Single with Children

“Yeah, well, as to that,” he said lightly, withdrawing eye contact, “we always wind up shouting, and your timing was excellent. Thanks. You didn’t have to step in.”

“I didn’t mean to, actually,” she admitted. “I’m afraid I did it without thinking. I hate conflict, just hate it.”

“Well, conflict’s about all there is between me and Jake,” he said.

That was so sad to hear that the awfulness of it nearly choked her. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I never knew my father.”

“Oh, say, I’m sorry.” He sat down again. “It’s not that we don’t care about each other, Jake and I,” he said after a pause. “It’s just… I don’t know, maybe we’re too much alike. The big thing is, though, he got pushed into the family business, when what he really wanted to do was be a doctor. He was firstborn, and it was like this huge family-responsibility thing, you know? I don’t think he even tried to fight it, and I’ve seen what it’s done to him. Well, I made up my mind a long time ago that it wasn’t going to happen to me, even if I am firstborn of the firstborn, and he just can’t accept that.”

“I see. It’s just a shame that you can’t avoid the issue or something.”

Adam chuckled. “Avoid the issue with Jake Fortune? That’ll be the day.”

Laura bit her lip. “It’s none of my business, anyway. I have this thing about family, that’s all. You know how it is, when you don’t have something that everyone else does, it seems like the most important thing in the world to have.”

Adam nodded. “My grandmother was like that. She was raised in an orphanage back before the Second World War.”

“They don’t call them orphanages anymore,” Laura said slowly. “They call them group homes or halfway houses, but they’re still the last stop for a kid with no one and no place to go to.”

Adam seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Isn’t there any family?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Both of my parents were only children. My grandparents were already gone when I was born. My dad died in some kind of farming accident when I was just a baby, and my mother…” She was surprised how difficult it was to broach the subject. “Well, we never knew if she took too many pills by accident or on purpose. Anyway, I was five then.”

“Wendy’s age,” Adam mused solemnly.

“Just about.”

“And you went to one of those group homes?” he asked.

“Not at first.” She sighed. “I was shuttled around from one foster home to another for so long I’ve forgotten how many there were. I lived in a group home during my early teens, then I applied at this Catholic boarding school for state wards, and I was accepted, because my grades were pretty good, and that’s where I actually met Sister Agnes.”

“She was special to you,” Adam surmised.

“Yes, she was.”

“So do you still keep in touch?” he asked.

Pain clouded her eyes. “Sister Agnes died when I was a senior. She was very old, and—” She broke off, then said, too briskly, “Well, I’d better check on the kids.”

“Oh. Yeah, and I better get going.” He got up again, saying, “I’ve got research to do.”

She wanted to ask what kind of research, but she didn’t. They’d talked long enough, and she’d already told him more than she intended to. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d mentioned her mother’s death to anyone. She didn’t like to think about it, because the truth was that, despite all the counseling and the self-help books and Sister Agnes’s thoughtful instruction, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she had mattered so little that her own mother had checked out without a second thought. She got up and followed Adam into the den to find the kids lolling in front of the morning cartoons in their pajamas.

“I’m going, kids,” Adam announced, reaching for the briefcase he’d left on the coffee table earlier. “Be good for Laura. See you later.” They didn’t so much as glance in his direction, but he seemed to find nothing amiss as he turned away. “There’s a card with my office number pinned next to the telephone in the kitchen,” he told Laura, “and my mobile phone number’s written on the back of it in case of emergencies.”

“We’ll be fine,” Laura assured him.

He nodded briskly. “Be careful on the roads.”

“I promise.”

“See you for dinner.” He walked away with a wave of his hand.

Laura watched him move into the hallway, then studied the kids sprawled on the floor in front of the television. Shouldn’t there be goodbye kisses and words of affection between a parent and children taking their leave of one another? If she was lucky enough to have children of her own someday, she’d never leave them without hugs and kisses and reassuring words, not even for a single day. It bothered her that this family seemed to take one another so much for granted. Something wasn’t right about it. She walked over to the sofa and sat down, close to where Wendy lay against it. “Dad’s gone,” she said lightly.

