The Instant Family Man

by Shirley Jump

  Chapter Three

  Peyton woke up on Monday morning with her stomach in knots. She lay in the hotel bed, staring up at the white popcorn ceiling for a good ten minutes before she heard Madelyne stirring beside her. Ever since Susannah’s death, Maddy had slept curled up against Peyton, one hand on Peyton’s arm, as if she was afraid she, too, would disappear.

  Peyton placed a gentle kiss on Maddy’s temple, then lay against the pillows and did what she always did before putting that first foot on the floor—she ran through a quick mental to-do list, setting goals and ticking off tasks. The activity almost always energized her for the day ahead, infused her with that can-do spirit that had fueled her rise in one of the biggest interior design firms in Baltimore.

  Today, though, lying there with a sleeping Maddy tucked beside her, the image of innocence, that to-do list was short and empty, sending a rising tide of panic through Peyton’s stomach.

  Two days ago, Peyton had been sitting in her boss’s office, listening to him tell her that she had screwed up on a big job—missed an important deadline—and that she needed to get her act together if she hoped to stay at Winston Interior Design. “Take two weeks off,” he’d said, “get some reliable child care in place, a maid to do the laundry and a priority list that puts your job back at the top, and then come back.”

  In other words, quit running out of the office because Maddy had a meltdown at preschool. Stop coming in late because Maddy hadn’t wanted to eat breakfast or get dressed. Quit leaving early because Maddy had been crying on the phone when Peyton called to check on her.

  Not to mention how the added responsibilities and worries had taken a toll on Peyton’s sleeping and eating habits. She was a walking zombie at best most days. As much as she needed the sleep, the break, the mere thought of a day that stretched long and empty scared her. They had the trip to the zoo, then lunch, then a trip to the playground, dinner, bath, followed by the endless hours after Maddy fell asleep and Peyton lay in bed, thinking. Thinking far too much.

  From the day the police had come to the door with their long faces and somber tones, Peyton had worried ten times more about Maddy than she ever had before. How would Peyton make this work? Would she be a good mother? A strong role model? Had she made the right choice coming here? Or would these days in Stone Gap make Maddy withdraw even more?

  Peyton stared at the ceiling, her heart heavy, her chest tight. Suzie, why did you leave her with me? I’m not a mom. I don’t always know the right thing to do.

  Susannah had been a distracted mother at best, one who seemed perpetually in need of money or help, but she had loved her daughter fiercely, and Peyton always believed that when it came down to the wire, her sister would put Maddy above everything else. In the end, Susannah hadn’t had the chance.

  Now Luke had a chance to step up and be a parent, but Peyton worried he would let her down—and worse, let Maddy down. If there was one thing Maddy desperately needed, it was structure, stability. Luke had never been the kind of guy who built fences and planted vegetable gardens and ate dinner at six.

  She needed to remember that when she met Luke at the zoo in a little while, and not delude herself into thinking that just because the man was handsome, and seeing him caused a little flutter in Peyton’s gut, that the three of them were forming some kind of happy little family. She was doing all this for her niece—not to resurrect some silly teenage crush.

  All Peyton wanted was to help Maddy become a happy little girl again. Stone Gap was the best place Peyton knew of for Maddy. Here, where the town sprawled among the lush green landscape, there were memories in the streets and the houses. Memories of Susannah, of Peyton, and a foundation for Maddy, who had stood on shifting sand for far too long.

  Staying in bed wasn’t going to get her any closer to that goal, so Peyton got up, got ready, then woke Madelyne. “After breakfast, we’re going to the zoo with my friend Luke,” Peyton said, as she tugged Madelyne’s nightgown over her head and helped her slip into shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Are you gonna be there, Auntie P?”

  Peyton nodded. “I sure am.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Every single second.” Peyton paused in helping Maddy dress to hold her arms and grab her attention. “I promise.”

  Relief washed over Maddy’s features. “Is there gonna be monkeys at the zoo?”

  “Monkeys and lions and giraffes,” Peyton said, lifting one of Maddy’s legs to slip on a sock, then repeated with the other foot. “And one very pesky monkey in particular.” She tapped a finger on Maddy’s nose, and the little girl almost—almost—giggled.

