The Heart of Christmas

by Kathryn Shay

  Eliza was stuck living with their decorating choices, but that was okay. She’d signed a one-year lease. By this time next year, she hoped to be in a house better suited to her tastes. One without any vaulted ceilings, she thought as she donned a cardigan. Even with the thermostat set at sixty-five and the furnace cranking heat into the radiators, she was cold.

  Or maybe what chilled her was her lack of friends in her new community. Not that people in Arlington weren’t friendly. The divorcee in the adjacent condo often schmoozed with Eliza when they met outside in their driveways or at the Dumpster behind the fence at the end of their row. Everyone on the staff at the Adams School had welcomed Eliza warmly. In time, she knew, she’d make some genuine friends.

  But she needed a friend right now. Someone she could invite over for a bottle of wine and some intimate talk. Someone she could confide in about the ridiculous crush she had on the father of an Adams student.

  She tried to imagine what such a friend would say. “Don’t even think about it, Eliza. You can’t mess with the father of a student, especially when the student needs counseling.”

  Or: “Go for it! He’s single, you’re single, why not?”

  Or: “Urge him to send his daughter to Rosalyn Hoffman for counseling. Then go for it.”

  A truly good friend would lay the first option on Eliza. She knew she shouldn’t be thinking about Conor Malone, about the piercing power of his gaze and the span of his shoulders beneath his leather jacket, about the surge of awareness she’d felt in his presence. She shouldn’t be thinking about him as anything other than the concerned parent of a troubled child.

  She poured herself a glass of chardonnay and wandered from her chilly kitchen into her chilly great room. Her overstuffed sofa didn’t match the stark architecture, but it was comfortable, and she kept a colorful crocheted afghan draped over the back so she could wrap herself up in the cozy wool if her sweater failed to keep her warm.

  She’d just sunk into the cushions and reached for the TV remote when her cell phone rang. Setting her wine glass on the coffee table, she hurried back to the kitchen, where she’d left her tote, and swiped the phone. “Hello?”

  A brief pause and then a man’s voice: “Dr. Powell?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “This is Conor Malone. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “No, you should have,” she said automatically, then laughed. And then stopped laughing, because she shouldn’t be so pleased that the man she’d been thinking about—the man she shouldn’t be thinking about—had phoned her.

  The only reason he would have contacted her was that his daughter was having a problem. “Is Amy okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s…well, maybe not okay. I don’t know…” He sighed. “I blew it. I don’t know what to tell her. She thinks Santa isn’t going to bring her mother for Christmas because she hit that boy today and Santa doesn’t bring presents to bad children. That wasn’t what I was trying to communicate to her, but that’s what she heard.” Another sigh. “I really screwed up.”

  Her impulse was to assure him that he hadn’t screwed up. But maybe he had. She needed to consider his situation from the perspective of a child psychologist, not a woman who felt a totally inappropriate pang of lust when she thought about him.

  “I didn’t tell her she was bad,” he went on. “I know that stuff about how you criticize the behavior, not the child, and I told her that hitting people was a bad thing to do, and she started crying, stormed away from the dinner table and shut herself up inside her room.” He hesitated for a moment. “She’s too young for PMS, right?”

  Eliza permitted herself another brief laugh. “I’ve worked with some girls who I think were born with PMS. But I don’t think that’s Amy’s problem. I’ve only met her once, but I’ve gone through her file and reviewed Rosalyn Hoffman’s notes. Amy seems like a healthy, normal child, so let’s assume her reaction to the loss of her mother is a healthy, normal reaction. She’s built up a fantasy in her head of a way to get her mother back, and she’ll fight anyone who threatens that fantasy. Can you blame her? I’m sure you sometimes dream of getting your wife back, too.” Too personal? Too adult? Eliza had mentioned that last part to remind herself that thinking about Conor Malone’s gorgeous blue eyes and lanky build was inappropriate. He was a grieving widower. She’d be wise to remember that.

