The Family He Didn't Expect

by Shirley Jump

  “Ty, sorry I’m late.” She strode forward, passing Dylan as if he didn’t even exist. “I got out of work late and then had to track down Cody, who, as usual, wasn’t where he was supposed to be.” She blew a lock of hair off her face. “I swear, that kid is going to be the death of me.”

  Uncle Ty put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine, Abby, really. Cody will settle in soon and Jacob is already up to his elbows in glue.”

  She glanced over at the table, where Jacob—the youngest one, Dylan assumed—had already taken a seat and was sprinkling beads across bright blue construction paper. Mavis sent up a little wave, signaling I’ve got this, honey.

  “Okay.” Abby let out a long sigh. “If you don’t mind, I have a proposal I need to work on. Can I...” She waved toward the office and gave Ty a smile.

  For some weird reason, that smile—directed toward his uncle—sent a little flicker of jealousy through Dylan.

  “Of course. Use my office. But first, I want you to meet my nephew, Dylan.” Ty turned to Dylan and gestured between the two of them. “Dylan Millwright, meet Abigail Cooper, but everyone calls her Abby. Abby, my nephew. He’s going to be helping out with the teen program.”

  For the first time in his life, Dylan wished he was the kind of guy who wore a suit and tie. His battered jeans, faded concert T-shirt and black leather boots didn’t exactly match the polished, pressed woman beside him. “Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand.

  She gave him a surprisingly firm handshake, considering how delicate she seemed at first blush. She was all business, not a spark of interest in her eyes. “You, too.”

  He was about to say something witty back, but before he could come up with a handful of words more charming than uh, you’re beautiful, she was picking up the briefcase and heading for Ty’s office. A second later, the glass door closed and Abby settled herself behind Ty’s desk. She pulled a laptop out of her bag, set it up and started typing.

  “I can see you watching her,” Uncle Ty said, putting a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “And I can read interest in your eyes. I’m tellin’ you right now, Abby isn’t...”

  “Isn’t the kind of woman who would date a guy like me?”

  Ty turned to his nephew and the lines around his eyes softened. “I wasn’t going to say that. You’re a good man, Dylan—”

  Dylan scoffed.

  “A good man,” Ty repeated with emphasis, “or I wouldn’t have you here. As for Abby, she’s...complicated. One of those women juggling a whole lot of balls and not interested in having a man help catch a single one of them. Her ex was a real jerk, who let her and her boys down in a big way.”

  “I’m not here to date anyone,” Dylan said and turned away from the office to prove his point. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  But as he walked away and crossed toward the teenagers waiting on the sofas, Dylan wondered if he’d still be singing that tune if Abby Cooper had looked at him with even an ounce of interest. Either way, the last thing he needed was a small-town single mom with workaholic tendencies. If anything screamed complete opposite from you, that fit the bill.

  He dropped into the lone armchair sitting in front of the sofas and propped his elbows on his knees. “Hey, guys, I’m Dylan. How about we talk about breaking the rules?”

  * * *

  Abby stared at the report in front of her. She’d spent the better part of the day putting it together, but it still didn’t feel right. Had she missed some data points? Forgotten to add the case study? She scrolled through the document, checked it against her list, then read the pages over again.

  Ever since she’d taken the promotion to director of brand development at Davis Marketing, she’d worried that she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Worried that they were going to see her as a fraud, as a woman who was only pretending to be up to the job.

  Because she was.

  Hell, her whole life seemed to be about pretending she could handle everything, whether she actually could or not. Get up in the morning, drag Cody out of bed, feed Jake, shoo Cody out the door and pray he made it to high school this time instead of heading for the park or the mall or somewhere with his friends. Then drop Jake off at preschool, making sure he’d taken his snack and a change of clothes for just in case at daycare later and that he didn’t have anything after school that she was supposed to go to. After all that, finally head off to work. Eight or more hours later, head home and repeat the process in reverse. Sometime in that window, she was supposed to cook healthy dinners, make the house spotless, draw baths and read bedtime stories. Oh and have “me” time, with rose-petal filled bubble baths and meaty novels.

  Because that was what the magazines said “women who had it all” managed to do. She’d yet to find a way to even come close to that, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and a burst of panic made her heart race. Abby drew in a deep breath, counted to ten, then whisked the tears away. There was no time to get distracted or lose her focus.

  She read the pages once again, hit Send on the report, then closed the laptop. There was more on her To Do list, but it could wait until after Jake went to bed. That would mean another late night again, but her Mommy Guilt was kicking into overdrive, especially after Jake had asked in the car if she was going to work “again,” with that pouty sound in his voice and disappointment swimming in his big brown eyes.

  She emerged from Ty’s office and crossed to the little kids’ table. Two more kids had arrived and now seven of them sat in pint-size chairs on either side of Mavis. She loved those kids and welcomed them like they were all her own little ducklings.

  “How are you, Mavis?” Abby said. She placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. Mavis covered it with her own and gave Abby’s hand a friendly pat.

