Sure enough, on the ride back home, Lucy pressed the point. “Uncle Tyler really liked Mr. Jensen, didn’t he? Everybody likes him, right, Mom?”
“Very subtle, Lucy. But, yes, I think Tyler liked him. And it was very nice of Mr. Jensen to take him to the hospital so I didn’t have to close the shop early.”
As they drove past houses that already had their Christmas lights up, Lucy kept up the attack. “I liked having Mr. Jensen eat with us. Do you think we can have him come over again soon? Maybe he can come for Thanksgiving!”
She’d expected that. And she had asked the man out on a date, but Thanksgiving dinner was something else entirely. Allison wasn’t at all sure she was ready to move quite that fast.
Chapter 11
Mike had thought the kids were restless on Monday, but that was nothing. Today, their minds were entirely on the weekend and the festival. He got about half an hour of actual teaching in over the course of the whole day.
One student who had been paying attention to him – too much attention – was Lucy Miller. He expected it, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. There was no policy against dating the parent of a student, and he assumed that Lucy had told all her friends about her plan to set him up with her mother. Still, being the subject of such concentrated attention was unnerving.
When class was over, she came up to the desk. “Mr. Jensen, you should come by Mom’s booth at the festival. She’s going to be there Friday and Saturday, too. And are you going to the ball on Saturday night?”
She said it all in one breath. Mike couldn’t help but be impressed by that. “I’ll definitely stop by your booth. I’m looking forward to seeing everything at the carnival.” He was, too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d attended a proper carnival. Back in high school, maybe?
“You didn’t say if you were going to the ball.”
No, he hadn’t said. “Do you know if your mother is going?” It was rude to answer a question with a question, but what else could he do? If he was going to ask Allison to go to the Ball with him, he had to do it directly, not through her daughter.
“Mom hasn’t said. But I know she really wants to go.” That was probably true, although Mike wasn’t sure whether Lucy actually knew it to be so, or was just saying it in hopes he’d ask Allison.
“I’m sure it will be really nice. But don’t you have to go get your lunch?” That was even worse than answering a question with a question, but he couldn’t keep deflecting Lucy any more. Besides, he was hungry himself; he’d woken up late and skipped breakfast this morning.
Lucy accepted defeat, or at least a temporary stalemate, with good grace and ran off to the cafeteria, and Mike went to the teacher’s lounge for his microwaveable meal. He didn’t even know what was waiting for him; he’d been in such a rush this morning that he’d grabbed a box from the freezer without looking and thrown it into his insulated lunchbag.
It turned out to be a box of frozen peas that you had to steam, rather than put in the microwave. Why did he even have a box of frozen peas in the first place? He couldn’t remember buying them, but he supposed he must have. Maybe there’d been some recipe he’d had an idea about cooking, which obviously had never happened.
He made do with a soda from the vending machine and two small bags of Doritos; the most inadequate meal he’d had in recent memory. But it got him through the afternoon classes and an hour of lesson planning for tomorrow that was probably pointless given how checked-out the kids were likely to be.
On the way home, a thought occurred to him. He had no idea how Allison Miller had come to be a single mother. The subject hadn’t come up in any of his conversations with her, and he couldn’t recall seeing any photos in her house last night that would have answered the question one way or the other. Of course, he hadn’t been paying particular attention to the décor; there might have been a dozen pictures of Lucy’s father for all he knew.
Not that it mattered what had happened in the past. He was divorced himself, so he certainly had no right to judge Allison, if that’s why Lucy’s father was no longer in the picture. And if they’d never been married, well, who was he to cast any stones? His mother might disapprove, but that bridge could be crossed if they ever got that far.
Of course, she didn’t know he was divorced, either. What if she had an issue with that? It didn’t seem likely; Allison wasn’t the judgmental type as far as he could tell. But there was only one way to know for sure. He’d just have to tell her and see what happened.
“MOM, YOU’RE GOING TO the ball, right? I bet Mr. Jensen is going, too.”
Allison was pretty sure that Mike hadn’t said anything at all on the subject of the Harvest Ball. “Did he tell you that at school today?”
“Not exactly,” Lucy said. “But he asked if you were going. He wouldn’t care unless he wanted to go with you, right, Mom?”
Allison took a deep breath to keep hold of herself before she spoke. “And how did that come up? Did he just tell you out of the blue?” She managed to keep most of the edge out of her voice; as inappropriate as it was for Lucy to be acting the way she had been this past week where Mike Jensen was concerned, her daughter was only doing it out of concern for her. She couldn’t be angry at that. Right?
“Well, I kind of asked him if he was going,” Lucy said, blushing just a bit, “and for a minute he didn’t say anything, then he asked if you were going.”
Allison was glad there were no customers at the moment; she didn’t need strangers – or, worse, friends and neighbors – hearing all about her love life. Or the lack of one, really. “And what did you tell him?”
Lucy wasn’t blushing now. “I told him you didn’t say but you really want to go. And you do! I saw you looking at that fancy dress in the closet last night! The blue one with the flowers! And I bet Mr. Jensen would like it, and it’s the same color as his eyes, so you have to wear it!”
