In the kitchen, he gestured at the table, and she sat down, which made her even more on red alert, since this was a “you’d better sit down” type of thing.
“Coffee?” he asked, taking out her favorite mug even though she hadn’t answered.
“Sure,” she said. If the man needed to “do” something in order to say what he had to say, fine.
He poured the coffee and added sugar and cream the way she liked, then handed her the mug. “Captain Morgan wants me on the force tomorrow. For a new task force the local FBI field office is spearheading.”
Allie almost dropped the mug. She set it on the table, mentally shaking her head at what he’d said. Christmas was in just a few days. They should be doing their holiday shopping at the very crowded mall or window-shopping in county seat Brewster’s vibrant downtown. Not having this conversation—that would mean no Christmas at all. Not one with Theo there.
“To cut to the chase,” he said quickly, “it’s about organized crime. One particular thug the PD and local FBI have been after for six months has resurfaced. The captain asked for my help.”
Allie tried to keep her expression neutral, but inside she was shouting, Noooooo! She picked up the mug and took a swig of her coffee, the caffeine boost helpful.
She stared at him, this man she’d known for so long, and she could see that he wanted to be part of this task force, that were it not for her and the quads, he’d be at the PD now.
“I’d have to be away for days at a time, possibly, while working surveillance,” he said. “We can’t know the extent until we’re in it, really.”
I love you. And if I love you, I have to let you be who you are. But I have to protect myself. She took another sip of the coffee, an idea forming in her head that she wasn’t sure of.
“I know you want to join the task force. I know this is the kind of police work you feel you’re meant to do, Theo. I don’t want to take that from you.”
He stared at her. “Not the reaction I expected.”
“But,” she added.
“But,” he prompted.
“But I can’t go back to two years ago. Things are good between us, Theo. We have a beautiful family life. I want to protect that. But I also need to protect myself.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“That maybe there’s a way we can make this work. You can do the work you want and I—and our marriage—won’t be in the same vulnerable position as I was back then.”
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. “I’ve been racking my brain all night, Allie. I’ve come up with nothing. So I’m more than a little wary of whatever you’re going to say.”
She could barely get the words out—that was how wary she was of the idea in the first place. But what choice did they have?
“Theo, I was about to marry Elliot Talley for the sake of the children. So they could have a father, stability and security. The marriage would have been basically platonic, since there was very little romance between him and me. I suppose he had his reason for proposing and for dropping out. And now you and I have ours.”
“Ours?” he asked, looking at her as though he was not following. And frankly, who would be following this crazy train of thought?
“A reason for having a marriage based on something other than romance. We’d live like partners and roommates,” she said. “Raising our children. But otherwise we’d live separate lives. I wouldn’t expect the usual stuff a wife expects from her husband, and therefore, there would be no stomped-on expectations or hopes.”
“Like roommates,” he repeated, his voice almost cracking.
“Right. You’re not here for me or this marriage. You’re here for the kids. So let’s make it about them.”
That wasn’t entirely fair. She knew he loved her. She did believe that. But she also believed that Theo Stark had romanticized his homecoming, thought they could pick up where they left off—minus all the heartache—and start anew, only to realize they would soon be back in the same situation they’d been in two years ago. The “but,” the monkey wrench, came in the form of the four babies upstairs. Theo had become a father the day he returned and that changed everything. But not between them.
He stared at her. “Allie, this isn’t what I want. And it can’t be what you want.”
“What I want is for you to be happy, Theo. I want you to be the cop you want to be, who you need to be. If that’s chasing mobsters and getting shot at, well, that’s what you signed up for. I didn’t realize, I guess, that it’s what I signed up for when I married a small-town police officer. I thought your biggest cases would be expired registrations and arguments over cutting in line at the bagel shop on Saturday mornings or maybe the occasional burglary. I thought you’d be chasing down seven-year-old present thieves, Theo.”
He took another swig of his coffee and then leaned his head back. “I know.”
“Now I have four kids to think about. They come first for me. So I want to stay with their father. But I have to change everything about how I view our marriage. We’d be parenting partners.”
“Parenting partners? That doesn’t sound right, either, Allie. Platonic spouses?”
Stay strong, she told herself. “I can’t say goodbye to you in the morning when you’re on this task force and not know if you’ll come home, if you’ll need to fake your own death again because you witnessed the mobster do something awful. I need to keep boundaries.”
“This isn’t what I want, Allie.”
“It’s not what I want, either. But it’s a solution.”
He shook his head.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “The multiples seminar starts in fifteen minutes. You’d better get going.”
“This conversation isn’t over,” he said.
What was left to say?
“I love you, Allie,” he said, standing up. “We’ll figure it out.”
She already had.
Chapter Fourteen
Parenting partners.
Platonic spouses.
Theo shook his head as he took the stairs up to the second floor of the Wedlock Creek Community Center and headed for Room 209. There was no way in hell Allie’s idea could work. He couldn’t live that way. He didn’t want to live that way. And he knew she didn’t, either.
You’re not exactly giving her much choice, he reminded himself.
