Charlie sighed, went over and picked him up off the floor. His hands snaked around her neck, and his sobs subsided.

  'I'm sorry, Mommy,' he whispered. 'I love you.'

  She moved into the living-room, sat in the big wing-chair. He was already asleep, nestled against her chest, one chubby fist tangled in her hair. Watching him sleep, she felt her nerves slowly relax, felt her aggravation being replaced with a luscious tranquillity.

  'I love you, too,' she whispered, running her hand through the beautiful crop of dark curls that capped his head. She gazed at him, astounded, as she always was, by how much he resembled his father. The tranquillity spread its fingers inside her.

  The house was dark when Gallagher came in. He sniffed the air and dashed into the kitchen, opened the oven, and threw a sheet of charred cookies into the sink.

  He turned to go in search of Charlie, and slid through something on the floor. He squinted down. Hot chocolate? Poor Charlie, he thought with a wry grin. Another one of those days.

  She had cried about it yesterday. She cried quite a bit lately. From experience, he knew that was par for the course. And he knew that, right now, she just didn't have her usual energy with junior, never mind anything else.

  'It's OK,' he'd told her yesterday. 'Let's not look back on our lives and be able to say we were perfect—at all the wrong things. Who cares if the house gets a little messy? Anyway, the season's almost over. I'll be home soon to help out. Gee, I've missed you up there this year, Chuck.'

  The look in her face in that moment—her love as fresh as if they had only just met, when they'd been married and working together close to five years.

  He wandered into the living-room and saw her. Gallagher was asleep on her chest, beautiful, thick lashes throwing shadows across his little round cheeks. He looked like an angel, which Gallagher Senior happened to know was not the case.

  Charlie was asleep, too, her arms tight around the little boy, her face serene and untroubled. The fire was dying in the hearth behind them, and they were silhouetted in reds and oranges and golds.

  He crossed the room on soft feet, and gazed down at them. Charlie was just beginning to show, he thought, feeling a stirring of fierce protectiveness and intense love.

  Unexpectedly, looking down at her, a lump grew in his throat. He reached out and tenderly touched the wild tangle of her hair, and felt a strange prick behind his lashes. He took the sleeping boy from her lap, and nestled him against his shoulder, but he couldn't pull himself away from her. He stood gazing at her, until finally the light in the room died.

  He turned slowly away to put Gallagher to bed. Once, he remembered, he had asked her to teach him of love. And she had.

  And once, he realised, he had thought that the closest he would ever come to heaven was when he was waist-high in the deep powder of a virgin slope.

  And he had been wrong.

 

 

  Quinn Wilder, High Heaven

 

 

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