“Then I’d hire somebody else,” he said. “Think about it some more. The boys help with the cleaning, which is why,” and he aimed a rueful smile at her rigid back, “the house lacks a certain…polish. That’ll give you time to help the kids with homework and Jesse with the cooking. You’d be more like an ordinary mother than a housekeeper. These boys need a mother badly.”
She turned to look at him again, thoughtfully. He thought he had her hooked, but the hint of interest in her eyes died as quickly as it had come to life. “I like the boys very much,” she said, “but my life is too uncertain right now. I wouldn’t want them to become attached to me.”
“As I said, just think about it.” He wasn’t letting her go yet. “In the meantime, will you work for me today, catching up on the laundry? With Jesse so stiff and sore, he can’t go up and down the stairs to the basement.”
Daniel could see her batting that option back and forth. He was gaming her, which he hated doing. But when he thought about Lilah and Jonathan sleeping in that small car, eating cold food, counting every cent, he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to let her do that to her son. Anything he could think of, any lie he had to tell, would be worth it in order to keep her here.
“Well, I suppose I could work for you today. I have the dishes to finish, and I have to wait for Jonathan anyway.” She looked at him somewhat hopefully as she rationalized a decision she hadn’t wanted to make.
“Jesse will be very grateful. He rarely complains, but…”
She was still gazing at him, the dirty dishes temporarily forgotten. “Some war wounds never completely heal,” she said. “I understand they have a certain random quality. For example, one evening a man can leap around a kitchen, cooking dinner for eight people, and the next morning he can hardly move.”
Was that a twinkle in her eye or was she being sarcastic? He couldn’t tell, and he was afraid to assume anything. He wondered if his face was red, because it felt red. And he’d just banged his knee on a table leg. Clumsy as a teenager. “Well, it’s time to get those boys off to camp. Come on, guys,” he shouted, “time to go.”
They came in a platoon, with Jesse lining them up for inspection at the bottom of the stairs. “Okay, Jesse,” Daniel called into the hallway. “Load the car and get this show on the road. And buy out the grocery store on the way back.”
Jesse really was hobbling when he stepped into the kitchen. In an unsteady voice, he said, “Miss Lilah, do you think you could do the driving? I’m still feeling sort of punk. I’ll go along and navigate, and I can help out at the grocery store.” He paused for a second, then added, “Help out the best I can, anyway.” He offered the keys to her.
What in the heck was he up to? Except for Sunday mornings, when Jesse liked to watch PBS news-in-depth, he wouldn’t hand over the keys to that van unless you knocked him down and sat on him. Furthermore, his leg was as fine as it ever would be. The four boys were staring at Jesse as if he’d morphed into an alien. But they weren’t saying a word. Good boys. Keep it up. We have a situation here.
Lilah put down her scrubbing brush. “I’d be happy to help you, Jesse,” she said. “You’re sure you feel like going along? The boys probably know where the camp is.”
“Of course I feel like going along,” Jesse snapped, apparently forgetting his new persona. “Don’t think I should be driving these kids, though, with my shaky leg and all.” He’d segued directly back into the frail old-man voice.
“Then let’s go,” Lilah said, and headed for the carriage house where the van was parked.
Daniel had to sit down again. It was as if they all knew; as if they were all helping him out. And then he thought, What is it exactly they’re helping me out with?
Maybe they’re helping themselves out, already imagining her as a mother figure and liking the idea.
He pulled himself together. He had a full schedule today, including a trip out to the Edwards farm to give the Jersey milk cows a thorough examination. This evening he had a meeting that was important to him—one that could shape the rest of his life.
“WE GOT HERE FIRST!” Nick shouted.
They’d reached a tree-fenced field on the outskirts of Churchill. A stocky man, obviously the coach, waved when he saw the van. “Bye, Mom,” Jonathan said. He leaned over the seat to give her a hug. I’m being dragged into all of this because of Jonathan, she thought before she reached behind her to return the hug. “Show them your stuff, Tiger,” she said.
