The Comeback Mom

by Muriel Jensen

  “With.”

  “All right. Ten minutes.” He picked up the carrier, caught Savannah’s hand and headed downstairs.

  LIBBY LOOKED OVER the clock as Savannah excitedly told the story of her morning in Cranberry Harbor.

  “We had sugar doughnuts just like Rosie!”

  “At a Scandinavian bakery rather than a boulangerie,” Jared translated.

  “And there was this biiiiig—” her little hands stretched way out to each side “—street with stores on it.”

  “Not the Champs-Élysées. Front Street.”

  “That’s where the clock was.”

  “I don’t know what the name of it is, but it wasn’t F. A. O. Schwartz.”

  “I dropped it and we had to pay for it.” Savannah added that with a note of chagrin. Then she smiled across the table at Jared. “But he didn’t yell at me, and he still likes me.”

  Libby saw in the child’s manner how much more comfortable she’d grown with Jared over the past few days. She also saw how gentle and sincere he was with her, how patient with the baby, how willing he was to extend himself to see that they were comfortable and secure. She’d heard Zachary squalling, and Jared’s quiet voice, talking to him.

  She didn’t like the way it was complicating her position, but as someone who loved the children, she couldn’t ignore the benefits to them.

  So she tried not to think about the ultimate results of those developing relationships and tried to concentrate on the moment.

  “This should be easy to repair,” she said. “And I can match the paint on the bird to fix that nick.”

  He sat back in his chair, one ankle resting on the other knee. He looked relaxed and somehow satisfied as he nodded. “I know it can be fixed,” he said with a disparaging grimace. “I just thought it was kind of cutesy.”

  “Well, we like cutesy, don’t we, Savannah? We’ll put it in your room and move that plain round one.”

  Savannah applauded the idea. Her cocoa finished, she came around the table to climb into Jared’s lap. Libby saw the indulgent smile in his eyes as he settled her comfortably in the crook of his arm.

  “What are we gonna do now?” Savannah asked. She yawned hugely.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Can we go swimming?”

  “Too cold.”

  “Do you have a merry-go-round?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  She sighed and leaned sideways to rest her head against his chest.

  “Do you have movies?”

  “You want to see East of Eden with James Dean?”

  She sat up, puzzled. “What’s that?”

  He laughed, pulled her head back to his chest and kissed the top of her head. “I was teasing you. I don’t have any kids’ movies, but we’ll have to get some. Want to see if you can find cartoons on television?”

  “Okay. Can I do the clicker?”

  “Sure. The Disney Channel is on twenty-six.”

  She slid off his lap and frowned. “I don’t know two-number numbers. Can you find it?”

  “Sure.” He followed her into the living room and Libby eavesdropped on their conversation as she finished her last sip of hot chocolate.

  “Two-number numbers,” he told her, “are just two one-number numbers. Like this one is made up of two and six.”

  Libby had to think about that a minute, but Savannah seemed to grasp it immediately.

  “Oh, yeah. That one and that one.”

  “Right. So you press two, and then you press six, and you get channel twenty-six.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then a happy squeal as the sounds of a cheerful ditty came from the television.

  Libby found herself smiling at Savannah’s success. Then she groaned and dropped her head onto her folded arms as she realized Jared’s progress with the children was a cause for anguish and not joy.

  If he won them over, she lost. She couldn’t take happy children away from their environment.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Jared’s concerned voice just above her made her raise her head in alarm. She had to remember her place, the scam, her pose.

  But that was hard to do when he was bent over her so solicitously, his large, warm hand on her back, his eyes dark and kind.

  “Ah…nothing,” she said. “Just…stiff. My arms are stiff from raising them over my head.” She rotated her shoulders to add credibility to her story. “I’m fine really.”

  He sat at a right angle to her and studied her face, as though trying to read the truth there. She couldn’t seem to let her eyes settle on his. They were nice. She didn’t want to know that.

  “Want a couple of Ibuprofen?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.” She smiled and knew she looked nervous. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “It’s your day off.”

  “I know. But I’d like to get that done.”

  “There’s no hurry, is there?”

  It was weird that she felt as though there was. The pressure of time had been building over the past few days, though she didn’t understand why. She began to wonder if everyone who lied felt that way. Maybe it was the feeling that one could be exposed at any moment that created a sense of urgency.

  “No. But when the light changes…” She shrugged. “It’s harder to work.” She stood, thinking she had to get away from him. Those eyes were reading her thoughts; she knew it.

  He drew back. “Then go ahead,” he said. “It’s your day.”

  Late in the afternoon, Libby went downstairs to make a sandwich and brought it back upstairs with her so that she wouldn’t have to have dinner with Jared and the children.

  It would be good for him, she thought, to see what it was it like to try to eat while feeding a baby and a fouryear-old. After a whole day of dealing with the children on his own, this could very well put him over the edge. She hoped so. Or so she told herself.

  The real truth was, she was beginning to feel serious pangs of conscience. When she wasn’t harassing him, he was very kind to her. And he was doing well with the children. She was beginning to feel a certain empathy with him that was sharply at odds with what she’d come here to do.

