Dangerous Conditions (Protectors At Heart Book 4)

by Jenna Kernan

  “The hardest part is having everyone think I’m mentally challenged. You, too, Paige. Up until a few days ago you always looked at me with pity in those big blue eyes.”

  She glanced away. “I did. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m still in here. Missing time didn’t change me.”

  “It did,” she said, trying and failing to keep her resentment at bay, her anger at his rash decision to reenlist, at his family’s request that she stop upsetting him with reminders of their past love. “You are not the boy who went away.”

  Not all the changes she noted were bad. He now seemed more prudent and less impulsive.

  “That’s what Connor says, too. Funny, though. I don’t feel different.”

  The office phone rang, and Logan rose to answer it.

  He said only two things. I see and Yes. Then he disconnected and turned toward her, his eyes sparkling and a smile lifting his features.

  “That was Principal Unger. She says that child protective services can’t get here until tomorrow and asked her to arrange suitable temporary placement for Valerie and Steven. She wants to temporarily place them with me.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “You think I can’t do it?”

  She remembered the last time she had left a child in his care and the outcome that had changed everything again. But that was long ago, and the improvements were remarkable.

  Was this the time to tell him how Lori got the scar on her chin or should she stick to giving him an answer to his question?

  She deliberated all he’d overcome since his injury as she stared at the hard expression. He expected her to say she didn’t believe him qualified. To her own surprise, she found that she did feel him capable.

  “I think you can do anything you want to, Logan. If you want to take custody, you should do it.”

  He sat back and confusion tipped the corners of his mouth downward.

  “Don’t look so surprised, Logan. I’ve seen you with kids. You are a natural.” She turned to a more difficult topic. “Do they know about their mom?”

  “Yes. Unger told them. She asked the kids who they wanted to stay with, and Steven said he wanted me.”

  “I’m not surprised. You coach Steven. He idolizes you, you know?”

  “Does he?”

  She nodded. “Where are they?”

  “The nurse’s office at school. I’m going to get them now.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Logan sat in the passenger side of Paige’s five-year-old gray Volvo sedan heading for the school. She had rightly pointed out that, if she rode along, they could not safely drive two children in his pickup truck.

  They parked right out front. School had let out thirty minutes ago and the buses had gone. They checked in at the main office and were walked across the empty hall to the nurse’s suite.

  Mrs. Warren had been the nurse at Central when they had both been in school, but Logan had never seen her this grim-faced.

  Steven perked up at seeing Logan.

  “Coach!” He shot to his feet. “Where’s Aunt Freda?”

  “Come on, sport,” Logan said, drawing Steven under his arm and turning toward the door. There he paused, waiting for Paige and Valerie.

  Valerie was on her feet and shifting from side to side.

  Paige squatted before the girl, who was just shy of her twelfth birthday. Logan knew this because her father had mentioned they were taking her to Montreal to see the theater production of Man of La Mancha.

  “Valerie, I’m Paige Morris.”

  Valerie glanced to her brother, already at the door beside Logan.

  Logan knew that Dr. and Mrs. Sullivan hosted Dr. Sullivan’s department party every July and had an annual Christmas party that Logan also attended. The kids always had a sitter for the winter gathering and headed for bed after making the rounds of the adult guests. But they were allowed to attend the summer event, so maybe they’d recall Paige.

  Paige continued, her voice low and calm. “I’ve been to your house many times. Do you remember me?”

  “You were on my team for Wiffle ball at the party,” said Valerie. Her face was pale with worry and she glanced to her brother again before returning her attention to Paige. “You played first base.”

  “And you hit a home run,” said Paige.

  Happier times, thought Logan.

  “Did they find Aunt Freda yet?” asked Valerie.

  “Not yet.” She extended her hand and Valerie took it, allowing Paige to walk with her past Mrs. Warren and out of the school behind Logan and her brother.

  “Is she dead, too?” asked Valerie, her voice cracking.

  “We don’t think so.”

  “But she’s missing,” said Steven, asking the tough questions again.

  Logan nodded.

  Steven swallowed several times and then turned to Logan. “If they can’t find Aunt Freda, where will we live?”

  “With me and my dad for now. Is that all right with you?” asked Logan.

  Steven nodded and bowed his head as the tears began to flow.

  Logan recalled his mother’s death when he was eleven years old. The suddenness and the randomness had struck him.

  He had been in school the very next day. He remembered how the grief hit him in waves. Everything would be fine and then it wasn’t. Then it would be okay and then the grief would leap on him all over again.

  Would it be like that for the Sullivans?

  “Harvest Festival tomorrow,” said Logan. “You two want to go or skip it and stay with my dad?”

  The two shared a long, silent moment that Logan could not interpret.

  “If we go,” said Steven to Valerie, “folks will stare at us and whisper. Or worse, they’ll be really nice.”

