Everybody's Hero

by Karen Templeton

  Chapter 13

  Taylor had spent most of the day being so damn chipper she probably scared people, beginning with a long, sweaty run with Jenna first thing in the morning, during which Taylor did her level best to ignore the blonde's you're-not-fooling-anybody glances. Then, swarming with exercise-induced endorphins, she'd bounced into day camp, actually eager to take a dozen little boys on a hike into the woods adjacent to the church. Of course, Seth being one of the little boys made her be-happy-ordie-trying vow a mite harder to keep, but she managed. Especially since she noticed how well he was beginning to get on with some of the other little boys who were close to Seth's age.

  Only then, she got to thinking about how he'd be leaving, after struggling all summer to find his footing in a new environment, and how much she'd miss him. That knocked a chunk or two out of her good mood. Or would have, if the good mood hadn't been as fake as a claw machine gold necklace to begin with.

  Which by the end of the day had begun to severely tarnish. So much so that when Sam Frazier came to pick up his boys—all five of whom were in camp this summer—even watching the gentle farmer's exuberant hugs for his gaggle of rug rats couldn't fully restore the shine.

  "Hey, Taylor," the tall, almost gangly widower said with one of his sunny smiles, only to feign having the breath knocked out of him when Wade, the eight-year-old, caromed into his thighs. "Got a few extra kids you'd like to send home? Hey, Frankie…whatcha got there?" A blue-and-red plaid shirt stretched across Sam's leanly muscled back as he crouched, the first-grader hugged backward to his chest, to look at a painting the child had made that day. As Frankie talked about the painting, Sam gently corrected the boy's speech from time to time, the result of his not hearing too well out of one ear. Then he told everybody to make sure they had their lunch boxes or whatever else they'd brought with them; as they scattered in what seemed like a hundred different directions, Sam grinned down at his youngest, Travis, then plucked the four-year-old off the floor and swung him high in the air, making the little one shriek with laughter.

  Her arms crossed, Taylor smiled, her insides warmed at the obvious affection between this man and his children. She'd come to Haven nearly a year after Sam's wife had died. Word was that, despite his own grief over a woman he'd apparently loved since he was a teenager, he'd never withdrawn from his kids or let them believe their lives were over simply because their mama's had ended way before it should have. And yet, despite the man's goodness and intelligence, despite his being pretty good-looking, actually, with those pale eyes and light hair against summer-browned skin, and despite his having six kids, which was not the obstacle for Taylor it might be for other women, she'd never been even remotely attracted to him. Nor he to her, if her intuition was even remotely on target. A turn of events she knew disappointed many in town who'd probably thought, "Aha! Have we got a man for you!" before she'd even finished unpacking.

  Which only went to show, she thought as her heart starting doing an Irish clog dance when she caught sight of Joe walking in the door, how little logic had to do with falling in love.

  Then she realized he wasn't alone. The petite, iron-haired woman with the miss-nothing eyes would be his mother, she guessed. And the girl, shorter than her mother, somewhat heavy-set, her thick, dark hair glimmering in the overhead lights, must be Kristen.

  Taylor lifted her eyes just in time for Joe's gaze to snag hers, sending a jolt through her. Not only of sexual awareness, although heaven knew that was part of it—in spades—but of something else, something she wondered if he even realized. Especially when his eyes tore from hers to scan the room, looking for Seth, she presumed.

  Her breath backed up in her throat—she'd lay odds this was not the way he'd intended for his siblings to meet, in a public place. In front of Taylor. And he wasn't at all happy about it. But why? What was the big deal?

  Taylor only half heard the Frazier kids' "See ya Monday, Miz Taylor!" as they filed out the door, her gaze following Joe's until it lit on Seth, sitting across the room at a table with Blair, the boy's expression just this side of shell-shocked. Kristen made a beeline for one of the tables, still littered with construction paper, ribbons, feathers and glue bottles from a recent arts and crafts project, plopping herself down in one of the little chairs and diving into all the goodies, her face beaming.

  "Kristen?" Joe's mother said in a level, but brook-no-argument voice. "Did you ask permission to do that?"