  “Just fine, just fine.” She turned to the kids and grinned at them. “I have the best table of kittens—”

  “We’re not kittens, Miss Mavis,” Jake said with a laugh in his voice. He was the happy one of her two boys, always ready with a smile or a laugh. Abby loved that about him and reached over to ruffle his hair.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, Jakester,” Abby teased. “You drink milk, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you like to sleep a lot.”

  Jacob laughed and cocked his head to the side, causing one lock of hair to do a little flip-flop. “That’s cuz I’m tired.”

  “And you have a big old mop of fur—” She nuzzled his dark hair.

  “Mommy, that’s hair! I’m a boy!”

  She leaned back and pretended to study him, tapping a finger against her lip. “Well, now, I think you might be right about that. Now that I look a little closer, I see you are indeed a boy. A cute one at that.” She gave Mavis a smile, then placed a kiss on her son’s forehead. “Keep on working on your picture, Jake. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She crossed the room, pausing by the watercooler, filling a paper cup and pretending to get a drink, but really trying to see how Cody was doing. Of the two boys, Cody had taken their father’s sudden departure the hardest. It had been easier when Keith had left the first time, because Cody was only two, but ten years later, when Keith had returned to try again, Cody had started to put trust in his father. The problem was Keith had never fully committed to his family and had never really intended to stay forever.

  The second time, Cody had turned twelve the day before and gone to sleep believing the world was perfect because he had a new bike and another game for his Xbox. When he got up the next morning, there’d been an empty spot at the kitchen table and a dark oil stain on the driveway where Keith’s Malibu used to be.

  Keith had walked out the door, leaving her with a newborn baby, forty dollars in the bank, a sheaf of bills as high as her elbow and the Herculean task of explaining why to two boys who didn’t understand.

  T
here were days when she wanted to throttle her ex-husband for what he had done to their family, for how he had hurt his children. She had known he’d wanted out for a long time, but had never thought he’d up and move, to live with the twenty-year-old college student who was the “love of his life.”

  Keith Cooper had been irresponsible and selfish, two traits that Abby had been blind to for far too long. She’d kept thinking he would change, that he would settle down, find a career, not just a job, and become the family man she’d foolishly hoped he’d be.

  She’d been wrong.

  Abby leaned against the wall beside the watercooler, a paper cone of cool water in her hand, and watched Cody. He was hunched into the corner of one of the sofas, looking angry and sullen. Par for the course with a sixteen-year-old who thought his life sucked.

  To his left sat Dylan Millwright, Ty’s nephew. He was a good-looking guy—tall and lean, with dark hair and green-brown eyes. She hadn’t really noticed him before, but she did now.

  He had a roguish look to him, with the scuffed black boots, the battered jeans, the faded T-shirt. Like one of those guys in a modern-day fairy tale who roared up on a motorcycle and whisked the bored debutante away for a life of adventure.

  Except Abby knew full well those kinds of guys didn’t make good boyfriend or husband material. They were as temporal as spring weather, gone with the next gust of wind.

  “Hey, Cody, want to join us?” Dylan asked.

  Cody shrugged and hunkered down more, as if his hoodie could hide him from the world.

  “We’re just talking,” Dylan said.

  One of the other kids, a fair-haired tattooed kid wearing a T-shirt with Kurt Cobain’s picture, leaned forward. “Yeah, like about girls and crap.”

  Another boy, with long dark hair and a dirty white T-shirt, leaned back against the couch. “My girl’s all mad at me today. I spent the day in solitary and she’s acting like I did it on purpose.”

  In solitary was slang for in-school suspension, something Abby knew all too well from Cody’s frequent trips down that hall. She leaned back against the wall, waiting to see where the conversation would lead.

  “Well, did you?” Dylan said.

  Long Dark Hair snorted. “No. Who gets suspended on purpose?”

  Dylan chuckled. “Some of us have done that. So I can sympathize.”

  “What do you know about our lives, man?” Cobain Fan scoffed. “What’d you do, skip a class? Blow off an essay?”

  “I was a lot like you guys. One of those angry kids who thought he knew better than any adult. Now I—”

  “Let me guess,” Cody said. He had pushed the hoodie off his head. He had the same mop of dark brown hair as his little brother and his father, except he wore his long on the top and shaved on the sides. “You grew up, got a good job, bought a sweet house in the suburbs where you mow the lawn on Saturdays and crap like that. Matt’s right. You don’t know anything about how tough our lives are.”

  “I’m not claiming to be an expert, even if you all think I’m too old to understand,” Dylan said. “Just someone who has made my fair share of mistakes.”

  “Doesn’t mean you know anything about us,” Matt—previously known as Cobain Fan—said.

  “True. But it doesn’t hurt to talk about your lives, does it? Maybe I can learn a thing or two from you guys, too.” Dylan shrugged. “So let’s talk.”

  Cody cursed. “Talking doesn’t change jack. Waste of time.”

  “Hey, I get it that you all don’t really want to sit here and go on and on about your lives. I’m not exactly Mr. Conversation myself. But I don’t think sitting around here—” Dylan waved at the motley set of battered sofas “—pissed at the world is going to change anything. And I’m betting every one of you has something he wants to change about his life. So let’s talk.”

