A Mother For His Child

by Lilian Darcy

  He and Daniel were leaving Arizona today, heading east by car in the wake of all their possessions. He would officially join Maggie’s practice ten days from now.

  As it turned out, not before he had to endure one more encounter with Alison, however. She was waiting for them outside the building, after they’d said a round of goodbyes to the child-care centre’s staff.

  Since he hadn’t seen her for several months, and only sporadically in the months before that, Daniel hardly knew who she was. The little guy took it in stride, therefore, when she simply stared down at him with a set, frozen face for a second or two then focused her gaze on Will.

  She must have come straight from the hospital, as she wore a tailored powder-blue suit that highlighted her ice-cool blonde colouring, with a doctor’s white coat on top. It had a stethoscope in the pocket, and her hospital ID tag was clipped to her lapel. DR ALISON MEAD, NEUROSURGERY, it read. She’d gone back to her maiden name before the divorce had been finalised. Inconsequentially, Will suddenly remembered that Maggie had never taken her husband’s name at all.

  ‘So you really have won this,’ Alison told him briskly. ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a victory,’ he growled in reply. ‘It was never meant to be a battle, Alison.’

  ‘How could we have shared him, when we had such different attitudes?’ she questioned in a brittle tone. Her light blue eyes flashed.

  ‘By wanting to,’ Will answered, determined to keep calm and rational. ‘By putting Daniel’s needs first. By working on it.’

  She shook her head and changed tack suddenly. ‘They had him outside again.’ She meant the child-care centre’s staff. ‘I saw him playing on a tricycle when I arrived.’

  ‘He’s fine with that, for short periods,’ Will told her. ‘They keep a wet towel on hand, and he’s learning to use it himself as soon as he feels hot. If he forgets, they remind him or do it for him.’

  ‘It was safer when I kept him inside and sitting quietly. That way, I knew he was all right.’

  ‘You can’t keep a child indoors watching TV with a nanny for twelve hours a day.’

  ‘For his own safety.’

  ‘You drugged him, Alison.’

  ‘I medicated him for ADD.’

  ‘He doesn’t have attention deficit disorder!’

  ‘It was medically appropriate.’ She blinked back tears.

  ‘The judge disagreed.’

  ‘He needed to be kept quiet for his own safety,’ she repeated.

  ‘For his own safety,’ Will echoed, his throat and scalp both painfully tight, ‘we should get going. This is what’s dangerous, keeping him here in the blazing sun while we talk.’ Talking was a tactful word for what they were doing. They were fighting, as usual, and he hated having Daniel as a witness to it. He finished, ‘And I don’t think there’s anything more to say.’

  He lifted Daniel, who put his little head on Will’s broad shoulder. Will touched a hand to one small, soft cheek and felt its warmth.

  ‘Except goodbye,’ Alison said. Her voice was foggy now, and her tone high and trembling, on the edge of wild sobs.

  ‘I’ve told you again and again, it doesn’t have to be goodbye.’ Emotion snarled in his throat. ‘I never wanted this!’

  ‘You’re moving him all the way across the country, willy-nilly,’ she accused, reminding him of just how he’d agonised over that decision during weeks of sleepless nights. His approach to Maggie about the practice had been anything but ‘willy-nilly’.

  ‘Because he needs a different climate, and because you’ve persistently refused to stop harassing me,’ he explained patiently, yet again. ‘To the point where all three of us need some distance. I wanted us to find the right solution to the issue of his well-being together. You know I only began to consider New York State when things between us had totally broken down. You know that, and if it continued, our conflict would injure our son, if it hasn’t already. I won’t have that, so we’re leaving.’

  ‘You’re right. Obviously.’ Her harsh laugh confused him. Was this sarcasm? Or one of her erratic capitulations? ‘I have surgery in half an hour. This is not going to interfere with my career. I have worked for this!’ she threw out. She looked at her watch. ‘And I have a date tonight!’

  If it was bait, he didn’t rise to it.

  ‘I’ll phone you as often as you want,’ he said. ‘I’ll send photos.’

