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Ros Snow studied the scene closely. This wasn’t good. She frowned and shook her head. Not good at all. She crawled around her dollhouse, set up on the floor of the family room where she usually had it, and she studied the scene. Sweet Potato, her Guinea Pig she had received for Christmas, sat nearby, watching with his nose twitching. He didn’t help, but Ros liked knowing that he was there if she needed him. Lady was also there. The Siberian Husky was lying in front of the television currently turned off; a fresh rawhide bone held between her front paws as she happily gnawed one of the knots. She wasn’t really paying attention to anything, but her bone, but Ros knew that Lady was there, too, if the girl needed her. (Ghost was outside in the backyard, barking at snowflakes, and wouldn’t want to come back inside until daddy got home from work.)
Christmas was officially over. Ros had gone back to school that Monday and today, Tuesday, Sansa had started her first class for the spring semester at the university where she taught. Sansa kept their decorations up until the Epiphany and then she, Jon, and Ros took everything down and stored it in their plastic totes, kept on the shelves in the garage, until next season. The house always seemed so big and empty once it was all put away, but Sansa reminded herself that the next Christmas would be here before she knew it.
And now that Christmas had come and gone, the Snow family was back to their usual schedule. Sansa taught downtown on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and also had her office hours after class, but she always had plenty of time to get back home and be at the bottom of the driveway at three o’clock when the school bus arrived and Ros hopped off. Inside, Sansa got Ros her usual cup of chocolate milk and helped her with her worksheets because Ros liked doing those as soon as she got home. Once finished, Ros then went off to play – either inside or outside – and Sansa started dinner preparations. Usually, on Tuesdays, Ros had her horseback riding lesson at the Marianne Vance Riding School, but the Vance family had not started spring classes yet, so Ros kept playing and Sansa was in the kitchen, putting dinner together and occasionally listening in on what her daughter was doing.
Also, for Christmas, Ros had received a wooden espresso machine. She had it set up on the coffee table, and she crawled to it now. Sansa smiled to herself as Ros fixed herself a cup and pretended to sip it. Daddy always drank coffee when he was working a case and Ros sipped her espresso from her pink wooden cup as she went back to her dollhouse. Sansa wasn’t too sure what Ros was playing, but whatever the storyline, it seemed quite serious and intense.
To the surprise of no one who knew her, Sansa absolutely loved Christmas and the holiday season. But it felt good to get back to usual, too. The holiday season brought so much eating, and Sansa was honestly tired of eating. Tonight, for dinner, she was making chicken Kiev from their freezer with white rice and green beans. It was easy and quick and the perfect meal to get the Snow family back “into the swing” of things post-holiday. Jon had texted her to let her know that he had left the Sheriff’s Station and was on his way home. It had been a quiet day for him, which was more than welcomed as it gave him a chance to catch up on files and reports.
Thankfully, people in their county were taking a break from doing nefarious things to each other. For the time being, at least. Jon had voiced his surprise to his wife over that fact because even though they had lived out here for almost four years now, the stark differences in certain things still caught him off guard. In the city, New Year’s Eve tended to be a busy night for the homicide department. More than one idiot had fired off guns into the air and never seemed to realize that the bullets had to come back down. Drunken fights that ended in tragedy. One year, a woman had stabbed her husband to death before midnight, wanting to start her new year with a “fresh” start.
Out here, in their small town in the country where they now lived, and in the county as a whole, there were people shooting off fireworks, Sheriff Deputies doing checkpoints for drunk drivers, and no murders.
“It’s a good thing to be used to,” Sansa smiled at him after he had wondered out loud if it was something he would ever get used to no matter how long they lived out here.
Ros was intently taking notes in her mind of her dollhouse scene, but the sound of the garage door opening broke through her concentration. She lifted her head with a gasp and Sansa smiled because she heard it, too. Ros hurried to her feet and ran to the laundry room. Lady abandoned her bone so she could trot after her. The door from the garage into the laundry room opened and Jon smiled when the first thing he saw was his daughter and one of their dogs.
“Hey,” he said.
