by Holly Jacobs
Harry knew that getting in any deeper with Samantha was a mistake, for all the reasons they'd both gone over. He also knew that he wasn't quite strong enough to walk away from this opportunity. "So, I'll come help."
"That would be good. This afternoon, after school."
Harry stood and extended his hand. "Thanks, Stan. Your mom's lucky she has you to look out for her."
Stan shook his head. "I didn't do such a great job before, but I'm trying."
"That's all a man can do—try."
Stan started walking toward the door, and Harry said, "And Stan. . .?
The boy turned around.
"I'll try not to embarrass you in front of your friends again."
Stan shrugged. "I can take care of them, Mr. Rem."
Harry raised an eyebrow, not sure that Stan's taking-care-of would fall within what was permissible at school.
Stan grinned. "Not like I'd punch 'em or anything."
"I'm sure you wouldn't."
Stan hesitated and added, "Mom's coming today right after school," as if he wasn't sure he could trust Harry to remember.
"I won't forget, Stan. It might take me a bit to get all the end-of-the-day stuff done, but I'll be there."
Stan nodded, turned around and left.
Harry sat at his desk. He'd promised he'd help with the pageant preparations tonight, and he would. He missed Samantha. Missed her a lot, maybe more than he should.
Chapter Nine
As she faced the third-grade class, Samantha felt butterflies in her stomach, but she tried to ignore them. She was an adult—she could do this. "Hi, everyone."
The Erie Elementary gym did double duty as the auditorium, with a raised stage at one end. Samantha was standing in front of it, while the third-graders sat in a semicircle on the floor. Thankfully, she'd volunteered in Stella's class, so she knew most of the kids' names. "I think you all recognize me. I'm Mrs. Williams, Stella's mom. I'm going to help you with the pageant since Mrs. Tarbot is ill."
"Yeah, her stomach blew up," one girl, Mia, said.
"Well, it didn't actually blow up. Her appendix—"
"Exploded. Pow," Nate cried excitedly.
"Gross," exclaimed a group of girls in unison.
Samantha realized she was losing control, so she said loudly, "That's enough, class."
When the children got quieter, she started again. "Okay, let's talk about the show. Mrs. Tarbot picked out a poem this year that will be our play. I've made copies of it for all of you. You have two weeks to memorize it, but if you forget the lines, don't worry. We're all going to be reciting the poem together, and I'll have someone backstage to help you remember. Now we'll need to pick a few special roles, and everyone who doesn't get one of these will just wear their school clothes and sit on the sides of the stage. We need a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a turkey, a pumpkin pie and a pilgrim. I thought—"
Every hand was raised high. Some kids had both hands raised. And J.C. Peters had gone beyond that and was standing, waving both hands and doing a little dance. Samantha tried to forget she was outnumbered thirty to one. "I thought, to be fair, we'd draw names from a hat and—"
"No," came a universal outcry, then individual children started arguing as to why he or she deserved a particular part more than the rest of the class, or why the child didn't want a part at all. Janey said something like, "But I've got basketball," while Samantha caught other bits such as, "I don't want to play the turkey," and "Dad says I have a big mouth."
"Kids. Kids," she pleaded.
"Everyone sit down and be quiet." She recognized the voice behind her. "I expect better from my school," Harry continued.
From the stage, Harry bent down to jump onto the gym floor. When he was standing next to her, she shot him a look of appreciation, and tried not to wonder why he was there.
"Mrs. Williams," he continued, "is volunteering and doing a lot more than she signed up for because Mrs. Tarbot isn't well. So, you all are going to show your appreciation by sitting down, listening and doing whatever Mrs. Williams asks." Harry looked at Samantha, and winked. "Mrs. Williams, would you like continue?"
She took a deep breath, noticing that Harry was so close that all she could smell was his cologne. It wasn't overbearing, only the lightest of scents. Warm and slightly woodsy.
"Samantha?" Harry whispered.
