Promise Me A Rainbow by Cheryl Reavi Page A

come?”
    “It isn’t Labor Day,” Catherine said, because he’d caught her completely off-guard, the fact that she hadn’t considered the possibility that he might extend a social invitation compounded by the fact that since her divorce she almost never went out.
    “We never let a thing like that bother us. We have the cookout on Labor Day if we’ve got the money. If we don’t, we have it when we do. One year it was January. We nearly froze our butts off. What do you say?”
    The refusal was already on her lips, but Fritz caught her by the hand again.
    “Please, Catherine!”
    Catherine looked into Joe D’Amaro’s eyes. His gaze held hers, then shifted ever so slightly to Fritz, who was still clinging to her hand.
    Catherine understood him as if he’d spoken aloud.
    “You said I couldn’t invite my friends, Daddy,” Della said at his elbow.
    “There’ll be enough to go around, Della. I’m sure Fritz can keep Catherine from eating more than her share. So can you work us in? You already know Fritz and me. And Mrs. Wheeler from The Purple Box will be there. You won’t be totally surrounded by strangers.”
    “All right. That will be fine,” Catherine said. “I’ll need the address.”
    “No, Fritz and I will come and get you so you don’t have to take the bus. I’ll call you later and let you know when.”
    “Oh . . . well, I’ll see you next Saturday, then.” She was growing more and more flustered by this sudden invitation, and she abruptly turned and walked away, giving one last wave to Fritz before she went inside to the wooden stairway that led to Front Street. But when she looked back at Fritz, she walked directly into a gangly teenage boy.
    “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, laughing. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
    “That’s okay,” he said. “You know my little sister? The one down there with her hand flopping on the end of her arm?”
    “Fritz. Yes. You must be Charlie.” She would have guessed that anyway, he looked so much like Joe D’Amaro.
    “In person.”
    He paused, both hands raised, listening intently.
    “What?” Catherine said, mystified.
    “I’m waiting to see if you say it.”
    “Say what?”
    “You didn’t . Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you, rare individual, who doesn’t say, ‘Charlie, you look just like your old man!’”
    “Well, I figured you already knew that,” Catherine said, teasing him.
    “Exactly.”
    “Got to go. I’ll miss my bus,” she said, hurrying toward the stairs. “Nice meeting you,” she called over her shoulder.
    Joe D’Amaro watched his son talking to Catherine Holben. He began to walk in that direction, but by the time he got there, she was already gone.
    “Who is that?” Charlie asked him.
    “Catherine Holben. She bought the gnomes. Just what are you looking at?” he asked, because Charlie was standing transfixed, staring in the direction Catherine had just gone.
    “Catherine Holben. Man, she does a lot for the back pockets on a pair of jeans.” He gave Joe a sheepish grin and punched him in the upper arm. “Or are you getting too old to notice those things, Pop?”
    “Get out of here,” Joe said, unable to keep from smiling at Charlie’s teasing. He had a good son here—absentminded and irrepressible but good nevertheless. “And don’t call me Pop!”
    Charlie’s grin broadened. “Right, Pop.”
    He loped off to join his sisters, and Joe gave one last look at Catherine going up the stairs.
    I noticed , he thought.
    She was nothing like Lisa, and until a few minutes ago he would have sworn that the only reason he’d asked her to come to the Labor Day cookout was because of Fritz, because he knew she liked Catherine Holben and because Fritz thought he’d been rude to her. He had been rude to her, and he regretted it. For days he’d been thinking about calling her or going by where she worked. But then, there she was, sitting in the sunlight. And she’d looked at him with those calm