Turkey in the Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

overheard plenty—most of it from Alan himself.
    Alan’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled. “God, you just can’t stand the idea of anyone else having fun, can you? Just have to go make the whole rest of the world as goddamned Puritan as you are!”
    Hank grunted. “The Puritans weren’t big on treating people decent, Alan. Find another comparison, but leave me, and my niece, and my niece’s babysitter out of it. Now you’re the one who wanted the day off, and I’m the one who has to deal with the paperwork. You want to make that happen? Move your scrawny uncomfortable ass.”
    Alan gasped and held his hand to his mouth like that was the most offensive thing about the conversation, and Hank ignored him and started shuttling books.
     
     
    T HEY did it. He was ready to strangle Alan (and have Keith canonized!) by the time they were done, but when Alan and Keith left—Alan actually too tired to bitch, and Keith very grateful for both the day off to visit his parents before Christmas and the pizza and beer Hank had bought—the room was done.
    Hank was in there shutting the window, which had been left open to get rid of some of the paint smell, when there was a knock on the door. He practically ran down the hall, he was so excited to see what Josie would think about it. They’d painted one wall pink and all of the trim in the room lavender, and although they’d left the other four walls white, Hank had put up posters of Disney princesses and Bubble Guppies and Dora the Explorer all over, but that wasn’t the best part. The best part was the day bed—the kind that looked like a long couch and had a little trundle cot that slid underneath—that was all set up in the corner. Hank had ordered it in lavender and also bought a pink comforter with a white eyelet sham with matching pillowcases and pillow shams and even a little canopy.
    That bed looked like an iced party cake and Hank was dying, dying for her to see it, so she could know that she had a home in Hank’s little house, and that she could stay there as long as she wanted.
    He threw the front door open, as excited as he’d ever been about Christmas, only to find her asleep over Justin’s shoulder, so exhausted she was leaving a little puddle of drool on the shoulder of his thin company windbreaker.
    Hank was so disappointed it felt like he shrank.
    “Here,” he said softly, “I’ll take her.”
    Justin shook his head. “Let me put her down, Henry. Odds are better she won’t wake up that way.”
    Hank didn’t protest that he wanted her to wake up, because that had happened once, when he’d gotten her from Mrs. Watson’s daycare really late, and at 1:00 a.m. that night, when she’d finally dropped off to sleep, he’d sworn never ever again.
    He gestured Justin down the hall instead, turning on the hall light as Justin walked into what was obviously her bedroom, so Justin wouldn’t have to turn on the pink tiffany lamp that Hank had installed on the new white bookshelves. He slipped into the darkened room as Justin pulled back the comforter with his free hand, and then laid the limp little body down on the clean pink sheets. Justin was very careful then, taking off her shoes and her coat, and leaving her in her second set of clothes—stretch pants and a T-shirt, which were damned close to pajamas—before pulling the blankets up and tucking them under her chin.
    Hank bent down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before she could wake up and then followed him out of the room into the hallway.
    “Well, I—” Justin started to say, and then Hank said, “Thank you so much for—” and then they both stopped and looked at each other bashfully in the middle of the hallway. Finally Hank reminded himself that he was the older of the two of them, and it was his job to break the ice.
    “We have real pizza,” he said hopefully. “And beer, that is, if you’re… uhm, you know. Twenty-one yet. And if not I’ve got milk. But, would