She shook herself from her cologne-induced stupor and looked at the now quiet class. "Since there are no extra lines to learn—like I said, we'll all be reciting the poem together. The fairest way is to draw names for the roles," she repeated. "Everyone whose name isn't pulled from the hat will wear their normal play clothes to the pageant."
"But I want to wear my party dress," Mary called out.
"Mary, I didn't see a hand," Harry scolded gently.
The little blonde raised her hand, but didn't wait to be acknowledged as she again called out, "But I want to wear my party dress."
"Mary, if you want to wear a party dress, you can. Unless you're chosen for a role, then you'll have a special costume."
"Do you have all the names?" Hannah, also forgetting to raise her hand, asked.
"Ha—" Harry started to say, but Samantha ignored the hand-raising faux pas and answered, "Yes. I had a copy of the class list, so I wrote all the names on slips of paper and put them in this bag."
"Hey, you said our names would be in a hat," Theo insisted. But Theo had a bit of a lisp so it sounded more like, Hey, you thed our nameth would be in a hat.
"It's a saying," Samantha assured him. Of all the arguments she'd tried to prepare for, this wasn't one.
"Well, we want a hat," Theo maintained, and because the sentence lacked s's, it came out perfectly clear.
Samantha didn't have a hat and wasn't sure what to do now because it was clear from Theo's stubborn expression that he wasn't going to settle for a bag. "Theo, I—"
"I have a baseball hat in my office," Harry offered.
"I'll go get it, Mr. Rem," offered Stan, who'd been painting a piece of scenery.
Samantha had been surprised that Harry had appeared at the rehearsal, but she was beyond surprised that Stan had offered to help Harry. Her son was back in short order, baseball cap in hand. He purposefully didn't meet her gaze as they dumped the slips of paper from the bag into the hat.
With Harry's assistance, Samantha had the roles assigned. When Harry pulled the slip that said Stella Williams for the role of the mom, Stella jumped up, ran to Harry and threw herself in his arms, hugging him for all she was worth. "Thanks, Mr. Rem."
Harry looked flustered as he hugged the little girl back and assured her, "I didn't do anything but pull the slip."
Samantha had thought that handing out the roles would be a piece of cake, but by the time the task was completed, she was ready to call it a day. Unfortunately, parents wouldn't be arriving for another forty-five minutes. There was nothing left to do but get on with the practice and try not to think about why Harry Remington was there.
Samantha attempted to ignore him as she worked with the class on reading through the poem.
". . .'Tis Thanksgiving morning, the kids are in bed
And mom's in the kitchen hoping all will be fed.
She's stuffing the turkey
And kneading the rolls. . ."
Stella jumped up at the stuffing-the-turkey line, grabbed Jewel—who was to play the turkey—and seemed prepared to stuff her. But before she could do anything to poor Jewel, Samantha warned, "Stella, we're not acting anything yet, we're just learning the poem."
"Ah, Mom," Stella cried before plopping back into the semicircle.
Eventually, parents began arriving to pick up their kids. "Please, help your children learn the poem," Samantha called after each new batch of adults gathered up their third-graders and headed away from the gym.
Todd's mother, who'd barely left, returned. "Todd said you gave out parts and he didn't get one."
"I did. You see—"
"Todd's been a
cting in plays since he was Baby Jesus in the Christmas play when he was eighteen months. How could you overlook him for a role?"
"Mrs. Liekowski, I didn't hand out roles. I'm sure, had Mrs. Tarbot been here, she'd have known about Todd's abilities. Although I know the kids through Stella, I don't know them as well as a teacher would, so I did the only fair thing I could think of, I drew names."
"Todd said your daughter got a role." Mrs. Liekowski had the stubborn look of someone who wasn't going to let this go.
"Only because her name was drawn, not by some sort of parental nepotism, I assure you."
"Well, it all seems rather fishy to me. I'm going to complain to the principal. Maybe your daughter should give up her role so Todd can have it."
Harry waved from on the stage. "Hello, Mrs. Liekowski. I couldn't help but overhear. First, let me assure you that the drawing was absolutely fair. After all, it was my hat the names were pulled from. Second, I'm pretty sure if you asked Todd, he wouldn't be interested in Stella's role—"
"And I'm sure he would be. He's broken-hearted."