She had been looking at the dress. Staring at it, really. Allison hadn’t realized that Lucy had been staring at her as she’d been doing it. And while she had no intention of admitting it to her daughter, she couldn’t lie to herself. She had been thinking about how the dress matched Mike’s eyes almost exactly, and also thinking about the expression she’d see in those bluey-blue eyes when he saw her wearing the dress.
“If I go, which I’m not promising, because I haven’t decided yet, and anyway, I’d need to get a babysitter for you, and Kelly’s going to be at the Ball herself, and so will Aunt Jessie, so I have no idea who’d watch you, but if I go, yes, I’ll wear that dress.”
Lucy gave her a self-satisfied expression, almost a smirk. “I knew it! You want to go with Mr. Jensen, no matter how many times you say you don’t! And I don’t need a babysitter, I’m nine years and four months old.”
“I wasn’t allowed to stay home alone until I was twelve, Lucy, and if that was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you, too.” But maybe there was a babysitter available after all. “So if I decide to go, maybe Uncle Tyler could watch you.”
That answer pacified Lucy for the rest of the afternoon and straight through dinner. While Lucy was rinsing off the dishes, Allison called him, but surely that was just a formality. He had only been back in town a few days; of course he didn’t have a date to the ball.
Except it turned out that he did. He was going to the Ball, sprained ankle and all. “Sorry, Allie. You’ll have to find somebody else. Or you could bring her. I’m sure she has a nice dress to wear, and there’ll probably be other kids there.”
That was an option, Allison supposed. Lucy would be thrilled to go to the Ball; it would be her first time at a big formal dance.
She still had two days to decide. She didn’t need to figure it all out tonight, after all.
Chapter 12
Mike still wasn’t sure he was going to go to the Harvest Ball, or if he’d actually ask Allison if he did decide to go. But since he hadn’t decided not to go, and since he needed a new suit anyway, he drove over to
the Legends mall as soon as school let out Thursday afternoon.
It took him three stores and nearly two hours to find something that he liked, and, more importantly, didn’t need any alterations. It was a dark blue three-piece suit that he could wear right off the rack, and it would be perfect for the Ball, should he choose to go.
When he returned home, he ran into Bailey Evans, who immediately saw what he was carrying, and guessed instantly what it was. “Wow, you got a new suit to wear to the Ball, didn’t you? I bet Ms. Miller will love it!”
He laughed; what else was there to do? “I admit it. It is a new suit, and if I go to the Ball, I’ll probably wear it. Now you can go and report back to Lucy all about it.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, with her best attempt at a straight face. To her credit, it wasn’t bad.
“I’m sure you don’t, Bailey. Have a good night, I’ll see you tomorrow morning in class.”
He went into his apartment, hung the suit up in the closet and then went to the kitchen. There were a couple of microwave meals in the freezer, and he chose the meatloaf.
It was awful; as far from Allison’s homemade meatloaf as it was possible to get. She really was a good cook, on top of everything else – a good mother, a successful business owner, smart, funny and pretty. No, beautiful, really, if he was being honest. There was, as far as he’d seen, nothing not to like about her. And no reason not to call her right now and ask her to the Ball.
But for some reason – he didn’t know why – the phone remained stubbornly in its little charging stand over there on the end table next to the sofa. It wasn’t in his hand.
What was the problem? He had enjoyed the time they’d spent together, he loved talking with her, laughing with her and fending off her daughter’s plots together.
Maybe that was it – Lucy’s plotting was putting him off. This was nothing like Isabel; Allison was not using her daughter the way his ex-wife had used her son. Lucy just liked him, and thought he would be good for her mother. And the truth was, she was right. He would be good for her, and to her. And if the time ever came, he could see himself building a new relationship with Lucy, too. He couldn’t – wouldn’t – replace her real father, but he could be his own kind of father to her.
“You are an idiot,” he said to himself. And he had to admit that it was true. What business did he have even thinking about a relationship with Lucy when he didn’t have the nerve to call her mother on the phone and ask her out on a date?
Now the phone was in his hand. He’d gotten up from the kitchen table and gone over to the sofa without even realizing what he was doing. And he heard ringing; he’d even dialed her number. But after five rings, there was no answer, just a robotic voice instructing him to leave a message.
“Allison, this is Mike. I just – I was just giving you a call. I’ll be up until eleven or so if you want to call me back.”
That was lame, but he could hardly ask her out via voicemail. He wasn’t really up to date on modern dating practices, but he was pretty sure that was still frowned upon.
“YOUR DAUGHTER IS A very lucky young lady,” the nurse – Margot, according to her nametag – told Allison. “The X-rays were negative, so she can go home as soon as I get all the paperwork sorted out.”
Allison knew that would be the case; it was obvious to her that Lucy hadn’t broken anything when she’d fallen in the same exact spot that Tyler had tripped down in the storeroom the other day. But you couldn’t be too careful, so off to the emergency room they’d gone. She’d left Jessie in charge of the store, and she really ought to call and let her know everything was all right.
