Mothers of the Year

by Lori Handeland

  Classes?

  “Well, then, I don’t understand. I…” She really needed to sit down.

  She should have eaten when she’d gotten to Ashley’s last night, instead of staying up answering her friend’s questions because she’d worried her by not showing up until well after midnight.

  “I’m not here to pressure you about fostering, Mrs. Brooks. It’s an important decision I wouldn’t dream of rushing anyone into.” Mr. Kramer’s reassuring smile flattened. He cleared his throat. “There’s actually another matter I need your input on, and I was hoping you might have a few minutes before class began. I normally wouldn’t bother you at work, but I’ve just met with Gayle Emory, and if the situation’s escalating as quickly as I fear it is, time is of the essence.”

  Lily’s mind flashed to the memory of shaggy brown hair, angry blue eyes and an angelic face framed by a frown and a backwards Falcons cap.

  “Dakota?”

  “Dakota Miller, yes. He’s just recently moved in with the Graysons, after having quite a bit of difficulty at the group home that cared for him last. And I understand there was an altercation here at school yesterday that you witnessed.”

  “I…” She’d promised the child Mr. Kramer couldn’t possibly be investigating something as inconsequential as a fight between two boys in the gymnasium. “I didn’t see what happened during PE, but I did get the chance to speak with Dakota afterward. It seemed like a relatively minor incident from what my husband told me. What—”

  “Yes, the fighting isn’t that out of character for Dakota, though I’d hoped moving to a home as stable as the Graysons’ might curb some of his hostility. It’s the running that concerns me most.”

  “Running?”

  “I understand he bolted from gym class after the fight. Before his grandmother turned him over to children’s services, Dakota had a history of running away from home.”

  “His grandmother gave him away? I…Can people do that?”

  Mr. Kramer grimaced. “It’s not an ideal situation, but the woman’s in her seventies, her daughter’s in and out of rehab for drug problems, and Dakota’s acting out had progressed to a point where the county had to get involved. A more stable environment was advisable. I suggested a group home.”

  “A group home?” Nothing stable about that, if the stories Tyler told were any indication.

  “Only until a private situation could be arranged. The Graysons were my first choice for Dakota, and I was hoping their influence would help settle him down. But—”

  “I don’t think one isolated incident at school means the Graysons’ home isn’t working out.” Lily wiped at the beads of perspiration on her forehead. Chills raced down her arms.

  “No, but he ran from the house last night while I was still there.”

  After he’d stormed away from her.

  “Is he still missing?”

  “A neighbor spotted him heading for a nearby park, and Mr. Grayson found him there and brought him home. But my concern is that his inability to attach to his surroundings is escalating rather than improving. Did you have enough of a chance to observe Dakota yesterday to shed any light on whether or not he’s settling in here?”

  “I’ve only spoken with him a couple of times.” And both times he’d seemed determined to hate the world and everyone in it. “He’s not one of my students. My husband—”

  “Yes, I spoke with Mr. Brooks last night, after Dakota returned and things had settled down. He suggested that I follow up with you.”

  Mr. Kramer seemed a tad confused that she and Tyler hadn’t spoken of it. Lily mentally kicked herself for ignoring her husband’s calls on her cell.

  “Yes, of course,” she hedged. The room seemed to be shifting under her feet. She made it to the nearest desk and slid into the seat. It was unfortunate that the world didn’t seem to realize that meant it should stop tilting around them. “I’d be happy to help any way I can.”

  Mr. Kramer sat in the desk beside her. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Lily whispered. “Just…a little dizzy.”

  Except dizzy and a little didn’t go together. Not for her. Not since her body had decided to reject every fertility drug known to man. She grabbed the edge of the desk. Her vision faded to a narrowing white.

  “Mrs. Brooks?” Mr. Kramer’s voice grew staticky. Whatever he said next made no sense at all.

  “Lily?” Was that Ashley? “I’ll go get Tyler.”

