Wednesday’s Child
By Leigh Michaels
Published by Leigh Michaels at Smashwords
http://www.leighmichaels.com
Copyright 2010 Leigh Michaels
First published 1985
All rights reserved
Cover illustration copyright 2010 Michael W. Lemberger
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CHAPTER ONE
Layne Emerson opened the oil can and balanced it so it could drain into the motor of her car. She leaned against the fender, brushing a trickle of perspiration away with her finger, barely aware of the streak of oil she left on her cheek. The faded green paint on the fender was warm under the brilliant afternoon sun; she could feel the heat through the brief shorts and low-necked top she wore. It was the end of June and the summer was a hot one.
Across the driveway in the neighboring yard, two small boys wrestled in the grass with a large sheepdog. She watched the trio for a few minutes, then something in their play alarmed her.
“Robbie! Tony!” she called. “Don’t tease the dog like that!”
One of the boys looked up. “Oh, Mom,” Robbie said, “Beast wouldn’t bite me.” But he got up from the grass, dusted his shorts off, and found a stick which he tossed for the dog to retrieve.
He was probably right, Layne thought. Beast was the gentlest of all creatures, and he had never turned on his owner, but he was so enormous next to her small son that she had to fear for Robbie sometimes. Being a single parent was really difficult, she thought. She didn’t know sometimes if there was anything she was doing right. Being wholly responsible for an eight-year-old was a constant drain.
It was, however, she thought, better than being without the eight-year-old. Robbie was not only her son, but her sunshine.
Beast brought the stick and dropped it at her feet, his tongue hanging out and his beady eyes sparkling in anticipation. For once, the thick hair that usually hid his eyes had blown back, and his vision was unhindered.
“I’m not the one who throws sticks, dummy,” she told him. “I’m just the one who buys the dog food.” Beast reared up and put his paws on her shoulders, and Layne got a whiff of the dog”s coat. “Robbie!” she called. “This dog needs a bath!”
Robbie came across the driveway and tossed the stick again. Beast romped off after it, and Robbie said, “Sure, Mom. I’ll give him a bath tomorrow.” Then he gave her a cheeky grin. “You need one too, Mom. You’ve got oil on your face. Are you almost finished working on The Tank?”
Layne raised a hand to wipe the oil off, and only succeeded in smearing it further. “Almost.
At least I’ll have finished everything I can do.”
“Do you have to work today?” he asked.
“Mr. Hamburg brought me some more of his life story to type. But it can wait till this evening if you have plans.” She smiled at him and ruffled his dark hair. “What do you want to do? Bake cookies?”
“Not today. Will you come to my Little League game this afternoon? You missed last
week.”
“Yes, I’ll come. But you know I had to go to that job interview last week. It was very important.”
“It couldn’t have been too important,” Robbie argued. “You didn’t get the job.”
“Even if I didn’t, I had to try.”
Robbie scuffled his shoes in the dirt. “I don’t want you to go back to work in some old office. And I don’t want to go to day care.”
“I know you don’t, Robbie. But someone has to hold a job around here to pay the rent and the grocery bill. And eight years old just isn’t big enough to stay alone.”
“Yeah, sure.” But Robbie’s voice was plainly unhappy.
Layne didn’t try to explain any further. She had tried so many times, and it always seemed to end up the same.
Robbie loathed day care. It was the main reason she had so hated to lose her last job; as the secretary to a high school principal, she had worked much the same hours as Robbie was in school, and she had even had the same holidays. But the funding for her position had run out, and there would be no job next autumn.
She wasn’t looking forward to going back to a nine-to-five office, either—but someone had to put the food on the table. Even the school job hadn’t left much for extras; they certainly couldn’t live indefinitely without a paycheck of some kind.
So she hugged Robbie and ruffled his black hair, and turned to check the oil can to see if it was empty. The Tank seemed to drink oil. But it was transportation, she reminded herself, even if it was old and used too much gasoline and was rusting out.
“Dad’s picture was in this morning’s paper,” Robbie said.
Layne kept her face turned away and her voice carefully casual. “Was it?” She checked the tension on the fan belt.
“Yeah. They opened North Winds Shopping Mall yesterday. He was the one who built it,
you know. Emco had all the contracts.” There was pride in his voice.
“Yes, I know.” How could I avoid knowing? Robbie had watched the progress of that construction for the past two years. He hadn’t missed a single news item about it. North Winds was the prototype of a new approach to shopping mall construction; it was supposed to sweep the country within ten years. So it wasn’t surprising that when dedication day came around, the man who had built it would be asked to cut the official ribbon. She should have expected it.
The man who had built everything worth knowing about in the Kansas City area for the last five years. Kyle Emerson, the head of Emco, which, as Robbie had told her so often, was the biggest construction company in the Midwest.
