Surprise Dad (14 page)

“We have to start sometime,” Mike told Brian. He stood at the head of the stairs with Brian on his hip, the diaper bag slung around his neck and the playpen dangling from his right hand.

He’d never fallen down the stairs, but if he ever did, it would be this morning. He couldn’t leave Brian alone while he took the playpen down, so he’d have to do it the other way around.

“Would you mind bringing the playpen down from the head of the stairs?” he asked an intern on morning duty.

The intern glanced at Brian, then looked nervously back at the roux he’d been stirring. “You have about thirty seconds before it burns,” Mike said, “so hurry.”

The intern darted away and darted right back with the playpen. Mike hauled it into his office and put Brian in it with a stacking toy and the stuffed rabbit.

Just looking at the rabbit Allie had bought for Brian made him sad.

He got to work, keeping the door to his office open so he had a clear view of Brian. Fifteen minutes of work, and Brian began to whimper. He didn’t need a diaper change, Mike discovered. He didn’t want conversation,
either, because Mike tried and got smacked on the hand with the rabbit.

He knew what was wrong. Brian was bored. He didn’t want to spend his life playing in a playpen. By now, Allie would have been on the floor with him upstairs, joining him in his games. Then she’d dress him for their first walk of the day.

Mike ached when he thought about Allie, so he just wouldn’t think about her. “Hang on,” he told Brian. “If I can just make a little more progress here, we’ll do something fun.”

Brian scowled, but he busied himself with two wooden spoons Mike had given him.

With the benefit tomorrow night and somehow keeping the diner open, Mike was strapped for time. Since Allie had left, he’d felt as if he were plodding through molasses. No, he wasn’t going to think about Allie. He was going to think about—

His gaze moved in an arc when the wooden spoons flew past him and landed an amazing distance from the playpen. Brian screwed up his face and started to cry. Mike picked him up. “Hey,” he said, “don’t tell me you don’t want to be in the restaurant business.”

He bounced Brian up and down. He was afraid to take him close to the kitchen equipment, so he pointed. “See Barney?” he said. “See how much fun he’s having flipping those pancakes?”

Brian buried his face in Mike’s shirt and howled.

“Let me take him a minute,” Colleen said, putting down the breakfast order she was about to take out.

He handed Brian over and took the order out himself. In the background, he could hear Brian’s howls turning into screams, so he dashed back into the office.

“Maybe he’s sick,” he said, but Brian’s forehead
was cool even though his face was hot and red from crying.

“He’s missing Allie,” Colleen said pointedly, and handed Brian back to Mike.

She didn’t have to tell him. He felt like howling, too.

At nine o’clock, when everybody in the kitchen and half the customers had held Brian for awhile, he gave up.

“Brian,” he said persuasively, “how about a walk?”

Brian stopped throwing the rabbit out of the playpen for Becky to put back in.

“Okay, let’s do it. Get as far with this as you can,” he told the intern who’d been prepping the dinner special. “I’ll be back in a while.”

The phone rang. Colleen answered it, and Mike was almost out the door when she rushed after him, the portable in her hand. “This sounds important.”

Impatiently, juggling Brian on his hip, he took the phone. “Earl Ritter here,” the voice said.

“Mr. Ritter. Hey, could I call you back? I have an unhappy boy here—”

“In a minute,” Ritter said. “I’m at Evan’s house going through his papers, as I was instructed to do, and found a letter to you. Perhaps he meant to include it with the will. I’ll send it to you.”

Just what he needed right now. A note from his father. What could the man do that he hadn’t already done?

He had to know, as soon as possible, get it over with. “Would you fax the letter to me?” Mike asked as Brian began to squirm and yell at the same time.

“Of course. If you don’t mind my opening it.”

“Open it. Fax it. Here’s the number.”

He handed the phone back to Colleen, then took a
long, long look at Brian, his father’s child, his half-brother. His son. He couldn’t wait for the fax, although he wanted to. He needed to get Brian calmed down. He took the baby upstairs, changed him, dressed him for the outdoors and, motivated by Brian’s obvious distress, began to hurry.

With Brian in the stroller, he set off at a brisk pace. Peering down to see how the boy was doing, he saw that while he wasn’t crying, he didn’t look happy, either.

He was doing the best he could, Mike told himself. He was taking time away from his work to walk a fussy child, he was trying to entertain him, he hadn’t lost his temper, and he hadn’t cut himself the last time Brian began shrieking. He had a new burden on his shoulders—that note from Evan—and still he was doing what it took to make Brian happy. What more could anyone ask of him?

Plenty, he told himself a few minutes later when Brian began whimpering again. Maybe the thing to do was to tell him what had happened and why he should be happy for Allie. It would be a heck of a lot better than going on saying it to himself. He went across the street and into the town square, found a bench in a sun-dappled spot beneath some trees, sat down and pulled the stroller close to him.

“Here’s the deal, Brian. You love Allie and she loves you.”
She loves me, too. She told me she loves me. She wouldn’t have made love with me if she didn’t, and heaven help me, I love her more than my own life, I want her, I need her.

Brian’s eyes had opened wide at the sound of Allie’s name. “But she needs more out of life than being a nanny. She’s smart, Brian, really smart. She needs a career. She needs the self-satisfaction of knowing she’s
helping more people than just us. Unhappy people who will feel better after they talk to her.”

Just the way I do. And I need to talk to her now, need her with me when I read that letter
.

Brian’s face screwed up. “I know, I know,” Mike said quickly. “You’re unhappy, too, and I admit it, kiddo, I’m not happy myself, but we can’t ask Allie to come back and save us. She has her own work to do.”