  No! Lily wanted to say. She’d be fine, as soon as she…put her head down for a minute…found a way not to pass out…got back on her feet before Tyler got there…

  Countless minutes later, the sound of someone running into the room penetrated the buzzing in her ears.

  “Mr. Brooks!” Mr. Kramer sounded relieved. Poor man. “She was fine, then she seemed to—”

  “Lily?” Tyler knelt beside her. “Honey, can you hear me? What’s wrong?”

  My body. Lily tried to raise her head, but could only manage to turn it sideways until she could see his worried frown. My body’s what’s wrong.

  “I’m so sorry.” She hated how weak she sounded. How weak she clearly was. “I’m so sorry, Tyler.”

  “CAN I GET YOU anything?” Tyler asked from the doorway of their bedroom.

  Lily looked so beautiful, propped up on their pillows, her glossy brown hair spilling over her shoulders. Beautiful, and miserable.

  “This isn’t necessary,” she said. “I feel fine now.”

  “I had to carry you to the car back at school.”

  “No, you carried me because you were overreacting.”

  Overreacting, hell!

  He’d been terrified.

  “I suppose the doctor was overreacting, too, when he insisted you either had someone watch you overnight or checked yourself into the hospital.”

  Tyler had pushed her into a visit to Dr. Gruber’s, where there’d been no gentle advising this time. No wiggle room. There would be no further fertility treatments, until her symptoms had subsided for a full six months.

  “Doctors are forced to be overly cautious,” Lily argued. “Law-suits. Malpractice insurance. Gruber’s covering his ass. There are other specialists, and—”

  “Not for us, there aren’t.” Tyler shook his head. “You scared me to death today. I thought…I thought I was losing you. Your pulse was racing out of control. Your blood pressure was still dangerously low at Gruber’s almost an hour after you fainted.”

  “Nearly fainted.”

  “Lord knows what kind of permanent effects all this will have on your body. We’re done, Lily.”

  “No kidding!” She pulled her legs from beneath her favorite blanket and swung them to the ground. “The handwriting on the wall is clear enough for even me to read, Tyler.”

  He sat beside her, leery of her sudden acquiescence. “Does that mean you’re ready to talk?”

  “No.” She flinched. “But I am ready to get out of here.”

  “And go where? Ashley won’t be off work yet, and the doctor wants someone with you for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “I’ll go to my mother’s, then.” Anything, it seemed, was preferable to staying there with him. “She’s home during the day.”

  “Rose will want to know what’s going on. If the kids at school have figured out we’re living apart, you can bet someone as active in the community as your mother has. How much do you want to bet she’ll have a passel of questions you’ll want to run from as badly as you want to run from me?”

  Tyler heard himself cornering her. He was sitting with the woman he’d love for the rest of his life, side by side on the bed he hadn’t been able to sleep in since she’d left, and he’d never felt more like a bastard. Then he realized she was silently crying. Not turning to him. Not asking for comfort. Facing the pain alone.

  “Damn it.” He cuddled her against his side. Drew her head to his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, honey. For everything. I know it’s hard, but—”

&nb
sp; She pushed off the bed, away from him, her tears still falling as she headed for the master bath.

  “Lily?” He stood but didn’t crowd her further. “Please talk to me. Stay, so we can figure this out together.”

  She hesitated, then turned back.

  “There’s nothing to figure out. You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve never failed at anything in your life.”

  “Neither have you, honey.” She had the biggest heart in Silent Springs. When it came to her family and her friends and her students, she never gave up until everyone was taken care of.

  She couldn’t be giving up on them now.

  “When it comes to what’s important,” she argued, “I’m a big, fat failure, Tyler. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “We’re not failing. We’re doing what we have to, to keep you safe.”

  “Well, safety’s not always ours to guarantee, is it?”

  Her shout wasn’t what propelled Tyler forward—it was the haunted look in her eyes. He’d seen it before, at the end of a weather-worn dock, on an overcast summer day twenty years ago.

  “Lily.” He raised a hand to her cheek. “Being willing to destroy your health to make a baby we aren’t meant to have isn’t going to bring Carter back.”

  She slapped his hand away.