“Daddy!” Ros exclaimed happily and even before he could take off his winter coat or scarf, she jumped up and Jon caught her, hefting her up into his arms.
“Rosie!” Jon matched her exclamation with his own and Ros laughed. They hugged one another tightly. “Best greeting,” he then let her know like he did every other night when Ros did the exact same thing.
Jon set Ros down on her feet and she beamed up at him. He then proceeded to give Lady a greeting, the dog’s tail eagerly sweeping back and forth and Jon rubbing her behind her ears. “Where’s the other one?” Jon asked Ros as he finally began taking off his coat and scarf, hanging everything onto the hooks on the wall where Sansa and Ros also had their winter outwear hanging.
“Outside, eating snowflakes,” Ros giggled. “Mama! Daddy’s home!” The girl turned and ran from the laundry room. Jon smiled and sat down on the bench to take off his boots. He heard the back door being opened and seconds later, Ghost burst into the laundry room to greet him, too.
In the kitchen, Sansa was setting the plates down at the table. “Ros, please do the silverware, but wash your hands first. You’ve been playing with Sweet Potato,” she said and Ros stepped up onto the stool at the sink without argument. Sansa smiled when Jon came in from the laundry room and he smiled as soon as he saw her. “Hello, Detective.”
“Hello, Doctor,” he greeted in return.
The oven began beeping and he took it upon himself to get the oven mitts to pull the baking tray with the chicken Kiev out. Sansa already had a potholder on the table and Jon carried it there. Without taking the oven mitts off, he then turned to his wife. Sansa laughed as his oven-mitted hands cupped her cheeks and he kissed her.
“Good day?” He asked.
She nodded in confirmation. “Good day?” She asked him next.
Jon nodded and smiled before leaning in for another quick kiss.
Hands were washed, milk and water glasses were filled, and the Snow family sat at the table, ready to eat their dinner. Ghost and Lady had sat down to begin their “begging for table scraps” stance. Sansa folded her hands and Ros mirrored her. Jon did not, but he waited for Sansa to say a prayer of thanks, both she and Ros finishing with “Amen”. When they were done, Jon and Sansa began serving the food onto the three plates.
Ros stabbed a green bean with her fork as Jon cut her Kiev for her, both careful of the scorching butter inside that could possibly squirt out. “Daddy, we have a new crime,” she informed him.
“Yeah?” Jon finished cutting her chicken pieces and leaned back into his own chair.
“Mrs. Hedgehog needed work on her roof. Mr. Otter came over, but someone stole his ladder and now, he’s stuck up there,” Ros said. Both Sansa and Jon turned their heads to look into the family room. Sure enough, they spotted Mr. Otter on the roof of the house with no ladder nearby.
Jon smiled, looking back to their daughter. When Ros started doing this, both Jon and Sansa had been mildly concerned. At Ros’s age, she didn’t understand murder. She knew about death. They had done their best to explain that in a way she could understand. But despite Jon’s profession, they hadn’t wanted her to know about the horrible things people did to each other. She didn’t need to know that at her age. The world, soon enough, would present itself to her and as her parents, it was Jon and Sansa’s job to keep her innocent as long as possible. When it came to what Jon did, Ros knew that people did bad things to other people and it was her daddy’s job to figure out who did it and why.
Ros liked playing detective with her woodland creature toys and dollhouse. Thankfully, none of the woodland creatures murdered each other. Jon and Sansa would have to take their daughter to a child psychologist if she started playing out those kinds of storylines. When it came to new crimes, someone stole Mrs. Bear’s freshly baked cherry pie. Someone took Mr. Turtle’s bicycle and crashed it before running away from the scene. And now, poor Mr. Otter was trapped on the roof. Those woodland creatures needed to be kinder to each other, in Sansa’s opinion.
“We’ll study the scene after dinner,” Jon promised and Ros beamed at that. “What else happened to you today?”
“We’re playing dodgeball in gym tomorrow!” Ros excitedly told her daddy the news she had already told her mama over worksheets.
