Abby closed the door. Darned if she could figure out that woman. Perky’s interest in Mitch was clear, but she wasn’t behaving at all the way the women in Abby’s L.A. social circle had done in similar situations. There was no cattiness, no insincerity, no underhandedness—none of the hallmark behavior with which Abby was familiar. Instead, Perky had been upfront about her intentions, confident in her quest to achieve them, and seemingly quite genuine about her offers to help Abby—all at the same time. It was weird.
Abby returned to the kitchen, where Kiana remained on the floor, but now had her arms wrapped around her stuffed bunny. In silence, Abby scooped fresh oatmeal into a bowl, heated it in the microwave, and added a drizzle of maple syrup and some almond milk. She placed the bowl on the island.
“Your breakfast is on the counter,” she said. “I'm going to go vacuum the upstairs. You let me know when you're done, and I'll walk you to school.”
The little girl's voice stopped her at the doorway. “I still get to go?”
“Of course. We'll just be a little bit late, is all.”
“Will Madame Sylvie be mad?”
“I'll talk to her,” Abby reassured her. “No one will be mad.”
“What about the cookies?”
“We’ll bake them before we go.”
***
It was the tail-end of lunchtime by the time they made it to the school, and Kiana's kindergarten class was out on the playground under the watchful eye of their teacher. Abby sent a bundled-up Kiana off to play with her friends, then went to join Madame Sylvie by the monkey bars. The other woman greeted her warmly, and then asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Just a rough start to the morning,” Abby said, pulling a face. “I tried to rush her at breakfast and it didn't go well.”
“Ah. Yes, she does take a little gentle coaxing, doesn't she?” Madame Sylvie moved away to support one of Kiana's classmates, small for his age, as he swung himself across the bars. “Très bon, Michel!” she praised him, and a dazzling smile of triumph rewarded her. She stepped back to Abby's side again, looking sideways at her. “You look like you have something on your mind.”
“How is Kiana in class?” Abby asked, watching her young charge building a snowman with her friends. A full head taller than any of them, she'd been put in charge of lifting the head into place. “Have you noticed anything that raises concern?”
Madame Sylvie's expression turned cautious. “I'm not sure I can discuss this with you,” she replied. “You're not a parent or a legal guardian...”
Abby had expected as much. She tried a different tack. “Her father hasn't mentioned hearing from the school. Is there something I should be asking him?”
“There might be,” the teacher allowed, “if he'd ever come in to speak with me.”
“You've asked?”
“Several times. He's canceled two appointments with me already. I'm trying to give him as much space as possible, knowing what the family has gone through.”
Abby nodded, unsurprised. She'd half expected that, too. She considered how to continue. “I have some experience with ASD,” she said carefully around the memories she didn't want to stir up. She could still hear the words spoken by Olivia's pediatrician a scant year before the accident: autism spectrum disorder. She steeled herself to go on. “Some of Kiana's behaviors are red flags for me. The hand-flapping and bouncing, the way she won't always meet my eyes when I'm talking to her, the difficulty in changing direction, her fixation on certain things. But I feel I haven't known her long enough to suggest to her father that there's an issue. If you've noticed the same things, however, it will give me something more to take to him.”
Madame Sylvie stared out over the playground for a long moment without answering. Then she sighed. “Snowmen,” she said.
“Pardon?”
The teacher nodded toward the fence on the far side, and for the first time, Abby noticed the veritable army of snowmen clustered there—at least twenty of them, of varying sizes and shapes, some with sticks for arms, others with stubs made of more snow.
“Kiana?” she asked.
Madame Sylvie nodded. “She draws them on everything, too. And every craft we do gets turned into one. She's quite creative about it.”
Abby tried not to smile, thinking about the tray of chocolate chip cookies they'd made before leaving the house, meticulously placed so that three cookies baked together—but not altogether evenly—into snowmen shapes.
