His First Choice

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Before you started to climb, I meant.”

  He shrugged again. And rather than upset him, she let the matter drop.

  Levi finished the puzzle. At her invitation he wandered around the room, touching things. A plastic tic-tac-toe board. A car track with little cars—not as elaborate as the one he had in his room at home, but still worth a little boy’s notice.

  Lacey put the puzzles back on their shelf, washed her hands in the sink and sat at a pint-size plastic picnic table. “You want a snack?” she asked, holding out a shortbread cookie she’d just taken from the cupboard.

  He looked at the cookie, shrugged and pushed a car on the track.

  “What kind of ice cream did you get last night?” His father had told him that they’d have some.

  “Chocolate. I get chocolate. Daddy gets ’nilla.”

  Leaving the cookie on the table, she sat down on the floor with him. “In a cone or a bowl?”

  He shrugged again.

  “Do you ever eat so much it hurts your stomach?”

  Another shrug.

  There were games she could play with him, activities designed to give her insights into his psyche. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to resort to something that formal. But...

  “Let’s play a little game,” she said, leaning back against the wall. He seemed happier when she gave him his space.

  He didn’t seem to have heard her.

  “Levi, will you play a game with me?”

  “Then can I go back to my daddy?” Those blue eyes were wide and sad as he looked at her.

  “Yes.” It was the only answer she could give him. Her purpose was not to make him unhappy. Or to make him dislike her, either. They needed to work together, Levi and she, to make certain that he was safe. Even if he didn’t know that.

  “Okay.”

  “So this is a talking game,” she started. “You can still play with your cars while we do it.”

  Picking up another car, he had one in each hand and circled one around the track.

  “So in this game, I tell you one of the best things that ever happened to me, one of my happiest times, and then you tell me yours. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “So, one of my happiest times was when...” She’d been ready to give him the rote—the memory she’d chosen long ago for this exercise, the same one she used every time.

  And then she stopped. He wasn’t exhibiting any need to confide in her, didn’t seem to need an excuse to open up, and he certainly wasn’t going to care about her and her identical twin sister playing a trick on their fourth-grade teacher.

  Not at that moment, at any rate.

  “When I was little, my twin sister and I were picked to do some television commercials,” she told him. “The best one was when we got to ride on the hood of a sports car for a little bit, right on the track.”

  He looked at her then. “Did you go fast?”

  “No. We were on the hood. But when we were done, my sister got to ride in it.”

  “All the way around?”

  “Yes.”

  He pushed the car around the track again.

  “It’s your turn now. What’s the best time you ever had?”

  She waited.

  “My fish.”

  “Your fish is the best time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did you do with your fish?”

  “Daddy and me goed fishing on a boat and I got to pick out goldfish for my pond we builded.”

  “You have a pond?” She’d missed that the night before.

  He nodded and pushed the car in his left hand for the first time.

  “Where?”

  “With the stuff outside.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Chairs and cooking and stuff.”

  Lacey would have picked up a little car, too, if she’d felt herself welcome. Instead, she watched the adorable little boy pushing his miniature vehicles with such precision while she leaned back against the wall.

  “And you went fishing for goldfish?”

  “No!” His giggle slipped inside her, lightening the weight she carried. “You buy them in the store, where they dunk that thing in for ’em.”

  She smiled then, liking this child—a lot—and knowing that, regardless of what she found out, he was going to be one of those she never forgot.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THRUMMING HIS FINGERS on the arm of the chair, Jem stared at the magazines on the table beside him. He stared at his phone, too, scrolling through his favorite news site, but seeing nothing. He reholstered his phone.

  What in the hell was taking so long?

  Was it possible that someone really was hurting his son?

  Impossible.

  He’d know.

  But one thing he’d learned since Levi had come into the world, turning his life upside down—kids had incredible imaginations.

  They were apt to say anything that came into their heads. Fabrication or not. To a kid Levi’s age, everything seemed real. From cartoons, dreams he’d had and stories he’d imagined.

  Jem had always encouraged his son’s free thinking. And when Levi came up with outlandish stories, he’d asked questions to play along. Because to Levi, in those moments, they were real.

  He’d also taught his son never to lie. He could imagine. He could make up. But he could not change facts that he knew to be true.

  But Lacey Hamilton, her crew at social services, whatever other professionals she might have involved in their lives—none of them knew that.

  Shooting up out of the scarred wooden chair, he strode to the door, opened it and caught a woman’s questioning look as she passed by the room on her way down the hall. She probably knew who he was. Why he was there.

  Obviously she’d know in whose office he’d been waiting.

  Back inside, he closed the door and sat down. What was taking them so long?

  Pulling his phone back off the holster at his waist, Jem started making calls to his site bosses. He fielded problems and offered solutions, helping those who worked for him to do their best work.