  Valerie wrinkled her nose. A moment later she had her hands over her eyes as she wept.

  Logan wrapped an arm around her. Steven was at his little sister’s side, patting her shoulder.

  “You don’t have to go,” he said.

  “But I want to.” Her words were muffled by her hands. “And I shouldn’t want to.”

  “No, nonsense. You can go, Valerie, and have fun. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you don’t miss them.”

  She sniffed and nodded, but her head came up and she stared at the dark pines that lined the schoolyard.

  “You’ll go, then,” said Logan. “Get some cotton candy and walk around. I have to work, but my dad can take you.”

  “I’ll take them,” said Paige. “You can join Lori and me. She’ll be thrilled.”

  He gave her a grateful smile.

  “And,” she continued, “I’ll bring you home anytime you want.”

  “Our home?” said Steven.

  “Not yet. The police are still there,” said Logan. These two kids did not deserve any of this.

  “But not my mother?” asked Steven.

  “She’s not there.”

  “Then I don’t want to go there. Not ever,” said Steven. “I want to stay with you.”

  “That’s what I want, too,” said Logan to Steven. The boy finally looked at him, his astonishment followed by an assessing gaze.

  “I do, Steven. I’d love to have you both stay with me.”

  * * *

  PAIGE HAD BROUGHT Lori back home from the movie theater after eight. The animated feature had succeeded in entertaining Lori and in taking Paige’s mind off her troubles for a time. An hour later, as she put Lori to bed, she faced the predictable questions, given all that had happened to her friends.

  “Mom? What happens to me if you die?”

  It was in that moment that Paige realized she did not have a will. She knew she needed one. But she was twenty-eight, and there always seemed to be time
. What twenty-eight-year-old thinks of such things?

  One who is a mother, she realized.

  Paige wished she could tell her daughter that she didn’t need to worry and that nothing would happen to her. But the Sullivans’ tragedy showed that rare and terrible things did occur.

  “If something happened to me, your grandmother would take care of you.”

  “What if it happened to both of you?” asked Lori. Her daughter’s curling ash-brown hair framed her worried face and her golden-brown eyes seemed huge.

  “Well, who would you want to live with?”

  The answer was immediate and surprising. “Mr. Lynch.”

  “Connor or Logan?” she asked.

  “Logan.”

  Paige blinked in shock. She had expected Lori to choose the parents of one of her classmates or her teacher or one of Paige’s friends. Instead, she picked her father, though she didn’t know him as such.

  “Why Logan?”

  “I like Logan. He’s nice.”

  Paige didn’t know what to say.

  Her daughter went on with steady reason. Clearly, she had been thinking about this. “He’s already taking care of Steven and Valerie. He has a job and he’s a good coach.”

  And he’s your father, Paige thought, but she said, “He is all those things.”

  She silently posed the question to herself. Who would she want to raise her daughter, if both she and her mother were gone?

  The answer was immediate.

  Logan.

  “Let me think about it. Okay?”

  “I’m going to ask him.”

  Paige’s entire body went cold. “It’s not done like that. I’d have to ask him.”

  “Will you?”

  Paige used her index finger to lift Lori’s chin and used her thumb to trace the jagged scar, white now and slightly raised, that threaded from her chin and across her jaw. “Sweetie, his brain was injured. I don’t want to overburden him.”

  “But he’s all better now.”

  When she spoke, her voice was sharper than she had intended as the worry rose up inside her.

  “He’s not,” said Paige. He’s not because he doesn’t remember us. And it’s better that way, so I don’t put weight on his shoulders he might not be ready to handle. But was he ready?

  For a long time Logan struggled to simply care for himself. But now... Had her young daughter identified what she had failed to notice? Logan was better or at least much improved. Perhaps now she could tell him what had been between them and, this time, he would remember. Connor certainly wouldn’t like it.

  Her daughter thumped the coverlet with her fists. “What about my real father?”

  “What about him?”

  “You never talk about him. When I ask, you just say he’s out of the picture. Is he dead?”

  “No.”

  “Then I want to meet him.”

  “That’s complicated. He doesn’t know about you.”

  “Then you need to tell him. Maybe he wants to be my daddy. I’m a good kid. He’d like me.”

  It was in that moment that Paige realized that while making her decision to keep Lori safe by keeping her daughter and Logan apart, she had robbed them both. She’d thought of this many times over the years, wrestling with what was the right thing to do. She’d grown so used to raising Lori on her own, was so careful to make sure she would not be hurt. What if she was misjudging his competence again? What if she told Logan and he fought for custody? Uncertainty gnawed. She couldn’t bear that. But was Lori right? Was Logan capable of raising their child if the worst happened?

  “I want to meet him, Mom.”

  All this time Paige thought she had been protecting her daughter. All this time she thought that she and her grandmother were enough. Why hadn’t she known that Lori longed for a dad?

