Loe raamatut: «The World's Best Dad»

Chapter One

“Decision’s up to you. Motherhood or your job.”

Julie Miles pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it in disgust. Was her boss listening to himself? If the choice was her child or her job, of course, she’d choose Marisa. Ed had kids of his own—why couldn’t he understand that?

Then again, he had a spouse to deal with the kids so he could work.

Maybe that’s what she needed, a spouse.

She took a deep, calming breath and put the phone back to her ear. “Ed, of course, my job is important to me.” For one thing, if she didn’t have a job, how would she and Marisa live? “But you know things are a little crazy for me right now. I’ve been a mom for exactly—” she checked her watch “—forty-three hours and ten minutes. And I’ve been a home owner for less than twenty-four hours. Cut me a break, will you?”

“I’ve already given you break after break these past couple weeks,” Ed grumbled. “Phillipa Grange keeps calling, and I know nothing about that stupid program of hers. And you know I’ve got the brass coming in next week. And here you are, getting on the mommy track. Ridiculous, a twenty-five-year-old with no husband adopting a preschooler.”

Ed wasn’t really a complete jerk, Julie told herself. He was just playing one on the phone.

“Not to mention you leaving me in the lurch with Cincinnati Eagle.”

Aha. The real agenda, finally. One of his biggest clients coming in for a presentation later in the week and Ed had no idea how to put the presentation together. He was going to look exceedingly stupid on Friday if something didn’t fall his way.

Well, this week, it was his problem. This week, she was a mom. For a moment, she allowed the pure delight of that to distract her from dealing with her boss. She was a mom. She smiled to herself.

“Julie? Are you still there?”

Back to the problem at hand. “Ed, go look in my files under Frequent Flyer Programs. You’ll find dozens similar to what Cinci Eagle wants. Make some changes so it looks like you were listening when they told us what they wanted, and give the project to Carla. Believe me, she can do everything I can do.”

He grumbled some more, but he let her off the phone. Just in time, too, because the movers were coming up the walk with her box spring. In the rain. As she watched, they walked through the muddy flower bed—well, weed bed, really—scraped the box spring across the porch railing, and just managed to avoid stepping on the plastic runner they’d spread out to protect her living room carpeting.

Not that she liked the stained mauve carpet, but a coating of mud was not the answer.

Mrs. Malloy, Julie’s enormously fat tiger-striped cat, lumbered into the living room carrying the carcass of yet another of the mice she was helpfully hunting in the basement. She deposited it on the living room window seat next to the others. She seemed to be arranging them by size. Julie suppressed a shudder and tried not to think about it.

The burliest of the three movers nodded at her, the wet box spring balanced in his muddy arms. “Where to, lady?”

“Master bedroom, please. Upstairs.” They turned and manhandled the box spring upstairs, knocking hard into a railing as they negotiated the turn in the stairs. Julie reached over to check it. Yep, loose. Of course, it had probably been loose before. Everything in the house was either loose or painted shut. Her new home was a handyman’s special.

Unfortunately, Julie barely knew which was the business end of a screwdriver. She made a note to herself to find a book on home repairs.

“Julie? Where’s my stuff?” Marisa—the reason for all of this, for everything Julie had done in the past month—hesitated slightly at the top of the stairs before starting down, as if she weren’t sure what she was doing was okay. The five-year-old had been bounced from foster home to her mother and back again for the past four and a half years. But now she finally had a forever family: Julie.

Marisa blushed. “I mean, Mom.” She looked down, and Julie felt the little girl’s embarrassment. “Sorry, I forgot,” she said on the barest whisper.

Julie squatted next to her. “Marisa, it’s okay if you forget. It’s hard to remember at first. I keep forgetting, too. Then I remember—I have a daughter!” She smiled in delight and Marisa smiled back. Julie pulled her into a big hug. The too-skinny little body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. Marisa wasn’t quite ready to hug back, but in the days since the adoption papers had been signed, she’d been getting more comfortable. Julie knew Marisa still didn’t quite believe it was for real, but the hope, heartbreaking in its fragility, was always in her eyes.

