Baby It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren

and I are going to check on the cows out in the far pasture, then I’m going down to the school for the Saturday afternoon basketball program. Is it okay if the guys come over for the Green Hornet tonight?”
    When wasn’t it okay?
    Behind her closed eyes, she got up, pressed a kiss to his head, bussed his empty plate, and piled it into the sink. He’d join her, then, wiping the two plates, cleaning up his mess, reeling out stories of the dance the night before, or perhaps his newest theory on how to get her father’s old 1929 Ford roadster to run again. Something about the fuel line, or a water pump, or…she could never keep track of it.
    She had no doubt he’d get it running, someday.
    How she loved wintry Saturdays.
    The walnut double bed squealed as Dottie rolled over. She opened her eyes. Stared out the window.
    Snow buffeted the window pane, ice edging the inside of the sash, lacy frost scrolling patterns across the pane. And, as she lay there huddled under her quilt, Nelson and the taste of joy dissipated, leaving only the hollow ache inside.
    No Nelson in the kitchen making flapjacks. No team of fellas sprawled in her parlor, listening to the Green Hornet on the Silvertone.
    Reality rushed back at her as she stared into the murky gray morning. Instead, strangers—okay, not exactly strangers, for she’d known two of them for most of her life, but one stranger and two…interlopers…invaded her home.
    Dottie closed her eyes again, wishing away last night. The stilted conversation around the watery soup, the dry biscuits. She’d made up the bed for Violet in her parents’ old room and given Jake the bed in the narrow spare room. She supposed she might offer him Nelson’s room, but she couldn’t bear it, and besides, the room needed dusting, an airing out. To Gordy she’d given—well, she’d wanted to give him the barn, but no, she gave him her father’s den on the main floor, tucking a blanket into the leather divan. If he didn’t fit, the floor would work fine for him.
    Oh! See, she didn’t really want him to sleep on the floor, but she needed someplace to store all her anger. Her grief.
    She pushed the covers back. Hopefully the storm had abated and today her houseguests would trudge back to their own homes. She slid her feet into a pair of worn gray slippers, pulled an old green velour robe around her, cinched it, and went to the window.
    Her breath caught. She couldn’t see ten feet beyond her house, the world white—or rather gray, in an almost sickly pallor. If the sun had risen, it couldn’t temper the storm. Maybe twenty inches had fallen, perhaps even more. The accumulation already reached a quarter of the way up the sill of her bedroom window, clogging out the light.
    No, unless the storm abated soon, she had another day of houseguests.
    Hadn’t she suffered enough?
    She went to the bureau, ignoring the old woman in the mirror, and ran a brush through her pale hair before tying it up in a tight bun. Then, trying to decide on the decency of emerging from her room in her bedclothes, she reached for a pair of jean trousers and a white collared shirt.
    She added a red scarf and knotted it at the nape of her neck as she headed to the bathroom.
    The white ceramic tile collected the cold and she ran the water for a couple minutes before it turned lukewarm. Splashing her face, letting the water drip off her chin as she stared in the mirror and inspected the new wrinkles around her eyes. Probably it didn’t matter. She brushed her teeth, then tried out a smile.
    It seemed foreign on her face.
    Was that humming? Directly below her, in the kitchen, and through the grate in the floor, she heard an ear-bending rendition of “Jingle Bells.”
    That Gordy. Not only had he invaded her kitchen, but now he was humming?
    Still, she sank onto the edge of the claw-foot tub, listening to the male voice, letting it churn up memories. Her father, chopping wood with five-year-old Nelson, handing him one log at a