"Stella's playing the mother in our play," Samantha told the woman. "I have three boys myself, and I'm sure none of them would be willing to play a female role in a school production."
"Oh."
For a moment, Samantha thought that would be all there was to it, but Mrs. Liekowski said, "We could ask him."
"No." Harry jumped down from the stage. "I'm afraid I can't let Mrs. Williams do that. It would set a bad precedent, and there's no way she can get ready for the play and accommodate a potential merry-go-round of role trading."
"Oh."
That drew Mrs. Liekowski up short. "I guess I can see your point, Principal." And with that the woman was gone.
"My hero," Samantha said. She tried to pass it off as a joke, but truth be told, she was way too tired to have dealt as well as Harry had with a stage mom in the making.
"All part of the service," Harry told her. He went back to the stage, as Samantha waited for the rest of the parents to come claim their kids.
No other parents complained, but Samantha wasn't quite sure she was out of the woods. Finally, the only children left in the room were hers. "Okay, boys, finish the painting, and clean up. I need to go home."
Samantha might still have on her sensible nursing Crocs, but she had to get out of her scrubs and into some jeans. The thought of making something for dinner was almost too overwhelming to handle.
She saw Harry on the stage earnestly talking to the boys about the scenery they had been painting.
"Thanks for the help, Harry," she called.
She sure had appreciated this. She wasn't sure she'd have survived Theo's no-hat crisis, along with Mrs. Liekowski's.
Harry returned the wave and walked out the door at the back of the stage that led into the first-floor hallway. Stan jumped from the stage onto the gym floor. "I asked Mr. Rem to come to dinner."
Stan's stance was almost defiant, as if he was waiting for Samantha to get upset and he was preparing to deal with it.
"You what?" She'd been shocked before, but really, this was akin to Stan informing her he was going to join the French Foreign Legion, or the girl's cheerleading squad.
"Mr. Rem said no," Stan added, glaring at her, as if it were her fault.
Samantha had been surprised, but admitted that for a split second, she'd hoped Harry had said yes, forcing her, out of politeness, to spend the evening with him.
"You should ask him," Stan continued. His back, if possible, was even more ramrod-straight.
"Harry and I decided we should keep our relationship professional. It was nice that he came here today, but it was because he's the principal, nothing more."
"You decided not to be friends anymore because of me."
When had Stan grown so astute?
"Honey, that's not the only reason. I love you enough to want you to be happy, but I'm also realistic enough to know that I deserve a life of my own, and if Harry and I were meant to stay friends, I'd have found some way to make you okay with that. The reality is that he's leaving and—"
"Mom, you're unhappy because you miss Harry."
How could she deny that? She did miss Harry, and that was just another reason why it was best to nip this in the bud, or else it was bound to hurt more when Harry left to go back to Ohio.
"Stan, it's for the best."
"Mom, I'm thirteen. Like you say, I'm not quite a grown-up, but I'm not a little kid anymore. You liked him as more than just a friend."
Harry was. . . She didn't know how to describe him. He wasn't a boyfriend. And he was more than just an old friend, or a new friend. He was potentially more than any of those definitions. Potentially more. That described what she and Harry were.
They were potentially more.
She couldn't say any of that to Stan, who was obviously confused enough, so she said, "Listen, don't worry about me. I'm all the way grown up and I can handle my friendships myself." She paused and added for good measure, "I'm fine."
"You miss him, Mom," he stubbornly insisted.
"Stan—"
"Mom, you know what you've always said about being a parent?"
What was it—quote Mom day? She'd never counted on having to watch her words, that someday they'd come back and bite her in the butt.
Stan didn't wait for her to respond. "You said you try to decide what to do with us by asking will it hurt? If we ask to stay up late and watch a movie, you let us if it's a weekend, 'cause we can sleep in the next day. If it's a weekday, you say no 'cause of school and we'd be tired the next day, but you tape it for us. And remember last Christmas?"
"The Christmas cookies?"
He nodded.
