Peril

DELLA

She rinsed the coffee urn while Mike ate his breakfast and thumbed through the paper. Nicky gurgled happily in his high chair, his small pink fingers dunking in the milk, reaching for a Cheerio.

“Where’s Denise?” Mike asked.

She turned and saw that he’d folded the paper and placed it on the table beside his plate. “Upstairs. Primping.”

“Primping? Jesus. She’s twelve years old.”

“They start early now,” Della said. “More coffee?”

Mike shook his head and got to his feet. “No. I’d have to piss halfway into the city if I had another cup.” He shrugged. “Probably will anyway.” He smiled that boyish smile of his, the one she’d fallen in love with nineteen years before. Then he turned and trudged up the stairs, his big, hulking shape a comfort to her, like living with Santa Claus. Once he’d made it upstairs, she listened as he moved from the bedroom to the adjoining bathroom, and back again. He’d misplaced something. His keys probably. What a lug she’d married. What a kind, sweet lug.

She walked to the bottom of the stairs. “Look in the hamper,” she called. “They’re probably still in your pants.”

She listened as he did as he was told.

“Got ’em,” he said loudly. “Thanks, babe.”

She felt a modest surge of accomplishment, a sense of being useful, then returned to the kitchen and began clearing the table. She’d just finished wiping milk from Nicky’s mouth when she saw Denise fly down the stairs and bolt out into the yard. Kids, Della thought, they’re so crazy now.

“Okay, I’m off,” Mike said as he lumbered back into the kitchen. He glanced out the window to where Denise stood waiting for her bus. “She okay?”

“Getting to be a teenager, that’s all.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“She talks to you as much as me.” She drew Nicky out of the high chair. “Say bye to your dad.”

Mike kissed Nicky on the cheek. “You be a good boy now,” he said brightly. He looked at Della, and his big, clownish face warmed her. “See you tonight.”

“We’re having tuna melt,” she told him. His favorite.

He kissed her, walked to the car, and got in. Denise offered a grudging, halfhearted wave as he drifted backward into the cul-de-sac.

Della returned Nicky to his chair, then began to load the dishwasher. The school bus arrived and Denise bounded onto it. Then the bus pulled away, and Della glimpsed her friend Sara’s house across the cul-de-sac. It looked cold and cheerless and abandoned, everything her house was not, and she felt inexpressibly lucky to have found a guy who’d take care of her, make sure she had everything she needed, provide a life that was truly without peril.