“Stella, we talked about this.” Marc unwrapped Stella’s arms and picked her up, putting her on eye level with Fiona. “Fiona is our friend. She came to Gammy and Papa’s for Sunday dinner.”
“No.” Stella shook her head.
Fiona’s insides clenched. This was a bad idea. She and Marc should have waited and met Monday morning without Stella.
“Luc’s my friend,” Stella said.
Fiona couldn’t read the bright look that flashed on Marc’s face when Stella spoke.
“We can have more than one friend,” he said, before he motioned to Fiona. “My car’s down the row to your left.”
Stella scrunched her face, reminding Fiona so much of Mairi preparing to throw a fit that it hurt.
“I can drive my own car,” Fiona said.
Marc followed her sideways glance at Stella. “No, let’s go together.”
Marc’s insistence affected her in ways it shouldn’t have. They were essentially testing the waters with Stella in a situation where Marc’s business, not their new family relationship, was front and center. Or at least that’s what Fiona had told herself repeatedly on the drive down from Willsboro.
Marc pressed his key fob to unlock his SUV and opened the back door. “I’ll get Stella in her seat.”
Fiona walked around to the passenger side and opened the door.
“Stella’s seat,” the little girl said as Marc fastened her in.
Fiona stifled a nervous giggle at Stella staking her territory. “I know. I’ll sit up front with your daddy.” She bit her lip, remembering Stella’s earlier possessiveness.
“Daddy drive,” Stella said as Marc climbed behind the wheel.
“Yes, it’s your daddy’s car.”
“Stella and Daddy’s car.”
Marc smiled and turned on the engine. “Now that we have that all established, let’s hit the road.”
They were barely on the highway before Stella was fast asleep.
“Is this her usual nap time?” It was a safe icebreaker topic.
Marc’s responding laugh had an edge to it. “Stella’s nap time has devolved into whenever and wherever she runs out of steam. Thank you, preschool, for a busy morning.” He tapped the steering wheel with his gloved finger. “Today was a bad idea, wasn’t it?”
The note of uncertainty in his voice surprised her. Marc had struck her as a man who thought things out, then made a decision and went for it. She’d figured he had a reason for bringing Stella, beyond not wanting to cancel their meeting on short notice.
“We should have discussed getting together with Stella,” he said. “Made a plan together. Although so far, it hasn’t gone badly.”
The right corner of his mouth tilted up, lifting Fiona’s spirits with it.
“I had visions of trapping you in the car with a screaming Stella for an hour.”
“I know what that’s like.”
Marc tilted his head and knitted his brow.
“My baby sister...” Fiona gripped the armrest with her right hand. Why had she said that? She never volunteered information about her family.
“Stella’s birth mother?”
The impersonal phrasing raised Fiona’s hackles. He could have used her sister’s name. “No, not Mairi. We had a younger sister, Elsbeth. We called her Beth.”
“Ah, the middle name on Stella’s original birth certificate.”
Fiona’s throat clogged. “Yes, Mairi named her baby after both of us.”
“Stella’s middle name is Marie,” Marc said.
Marie, Mary, Mairi. Fiona blinked at the almost painfully bright sun reflecting off the snow. She had to say something to end this conversation before Marc started asking more questions she’d rather not answer. She wanted him and his family to accept her, even to like her.
“I like that.” Marie—something from our family.
“So what were you saying about your youngest sister?”
Had she really thought she could change the subject that easily? “Our mother had to take Beth to the UMV Cancer Center at the University of Vermont in Burlington. I remember her crying all the way there and sometimes back until she wore herself out.” Fiona glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping Stella. “Beth didn’t like riding in the car.”
Who would, in their old car? It was either freezing in the winter because the heater didn’t work right, or sweltering in the summer because it had no air conditioning. “The hour and a half drive seemed forever to Mairi and me.”
Fiona rubbed her temples. But, Lord, I gladly would have taken a hundred more of the head-splitting trips if only Mom hadn’t given up on Beth, on all of us, in favor of her addiction.
“Did she make it?” Marc’s voice was deep and low and touched her to her core.
“No, Beth died when she was three. Mairi was seven, and I was eleven.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” But talking about Beth made it seem like yesterday, which was one of the reasons she didn’t talk about her or her family in general. Fiona wanted to live in the moment, not dwell on the past, chasing childhood fantasies. She was an adult now. She knew what she could control and what she shouldn’t try to control, and she knew better than to want for anything more than her work and the financial security and personal satisfaction it provided.
“Mama,” Stella cried out in her sleep.
Fiona jerked around, and Stella looked at her with wide, unseeing eyes.
“It’s okay, baby,” Marc soothed. “Daddy’s here.”
The little girl closed her eyes and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Fiona faced front again, leaned back in her seat and stared out the windshield while her pulse worked itself down to normal. Her niece was icing on the cake of life to be savored when offered, but not Fiona’s responsibility. Still, having talked about Beth, she had to ask.
“The other day, at Pastor Connor’s, your sister asked whether you’d scheduled an appointment with a specialist.” Fiona twisted her hands in her lap. “Is Stella okay?”