Brian frowned deeply, and Mike began to feel desperate. “We have to let her do it,” he insisted. “Maybe someday she can come back, when she’s a full-fledged psychologist. Maybe she’ll decide to set up an office in town and live with us. Who knows? Whaddaya think about that, huh?”

Nothing good, it was clear. He leaned closer to the boy, who instantly grabbed the points of his collar with both hands and tugged, putting all his strength into it, and glared ferociously at Mike.

“You think I should have tried harder? You think I should have figured out a way for her to stay with us and still have a professional life? You think I should have told her we’d wait for her, we’d be grateful for any time she could give us?”

Still glaring, still keeping a stranglehold grip on Mike’s collar, Brian yelled, “Da.”

Mike felt stunned. “Did you just say Da?” Did he dare to hope? “You said Dad?”

Without thinking, he reached into his pocket for his cell and punched in Allie’s number. She answered, her voice as beautiful, as musical, as appealing as ever.

“Brian just said Da,” he blurted out. Realizing what he’d done, he pushed the End button with his thumb, then turned the phone off.

His first thought had been to call Allie. Of course.
She was the first person he wanted to know that this stupendous thing had happened. Even before he told Daniel or Ian.

Brian was trying to take the phone away from him, protesting, babbling and still glaring at Mike. Mike gazed at him, feeling something warm and bubbly rise up inside, stirring his heart, tightening his throat, making his eyes feel hot.

All at once, he knew what it was. He was consumed with love for this determined child, the love he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself until now. He no longer cared why his father had left Brian to him, he cared only that Evan had done it, and for that, Mike was grateful. Loving Brian had dimmed his resentment toward his father. He could read that letter, and whatever it said, he could survive it. He could leave that dark side of himself behind, forever.

“That’s right, Brian. I’m your dad.” He picked up his baby and hugged him close. One day he’d have to explain to Brian that they were brothers, but for now, he was his son. Mike loved him and wanted Brian to love him in return. He wanted Brian to have the best life any boy could have. He didn’t even care if Brian learned to cook. He just wanted him to be happy.

And he loved Allie. God, how he loved Allie. And she loved him, and Brian…What had he been thinking?

“You’re right,” he said to Brian, putting him back into the stroller. “I’ve been a complete idiot.”

Brian, having no idea what he was talking about, looked up at him and smiled. Mike grabbed the handles of the stroller and ran to the Hendricks’s house, with Brian shrieking, this time in delight.

Elaine Hendricks wasn’t at home, or if she was, she
wasn’t letting him in. Disappointed, he said to Brian, “At least we tried.”

Now he didn’t feel like running. His feet felt like lead as he went back to the diner. “We’ll find Allie eventually,” he assured Brian. “It won’t be long before I run into Elaine on the street, or maybe she’ll come to lunch.”

Back in the diner, he went directly to his office, where the fax from Ritter caught his eye. He put the cover sheet behind the note—the original had been handwritten—and began to read.

Mike’s eyes widened. What was this?

Stunned, Mike read the letter again. “A person he trusted,” Lilah had said, and he’d laughed at her. Hot, burning tears blurred the words he stared at.

Hearing a commotion in the kitchen, he wiped his eyes, put down the fax and picked up Brian, who’d begun to fuss again, from his playpen. Together, they went out to see what was going on.

What was going on was Barney, smiling sheepishly, with Elaine Hendricks, who was holding her left hand to Colleen and Becky while they shrieked with delight.

“Look at her ring,” Becky crowed. “She and Barney are getting married.”

Mike glanced at the ring. “Very nice. Congratulations, Barney. Elaine, where’s Allie?”

The kitchen fell into silence. Elaine took back her hand and stared at him. “She’s…she’s in Burlington,” she said at last.

“Where in Burlington?”

“She didn’t want anybody to know where she was until she got things settled.” Elaine looked longingly at Brian, who reached out for her.

“I can’t wait until she gets things settled,” he said, “I have to talk to her
now.
In person.”

“I promised her,” Elaine said, pleading with him to understand. “She has to have time alone to work things out.”

“Elaine,” Mike said, calming down enough to look her straight in the eyes, “do
you
want me to find Allie?”

Her gaze dropped to the kitchen floor. Then she looked back at Mike and put her finger to her lips. Reaching for one of his order pads, she scribbled on it and handed it to him.

On it was an address.

Mike gazed at her. “I get it,” he said softly. “You didn’t tell me.” He threw his arms around her and hugged her, because, after all, she was going to be his mother-in-law, sooner, he hoped, rather than later.

“I have to leave,” he told his surprised staff. “We may be serving scrambled eggs at the benefit tomorrow night, but I have to leave.”

A few minutes later, he and Brian were in the car heading for the freeway, where he drove as fast as he thought fathers were allowed to—slightly
under
the speed limit.

A
LLIE STARED
at her phone. Mike had called her. But he’d hung up after telling her what Brian had done.

Hoping he’d just lost service, she called him back, but got his voice mail. He didn’t want to talk to her. He might have called her by accident—had her number programmed and pushed the wrong button, that it was Daniel, not she, with whom he wanted to share the big news.

She missed them so much she hurt. Could she stand to see them tomorrow night at the benefit?

For the past several hours, she’d been alternating among crying, filling out endless application forms and blotting the tears off the application forms. She stood to pour another cup of tea and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink. She was a wreck, her hair hanging lank and uncombed, no makeup and wearing the gray sweatsuit from her high-school days, her comfort symbol.
I’ve turned into a slob
.

But who did she have to dress up for?

Was she doing the right thing in going back to school? Mike had left her no other choice, had he? With each bit of information she’d gathered, she’d been more sure of her career choice, and less sure she could stand being away from Mike for even another hour, much less the time her coursework and training would take. But it would be worth it, she told herself stubbornly. And then immediately she thought, “Worth leaving Mike and Brian?”