  She shook her head with a jerk. ‘Don’t. As I’ve said, you’ve won. I’m not in the contest any more, so there’s no point. It would only be hurtful.’ She dabbed at her eyes, suddenly, with a lace-edged cambric handkerchief and said, half to herself, ‘If he’d been normal…If only he had, it would all have been different! I know I haven’t been the best mother to him, but I could have been!’

  Then she turned abruptly and almost ran, her hanky still pressed to her face. He heard her mutter something about her make-up, and being late for surgery. Just around the corner in a sidestreet, a car door banged and an engine started. Will wondered how long she had sat there earlier, waiting for him, with the engine running, no doubt, to keep the car cool.

  Daniel stayed propped in his arms, silent until he said, ‘Lady went in the car.’

  ‘Yes, the lady went in the car,’ Will agreed, while his heart gave a violent twist. He forced his voice into an upbeat tone. ‘Hey, let’s go say goodbye to Nanny Sarah, shall we?’ He’d split Daniel’s child-care arrangements between a structured centre that offered contact with other children in the mornings and the personal care of a nanny each afternoon, and that had worked out well. He hoped to do the same at Picnic Point. ‘Then we’ve got a lot of driving to do.’

  ‘Going to live at the lake?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t that great?’

  Daniel could say the letter L now, Will observed. It was one of those oddly dispassionate observations that could hit you in the midst of complete emotional turmoil. Five weeks ago, when they’d visited Picnic Point, he’d said ‘yake’, not ‘lake’. Kids learned fast, and five weeks seemed like a long time in their little lives. To an adult, it was the blink of an eye. Had it really been five weeks since he’d spent half the night in Maggie’s bed?

  Will and his son were due to arrive at Picnic Point with the change of season. Through a local realtor, Will had rented a vacation home that had been renovated and winterised a few years earlier. It was about a mile north of Maggie’s place, offering an easy and scenic drive to and from the practice each day.

  On Will’s behalf, Maggie had picked up the key from the realtor and taken delivery of his furniture and other possessions two days earlier. She had directed the men to place the most obvious items of furniture in their correct rooms. Beds upstairs. Dark red leather couch and matching armchairs in the living-room. Wooden table and four upright chairs in the huge, eat-in kitchen. When the removers left, however, there were mountains of boxes still piled in most of the rooms, and it would take him some time to settle in.

  Now, entering the house again on a Thursday, the day Will and Daniel were due to arrive, Maggie felt as if she were trespassing. Outside, behind the house, the mountains burned and flamed with colour. Red maples, yellow birch, tan-orange beech. It had been chilly all week, too. Summer was definitely over.

  She went into the basement, turned on the power and the hot-water system, then approached the furnace. It was the same model as her own, thank goodness, so she was able to light the pilot and get it going with no difficulty. Upstairs once more, she felt the warmth coming up with satisfying strength through the ducts in the floor.

  As an added welcome, she laid a fire in the rustic stone hearth and left matches in a prominent spot on the mantel-piece. She had brought basic supplies for the fridge and the pantry as well. Milk and breakfast cereal. Coffee, eggs, cheese and bread. A head of lettuce, a jar of peanut butter and some cans of soup.

  It was one-fifty by this time, and she had appointments scheduled to start again at two. That gave her a good reason not
to stay to welcome Will and Daniel personally. Will had said he hoped to arrive ‘early in the afternoon’ in order to get at least a few things unpacked and in order before Daniel needed to be fed and tucked into bed. Ten to two was ‘early in the afternoon’, wasn’t it?

  By the time she’d put a couple of her own spare towels and a bar of scented soap in the bathroom and checked that the phone was working, she was jumping every time she heard the sound of a car.

  No point in pretending to herself. She was nervous about their imminent meeting, after what had happened that Sunday night almost six weeks ago. She’d been hiding behind a mask of practicality ever since, but that wouldn’t be possible for much longer. She would have to confront her own feelings…and Will’s expectations.