“At the beginning of the school year, it was penguins,” Madame Sylvie said, “after we read a book about them.” She turned to Abby as the school bell rang, signaling the return to class. “Kiana is an extremely bright girl, Ms. Jamieson, but yes, I think you should speak to her father. And I think he should keep his next appointment with me.”
Chapter 19
It was with more than a little trepidation that Abby listened to Mitch making tea in the kitchen that night. Both her conversation with Madame Sylvie and the previous evening's encounter remained fresh in her mind, and as she plucked at the blanket, awaiting his appearance, she preferred not to think about which was the primary cause of her jitters. Mitch's silence when he did arrive didn't help.
He handed her one of the cups he carried, then indicated his usual armchair with his freed-up hand.
“Of course,” Abby said. “I need to talk to you about something anyway.”
Mitch's mouth drew tight, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. When he sat, he didn't lean back like he usually did, but instead sat forward with elbows on knees and head bent, staring into the cup he held.
Abby took a deep breath. “It's about—”
Mitch held up a hand but still didn't look at her. “Please,” he said. “Let me go first. I know I made you uncomfortable when I grabbed hold of you last night, Abby, and I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am. I don't know why—and you're right, it's none of my business, so I won't ask—but being here in the house with us is hard for you, and the last thing I want is to make it harder. So please, give me another chance?”
“Another...” Abby blinked at him. “You think I'm quitting?”
“Aren't you?”
“No! Of course not. This isn't about—it's not—I need to talk to you about Kiana.”
“Kiana?” Mitch's head came up at last, and he frowned. “What does Kiana have to do with it?”
Briefly, Abby outlined her conversation with Kiana's teacher that morning, including her own observations and concerns, and ending with, “I know it's difficult to think there might be an issue, but have you ever considered having her evaluated? It might be nothing, but—” She broke off as Mitch, looking inexplicably stricken, set his cup on the coffee table and stood.
“I'll be back,” he said, and a second later, she heard him opening and closing what sounded like file drawers in his office. He returned when Abby had drunk half her tea. “Sorry, it took a while to find it.” He dropped a file folder onto the table.
Abby looked askance as he resumed his seat.
“It's Kiana's medical file,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees again. This time, however, he didn't hold his cup but instead rubbed his hands over his face, looking wearier and more haggard than Abby had seen him so far.
No, not haggard. Tortured. She reached for the file.
“Kiana has trisomy X,” Mitch said as she began flipping through the reports and letters inside. “Also known as triple X syndrome. It's a genetic—”
“A genetic abnormality,” Abby broke in. “Affecting one in a thousand women, most of whom go undiagnosed because they have no symptoms—or because their doctors don't know to test for it.”
“You're familiar with it?” Surprise laced Mitch's voice.
“I've... come across it before.” She'd researched it half to death when Olivia's pediatrician had recommended the DNA test. It was his standard next step when autism was confirmed in a female patient, he’d told them, even though the syndrome still wasn’t well known in most of the medical
community. In Olivia's case, the test had come back negative, much to Abby's great relief. Autism on its own would have been challenging enough, but if it had resulted from triple X, there could have been a whole host of other issues as well. Abby paused at a cardiology report, relieved to read that no heart abnormalities had been found in Kiana. Ditto for the kidney exam results. She looked across the top of the folder at Mitch. “When did you find out?”
“Not long before Eve was diagnosed. She was able to look after some of the follow-up work”—Mitch nodded at the file—“but once she started treatment, she was too sick to do more. And I...” The tortured look returned. “I never even opened the file after she died because I forgot about it.” He rubbed his hands over his face again, steepling his fingers against his mouth.
“Freaking hell,” he muttered. “What kind of father forgets about his daughter's health?”
“One that's been stretched a little too thin for a little too long,” Abby replied, but the torment remained on Mitch's face. Without thinking, she leaned across to put her hand on his knee. “Hey, ease up on yourself. You've singlehandedly kept your family and business afloat for a year, remember?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You can say that after the disaster you walked into last week?”