  Abby couldn’t have been more surprised if Dylan had stood up and started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She never would have imagined—given his appearance—that he would be so smart and intuitive with how he handled these kids. There was color in Cody’s cheeks, interest in his eyes—

  Two things Abby hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Abby clutched the paper cup so hard it crumpled, praying her son would open up, stop shutting himself off from the world.

  “Whatever, dude,” Cody said finally, then got to his feet, flipping the hoodie back over his head as he rose. “I’m not here to have a Dr. Phil moment with some guy I don’t even know. I’m just trying to survive.”

  Then he headed out the door, snagging a basketball from the bin as he went. The door shut behind him with a solid thunk.

  Abby looked at Dylan. She could see the same disappointment in his face that she felt herself. For one brief second, Abby had felt like she had an ally.

  And that was a dangerous thing to depend on, Abby reminded herself. She knew full well how a man could let her—and more, her sons—down. So she went back into the office and went back to work, doing the only thing she knew how to do, to—

  Survive.

  Chapter Two

  Dylan straightened the sofas, replaced the cushions and pillows and picked up the empty soda cans from the scarred coffee table. The rest of the teenagers had headed outside after Cody, a sort of group mutiny. Dylan could hear the ping-ping of a basketball hitting the pavement.

  Well, that hadn’t gone too well. He’d hoped maybe he could connect with the teenagers, have an open discussion, maybe warn them off from making the same mistakes as he had. But so far, his batting average at being a teen group leader was pretty close to zero. For the hundredth time, he wondered why Uncle Ty had thought he could be good at this.

  The little kids had finished their craft project, and were sitting in a circle on the carpet while Mavis read them a story about a lost kangaroo. Maybe that was the age when Dylan should be telling them to stay in school. When they still thought books and stories held magic, and when they weren’t scarred by the world.

  Uncle Ty came over and picked up a cushion that had fallen on the floor. “That went pretty well. I liked how you handled them.”

  Dylan turned to his uncle. “Really? They all walked out on me.”

  Ty waved that off. “It happens. The last thing teenagers want you to know is that they’re listening to you and agreeing with you. The first time I led a teen group, it lasted maybe ten minutes before the whole lot of them walked out the door. I didn’t have the basketball court or the game stations then, so they all went home. Your group lasted a lot longer than that.”

  “Maybe. But they still left.” Dylan sighed.

  “No, they’re still here.” Ty pointed to the boys outside the window, shooting layups and teasing each other between shots. “Getting teenagers to listen is like turning a cruise ship. You don’t yank the wheel hard to the right. You nudge it, a little at a time, so the passengers don’t even feel the turn.”

  Dylan chuckled. “Covert counseling?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Talking to the teenagers had been like talking to his former self, if he could have done that fifteen or sixteen years ago and with better results. Of course, Dylan hadn’t listened to anyone back then, not even his uncle. Dylan had been so angry at the world, so ready to leave Stone Gap. Maybe if he’d listened years ago, his path wouldn’t have been so rocky, and he wouldn’t be thirty-two and still trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

  “Don’t worry so much. You’re doing great.” Ty looked around the room and let out a long breath. “There’s so much to do here. I put everything on hold when Virginia got sick because I kept thinking she’d get better and I’d have time, but...” Ty shook his head. “I need to repaint. Replace that carpet. Repair a few of the chairs and sofas, fix the kitchen cabinets, replace a chunk of countertop that rotted when we had a water pipe burst. One of the toilets is leak
ing and there’s a hole in the roof, two broken windows, a big hole in the hallway wall and another over there. That’s just the big stuff, not to mention all the little things that need to be done around this place. I don’t even know where to start.”

  He could hear the stress in Ty’s voice. The center was, indeed, in need of a major overhaul. Major overhauls—of buildings at least—were something Dylan could do. He draped an arm over his uncle’s shoulders. “It’s like steering a cruise ship, Uncle Ty. One thing at a time. Show me where the tools are and I’ll start on the repairs today.”

  Gratitude eased the worry in Ty’s face. His uncle looked tired, worn down by the last few weeks. “I’ll get my toolbox. I have a list as long as my arm of things I need to buy at the hardware store—”

  “Give it to me. Go home tonight, let me lock up. The center’s only open for another hour, and I’m sure I can handle things for that long. I’ll run over to Ernie’s hardware store in the morning and start the repair work tomorrow.” It was the least he could do for his uncle during his time here. And, it would keep Dylan busy, which would also keep him from running into his brother. Or think about what he was going to do next, after he was done in Stone Gap. He had a job offer from his boss to manage a construction project in Maine. It was a multiyear commitment starting in the spring, for a slew of new housing. His boss had taken Dylan under his wing a couple years ago, even paid for Dylan to take the contractor’s exam, to make him official. Jay was a good man, who had a similar history to Dylan’s, and they’d hit it off from the start. It was the longest Dylan had ever stayed with one job, and most of that was due to Jay’s support.

  Dylan had put off the decision, telling Jay he needed to go to Stone Gap first. Be there for Uncle Ty and then...

  Dylan would see. Taking the job from Jay would mean staying in one place, something Dylan wasn’t so sure he wanted.