  All the while trying to ignore the fact that he’d never felt so helpless in his life.

  * * *

  “SO THE NEXT part of this game is, I tell you my worst memory.” Lacey felt like a creep as she sat there in the small playroom with a little boy who had no good reason to trust her. Pumping him for information that could make a drastic change in his life. If his life needed a drastic change.

  Fully knowing that for most kids, even when the change was needed, it wasn’t welcome. The devil you knew was much better than facing the fear of the unknown. And being ripped away from those you loved—even if they weren’t good to you—was the worst.

  “It was when I was little and had to be in the hospital and I was really scared.”

  She had to make it bad enough that he wouldn’t feel intimidated talking about his, no matter how bad it was.

  And yet not so bad as to give him nightmares.

  It also had to be true. Her rule. The kids in her life generally had major trust issues. She was not going to add to them by lying.

  He looked up at her. “Were you sick?”

  “I had to stay overnight,” she said. “I thought I’d done something really bad and that I was being punished.”

  Levi shifted, sitting on one foot, with his chin resting on his upraised knee. He grabbed a new car—a pickup truck—and ran it around the track, crashing it into the smaller white car he’d left there.

  “What’s your worst memory?” she asked, knowing full well that a child his age would most likely access only the past couple of weeks.

  “I dunno.”

  Not an atypical
response, even from a well-adjusted, happy four-year-old.

  “Levi, I’m going to ask you something. And I need you to be completely honest with me. Do you understand?”

  He backed the truck up.

  “Levi? Look at me a second.”

  Without lifting his chin, he glanced in her direction.

  “Will you be honest with me and answer my question?”

  “I don’t tell lies.”

  A prevarication. At four. She almost smiled.

  “Has anyone ever told you not to tell something?” A leading question if ever there was one.

  She was counting on the fact that he wouldn’t be savvy enough, at four, even four going on forty, to see that.

  He didn’t answer. His hand stilled on the truck, but he didn’t let go of it.

  “You don’t lie, remember?” she said.

  He sat there.

  “Has someone told you that?”

  The next time he glanced up, there were tears in his eyes. She had her answer.

  “Levi...”

  “Do I gotta tell?” His lower lip trembled.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “But you don’t have to tell me what you can’t tell. Just who told you not to.”

  He didn’t say anything more. So she tried to make it easier on him.

  “Was it your daddy?”

  Chin on his knee, he shook his head.

  “Was it Mara at school?”

  Another shake of his head.

  “Someone else at school?”

  He shook his head again.

  She thought about that broken arm. About where he’d been when it had happened. About a mother who never dropped her son off or picked him up from school.

  “Was it your mommy?”

  He didn’t respond. Not even a shake of the head.

  Lacey had her answer.

  * * *

  THERE WERE SOME days a guy just needed a burger. The biggest, juiciest patty of beef he could find. And when a guy had a pint-size sidekick, it had to be at a place that served pint-size versions of the same.

  Instead of taking Levi straight to preschool after their meeting at social services, Jem turned their truck in the opposite direction and drove until they landed at the beach. At Uncle Bob’s—one of his and Levi’s favorite spots.

  Lacey Hamilton had told him basically nothing when she’d come into her office alone less than twenty minutes before. He’d been about to say a whole lot, until she’d explained that Levi was with a coworker of hers, looking at her goldfish, and would be along in a second.

  “Can I play in the sand?” the boy asked as he unhooked his seat belt.

  “Yep.”

  Levi climbed out of his car seat in the back and made his way to the front of the truck to get out with Jem.

  Jem had been thinking about making the little guy wait until he opened the back door to get him out, but figured Levi would be opening doors on his own—exiting them without wanting his father close—soon enough. He swung the boy up on his hip and carried him toward the entrance.

  It was a testimony to their dual state of mind when Levi put his arms around Jem’s neck and rode the whole way in. Most days he’d have been pushing his feet against Jem’s thighs, eager to be down and on his own.

  “I don’t have school today, do I?” Levi asked as they waited to be shown to their table. He’d requested one by the big sandbox play area. Tuesday before noon and the place was already crowded.

  “Yeah, you do,” he said. He wouldn’t have if Jem wasn’t feeling overly paranoid about having his every move watched. He didn’t want someone thinking that he was suddenly changing his schedule, afraid to take his son to day care, for fear of what someone might report.

  Not that he thought, for one second, that Mara or any of the ladies at the day care would report him for abuse. No, he’d pretty much figured out it was either the hospital, because they had to report frequent hospital visits, as he’d learned last night during his reading—Levi had been to the emergency room six times—or Tressa.

  She’d wanted to have sex the previous weekend. He hadn’t been interested enough to pull off the pretense, but had thought he’d made a pretty good excuse. She’d seemed to roll with it at the time.