When would she ever learn? Not only her words, but her actions were coming back to haunt her. It had seemed so innocent at the time. She'd had a ton of holiday cookies left over, and when the kids had begged to have one with their breakfast, she'd said, "No, let's have all of them for breakfast."
It had been such a hard holiday without Phillip there. She'd done what she could to make it special, and decided one breakfast of cookies in a lifetime of oatmeal wouldn't kill her kids. The Christmas cookie breakfast had rapidly become the thing legends are made out of.
"Yeah, and Seton threw up after it. He still says it's one of the coolest things ever. Then you made us promise if we had those cookies for breakfast, that we'd eat three fruits and three vegetables every day for two weeks."
"And you discovered you did like kiwis," she reminded Stan.
"Even though they're hairy. So that breakfast didn't hurt after all."
"No, you're right. To splurge every now and again is what makes life fun."
"Mom, Harry's going away before Christmas break. I was being a jerk about you guys being friends. I asked myself, what's it going to hurt? And it's not gonna hurt anything. Even if you liked him more than a friend, it would be all right. Dad has a girlfriend, and she's okay. I mean, Lois likes us and tries to get Dad to spend more time with us, so it's good that she's living with Dad. And, Mom, I don't like it when you're sad. You've been sad 'cause you miss Mr. Rem, and that's my fault for acting like a kid, instead of the oldest."
"Stan. . ." She was choked up and knew if she got all watery, Stan was going to be embarrassed, so she forced herself to be as unwatery as possible. "That's sweet. But even though you're the oldest, you are a kid. You don't have to worry about me. It's my job to worry about you."
"Yeah, but maybe sometimes I can worry, too, just a little? I mean, everyone needs someone to worry about them."
She'd held back the tears, but couldn't quite stop herself from reaching over and ruffling Stan's hair.
Stan, sensing he'd won the argument, pushed. "So, ask him to dinner."
Stan had a point. What would it hurt?
She did miss Harry, and he'd been very sweet to come help today.
Decision made, she said, "Fine. Help your brothers and sister clean up the mess, and let me go see
if Mr. Remington has other plans." She paused. "Stan, I do love you, more than anything. Don't forget that, will you?"
"I won't, Mom."
She climbed the stairs to the stage feeling lighter than she had in days. Tracing Harry's steps, she arrived at his office door, which was open, so she walked in.
Suddenly felt nervous. "Hi, Harry, I. . . Well, Stan mentioned he'd invited you to dinner, but you'd said no. He seemed to think if I issued the invitation, you'd be more inclined to agree."
"Samantha, I thought you didn't want to spend any more time with me." He sounded wounded.
That had never been her intent. "Not wanting to spend time with you wasn't it at all. I really want to spend time with you—all the time we can manage—which ultimately could be the problem."
Harry shook his head. "Sam, I'm going to confess, I don't get it. You want to spend time with me, so you don't. Yet, here you are asking me to dinner despite that. What do I do, I ask you? Am I a good guy if I say yes, or a jerk?"
Her logic did seem convoluted. "Listen, Harry, I know you didn't ever want to get involved with another woman with kids, but Stan reminded me that we can't live in the past, or worry so much about the future that we forget the present. And at present, I'm here, you're here, and there's a dinner out there somewhere."
"And about the rest?" he asked.
"For tonight, let's just worry about eating. I skipped lunch today because the office was so swamped. Then I came right here after I got out, so I'm pretty convinced my stomach is eating itself, it's so hungry. There's no way I can untangle my thoughts until I have some food. Maybe after that, if we both put our heads together, we can figure it out. I do know one thing, I did miss you."
Harry rose from his chair, sporting a big grin. "Well, we can't have your stomach eating itself. I'm sure we can find something better. Let's go."
HARRY TOOK SAMANTHA'S suggestion and forgot about the past and the future, and tried to live thoroughly in the present.
And it was a great present.
They went back to Patti's Pizza, which was conveniently close and was definitely what the kids would enjoy.
"We're almost regulars," Seton announced, as he led them to the same table they'd sat in before.