Triplets Find a Mom

by Annie Jones

  On the bright side, as parking-lot teacher she’d be so busy that if Sam brought the girls into their classrooms, as many parents of young children did, she wouldn’t have to interact with him. Confident in that, she began to try to brush away the worst of Donut’s hair off her slacks.

  Three quick honks startled her. She jerked her head up and jabbed her finger in the direction that Brianna had pointed earlier only to find Sam Goodacre smiling at her from behind the wheel of the family minivan.

  “Miss Bennett! Miss Bennett! Will you be at Sign Up for Your School tonight?” Hayley Goodacre hadn’t even gotten fully out onto the sidewalk before she started calling out.

  Juliette and Caroline were not far behind.

  “Hurry on into your classes, girls. You know the drill,” Sam ordered through the lowered passenger-side window.

  “You’re not coming inside with them?” Polly shaded her eyes and leaned forward to peer in at him.

  “Are you kidding? Treat them like ‘baby’ first graders? They’d never forgive me. They know what to do.”

  “Move forward.” She nodded.

  “It’s not a bad thing, you know.” He sounded defensive, as if what she thought of his parenting approach mattered to him.

  She smiled at that idea, but couldn’t allow herself to linger over the notion. “No, I mean, you’re holding up the other parents dropping off kids.” She waved him on. “Move forward.”

  “Oh, right!” He laughed and waved, rolled forward but slowed again long enough to say, “I’d like to see you tonight at the sign-up.”

  “Really?” Maybe it was the loneliness of the past weekend or nerves for the first day of school, but hearing Sam say he wanted to see her made her pulse quicken. Maybe the days since their kiss had him rethinking all his—

  “We’ve got a lot to talk about to get Caroline started on the right track this year.”

  “Right. Caroline,” she murmured under her breath. She pushed back her shoulders, raised her hand and gave another wave. “Move on, please.”

  This time she was sending a message to herself.

  Sam had a plan. In his situation he couldn’t afford not to. Although the past ten days—ever since he veered from his course to see if a certain young lady needed his help—Sam’s plans hadn’t seemed to mean a whole lot. But tonight, the first time the girls would be able to learn about and join school-sponsored clubs and learn about opportunities for after-school activities, Sam had come up with something that couldn’t fail. Divide and conquer. Three girls, three adults, one mission—to help Caroline plunge into at least one new adventure while keeping Hayley and Juliette from going off the deep end and signing up for a dozen each.

  Sam had laid out the strategy carefully. Gina would guide Hayley through the crowd of colorful booths set up in the school gymnasium. Max would shepherd Juliette. And Sam would prod Caroline along as best he could. If any of them reached an impasse, they had agreed to go to the girl’s teachers for advice.

  Well, Max and Gina agreed. Sam felt confident he wasn’t going to need any backup. Caroline was his daughter, after all. He’d just point out the advantages of the groups that he thought might help bring her out of her shell and that would be that.

  “Caroline wants to join the book club.” Sam poked his head into the open door of Polly Bennett’s second-grade classroom barely five minutes after he had made that bold proclamation to himself.

  “Good for her.” Polly twisted around to look at him from her perch, standing halfway up a short stepladder, hanging scalloped trim along the top of a long bulletin board bearing the sign I CAN.

  “Actually I was hoping you’d help her choose something else,” Sam confessed, sheepishly. “I’d like her to be a Go-Getter.”

  “Joining the book club can be a way of being a—” Polly went up on her toes on the ladder rung, and stretched her whole body all the way to her fingertips to try to push in the last tack. The ladder wobbled.

  In an instant Sam rushed to her side. Using his own weight as ballast, he planted his boot on the bottom rung. While he grabbed the side of the ladder with one hand, the other cupped Polly’s elbow to keep her steady. He leaned in to further protect her from falling, but at the last second she righted herself.

  Looking down over her shoulder at him, a little breathless from the near spill, she finished her thought in a whisper. “A go-getter.”

  He should have pulled away immediately, especially after what had happened between them in the upstairs hallway at the farm. But standing there so close he could see the way her black bangs caught on the tips of her long eyelashes, the last thing on his mind was moving on.

  “The Go-Getters is an after-school program to get kids involved in the community and keep them active.” Reluctantly he took a step backward. “They go on supervised hikes, learn square dancing, do physical fitness challenges.”

  “Hiking and dancing? Sounds more like Juliette and Hayley’s style.” She stepped down a rung. The ladder rocked from side to side slightly.

  “I know, but it’s not like it’s a bad thing for me to want that for Caroline, too, is it?” Sam held out his hand to help her down.

  “Bad?” She slid her hand in his.

  It felt good to be there with her, to stand so close to her, to be asking her advice about Caroline and trusting that what she said would bring with it the best of intentions.

  Polly paused a moment gazing down at him. She shook her head just enough to make her hair sweep free of her eyes as she pressed her lips together as if maybe she was trying to keep herself from saying too much. She took a breath, then stepped down to the floor and tipped her head back to meet his gaze. “Not for one moment do I think you want anything that would be bad for Caroline.”