Abby smiled. “The house was still standing when I got here,” she countered, “and the girls had been fed—”
“Is that what we're calling granola bars for breakfast?”
“And your business is still running—”
“More thanks to Derek than to me.”
Exasperated, she lifted her hand and gave his knee a poke. “Enough. Like it or not, you've done better than you give yourself credit for, and I'm going to get you on track so that it's easier. Even with this.” She waved the file folder at him. “You just need a plan, is all.”
Mitch stared down at the knee she'd prodded, then he stood up from the chair and picked up his untouched tea. “I'll keep telling myself that,” he said, his gaze meeting hers with a quiet despair that went straight to her core. “But you need to know that you're way more optimistic about this three-month thing than I am, Abby. Way more.”
Abby listened to his steps retreat down the hallway, first to the kitchen and then past the living room again to his office, where the door clicked shut. She wrestled with the desire to follow him and offer more reassurance, but her better sense won out—underlined by the memories of the evening before and the tingle in her palm from its contact with his knee. Settling back on the loveseat, she opened the file again and began reading about Kiana.
Chapter 20
“Abby, there’s someone at the door for you!”
Abigail pulled her head out of the washing machine and raised her eyes toward the ceiling. Her third Saturday on the job, all the girls at home, yet another confrontation with Rachel, a washing machine that refused to drain...and all before nine in the morning. And now what was most likely a door-to-door marketer. Maybe she’d get lucky and it would be kids selling chocolate bars to raise money for a school project, and she could buy their whole inventory, and—
“Abby!” Brittany yelled again.
With a sigh, Abby wiped wet hands against the seat of her jeans. “Coming,” she called back, heading into the hall. She stopped short of the entryway. “Gwyn! What—how—?”
Her sister grimaced, looking guilty. “Tracking app,” she said. “On the phone Gareth gave you. You haven’t been returning my calls, and I got worried.”
“You tracked me?”
“Sister’s prerogative?” Gwyn hedged. Then she scowled. “Seriously, Ab. I was worried. Why didn’t you call me?”
It was Abby’s turn to hedge. “I was busy.”
Gwyn raised an eyebrow. Heat suffused Abby’s cheeks.
“And I wasn’t ready to talk.”
“You talked to Gareth.”
“He told you?”
“Yes, but he didn’t give me details. He just said you and I had some clearing of the air to do.” Gwyn waited, still bundled in her winter coat and boots, hands stuffed into her pockets. Then she sighed. “If you’re not ready, I can respect that. Today, I really did just want to know you’re safe.”
“I’m fine.”
Her sister’s gaze took in her wet shirt front and jeans. “I’m catching you at a bad time.”
“Yes. No. Kind of. The washing machine decided not to drain. I thought maybe something was jammed, but I’ve taken the whole load out, and I can’t find anything.”
“Sounds like your water pump. Ours went last year. You’ll need someone to come in.”
Abby groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I stripped all the beds this morning, and I have six loads to do, including school clothes. And I haven’t been in a laundromat in—” She broke off and frowned. “Do they even have laundromats in Ottawa anymore?”
Gwyn laughed. “They do, but why don’t you and the girls come to our place instead? You can have lunch with us and use our machines. Our four would love the company.”
Abby hesitated.
“And I promise not to grill you,” Gwyn added. She began stripping off her coat and scarf. “Point me toward the laundry room and I’ll put things in bags while you get your troops organized. Make sure everyone has their snow gear, and I’ll see if I can talk Gareth into taking them tobogganing while Julianne naps. There’s not a huge amount of snow yet, but our crew insists there’s enough. And our van seats eight, so they can all squeeze in to get to the hill, and Amy’s coming by this afternoon, so she can help out.” She paused in her efforts to divest herself of her boots. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’d forgotten how bossy you can be.”
“Would you really rather drag three kids to the laundromat with you for the day?”