  “I don’t play make-believe very often,” he said. “The only thing I fantasize about these days is Amy having an easier time of it.”

  “She’s doing really well, considering.” Eliza offered him encouragement by adding, “You’re doing really well, too, Dr. Malone.”

  She heard a sound through the phone, half a cough, half a chuckle. “Nobody calls me Dr. Malone.”

  She’d used his formal title to establish some distance between him and herself. If his only fantasy was about his daughter healing, then she sure as hell shouldn’t entertain any fantasies about him. “As I said, I read Amy’s file,” she explained. “It says you have a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon and you’re the founder and CEO of a firm that develops…what was it? Some kind of security system?”

  “Network security,” he told her. “Defenses against hacking, malware, that kind of thing. But nobody calls me doctor.”

  “Mister, then.”

  “Most people call me Conor,” he said. “Except for a few who call me Butthead.”

  She smiled, then bit her lip. Was he getting personal, inviting her to call him by his first name? Or just joking around with her? Did joking imply that he wanted to get personal?

  Don’t overthink it, she cautioned herself. As the father of a student, he was firmly situated on the other side of a line she couldn’t cross.

  “So what should I do?” he asked, his voice still warm even though he’d reverted back to the serious subject of his call. “Should I try to coax Amy out of her room or should I just leave her in there?”

  “She’ll probably come out when she gets hungry,” Eliza advised. “If not, give her a little while and then tap on her door and crack it open. Tell her you want to make sure she’s all right. Don’t step inside unless she invites you. Forgive the cliché, but she needs her space right now.”

  “Okay.”

  “You are entitled to open that door, Mr. Malone.” She used his last name deliberately, for her own benefit. “You’re her father. You need to make sure she’s safe.”

  “Okay.” Yet another pause. “Can I get Dr. Hoffman’s contact information from you?”

  “Sure.” That Amy would receive counseling from Rosalyn Hoffman instead of Eliza was a wise choice, given Eliza’s unwelcome attraction to Amy’s father. Amy would probably be more comfortable with Rosalyn, anyway. Rosalyn had helped her through the worst of her trauma last year. Frankly, Eliza would just as soon Rosalyn be the one to break the news to Amy that Santa Claus didn’t exist.

  After providing Conor Malone with the phone number of the private practice where Rosalyn was currently working, Eliza said good-bye and returned to the sofa. She wrapped the afghan around her, snuggled deep into its woolen folds and took a sip of wine. She clicked the remote control, and across the room her TV came to life, filling the echoing room with the sparkling dialogue and colorful images of a romantic comedy, one of those movies about a single professional woman who doesn’t want to think about how lonely she is until a funny, handsome, utterly inappropriate guy enters her life.

  Bad choice. She flipped through the channels until she landed on a basketball game. She wasn’t much of a basketball fan, but she didn’t want to watch a movie that even remotely reflected her own life.

  Basketball was safer, she decided. Basketball and a glass of wine and the afghan her mother had given her for Christmas a few years ago. Actually, anything was safer than thinking about Conor Malone. “Butthead,” she muttered aloud, then chuckled. It didn’t seem fair that a man still undoubtedly in the throes of grief and anxious about his daughter could make her laugh.

  Som
etimes nothing in life seemed fair. That was what wine was for, she thought with a sigh.

  Chapter Three

  “THE DADDY SCHOOL,” Dennis Murphy said.

  Conor stood with Dennis in the kitchen of Dennis’s sprawling house. Erin, the female half of Dennis’s nine-year-old twins, was Amy’s best friend, and today, because Dennis’s wife had had to take a day off from work while a new hot-water heater was installed in their basement, she’d allowed each of the twins to invite a friend over after school instead of attending the after-school program at the Y. According to Dennis’s wife, Amy and Erin had shut themselves up inside Erin’s bedroom for most of the afternoon while Erin’s brother Sean and his friend wreaked havoc in the family room. They were at an age when boys believed girls had cooties and girls believed boys were gross. Conor doubted Amy would have any cause to punch Sean Murphy or his buddy, but he was relieved to hear that the children had segregated themselves onto separate floors.