The boys sped off to meet the coach, who greeted them warmly with high-fives and manly punches to their shoulders, acting as if he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do on a beautiful summer day than play soccer with a bunch of kids. More cars arrived. Moms, already looking tired in their shorts or work clothes, and dads looking proud, waved their carloads of boys and girls onto the field.
Lilah watched, seeing Jonathan mix right in with the others, and couldn’t help feeling a glow of happiness. At the same time she was thinking, not for long.
Jesse said, “Wish I could run like those boys. Can’t even walk fast anymore. And this morning…”
“Jesse,” Lilah said, turning a direct glance on him, “I know when I’m being worked on. So cut it out. We’re going to hit that grocery store like an attack force. I have laundry to do.” But then she smiled at him, enjoying the sheepish look on his face.
JESSE PUT THE GROCERIES away while Lilah stared at the laundry piled beneath and around an old-fashioned clothes chute. She’d never been in the back of a professional laundry, but she couldn’t imagine that even one of them would have so many dirty clothes on hand. Mountains of them. Mixed in with sheets, towels—she half expected to find a dead body in there.
The washer and dryer were huge. She filled the washer with many sheets as she dared to and started the first load. While they washed, she’d sort the rest of the laundry.
Darks, lights, whites, towels, more sheets. Flinging the items into one pile or another, she came across the tan plaid shirt Daniel had been wearing when he came home from delivering the piglets. For a moment she held it in her hands, fingering the soft fabric, as scenes of Daniel and his boys danced through her mind. She pressed it to her face, taking in the manly smell of soap, warm skin and straw. Then she quickly tossed it into the “lights” pile. There was something all too comfortable about Daniel. She’d told him she didn’t want the boys to have time to become attached to her. But she didn’t want to get attached to them, either. And even more importantly, she didn’t want to become attached to Daniel or vulnerable to his opinion of her. Or vulnerable to any other man, ever again.
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY SHE started another load of washing, then went upstairs to the kitchen. Aengus stared at Jesse with rapt attention as he piled something onto hamburger buns, dozens of them. “Hot tuna salad sandwiches,” he explained. “For lunch. The guys love them.”
“I’ll be on my way to pick them up,” Lilah said.
“I pick them up,” Jesse said, sounding sort of huffy, and then he caught himself in his own trap. “I mean,” he said, shuffling his feet, “I’m feeling a lot better now.”
“I’m so glad to hear it.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “I was terribly worried about you.”
He glared at her. She smiled back. “So I’ll just go on with the laundry.”
A half hour later, silence exploded into chaos above her head. Ah, the boys were home. Almost immediately, footsteps thumped down the stairs to the basement. “Mom,” Jonathan said, “we practiced making goals, and I made more than anybody my age!”
She dropped the towel she was folding and gave him a hug. “You are the best soccer player ever.”
While she was at his level, he whispered in her ear, “I even made more than Will, but don’t tell him I told you.”
“Not a word,” she said, “but that’s really something. He must be…ten, maybe?”
“He’s eleven,” Jonathan hissed.
“Wow!” Now she had to bring him back down to earth.
“Honey, we were going back to our hideout when you got home, but I said I’d stay today and do the laundry.”
“Good,” Jonathan said, “because after lunch everybody goes to the pool.”
Lilah sighed. The tender trap tightened around her every moment Jonathan spent in its embrace. “Okay,” she said. “Run over to the carriage house and get the sunscreen out of my bag. Your swimsuit’s in the car.”
“Nick’s loaning me a swimsuit,” Jonathan said, “but I don’t know about the sunscreen. You coming upstairs for lunch?”
“Well, I—”
“Lilah,” Jesse shouted down the stairs, “lunch in ten minutes!”
“I guess I am,” she said.
Jonathan paused at the bottom of the steep basement stairs. “Mom,” he said hesitantly, “did you get the job?”
“Dr. Foster offered me the job,” she said carefully, “but it might not be quite right for me.”
“I really hope you take it,” he said. “I like it here.”
His steps were slow as he climbed the stairs. Lilah sank her face into her hands. What was she going to do?