Marisa pulled away slightly, looking over Julie’s shoulder into the living room, and Julie let her go. Her eyes widened, and her lips drew back in distaste. “Mom! What’s that?”

Julie turned around. Mrs. Malloy’s mice, that’s what that was. “Oh, that’s just a mess I’m getting ready to clean up. Don’t look, honey.” She hurried into the kitchen to find some paper towels and an empty grocery sack.

When she returned, Marisa was leaning over the window seat. “Gross!”

Julie turned her away from the sight. “Don’t worry, honey, I’m going to take care of it.”

“Mary wouldn’t take care of it. Mary would make George take care of it.” Mary and George had been Marisa’s most recent foster parents. “Mary says daddies do that.”

“Well, in this house, I do that.” Brave words, but the familiar anxiety hit Julie in the pit of her stomach anyway. It seemed as if every time she turned around there was yet another message that kids needed both a mother and a father.

When Marisa didn’t appear to be convinced by Julie’s words, Julie patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “Honey, if daddies can do it, so can mommies.” That was what Julie kept telling herself, anyway. It didn’t stop her stomach from rebelling as she picked up the dead mice and dropped them into the sack.

After Julie had disposed of the bodies, Marisa apparently remembered her original errand. “Mom, my stuff isn’t here!” She looked up into Julie’s eyes anxiously. Her “stuff”—the pitifully little amount that there was—was in two cardboard boxes in Julie’s car.

“That’s okay, I know where it is. It’s in my car, safe and dry.”

Marisa screwed her face into a doubtful frown.

Julie smiled, resigned to getting wet. “Okay, let’s go get it.” She stood and took Marisa’s hand, and they walked out onto the porch. “Ready?” Marisa nodded. “Okay, let’s go!” Still holding hands, they ran out into the downpour and across the front yard to the car.

Julie yanked open the hatchback of her elderly navy-blue Saab and dragged out a cardboard carton. “Here, you take this one, I’ll get the big one.” She grabbed the other carton and balanced it on her hip while she jerked the hatchback shut. The two of them hurried back through the rain to the porch, laughing as they got drenched.

They carried the boxes upstairs to Marisa’s room. Marisa dived into the first to check her most treasured possessions, her battered, much-read books. Julie smiled at her intensity. It was one of the things she’d loved first about Marisa. For a moment, before getting back to work, Julie simply watched and enjoyed her daughter.

Wringing water from her brown hair, Julie trotted back down the stairs and into the living room just as her friend Carla Hartshorn came through the front door, her own short blond curls dripping. The two of them probably looked worse than Mrs. Malloy’s mice.

Julie raised her eyebrows. “Ed let you leave? I just got off the phone with him, and he was panicking.”

Carla grinned. “I’m on my lunch hour.”

“At four in the afternoon?”

“I didn’t get lunch earlier, due to him freaking out. Good idea of yours, having him go through an old presentation and mark it up. That’ll keep him busy all night.”

“Yeah, but it’ll leave you with the cleanup tomorrow.”

Carla shrugged her dainty shoulders. “I know what you wanted for Cinci Eagle, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Now, what can I do to help?”

Julie gave her a grateful look. “Bless you, my child. You can call the plumber and find out why he still isn’t here even though we had a nine-o’clock appointment and every time I call they say we’re the next stop. And you can call Cincinnati Power & Light and find out why we still don’t have electricity even though they were supposed to turn it on this morning.” She handed Carla her cell phone and the list of calls she’d made. “And Cincinnati Telephone, too, while you’re at it, to find out why the phone hasn’t been turned on. All these cell calls are going to break me.”

Carla clicked the phone. “No, they won’t.”

Julie shot her a questioning glance.

Carla held up the phone. “Battery’s dead.”

Wonderful.

BEN HARBISON TURNED from his four-year-old son in the bathtub to grab the portable phone on the sink behind him. “Hello?”

“Ben?”

He sighed to himself. Maggie. A nice woman, a wonderful grandmother, but she’d been trying to run his life and Joe’s ever since Rose died two years ago. “Hi, Maggie. What’s up?”