  But there was no way she was relinquishing her claim to them. She had to have them. That had to be the point! Otherwise, why would she have been brought back in time to the day she’d been supposed to claim them?

  So what did she do now? She had no idea. And she didn’t want to have to sit across the table from him while she struggled with her options.

  She turned the light on in the room at four and kept painting. Through the window, she saw swiftly moving clouds darken the sky and threaten a change of weather overnight.

  Savannah did not reappear, and Libby guessed Jared was protecting her day off by keeping the child downstairs.

  She cleaned up about eight, knowing Jared would be bringing Savannah up soon for a bath before bed. She carried the ladder and her paints into her own room and closed the door.

  The room’s proportions seemed small suddenly. Even confining. She went to her drafting table for something to do to while away the rest of the evening, then decided that her creative self needed a rest after the long day she’d put in.

  She turned on the small television tucked into a shelf in the corner of her room, pulled off her paint-spattered clothes and dropped them into the bottom of her closet. She wrapped herself in a pink velour robe and lay on the bed to stretch her cramped muscles. It took her a circuit of the channels to find something she wanted to watch, then her eyes drifted closed. The last thing she remembered was Cindy Crawford advertising kissable lipstick.

  “SHE WON’T talk to me,” Savannah complained to Jared with a pout as he tossed her blankets back. She’d run across the hall to say good-night to Libby and appeared crestfallen.

  “Maybe she fell asleep,” Jared said, putting a finger to his lips to remind her to keep her voice down. Zachary was asleep in the crib.

  Savannah looked at him impat
iently as she climbed into bed. “She’s bigger than me. She can stay up late!”

  “I see.” He fluffed her pillows and tucked her in. “But you know, sometimes adults like to go to bed early. Especially when they’ve worked really hard. And she did a lot of painting in here today.”

  Savannah smiled. “Yeah.” She pointed to the Rosie character on the wall opposite her. “That’s Rosie.” Her finger moved to the cat. “And Tux. And that’s the…the tower thing.”

  “The Eiffel Tower,” Jared said.

  “Yeah. I always forget that.” Then she smiled into his eyes. “But I know your name now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he challenged gently, kneeling beside her bed. “What is it?”

  “It’s Jared.”

  “Very good.”

  She reached her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

  He hugged her tightly. “Good night, baby,” he said, and got to his feet to turn off the light.

  “I’m not a baby” came indignantly out of the darkness, then was followed immediately by a gasp of surprise. “Jared! Look!”

  He stopped on his way to the door. “Where?”

  “Up there!”

  He looked up and saw stars twinkling from Libby’s border. She’d put something in the paint to make them glitter in the darkness.

  “Wow!” Savannah breathed.

  “Cool,” Jared agreed, smiling over the fanciful touch. “You can wish on one. Do you know about wishing on a star?”

  “Yeah.” She launched into the first few bars of the tune heard often on the Disney Channel. “It’s like magic.”

  “Yes. Sometimes. Kind of.”

  “Can I wish for Mommy to come back? And Daddy?”

  He wandered back toward the bed, wishing he’d never brought the subject up. She was trying so hard to adjust.

  “No,” he said firmly but with difficulty as he squatted beside her again and patted her tiny hand. He had to clear his throat. “Sometimes wishing on a star is supposed to make dreams come true, but people who’ve gone to heaven don’t get involved in dreams anymore. You have to wish for things in the future.”

  “What’s the future?”

  “Things that haven’t happened yet. Things that could happen tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet a moment, then she said briskly, “Okay, I know. I’ll wish that if Mommy can’t come back that Libby could be my mommy.”

  Oh, good. He’d averted a possible encounter with grief, only to have to confront the impossible.

  But he didn’t have to tell Savannah it couldn’t happen. She was entitled to wish for what she wanted to wish for. He just had to remind her that magic was chancy.

  “Sometimes…” he said cautiously, “wishes don’t always come true. Sometimes there are other things planned for us that we can’t even guess about.”

  “But Libby made the star,” she said emphatically, determinedly. Then her small right hand shot out in the darkness to point to the largest star on the wall facing her. It sat just above the central spire of Notre Dame Cathedral. “I’m gonna wish on that one.”

  That little hand came back to settle on his in which he’d enfolded her left hand. He remained still, his much larger hand sandwiched between her two, energy emanating from her as she made her wish.

  She wrapped her arms around him again and kissed his cheek. “Good night,” she said again. She sounded lighthearted.

  He’d become enough of a parent in the brief week he’d had her to be unwilling to do anything to dilute her happiness.

  He hugged her again and left the room.

  From his room, he heard Libby’s television clearly. She was listening to the Arts and Entertainment Channel, if he wasn’t mistaken. Something British.

  He frowned as he stood just beside the door that adjoined their rooms. He knew she would not have ignored the child’s knock if she’d been awake. Then he remembered how she’d complained about muscle pain when they’d had cocoa in the kitchen. Was she in pain or simply asleep?

  He put his hand on the knob, prepared to turn it, then stopped himself. What if she was awake and he walked into her room uninvited? As his employee, she’d have a sexual-harassment case against him before he could even explain.

