Second Time's the Charm

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Lillie was having a hard time keeping her thoughts to herself. Was she being paranoid? Or did she have to have a serious talk with Jon?

  She knew the answer.

  She couldn’t risk the chance that she was right.

  “I’d love to have dinner with you,” she said. “And, if you don’t mind, once Abraham goes down for the night, I need to talk to you about something.”

  Jon’s grin faded. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Of course not!” Seeing the sudden distance in his eyes, Lillie leaned into him and gave him another kiss, one that included a lot of tongue. “You, sir, are perfect.”

  It was his son she was worried about.

  But now wasn’t the time to tell him about it.

  * * *

  WITH ABRAHAM’S HELP, Jon did laundry, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, made an afternoon run to the store and refused to let himself dwell on where Lillie might be and with whom. He had the mac and cheese warming in the oven by the time Lillie rang their bell just after six.

  “I blocked you in again,” she told him. Guest parking spots were nonexistent on their little driveway and the night before he’d had her pull in behind him. The two guys next door could back out from their assigned spots on either side of Jon’s truck, but just barely. At some point, they’d have to move their little party to her house. Maybe put a portable crib in her spare room...

  Slow down, bucko.

  It wasn’t just with women that Jon barreled ahead. He’d learned young that if he was going to have anything in life he had to snatch it the second the opportunity presented itself.

  Foster care, juvenile detention, they were all the same in terms of too many bodies and not enough of anything to go around.

  But he had a normal life now. He could afford to take his time.

  He wanted to kiss Lillie hello. It had been hours since he’d tasted her lips. But he didn’t. She didn’t kiss him, either. And he wondered if there was significance in that.

  She kissed Abraham, though. And gave all of her attention to the toddler as they sat at the table and shared a real, homemade family dinner. Jon might have been jealous of all the attention his son was receiving if he hadn’t been so damned grateful for it.

  And turned on, too. Those hands again, lithe and long fingered and soft as they helped his son’s short fingers wrap around his fork or hold his sippy cup. As they cut the hot dog Jon had heated to go with Abe’s mac and cheese. And handed tomatoes and cucumbers to the little boy.

  She’d remembered which fresh vegetables Abe would eat and which he wouldn’t.

  Later, Jon did the dishes while Lillie gave Abraham his bath, at Jon’s suggestion. He wanted her to have time with Abe, to know exactly what it took to care for him at home—not just at the day care where she could do her job and walk away.

  If Abraham was going to be too much for her, they needed to know now.

  Besides, he’d needed a break. She’d been pointedly not engaging with him all night.

  She’d said they needed to talk. All guys knew those words were the kiss of death.

  He’d been rushing things. Taking her to bed two nights in a row. Not that she’d done any complaining.

  “Did you have a good day?” he asked, following her into the living room and dropping down on one end of the couch as soon as Abe was asleep in his crib. If she thought he was going to give her hassles about who she’d been with that day, then she was wrong. They hadn’t agreed to any kind of commitment. She owed him nothing. But he couldn’t keep sleeping with her if she was seeing someone else.

  “It was a busy day,” she said. “I spent a lot of it at the office, catching up on charting and doing some research.”

  The office? “I thought... I assumed... You’d said you had a non-work-related thing.”

  “Breakfast,” Lillie said. “After that, I worked all day.”

  There was no reason for the heady relief that surged through him. To the contrary, he needed to be concerned that her lack of a day-long date with someone else affected him so severely.

  “You said you wanted to talk.” Get straight to the point. Good or bad, that was his way.

  Sitting close, but not touching, Lillie clasped her hands in her lap and studied him.

  It was going to be bad. He’d been through this enough times to know. First, the state telling him his mother wasn’t coming for him. Or letting him be adopted, either. Barbara, bailing on him when he was twelve. His court-appointed advocate telling him that he was going to juvenile detention for the rest of his high school years. And then Kate...

  Mustering his best rendition of an encouraging smile, he waited for the boot, betting that Lillie would give him the best one yet. She was too sweet to do otherwise.

  “I’m concerned about Abraham.”

  Not sure what that meant, Jon nodded and waited for her to say more. If she was about to tell him that she’d been working for Clara, after all, he’d deal with it.

  If she didn’t want to take on the full-time responsibility of helping raise a two-year-old, he could understand. He’d deal with that, too.

  She took his hand. Yep, this was going to be the best one yet.

  “Jon, I think Abraham has a hearing problem.”

  Jon heard her words, but it took his mind a few seconds to process them. At first he thought he was the one with a hearing problem.

  “I think he’s losing his hearing.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said, remembering with acute clarity that she’d asked him the week before about Abe’s hearing test. They’d been at the museum. Watching Abe interact happily with the other kids. “He was tested over the summer.”

  “I know.” Nodding, Lillie squeezed his hand. He was glad she held on. And wanted to be free, too. “That’s why I’ve been second-guessing myself. But I’ve been watching him all week, and today I spent a lot of time looking at case studies of two-year-olds with hearing loss and they describe Abe’s behavior to a T.”

