by Tiana Cole
“So if you don’t have time, why don’t you send her to school? There are tons of preschools you could send her to, especially when money isn’t a problem.”
Oh god, that was so rude. You weren’t supposed to bring up things like money, especially with a man you hardly knew. But I had to know. I had to understand why he wouldn’t go the extra mile to help his little girl.
“Because. Because she is so wild. I know what it’s like for children like that. The money has nothing to do with it. If I thought money would buy her a school that wouldn’t break her spirit I would send her there in a heartbeat. But a fancy school doesn’t mean that they will treat her kindly.
She can hardly sit still for more than a minute. They’ll punish her, Kayla. They’ll punish her just for being who she is. Then they’ll start talking about the medications that will keep her still enough to teach. I can’t have that. That’s why it was so wonderful that you’re a teacher, and of children close to her age. I could tell right away that you didn’t mind her wild side. I thought it would help to have someone like you teaching her.”
Shit. I could not have misread the situation more completely if I had set out to do so. He wasn’t neglecting her. He was trying to protect her from being reprimanded every day for something she couldn’t help. It had never even occurred to me that he might be looking out for her and I felt terrible now.
I could see that it was genuine. He did care about her. Regardless of what I had seen earlier that morning, he seemed to care about her very much. He looked at me now with tired, sad eyes. It was hard not to feel bad for him when he looked at me like that and I didn’t know what to make of my own sympathy.
“I was so much like her when I was small. I was wildly imaginative and couldn’t sit still no matter how hard I tried. I grew up in this neighborhood, only a few blocks away from here. Both of my parents were doctors. I guess that’s why I went to medical school. It was just what I was supposed to do.
They weren’t ever really around, my parents, and so they stuck me in exactly the kind of school you’re suggesting for Sophie. I hated it. I cried every time I went but it didn’t matter. They sent me and I got punished, and no amount of pleading could get me out of it. When my dad died I was only six, and things got worse.
My mom was so sad but she wouldn’t let me be. I had to grow up, to straighten myself out. I did it, but it was never a very pleasant experience. My mother, she was a very harsh woman, is a very harsh woman. I don’t want that kind of environment for Sophie. Not ever.”
“Of course you don’t,” I said quickly, eager to help him not to worry any more than he had to for his little girl. “I’ll help her, David. She’s a bright girl and I know I can teach her. And we’ll have fun doing it.”
“Thank you. Really, thank you.”
He stood up then, shutting his eyes and grimacing. He was pale and it was clear that he was hurting. He looked down at me with a weak smile and I stood, unsure of what I should do.
“Speaking of my mother, she will be here tomorrow for dinner. I was wondering if you could attend as well, to help with Sophie.”
“Sure, that’s not a problem. She’s my little buddy.”
“That’s good to hear, but I feel that I should warn you. My mom is a tough woman. She’s difficult and, well, she’s not the most tolerant person. I don’t know how to put that delicately.”
I wasn’t afraid of David’s mother. I always did like a challenge.
“Oh don’t you worry about me, David,” I said with a mischievous grin, “I’m pretty sure I can handle her.”
“I bet you can. Alright, dinner, then. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be heading off to bed. I’ve had a wicked headache all day and I can’t seem to shake it. Migraines. A tough thing to beat.”
I nodded in sympathetic understanding and sat back down in relief. It had been a good conversation, much better than I had expected it to be, but it was still stressful. Talking to David Wyatt felt like navigating a minefield. I was finally starting to feel a little bit better about him, though, enough to wonder if maybe everything that had happened to Nikki wasn’t all his fault.
I felt that way right up until, halfway up the stairs, he pulled a little bottle of pills out of his pocket and popped a few into his mouth. That was what I had been looking for, right? Some kind of proof that he was a drug addicted negligent doctor leaving dead patients in his wake? So how come it felt so wrong to think that’s what he was now? What the hell was I going to do?
Chapter Four
David
God, these headaches were starting to get brutal. They were bad enough that I had actually broken down and seen a doctor myself, which wasn’t something I was prone to do. I was absolutely that doctor cliché. Do as I say and not as I do and all of that nonsense.
“It’s stress, David, plain and simple. You’ve got to start taking care of yourself. You’ve had an unbelievably trying couple of years, everyone here knows that. You’ve got to start taking it a little bit easier, okay? Speaking of which, how’s your leg doing? Still in pain?”
“It’s fine. It hurts occasionally but I still have the prescription you gave me.”
“Need me to put in another one for you?”
“No, thanks. I’ve still got plenty. I try not to use them any more than absolutely necessary.”