  “I’s not a monkey, Auntie P. I’s a big girl.”

  Peyton pretended it didn’t bother her that the jokes that used to make Maddy smile had lost their touch, that Maddy’s sparkle had gone as flat as a pancake. Time, the psychologist had said. Time will help. How much time was the question that bothered Peyton in those dark moments late at night when she was struggling to be sure she was doing the right thing. “Go get your shoes on, monkey, and we’ll go to breakfast. We have to be at the zoo at nine-thirty.”

  Maddy, of course, couldn’t tell time yet and had no idea if it was nine-thirty or five-thirty. But Peyton liked having the schedule, liked saying it out loud, as if putting the numbers in the air would cement the plan in place. When things ran on time and as planned, it gave Peyton room to breathe.

  So at eight-twenty, they left the cozy room at the Stone Gap Hotel, took Peyton’s car to downtown Stone Gap and walked into The Good Eatin’ Café, pretty much the only breakfast choice in town. The second the door opened, Peyton regretted her choice. Stone Gap was a small town with long memories and gossipy residents. All she needed was someone recounting Susannah’s wild past in front of Maddy.

  “Oh, you cute little button!” Vivian Hoffman, the owner of the diner, came bustling around the counter, a petite gray-haired woman who had worked at The Good Eatin’ Café for so long, Peyton figured she had to be close to a hundred, though she moved at the speed of people half her age. Vivian bent down in front of Maddy. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Madelyne.” She drew herself up. “Madelyne Reynolds.”

  “Oh, what a cutie. And as serious as a judge in church.” Vivian put out her hand and gave Maddy’s a little shake. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Madelyne. I’m Miss Viv, and if you need anything at all, you just let Miss Viv know and I’ll get it from the kitchen.”

  “Can I have pancakes that look like cookies?”

  “She means chocolate chip pancakes,” Peyton explained.

  “Oh my, of course you can, sweetheart.” Miss Viv’s smile crinkled her eyes. “Why, we make the best cookie-looking pancakes in all of North Carolina. How about some chocolate milk to go with that, too? With one of those crazy bendy straws?”

  Maddy started to say yes, but Peyton put a hand on her shoulder. “Apple juice will be fine, Miss Viv. Thank you.”

  Vivian looked at Peyton now, really looked at her. “You’re the younger Reynolds girl, aren’t you? Peyton?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, as if she was still a child and trying on her best manners in front of Grandma Lucy.

  “And this adorable angel is your little girl?”

  “No, she’s my niece.”

  “Niece? That means Susannah...” Her voice trailed off and she dropped her gaze to Maddy’s blond curls. “Well, I’ll be. And I thought I knew ’bout everything that happened in this town.” Miss Viv brightened and put an arm around Peyton, drawing her deeper into the diner and steering her toward a booth that overlooked a shady corner of the park next door. “Best table in the house, though that busybody Mort Williams will say otherwise.”

  From the far corner of the laminate bar that fronted the kitchen, Mort, a gray-haired man with a hunched back who owned the Page In Time Bookstore a block away, raised his cup of coffee in Miss Viv’s direction. He had a book in his hands now, a leather-bound volume. Probably a class
ic he’d read a hundred times before, if Peyton remembered correctly. “Howdy, Peyton,” he said, raising his book in her direction. “Stop on by the bookstore while you’re in town.”

  “I sure will,” Peyton said. “I think I spent more time there than at home when I was young.” The bookstore had been her escape, a quiet place with cozy chairs, where she could read and get away from the roller coaster that had been her childhood. An alcoholic mother, a never-present father and two girls who had few, if any, rules or expectations meant Peyton could count on nothing but the happy endings she found in the books she read.

  “Looking forward to seeing you.” Mort smiled. “And though that booth Miss Viv gave you is good, if you ask me, the best seat in the house is this one. Lets me watch all the comings and goings.”

  Miss Viv leaned in toward Peyton. “He likes to think himself the town gossip. I told him Anna May Robicheaux has had that job for going on ninety-one years and given her constitution, she’s not giving up her title anytime soon. Would that she did, because Mort here is near as old as Methuselah himself.”

