Small-Town Mom (7 page)

“If it’s her kneecap, I should be able to snap it back in place. I’ve done it before. We’ll be fine,” Jamie reassured him.

He jogged down the hill after Opal. Jamie’s firm, calm handling of the situation—make that situations—with the girls impressed him. If it was an example of typical day-to-day life with kids, parenting was a lot like combat.

Eli reached Opal at the same time Myles did. Her brother must have seen her stomping downhill when he and Tanner were headed back up.

Myles reached for his sister, and she kicked him in the shin. “Don’t touch me.”

Myles rubbed his leg. “You are going to be in such trouble with Mom.”

“I don’t care. We were ahead and then you cheated and ruined everything.” Opal burst into tears.

“Go ahead.” Eli motioned Myles uphill. “Opal and I will head over to the clubhouse. I hear they have hot chocolate there.”

“She kicks me, and you take
her
for hot chocolate.” Myles looked up the hill at his mother and shook his head.

“Go help your mother with Rose. I’ll handle this.”

“Whatever.”

Opal looked at her brother.

“Yeah, you can go have hot chocolate with him.” The teen yanked his toboggan and stomped away much like his sister had earlier.

Eli took Opal’s hand. “You weren’t nice to your brother.”

Opal shrugged her shoulders and sniffled.

“The race was supposed to be for fun. It didn’t matter who won.” Eli opened the clubhouse door and followed the little girl in.

“Yes, it did.”

“Sit here.” He pulled out a chair for her in the small snack area. “I’ll get the hot chocolate and we can talk.”

Her coffee-brown eyes, so like her brother’s and mother’s, flashed defiance, but she nodded.

Eli got their drinks and returned to the table. He handed Opal a cup.

“Thanks.” She kept her eyes focused on the cup.

He slid into the seat across from her, unzipping his jacket but leaving it on since the clubhouse wasn’t a lot warmer than outside. “So tell me why it was so important for you to win the race.” He sipped his hot chocolate as he waited for her answer.

“Not me, us. It was important for us to win so Mommy would be impressed with you. You would have made us win. That would have impressed her. We were going a lot faster with you on the toboggan than Mommy and Rose and I did when we went down before.”

He was certain winning would not make any difference in Jamie’s opinion of him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know why Opal wanted him to impress her mother.

“There’s this father-daughter dance at school. They have it every year.” Her words poured out. “Daddy was home one year and went with Rose. But I wasn’t in school yet, so I couldn’t go. Mommy said she’d go with us, but that’s weird. It’s not the mother-daughter dance.”

Eli could see where this might be going, but he had to ask. “What does that have to do with me?”

Opal sighed, as if he should already know the answer, which he was afraid he did. “When Emily watched us after school that day Mommy and Myles were meeting with you, I heard her tell Drew that Mommy should start going out again. That it’s been almost two years since Daddy didn’t come home and Mommy needed fun with grown-up friends.”

Opal’s words kicked him in the gut. He wondered how often she’d seen her father. Had she known him at all? She talked about his death as if it were only a matter of him not coming home when he was scheduled to. Like he might return later. Had John Glasser had regrets about how much he was missing out on being away for so much of his kids’ lives? Eli studied the black curls that had escaped Opal’s braid and framed her face, just like her mother’s curls. Glasser would have had to be a fool if he hadn’t. He revised his hasty assessment of the man. Jamie struck Eli as a woman who wouldn’t suffer a fool.

“If Mommy liked you, you could be her boyfriend and take her out and make her happy, like Emily said. And if you were her boyfriend, you could take me and Rose to the dance. Amy Bryant’s mother’s boyfriend is taking her.”

The hope in her wide eyes got to him. “Opal,” he said as gently as he could, “I can’t be your mother’s boyfriend simply because you want me to be.”

“But if she liked you, you could be.” A single tear slid down her cheek.

“Honey, that’s not—”

“No!” She pushed away from the table, sloshing hot chocolate on its surface. “Leave me alone. I’m going to the girls’ room.” She ran toward the lavatory.

Eli rose to follow her.

“Let her go,” said the woman who had sold him the hot chocolates. “If she’s not out in a minute, I’ll go in and check on her. The back door is locked. The only place she can come is back here.”

The woman had looked familiar. Now he recognized her from church.