  Even though Taylor instantly understood she had no business interfering in whatever discipline strategy the mother had implemented for the girl, she couldn't help the prick to her heart when Kristen's bright smile instantly dimmed, her entire face crumpling into a scowl. Then short arms clamped across her chest.

  "I wasn't…hurting any-thing, Mama! I was just playing. See?" She unfolded her arms to grab two pieces of ribbon off the table, holding them up, her expression both pleading and defiant. "Okay?"

  The few people left in the room were now engrossed in the little drama playing out in front of them. Terrific. Taylor sucked in a deep breath in a futile attempt to relax. She'd worked with children with Down syndrome before, when she'd taught in Dallas, but only with the two or three who'd been mainstreamed into her classes. Even so, she knew how radically different one child with DS could be from another; the last thing she wanted to do was base her judgment on how to handle the situation on assumptions that might be way off base.

  Then she felt a gentle, brief squeeze on her shoulder as Joe brushed past her and over to his sister and mother, where he squatted down beside the girl. Taylor couldn't hear his words, only the soft rumble of his voice, a sound she realized had become very precious to her.

  A sound apparently also very precious to the still glowering young woman seated at the table. At first she sat stiffly, glaring mutinously at the table, her hands dangling at her sides. But as Joe talked and rubbed Kristen's back, Taylor watched the tension slowly leak from the girl's body. Then she leaned into her brother's chest, nodding, sparing a glance now and then at Taylor through her thick glasses.

  "Okay?" Joe said, giving her a quick hug. "Can you do that?"

  "Yeah, Joe," Kristen said. "I can do that." Then she sat up and said, "Is it o-kay if I play with some of this, Miss Taylor?"

  "Of course you can, Kristen," she said with a smile. "For a few minutes anyway. Since we're about done for the day, we have to clean up soon."

  The girl smiled back. "I can help clean up. I'm good at that."

  "I'm sure you are."

  Then Joe's eyes met hers again, and she flinched, startled at the frustration and guilt she saw in them. "Well," he said, straightening up. "Guess it's time Seth and Kristen meet each other, huh?" Only this time, instead of his voice being soothing, she heard the strain of somebody plumb worn-out from trying to make everybody happy. And she was nearly overcome with the urge to tell them all to leave the poor guy alone, for crying out loud.

  She could just imagine how well that would go over. Especially with Mr. I-Can-Do-it-All over there.

  "You must be Taylor?" she heard beside her. She turned to meet an extraordinarily bright smile. "I've heard so much about you," Joe's mother said.

  And Taylor thought, Oh, yeah?

  * * *

  Joe was halfway across the room to Seth when he noticed his mother move in for the kill. When he couldn't do a damn thing to stop her, of course. That was the last time he mentioned a woman, he mused irritably, only to then think, And just what other women do you think you'd be mentioning, or not, anyway?

  There was a heart-stopping thought.

  In any case, Taylor—who he now knew was tougher than she looked—could probably hold her own with his mother without coming out too bloodied. His little brother, on the other hand, looked like he didn't know which end was up. Joe's heart turned over—it was one thing to hear about Kristen, quite another to deal with her in person. There seemed to be little middle ground for his sister, emotionally—she was either giddy with joy or having a hissy a
bout something. Fortunately, the happy times generally outweighed the unhappy times, but Kristen had never taken kindly to any attempt to thwart her exercise of free choice.

  "That's her?" were the first words out of his brother's mouth after Blair left them alone.

  "Yep. That's Kristen. And the lady talking to Taylor is my mom Danielle."

  The boy nodded, saying nothing. But the apprehension and confusion in his eyes tore Joe up inside.

  "Seth?" A beat or two passed before the kid turned to him. Joe laid a hand on his shoulder, dipping to see into his brother's eyes. "What's going through your head?"

  Under his palm, his brother's muscles tightened. "Nothing."

  "Seth, you can tell me the truth."

  "That is the truth! Jeez, it's not like I can say something that's not there."

  As if Joe wouldn't know hot air when he heard it.

  "So, are you ready then? To meet your sister?"

  "Yeah, sure." He got up, banging the chair up against the table so hard it sounded like a gunshot. Then he looked over at Kristen and said, "Will she understand? Who I am, I mean?"