The doc gave me a suspicious look so I shoved my hand down in my pocket and gave the bottle a little rattle. Sure, I carried them with me just in case, but they were a last resort. I may have been a doctor but I wasn’t a fan of using medication myself.
“Alright, but take it easy, you hear me? You’ve got that little girl to think about now, too. Don’t forget about that.”
“Thanks for your time. I’ll see you around.”
That little girl. I had that little girl to take care of now. He was a nice man and he meant well, but did he really think I had forgotten about Sophie? Did he think that she had just slipped my mind the same way one might sometimes forget to feed their cat? She was my brother’s daughter, for Christ’s sake.
My brother. Just thinking about Mikey made my leg start to ache. I winced at the pain, shaking it out and waiting for the wave to pass. It was hard to tell if it was a legitimate pain or just a memory right now. Sometimes it hurt when I thought about him. Then again, when I thought about Mikey I hurt all over. Still, after almost two years.
Mikey was younger than me by a couple of years. Our relationship had always been an interesting one. He was pretty much brilliant, and in some ways he seemed like he was a decade older than me, maybe more.
In other ways, though, he was always a little bit of a child. He was a dreamer, my brother. Both the youngest and the top of his class in Yale Medical School. It was never about money for him though. He always wanted to do something great, something worthwhile.
My brother wanted to save the world from the time he was small up until the day he died. I almost believe he would have done it too, if things had happened differently. Not for the first time I thought to myself that the wrong brother had died. I was sure I wasn’t the only one with that opinion.
“Don’t you want to see them, Daddy?”
Shit, I cringed just thinking about it. I could still hear Sophie from way back when she first started talking, toddling up to Mikey and saying something very similar to that. He had handled it so much better than me. Infinitely better than me. I was never meant to father his daughter. I was nowhere near as good at it as he had been.
Those two had been made for each other. Even Anna, Mikey’s wife, noticed it. Sophie had been a daddy’s girl if ever there was one. From practically the day she was born she had wanted nothing more than to be right by his side. Hell, she looked exactly like him. I had to smile, thinking about how goofy the two of them had been together. It was true love, two perfectly matched quirky personalities.
It made it so much harder to take it when I heard her call me Daddy. I knew why she did it. It was the natural thing for her to do. She was
still only four years old, still practically a baby, and I had a sinking fear that she remembered very little of her parents. That just about broke my heart, although it made me feel better to think that she probably didn’t remember what happened either. Jesus, I wish I didn’t remember it myself.
It was a camping trip. It was a vacation and it should have been fun. And it was, up until the end. Mikey and I didn’t get to see each other nearly as much as I would have liked. We were just so busy all of the time, every day. We kept telling each other that we were going to make more time and when Anna insisted on taking Sophie on her first camping trip Mikey asked me to come along. How do you say no to a request like that from your kid brother? And I had barely even seen my own niece. This would be a good start. The whole thing was almost perfect.
“Dr. Wyatt? Everything okay?”
Crap, I needed to get out of this hospital. Now that I knew that there was pretty much nothing I could do about the headaches, because let’s face it, everyone has stress and I was pretty sure mine wasn’t going anywhere soon.
I knew the people around me meant well when they asked if I was alright, but I was just so tired of answering that question. I felt like it was the only question I had been answering for the past two years. I just wanted to get home. At least things felt like they were starting to get a little bit better on that front.
“Dr. Wyatt! David. How did everything go?”
I smiled at Kayla, happy to be asked something new. I liked the way she asked me, too. There was something about the tone in her voice, the expression on her face. When Kayla asked me how things went I could tell she was genuinely interested in the answer. That was something you got from a whole lot of people.
“It was alright. Fine, really.”
“Did you learn anything useful?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. It was always funny to me, being asked a question like that about my experience with another doctor. Especially when there was nothing of any use to report. This must be how other people felt when they left my office and didn’t like what they heard. Maybe it was karma.
“Stress. Apparently it’s no good.”
She laughed, her striking green eyes shining with just a hint of mischief. I watched her intently, hoping she wouldn’t notice that I was basically just staring at her. There was something about this girl.
First of all, even though she had assured me that we had never met, I had this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that we had, that I should remember her. I just couldn’t place where. Besides, what reason would she have to tell me we hadn’t met if we had? Unless she didn’t remember me either.
Then there was the fact that she was completely beautiful. I had never seen a woman like Kayla before. The combination of her dark skin and her flashing blue eyes was alarmingly attractive, the easy curves of her body difficult to ignore.
Especially when she was living on my property, taking care of Sophie so that she seemed happier and more well-adjusted than she had in the entire two years of me attempting to care for her myself. I had to remind myself that she was not here for me. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her away from Sophie, no matter how attracted I was to her.