Wendy shrugged. “He’s always gone.” Something in the way she said it made a chill of unease sweep over Laura. Well, it wasn’t any of her business. And yet… She shook her head, got up again and walked into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to clean up after breakfast, kids, then we have to get dressed and take Wendy to school. That means the TV has to be shut off.”

There were whines and grumbles about that, but they ceased as soon as she left the room. Laura smiled to herself. The Fortune children weren’t ones to waste their energy complaining when no one was around to pay attention. The thought that followed, however, was one to give even the most formidable nanny pause. No, the Fortune kids wouldn’t waste energy complaining; they’d much rather be dreaming up mischief.

Laura sighed. Ten minutes late already, and she didn’t even have them in the car yet! As if reading her thoughts, Ryan wiggled out of her grasp at the last instant, bounced off the edge of the bench seat, shoved her aside, kicking her shin in the process, and ran shouting gleefully down the drive. Two pairs of nylon stockings, the thick black leggings that she wore over them, a pair of wool socks and the tops of her tall insulated boots cushioned the blow, but Laura groaned and laid her forehead against the edge of the car door anyway. Robbie giggled inside the car, alerting Laura to his own escape from his car seat, but it was Wendy at whom she leveled her gaze after he shoved by her and ran to join his brother. Sitting backward in the front seat, her hand clapped over her own grinning mouth, she was the picture of innocence, but Laura knew better.

“I’ll have to write you a note for being late, Wendy,” she said apologetically. “Do you want to know what it’s going to say? It’s going to say that you and your brothers misbehaved so badly that I couldn’t do my job. I guess I’m not a very good nanny, after all.”

Wendy blinked, putting all that together. “Well, when I’m very late, Godiva just always says I might as well not even go, and she lets me stay home…to help with the boys.”

Laura seemed to consider that. “Hmm…well, I did promise your father that I’d do some shopping this morning. If—if I could just get the boys into the car…” It was pretty sneaky, but she figured a dose of her own medicine was just what Miss Wendy needed at this point.

Convinced that she’d won, Wendy opened her car door and awkwardly climbed down to the garage floor. She walked to the edge of the drive, put her chubby fists to her hips, stomped a foot and bawled, “Cut it out, you guys, and get back in the car!”

The little miscreants actually stopped in their tracks and looked at their sister, their faces a study in puzzled surprise. Wendy smiled the smile of the supremely victorious. “Get in the car,” she said again. “Laura’s taking us shopping.”

The boys looked at each other, then at Wendy, before breaking out in whoops that froze on the cold morning air. Making sounds like screeching tires, they tore up the drive and practically knocked Laura down getting inside. With a wealth of other sound effects, they both climbed into their seats and waited to be buckled in. Laura obliged, her lips pursed against a secretive smile.

Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of Wendy’s school. Wendy turned a mutinous face on Laura, but Laura shook her head. “I never said you didn’t have to go to school,” she pointed out.

Wendy’s bottom lip poked out. “You t-tricked me,” she accused.

“Yes, I did,” Laura admitted smoothly. “It feels bad when somebody you trust, somebody you care about, tricks you, doesn’t it?”

Wendy merely narrowed her eyes.

“I know you put the boys up to misbehaving this morning,” Laura told her softly, “so you’d be late for school, so late you wouldn’t even have to go, but that won’t work with me, Wendy. All it does is make my heart hurt because it’s so disappointed that you would try to trick me and make my job so difficult.”

Wendy abruptly burst into sobs. “I just wanted to stay home with you and the boys!”

Laura nodded in understanding. “Yes, I know, but it’s not good for you to miss school, Wendy. My job is to take care of you and your brothers. How can I look your father in the eye and tell him that he can trust me to take care of you if I don’t see to it that you do what is best for you? How can I even call myself your friend if I let you do things that are going to hurt you in the long run?”

“I don’t knooow!” Wendy wailed.

“Well, I do know,” Laura said evenly. “That’s what makes me the adult here, Wendy. That’s why I make the decisions. Well, some of them. Your father makes most of them. The point is, school is important, and even if you aren’t big enough to know that, you still have to go. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you stay home any time you felt like it, and if I can’t do this job the way I should, well, then I’ll just have to find something else to do. Now I’m going to make you a promise.”

“A promise?” Wendy echoed, wiping her eyes. “What kind of promise?”