  She arrived back at the practice and found two cars already parked in front. Neither of them had Will’s Arizona licence plate, however. That meant patients were waiting for her.

  After acknowledging them in the waiting room with a brief smile, she gave Will’s key to Marilyn and told her in a tone of brisk efficiency, ‘Put this in an envelope for Dr Braggett, could you, Marilyn? Barring delays, he should be here within the next hour or so to pick it up. He phoned me last night from a motel in eastern Pennsylvania, and he was hoping to get an early start this morning.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him,’ Marilyn said wickedly. ‘His voice sounds so sexy on the phone.’

  It would have been an alarming statement if Maggie’s office manager hadn’t been fifty-five years old, happily married and a grandmother six times over.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,’ Maggie said lightly, and disappeared into her office.

  She was still with her first patient when she heard Will’s ‘sexy voice’ coming from the waiting room. Oh, be honest, Marilyn wasn’t the only one who thought that way! Instinctively, she wanted to try and catch his words, but forced herself not to lose focus. Her patient was an elderly man with prostate cancer, here for the results of his latest PSA test, and he needed reassurance.

  ‘Point four is an excellent result,’ she told him. ‘The medication is obviously working as it’s supposed to do.’

  ‘How long have I got, then, Dr Lawless? Can you give me a number?’

  ‘You’ve got long enough that I very much doubt prostate cancer will be the thing that kills you. When this particular form of cancer occurs at your age, it usually progresses very slowly, and lowering your testosterone with the medication you’re on will inhibit it even further. We’ll send you a reminder notice when it’s time to have your PSA checked again, OK?’

  He had a couple more questions, which Maggie answered in conscientious detail, and by the time she’d ushered Mr Waddell out, Will and Daniel were no longer in the waiting room. She almost asked Marilyn about it.

  So, did you achieve a successful outcome to the key hand-over situation?

  But that would have been ridiculous. Obviously, he’d had an uneventful trip. Obviously, he’d collected the key. It was hardly likely that he’d fail to find the house, whose mailbox was clearly marked. Maggie had also sent him a couple of pictures, as part of her drive for efficiency over this whole partnership thing.

  She’d opened the door to personal vulnerability, but on a professional level she was determined to remain competent and in control.

  Will would, no doubt, contact her at the appropriate time. No, on second thoughts, she’d give him a call herself once appointment hours were over, to welcome him and ask if there was anything more he needed. He would then start work part-time on Monday as they’d agreed. The weekend remained as uncharted territory in between. Marilyn was already scheduling appointments for him. Several of Mark’s male patients had been pleased to hear that a man was joining the practice, and she would tell Will so.

  Maggie had handled the whole process with just this efficient good sense over the past six weeks, and if this was nothing more than a veneer, she was satisfied that she was the only one who knew it.

  So far.

  Three hours later, she had seen her last patient and was just about to pick up the phone and call Will, but he beat her to it. She had the usual reaction when she heard his voice. Her heart flipped. Her strength drained dramatically. And she was furious with herself, and so determined to stay cool that her voice came out of her mouth with icicles attached. Her delivery had the clipped quality of an army sergeant’s instructions for drill.

  ‘Good to hear from you, Will, and I’m glad you made it safely. Now, about the weekend—’

  ‘Yes, I’ll need it to settle in,’ he answered. Not quite as clipped, but close. ‘But if you did need me to see a patient or two…’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course not.’ Maggie took a breath, then dealt her cards on the table. ‘I wanted to offer some help, that’s all.’

  At the other end of the phone, Will was silent for a few seconds, on shaky ground. How did he interpret her almost brusque offer? He didn’t think she was just talking about shelving a few boxes of books.

  He massaged his temples with finger and thumb. Driving from Arizona in six days with a two-year-old had been no picnic. He’d started early and finished late each day, in order to encourage Daniel to nap in the car. In the middle of the day, they’d taken a good break, detouring from the interstate highway to find a park to explore and some food that wasn’t ‘fast’.

