A Mom for Callie

by Laura Bradford

  “She said when people see a picture of a cookie they can’t resip them.”

  “Oh, you mean, resist.”

  The child nodded, her face serious. “Wow. I bet you never make mistakes with words. My grandma says you must be really smart to write a book.”

  Squatting down beside Callie, Betsy met her awed gaze head-on. “I make mistakes all the time. Everyone does. It’s how we learn, whether we’re big or little. And as for being smart, I think smart comes in lots of packages. Mine just happens to be in a package wrapped with my imagination.”

  “Imagination?” A dimpled smile lit Callie’s face as Betsy’s words sunk in. “That’s what you need to be a writer?”

  “It’s one of the most important things, yes.”

  “My grandma says I have that all the time! Daddy does, too.”

  Betsy tapped a gentle finger on the tip of Callie’s nose. “And you like to write poems, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then it sounds to me like you and I are both writers.”

  A squeal erupted from Callie’s mouth that made Betsy laugh, the child’s enthusiasm for writing tickling her own. “You really think so?”

  “I know so.” She glanced down at the order form once again, her finger gliding down the list of options. “Hmm, they all look so good. Which ones did you try at your meeting yester—”

  The honk of an approaching car cut her off midsentence and she looked up. A black sport utility vehicle slowed to a crawl before pulling into the Brennans’ driveway. Callie squealed again. “Daddy’s home!”

  Feeling her face warm at the notion of seeing Kyle once again, Betsy stood and waved, her smile slipping from her face as Callie’s father stepped from the car in full uniform. In an instant she was standing in the doorway of her apartment, a uniformed member of the NYPD and the captain of Mark’s firehouse informing her of her husband’s death. He was a hero, they’d said. He’d died a hero’s death.

  Only she’d never gotten to say goodbye.

  Her stomach lurched as, one by one, her senses traveled back to a night she longed to forget—the dimly lit hallway outside her apartment, the acrid smell of smoke that still clung to the captain’s skin, the taste of bile that rose in her throat as they spoke of her husband’s heroism….

  She grabbed the porch railing in front of her as her knees began to buckle, Kyle’s confident stature registering somewhere in her subconscious.

  “H-hi,” she stammered as Callie ran down the steps and wrapped her arms around her father’s legs.

  Pausing midstep to greet his daughter, he lifted Callie off the ground and spun her around before setting her back down with a kiss on her forehead. “So how’s my girl this afternoon? How was school?”

  “It was great, Daddy. We’re making a surprise in art class.”

  “A surprise? Hmm, should I guess?” he asked with a teasing lilt as he peered over Callie’s head and winked at Betsy.

  “No! Surprises aren’t meant for knowing.” Callie rested her hands on her hips and leveled a look of distaste at her father. “Trying to guess is like cheating. You know that, Daddy.”

  She knew she should say something, anything to acknowledge the curious way in which Kyle peered at her in between bantering with Callie, but she couldn’t. There was simply nothing in her thoughts except memories—painful, time-stopping memories.

  “Why don’t you go tell Grandma I’m home and that I’ll be inside in just a minute.” Kyle kissed his daughter on the head once again.

  “But Miss Anderson is ordering cookies.”

  Betsy looked down at the order form now wrinkled inside her hand, Kyle’s response breaking through the white noise in her head. “Go on and tell Grandma and then you can come back over and get your form.”

  “Okay.” The child scampered across the yard and up the driveway, her white-and-pink sneakers smacking softly against the asphalt. “I’ll be right back!”

  “We’ll be here.” Kyle turned his attention from a retreating Callie to Betsy and smiled, his long legs making short work of the distance between them. “I wanted a chance to talk to you alone…if you hadn’t already figured that out.”

  Betsy stood rooted to the front porch. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I can’t really discuss it too much at the moment, but I can say that we think your observation about the perp from the bank is right on the money.”