“We’ll do something fun this afternoon when you get home,” Laura said. “Something special.”

“Something special?” Wendy repeated. “Like what?”

“Well… How about if we make a snowman in the front yard? No, wait! A snow castle! We’ll build a snow castle in the front yard! How would that be?”

“A castle? Really?”

“Sure, why not? As long as it’s dry out and we bundle up real warm, we can build anything we want in the snow!”

“Okay!” Wendy said, smiling. “Oh, boy! Godiva wouldn’t ever let us play in the snow! She said we’d catch new money and die!”

Laura laughed. “We won’t let anybody catch pneumonia, I promise. Now, you’d better go inside. Can you find your room by yourself?”

Wendy nodded eagerly. “Uh-huh.” She opened her door. Laura leaned over and released her belt. “Bye!” Wendy said, swiveling in her seat to get her feet outside.

Laura suddenly thought of that sterile leave-taking between Adam and his children earlier that morning, and she found that she couldn’t let Wendy go without some gesture of affection. “Wait!” Wendy turned back, and Laura wrapped her arms around the girl’s small body. She gave Wendy a brief hug and kissed her silky temple. “Bye, sweetheart. See you later.”

Wendy’s golden eyes glowed happily. “Don’t do no other job, Laura,” she whispered. “Stay with us.”

Hot tears pricked Laura’s eyes. She wanted to promise this little girl forever, but she knew that it wasn’t in her power to do so. Sooner or later, she’d have to go. If Doyal should find her here… She shuddered at the thought of what he could do to this already troubled family. She couldn’t let that happen, and going away before he found her was the only way she could protect them. But she couldn’t tell this little girl that. She couldn’t tell anyone. She smiled and brushed the rusty brown hair from Wendy’s eyes. “We’ll see. Go on now.”

Wendy wiggled out of the car, grabbed her backpack from the floorboards, then slammed the door. Without looking back, she ran up the walk and into the building. A pleasant-looking woman in a heavy skirt and sweater stepped outside to wave Laura on. Laura eased the car away from the curb. How long? she wondered. How long before she had to leave them all?

Laura crawled on her hands and knees through the narrow opening, scrunched her body into the tiny space left over by the other three occupying the small chamber and smiled broadly.

“It’s warmer than I’d have thought.”

Wendy giggled. “Snow isn’t warm!”

“No, of course it isn’t, but a snow castle is…sort of.”

“Oh, I love my snow castle!” Wendy sighed.

Robbie punched her in the arm. “It isn’t yours! It’s all of us’s. Isn’t it, Laura?”

“Yes, but you mustn’t hit your sister. Hitting isn’t acceptable behavior. Make apology please.”

Robbie had “made apology” several times already that day, and he screwed up his face at the effort it took to make another. “Sor-ry.”

Wendy patted him companionably on the head. “That’s all right, Robbie. It didn’t hurt, anyway. Tomorrow,” she said to Laura, “can we play knights and princess in our castle?”

Laura laughed. “If the weather’s clear, but we’ll have to be very well bundled up knights and princess. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They sat hunched together on a piece of cardboard on the cold ground. Laura had drawn planks on it to represent a wooden floor. She shivered, knowing they would have to go into the house soon, but wanting to give them as long as possible. With luck, Adam would be home before they had to go in and would be able to look over their handiwork and make appropriate noises of praise. At least she hoped he would. She decided to gauge the likelihood. “Won’t Daddy be impressed with our snow castle?” she asked no one in particular.

Robbie and Ryan looked at Wendy, who shrugged. “Dunno. He might not notice.”

“Well, sure he’ll notice.” How could he not notice an eight-foot-tall snow sculpture in his front yard? “I bet he’ll be sorry that he wasn’t here to help us.”

Wendy shook her head. “No, he won’t.”

“No, he won’t,” Ryan echoed.

Laura swallowed a lump in her throat and put on a smile. “Why, sure he will. Um, h-hasn’t he ever…played in the snow with you?”

Wendy dropped her gaze. “Daddies don’t play,” she said. “’Sides, he wasn’t never here for snow before.”

“Never here for snow?” Laura mumbled. “I don’t understand.”

“He didn’t never live with us,” Wendy said, “until Mommy went away.”