  “Don’t bring my brother into this,” she said on a choked whisper. “You lost your parents. You’ve survived the kind of tragedy I can’t even imagine. But I…I don’t know how…I feel so powerless. And if you really understood that, you’d be helping me find another way to have a baby, instead of pushing me to settle for failing all over again.”

  BUNNIES. Lily checked her list from Mr. Palmer. Fluffy little things. No possible harm there, just keep tiny fingers out of the cages.

  Ponies. Check. Potentially messy, but what was a petting zoo without ponies?

  Potbellied pigs. Check. Wilber was a crowd favorite every time.

  Hoot owl? Strike that one. Shrieking wasn’t exactly the warm, fuzzy effect she’d promised.

  Llama. Llama? The answer was in the question.

  Peacock. Too exotic.

  Flamingo. Cute, but the tall, gangly freaks of feathered nature didn’t exactly say, I Love You, Mom. Too Spring Break, Daytona.

  “What are you doin’ here?” an accusing voice asked from the bottom of the bleachers.

  Lily jumped, very nearly throwing her list of barnyard fun at Dakota. The paper slid from her shaking fingers and floated to the ground at his feet. She’d forgotten for a moment that she’d wandered outside during her planning period. She glanced up to find that Tyler had noticed Dakota’s absence from the kickball game. Their gazes met and held, reminding her that it wasn’t just the sunny day that had drawn her to the PE field.

  They hadn’t spoken since last night’s argument. She’d been horrible to him, when he’d been trying to listen for a change. Trying to understand. She’d stayed instead of going to her mother’s, but facing her husband and their problems together hadn’t been possible.

  So Tyler had slept in the guest room. And as a reward for his thoughtfulness, they’d shared a strained breakfast and silent drive to school, and now she’d deposited herself under his nose for the past half hour. To maybe get the chance to talk things through once his class went back inside? To torture him from a distance? Given her uncharacteristic ambivalence, it was a toss-up.

  Dakota picked up her crumpled list and scanned the page.

  “I’m talking to Molly Palmer’s grandfather about bringing a petting zoo to the Spring Fling.” She stepped down the bleachers until she was standing on the grass beside him. “He has a farm about a mile or so from the Graysons’ place, actually, and he’s offered us our choice of animals. He needs to know which ones would work best for the carnival.”

  Dakota took a second look.

  “You marked off all the cool ones.” He stared up at her. “Grown-ups are so lame.”

  She snatched her paper back with a very unteacherlike yank and double-checked her choices while she counted to ten. “You should stay home today,” Tyler had said when they’d gotten up that morning. Her only response had been taking a quick shower, applying minimal makeup and donning her brightest top and skirt—both a cheery pink.

  She was fine. She could handle school, even if she couldn’t face anything else. Her work, her kids here, were the one part of her life that was still the way it was supposed to be.

  So why was she a breath away from snapping at an adorable fourth-grader who was only being a typical fourth-grader? Grown-ups were lame, no doubt about it.

  She sat on the lowest bleacher.

  “Ms. Emory wants to keep things low-key. It’s better to stick with the animals that are—”

  “Boring?”

  “Calmer.” She checked her watch. Her class had story time in the library for another half hour. “Don’t you need to get back to your game?”

  “What’s wrong with flamingos?”

  “The petting zoo’s part of a Mother’s Day theme. Flamingos don’t exactly fit.” Catching Tyler’s attention, she waited for him to call his student over.

  Instead, he waved and blew his whistle to have the team that was kicking switch with the one in the field. He traded several high fives with passing children, smiling and encouraging everyone.

  That was why she’d come outside, she realized, when she could have reviewed Mr. Palmer’s list over a cup of tea in her classroom. Tyler’s enthusiasm for life, for others, was infectious even from a distance. Despite weeks of being away from him and a long night of uncomfortable silence, she’d been drawn here. To see him smile, and see how much he loved working with kids. Maybe even to find a way to accept what he’d been trying to tell her for so long.