* * *
Marc flicked the windshield wipers on against the light snow that had begun. “She’s fine.” That’s what he’d decided to think until he knew otherwise. “Her pediatrician said her growth was falling behind for her age and he wants to rule out any possible medical reason. That’s all.”
“I see.”
She saw what? Marc focused his attention on the road as the snow picked up. It was enough that his mother and sisters were prodding him about Stella’s stomachaches. Their former counselor had said the complaints were probably stress related, and he was working on that. He’d signed up for the adult Bridges Group. And so had Fiona.
“Was your sister Mairi petite, small as a child? Stella’s new pediatrician asked me.”
Fiona shook her head. “She was average, like me.”
From what Marc had seen, there was nothing average about Fiona Bryce, looks or otherwise.
“But.” Fiona hesitated. “Beth was always tiny.”
Marc hit a patch of ice, and he hated to admit it, but he welcomed having something to focus on other than the thoughts building in the back of his mind. Stella was fine. “So Stella could be small for her age simply because of heredity.”
“She could be.”
Marc ignored the hint of doubt he thought he’d heard in Fiona’s voice. “You haven’t said anything about the email I sent you yesterday.” There. Business. A neutral subject.
Relief matching his own spread across Fiona’s face. “I agree with everything your partners had to say, especially their recommendation for joining the Chamber of Commerce and seeking a spot on the Farmer’s Market Association board.”
Of course, she’d jump on the two things he wasn’t one hundred percent behind. He didn’t want to become too entrenched in l
ocal commitments because of the time involved, and because he was leaving his options open for returning downstate once the restaurant here was up and running.
“You disagree?” she asked. “Your expression.”
“It’s the time factor. With Stella. My partners don’t get what’s involved in being a single parent.”
“I should have considered that. I had custody of Mairi when she was a teenager and I was at Cornell, after our mother died.”
Another piece in the Fiona puzzle.
“And I should warn you,” she said. “Teenagers are as time-consuming as toddlers, and share some other characteristics with them.”
He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I still think you should come with me to one of the co-op meetings.”
“Sure. Let me know when, and I’ll put you on my calendar.” He stuttered. “It on my calendar.” He didn’t have to say that. She knew what he meant.
“Daddy.”
“Hey, sweetpea. Did you have a good nap?”
“No nap.”
Fiona almost succeeded at suppressing her laugh.
“I want juice.”
He jerked back in his seat at his daughter’s use of I, garnering a quizzical look from Fiona. “We’re almost to the restaurant. I can get your juice when we stop.”
“Feena no juice.”
“Stella, what did D—” he caught himself “—I tell you at lunch about sharing?” Not referring to himself as Daddy might help correct Stella’s way of speaking.
Stella huffed, reminding him of Cate on the too-often occasions he’d called to say he’d be working late, before he’d started texting instead.
“Stella shares with Mia at school.”
Guilt melded with letdown when his daughter used her name again, rather than I. He’d tried. “Yes, but not just with Mia and the other kids at school.”
“It’s okay.” Fiona jumped in. “I brought water.”
She probably thought she was helping. But if he and Fiona were going to be raising Stella together... He put a halt to that out-of-the-blue thought. They weren’t raising Stella together any more than he and any of his three sisters were. Fiona was Stella’s aunt, which was all she’d asked to be, and his business associate. He shouldn’t be thinking of her in any other way—but he did, all too often.
“See? Feena no juice.”
He rolled his shoulders against the back of his seat. Maybe preschool hadn’t been such a great idea. Where else could this attitude be coming from? His control of Stella was slipping away. Too many outside factors were weighing in—school and his family, among others.
“If you want a drink now, I’ll share my water with you,” Fiona offered.
Fiona, too. If Fiona was going to be part of his daughter’s life, the two of them needed to be on the same page where Stella was concerned.
“No fank you,” Stella said.
Marc and Fiona burst into laughter, ramping down his tension.
“Here we are,” he said as he recovered and pulled his vehicle up the snow-covered drive.
“Wow!” Fiona said when the tan cut-stone building came into view. “Not what I expected. Very impressive, like one of the Great Camps of the Gilded Era.”
“It’s a scaled-down near replica of one, built by someone who had not quite as much money,” Marc said, allowing himself some pride in having been the one who’d found the building. “When the weather permits, we’ll be painting the wooden window and porch trim the original salmon color.”
“Nice and not what I expected, considering where you’re coming from.”
Marc brought the SUV to a stop by the front door. Fiona’s words rubbed him. He’d told her it was a historic camp. What had she expected?
“I was seeing something sleek, chrome and glass. Frank Lloyd Wright-ish.”
“Have you been to our New York restaurant?”
“No.”
“Because you just described it.”
“Ha, so I was sort of right.”
“Daddy, juice.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, glad for the distraction to give him time to digest Fiona’s perception of who he was. He jumped out, his boots sinking into the knee-high snow piled by the driveway. He opened the back door of the car and retrieved the juice boxes he had stashed in a bag on the floor. “Here you go.” Marc stuck a straw in the juice box and handed it to Stella.