“No?” Laura tried to bite back the question, but it tumbled out before she could. “Were they divorced?”

They were clearly confused by the question, looking to one another for clarification. Finally Robbie threw up his arms and said, “No! Daddy, he lived with the army!”

“The army? You mean, he was a soldier?”

“Yes, with the awmy!” Ryan said, clearly exasperated with her lack of understanding.

Well, that explained the haircut and his superb physical condition. But it didn’t explain why he’d never spent a winter with his own children. She looked to Wendy for answers. “Why didn’t you all go with him?” Wendy merely shrugged. Laura tried again. “Well, I’m certain he came home often. I mean, he wouldn’t have missed your birthdays or the holidays…would he?”

“Daddy was home Chwistmas!” Ryan said, adding with relish, “he and Gwandpa Jake got in a fight!”

A fight. At Christmastime. Laura gulped. “That’s too bad,” she murmured, “but it was just one Christmas in many.” She looked at Wendy. “Wasn’t it?”

That shrug again. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t know. She didn’t remember whether her father had spent other Christmases with her. What was wrong with that man? Laura blinked to cool hot eyes, and tried to put the best face on the situation. “Well, he’s here now, and I’m sure that he spends every minute with you that he can.” Wendy made no reply, but her little face was simmering with suppressed anger. Oh, Adam, Laura thought, what are you doing to your children?

Ryan said, “I’m cold!”

Laura snapped out of her reverie. “I bet a cup of cocoa would warm you up, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah! Cocoa! Cocoa! Cocoa!”

Laura flipped over and led the way out of the snow structure. The temperature had dropped in direct proportion with the descent of the sun, which had now dipped beneath the horizon. Adam’s four-wheel-drive was nowhere to be seen. Laura swung a shivering Ryan up onto her hip, then took Robbie and Wendy each by a hand. Together they went into the house, stopping in the entry to let tingling body parts adjust to the sudden warmth and divest themselves of a whole closetful of outer garments. The next stop was the big bathroom, where everyone washed up. Then it was on to the den for the kids, while Laura went into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said to Beverly, who was stirring a pot at the stove and flashed her a smile over her shoulder. “Is that cocoa ready?”

“It is, but so is dinner.”

“Smells great. What is it?”

“Stew. Should I serve it up now?”

Laura shook her head. “We’ll wait on Mr. Fortune.”

Beverly shot her an odd look. “Oh, I forgot. He called a little while ago. He said not to wait for him. Something came up.”

Laura’s spirits plummeted, but it wouldn’t do to let the children see that she was upset. She closed her eyes and made herself think. “We’ll have the cocoa first, anyway,” she decided. “Why don’t you put the stew pot in the oven to keep warm, and go on home? We’ll serve ourselves when we’re ready.”

Beverly was untying her apron strings before Laura finished speaking. “Well, if you’re certain.”

Laura nodded. “Absolutely.” The cook was gone before Laura got the cocoa poured into cups.

Laura put the cups on a tray, sprinkled them with small marshmallows and carried them to the door, where she put a determined smile on her face. No one should know that inside she was grieving, grieving for the father she’d never known, grieving for what Adam’s children should but did not have, grieving and beginning to get angry.

Adam walked tiredly down the hall and into the kitchen. Beverly had promised to leave him some dinner in the oven. Not that he was hungry, really. He’d eaten earlier, with an old friend from high school and his wife, but it was politic not to offend the household help, especially when one depended upon that help for survival. He swallowed a few bites of the stew at the kitchen sink, then put the rest down the garbage disposal and rinsed out the bowl. It was good stew, but he just wasn’t hungry. He went to the cabinet, took down a bottle of brandy and poured a measure into a small snifter, which he warmed with his hands as he walked into the den.

Laura was sitting on the sofa, her legs folded beneath her, poring over the family photo albums. Adam felt a quickening that he could only have called interest. “Hello,” he said, stopping in the middle of the floor to sip his brandy. She was amazingly attractive, her long blond hair swept onto a shoulder bared by the droop of the wide collar of her pale yellow nubbly-knit sweater. The slender length of her legs was not diminished either by her position or by the thick black leggings she wore. Likewise, heavy wool socks in no way disguised the delicate turn of her ankles or the petite perfection of her feet. Her graceful hands abandoned the book to her lap. She sat upright and folded long arms beneath breasts almost too ample for her slender frame. When she turned her face up to him, his first thought was that not even anger could make her seem less than pretty. Anger. The realization was secondary, but correct nonetheless.

