Free A Little Learning by Margot Early Page B

turned away. “Rory’s troupe is going to perform this weekend for the Sultan Winter Festival.”
    “We’ll have to go see that,” he said. He’d been aware of the approaching festival without knowing what it might involve. Relief washed through him. Lauren had changed the subject. They could let it go, move on, pretend they’d never had the conversation. He mused, “I think Caleb said they lost the snake.”
    “Oh, they did. She’s loose in the house somewhere, so Rory and Samantha and Desert are all sleeping in one room. Samantha wasn’t going to stay in the house at all, but Desert talked her into it. They’re waiting for the snake to turn up. They figure she’s curled up next to something warm.”
    “Undoubtedly.” Tension raced through him. Rory was sleeping in that house, living there, with that huge snake wandering around in search of “something warm”? What if it attacked her?
    An image came to him of Rory trying to fight off the giant snake. He shook it off, telling himself not to overreact. “Caleb says they’re practicing with fire now,” he said, to distract them both from thoughts of Lola on the loose.
    “I know. You can go watch,” she said. “If you want. I mean, I’ll stay here with Cal and Belle.”
    “Thank you. I think I should go see what Beau’s up to.”
    “You want Rory for your next girlfriend, don’t you?”
    Next girlfriend. As if there’d been a series. As if a girlfriend was a temporary thing, easily replaced by another and another. He gazed at Lauren, noting the arch of her dark eyebrows, her expression belligerent once again.
    “Does it matter to you?”
    She shrugged. “Someone else is always more important than us. That’s all. It’s either a girlfriend or work or working out. Then, you say you have no time.”
    “I’ve had nothing but time since we’ve gotten to Sultan.”
    “Beau says you asked Rory out. You can’t wait to do something else.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “I just wish you wanted to be with us, like you obviously want to be with her.”
    Seamus refused to be drawn in this time. “I’m going for a walk. Thank you for your generous offer to watch your brother and sister.” He looked at her and wanted to say, I love you, Lauren, but the words would not come. Not now.
    It wasn’t that he didn’t love her.
    But she kept fighting for Janine in the war that was dead, dead, dead.
    Except, he knew that it would never be dead. That his children would always cherish their mother’s memory—and he never would.
    * * *
    N ONE OF THEM were outside. Not Rory and her roommates or their drummer or Beau and Seuss. Was his son inside? With a loose thirteen-foot snake?
    Of course, the snake was probably not aggressive....
    But look what it did to Samantha. How many stitches had Rory said she’d needed?
    He hesitated only a moment. He could see light in the room beyond the back door. He let himself in the back gate and crossed the concrete patio. At the door, he knocked.
    He heard laughter, and the door swung open.
    It was Rory. She wore a long-sleeved thermal undershirt, baggy canvas pants, a wide-striped knitted scarf and a ski hat. She looked as if she’d just come in from outside, except that she was in her socks.
    “Oh, come in. He’s here.”
    Beau knelt on the floor in the carpeted living room. Samantha knelt at the other end of the floor. They seemed to be taking turns saying, “Seuss, come!” and having the puppy rush toward him.
    “Dad, he knows ‘Come’!” exclaimed Beau.
    Where is the snake? Seamus wondered. He said, “Has Lola turned up?”
    The tallest roommate, whose hair was now beginning to resemble a buzz cut, wandered in from the hallway. “Oh, hi,” she said. She wore flannel pajamas covered with pictures of the Pillsbury Doughboy, and had a red stuffed thing on a ribbon tied around her neck. Seamus saw that it was a heart in two pieces.
    “Brokenhearted?” he asked.
    She made a face, some sort of agreement.
    “Lola