  “It’s your coffee keeping me young, Miss Viv,” Mort said, hoisting said mug again for a refill. “That and your sweet smile.”

  “That man is far too old to flirt. Goodness. Now, you two sit right here,” Miss Viv said, reaching over to pluck two menus from a vacant table and lay them before Peyton and Maddy. “Tell me what you want, Peyton, and I’ll get it started right quick.”

  “Uh...just coffee, please.”

  Vivian waved that off. “You can’t start your day with just coffee! You’d, like, about die from starvation before ten. ’Sides, I can’t let anyone leave the Good Eatin’ Café saying Miss Viv didn’t fill their bellies from the bottom up.” She stepped back, put a finger on her chin and studied Peyton. “Let’s see if I can remember your favorite order.”

  “Oh, Miss Viv,” Peyton began, “it’s been at least ten years since I’ve eaten here with my grandma and—”

  “Two eggs, sunny-side up, not too hard, not too soft. With a side of pancakes, and extra syrup.”

  Miss Viv had nailed her order, as easily as if the last time Peyton had been here had been last week, instead of over a decade. “That’s...that’s exactly it.”

  The older woman patted Peyton’s hand. “I never forget a customer, especially one as pretty and nice as you.” Then she bustled away toward the kitchen, sending over one of her waitresses to give Peyton a hot cup of coffee.

  Maddy settled in the booth, dwarfed by the red leather back. “Auntie P, how’s come that lady knows you?”

  “I used to come here when I was a little girl with my grandma. I sat at that stool right there.” She pointed toward the one in the middle of the bar, wondering if it still squeaked when you turned right. “And we’d have our Sunday-morning breakfast here.”

  Maddy considered that for a while, taking in the seat, the covered platter of sugar-dusted doughnuts beside the glass cookie jar raising money for a local boy whose beaming face filled a photo on the front, then lifted her gaze to Peyton’s. “Do I have a grandma like that, Auntie P? Can she bring me here on Sundays, too?”

  Peyton started to say no. Peyton’s grandmother Lucy, the one who Peyton could run to for cuts and bruises and happy moments, had died when Peyton was eleven. And Peyton’s own mother...

  She’d never been the motherly type, much less the grandmother type, even after Maddy had been born. Three years ago, Peyton’s mother had died of cirrhosis. The girls had never known their father, so if there were paternal grandparents, Peyton had never met them.

  But there was another woman, another grandma, who would take one look at Maddy and spoil her rotten for all the days of her life. The kind of grandma who would take her for chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday and go to all her school plays and exclaim over every handmade lumpy clay ashtray.

  Peyton knew that, because she knew that woman well. Luke’s mother, Della, the one woman in Stone Gap who Peyton had wished was her mother from the minute she met her.

  Maddy was still watching her, waiting for an answer. If Peyton told her the truth, Maddy would want to meet Della. If Peyton lied, it would be one more blow to a little girl who’d already had too many.

  “Yes, Maddy, you have a grandma like that.”

  A smile, a genuine, joyful smile as bright as a June day, bloomed on Maddy’s face. “Does she know I like pancakes that look like cookies? Does she know I’m almost four? Does she know I can count to a hun-red all by myself?”

  Damn. How to answer these questions without telling Maddy everything? “She doesn’t yet, but she will, when you meet her.”

  “When am I gonna meet her? Is she coming to my house? Is she gonna make me cupcakes like Kayleigh’s grandma? Cuz she makes cupcakes all the time and puts sprinkles on them and they’re really yummy.”

  “I don’t know when you’ll meet her,” Peyton said. The waitress came by and laid plates of food before them. Peyton thanked her, then nudged Maddy’s plate closer to her niece, hoping to shift the conversation away from a comparison of Maddy’s friend Kayleigh’s grandma and her own. “Why don’t you eat your breakfast, so we can go to the zoo?”

  “I don’t wanna go to the zoo. I wanna see my new grandma.”

  “We can’t right now, sweetie. But...soon.”

  “When?”

  “I...” Peyton sighed. “I don’t know. Just eat, please.”

