For the Sake of the Children

“No, Mom likes German chocolate. Why is it that you can never remember—” But Melanie didn’t finish what she was about to say. “The coconut’s all right, isn’t it?”

“I’m easy to please. Coconut, German chocolate—doesn’t matter to me. But yeah, coconut’s my favorite.” Patrick figured that if this strained atmosphere went on for much longer, his dessert would be Maalox, not cake.

If just he and Lissa had been having this conversation, he would have come straight out and asked her why she was even here. What had made her say yes this year when he’d asked her to spend his birthday with him? Was he foolish to hope that her coolness toward him was thawing?

He jammed his hand into the silverware drawer, smothering an oath when the tine of a fork poked him.

Damn Jenny, anyway. She was the one who’d left. She was the one who’d thought their marriage—their family, what was left of it, anyway—should be scrapped. All because some other guy listened to her. Listened.

Tonight it seemed that he was about to lose Melanie by trying to salvage what was left of his relationship with Lissa.

But if he’d learned anything, it was that you were never guaranteed tomorrow. That and you’d better take advantage of what you had today. Maybe Lissa felt the same way. Maybe her first semester at technical college had rammed home how quickly time flew and how things could never stay the same.

Lissa, in college now. This was the year Annabelle should have graduated from high school.

The silverware in his fist slipped out of his grip and landed with a clatter on the floor. Everybody jumped at the racket.

For an endless moment, Patrick felt his eyes shift from Melanie to Lissa and back again.

Then Melanie chuckled. Lissa joined in and Patrick laughed himself, but out of relief.

“Boy, we’re strung tight,” Patrick told them.

“Long day.” Melanie went back to tossing the salad. “I swear, the phone at my office rang nonstop all afternoon.”

“At least you’re an accountant and you work in an office. You’re not stuck ringing up groceries. Man alive, but I got chewed out for carding somebody who wanted to buy beer,” Lissa said. “I wish I could quit. I have to keep this job, though, and my other job to earn the car down payment because somebody won’t co-sign a loan for me.”

Patrick caught Mel’s knowing older-sister eye. “Oh, poor baby,” she sniped. “Maybe if you had actually done what you were supposed to do and showed a little responsibility, Dad would have a little confidence in you.”

“I am responsible! What do you mean?”

“The internship you flaked out on. If you can’t get your papers in on time, how can Dad expect you to make a car payment on time?”

“Dad!” Lissa whirled to face Patrick, and jabbed the fork at him. “You told her I missed the deadline?”

Mel didn’t wait for Patrick to respond, just jumped in. “Yeah, he did. How else was he supposed to explain his sudden change of heart? You’re eighteen, Lissa. Grow up, why don’t—”

“Mel, that’s enough.” Patrick stepped between them. Now he regretted having mentioned Lissa’s sad story to her elder sister.

The chicken grease hissed behind them. Lissa broke the stare she had locked on to Mel to attend to it. Her smug look as she turned toward the stove irritated Patrick.

“Lissa, Mel’s right about one thing. You need to be more responsible. It’s not just the internship paperwork. If you’re serious about a job in the nursing profession, you have to manage a lot of deadlines, and that’s part of the reason your teachers set them—”

“It’s hard, Dad.”

Her whine sent his blood pressure up just a tick more. “Yeah, maybe. But when Mel was your age, I never had to worry—”

“Perfect Mel with her perfect husband and her perfect house and her perfect job. Never-screws-up Mel. Never-try-anything-so-you-don’t-screw-up Mel.” But Lissa’s mutter was barely audible. He shook his head toward Mel to stop her retort.

More silence. Patrick grabbed some plates and would have put them down on the small table in the kitchen, but Mel took them from him.

“It’s your birthday, Dad,” she said. “Even if Luke had to work and we can’t all be here, we can eat in the dining room, okay? It’s a celebration.”

Patrick ignored the derisive sound Lissa made at the mention of Mel’s state-trooper husband. “Okay.” He headed for the dining room with his stack of plates. Over his shoulder he called, “I can top both of you on the bad day at work. Today was my first and last day as a bus driver—and I had to break up a fight.”

“You? Drive a school bus?” Lissa laughed and was leaning back against the cabinet when he returned. “This I gotta hear.”

“Why is it that everybody gazes at me like that when I tell them I drove a school bus?” He let mock irritation color his words. “What? I don’t appear competent to drive a bus?”

He ventured a glance at Melanie, who was openly curious.

“Go on, Dad. I want to hear.”

So he started telling them, spinning the story light and funny and eviscerating from it all details of his momentary heart-stopping look at that little girl. Lissa and Mel were laughing now, a beautiful, beautiful sound.

The doorbell rang, and Melanie wiped her hands on a dish towel, then went headed to answer the front door. “Are you expecting someone? It’s not Luke. He won’t get home until nearly two in the morning.”

“No. But if it’s Vann, tell him to come on in. We’ve got plenty, don’t we?”

Lissa lifted her eyebrows in disbelief and held a little tighter to the plate of chicken in her hand. She was the spitting image of Jenny when she did that. “Vann’s huge, Dad. Linebacker huge. He could probably clean us out and still ask for seconds.”

“According to Vann, it’s all muscle, not an ounce of fat.” Patrick grinned at Lissa. “But I agree, all that muscle has an appetite.”

“Dad?” Melanie’s strained voice pierced the house. “Someone’s here for you. A Dana Wilson?”

The name jolted Patrick back to this afternoon, back to the school nurse who’d shifted papers from one pile to another and who had admitted maybe she wasn’t up to the job. A good thing he hadn’t interviewed Dana Wilson for the job. He might have been inclined not to hire her based on how pretty she was. All that blond curly hair and those big brown eyes. And those long legs. Even though her legs had been hidden beneath scrubs, he could tell they were nice.

“Dad?” Melanie sounded even more strained.

“I’m coming. Give me a minute to get there. Why don’t you just invite her in.”

“She—she—”

Patrick rounded the corner to the living room and saw Melanie at the door, blocking his view. Mel usually had excellent manners. What was her problem?

He walked up behind Mel. “Dana, hi. Why don’t you—”

But Patrick could get no more words out. His throat closed up and he gripped the door. Dana wasn’t alone. On her hip was a little girl, blond hair curling softly around her face, thumb in her mouth, sky-blue eyes heavy with drowsiness.

B EWILDERMENT PARALYZED Dana for a long moment. She stood there on Patrick’s front porch, switching her gaze from Patrick’s befuddled face to his daughter’s, and then back again. Both Patrick and his daughter wore expressions of shell shock.

What? Had she grown horns or a second head? Had her hair turned purple?

“I—I thought this was a good time. To talk about the asthma tests,” Dana ventured, shifting Kate from one hip to the other. “On the phone you said to come by?”

Patrick frowned. “You called me?”

“No—your daughter here.” Dana nodded toward the young woman. “I stopped by your shop, and they said you were on your way home, so I phoned your home and your daughter—”