dinosaur was nothing if not persistent. “Not even—?”

      “No,” she said emphatically, cutting the T. rex off before he was finished.

      The children’s laughter grew with each interaction between the woman and her puppet. “Now remember why we’re here,” she told the T. rex.

      Drooling again, the dinosaur eyed his potential snack. “You remember. I’ll chew.”

      Erin gave the puppet her very best glare. “Tex, you’re impossible.”

      “No, I’m very possible,” he assured her. “But I’m also just very hungry. Hear that?” He looked down at his midsection. A noise was heard. “That’s my tummy growling,” he protested. Instead of the rumbling of an empty stomach, an actual lion’s roar echoed through the classroom, bringing more giggles.

      Steve had to admit that he was as captivated and as hooked as the children were, except that to them, the exchange between the strawberry-blonde woman and the dinosaur in her arms was very real, while he found himself enthralled by an extremely good ventriloquist who was very easy on the eyes.

      He watched her lips—something he realized he became caught up in with great ease—and couldn’t really see them move, yet he knew that somehow, they had to because the exchange was so lively.

      * * *

      In the end, Erin gave, all in all, a very entertaining “talk.”

      She had brought more characters with her, toys that had hitchhiked in the valise only to jump out—with a little help from her—in a semiorderly fashion when she called to them. Some of these characters spoke, some did not, but the running thread through all the toys she did display was not a single one of them required a battery, a power strip or even a windup key of any sort.

      All they uniformly required, Steve discovered, was imagination. Imagination by the bucketload.

      The other thing that the toys she’d introduced had in common was that each and every one of them—and she almost presented them as family—was initially her brainchild. Toys that came into being out of some childhood adventure or childhood need to keep the darkness at bay.

      The young woman with the talking green dinosaur had created all the toys she’d brought with her, Steve thought. He found himself being more than a little impressed by her efforts, her creativity and her very real dedication to jump-starting children’s imaginations again. Moreover, though she didn’t come out and say it, he got the impression that Erin O’Brien had put together and built up her toy company all on her own, not an easy feat in this day and age.

      He couldn’t help but admire her determination. A man could learn from a woman like that.

      And so could a classroom full of energetic seven-and eight-year-olds.

Chapter Three

      The woman really did have a way about her. While the second graders had listened to him politely, there had definitely been a certain lack of enthusiasm among them.

      He didn’t really blame them. Very few seven-year-olds aspired to be lawyers—as a matter of fact, he doubted if there were any seven-year-olds who even remotely contemplated that. He would have had to have been something along the lines of an astronaut in order to have sparked their imaginations.

      But the moment Erin O’Brien took center stage—even before her T. rex started “talking,” he saw a definite shift in the pint-size audience. They appeared to be hanging on her every word, anticipating something funny or just plain fun. It was almost as if they seemed to sense what she was about to do—entertain them by bringing make-believe into their world.

      Steve found himself mesmerized by her, as well. But what really caught his attention was when he glanced in Jason’s direction and saw that his ordinarily solemn son’s face was animated, that he was taking in everything she said.

      And when Tex requested “just a teeny, tiny taste” of one of the children in the audience, he was stunned to see Jason laughing. Actually laughing.

      Jason hadn’t laughed since Julia had died.

      Steve could feel his heart constricting within his chest. When he’d lost his mother, the light had simply gone out of Jason’s eyes. Not only that, but his entire personality had undergone a drastic change. He had become introverted, retreating into the world of video games. He’d completely stopped playing with his friends, stopped everything that even vaguely reminded him of a time when his mother was still around.

      While it worried him, Steve was afraid to push the subject, afraid he might make things worse. His friends advised him to give Jason time.

      But how much was enough? No one had an answer, least of all him.

      And meanwhile, here Jason was, responding to a make-believe dinosaur and the woman who had given that T. rex life. It left Steve in utter awe. So much so that it took him a minute before he realized that Jason’s teacher was saying something to all of them.

      “—and I would like to thank both Ms. O’Brien and Mr. Kendall for coming in this morning and taking the time to talk to us about what they do for a living,” Mrs. Reyes concluded.

      The next minute, Erin was leaning into him, keeping her voice low as she prompted, “I think she wants us to stand up now.”

      Like a pop-up toy on a three-second delay, Steve quickly rose to his feet. He managed to effectively cover up his chagrin. He’d been so wrapped up in his discovery and his thoughts about Jason that he hadn’t been paying attention to what the teacher was saying.

      He flashed a quick smile at the older woman, who looked pleased. “Class, how do we say thank you to these two nice people?”

      In response to her question, the children began to clap.

      “Thank