  “Thanks. I thought for a minute—”

  “But…” She withdrew her hand from his.

  He closed his suddenly empty fingers into a loose fist and smiled, reminding himself of his conviction that Polly had what was best for Caroline in mind. “But what, Polly?”

  “Sam, I just think you need to keep in mind that your triplets might be identical, but they are still individuals. What works for one, or even two, might not be right for the third sister.”

  “I’ve thought about that, Polly. I really have, but in the car on the way here, we talked about doing things that make us happy and Caroline told me she really wanted to do that this year.”

  “Good, then I assume you’ve thought that maybe she was saying that what she wanted to do this year was make you happy.”

  Not since Marie had anyone spoken to him so directly and honestly about his handling of the girls. Sam tightened his jaw. On one hand he liked finally hearing somebody give him some real advice that might actually help him. On the other hand… “I think I know my girls, Polly.”

  She nodded and moved to her desk.

  Watching Polly sitting all proper in her teacher’s chair going over her day planner, he kept getting flashes of her in his drugstore, her at his table. He could see Polly needing his help with her dog, Polly reading to his daughters. After this short time she was already that much a part of his life.

  However, that didn’t change the reality that she was a new girl in town who had told the triplets that she missed her family. What if she decided not to stay after the end of the school year? He couldn’t risk what that might do…to his girls. No, better to stick with his plan, not because it was the best choice, but because for him, it was the only one.

  He wanted to go over, put his hands on her shoulders and tell her that, but the sound of multiple little tennis shoe–clad feet came thumping and bumping down the school hallway outside the door.

  “Daddy! Daddy! We all got signed up for clubs and stuff!” Hayley flapped a paper as she and Juliette practically tumbled over each other t
o get inside Polly’s classroom.

  “Hayley! Juliette! No running!” Gina’s voice echoed after them followed by Caroline winding around into the threshold with a piece of paper of her own tucked tightly to her chest by her crossed arms.

  “Hey, sweetie, did you join the book club?” Sam tried to sound enthusiastic. He really tried.

  Caroline shook her head.

  “The current-affairs club?” He went for the second choice on the child’s list, more than a little surprised to find himself rooting for a positive answer.

  Another shake “no.”

  “Then what did you join?” he asked, stealing a sideways glance at Polly.

  “The Go-Getters!” Hayley and Juliette shouted in unison.

  Caroline ventured forward, extending her hand to show him the paper he had to sign to allow her to join the club Sam had decided she should join.

  He smiled, but deep down he couldn’t help feeling a lump in the pit of his stomach. He looked down and shifted his feet, telling himself this was a good thing. Caroline needed this.

  But when he raised his gaze to Polly’s again, he couldn’t help wondering if he had been fooling himself all along. Polly might just be right about the girls and it made his chest ache. How could he cope with knowing that the only person who could make him a better parent was the one person he believed also had the power to break his daughters’ hearts?

  Chapter Nine

  “Friday at last!” Katie Williams, one of the other second-grade teachers, who was only a couple of years older than Polly, stuck her head in the open door Friday afternoon as the rest of the staff was heading home. “Big plans for the long weekend?”

  “You mean they get longer?” Polly blinked at her teaching colleague.

  “It’s Labor Day, silly.” Katie came in and leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her yellow-, red- and black-plaid apron bib dress. “We have three whole days off.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I…uh…” Three whole days. It sounded like an eternity. It had her wondering if she was really cut out for small-town life. As soon as she thought that, memories washed over her to contradict it. From the first day when Sam lay on the drive to help her rescue the lost dog to the day his family invited her out to eat, she had loved every minute of that. Of course, that probably wasn’t just small-town homeyness.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been so busy planning so that the school week stays on track I haven’t put much thought into the weekends.” Polly pulled out the large drawer of her desk where she kept her purse. Her gaze fell on her car keys and a sense of possibility seized her…or maybe it was panic. “I guess I could always go home to Atlanta to visit.”

  It was an impulsive idea, but once she’d said it, it didn’t seem so far-fetched.

  “Really? Atlanta?” Katie turned around to gaze at the map of the United States unrolled over the chalkboard from the last lesson of the day. She tipped her head and peered closer. “Isn’t that, like, almost a twelve-hour drive?”

  “Ten hours and about fourteen minutes, door to door,” Polly murmured, thinking of how long it had taken to drive from her mother’s home to her rented house in Baconburg. Then she drew in a deep breath and shook her head, losing enthusiasm for a weekend spent bouncing between her parents’ respective houses and her sister’s restaurant. The whole thing would be a blur. And she’d probably end up being reminded how much more her family expected of her. Could her self-esteem take it right now with her big, bold move for independence still so shaky? “Of course, that could be give or take fifteen minutes depending on whose door I chose to go to.”

  “So you’d spend most of tomorrow and then Monday in the car.” Katie tapped her finger to her cheek and narrowed her eyes. “Not much time to visit. Then there’s the issue of the dog… I guess you could take him with you.”