  “My observation?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, about his on-camera actions seeming quite deliberate. Looks as if we’ve got far more on our hands than a thwarted bank robbery.”

  The sound of metal smacking against wood echoed across the yard signaling Callie’s impending return.

  “Is it bad?” she asked.

  Kyle shrugged. “Yeah, it could be. But—” he gestured toward his daughter “—I don’t want to talk about it in front of her. I don’t want to scare her.”

  She managed what she hoped was a nod in the absence of words but it was an effort of mammoth proportions.

  He looked at her strangely. “You okay?”

  Again she nodded.

  Glancing over his shoulder at his daughter, who’d stopped to pick a flower from the front landscaping, he looked back at Betsy, his voice softening. “I was thinking about you today. Specifically about what happened in the car last night. And I was wondering if maybe you’d like to catch a movie tonight?”

  He stepped closer and onto the porch, his various police insignia and medals gleaming in the sun.

  “I—I—” She stopped, swallowed and tried again, the thudding in her chest nearly drowning out the sound of her own voice. “I can’t. I have to write.”

  She felt his eyes studying her and she looked away.

  “Okay, then how about another night? Maybe tomorrow or sometime over the weekend? Would that work?”

  Betsy shook her head, the barrage of sensations and memories jelling with a reality she couldn’t deny. Kyle Brennan was, by all appearances, a nice guy and a good father. For anyone else, he’d be worth pursuing. But not for her.

  She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t do it again. Small town cop or not, his profession came with danger….

  “I’ll be writing every day. It’s the only way I’m ever going to be able to get back home where I belong.”

  In an instant the smile that had lit Kyle’s face was gone, in its place a dark cloud.

  “I’m back, Daddy.” Callie hopped up onto the porch and extended her left hand shyly in Betsy’s direction. “I brought you a daffodil, Miss Anderson. You can put it in the middle of your writing table.”

  Kyle’s hand closed down on his daughter’s shoulder, pulling her backward as his words bit through Betsy’s heart. “I think it’s high time we left Miss Anderson alone. Seems the hustle and bustle is calling.”

  Chapter Five

  He slammed his locker shut, his fist repeating the sound with an even louder bang.

  “Yo, dude, what’s your problem? You’ve been a real drag all morning.” Tom popped a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth and leaned against the row of floor-to-ceiling lockers on the opposite wall. “One minute you’re surly and silent, the next you’re bitchin’ about everything from the new flashlights the chief just issued to the speed of the computer out in the hall.”

  “There is no speed with that piece of garbage.”

  “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present Exhibit A,” Tom said as he waved his hand with a flourish toward his partner.

  “Exhibit A?”

  “Yeah. Your bitchin’.”

  “Shut the hell up, would you?” Kyle Brennan exhaled loudly as he raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve just got some stuff on my mind, that’s all.”

  “Callie sick?”

  “No.”

  “Your mom sick?”

  “No.”

  “Heard from Lila?”

  He stared at Tom.

  “I take that as a no?” Tom popped a few more seeds into his mouth
. “Does this have something to do with Betsy Anderson?”

  His mouth grew dry. “Why would it?”

  “Man, I’m really starting to lose it, aren’t I?” Tom leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. “What was that…four? Used to get it on the first try every time. Then again, Lila was an easy guess back then.”

  Kyle banged the back of his head against the locker behind him.

  “Whoa, take it easy there, Ky.”

  “Can we just not do this right now?” Bending his leg at the knee, Kyle pushed off the row of lockers and strode toward the door that led from the department’s locker room to the hall beyond. “I put out some feelers today and I think we’re right on the money with our perp. Seems he and his fellow bank robber were working on building themselves a gang a few towns over. Like-minded thugs interested in scoring money for drugs and partying. They figured that if they could get away with the hardware store and the market…maybe they could score a third time with the bank.”

  Tom rose from his bench but didn’t fall into step with Kyle. Instead, he simply stood, feet spread wide, arms folded across his chest. “We squashed that thought, didn’t we?”