Except, where was her phone? She always carried it with her. Except, apparently, today. “Thank you,” she told the nurse, and then, to Lucy, “And as soon as we get home, it’s straight to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day, you need all the rest you can get. No arguments, OK?”
“OK, Mom,” her daughter answered. “I’ll go right to bed, I promise. I want to help tomorrow at the booth, you promised I could, right?”
“Well, since you didn’t break your arm, I can definitely use you. Now let’s get you home.”
It took another twenty minutes for Lucy’s paperwork to arrive, and the girl was beginning to nod off. Allison was sure that the Tylenol with codeine was helping that along. She was just thankful that Lucy was awake enough to walk back to the car under her own power. The last time she’d had to carry her daughter any distance was three years and nearly twenty pounds ago.
By the time they got home and she got Lucy ready for bed, she’d forgotten about her phone completely. It wasn’t until she herself was in her pajamas and brushing her teeth that she remembered she hadn’t called Jessie. She didn’t bother to look for her cell phone, she just called on the landline to let her Aunt know that Lucy was fine, and then she went to bed herself. If anyone had called her on her cell, she could worry about that tomorrow.
Chapter 13
The half-day of classes flew by. Mike himself was as restless as the students; he was as eager as they were to get over to the carnival. He hadn’t heard back from Allison, but there were a million possible reasons why she hadn’t called him last night, and he could ask her in person at the carnival. It was better that way anyway. Asking someone out to a big dance over the phone was not something adults did. It was for nervous teenagers, if they even talked on the phone anymore. Maybe they asked each other out via text these days.
But when he got to the carnival, Allison was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a teenaged girl in The Last Page’s booth, two stalls down from the cotton candy. “You look a little old for storytime,” she told him with a grin, “but I think there are still a couple of seats in the back.”
Indeed there were; there were a dozen folding chairs in the back of the tent that Allison – or this girl, apparently – had set up, most of them occupied by kids he recognized from his classes. Lucy was one of them, but she hadn’t noticed him.
“I was looking for Allison, actually. Is she here?”
Now the girl made a face. “She’s back at the store fighting with the guy from the alarm company.” That certainly counted as one of the million possible reasons she hadn’t called him today, although not one he would have guessed.
“Oh. What happened?”
Now the girl – Kelly, he could see; she was wearing a nametag – shook her head. “She didn’t say much, but I guess the alarm started going off early, like five in the morning, and it wasn’t a break-in, so she called the alarm company, and they sent a guy, and she’s been there all day trying to sort it out.”
He wondered if he should go over there. He could lend moral support, if nothing else. Or, he might just get in the way, and she might think he was trying to rescue her when she didn’t need any rescuing. Why did this have to be so complicated?
He decided to opt for the better part of valor. “Got it. Do you mind if I have a quick word with her daughter, then you can get on with storytime?”
Kelly nodded, and he went into the tent. “Lucy,” he said, catching her attention. The girl hopped up and ran over to him. “I heard about the problem at the store. Could you give your mom a message from me?”
She smiled brightly up at him. “Yes, Mr. Jensen!”
“Just tell her I came by to see her, and I hope she gets things fixed at the store, and I’ll come by the booth again tomorrow to see her. OK?”
That was clearly very OK with Lucy. “Definitely, Mr. Jensen! She’ll be really happy you stopped by.”
He hoped that was true.
BROCK FROM TITANIUM Residential Defense Services was finally, mercifully gone. It had taken the man eight hours to fix the store’s alarm system, and, honestly, Allison was not at all convinced it was actually fixed correctly.
She stared up at the picture of her parents on the mantel. “You just had to save a few bucks by signing up for a package deal, didn’t you, Dad?” Five years ago, shortly before the accident, before she’
d returned to Blessings, the security company that her father used for the alarm at home offered him a discount if he bought their services for the store as well, and he’d jumped at the chance.
She supposed that she couldn’t really blame him; this was – as far as she knew – the first problem they’d had. And Brock – a shifty-looking young man who needed to shave more frequently – was probably not representative of all their employees.
Anyway, it was all done now. She’d lost the entire day, but at least she could sit down to a civilized dinner with her daughter, who was upstairs washing her face right now.
“Mom!” Allison heard the panic in her daughter’s voice and was upstairs in a flash. She got to the bathroom just in time to watch Lucy empty the contents of her stomach into the sink.
“It’s OK, honey,” Allison said, stroking Lucy’s hair with one hand and grabbing a washcloth to wipe her mouth with the other. “Was that it, or do you still feel sick?”
It took Lucy a moment to answer, and she was a little shaky when she did. “I think so, Mom. I think...”
That wasn’t it; there was still more to come up. Allison thought she saw pink in the vile puddle draining down the bathroom sink. It was clear what had caused Lucy’s nausea. “Just relax, honey, let’s just sit here and make sure you’re all done. And by the way, exactly how much cotton candy did you eat?”
The vomiting was done, but it took Lucy ten minutes before she answered the question. “Three or four helpings, I think.” Which meant more like five or six. That was definitely enough to upset the digestion.
“Well, I think you got it all up. Maybe we’ll skip dinner tonight, but if you’re feeling better in an hour or so, I’ll give you some tea and toast. What do you think?”
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