  Now he ached all over, and a phantom image of the wide grey ribbon of highway still flickered continuously in the back of his mind. He hadn’t particularly wanted to call Maggie right now. Was this, or was this not, a personal as well as a professional relationship that was just about to get onto a new and very different footing? His doubt on the issue was unaccustomed…except that this was Maggie Lawless and, true to her name, she’d always broken all the rules where he was concerned.

  To be honest with himself, he was too tired to want an answer to the question immediately. In recent years, life had taught him to be cautious, and his experience of marriage didn’t tempt him to contemplate another long-term relationship.

  He shouldn’t have slept with her six weeks ago. He should have taken it more slowly. If she wanted to add some distance now, that was good.

  ‘Some help would be great,’ he finally said, going along with the ambiguity of her offer. ‘Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, all right. Perfect. I’ll get some errands done in the morning and come up right after lunch.’

  And, of course, she did exactly that, arriving at just after one-thirty. In their long, difficult acquaintance, he couldn’t ever remember her letting down a friend. Her loyalty to Alison, for example, had been unflagging. He suddenly wondered, however, if his avoidance of the full story of their divorce and custody battle had less to do with protecting that loyalty than with protecting his own back.

  The covered casserole dish in her hands distracted him from this unanswerable question.

  ‘You don’t want to have to cook when you’ve got so much else to do,’ she said quickly, when she saw his eyes alight on the dish. ‘Hi, Daniel!’

  Conveniently, he also didn’t have to wonder whether they should touch. Daniel was clinging to his legs, and Maggie held the casserole in front of her like a shield. Or maybe a battering ram.

  She must have made it this morning, because the savoury aroma coming from the steaming dish was strong. It reminded Will of his mother’s relentless barrage of perfect home-cooked meals, from her ever-expanding indexed recipe file. She’d always been such a perfect wife and mother, the way Alison had been a perfect student, a perfect girlfriend, a perfect doctor.

  Maggie was different. A little less perfect and a lot more real.

  ‘It smells great,’ he told her.

  ‘Hope so.’ She shrugged and grinned. ‘I didn’t use a recipe. Just threw in what I had.’

  He took it from her and peered through the moisture-beaded glass lid. ‘Little bits of crispy bacon sprinkled generously on top can cover a multitude of culinary sins, as far as
I’m concerned,’ he said.

  She grinned again, looking relieved but still a little tense. ‘Exactly!’

  Daniel stopped clinging and began jumping up and down, making silly sounds. The tension eased. Will felt it in the way his breathing deepened and relaxed, and in the little lift of expectation in his chest. She’d stay to eat tonight. Daniel would go to bed. They’d pick up where they’d left off nearly six weeks ago. If it had been a mistake, he decided, it was one he wanted to make many times more.

  Her figure-hugging red sweater and blue jeans would disappear, as would his own similar work clothes—jeans and white T-shirt—and they’d touch and entwine, skin to skin, pleasuring each other. No recipe required. They’d make it up as they went along, and it would be utterly delicious.

  He couldn’t imagine Maggie Lawless ever getting clingy or dependent or conventional. They would have a careful yet passionate affair which would end without recrimination when the time was right. He would be able to keep Daniel safely out of the equation, where he belonged.

  Perfect!

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘HE’S asleep.’

  The words arrived at the bottom of the stairs before Will did, and contained a note of parental relief that Maggie recognised.

  ‘He must have been tired from all that “helping” he did,’ she teased, and Will laughed. They could have filled the bookshelves in the living-room twice as fast without a two-year-old’s assistance.

  ‘Should we do the rest of the boxes in this room?’ Maggie suggested, trying not to notice what his laugh did to his dark eyes.

  ‘Without any “help”?’ Will questioned.

  ‘Well…yes.’

  ‘No. Let’s not,’ he said. ‘Let’s have…coffee, or something.’

  He crossed the room towards her. Their eyes met for a moment, but Maggie couldn’t hold the contact. Didn’t want to. She examined the coffee-table very intently instead. Its dark, polished surface didn’t have the treacherous depth of Will’s eyes.