Jon shuddered from traumatic memories of elementary school dodgeball bombarding his mind. Sansa laughed at his reaction. “Watch out for those head shots. Kids during dodgeball are vicious,” Jon advised Ros as he took his water glass and stood up to get himself some more. He was usually overly thirsty when he got home from work and downed a glass of water straight away. He tended to drink nothing, but coffee while at the station and his kidneys were begging for something else.
“I’m vicious, too!” Ros happily replied. She wasn’t sure what the word meant, but she liked the sound of it.
“How was your day?” Jon asked once he sat down again and looked at Sansa.
She was in the middle of chewing, but she nodded her head. She spoke once she swallowed. “All around good. Class was great. The students this semester are really excited. At least that’s the feeling I got.”
“They’d be idiots if they weren’t excited,” Jon said. “You teach the best class on campus.”
Sansa had to laugh at that. “You’re an idiot,” she teased him.
“Of course, I am. I never took your class,” Jon quipped back.
“And then after my class, I sat with Daario as he began to plot out our route for this summer.”
“You fly into Lima?” Jon asked and Sansa nodded.
That was all he knew because that’s all Sansa had known up until this point. She, Daario and his grad students that were coming with them would fly into the Lima airport in Peru and from there, his wife would be traipsing into the jungle for a month to live among an uncontacted tribe. He was so glad that she was doing this once-in-a-lifetime experience, but damn. He was scared, too. He and Sansa just weren’t “let’s go traipse into the jungle” kind of people.
Jon wouldn’t tell Sansa he was scared. Right now, she was super excited and had been that way ever since making her final decision on taking this trip with Daario. She should be excited and focus on only that for the time being.
“That’s still the plan,” Sansa confirmed. “He was actually thinking we might go to Bolivia and cross the border from there since it’s closer to the actual part of the general part of the Amazon we’ll be going to, but that might be a pain. He has time to figure it out. I’m literally just along for the ride.”
“Bolivia,” Ros repeated like she sometimes did when she heard mama say a word she had never heard before. Her mama knew a ton of words and Ros wanted to know all of them, too. “What’s that?” She assumed it had something to do with anthropology. All of the words that mama used that Ros didn’t know usually had to do with that.
“It’s a country in central South America, right next to Peru where I’ll be going in June.” Sansa began to smile wider. “There’s this huge lake that both Peru and Bolivia share. Do you want to know its name?” She asked.
“Yes!” Ros exclaimed and then leaned forward. Her mama was smiling like Sansa was about to tell her something very good.
“Lake Titicaca.”
And to no surprise, Ros began to laugh as soon as she heard that. To a six-year-old, Sansa knew that few words were better than Lake Titicaca. And when Ros began to laugh, she couldn’t seem to stop, and it made Jon and Sansa laugh, too.
“Ah, classic,” Jon grinned. He reached over and took Sansa’s hand, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. Sansa smiled and blushed at him.
She leaned forward in her chair with her plate to scoop herself some more rice. “How was your day?” She asked Jon because he was the only one who still had to say.
“Lake Titicaca,” Ros said to herself and shook her head before stabbing more green beans. She couldn’t wait to tell her best friend, Hannah, about that tomorrow at school.
“It was good,” Jon answered. “Still getting used to not having something to do right away in the new year, but it’ll come. Best part of my day was coming home.”
“Mine, too,” Sansa agreed, smiling and nodding.
“Mine, too!” Ros joined in. “Mama, after dinner, can we look up Lake Titicaca?” She was now officially obsessed with this lake, and it had to be amazing with a name like that. She wanted to see it for herself and have it confirmed.
“We definitely can,” Sansa said. “That lake is very important to the Incan history,” she then added though Ros would have absolutely no idea what that meant.
“What about Mr. Otter?” Jon asked. “He’s still on the roof and we need to figure out who wanted him to be stuck up there. This is the first case I’ve had all week.”
Ros was drinking from her cup of milk, and she turned her head to look at her dollhouse on the family room floor as she swallowed. “He’s not going anywhere,” she then shrugged.
Sansa let out a surprised laugh like she did when her daughter said something in that nonchalant way that children sometimes did.
Jon blinked at Ros and she giggled from the look on his face. “Vicious,” he confirmed.
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