Why, Layne asked herself, had she ever told Robbie about his father? And then she
reminded herself that she hadn’t actually told him at all. Robbie had made the connection himself two years ago. The fact that a first-grader had been so quick to draw a perfectly accurate conclusion had startled her so that she had confirmed his suspicions before she had even paused to think. If she had only taken that extra moment…
Robbie had been home from school, suffering from a virus. He had been watching the noon news while waiting for the cartoons to start, when Kyle Emerson had been interviewed about his new shopping center project. Robbie had been transfixed, then he had called, “Mom! Come see this guy who looks just like me!”
And as Layne, without any warning, found herself face to face with the image of Kyle
Emerson, Robbie had said, “His name is Emerson, too. Is he my father?”
And Layne had murmured, “Yes, Robbie.”
She could kick herself now, of course. If she could have foreseen what Robbie would do, she might have lied to him. For instantly he had become a TV news freak and the youngest steady reader of the Kansas City Star, searching for the next mention of Kyle Emerson for his scrapbook.
Robbie’s playmate had gone back into his house next door, and now his mother leaned out of the casement window above her kitchen sink and called, “Hey, you two, I just took chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.”
“Can I go have some?” Robbie asked. “Clare makes the best cookies.”
“Better than ours?” she teased.
“Heck, no. But next best. And she makes them more often.”
Layne laughed. “Sure, Rob. Tell Clare I’ll be there in a minute.” She checked the battery, and fingered the cable connections, and wish
ed that she had told Robbie that there were hundreds of men named Emerson in Kansas City, and that she’d never heard of one named Kyle.
The casement window opened again. “You’d better hurry, Layne,” Clare Reynolds called.
“Your coffee is poured.”
Layne slammed the hood of The Tank and crossed the driveway. Clare was already sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee. She pushed Layne’s cup and the plate of cookies towards her.
“The boys took their snack to the rec room,” she said. “Which leaves you free to tell me what that gloomy expression on your face means. What’s wrong, Layne?”
“Nothing. Everything.” Layne bit into a cookie, and still-melting chocolate chips oozed out. “There are no job prospects yet, and it’s really beginning to bother me. I thought I had it all planned, and we’ve been careful what we spent, ever since I found out I’d be laid off. But it just takes more money than I figured on.”
“It has a habit of doing that,” Clare said. “Is there any possibility the school district will call you back?”
“Perhaps. But I’m afraid to count on it, Clare. What if they don’t have an opening? They won’t, unless someone retires or takes another job. And there just aren’t many secretarial positions in the schools.”
Clare nodded. “I know. What about the private typing business?”
“It’s picking up. I even made a hundred dollars last week on a book manuscript.”
“Only a hundred?”
“It was a short book. That helped to pay for the repairs The Tank had to have last month.
And there’s always Mr. Hamburg’s life story. It must be going into the third volume.”
“Now if he’ll just pay you,” Clare said dryly. “I put up some more flyers yesterday when I was shopping.”
“I keep thinking that perhaps we can make it through the summer on what the typing will bring in. After all, the bills aren’t as big.”
“Come to think of it, I have a friend who belongs to a writers’ club. I’ll call her. It might not be a book a week, but there should be something.” Clare stirred her coffee moodily. “Robbie seems happy to have you at home.”
“Of course he is. He hates it when I go for interviews or even talk about getting another job. It’s one long continual battle.”
“Having you home so much has spoiled him.”
“That’s not all—it spoiled me too. Being off work at three every afternoon was awfully nice. I don’t want to go back to a regular job any more than Robbie wants me to.”
“Layne, is something bothering him?”
“Nothing more than the idea of going back to day care, as far as I know.” She sipped her coffee and added reluctantly, “He’s talking about his father again.”
Clare got up and refilled her cup. “He’s a boy, Layne. And he’s old enough to realize that even the kids who have divorced parents see their dads once in a while.”
“So does Robbie,” Layne muttered sarcastically. “In the newspaper, which he reads word-for-word every day.”
“Robbie doesn’t understand why he never actually sees his dad. So he talks about him to prove that Kyle isn’t just in his imagination.”
“You make it sound so simple, Clare.”
“Did you see the picture?” Clare reached for the newspaper on the counter.
“No. I can live without the experience.” But Layne took the paper anyway.
The story was at the top of the front page, with a banner headline; North Winds was an important development, and it had received nationwide publicity. She didn’t want to look at the photograph, but another part of her couldn’t look away. There in living color on the front page was Kyle, his black hair ruffling in the breeze as he cut the ribbon across the main doors of the North Winds Mall.
He hadn’t changed, Layne told herself. Oh, that might be a trace of white in the hair at his temples—it was difficult to tell in the grainy newspaper photo. And there were two deep lines between his eyes as he frowned over the wide red ribbon. But otherwise, everything was the same. He was still just as handsome as he had been nine years ago.
And there was another thing that hadn’t changed, Layne told herself as she looked closer at the photograph. Beside him was Jessica Tate, one hand raised to keep her wide-brimmed hat from fluttering off in the breeze, the other under Kyle’s on the big shears. She was smiling, and she was beautiful.