“I’m Karen Hill. My husband and son own Hill’s Auto Repair. I think you may have gone to school with my youngest brother, Mark.”

“We played football together. How’s he doing? I haven’t run into him since I returned.”

“You wouldn’t have. He lives out near Seattle, has a company that designs computer games and apps. Stuff like that.”

“I can see that. He was a wiz at math. And Ninja Gaiden.”

Eli glanced over toward the hall to the restrooms. Shouldn’t Opal be back by now?

“Sad, isn’t it?” Karen asked. “Those poor kids without a father. And Jamie, so young to be widowed. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, it’s tough.”

Karen raised her hand and covered her mouth. “Sorry. I’d forgotten about your father. You do know what they’re going through.”

Eli shifted in the chair. “Uh, would you mind checking on Opal?”

“Sure. We’ll be right back.” Karen hustled across the room.

He finished off his hot chocolate in one swig and made a face. The drink had gone cold and bitter. When Karen didn’t return immediately, he stood and walked to the hall. The air temperature dropped as he turned the corner and saw Karen pushing open the glass door at the end of the hallway. The door she’d said was locked.

She looked back over her shoulder. “Opal wasn’t in the ladies’ room.” Concern laced her words. “This door is supposed to be locked.”

“There’s no place else in the building she could have gone without our seeing her?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “I checked the storage closet to see if she was hiding in there. She wasn’t. The only other room this hall connects to is the one we were in.”

Eli stepped in front of her and pushed the door open wider.

“I called Jerry, our maintenance guy, to look for her. He’s out on the snowmobile.”

He stared out at the expanse of snow-covered terrain. His chest tightened. He’d lost Jamie’s daughter. “Thanks. I’ll go try to follow her footprints. It shouldn’t take me long to catch up with her.” He checked his watch. How long had she been gone? Had she even used the bathroom or gone right out when she’d left him?

Her footprints tracked through the snow, meandering around a small pond before mixing with a hundred others—some heading up the hill, some going toward the parking lot and the road.

Eli closed his eyes.
Please, Lord, keep Opal safe.
He looked up the hill and didn’t see Jamie’s jacket among the figures congregating at the top. But he did see Drew, who waved him up.

When he reached Drew, Eli’s heart was pounding—much more from fear about Opal than the exertion of sprinting up the hill. “Where’s Jamie?”

Drew looked at him sideways. “She had to take Rose to urgent care.”

The pounding picked up tempo. “Oh, man. I’ve lost Opal.” Eli glanced from side to side to make sure none of the teens had overheard him.

Drew burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Eli’s fingers itched to wipe the grin off his friend’s face. Hadn’t Drew gotten what he’d said? “Opal got mad at me at the clubhouse and took off. I can’t find her.”

Drew caught his breath. “She’s fine. She’s with Jamie. Sara saw her outside the clubhouse and walked her back. Opal does stuff like that all of the time. It drives Jamie crazy.”

Drew was driving him crazy. “It didn’t occur to you to send someone down to tell me that?”

“No, I thought you’d asked Sara to bring her back. Opal said something about you talking with a lady at the snack bar.” Drew arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t want to interrupt anything.”

“Right, Karen Hill. Was Jamie mad?”

“About what?”

Drew had to be kidding. “My not bringing Opal back. I’m not Jamie’s favorite person as it is.”

Drew’s eyes narrowed and one corner of his mouth tilted up. “But you’d like to be. Go for it. She didn’t seem mad at all to me. As I said, Opal’s done that before.”

His friend’s ribbing rubbed him the wrong way. But he was too drained to answer the challenge. “It must be about time to go. I’ll start rounding up the kids.” As he walked away, his earlier thought echoed in his head.
Jamie wasn’t a woman who would suffer a fool.

* * *

“Mommy,” Opal said as Jamie drove the girls home from the urgent care center. “I’m glad Rose’s knee is okay.”

“That’s nice of you to be concerned about your sister.”

“Yeah, you know the father-daughter dance at school is next week.”

Jamie’s chest tightened. She didn’t know why Opal was so focused on the event. The elementary grades had the dinner-dance every year. Originally, it had been called the father-daughter dinner-dance, and that name had stuck even though the school hadn’t called it that in years. Officially, it was the Winter Dinner-Dance. The idea was to get dads more involved, but escorts weren’t limited to fathers. Brothers, uncles, grandfathers, friends and even mothers were welcome.

