A Mom for Matthew

Gavin looked decidedly happier. So happy and relieved that Zeke didn’t have the heart to tell him it’d been his own assignment all along.

After Davis departed, Zeke rose and snatched up the binoculars again. He spent the next ten minutes panning the point where sky met bay until at last he saw Grace’s red-gold head surface. “Fool woman shouldn’t dive alone.”

Disgusted, and more irritated by the fact that he’d been grinding his back teeth because she’d stayed submerged for so long, he muttered a totally uncivilized remark and swung aside. This time he dumped the field glasses on his messy desk, poured a cup of strong black coffee and bent to his tasks.

The calls to his subcontractors made his head pound. David Decker, owner of the flatbed barges they needed to transport everything out to the site, was especially nasty. As was the steamfitters’ union rep. Both threatened Zeke with loss of body parts. In the old days of oil exploration in Texas, those would have been very real possibilities. Nowadays, it was saber rattling. Pace’s lawyer would probably be dragged into court to settle breach-of-contract issues, and Kemper would pay delay fines if Zeke didn’t fix the problem.

He ran some calculations, then signed correspondence and the time cards a part-time secretary had left on his desk. After sealing them in a larger envelope to send off to headquarters where the main bookkeeping was done, he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

“Hey, Possum,” he called to the chunkier of the two men working at desks in the outer office. He was Ramon Trujillo the sixth or something, and everyone always called him Possum. “Are either you or Gramps certified to dive?”

“As in deep-sea?” Norm Steel, the old-timer of the crew, known as Gramps, asked as he exited the bathroom, hitching his saggy jeans up over skinny hips.

“Not deep-sea. Scuba, with fins and snorkel,” Zeke said, pausing in front of the two men to display a hopeful expression.

“Not me. Too much water inside or out will weaken a man,” Norm said with a laugh.

Trujillo was already shaking his head. “Why do we need an extra diver? Ain’t the union requiring our sonar specialist on Number Four?”

Zeke slung his jacket over his shoulder, hooking it with an index finger. “Pace thinks we oughta help our obstacle in the bay locate that WWII plane she thinks is under our buoys. I’ve got plenty on my plate here, but if I’m the only certified scuba diver, I’ll have no choice but to give her my time.”

Possum pulled his double chins down until it looked like he had no neck. “Gramps, what did I tell you when we found that woman out there? Told you Jorge Boudreaux shouldn’t have rented her his boat. Bad luck to let a woman on the deck of a shrimp boat. Her being there’s already causing trouble.”

The very last thing Zeke needed was to have his men spouting dire superstitions or warnings that might distract everyone and jeopardize the whole project. Oil crews were a superstitious lot, and offshore drillers some of the worst.

“The only trouble she’s causing, Possum, is a slight delay. I have Gavin otherwise occupied. If you can hold down the fort for a few days, our operation will be back on track in no time.”

Trujillo didn’t look convinced. He rocked back and forth in his chair, the squeak getting on Zeke’s frayed nerves. “Mark my words, Zeke, things is only gonna get worse.”

Zeke laughed, but it sounded hollow even to his ears as he left the two somber men who’d been the backbone of the team since he’d come on board with Kemper.

It took longer than expected to assemble what he needed for diving. He had to make a trip home to find his certification before the shop would rent him air tanks. Matthew thought he was home for the day, and sobbed uncontrollably when Zeke attempted to leave again.

“Stay and eat lunch, at least,” Celia suggested. “Matt’s favorite cartoon comes on right after that, and it’ll distract him.”

“I didn’t know he had a favorite cartoon.” Zeke frowned, wondering how much else he’d missed. Surely that was a positive step toward more focused awareness-development—an issue Ms. Burnham harangued him about constantly.

“Matt loves watching the children in the interactive shows, Zeke. I know I let him sit too close to the TV, but the other day I saw him bobbing and swinging his shoulders,” she said excitedly. “I think he might feel the beat of the music.”

“You do? Jeez, that’s great! I wonder if the library has a book that might tell us how to capitalize on that?” Zeke suddenly recalled a conversation with Grace, who’d said a person could learn virtually any skill on the Internet or by reading.

“Have you forgotten that we got books on Matty’s condition after you moved here? They were too technical for us to make heads or tails of.”

“Yeah, but the research assistant gave us medical texts used by students at the nursing college.”