  …being willing to destroy your health in order to make a baby we aren’t meant to have isn’t going to bring Carter back…

  The paper was torn from her hand.

  “Pigs?” Dakota snorted. “Stinky pigs say Mother’s Day to you? And what’s wrong with owls? They’re fluffy like bunnies.”

  Lily craned her neck so she could see the other end of the field, where the teachers sometimes sat and watched their classes play.

  “Mrs. Rushing’s not here,” her heckler informed her. “We’ve got a stinky substitute, and she has allergies. She’s inside somewhere, probably talking with the principal about me.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “Rough day?”

  Dakota glanced to where his classmates where cheering and rooting one another on. “The substitute thinks I’m a flamingo.”

  Lily blinked.

  “Mrs. Rushing’s substitute thinks you’re a leggy, hot-pink bird?”

  Dakota’s eyes narrowed at the smirk she hadn’t been able to swallow. “She’d rather have a class full of bunnies.”

  His eyes fell to her list. He shoved it back at her.

  “I’m not even a stinky pig,” he said. “Maybe I’d fit in better if I went to live with the flamingos.”

  Lily realized her mouth was hanging open. She covered it while she gave a small cough and fought to regroup. Either she really shouldn’t have come to school today and she was imagining things, or a fourth-grader was actually standing in front of her spouting a spur-of-the-moment analogy that was twisting her heart around his little finger.

  Keep him talking, Lily. Focus on the child. Help him before children’s services takes over and unsettles his life even more.

  She took a chance and smoothed a hand down his arm. When Dakota scowled but didn’t bolt, she pulled gently, urging him to sit.

  “There’s nothing wrong with flamingos. Or…owls.”

  He flopped onto the bleachers and kicked at the dirt at his feet. “Right. That’s why you scratched them off your list.”

  “But a classroom isn’t a petting zoo.”

  “Yeah, they have to take you at school, whether you belong or not.”

  Tyler smiled over again. Encouraging. Adoring. So insistent that she was the
amazing woman he’d married. How did he do that with just a twitch of his lips? How could she believe him, when deep inside she felt as much of a misfit as Dakota?

  “You belong at Silent Springs.” She pulled her pen from her pocket and checked one of the lines she’d crossed off so casually. “You and the flamingos.”

  Dakota pushed to his feet, eyeing her as if she were as strange as the pink birds she’d just agreed to include along side the family-friendly chicks. His chin wobbled as his eyes filled.

  “Who needs you!” he choked out, backing away. “Screw you and your stupid zoo!”

  “Dakota!” a woman admonished as he fled across the field.

  Lily turned to see Mariah Caldwell approaching—Alma Rushing’s substitute.

  “He’s okay,” she assured the part-time teacher. “I upset him, and—”

  “He’s been disruptive all day.” Mariah shook her head and puffed at the bangs that always seemed to be rebelling against whatever she did to style them. “I don’t know how Alma deals with him.”

  “He’s just settling in.” Lily tried to sound as if she believed that was all there was to it. “It’s only his first week here, and with the Graysons.”

  “Marsha and Joshua?” Mariah glanced from Lily to the kickball game. Dakota was sulking near the rest of his team but still standing separate, awaiting his turn at the plate. “He’s a foster child?”

  “He’s smart as a whip,” Lily added. “Just not about how to stay out of trouble.”

  “Courting trouble seems to be his specialty.”

  On cue, Dakota shoved a kid who’d been laughing at him—Nathan Grover.

  “Oh, no,” Lily groaned, taking off.

  Nathan took a swing at Dakota, missed, then Dakota’s fist showed him exactly how it was done. Both boys ended up on the ground, rolling and punching.

  “Stop it now!” Tyler lifted them to their feet at the same time. He held the kids far enough apart that the punches they were still throwing only made contact with his thighs. “Stop it!”

  A shake got their undivided attention.

  “That’s it.” Mariah grabbed a handful of Dakota’s jacket. “You and me, in Ms. Emory’s office—now!”

  Lily caught Nathan’s sneer as his classmate was dragged away. She shot Tyler an oh, hell, no! look.