“Ben, I’m concerned about Joey.”

No surprise. Maggie was always concerned about Joey. Ben glanced at his son. “Just a minute, Maggie.” He covered the mouthpiece for a moment. “No splashing, understand?”

Joe frowned. “Cats don’t splash. Cats don’t like water.”

A cat. Well, a cat was better than a rabbit, which Joe had been for three carrot-filled days last month. Ben had worried the kid would turn orange.

“Excellent!” Ben handed his son the washcloth. “You can give yourself a nice cat-bath with this cat-tongue.”

Ben stepped out into the hall so Joe wouldn’t hear the conversation. Lately, his conversations with Maggie were never good and were getting worse, instead of better. Joe didn’t need to hear an argument between the two most important people in his world. “Okay, I’m back. Now, what about Joe?”

“I don’t like that day-care center he goes to.”

Ben bit his tongue and paced down the hall to keep from replying sharply. “Maggie, it’s a preschool. And he’s very happy there, and it’s only ten minutes from the job site.”

She hesitated a moment. “I think he’d be better off here with me.”

Why were they wasting time on this argument again? Ben tried to control his irritation. Pacing back down the hall and into his bedroom, he gave her the same answer he’d given her last time she’d suggested she watch Joe during the day. “That’s impossible. You’re an hour away, and I can’t see how spending two hours each day in the car is good for Joe.”

Much less the four hours Ben would spend driving Joe back and forth. But he knew better than to bring up that. “Maggie, we’ve been through this before, several times—”

She broke in, hurrying to get the words said. “I mean, during the week. He could stay here with me.”

He almost laughed. “Stay with you? You mean overnight?”

Her voice took on new resolution. “I think we should talk about Joey living here with me during the week. He could go to preschool here, a couple mornings a week instead of all day every day.” Maggie started to talk faster. “You could come get him on Friday nights, and bring him back Sunday nights. Or even Monday mornings. That way you’d only have to take time out of your workday once each week.”

Ben was speechless.

“Don’t you think that’s a much better idea than driving back and forth?” Her voice turned wheedling. “And think how much more freedom you’d have during the week.”

He gritted his teeth. She’d always thought that was the real issue with Ben. His own convenience. For a moment, resentment flared. Did she really think he liked having Joe in preschool nine hours a day? Carefully he tamped down on his emotions before he lost his temper.

She continued. “And this way he wouldn’t have to spend such a long time in day care each day. And I don’t mind a bit—you know how Joey and I get along.”

“Joe.”

“Pardon?”

“Joe. He hates being called Joey.” Ben took a breath. “Maggie, you can’t possibly have thought this idea would fly with me. I appreciate your offer, but of course I want Joe here with me.”

He could almost hear her stiffening. “Perhaps what you want and what is best for Joey are two different things.”

There it was. That’s what it always came down to. Ben’s selfishness. He felt guilty and anxious enough about Joe’s preschool schedule. He didn’t need Maggie adding to it with advice and suggestions that tore him up inside.

“I’m his father. I know what’s best for him.” He took a breath to calm himself and made a conscious effort to lower the tone of his voice. “Maggie, you know I’ve always loved and respected you. I understand you think Joe needs something different than I’m giving him. I respect your opinion, but I think you’re wrong. I understand you’re saying these things out of love for Joe. But I can’t put this any other way—back off.”

She gasped, probably at the dead-serious tone of his voice as much as the words themselves, and he felt another stab of guilt for hurting her. Then she gave an offended huff. “I am the child’s grandparent. The only living representative of his mother’s family. I have a responsibility to make sure he is being cared for properly.”

“Then I can assure you, Joe is being very well cared for. Unless you think I’m incapable of doing a good job, you’re just going to have to accept that.” He took another deep breath and tried a warmer tone. “Look, I know you only want what’s best for Joe. That’s the same thing I want. Trust me. You must know I’m doing my level best here. Do you believe that?” He paused, waiting for her response.