As he pulled open the door to the room where Reed Barelli’s two-hour seminar, “New Dads of Multiples,” was being held, he breathed a sigh of relief. He counted twelve men sitting at desks, notebooks at the ready. He wasn’t the only one in desperate need of this class. Reed’s wife, Norah, taught many of the multiples classes, but when she’d brought Reed in for a “father’s perspective” one time, the class had been such a hit that Reed began offering a seminar for new dads twice a semester.
Juggling multiples, a job, life—and teaching classes? Reed had this down. And Theo needed this class big-time.
The timing couldn’t be better. Theo would get some great tips, more in depth than what Reed had been able to share in the busy, loud Kidz Zone with both their attention on their children. Now Theo could soak up solid information and have a much better chance of talking Allie out of this platonic marriage nightmare. Because that was what it would be: a nightmare. If he could just show her—and himself—that it was possible to be a family man and a cop who worked mostly in the most dangerous of shadows and circumstances, then they could still have what they’d been working toward: their family.
Allie and him, platonic? He wouldn’t survive a night. He’d barely survived those first few nights at her side in their bed.
“Welcome!” Reed said from the front of the room. “You know, when I first started teaching this seminar, I used to have a five-page handout for every student. If you look at the desk in front of me, you’ll see I don’t ha
ve any handouts. Know why? Because when your twins or triplets or quadruplets are screaming their heads off all at the same time, you’re not going to be consulting the manual.”
Theo laughed. He tried to imagine himself looking up “How to change four diapers at once” while the quads cried and lifted their arms.
“The most important things you need to know about being the father or caretaker of multiples?” Reed posed to a group hanging on his every word. “Number one—you’re doing better than you think you are. Even if one triplet is screeching bloody murder and another is breaking out in hives and the third is taking off his diaper and throwing it across the room—you’re doing better than you think. Because you’re trying. And you’ll soon come into a rhythm. At first, everything will seem overwhelming and then one day you’ll realize you’ve got this, that you’re handling it, that you can tell Billy and Brandon apart.”
Theo knew from experience all that was true. He thought back to the first day he’d met Tyler, Henry, Ethan and Olivia, how inept he’d felt. Now he could change one’s diaper while sprinkling cornstarch on another’s tush without blinking. He’d learned how to feed four babies at once. And he could tell which baby was crying in the middle of night at first waah.
Reed continued on about using safe stations—high chairs, Exersaucers, playpens, car seats, cribs—to contain a baby or two if it were necessary to concentrate on another. After a talk on safety in general, he moved to schedules—feeding, napping, sleeping, diaper changes, playtime.
“Okay, pop quiz on material we haven’t even covered yet,” Reed said. “It’s eight thirty. You have to be at work at nine. You still have to get dressed and have some coffee. Your wife is on maternity leave and both twins are crying. What do you do?”
A guy in a suit raised his hand. “You let your wife handle it.”
“Sorry, my friend, but that is incorrect,” Reed said. “Just because your wife is on leave and you’re not doesn’t mean the babies are her sole responsibility. You’re there, you help. You take one baby, she takes one baby. In no time, the situation is handled. And guess what? It took two minutes. Now your wife is smiling and feels supported, and you got to spend more quality time with your family.”
There were murmurs and nods. “Never looked at it that way,” another guy said. “But I get it.”
“Quiz question number two. It’s seven o’clock at night. Your wife expected you home an hour ago. You have six-month-old quadruplets. Your boss gives you a plum assignment that will work in your favor come promotion time, but he wants you to stay late every day for the next two weeks to handle it. What do you do?”
“Work has to come first,” Andrew Muttler, a mortgage broker, said.
“Agreed,” said a lawyer.
Theo raised up a hand. “Well, I don’t agree that work has to come first, but I don’t know what the answer is.”
And he needed the answer.
“The answer is compromise,” Reed said. “You want the big assignment? Fine. Tell your boss you can only take it on if you can do the extra work it’ll require from home.”
“Huh,” the lawyer said. “I guess I can do most what I do via Wi-Fi and my briefcase.”
Reed nodded. “Exactly.”
“But what if I’m deep in concentration at 9:00 p.m. on the project at home, and the babies start crying and I can’t be interrupted?”
“Then you ask your wife if she can handle it this time,” Theo said, “and you’ll get it next time.”
“Good compromise,” Reed said, nodding at Theo.
But what about when I’m out on the street, behind some dark building, chasing down a suspect and a lead comes in, and if I go home, I lose the suspect. I can’t take my work home with me. Literally and figuratively.
You’ll figure it out, he told himself. Weren’t those his last words to Allie earlier? He didn’t have the same responsibilities two years ago. He didn’t have four little lives depending on him. He had to change his way of thinking. He would figure it out.
Yeah? So how? There was no calling home or leaving early when you were on surveillance and had a suspect in your crosshairs. When getting the punk off the streets was the most important thing in that moment. In that moment seemed the key. Or was he just rationalizing?