  “Behavior? What behavior?” Whatever their problem might be, he’d deal with it. He didn’t think, for one second that it had anything to do with his son’s ability to hear.

  “The tantrums, for one.”

  “They’re virtually gone,” he quickly pointed out. “A couple of mini tantrums is all we had this week and they were over almost as soon as they started.”

  “Because we’re tending to the symptoms and, by doing so, putting a bandage on the problem.”

  “What symptoms?” He was with her all the way. Just had to hear her facts so he could help her see where she erred on this one.

  “I think I was wrong about Abe’s aversion to crowds.”

  See, she got things wrong. Crowds. Hearing. It happened. No big deal.

  “Or rather, I wasn’t wrong. He does have problems in crowds, but not for the reason I thought.”

  Uh-huh.

  “Crowds were a problem because they create confusion, because he can’t hear what’s going on, and he gets scared. It’s the fear that causes the tantrum.”

  It was a good theory, but it didn’t apply. “He hears fine, Lil. He didn’t pick up a gazillion new words in just a few weeks by reading lips.” He kept his tone gentle. He wasn’t upset with her. He knew she just wanted to help.

  “I agree, he hears. For now. But I think something’s going on in his ear canal. He’s losing his hearing.”

  The worry in her eyes wrenched his heart. He wanted to hug her. “He just had his hearing checked,” he reminded her. “They looked in his ear canals.”

  “And that’s why I think something’s going on. He shouldn’t be exhibiting so many signs of hearing loss this quickly unless something changed in the few months between summer and now.”

  “What signs is he exhibiting?” Tantrums? He’d
asked his doctor about them. A medical professional. The pediatrician hadn’t mentioned anything about hearing loss attributing to tantrums.

  “Visual cues,” she said. “Things a developmental specialist would look for.”

  Giving her the benefit of the doubt because he trusted her overall, he asked, “What visual cues?”

  “Last week at the museum, he held up his hand to tell another child to stop, rather than saying the word.”

  “One hand gesture is a sign of hearing loss?”

  “He did it four times. With different kids.”

  “He doesn’t know the word stop yet.”

  “He knows numbers. He can count to three.”

  “I know,” Jon grinned. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Bonnie had given him the good news on Thursday afternoon—Abe had only been with the three-year-olds since Monday and already he’d been picking up new things.

  “This morning, when I asked how many cars he had, he held up his fingers.”

  “He just learned how to do that this week. It’s a new trick. He’s proud of himself. Kids repeat new tricks.” She should know that. She knew all about the developmental stages of kids.

  She wasn’t a medical doctor. She didn’t have ear canal training.

  “He’s been using visual cues more increasingly for a while now.”

  He wasn’t convinced. At all. He knew his son—he was with Abe every day. He’d have noticed if there’d been some change in him. Or if his son was going deaf.

  “He answers when we speak to him.”

  “Yes, he does. I didn’t say he was deaf, only that he’s exhibiting signs of losing his hearing. But think about it, Jon...” Her gaze was so sincere, so filled with compassion, he knew he was in grave danger of falling in love with this woman.

  Not just in love and if you leave me, fine. But in love and if you leave me it’s going to be horrible.

  The kind of in love he should be with his wife. The kind he’d always dreamed about.

  “One of the practices we instigated to help minimize the tantrums was to get right up in Abe’s face when we talk to him.”

  “To get him to focus,” Jon agreed. “When he focuses, he uses his words and communicates his wants and needs instead of freaking out. We put him in control of his own destiny so he doesn’t have to panic.”

  He’d listened well. And her idea had worked.

  “That’s right.” She let go of his hand. Jon left it where it was on his thigh. “The teachers at Little Spirits have been told to do the same.”

  He knew that.

  “I’ve been noticing that Abe focuses on our mouths every time we talk to him, not just when we’re right in his face. My professional opinion is that he’s learning to figure out what we’re saying by using a combination of skills, his limited hearing and lipreading.”

  “He’s always had that look of concentration about him when he looks at you,” Jon said. Abe’s six-week-old pictures included a shot of him with that same frown on his face, as if he was trying to solve a calculus problem or something. It had always been Jon’s favorite of Abe’s baby pictures.

  “I think he throws tantrums because he can’t hear, and when something sudden happens that he doesn’t expect, it scares him. As soon as we get in front of him and he can see that we’re talking to him, can hear us in the midst of all the white noise around him, he calms down.”

  She was digging deep. And he loved her for it. For caring about them that much.

  Okay, he was admitting it. In a few short weeks, he’d fallen in love. Professional caring didn’t mean she loved him back. She’d said she was only after the sex.

  Fine.

  He’d deal with it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “IT WAS JUST a weekend of great sex.” Lillie pedaled hard, putting herself almost a full bike length in front of Caro as the sun was rising up over the horizon Monday morning.