“Right, Zeke. I wish you could go with me to Matt’s regular checkups sometime. The doc and his nurse talk over my head. I never finished high school, you know. Maybe they think I know more than I do because I was a nurse’s aide. Really, I was basically just a maid.”

“Ma, you have more common sense than those medical folks who should’ve explained a lot of stuff to me and Trixie Lee about our newborn.” Zeke’s bitterness at the system that, in his opinion, fell far short of helping scared, confused young parents reared its head as he patted his mom’s shoulder.

He glanced at his watch, then swung Matthew high in his arms. The boy had been clinging to Zeke’s leg practically since he’d entered the house. “I’ll stay for lunch, but then I’ve gotta take off. I’ll pick up my gear, then I guess I’ll be breaking the unpleasant news to Ms. Stafford that she’s gonna have a partner, like it or not.”

“It’d probably go a whole lot smoother, Zeke, if you’d start with a better attitude.”

He let the remark pass. He was the busy manager of a vital oil company, dammit. He didn’t have the time or inclination to babysit a schoolteacher on a fool’s mission.

Loading the equipment took a while. Gavin got too-small flippers, so Zeke had to exchange them. As he finally turned around, headed back to Kemper’s to collect the runabout, he noticed what looked like Boudreaux’s boat berthed at the pier. Squeezing into a parking space, he jogged to the boat. Sure enough, the leathery old Cajun was dozing in a deck chair. Zeke cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “Ahoy there, Jorge. Jorge Boudreaux.”

The old man came stiffly awake.

“It’s Zeke Rossetti.” He leaped from the dock to the deck. “Where’s Ms. Stafford? Isn’t this earlier than you normally knock off?”

“Miss Grace had trouble with an air tank. We be finished for today.”

“I just came from the dive shop. Didn’t see her. Was she going to her hotel?”

Jorge shrugged. “Maybe gone to see the sights. Hasn’t seen much of Galveston yet.”

Zeke’s anger surged. He’d put important work on hold and busted his balls so he could lend her a hand, and she went sightseeing? “If Grace comes back to the boat, tell her I’m looking for her,” he ground out.

Hell, if she and Jorge had free time on their hands, it’d be better spent patching holes in this leaky boat.

He decided to hike along the Strand. Last night she’d shown interest in the shops. Although quite a few tourists roamed the city’s best-known street, his sharp eyes spotted Grace crossing up ahead. She wore a pink sundress that clashed with her hair, and was making a beeline for the coffeehouse.

Zeke broke into a jog, smiling when he saw the coffeehouse door close off his view of Grace’s dress.

She was next in line, and Zeke was out of breath when he skidded to a stop behind her. “Isn’t this a coincidence?” he said near her ear, giving her an obvious jolt. “Our afternoon breaks coincide.”

“What do you want, Rossetti?”

“Caffeine,” he murmured, edging closer as if they’d planned to meet. Meeting the eyes of the harried clerk, he said, “I’ll have a double espresso. Grace, what’s your pleasure?” Zeke dug in his tight jeans and extracted a silver money clip. He peeled off a ten-dollar bill and dropped it on the counter.

Grace plunked down her own money. “I believe I was here first,” she said sweetly. “I’ll have a coffee latte with a double shot of almond extract.”

“Put hers on my ticket,” Zeke insisted. His irritation over her stubbornness barely controlled, he shoved her money back into her hand.

The clerk, who must’ve had a trying day, muttered, “So which is it, lady? Should I let him pay?”

“Why not?” Grace magnanimously gave in. Clearly, she was less happy when Zeke latched on to her elbow and steered her to an empty table for two. “I didn’t say I’d share a table,” she hissed.

“Truce?” Zeke said as they plopped down on opposite chairs. “I needed to talk to you anyway. I was on my way to the office to get the runabout so I could meet you in the bay when I saw Jorge’s boat tied up at the marina.”

“How’d you find me? Galveston isn’t that small.”

“No. But Jorge said he thought you went sightseeing. Unless you took off in a car, I thought it was logical that you’d hit the Strand.” His grin widened as her scowl deepened.

She might have said something unkind had the clerk not called out the number on Zeke’s slip. He rose and collected their order.

“How can you drink a double espresso?” she asked, gazing into the thick black depths of his small cup. “That looks strong enough to eat holes in the lining of your stomach.”