  “If it’s just the two of them.”

  “You seriously think there’s more?”

  “Two people hardly make a gang.”

  “True. And it makes sense. But maybe we shut them down at their main artery,” Tom suggested in his usual positive way.

  Kyle bypassed the closed door and began pacing. “Maybe. Or maybe we pissed them off.”

  “It’s kinda weird how that news footage took on different meaning the more we watched it yesterday. Did you tell Betsy we think she was right?”

  He spun around and walked in the other direction. “Elizabeth Lynn Anderson is too busy for such small town nonsense.”

  “What are you talking about? Betsy isn’t like that…you know that.” Tom’s confusion was etched in his forehead. “Hell, you, yourself, were singing her praises all day yesterday. What changed?”

  “She did,” Kyle hissed.

  “How?”

  “She took off the mask.”

  “Mask?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “And?”

  “She talks a good game, but when push comes to shove she has no use for a town the size of Cedar Creek.”

  Tom snorted. “Give me a break, Kyle. She chose to write here, didn’t she?”

  “Maybe. But this isn’t her home.”

  “I don’t know what’s eating at you, dude, but you need to chill out.”

  He stopped, stared at Tom for a moment, and then headed back toward the door, his hand stilling on the knob just long enough to utter a single sentence in response. “The only thing I need to do is keep my daughter away from that woman—far, far away.”

  BETSY STARED AT THE BLINKING cursor in the top left corner of her still-empty screen, unable to think of a single word. All night long she’d tossed and turned, her latest encounter with Kyle making a continuous loop through her thoughts, the memory of her rude behavior broken only by images of their kiss and the details behind the demise of his marriage to Callie’s mother.

  She could pinpoint, with absolute clarity, the moment she’d pushed him away. By emphasizing she belonged in New York, she’d likened herself to Kyle Brennan’s ex-wife—a woman who thought Cedar Creek was nothing more than a mere stumbling block to a better life.

  Betsy rose from her chair and wandered to the window that overlooked Kyle’s house. She could still see the look on his face as if she’d slapped him with her words. And she cringed at the memory of Callie’s surprise as her father jerked the order form from Betsy’s hand and ushered her away.

  She’d been wrong. She knew that now. Not about her feelings where Kyle’s profession was concerned but, rather, in the way she’d cut him off, making it sound as if Cedar Creek was merely dirt on the bottom of her shoes. She liked this town, liked the people she’d met so far. And she especially liked Kyle and his daughter, Callie.

  Determined to make amends at least as far as her rudeness went, Betsy stepped outside and headed in the direction of Callie’s house.

  “THIS ONE’S ABOUT THE SUN. And the way it makes me happy when it lights up the sky.” Callie began reading from the paper in her hand, a wrinkled page covered in large, careful handwriting. When she was finished, she looked up at Betsy. “Did you like that one, too?”

  Betsy smiled as she tucked her legs underneath her body on the wicker settee. “It was wonderful. I liked the way you referred to the sun as the big warm circle in the sky. Very nice, Callie.”

  The little girl beamed as she set her paper on top of the pile of similarly wrinkled papers between them. “I’ve got one more…this one’s ’bout my grandma because I don’t have a mom—not really, anyway. And my teacher said we had to write one about someone special to us.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “My teacher said it could only be half a page. My dad would take up more than that.”

  Her throat constricted as the little girl’s earnest words took root in her heart. If Callie felt a sense of loss at not having a mother, it didn’t show. “You could write one now if you wanted.”

  “You mean, outside of school?”

  The surprise in Callie’s voice made Betsy laugh. “Of course. All you need is paper and a pencil, right?”

  “Right!”

  “And after you write it, we could put all of these—” Betsy lifted the pile of poems into the air then set them back down “—into a little booklet.”

  “Could we make a cover? So it looks like a real book?” Callie asked, her eyes large.