  She’d thought about denying having had sex at all, except that she’d left her car parked outside of Jon’s duplex—which Caro owned—overnight. She’d known someone would see it and comment. Saturday night she hadn’t cared.

  “I know you better than that,” Caro said, not the least bit winded as she caught up. Of the two of them, Caro was the better athlete. She was also two decades older and had given birth three times. Lillie should be able to outride her. “What really happened?”

  “Why did something have to happen?”

  “Because Friday morning you were as jittery as popcorn in hot oil and this morning you’re trying to pretend that you don’t feel anything at all.”

  She wasn’t pretending. Mostly. Pedaling more steadily, she turned a corner and glanced at her friend as they fell in line next to each other for the long empty strip of road in front of them.

  There were very few cars out on the roads at this time of the morning. And the nip in the early-morning air kept the wildlife quiet, too.

  “I told him that I think his son has a hearing problem.”

  “In the middle of sex?”

  “No! Of course not.” Focusing on the vivid fuchsia color of a bougainvillea plant in the landscaped front yard they were passing, Lillie thought of her conversation with Jon the night before.

  Of the way he’d brushed off everything she had to tell him—shrugged aside all of the signs she’d laid so plainly in front of him. Abe’s focus, he’d said, was just something he’d been born with.

  Maybe that was what had made him so adept at lipreading at the age of two.

  “I take it he took the news badly?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “He didn’t believe me.” Glancing at her friend, Lillie looked for Caro’s reaction. Did her friend think she was overreacting, too? Was this really not about Abraham at all?

  But about Braydon?

  About loving a child. And fearing the worst?

  After one weekend in bed with Jon, she was already making Abraham out to be sick. Because she was never going to be able to have another child—love another child—without the constant fear of losing him riding on her back.

  Which was why she was never going to have another child. Or marry again, either. Her job was to care for other people’s children so she could keep breathing when diagnoses came back bad.

  She pedaled hard.

  Caro kept up.

  “I spent yesterday afternoon poring over case studies of two-year-olds with hearing loss and Abe has every single one of the symptoms.” As they rode, turned a corner and headed up the opposite block, Lillie listed off the same signs she’d told Jon about the night before.

  “Sounds to me like you’re spot-on...” Caro said, drawing out the last word.

  “But?”

  “It sounds like he could be, too,” she said. “When you put all those things together, they do paint the picture of a child with hearing loss. But, at the same time, each one of those behaviors, by itself, isn’t all that unusual. They could all be explained by the things Jon said.”

  “You think I’m wrong, too?”

  Coming to a stop sign, Caroline put her foot down to the ground and sat on her bike, waiting for Lillie to do the same. “What’s all this about right and wrong, Lil? I’ve never known you to second-guess yourself where your work is concerned.”

  “No one’s right all the time.”

  “Of course they aren’t. You’re reminded of that every single day when you go into a room with a sick child.”

  They’d had that talk before—about the potential for people who spent their days with sick children to get burned out.

  “So why are you beating yourself up over this one? Seems pretty simple to me. Jon gets Abe’s ears tested and you deal with the results.”

 
“I told you he didn’t believe me.”

  “He’s not going to have Abe’s ears tested,” Caroline surmised.

  “He just did this summer. He sees no point in putting Abe through the procedure again.”

  “And you’re afraid that in the meantime the little guy’s going to lose hearing that he might not be able to regain.”

  “Right.”

  And she was worried that she was losing her professional grip completely. That she was seeing potential illness where there was none.

  Lillie pushed off and Caroline followed her up the street.

  Maybe Lillie was seeing a father who couldn’t deal with the fact that his son might not be perfect.

  The thought hit her like a tree limb falling from the sky. Was Jon in denial? Like Kirk had been? Jon didn’t have Kirk’s ego, by any stretch, but he did seem overly obsessed with how perfectly he was raising his son—going on the defensive anytime he perceived she was criticizing his parenting skills. Or Abe.

  “I can see where it’s hard, Lil.” Caro was beside her again, speaking loud enough that she could hear her as they rode. “Especially considering the fact that you’re involved with Abe’s father and are growing to care for the boy on a more personal level.”

  The words struck instant fear inside her. Caro was validating her own conclusion—she was in too deep.

  “...can do is keep a close watch on Abe and if you continue to see signs, if you continue to be convinced there’s hearing loss, have another talk with his father. I’ve only met them a couple of times, but it’s pretty clear how much that man loves his son. He’ll do the right thing.”

  Kirk had loved his unborn son, too. Braydon’s conception had had a profound effect on her ex-husband, one that had gone deeper than anything she’d ever seen with Kirk. He’d been in awe, and humbled. The first time he’d heard Braydon’s heartbeat it had been as if Kirk had been reborn. He’d apologized for Leah. And others. Swore to Lillie that she and the baby would be it for the rest of his life. The baby had brought out the very best in the man she’d married but begun to doubt in so many ways.