  Despite much cajoling on Peyton’s part, Maddy only picked at her chocolate chip pancakes and took two sips of her juice. She kept her eyes down, her hair swinging like a curtain over them. The bright mood evaporated.

  Why had Peyton brought her to Stone Gap? Why had she brought Luke into Maddy’s life? All it had done so far was complicate things and open up questions that Peyton wished she didn’t have to answer. She never should have mentioned Della or told Maddy that she had another grandparent. Two, in fact, who would probably love nothing more than to spoil Maddy with love and kisses.

  This little girl deserved that—deserved those moments when the world was full of sunshine, those brief snippets that Peyton herself had enjoyed on the rare weekends when she had stayed at Grandma Lucy’s—but bringing Della and Bobby into Maddy’s life meant exposing Luke as Maddy’s father. Creating a permanent bond with the man and his family.

  Was that what Peyton wanted? What was best all around?

  Peyton slid her plate to the side, the food mostly untouched. Maddy did the same, with even less of her food consumed. “Come on, sweetie, eat some more. Aren’t you hungry?”

  Maddy shook her head. “I don’t wanna. I wanna go home.”

  “We’re going to the zoo today. We can go back to the hotel later.”

  Maddy looked as though she wanted to argue, but instead she just nodded. The acquiescing, resolute and sad Maddy that so worried Peyton had returned.

  “Well, we need to go if we want to get to the zoo on time.” Peyton dropped a few bills on the table for the tip, then waved a thank-you at Miss Viv as they left. Maddy dutifully fell into place beside Peyton, taking Peyton’s hand as they went back to the car, but the spark was gone from her niece’s face.

  Even when they pulled up to the zoo, located a few miles from Stone Gap in a nearby city, Maddy didn’t seem any more excited to go. Peyton parked, exchanged her purse for an easier-to-carry backpack, then unbuckled Maddy. She looked around the still-empty parking lot—the zoo opened at nine-thirty and had yet to fill with patrons—but didn’t see Luke or his Mustang.

  Typical. He was probably late or had forgotten all about it. Why had she thought she could count on him?

  “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go get our tickets.” Peyton led Maddy across the lot to the bright ticket booths, each shaped like a different animal head.

  And then, standing beside the giant polar bear booth, dark shades blocking his incredible blue eyes, was Luke. He was leaning one shoulder against the booth, as casual as a summer breeze. He smiled when he saw her and something warm unfurl
ed in Peyton’s belly.

  He pushed off from the wooden building and met her halfway. “Bet you didn’t think I’d show.”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “I’m more responsible than you think, Peyton.” He held up three colorful slips of paper. “And I already have tickets.”

  Peyton’s brows arched. “You do? Wow. Thanks.” That surprised her, even more than him being on time. “Where’s your sports car?”

  “My sports car...” It took him a second, then he nodded. “Oh, the Mustang. That’s Ben’s. My car’s a plain old Taurus. It was at Gator’s the day you came by, waiting on some parts for the brakes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Didn’t expect me to be driving a car as boring and dependable as a picket fence, did you?” He didn’t wait for Peyton’s answer. Instead, he turned and handed Maddy one of the tickets. “Here, kiddo. Here’s yours.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’s old enough—”

  But Maddy was already running ahead, dashing toward the ticket taker at the entrance to the zoo. The woman smiled down at Maddy, tore the paper in half and handed one half back to Maddy, who clutched it in a wadded ball in her palm. “Be sure to keep your half of the ticket,” the woman said. “You need it to take the train around the zoo.”

  “Okay. T’ank you,” Maddy said, as solemn as a preacher.

  Peyton followed behind, with Luke right beside her. She moved fast enough to be sure Maddy never got more than a couple of feet away, scanning the ground as she walked. Partly to watch for the ticket when it dropped, and partly to keep her gaze from straying to Luke. Damn the man for looking good in something as simple as a button-down shirt and khaki shorts.

  Thirty seconds later, Peyton bent down and picked up a familiar crumpled paper. “This is why I don’t let her hold her own ticket,” Peyton said to Luke. “She’s too little for that responsibility.”

  “People don’t learn responsibility unless you give it to them,” Luke said.

  “And you, Mr. Unmarried, are the model for responsibility?”