  "She knows our father had another child after he wasn't living with us anymore. And she understands what it means to have a brother. So yeah, I think she'll understand who you are."

  "She needs a lot of help, doesn't she?"

  "Yeah, she does," Joe said with a kick to the gut. Especially, Joe thought as they walked back to where Kristen was sitting, gleefully cutting construction paper into strips and gluing them into circles, to make sense of a world so out of sync with the one that damn extra chromosome had trapped her in.

  Then again, he doubted she felt nearly as trapped as he did, he thought with a shudder of guilt. And again, as it had a few weeks before, the urge to shuck off the burden of responsibility swamped him, seduced him with promises of how much easier life would be if he just…

  He would not, could not let himself complete the thought. Even when Taylor's calm, strong gaze caught his, her compassion and understanding a balm to his conflicted, tormented soul.

  A balm…or a temptation? Because one glimpse into her beautiful face, a single remembered sigh or burst of laughter, and everything—everything—inside him screamed for surrender. To seek refuge in her arms, in her heart and mind and body, not just for a couple hours, or a few weeks, but for the rest of his life.

  But to yield to that temptation—to run, to hide, to forget—would make him the most selfish bastard on the face of the planet. He broke his very unsteady gaze from her curious one—did she somehow sense what he was thinking?—letting it wash over his mother, his sister and little brother, tentatively checking each other out. People who'd already been let down by one man who didn't have the balls to live up to his responsibilities.

  "Joe?"

  He looked down, somehow not surprised to find Taylor standing there, concern beetling her brow, softly edging her questioning smile. His heart thundered inside his chest, at how much he'd grown used to having her in his life.

  He tried a smile. "You survived my mother?"

  "Oh, she's okay. Hey, at least she's there for her kids. Which is more than I can say for mine." Then she shook her head, as if refusing to let the obvious disappointment and bitterness gain a foothold, and said, "This is really hard on you, isn't it?"

  He crossed his arms, legs spread, not giving a damn that she'd see straight through his macho posturing. "Nah, I'm fine." He smiled, feeling like his cheeks were about to crack. "It was a little awkward there for a second, but I think we're through the rough part now."

  "Oh, Joe," she said on a sigh. "How clueless do you think I am?"

  Then she walked away, and Joe watched her, ached for her, thinking, Clueless? She didn't even know the meaning of the word.

  * * *

  Seth stretched out on a patch of warm dirt in front of the cabin where Joe's mom and sister were staying, staring up at the sky and watching the clouds change shapes, something that had always made him feel better, for some reason. Kristen and Dani—Joe's mom had asked him to call her that—had been there for two whole days, and Seth still felt like he was playing some weird game where he didn't know the rules. Oh, Joe's mom was real nice and all. And she was a far better cook than Joe, that was for sure. But she was almost too nice, like the people behind the desk when you went to the doctor's or dentist's office. Like the more they smiled and laughed, the less it would hurt.

  He'd been reading inside, but Kristen had been pestering him until he was about to go crazy, so he'd escaped. Joe was working—so what else was new?—so Joe's mom said he might as well spend the afternoon with her and Kristen, if that was okay with Joe. Seth had really hoped Joe would say no, but he didn't. In fact, he looked pretty relieved, and since Joe didn't look relieved a whole lot these days, Seth figured it wasn't to his advantage to add to Joe's worries.

  He thought maybe a lot of Joe's problems had something to do with his work, but he didn't know what, only that whenever his brother talked to Hank or somebody who had something to do with his job, he didn't sound happy. A couple of times, Seth asked what the matter was, but Joe always said, "Nothing for you to worry about, buddy," with that tired smile that grown-ups never thought kids couldn't see straight through. So after a while, Seth stopped asking, since it was obvious he wasn't going to get an answer anyway.

  But even worse than Joe's work problems—in Seth's opinion, anyway—was whatever was going on between him and Taylor. Jeez, Seth couldn't even bring up her name without a cloud coming over Joe's face, like it hurt to think about her. If you asked him—not that anybody was, but still—Joe and Taylor were in love with each other but didn't know what to do about it. Seth had watched lots of those stupid romance movies with his mom, where people were all the time acting dumb because they actually liked each other, so he figured he pretty much knew the signs. However, Seth also figured nobody would be much interested in hearing a kid's take on the issue—if he'd had any advice to give to begin with, which he didn't—so he kept quiet about that, too. After all, in most of those movies, everybody eventually stopped acting dumb and just went ahead and admitted they loved each other, so everything turned out okay in the end.

