The cabin is quiet when I let myself in, an old sitcom playing softly on the TV. Stevie is asleep on the couch, her hair sprawled around her in a halo of dark brown, the sweatshirt she’s wearing riding high on her torso, exposing her tan stomach.
The weather has been too unpredictable to decide to turn on the heat yet, but the damp cold outside has dropped the temperature inside the cabin. It’s finally chilly enough to justify the switch, but before I head for the thermostat, I pluck one of the throw blankets from the chest by the fireplace and drape it over Stevie. She stirs, and I back up as quietly as possible, avoiding the creaky floorboard in the hallway as I make my way to my bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m showered, dressed in a threadbare hoodie and sweatpants, and letting myself out onto the back porch, a steaming mug of black coffee in one hand and my phone in the other. I missed a video call from Evan during my shift, so I call him back now. He’s an early riser like me, a by-product from our ranching days, so I know he will be up.
My niece answers on the second ring, her gap-toothed smile and freckled cheeks filling the entire screen.
“Good morning, Clara girl. What are you doing up so early?”
“Uncle Jack!” she screams loud enough to send the birds in a nearby tree flying off, and I have to suppress a grin. She hasn’t learned volume control yet, which drives Evan and his wife, Kate, bonkers, but I love it.
“How is my girl?”
“She woke up at five twelve this morning,” Kate yells in the background.
“Is that so?” I ask my niece and she grins wickedly, nodding.
“Yup. Mommy said a bad word.”
“Happens to the best of us,” I reply with a shrug. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s doing yoga.”
My brows lift beneath my hood. “Really?”
“He said he needs zen.”
A laugh barks out of me. “Maybe I should take up yoga.”
“It seems boring. You should do something more fun.”
“I run.”
Clara wrinkles her pert little nose, eyes the same color as my own disappearing beneath thick brows. “That’s worse.”
“Not an athlete, Clara girl?”
She shakes her head, blonde hair swishing around her pajama-clad shoulders. “I like to dance, though. I need to get good at it for when I grow up and become a singer.”
“A singer, huh?”
She nods, a proud smile curling the edges of her mouth. “I got picked to sing the lead song in our Christmas musical.”
“Really? That’samazing,” I tell her, the stress of the long night beginning to slip away like the morning mist, evaporating beneath her sunshine.
“Can you come see it?”
As quickly as my tension was dissipating, it clings back onto me, not ready to let go. “I don’t think I can this year.” At her frown, I say, “But I’ll try my best.”
I avoid looking at Kate’s face in the distant background of the screen, unable to face the disappointment there.
“You know.” I change the subject. “Your Uncle Jack sang on stage the other night.”
“You did?” Clara asks, eyes going wide, her disappointment in me forgotten as quickly as it came on. I don’t deserve her love.
“It was karaoke.”
Evan’s face appears on the screen behind Clara’s head, a smirk plastered all over it. “Karaoke, huh?”
