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“Oh? Then maybe I should go on to point out that both ‘can’ and ‘may’ are conside
red ‘modal verbs.’ There are nine modal verbs. Would you like me to tell you what they are?”
“You’d better not,” he said. “I can’t take too much excitement.”
Sam put his arm around her, drew her close, and kissed her on her lips.
“Wimp,” she teased when he drew back. “Well, come on in. I have some delicious canned okra, a burned homemade graham-flour tortilla, and half a head of Orc’s cabbage left over from dinner if you’re hungry. If you wrap the tortilla around some shredded cabbage and a bit of okra and microwave it for thirty seconds you have something really disgusting but kind of healthy.”
Sam stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Little Pete was camped out in front of the TV watching a DVD of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jim Carrey, completely obscured by makeup, was rubbing his hands gleefully.
“It was one of his Christmas presents,” Astrid explained.
“I remember,” Sam said.
Christmas had not been a great time for anyone. Christmas without parents. Without older siblings. Or grandparents. Without all the weird relatives you saw only at holiday time.
Astrid’s parents had an artificial tree that Sam had found in the attic and hauled downstairs to set up. It was still set up, although they’d taken the ornaments off and put them back in boxes.
Everyone had done what they could. Albert had put on a feast, though nothing to rival his great Thanksgiving production. By Christmas there were no pies to be had, no cookies, and fresh fruit or vegetables were all in the half-forgotten past.
“We can’t fight over…you know…politics,” Sam said.
“You mean you want me to just agree with you on everything?” Astrid asked, her voice signaling readiness to start it all over again.
“No. I want you to tell me what you think. I need you,” Sam admitted. “But that’s kind of the point: I need you. So when we disagree, we can’t get mad at each other. As people, you know?”
Astrid seemed ready to argue. Instead she exhaled a long, weary breath. “No, you’re right. We have enough to deal with.”
“Cool,” he said.
“Did you get any sleep last night? You look tired.”
“I guess I am,” he said. “Long day. Hey, did you know Quinn is fishing? He caught something big this morning.”
“I didn’t know. That’s good.” She looked troubled. “We should have thought of that. Fishing, I mean.”
“We’re not going to think of everything, I guess,” Sam said wearily. That was the problem with having one person in charge. People expected you to come up with all the answers. They stopped coming up with answers for themselves. Quinn had opened up a new possibility all by himself. And now he was turning to Albert for help, not to Sam.
“What’s he doing with the fish?”
“We sent a lot of it over to the day care this morning. We got some protein to the littles, at least.”
“A lot of it?” She raised an eyebrow. “What’s Quinn doing with the rest? He’s not hoarding it, I hope.”
“He’s…” Sam stopped himself. The last thing he wanted was to argue about Quinn and Albert and fish. “Actually, can we talk about that tomorrow? The important thing is that the littles got some protein today. Can we just be happy about that?”
Astrid laid her hand against his cheek. “Go to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He trudged upstairs, feeling better than he had all day. He passed Mary coming down. “Hey, Mary. Back to work?”
“What else would I be doing?” she said. “Sorry, that sounded cranky.”
“If you can’t be cranky, who can?” Sam said. “But hey, are you getting enough to eat?”
Mary seemed startled. “What?”