IT WAS CLOSE TO FOUR O’CLOCK when Jesse yelled down at her again. “You don’t have to bring up the clothes,” he said. “Everybody gets his own.”
She was, at that moment, wearily heading for the kitchen cradling a basket in each arm, wondering if Jesse had ever been able to negotiate those stairs or if Daniel and the boys had been trying to manage the laundry themselves. “Thank goodness,” she moaned. She dropped the basket onto the kitchen table. “Here are the dish towels and cloths,” she said. “I’ll take up the sheets and bath towels and leave everything else. I had no idea what belonged to whom. Can the boys figure it out?”
Jesse turned away from a steaming pot that was giving out a delicious smell of tomatoes, garlic and basil. “They pick things up by size,” he said. “Somehow it all works out. I bet you could use something to drink before the mob gets home. Lemonade?”
“Sounds wonderful. Jesse, do you think Daniel would mind if I used the computer in the living room for a few minutes?”
“Of course not. I’m off to the pool, so enjoy the peace and quiet while you can.”
Lilah took the glass of lemonade he handed her, cold, tart and delicious, and sat down at the computer. In a few minutes she was into the Web site of The Kingdom Dispatch, the weekly newspaper that served Whittaker and the rest of the Northeast Kingdom, reading the news clips.
The city council was fighting again, this time over a new truck for the volunteer fire department. The principal of the elementary school had resigned.
But those newsy tidbits weren’t what Lilah was looking for. She stiffened. There on the screen was Bruce’s face, a study in remorse. “Bruce Jamison was recently released from Northeast State Correctional Facility after serving three years of his five-year sentence. ‘He’s been a model prisoner,’ says Prison Supervisor Lex Holt. ‘We feel he’s ready to return to his community and live a useful life.’”
“Right,” Lilah muttered, “a useful life.” She read on, feeling more disgusted by the minute.
“In a recent interview, Jamison expressed his regret to God, the community and his family. ‘I don’t know what made me do it,’ he said. ‘I’m not the kind of person to take good money from hardworking folks. While I was getting my mind straight in prison, I realized I was glad they caught me so that those folks could get their money back.’”
Not all of it, however. Lilah had had to make up the rest, and doing so had left her penniless.
“‘I feel the worst about my family. My wife and my son have left me, and I understand why. But I’m going to move heaven and earth to find them and try to win back their love and respect. If anybody knows their whereabouts, I would appreciate the information.’”
Her flesh crawled. He will find us. He’ll punish me for the rest of my life for turning him in. And Jonathan…Jonathan…
Her hands were icy as she acknowledged the truth: There was no safe place for her and Jonathan.
She got up from the computer and stared at Daniel’s homey, untidy living room. Unless it was here. Even if Daniel wasn’t quite as great a guy as he seemed to be, they’d still be safer here than they would be running from Bruce at his most determined. Maybe it was the only choice she had.
The house suddenly filled with noise, and above all the boys’ voices she could hear Daniel’s. “How many goals? Good grief, Jonathan, I’m harboring a celebrity. Yes, I mean you.”
Lilah could imagine the scene in the kitchen. Daniel would ruffle Jonathan’s hair, give him that infectious grin, and Jonathan would beam back. She closed the Web site and stepped into the kitchen.
While Jason and Maury stood back, looking indulgent when they meant to look bored, the younger boys gave Daniel a blow-by-blow description of their day, surrounding him like adoring fans. Then, at Jesse’s suggestion—command was more like it—they flooded into the basement, returning with armloads of clothes and calling, “Thanks, Lilah,” as they raced away to their rooms.
She felt exhausted but she had something to say, and she had to say it now, before she lost her nerve. While Jesse was microwaving popcorn, she said quietly to Daniel, “May I talk to you a minute? In private?”
He stepped into the hall with her. He looked worried, which made her feel more determined to get it over with. She drew in a deep breath. “Daniel, if your job offer’s still open, I’ll accept it.”