Fiona waited for him in front of the SUV while he unbuckled Stella and carried her over. A narrow, shoveled path led to the front door of the restaurant.
“The contractor has been using the back door.” Marc pointed toward the back of the building to a tall stone arch over the driveway. “But I want you to see the dining room first.”
He led Fiona up the steps to the covered porch, unlocked and pushed open the heavy oak door. He held the pine-framed screen door for Fiona.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said even before she was all the way into the dining room.
“Make up for the lack of chrome and glass?”
“Cut me some slack,” she said. “I came across the ‘Up and Coming in New York Cuisine’ profile online when I was researching your business.”
Marc clenched his jaw. That article had come out just before his career and single-parent balance had imploded. He’d suspected that his partners had been behind it, as an encouraging boost, but had never asked. Fiona was right. He had been chrome and glass. The glass had shattered and left him a tarnished chrome shell.
“Down,” Stella insisted.
Marc placed her on the floor, removed her mittens and cap and unzipped her coat. Stella handed him her juice box and tugged at a sleeve to take her coat off.
“It’s cold in here. We’re going to leave our coats on.”
Fiona removed her gloves and hat, stuck them in the bag she had slung over her shoulder and unzipped her coat. Stella eyed her to see if she was going to take it off. Satisfied that Fiona wasn’t, Stella held her hand up for her juice box, grabbed it from Marc and took off across the room toward the mammoth stone fireplace that was the focal point of the room.
“Fire!” Stella shouted.
Marc and Fiona followed at a more leisurely pace.
“You might not have noticed when you were at the house, but my parents have a woodstove insert in the front room fireplace. Stella is fascinated by the flames.”
Fiona gripped the strap of her bag and pressed her lips together.
He crossed his arms across his chest. “She knows the stove is hot and not to touch it.” Marc unfolded his arms and ruffled Stella’s curls. “No fire today. The man has to come and clean the chimney before we can light a fire.”
Stella stuck out her bottom lip and Marc held his breath, waiting. A mix of helplessness and frustration filled him that he couldn’t better anticipate and defuse the triggers to his daughter’s outbursts. Or, as he’d heard from one of the downstate babysitters, was Stella just plain spoiled?
“Yo, Marc.” Sean, one of the construction crew, a guy he’d played baseball with in high school, walked in from the kitchen, diverting Stella’s attention and drawing Fiona’s.
Marc eyed the guy’s muscle shirt and swagger as he strode toward him.
“We’ve got a problem. The chief wants you to come and take a look. Black mold behind the old freezer unit. We may need to rip out the whole wall and replace it.”
“All right. Stella, you need to stay with Fiona.”
Fiona offered her hand to Stella. “Let’s go look out the window at the birds at the bird feeder while Daddy works.”
He gave Fiona a thumbs-up just before Stella let go with a loud, “No, go with Daddy!”
“You have to stay with Fiona. It’s dangerous, like the fire.” He didn’t need her breathing in the mold the crew had uncovered.
“N
o fire today,” Stella said. “Go with Daddy.”
He wasn’t going to stand here in front of Sean and Fiona and argue with a two-year-old. Marc nodded at Fiona. She caught his message and bent to pick up Stella. The little girl raced across the short distance between her and Marc, but not before he’d caught the pain on Fiona’s face.
“Hey, cutie, what’s your name?” The workman scooped her up and handed Marc a facemask. “I’ve got this. I have one at home her size.”
Stella tilted her face to Marc. She’d run away from Fiona, but seemed to be fine with a strange man picking her up, despite him reading her a stranger-danger storybook on a regular basis. On a scale of difficulty, parenting blew anything else he’d done out of the water.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s Sean, my work friend.”
“Like Feena?”
Not at all. “Something like that,” Marc said and headed to the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later, he returned to the dining room. Fiona, Stella and the workman were at the far window by the bird feeder chatting away like old friends. Marc ground his molars. He modulated his steps and fought the urge to stomp across the room and claim his girls.
“What’s the verdict?” Sean asked.
“The wall has to come down.”
“I’ll get back to work, then. Nice meeting you, Fiona, Stella.”
“You, too,” Fiona said.
Was it his out-of-control imagination, or did Fiona’s gaze linger on the other man as he walked away? And what if it did? Why should he care if Fiona was flirting with Sean? Except Sean was married. Marc clenched and unclenched his fists. They had to get out of here. He was going crazy.
“Sorry I can’t show you the kitchen.”
“I understand,” Fiona said. “We covered all of our business already on the drive down.”
That’s right. This was business. Although he had wanted Fiona to see his self-designed kitchen setup. “Let’s head back. Come on, Stella.” He held out her hat and mittens.
“Bye-bye, birdies,” she said.
He squatted to put Stella’s mitten on her, and the sound of male voices drifted in from the kitchen. Marc straightened to face Fiona. “I was thinking that you might want to come with us to Stella’s appointment with the gastroenterologist. Family history and all that. And we need to schedule that one-on-one session with Noah.” He scuffed his toe against the polished wood floor. “You know, the Bridges thing.”
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