“Of course, Ben.” Her voice sounded muffled, flat.

“And if you believe I’m doing my best, can’t you give me enough credit to believe my best is good enough?” He hated the hint of pleading he heard in his own voice, the implication that he didn’t believe it himself.

She sighed, sounding resigned for now. “I believe you believe it.”

He shook his head. There was no winning. “Maggie, listen, I have to go. Joe’s in the tub, and it’s way too quiet in there.” At her disapproving gasp, he closed his eyes in disgust at his own stupidity. Why had he told her Joe was unsupervised in the tub?

He knew he’d never manage to keep his tongue through one more lecture on parenting practices. “Look, Maggie, we’ll talk more later.” He hung up before she could protest.

He hadn’t heard the end of it, but at least it was the end for tonight. Maybe next time he talked to her he’d have more patience.

He headed back toward the bathroom, deliberately willing himself to calm down before he walked in on his son. Joe didn’t deserve the remnants of Ben’s irritation with Maggie.

He looked at his watch. Only four o’clock, but after a full day on the site and only a half hour with his son, he was beat. Maybe he could get Joe down to bed early tonight.

He’d get Joe bathed and fed and played with and read to and put to bed and put to bed again and put to bed sternly and put to bed with dire threats. Then Ben could start mentally recharging himself for the next day. When had he gotten so old?

He stepped into the bathroom.

No Joe.

JULIE STOOD STARING at the dead phone stupidly.

In the open doorway, one of the movers grunted as all three tried to maneuver her wet living room couch through the opening.

Mrs. Malloy walked past her and into the living room with yet another body for her collection.

Julie felt like throwing the dead cell phone on the floor and stomping on it. With an effort, she controlled herself. She was a mom now, she had to be mature. All the parenting books emphasized the importance of the role model she played for her daughter. Especially since she was the female parent. Especially since she was the only parent. She had to be practically perfect. The knowledge settled like a familiar weight on her shoulders.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. It didn’t really work but she did manage to keep from doing violence to the phone.

She peered out the dining room window at the house next door. Maybe the neighbor had a cordless. Or even a phone with a long cord. There was only a slim strip of driveway between the two houses—the two identical tiny bungalows had obviously been shoehorned in on what had originally been a single lot long after the rest of the neighborhood had already been built.

Fine, she’d go meet her new neighbor.

She called up the stairs. “Marisa? I’m going next door for a minute. Carla’s here.”

“Take me with you!” Marisa ran from her bedroom into the small hall at the top of the stairs. Her nervous glance shot to Carla and back to Julie. Carla gave Marisa an encouraging smile, but Marisa was having none of it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Carla. She just couldn’t seem to let Julie out of her sight.

Julie looked out the door as the movers tried again with the couch. “But it’s raining, honey.”

Marisa ran down the stairs. “That’s okay.”

Julie shrugged at Carla. “Okay, we’ll both get wet.”

Carla was watching Marisa. “Can I come, too?”

Marisa nodded, and Carla mouthed “progress” at Julie.

Julie laughed. “I think you’re both nuts. But, okay, we’ll all three get wet.”

The movers set the couch down half in, half out of the living room door. “Lady, I think this door is going to have to come off.”

Of course it was. Julie gave them a resigned nod.

Carla looked at her with a wide-eyed gaze. “For free? Boy, are you lucky! Is this place ever going to be nice and aired out! No better smell than a nice spring rain, I always say.”

Julie gave a helpless laugh. What would she do without Carla? Feeling quite lucky, indeed, Julie led Carla and Marisa out the back door.

It was dim under the overhang of the awning, the early March sun already setting behind the rain clouds.

“Should we just run over to their back door? It’s closer.” Carla nodded across the yard.

“Yeah, but I hate to introduce myself that way. Let’s go around to the front like civilized people. It’s not much farther, and we’re going to be wet anyway.”

She held out her hand to Marisa, but before the three of them could dash out into the drizzle, the back door of the neighboring house swung open, and a naked child streaked across the two small backyards to Julie’s sandbox.

Into which he promptly peed.