Chapter Four
Daniel was elated to have the housekeeper search over and done with, even though the way Lilah had accepted the job made him think she might just as well have been saying to her doctor, “Yes, I’ll have the spinal fusion. Without anesthetic.” And after delivering the message, she’d fled so quickly that he hadn’t even had time to talk to her about her salary.
Why did he make her so nervous? He could understand that she wouldn’t want to become involved with anyone so soon after losing her husband, but hell, he wasn’t asking her to get involved. He’d only been trying to give her a job that included room and board! He hadn’t flirted with her and asking her to have dinner in the kitchen with his family and his dog surely couldn’t be confused with asking her for a date. It had been her own idea to interview for the job; she needed one desperately, and he’d practically had to force it on her. What was her problem?
Even if she was somewhat neurotic, however, he felt he’d made a good decision. Jonathan was his proof that she’d be good to the boys, which was all that mattered. Shaking his head, he wandered back into the clinic, where he’d have a brief window of time in which to think about the meeting of the Serenity Valley Regional Development Board this evening. There he planned to bring up some new business, the dream he’d been cherishing for the past several years.
Taking in foster children had made him a whole man again, but there was a limit to the number of kids he could handle on his own. And in Vermont there were dozens, maybe even hundreds of children going hungry, being neglected, some of them being physically abused, as well. He could do more by himself, but not enough.
On fifteen acres of Ian’s sheep farm in Holman, the town at the tip of the valley, he wanted to build a foster care center to meet the needs of several dozen children. He’d already consulted an architect and talked to some government agencies and private foundations about funding. Daniel felt ready to test the waters.
He was thinking about what he’d say at the meeting when Mildred appeared in the doorway. “Betty brought Tiffany in with a sore paw,” she whispered. “Can you take a minute to see her?”
Daniel groaned. “Sure,” he said. “A sore paw could be fatal.”
“HOW’S BUSINESS?” Ian Foster stuck his head through the door of Daniel’s examination room.
“Steady, as you can see.” His current patient, a giant Maine coon cat, glared balefully at Ian.
“Don’t look at me,” Ian growled. “He’s the one who’s sticking the needle into your—”
“La
nguage,” Daniel said automatically.
“Hey, it’s me,” Ian said. “I’m in charge of my own language.”
“Okay, Tiffany, you’re all set,” Daniel said to the cat.
“Tiffany?”
“I don’t get to name the patients, Ian, I just get to stick needles into them. Tiffany’s good to go,” he called out into the waiting room.
“Why isn’t Tiffany’s owner in here with her in her time of trial?” Ian rolled his eyes as he said the cat’s name.
“These,” Daniel said, pulling off a pair of gloves a steelworker might find adequate. “We don’t want Tiffany’s mom to know that her kitty is one of the most vicious…Betty! Here she is. Her paw’s going to be fine.”
The stout gray-haired woman swept the cat into her arms and said, “Ooh, was Mommy’s little precious a good girl for Dr. Foster? Of course you were, you little sweetums.”
Ian looked as if he might upchuck. The woman bustled out, carrying the cat, who was purring now, upside down in her arms like a baby. Mike, the middle Foster brother, came in in her wake, carrying takeout containers in much the same way Betty had carried the cat. “Dinner,” he said succinctly. “It’ll be a long, tough meeting. We need fortification.”
“You don’t have to be at the restaurant?”
“It’ll be fine. Almost everybody ate early anyway. My guess is they’re all going to the meeting. I dropped off last night’s leftovers at the house, too.”
“You don’t want to eat last night’s leftovers with the kids?”
“Not tonight. Seems the table would be too full.” Mike narrowed his eyes. “Who was that vision of beauty in the kitchen with Jesse who ran like a gazelle as soon as she saw me?”
Ian gave Mike a long, contemplative look, then turned his gaze on Daniel.
Daniel hadn’t thought of her as a “vision of beauty,” but now that Mike mentioned it, she had cleaned up well. “That’s Lilah Jamison,” he said, feeling uneasy. “She’s, well, she’s my new housekeeper. I told you about the housekeeper, and you agreed I needed some help…”
One of a Kind Dad Page 5