  And turn the way-too-happy-for-comfort puppy loose in her mom’s perfectly appointed home or the home her dad now shared with the big, hissy cat given to him by his wife-to-be? Her sister’s restaurant was obviously out and her brother was allergic. And really, deep down, Polly didn’t want to go. “Maybe I’ll just hang around Baconburg.”

  Katie perked up a little too much for such a noncommittal remark. “So you’re staying at home, then?”

  At home. Polly liked that. She tugged her purse out of the drawer, grabbed her keys and tossed them up to catch them again. “Looks like that is exactly where I’ll be.”

  “And you don’t have plans?” Katie raised her voice.

  “Nope, just to stay at home and—”

  “Great!” Brianna Bradley popped into the room from the hallway where she’d clearly been hovering, waiting for this very news from Polly before she appeared. “That means you’re available!”

  “Available?” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “For what?”

  “The Go-Getters are having an event tomorrow to raise money to go to the Museum Center in Cincinnati. It’s a dog wash at the fire station.”

  Dog wash with the Go-Getters? Red flags went up all over the place in Polly’s mind, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to explain her reservations to the other teachers without confessing her attraction to Sam Goodacre.

  “They need extra sponsors and a little bird…three of them, actually, told us you’d be the perfect one to ask to pitch in,” Brianna summed up.

  “You do have a dog, after all,” Katie rushed to add. “And unless you just gave him a bath last night…”

  “No, I haven’t bathed him since…” The image of Sam sitting on the bathroom floor rubbing a towel over the dog’s back while the little guy tried to lick his face filled Polly with the sweetest warmth tinged with sadness. “Um, no, he hasn’t had a bath lately.”

  “Perfect. You can set the example for everyone, you know, to get them started.” Brianna came to Polly’s desk and wrote down the time, underlined, then circled it.

  Polly chewed her lower lip. This was it. Her invitation to be a part of the community.

  “What do you say?” Katie asked.

  What could she say? The weekend stretched out before her and for the first time she realized she couldn’t go “home,” not now, or she’d never really be home in Baconburg. And the truth was, she was the perfect one for this particular job. She had the time. She had a special interest in watching over Caroline’s progress or lack of it. And she had a dog that needed washing…again.

  “What do I say? I say—” she picked up the piece of paper, folded it and tucked it into her purse “—I’ll be there.”

  Out in the hallway giggles rose, then faded with the sounds of small feet hurrying away.

  Polly clutched her purse to her chest and sighed. She had moved to a small town because she craved the slower pace, but Polly couldn’t help thinking those triplets had just pulled a fast one on her.

  “This is Caroline’s day, girls.” Sam waved to Juliette and Hayley from the drive while they waited on the porch pouting. This was his plan, the new-and- improved version. He wouldn’t just push Caroline to find things to help her forge ahead; he’d use this as an opportunity to give her some special attention. So much for Polly’s concerns about his not allowing Caroline to explore her individuality. “It’s Caroline’s club. Her fundraiser.”

  “Her plan,” Gina muttered as she tucked Caroline into the passenger seat and double-checked that her seat belt fit properly.

  “What?” Sam glared at his sister over the top of the minivan’s hood.

  “You don’t think she’s all excited to spend her Saturday morning washing just any old dog, do you?” Gina laughed and shook her head. “No wonder it was so easy to get you to volunteer to be a parent sponsor.”

  “Nobody ‘got’ me to volunteer. I’m doing this to support Caroline and…” And that’s when Gina’s po
int hit him. He thought about swapping kid duties with his sister, to have her attend the event and let him take charge at home. He glanced inside the car at Caroline. “Miss Bennett is going to be at this deal, I take it.”

  “Just give in and make the most of it, old man. Invite Polly and Donut out to the house for our barbecue Monday,” Gina called out as she walked toward the house, not even looking back as if his agreement was a foregone conclusion.

  “Your barbecue,” he corrected, realizing that if he didn’t take Caroline to the Go-Getters dog wash Gina would just make sure Polly and the pup made it out here for the holiday get-together. “I’m just going to hang around for the food and if you need any heavy lifting. Besides, I thought that barbecue was for the people helping you run the Pumpkin Jump. Polly’s not in that group. Doesn’t make sense to invite her.”

  “Makes perfect sense to me,” Gina shouted at him from the porch.

  “Us, too,” Juliette and Hayley mimicked her.

  “Let’s go, Daddy!” Caroline kicked her feet and beamed at him. He hadn’t gotten a smile that big out of her or heard her that excited to do anything in a long time.

  “I have to go,” he concluded. Have to, not want to. As he’d pointed out to Polly, you can’t really hide in a small town. The sooner he crossed paths with the pretty teacher again, the better. From then on, it would be smooth sailing, right?

  “Let’s do this, kiddo,” he said as he slid behind the wheel and started the van. “Full speed ahead.”

  Minutes later they parked behind the drugstore and headed through the drugstore as a shortcut to the firehouse, just down the block.

  “I can go in your place and you can stay here to mind the store and try to figure out how to install this countertop if you—”

  “No, thanks.” Sam didn’t allow his brother’s offer to break his momentum as they passed through the store toward their destination. “We have a job to do.”