  “A book of poetry—your poetry.”

  Callie pointed at the stack of poems she’d read to Betsy. “Could I rewrite all of those? I dropped my writing folder on the floor of the bus the other day and someone stepped on it. That’s why they’re so messy. And if I did them over, I could work extra hard to make my writing look neat and pretty.”

  “Sure. I think that’s a great idea, though your handwriting looks neat and pretty to me already.”

  The slam of a car door made them both look up. “Oh no, it’s Daddy! I wanted to get started on his poem.”

  Betsy dropped her feet to the ground as Kyle headed in their direction, a slash of anger where a smile had been just the day before. “Why don’t you go inside? I have paper and pens on the sunporch. You can get started while I talk to your dad for a few minutes.”

  “Do you have any pencils? ’Cause I make mistakes.”

  “They’re in with the pens…I make mistakes, too.”

  “Okay.” Callie scooted off the settee, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Don’t tell Daddy ’bout my surprise, okay?”

  Clamping her lips shut, Betsy curved her thumb and index finger against her lips and turned it in a locking motion. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  As the little girl disappeared inside, Kyle’s pace quickened. “Where is she going?”

  “She’s working on a surprise. For you.”

  He stepped onto the porch, his uniform from yesterday replaced by a pair of jeans and a Chicago Cubs shirt. “She can work on a surprise at home.”

  Betsy placed a gentle hand on his chest as he approached the door, the feel of his skin beneath hers unleashing the butterflies in her stomach. “Please, I want to help her with this. It was my fault she was upset yesterday afternoon and I’m sorry about that.”

  “My daughter is none of your concern.”

  She winced at the anger in his voice but stood firm. “I’d like her to be.”

  “She doesn’t need you riding in, trying to fill some void you perceive in her life only to turn around and ride out as quick as you can. She’s fine.”

  “A void? In her life?” Betsy jerked her head in the direction of the closed door and held a finger to her lips to quiet his rising voice. “I’d be blind not to see that’s one well-adjusted little girl in there. If there’s a void in someone’s l
ife…it’s mine.”

  Shock chased anger from his face. “Yours?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve felt more pangs of healing in the three days I’ve been in this town than in the twelve months prior in New York. And spending time with Callie…talking about her poetry and listening to her innocent observations on the world around her is healing. For me.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t. Just accept my apology for being rude yesterday. It’s what I was coming over to tell you when I found Callie on my front porch. My rudeness wasn’t a reflection of anything you did or didn’t do. Not the you that’s standing in front of me right now, anyway. It’s what comes along with you…when you’re dressed the other way.”

  She met his gaze, felt her defenses cracking at the raw emotion splayed across his face. “Dressed the other way? What does that— Wait! You don’t like the fact that I’m a cop?”

  “I admire the fact that you’re a police officer. I respect what you’ve decided to do with your life but it’s what comes with—”

  Callie appeared on the other side of the door, her face stretched nearly ear to ear by a grin that magnified the sapphire-blue eyes she shared with her father. “Daddy, guess what?”

  She felt his eyes leave her face, swallowed at the break in the scrutiny as he addressed his daughter with an air of distraction. “What’s that, pumpkin?”

  “Miss Anderson put my flower exactly where I said. It’s right next to her computer.”

  “Of course I did.” Betsy matched Callie’s smile with one of her own. “The color reminds me to be happy.”

  “You need a reminder?” Kyle asked.

  “Sometimes, yeah.” And it was true. Though, for some reason, happiness was coming a little easier since arriving in Cedar Creek.

  For a long moment he simply studied her, the sudden silence between them anything but awkward. When he finally spoke, he addressed Callie with his words while maintaining his visual focus on Betsy.

  “I was thinking, Callie, about those hamburgers and hotdogs we bought the other day. The pretzels, too. What do you say we have a barbecue tonight and invite Tom and Ang to join us? Miss Anderson here, too…if she can put aside her writing for a few hours.”