  He considered that a moment, then turned the knob. He’d be damned if he’d be held prisoner and be prevented from checking on someone’s good health by the possible extremes of political correctness.

  He opened the door. All he could see was the top of Libby’s head against her pillows. He moved cautiously into the room and said her name quietly, afraid of terrifying her if she was awake.

  When there was no response, he moved farther in and judged, by the arm dangling limply off the bed and the absolute stillness of one long and creamy thigh exposed by a parted robe, that she was fast asleep.

  He went quietly to turn off the television, then moved back to the bed. He took the blankets she’d kicked to the foot and pulled them gently over her. Her brow pleated, she made a little sound between a whimper and a moan, and he froze where he stood, certain she would open her eyes and scream.

  But she did something else entirely. She puckered her lips and strained slightly off the pillow as though she were meeting another pair of lips in her dreams.

  He was mesmerized. The pull to respond was almost overwhelming. Thick dark eyelashes lay on pale ivory cheeks, and her mouth, drawn into a tight circle like the center of a flower, was pale pink, the lipstick worn off.

  A slender hand fluttered on the pillow near a tangle of sunshine-colored hair.

  He leaned halfway toward her, willing to flout societal rules again and take his chances, but the pucker turned suddenly to a smile and she rolled over.

  Acutely disappointed—and concerned that he was—he readjusted the blankets again, left the room and pulled the connecting door quietly closed behind him.

  Chapter Six

  Libby heard the thunder as though in a dream. It rumbled at the edge of her consciousness, quietly ominous. No, not thunder. Please not thunder. She tried to cover her ears, but she couldn’t move her hands.

  Thunder clapped again, louder this time. She saw the flash of light from behind closed eyelids and heard the loud, resounding crash within just a few seconds. It was coming closer. No.

  Again she tried to move, but she couldn’t free her arms and something was wrapped around her feet. She tried to force herself awake, but she was helpless.

  She braced herself, sure she knew what was coming next.

  Light flashed as if a light had been turned on; the thunder exploded directly overhead, mingling with the light, creating the effect of a bombing or a train wreck or some other horrible disaster that involved scorching light and mind-numbing sound.

  She finally managed to throw off the blankets, perspiration standing out on her forehead, and saw that she was in darkness.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a dream. Then light flared brightly and thunder crashed simultaneously, growling, deafening, terrifying.

  Her heart thumping inside her, she scrambled out of bed and experienced a moment of complete confusion. Where was she? Where in time was she? Was this some cosmic realigning of her life? Would this all clear, and she would walk out her door and find herself in colonial America or medieval England? Or ten years into the future to her quiet, lonely life?

  Panic fisted in her throat. Somehow the latter seemed like the worst of all the possibilities.

  Thunder roared again, over and over, making her feel as though it beat on her directly, personally. A cry in her throat, she stretched both hands ahead of her in the darkness and went forward, looking for a door.

  JARED AWOKE with the first clap. An instinct, newly in use but deeply ingrained, sent him flying out of bed and running across the hall to the children’s room.

  Zachary, who’d awakened shortly after midnight but had gone to sleep immediately after a bottle, slept on, impervious to the noise.

  Savannah was burrowed under the blankets, b
ut she, too, was fast asleep.

  He stood still as the room filled with light and thunder crashed again, closer this time. He was certain that both children would awake at any moment, terrified by the sound.

  But they didn’t. Thunder crashed directly overhead, the sound shaking the room, vibrating loudly, until it finally diminished. Neither child stirred.

  It was probably against some rule, he thought with a grudging smile, for Zachary to be awake while he himself was awake.

  He finally left their door ajar, crossed the hall and went back to his bed.

  He was debating the options of finding a book or going downstairs and making a pot of coffee, when the door joining his room with Libby’s burst open.

  He saw her blond hair like a shadow image in the darkness just before she collided with him. She cried out and he caught her arms to steady her. He felt the perspiration on her, heard the agitated way she drew a breath, and surmised that although the children were sleeping through the storm, their nanny was terrified.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s just a thunderstorm.”

  One of her hands moved up to touch his face. “Who are you?” she asked. She sounded truly frightened, completely disoriented.

  “It’s Jared,” he said, trying to ignore the unsettling effects of her fingertips skimming over his lips. He laughed, primarily to distract himself. “Why? Who were you expecting?”

  She stiffened under his hands, then a small laugh that sounded like relief escaped her and she collapsed against him, her arms wrapping around his waist, her head settling on his shoulder. “Jared. Jared. Hi. I thought you were some minuteman or…one of Arthur’s knights.”

  LIGHT BURST around them and thunder ground the silence for a long few seconds.

  Libby leaned closer, held tighter, and he closed his arms around her and hovered over her protectively.

  He felt curiously as though lightning were flashing in his brain. Every sensory corner of it was lit with sudden sharpness. The floral fragrance of her hair wafted around him; her eyelashes fluttered against his throat; her breasts—the ones he’d dreamed about in blush lace—were now crushed against him and restrained by nothing but the fabric of a robe.