  While Dennis’s wife was upstairs, alerting Amy that her father had come to take her home, Dennis and Conor loitered in the kitchen, inhaling the aroma of chicken roasting in the oven. Dennis had offered Conor a beer. Conor had declined. Dennis had asked how things were going, and for some reason Conor had told him, “I’m worried about Amy. She’s got some crazy ideas about Christmas this year, and I don’t know how to set her straight.”

  He’d always gotten along well with Dennis Murphy. Dennis had unexpectedly received full custody of the twins after his ex-wife had decided to move away from Arlington. Until his remarriage, he’d had a taste of what Conor was going through as a single father. Conor wasn’t a sexist, but honestly, parenting seemed to come more naturally to women than to men. No woman could love her child more than he loved Amy, but women had certain instincts that he seemed to be lacking.

  Maybe it wasn’t a male-female thing, or an instinctive thing. Maybe it was a Conor thing. Maybe he just plain sucked as a father.

  He’d made an appointment for Amy to start seeing Rosalyn Hoffman again starting Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, transporting Amy from school to Dr. Hoffman’s office meant Conor would have to leave work early. Not a great idea when GateKeepers was trying to nail down a major contract with the West Coast firm before the end of the year, but his daughter’s mental health took precedence.

  Life would have been easier if he’d arranged for her to meet with Eliza Powell instead. Dr. Powell worked at Amy’s school. Conor wouldn’t have had to cut out of work to chauffeur Amy to Dr. Powell’s office.

  But Dr. Hoffman had been so good with Amy. And Conor wanted Eliza Powell for himself.

  Stupid thought. Stupid and selfish. He couldn’t have Eliza Powell, even if he did want her—which, honestly, he didn’t. Shouldn’t. Mustn’t. She might be married or otherwise attached. And he was still attached to Sheila. She might be dead, but… God, just thinking about another woman felt like a betrayal.

  “The Daddy School,” Dennis was saying. “It’s a program set up by my sister-in-law and her best friend to help men become better fathers. I didn’t know which way was up when I first got custody of the twins. Then Gail—” he angled his head toward the stairs, where his wife had vanished a few minutes ago to fetch Amy “—dared me to take a few classes. She wound up taking some, too. Those Daddy School teachers really know how to cut through the crap and figure out what we need to make the whole father thing work.”

  “Classes?” The idea struck Conor as bizarre. “Like, lectures? And homework?”

  “No homework,” Dennis said with a laugh. “Lots of discussion, guys sharing strategies. Molly—my sister-in-law—runs a preschool, and her friend Allison is a pediatric nurse. They know their stuff when it comes to kids.”

  “Amy isn’t a preschooler.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Molly is an expert. Let’s face it, anyone who can get a toddler to stop whining is a genius.”

  True enough. “How do I sign up for these classes?” Conor asked, even though the thought of squeezing yet another obligation into his calendar made his head throb.

  “Just show up at the Children’s Garden Preschool at ten a.m. on Saturday. Tell Molly you’re my friend.”

  Just show up? That seemed too simple. And then Conor realized it wasn’t so simple. “Finding a babysitter on such short notice…” He sighed.

  “Yeah, that’s a challenge. Most of the Daddy School students have wives or ex-wives or partners to stay home with the kids. But if you can’t find a sitter, you can bring Amy with you. Molly usually has one of the other preschool teachers keeping an eye on any children who come with their dads.”

  Conor wasn’t sure how Amy would feel about spending Saturday morning in a preschool, surrounded by toddler toys and overseen by a teacher who spoke in single-syllable words. She might be illogically fixated on the idea of Santa, but she was a smart girl. She devoured chapter books. She drew beautiful, elaborate pictures. She was as comfortable around computers as her father was.