Abby rolled her eyes and pointed down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Hallway on the right, just past the stairs. Bags are on the top shelf of the cupboard over the sink. I’ll get the girls.”
Predictably, Brittany and Kiana were thrilled with the idea of going out for the day, especially when the possibility of tobogganing was raised. Equally predictably, Rachel was not.
“You’re kidding, right?” From her usual sprawled-on-belly position on the bed, she regarded Abby as she might something distasteful on the bottom of her boot. “You expect me to spend the day with a bunch of little kids I don’t even know, just so you can visit your sister? I don’t think so.”
“It’s not so I can visit Gwyn, it’s so I can do your laundry. I told you, the machine is broken, and Gwyn was kind enough to offer the use of hers. It’s either that or the laundromat, and I guarantee her place is nicer.”
“Right. How convenient.” Rachel returned her attention to the laptop open before her. “I have an English essay to write. I’m staying here.”
Abby drew her lips between her teeth and bit down so hard that they burned. While things had improved between her and Rachel immediately following the blow-up last weekend, they had slowly devolved again over the week, until it felt like they were back to square one, and Abby was getting more than a little tired of the constant friction. Tired, too, of the attitude. Already today, Rachel had refused to strip her bed so Abby could wash the sheets. She hadn’t outright informed Abby that it was part of her job this time, but she had certainly insinuated as much. Abby counted to a slow ten, weighing and discarding options such as throwing an all-out hissy fit or just turning the entire mess over to Mitch after all. Then inspiration struck. Calmly, she crossed the floor to the bed, closed the laptop, and picked it up.
“Hey! That’s mine!” Rachel screeched.
“Your English essay,” Abby said, “is coming to Gwyn’s. And so are you. Bring your headphones and your charging cord, and we’ll find you a quiet corner to work in. I’ll see you in the front hall in five minutes.”
“And if I’m not there?” Rachel demanded of her back as she headed out of the room again. “You can’t make me, you know! You’re not the bos
s of me, Abigail!”
Abby pulled the door shut, closed her eyes, and leaned against the wall, listening to the string of inappropriate curses filtering into the hallway and wanting very much to slide down onto the floor and curl up in a ball. How in the world was she going to survive another two months of this?
“Jessica would never treat me like this!” Rachel’s muffled voice yelled, and Abby’s eyes snapped open. She twisted her head to look over her shoulder at the teen’s door, letting that last bit percolate in her brain. Was that the problem? Could Perky Perkins really be so small that she’d stoop to—
Abby thought back over how the woman had cheerfully insisted on continuing to pick up Brittany and Rachel for school every morning. Could her helpfulness have hidden some kind of ulterior motive? Sure, she’d made her interest in Mitch clear, but would she stoop to deliberately poisoning Rachel’s mind like that?
Well, hell.
“Abby, we’re ready!” Kiana called from the front hallway. Abby detached herself from the wall, gave Rachel’s door a last, thoughtful look, and headed for the stairs.
“Four minutes and counting, Rachel,” she called over her shoulder. The thud of something hitting the door was the only response.
Gwyn looked up from zipping Kiana’s jacket as Abby joined them. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Abby muttered, setting the laptop she carried on the entry table beside her keys.
“Let me guess, thirteen going on eighteen?”
“I’m five going on eighty,” Kiana volunteered. “Grandma said so.”
“I can believe it.” Gwyn tapped the little girl’s nose with a fingertip, then pushed to her feet and surveyed the pile of gear by the door. “Right. Snowsuits, mittens, hats, scarves, spare socks, laundry, favorite plushie, and”—she nodded at the table—“laptop. I think you have everything you’ll need, and I have spares at home if we forgot anything. I’ll head out now and get the wet load into the machine to start, and you follow when you have everyone on board.” She zipped up her own coat and tugged on her gloves. “Mac and cheese for lunch, and tobogganing after. Sound good?”
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