  But his ex-wife had a tendency to be vindictive where he was concerned. Someone had to take the blame for the things that hadn’t gone right in her life. Might as well be him.

  * * *

  LEVI CHATTERED ABOUT building a sand castle while they waited for the burgers and fries Jem had ordered. Not only were they by the big sandbox, the hostess had seated them at a table with a view of the beach.

  Jem would have loved to spend the day out there. Playing in the sand with his son. Building castles. Or surfing the waves like he used to do. Before he’d met Tressa, become a husband—and then a father.

  “What’s a twin?” Levi’s foot, swinging beneath the table, caught Jem on the knee. The boy’s chin barely reached the top of the table, but he’d been pretty particular about not wanting a booster seat.

  He was a big boy and not a baby, at least that day.

  “A twin?” he asked, giving his son his full focus.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Levi’s chin lifted. “Lacey said she has a twin. What’s a twin?”

  An immediate vision sprang to mind. Not one but two of the beautiful blondes, hair down, of course...

  What in the hell was it with him? He was bordering on disrespectful the way he kept picturing the woman.

  The next second he was shrugging off his propensity for doing so. He was a guy. It was what guys did.

  Not that he could remember the last time he’d mentally undressed a woman he’d just met...

  “A twin is someone who has a brother or sister who was born at the same time they were,” he said.

  “With a different mommy and daddy?” the boy asked, screwing up his nose like he did when he wasn’t understanding something.

  “Nope. With the same mommy and daddy.”

  “You said I came out of Mommy’s tummy.” Technically, he hadn’t offered up that technical tidbit to a four-year-old child. Tressa had, one night when she’d been explaining to Levi why he was hers and why he should want to spend more time with her. Jem had been left to explain, as best he could, what she’d meant.

  “That’s right,” he said now.

  “Does everyone come out of a mommy’s tummy?”

  Obviously his lesson had lacked some pertinent details. “Yes.” He waited. The last time they’d dealt with this topic, he’d answered Levi’s questions and left the rest for when the boy wanted to know more.

  Thanks to Lacey Hamilton needing to tell his son about her birth situation, now was apparently the time for more. As if the day wasn’t already challenging enough.

  Both little feet beneath the table were swinging now and softly kicking him. Jem thought about reaching down to stop them, but chose to take the blows instead. If Levi didn’t expunge his energy one way, he’d find another.

  Levi’s gaze followed a waiter with a tray full of ice cream sundaes and Jem was pretty sure they were done with the topic. He was ready to ask his son if he wanted a sundae for dessert, in spite of the fact that they didn’t do dessert at lunchtime, when Levi turned back to him.

  “Lacey’s mom had two babies in her tummy at one time?”

  “Yep.”

  “How come my mommy didn’t have two babies at one time?”

  Levi had talked a time or two about having a baby brother or sister. So far Jem had avoided the hows and why that couldn’t happen, saying only that mommies and daddies had to be married to have babies. A weak excuse if ever there was one.

  “Because you took up so much room, silly,” he said now and grinned for real when he saw their
waitress heading toward them with two burgers. One big and one small.

  As expected, Levi moved on from the whole twin thing as he ate. Talking about playing in the sand again. And about cars. He wanted a blue one with turbo twin spoilers like the one he’d played with that morning.

  “It was really cool, Dad.”

  Jem promised him the car. Knowing that on any other day he’d have given Levi some task to complete to earn the toy that he wanted.

  Levi seemed to have shaken any of the trepidation he’d had after his encounter in Lacey’s playroom.

  But Jem couldn’t shake his awareness of Lacey Hamilton from his mind quite as easily.

  And wondered what it had been like for her, growing up with a built-in best friend. Wondered if her twin was a brother or a sister.

  Wondered, too, why he gave a damn.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LACEY’S LIFE WAS her work. She didn’t try to hide the fact or apologize for it. She’d made choices and was at peace with them. She liked her life.

  She hadn’t grown up thinking she’d be a career woman. She’d gone to college more because it was expected of her than because she had career goals to pursue. But time, experience, clarified things.

  As she drove through the streets of Santa Raquel on Tuesday, mingling with rush-hour traffic, Lacey followed the instructions from her GPS.

  She hadn’t known, until the summer before her sophomore year in college, when she’d had to declare a major, that she was even going into social work. She’d always had a way with children. And her aptitude test had scored measurably higher for a career that involved working primarily with children. Science and math weren’t her thing, so that had ruled out anything in medicine.

  “In zero point two miles you will be arriving at your destination. On the right.” The slightly accented female voice came through her sound system.

  When she’d been little, Lacey had assumed she’d just grow up and be a mom someday. That thought had never really changed. It, like so much in her life, had just slowly drifted apart from her. There’d been nothing that stood out as a conscious realization of what her life would be. She’d just become what she was.