Where Angels Tread by Clare Kenna Page A

anymore. A small part of Heidi felt relieved that life would be able to return to normal, and she could pretend that she and Shane Kensington had never met. It might take a while for her to erase him from her memory, but Heidi knew that it would be worth it in the end. Nothing good could come from pining over something that could never be. When the day came when her son was ready to accept the presence of another man in their lives, Heidi had no doubt that Shane would be off the market. Frankly, she was surprised that a man like him was still single, but she never gathered up the courage to ask him why.
    Later that evening, after Shane had gone home, Heidi sat at the dinner table with Zachary, toying with her own food and watching as he devoured a plate of macaroni and cheese with gusto, all the while chattering on and on about the other boys who were planning to try out for the team. “Eddie’s pretty cool,” he said through a mouthful of noodles. “His father’s in the army and lets Eddie try on his uniform. They live in a big house with a pool and Eddie already invited me to come over this summer and swim!”
    “That’s great,” Heidi said gently, wetting her napkin in her water glass and wiping a dribble of cheese from her son’s chin. “Sounds like you’ve made a lot of new friends.”
    “Uh huh,” Zachary said, nodding proudly. Without warning, a sad look crossed his face and he began pushing the soggy noodles around his bowl absentmindedly.
    “What’s wrong, buddy?” Heidi asked, lifting his chin with her fingers.
    Zachary heaved a sigh and gazed at her with pleading eyes. “What about Shane?”
    “What about him?”
    “Do you think he’ll still be able to come over, even after I make the team?”
    Heidi covered the little boy’s hand with her own. “I’m not sure if he will,” she said honestly. “Shane’s a very busy man with an important job, and he promised to help you all the way through basketball tryouts, which was already a lot more than he needed to do. I think that once tryouts are finished we should let Shane get back to his own life.”
    Zachary hung his head in disappointment. “I’m sure you’ll still see him every so often,” she added. “And we’ll have to come up with a special way to thank him for being so generous with his time.”
    “We could have him over for dinner,” Zachary said excitedly. “I could cook! Do you think he likes macaroni and cheese?”
    A smile played across Heidi’s lips as she imagined serving Shane pasta out of a box as a thank you for spending countless hours with her son. She had no doubt in her mind that he would clean his plate and politely ask for more. “We’ll see,” she said. “Maybe I’ll think of something we could make together.” She glanced at the clock above the kitchen stove. “I didn’t realize it was so late! Finish your dinner and brush your teeth, then I’ll come upstairs and read a chapter to you before bedtime. Why don’t you pick out a new book?”
    As her son scampered out of the room, Heidi rose from the table and began clearing away their dirty dishes. She added a squirt of soap to the dishpan and watched as it filled with hot, sudsy water. Despite having for the first time in several years a kitchen with a fully functioning automatic dishwasher, on most days Heidi preferred to scrub the plates by hand. She had always found the repetition soothing, a way to allow her mind to wander. Some of the most important decisions in Heidi’s life had been made while she was washing dishes: where she wanted to go to college, what to name her first child, how to make a living for herself and her son when she was thrust unwillingly into the perilous world of single motherhood.
    Now, as she grabbed the sponge to work on a particularly stubborn pot, she began imagining for what seemed like the thousandth time over the past three years what her future would look like. While thoughts like this used to immediately cause Heidi