“I don’t think you’ll have to take us.”

“Is that right?” Opal must have asked Drew to take them. Jamie would be sure to tell him he didn’t have to, as he had enough to do with his own family.

“Yes. Mr. Payton is going to take us.”

Jamie swallowed wrong and choked. “What?” she coughed out.

“I asked him when he bought me hot chocolate.”

“Sweetie, why?”

“It’s lame to go to a daddy dance with your mother, and Mr. Payton seems like he’d be a good daddy.”

Jamie blinked back tears. Opal seemed to have accepted John’s death the easiest of the three kids, probably because she’d seen him so rarely. He’d been deployed to the Middle East most of her short life. She glanced at her daughters in the rearview mirror. Or had she been so wrapped up in Myles acting out that she’d missed her daughters’ needs?

She swallowed and tried to imagine Eli’s reaction to Opal’s request and how it may have affected Opal. A snapshot of his lopsided grin when he’d pulled the green bandana from her hand to start the toboggan race imbedded itself in her brain. She loosened her grip on the steering wheel. Opal’s assessment of Eli might be right. He was good with kids. She shook his picture from her mind. Thinking of Eli as daddy material was a dangerous direction she needed to steer Opal, and herself, clear of.

“What exactly did you say to Mr. Payton?”

“I told him that if you liked him… You do like him, don’t you?”

“Yes, I like him.” She did like him, even if they had their differences.

“I said if you liked him, he could be your boyfriend, and he could take me and Rose to the dance.”

No wonder Eli sent Opal back up the hill with Sara. He probably needed to recover from that bomb.

“You are such a baby to tell him that,” Rose said.

“Am not.”

“Rose, no name-calling.”

“But, Mom. Can you imagine what he thought?”

Jamie could imagine, and that was a problem.

“Let your sister finish.”

Rose leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms in front of her.

“And Mr. Payton said he would take you to the dance?”

“No.” Her answer was almost inaudible. “He said he couldn’t be your boyfriend just because I wanted him to be.”

“I told you it was a dumb thing to say.”

“Rose,” Jamie warned, “you’re close to losing your TV privileges.”

Her older daughter snapped her mouth shut. They’d just gotten a movie on DVD this morning that Rose wanted to see.

“So, Mr. Payton didn’t say he would take you and Rose to the dance, did he?”

“No, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t.”

Rose snorted.

“Let’s stick with our original plan,” Jamie said.

“We’ll see,” Opal piped up from behind her.

Jamie bit her lip to keep from laughing at how much her daughter’s response sounded like her.

“Mom, don’t forget the pizza,” Rose said as they approached DC’s Pizzeria on Route 9.

Jamie flicked her directional. “Don’t worry.” But she had forgotten, which wasn’t like her. She didn’t know what was making her so scattered these days. Or did she? Ever since she’d met Eli Payton, her whole life had been a little out of step.

* * *

The kitchen door opened, letting in a blast of cold night air. “Hey.” Myles surveyed the pizza boxes. “Did you save any for me?”

Jamie looked up, her gaze bypassing Myles to Eli walking in behind him.

“Mr. Payton brought me home.” Myles strode over to the table to more closely inspect the pizza situation.

“So I see.” She smiled at Eli, who was still standing by the door, to let him know she wasn’t going to light into him again over driving Myles home.

“Want to join us?”

“Thanks, but I just wanted to check on Rose.”

“No, stay,” Opal prompted. “You can sit next to Mommy.” She pointed at the empty seat by Jamie.

Jamie felt her cheeks flush. “Rose is fine. The physician’s assistant popped her kneecap right back in place. I wasn’t able to this time.”

Eli winced, and Jamie bit back a smile.

“Seriously, join us. There’s plenty.”

Myles’s expression questioned that, but she ignored him and moved her chair toward Opal’s so Eli could take the seat next to her.

“All right. I’d like that.”

“Myles, take Mr. Payton’s coat.” She eyed her son’s coat slung on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “And hang it and yours up.”

He grabbed Eli’s ski jacket and hung both on the coat pegs by the door.

Eli sat down and reached over to take a slice of pizza from the box in front of her.

He seemed to take up so much space at the table. She wrapped her ankle around the chair leg and scooted the chair to the right.