Who was he kidding? He knew what was required to be a good cop in the field on these task forces. And he knew what was required of a father of baby quadruplets. Of a man who’d let his wife down hard once already and had vowed never to do it again.
He wanted to ask Barelli all these questions, but he was the only cop in the class and didn’t want to take class time asking questions that only pertained to him. Reed had moved on to dealing with in-laws, and while Theo’s mind focused on how he couldn’t have it all, class had come to an end.
His heart so heavy he could barely stand up, Theo wondered if maybe Allie was right about the platonic marriage thing. He’d just have to give up his dreams of having a real marriage, of making love to Allie, of being partners in every sense of the word. He couldn’t have everything, but he had to be there for her and the babies.
He glanced at his watch. Time to go pick up the Chadwells. And just as he was about to think, Well, at least this assignment will let me take my mind off my problems with Allie, he realized that was the problem. Getting consumed by his work and forgetting about what was tearing him apart inside.
What the hell was he going to do?
* * *
Hunter Chadwell sat in the back seat of Theo’s car, staring down at his lap. His mother, June, sat in the passenger seat, biting her lip. He felt for her; no one wanted to be in her shoes, the mom of the kid who’d stolen his classmates’ presents. And now had to face the music.
Theo pulled up in front of the Dumfords’ residence. “Ready, Hunter?” Theo asked, turning around to look at the boy.
“I guess,” he said, his face crumpling.
“Hey,” Theo said. “You made a mistake and did something wrong. Now you’re making it right. It feels good to make something right. Takes a huge weight off your shoulders. It’s not going to be easy to walk into that house, Hunter, but after, you’ll feel so much better.”
The boy sniffled and nodded.
Moments later, the three of them stood on the doorstep of the Dumfords, Hunter holding the gift that belonged to Miles Dumford. Theo rang the bell.
Mrs. Dumford opened the door and smiled at him and Mrs. Chadwell, then looked at Hunter. “Hi there, Hunter,” she said, giving him a warm smile, which Theo appreciated. “Come on in.”
The group followed her into the living room. The beautifully decorated tree was in front of the window, lined with presents underneath. Miles was sitting on the couch playing on an electronic device.
“Honey, look who’s here,” Mrs. Dumford said to her son. “It’s Hunter.”
The three of them stood somewhat awkwardly near the sofa. Theo nodded at Hunter, who held the wrapped gift in his hands and stepped closer to Miles.
“Um, Miles? I came into your house when you were at karate and took this. I’m really sorry.” He handed it to Miles, then Miles’s mom took it and put it on the coffee table.
“Why’d you take it?” Miles asked, tilting his head, his blond hair flopping to the side.
Hunter chewed on his lip and shrugged miserably, then said, “I was mad that you got to go to karate when I couldn’t. I was riding my bike past your house and saw the Christmas tree, so I came in and looked for a present with your name and I took it.”
“Why can’t you go to karate?” Miles asked.
Theo could kiss the boy. Only kids got right to the heart of the matter, asking the right questions, leading right to motive. Adults tended to get sidetracked with all sorts of other issues.
“My mom said we couldn’t pay for it,” Hunter told him.
“Oh,” Miles said. “Well, thanks fo
r bringing it back. My mom told me it’s the Lego set I wanted.”
Hunter’s eyes lit up for a moment at the words Lego set, then he seemed to remember why he was here. “Sorry I took it.”
“Maybe you can help me build it after I open it,” Miles said.
His mother smiled. June Chadwell smiled. Theo smiled. And no one smiled bigger than Hunter.
“We might move right after Christmas,” Hunter said. “But if we don’t, I’ll help you put it together. I’m good at Legos.”
The next hour was a repeat, with minor tweaks here and there, of what had happened at the Dumfords’. Two of the kids weren’t as willing to forgive and forget and invite Hunter to play with the item he’d stolen, but hey, no one said they had to. At the final house, the boy who had his ant farm taken was a total gem who was more interested in telling Hunter about ants and how they operated than anything else. The kid’s little sister, who the present was from, walked up to Hunter and hugged him with a thank-you for returning the present. The mission ended on a good note.
“You were right, Policeman Stark,” Hunter said to Theo as he helped him get settled into his car seat in the back of Theo’s truck. “I feel better.”
“Good,” Theo said. “And we have a deal, right? No more stealing? If you feel bad about something and you’re all upset inside, you’ll talk to your teacher or your mom or you’ll call me. You have the card I gave you, right?”
Hunter pulled it from his pocket and held it up, smiling. “I have it.”
“Thank you so much,” his mother whispered to Theo as he got in the driver’s seat. “For the first time in months, I feel like we’re going to be okay.”
He smiled and nodded and looked in the rearview mirror at Hunter, whose blue eyes had lost the troubled fear that had poked at Theo since he’d met him.
He imagined it was Tyler or Olivia in the back seat, having gotten in trouble.
He had to be there for them the way he’d been there for Hunter, the way he’d be there for Hunter. He couldn’t be both. He couldn’t be a family man and a cop who took on dangerous missions. Hadn’t his own dad proved that? The man hadn’t been there for Theo in the big ways.
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