“Definitely no good. I’ve heard it can hurt you in all sorts of different ways. Which is why I hate to bring this up.”
She gave me a sheepish little smile and I raised my eyebrows at her expectantly. Shit. What new bad news did she have to deliver? I wasn’t sure I was in the mood to shoulder anything else at this particular moment in time.
“It’s just that your mother called. She said she’s going to be early for dinner. Which means that she’s going to be here in just under an hour.”
“Oh come on!” I groaned, closing my eyes briefly in frustration.
“I know, I had a feeling you weren’t going to be thrilled with the information. But who knows? Maybe things will go better than you’re expecting them to. Stranger things have happened.”
“You’re right. Stranger things have.”
“I’ll get Sophie ready, okay? You just get changed and relax. Everything is going to be alright. I promise.”
I smiled and watched her hurry off to find my brother’s little girl. Somehow when she made that promise it was hard for me not to believe her. I wanted to believe her, I really did. The only thing was, she hadn’t met my mother yet. It would be interesting to see how positive she would stay then.
“David, darling. Whatever took you so long to come to the door? I feel as if I’ve been standing out on that stoop for a century. You really should get a butler, you know. It isn’t like you can’t afford one.”
“Hello, Mother. Sorry about the wait.”
This sounded about right, the typical kind of greeting from my mom. God knew I loved her, but she was not the easiest woman to take. Especially after my father died. She had always been high strung, but my father had a little more of a whimsical side to him, just like Mikey did.
He balanced her out. After he died she got a lot harder to reign in. After the car crash, after Mikey and Anna both passed away, she had become almost impossible. The only ones left in our family were the super serious ones, aside from Sophie, and we didn’t always do so well without the buffer.
“No need to be sorry, David, that’s not what I want to hear. What’s the use in being sorry anyway?”
“I know, you think sorry doesn’t get you anywhere.”
She gave me a sharp, stern look of disapproval. The tone of my voice. Had to be. She always seemed to think I had a disrespectful tone, even when that was the last thing I was trying to do. She had been that way since I was a kid. She had been a little more forgiving with Mikey.
“Well, it doesn’t. You should know that just as well as I do. The answer is simple. Either get a butler or get to the door more quickly. God forbid you have someone really important waiting at your door.”
“Alright, Mother, I’ll look into it.”
She breezed past me and into the home just as if she owned it. She had a tendency to do that, to walk into a place and make it her own. She was used to being in charge. I had to give it to her, there were obvious reasons for that. When you were the head of cardiology you got used to people doing what you said. It had to be hard to just turn that general-like personality off and on with the flip of an internal switch.
“Good, that’s good. And what of my granddaughter? How has Sophie been?”
“Good! Better, I think. She seems to be finally adjusting to things. Sometimes I wonder how much she really knows.”
This comment got me another look, a much more formidable one than the last. That one had gotten dangerously close to crossing the line my mom had drawn in the sand after Mikey’s death, the line that was never, never to be crossed.
All four of us had been in that car crash, Mikey, his beautiful family, and myself. Sophie had, miraculously, come out of it without so much as a scratch. I shattered the bones in my left leg, something that still routinely caused me pain, but I walked away from the crash.
Mikey and Anna died that day and almost immediately my mom made a rule that he wasn’t to be spoken of. That was her bottom line. Nobody was allowed to talk about him, which meant we pretty much had to pretend that Sophie was mine. Any mention of a need to adjust was like mentioning Mikey to mom.
“Well, where is she? Will she be joining us for dinner?”
Just like Mom, pretend nothing out of the ordinary was said and push forward. That was the creed she lived by. Push forward, no matter what. I had never even seen her cry, not once. Not after my dad passed away and not after the whole horrible mess with Mikey.
“Sure, sure she is. She’s excited to see you. She’ll be joining us, as will Kayla.”
“Kayla? Who, may I ask, is Kayla?”
“She’s the woman I’ve hired to care for Sophie when I’m away. She was a school teacher and she’s very good at working with Sophie, despite her ADHD.”
“She doesn’t have any such thing,” my m
other fired back quickly, “she’s just spirited. And how do you know this woman is actually qualified to work with my granddaughter?”
“Relax, Mom. I’ve watched the two of them together. She’s great with her. She seems to make Sophie really happy. They’re actually in the dining room already. Perhaps we should join them?”
“I suppose so.”
Even her walk seemed disapproving as she made her way deeper into my home. I took a deep breath, wishing this whole thing was already over and done with. Reduce my stress? That didn’t seem likely with a dinner like this to get through.
Chapter Five
Kayla
“And who are you? The new nanny, I suppose?”
“Yes, hello, you must be David’s mother. I’m Kayla. It’s lovely to meet you.”