  Except even Seth knew that life wasn't like the movies, and that, more often than not, things don't turn out in the end. And anyway, even if things did turn out okay for Joe and Taylor, where would that leave Seth?

  A big, fat, fluffy cloud right over him started changing from a dog to a dinosaur. Kinda like a tyrannosaurus, but without the teeth. Seth folded his hands behind his head and kept his eyes fixed on the cloud, like if he stared hard enough, he could float right up there with it, where he didn't have to deal with Joe being grumpy or wondering what was going to happen at the end of the summer or trying to be nice to Joe's mom and especially his sister, which was turning out to be a lot harder than he thought it would be. That made him feel bad, because he knew it wasn't Kristen's fault that she was slow doing lots of stuff or that Seth couldn't always understand what she was saying.

  "Whatcha doin'?"

  Oh, brother. Or in this case, sister.

  Seth looked up at Kristen, grinning down at him, and that bad feeling came over him again. He really wanted to like Kristen, but he didn't know how. Or if he could. Yesterday, in fact, they'd been in the supermarket with Dani and Kristen had thrown her arms around Seth and given him this huge hug and embarrassed the life out of him, not to mention nearly knocking the breath out of him, too. And then he'd felt all guilty about feeling embarrassed when all she was doing was showing how happy she was to have him in her life now.

  Anyway, here she was, all happy and stuff, and here he was, not happy at all. But it wasn't like he could say, "Go away," because that would be mean and hurt her feelings—and he'd already learned that Kristen's feelings hurt real easy—or even, "I'd like to be alone," because he didn't know yet if that would hurt her feelings, too. So he was stuck.

  "I'm watching the clouds," he said.

  "Yeah?"
She looked up, squinting through her glasses.

  "Yeah. You ever do that?" he added, just for something to say.

  "Uh-uh." Her gaze lowered to his. "C'n I lay down beside you?"

  "Sure, I guess."

  With a grunt, his sister lowered herself to the ground and said, "If I get dirty, I'm telling Mom it's…your fault."

  Well, he hadn't expected that, and to tell the truth, it made him laugh. Maybe there was more going on in her head than you could tell unless you knew her. Kristen laughed, too, a loud, "HA! HA! HA!," that was going to take some getting used to, but Seth figured he could do that. He pointed up at the tyrannosaurus, which was now changing into something else.

  "That one kinda looked like a dinosaur a minute ago. But now…it looks like an elephant. See the way that piece coming off the side looks like a trunk?"

  Kristen looked hard at the cloud for several seconds, breathing loudly through her mouth, then said, "Uh-uh. It's a man, running." Her chubby fingers jabbed at the sky. "There's his…legs, see? And one arm…is behind his back."

  Seth angled his head a bit, then grinned. "Yeah, I see it."

  Kristen moved her head to look at him, then looked back up at the sky, tucking her hands behind her head, too. Imitating Seth. "This is fun, Seth." She had to say his name slowly because the th sound was hard for her. At first, it irritated him; but he was getting used to it, so it wasn't so bad now. "Like watch-ing TV, huh?"

  He chuckled. "Yeah, I guess. Except quieter."

  They laid there for some time without saying anything, just feeling the warm earth underneath them and listening to the leaves swishing in the breeze and the buzzing of a bee a few feet away, and Seth shut his eyes, feeling a little more relaxed. Then he remembered something Taylor'd said, about how she wasn't close to her sisters because they didn't really have anything in common, except for having the same parents. That got Seth to thinking about how, on the surface, Kristen and him didn't have anything in common, either. But they both liked to lie and look up at the sky, and for sure they both loved Joe. And something told him she also knew what it felt like to never really fit in anywhere, even if maybe she couldn't put it into words. It wasn't much to build on, but it was better than nothing, he guessed. Because, after all, he did need to keep his options open….