The agony of that last afternoon at Wheatlands swept over Layne in waves. That afternoon that Jessica Tate had told her the truth…
Layne pushed the hurt to the back of her mind and read the caption. Jessica owned a string of boutiques, including a new one in North Winds Mall. To most people, it would explain why she was beside Kyle, acting as if she belonged there. Layne knew better.
Clare propped her hands on the table and rested her chin on them. “Why don’t you call
Kyle?” she asked gently. “I can’t believe that he would want you and Robbie to be living like this. And he can certainly afford to pay child support.”
“Not if he’s entertaining Jessica Tate, he can’t. That lady is expensive. And you know that if Kyle finds out about Robbie, he’ll take him away from me.”
Clare took a deep breath. “Would that be so awful for Robbie?” she asked gently.
“Robbie is a gifted child, Clare. He’s a brilliant child.”
“I know that. That’s exactly what I mean. He needs additional advantages that you can’t give him. You can’t send him to private school, Layne, or to summer camp. And what about college? I know it’s a long way off, but surely you want the best for Robbie. What can you give him, compared to what his father can do for him?”
“I can love him,” Layne cried. “Love him because he’s Robbie, not just because he’s an Emerson.” She buried her head in her arms on the table. Great choking sobs tore at her throat.
Clare sighed and lit a cigarette. She tapped it on the edge of the crystal ashtray and waited for Layne’s sobs to quiet. Then she patted her friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re right, of course. But I hurt so, watching you struggle to provide for Robbie when Kyle could do it so easily. When he ought to be doing it.” She stroked Layne’s hair.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” Robbie asked at Layne’s elbow.
She raised her head and gave him a watery smile. “Oh, honey, sometimes I just get scared when I think about things.”
“Oh.” He thought that over for a moment and dismissed it. “Are you still coming to the game?”
“Is it time?” Layne glanced at her watch. “Run home and get your uniform on. We’ll have to hurry.”
Robbie ducked out the door. Layne dashed a hand across her eyes, where tears still pooled.
“Clare…”
“I know. I’m sorry, and I won’t bring it up again, even though I think...” She stopped and shook her head. “I’ll try not to bring it up,” she said ruefully. “All right? Now you’d better hurry, too. And wash the streak of oil off your cheek before you go!”
*****
Layne sat down on the top bleacher, off in a corner by herself. She didn’t feel like being near anyone; the tears had been too recent, and she was afraid that they might start again if anybody so much as asked her what was new.
Down on the field, Robbie’s team was warming up. The blue-and-gold uniforms of Robbie
and his fellow Angels stood out against the red and white of the opposing team. She saw Robbie talking to his coach, then the man looked up at the stands and waved at Layne. She waved back, pushed her dark glasses up, and hoped that he wouldn’t come up to say hello just now. She hated to have anyone see her cry, and if Gary Spencer showed an ounce of concern or sympathy, she’d break down all over again.
So she watched the team warm up. Robbie seemed so young to be in organized sports,
Layne thought, but he adored baseball, so she had given in. At least he hadn’t chosen a violent sport like football.
She had not been surprised that
baseball had been Robbie’s choice, for hadn’t Kyle told her once that it was the sport of gentlemen? Emco’s employees had a team, that summer so long ago.
Kyle played shortstop, and he’d taken her to all the games. Layne, at seventeen, had been so blinded by his charm that she wouldn’t have cared if he had expected her to be third base, as long as she could be with him.
Yes, she thought, Robbie was definitely his father’s son. No wonder he had been so certain the day he’d first seen Kyle on the television screen.
The team’s coach was beside her before she was aware he was near. “I’m glad you’re here, Layne,” Gary said. “Rob really missed you last week. He stole second base, you know, and he wanted you to see him.”
“He told me. He was very proud of himself.”
“The boy has the makings of a good athlete. If he keeps developing as he has over the past year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him a star on my high-school team. And then who knows?”
“I think eight years old is a little young to be signing him with the Royals, Gary,” Layne said tartly.
Her response startled him. “Well, yes. But I can dream, can’t I? I don’t say anything to him about it.”
“I didn’t mean to be sharp with you. But I’ve never been very comfortable about baseball being a profession.”
“I see what you mean. Half my team thinks they’re going to be stars in pro ball,” Gary mused. “Is something wrong, Layne? You look a little unusual.”
Layne self-consciously straightened her dark glasses and looked out over the field. “It’s just been a hard day.”
Gary looked relieved. “I’m glad it isn’t anything I did. I’ll take you and Robbie out for pizza after the game.”
“Shouldn’t we see what the score is, first?”
“Why? If Robbie isn’t celebrating a victory, he’ll need consolation for a loss.”
Layne smiled reluctantly. Gary was good for her, she admitted; sometimes he almost
forced her into doing things, but she always ended up enjoying herself. “You’re right. And Robbie can always eat pizza.”
Gary glanced down at the field. “I’d better get down to my boys. I’m shirking my duties.”
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