She dropped her gaze once more to the pair of photo albums overlapping on her thighs. “You aren’t in any of the pictures,” she said. Her oddly husky voice took on a hint of challenge. “Have you noticed that you aren’t in any of the pictures?”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, or why it affected him as it did. He only knew that something clutched at his heart, sending rills of panic surging through him. Instinctively he stepped into the firm, indifferent role that had served him so well in the military. “I don’t recall giving you permission to go through my family keepsakes.”

The gaze she jerked up at him was first wide with shock, then lax with contrition, and finally narrow with hurt. She closed the books gently, the glossy gold-embossed navy blue one first, then the ragged hemp-colored one. “My apologies,” she muttered softly, sliding the books onto the coffee table. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She got swiftly to her feet and weaved her way past the table, a displaced footstool and him. He couldn’t help noticing that, though her grace rivaled that of a ballet dancer, she managed to stub her toe twice.

His indifference fled, and he didn’t have time to question why. He only knew that he didn’t want her to go, and his body reacted to that desire. Stepping back and to the side and throwing out an arm, he managed to block her path and catch her against him at the same time.

“I, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark. It…it’s been a long day.”

She bowed her head, standing very still in the curve of his arm. “Yes, I know.” The gaze she lifted to him this time glittered with accusation. “They waited until after nine o’clock.”

They? His children, of course, though why they would bother to wait up for him, of all people, was pure mystery. Most of the time, they ignored everything about him, including his commands. He dropped his arm, put his head back and swallowed his brandy in one hard gulp that burned all the way down and hit his belly with the force of a fist. He inhaled cooling air through his mouth, bit down on the fiery aftertaste and sighed with satisfaction. He immediately felt better. “Suppose you tell me what they wanted,” he said smoothly, loosening his tie with one hand. Suddenly her anger was back. It leaped like bolts of clear blue lightning in bright green eyes.

“They wanted their father!” she told him sharply. “We built a snow castle in the front yard today, and they wanted to be told what an amazing structure they’d made, what brilliant children they are.”

“A snow castle,” he repeated dully. He hadn’t noticed. He stepped over to his chair and sank down upon it, all at once weary beyond bearing. “I’ll tell them in the morning,” he said, pressing the brandy snifter to the ache beginning between his eyes.

Laura shook her head slowly from side to side, but he was too tried to ask what it was all about. This time, when she muttered, “Good night,” and stalked away, he let her go.

After a while, the pounding in his head seemed to lessen, and he sat forward, trying to work up the energy to get up and go to bed. His gaze fell on the photo albums on the table. Leaning far forward, he could just reach them. He pulled them into his lap, stacking one on top of the other. He ran a hand over the ragged cover of the first and wondered again why his grandmother had left him this shabby piece of memorabilia in her will. You could never tell about Kate. Her mind had seemed to work in several arenas at once, weighing seemingly unrelated matters and reaching often amazing conclusions. He missed her. He was surprised at how much he could miss her after all those years away in the military.

What were you doing, Kate, flying off to the Amazon alone, leaving your family to fend for themselves? He had the lowering feeling that he wasn’t doing too well on that score himself. After eighteen months, his children seemed hardly to know him, and he was still drifting, still looking for an anchor.

Slowly he opened the cover of the photo album and looked once more upon his parents’ wedding picture. They had been the perfect couple, the heir apparent and the unspoiled beauty. It was difficult to think of them apart now, despite the reality of their separation, and yet, when he thought of home and his youth, he thought of his mother and her apologetic explanations for his father’s continual absence.

“He has the whole weight of the family business on his shoulders,” she would tell him. “So many are dependent on him. He’s doing the best he can.”

He thumbed through the photos, watching himself grow from infant to toddler to mischief-maker to rebel to man. Here were the hallmarks of his life—first steps, birthday parties, eighth-grade graduation, the football championship, hockey play-offs, proms. In these pictures the family grew, too, from first and only son, to Caroline, then Natalie, and finally the twins, in precise two-year intervals.