  Maybe she could sit quietly in a corner of the preschool with a few books, or a sketch pad, or a tablet. She could sketch and read and play computer games while ten feet away, her father tried to learn how to be a better dad. Yeah, right.

  He’d have to find a babysitter. Or else give up on attending the Daddy School. He wondered if Dennis’s sister-in-law taught classes on how to land a babysitter. That was one essential parenting skill he still hadn’t mastered.

  ELIZA TOLD HERSELF she didn’t want the phone call to be from Conor, but she was inordinately pleased when it was. The last time he’d called her, a couple of days ago, he’d told her he had made an appointment for Amy with Rosalyn Hoffman. “I wanted you to know,” he’d said. “It has nothing to do with whether I think you’re a good psychologist or anything. It’s just that Amy knows Dr. Hoffman.”

  “That’s fine,” Eliza had assured him, and she’d meant it. Continuity and consistency were good things for a child who’d lost so much. Eliza certainly hadn’t felt judged or rejected. In fact, a part of her had been relieved that Conor’s decision removed an ethical barrier. If Amy wasn’t Eliza’s patient, Eliza and Conor could become…

  What? Friends? Certainly nothing more than that.

  Yet they’d talked on the phone, as friends, for a good twenty minutes. About his work. About reputable auto mechanics in Arlington; her car would be due for a tune-up in January. About the Adams School’s annual holiday concert. Conor would be there; Amy sang in the school chorus.

  Eliza had warned herself that the main reason for his call had been to inform her that Rosalyn Hoffman would be working with his daughter. He would never have a reason to talk to her again. She had no excuse to be disappointed when the only call she’d gotten the following evening had been from her credit card company, offering her bonus points if she spent a thousand dollars on holiday gifts by the end of the year. She shouldn’t have expected Conor to call. She shouldn’t have wanted it.

  But she did want it. And when she answered her phone that evening and heard his voice, her face broke into a giddy smile.

  “What’s up?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.

  “I was wondering if you’ve ever heard of something called the Daddy School.”

  “The Daddy School?” She frowned.

  “It’s a program to help guys become better fathers. My friend—well, you might know his kids, since they attend Adams, so I’ll keep his name out of it. Anyway, he told me about the Daddy School. I could use a few lessons. I’ll probably be the worst student in the class. I wonder if they have a remedial program.”

  She heard the humor in his voice and laughed. “You don’t need a remedial program. Where are the classes given?”

  “The Children’s Garden Preschool. Obviously, Amy isn’t a preschooler, but that’s where the class meets.”

  Eliza grabbed a pencil and pad, the top page of which happened to contain her shopping list. Below spinach, coffee filters and anti-frizz conditioner, she jotted Daddy School. When she had a c
hance, she would research the program. It sounded like something she, as a child psychologist, ought to look into.

  “As far as I know,” he continued, “the Daddy School doesn’t have a prom, but they’ve got a damned good basketball team.”

  She laughed again. “Will Amy attend the classes with you?”

  “No. They’re just for dads. I’m trying to line up a sitter. The class meets Saturday mornings at ten a.m. For some reason, the teenagers I know who babysit like to sleep late on Saturdays. But I’ve got a few prospects who haven’t turned me down yet.”

  “How long is the class?” Eliza asked. “Maybe I could stay with Amy.” Then she clamped her mouth shut. What had made her suggest that? It wasn’t appropriate.

  It wasn’t inappropriate, either. She’d occasionally helped a parent in a pinch back at her old school in Albany. She knew and enjoyed the children, and she’d been willing to assist the occasional parent who had an essential errand and couldn’t line up a sitter. She’d worked with one student whose father had been undergoing treatment for cancer, and she’d often gone to the boy’s house to keep an eye on him after school while his mother took his father for his chemo. She’d never been the sort of school staffer who believed students stopped existing the instant the final bell rang at three o’clock.