  “I understand.”

  “Mom?”

  “We’ll talk about this some more later. Right now I need to sleep and so do you.”

  Lori lowered her chin, and Paige braced for a fight. But gradually her daughter released her clenched fists and finally nodded.

  “Okay,” said Lori.

  She tucked her daughter into bed and smoothed the covers that she knew would be a wild tangle in the morning from her daughter’s restless sleep. At the door she flicked off the light. The blue moonlight splashed through the window of Lori’s bedroom, sending the shadows of the maple trees waving across the coverlet like the arms of skeletons.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” said Paige.

  “’Night, Mom.”

  Lori looked like him, Paige thought, with her brown hair and amber eyes.

  When she’d come home with a child, folks here did the math and assumed that she’d gotten in trouble in college after her breakup with Logan while he was deployed. No one knew he had been to see her before deployment or that their broken engagement had not stopped them from sleeping together before he shipped out. No one remembered but her.

  She’d kept the truth from him to protect Lori. His dad had told her the doctors didn’t expect Logan to survive his injuries, but he had. They prepared Mr. Lynch for the possibility that Logan would remain in a vegetative state. But he’d regained consciousness. They never expected him to recover the ability to speak, but he had. Back then it had been irresponsible of her to continue to try and make Logan remember them or to allow him any custody of Lori. When her daughter was a baby, Lori’s injury convinced Paige that her daughter had needed protecting, but now she needed the truth. She needed her father.

  That meant that it was time for her to again tell Logan.

  Chapter Ten

  Logan was up at six and directing the food trucks and vendors to their positions on the Main Street. Setup began immediately as he worked to direct visitors’ vehicles that began appearing a little after eight with traffic building until about ten-thirty. The volunteer fire department handled most of the parking and collected the five-dollar fee to fill Rathburn-Bramley’s empty parking lot and the fields across Raquette Road. Mrs. Unger, the primary school principal and long-time member of the squad, was already there and setting up her crew. If any of them noticed the yellow caution tape at the head of Turax Hollow Road, they did not mention it. Dr. Sullivan’s death didn’t seem to be on the minds of visitors, if they’d noted it at all, and was momentarily set aside by the residents.

  Logan went over to Mrs. Unger to see if she needed his help.

  “No, we have it all under control, Logan. Thank you,” said Unger.

  He tipped his hat.

  “Oh, Logan. I notified child protective services that you and your dad have accepted temporary placement.”

  “Great.” He did not fail to notice that she had said that he and his dad had accepted placement as if he alone could not handle the job.

  “It might just be a day or two.”

  “They’re no problem.”

  Then he blurted out, “Mrs. Unger, do you think I could keep them?”

  She cocked her head. “What’s that now?”

  “Steven and Valerie. Do you think I could be the foster parent?”

  “You... Well, Freda would have custody.”

  “Assuming they can’t find their aunt or she turns down custody.”

  “Well, you would have to be vetted and you’re a single man and you have...issues.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Logan, I’m just not sure.”

  “You think my TBI keeps me from being a good parent?”

  “I know you’d be a fine parent. But we are talking about fostering someone else’s children. It’s a different question.”

  “I see.” That was a polite no. She didn’t think him capable or didn’t think he’d gain approval from CPS.

  He’d grown used to people underestimating him, but this still stung. He knew how to care for s
omeone, and he could protect them, even love them, as if they were his own children.

  She lifted one shoulder and her mouth twisted. Logan knew the expression. She was not optimistic. “Tell you what? Get the forms. They’re online. Then we’ll see.”

  Mrs. Unger took two backward steps, turned and hurried away.

  He watched her go. He wondered if he might be better off in a place where he was not constantly being compared to who and how he was before. His intelligence was normal, and he was up and running in all other ways except the difficulty with sound. But he knew people who were deaf and were excellent parents. His memory loss seemed permanent, but it wasn’t as if he’d forget where he put the kids and wander off.

  Logan headed in the opposite direction. He had spotted his father, the Sullivan kids and the Morris family sitting at the bandstand watching the Delaware Dixieland Band. The group was so old that they left dust behind them on the stage, but the music was upbeat and joyful. He was gratified to see Steven and Valerie both smiling.

  “Can you join us for lunch?” asked Paige.

  Logan nodded and then turned to Steven. “Tacos, corn dog or pulled pork sliders?”

  “Corn dog!” said Steven, his cares momentarily set aside.

  “Tacos!” said Lori, bouncing in delight. Her grandmother, Beverly Morris, glanced toward the sky, drawing a long breath through flaring nostrils. As she exhaled, the warm air in her lungs collided with the chilly atmosphere, making her seem suddenly a fire-breathing dragon.

  Mrs. Morris didn’t like him. He wished he could remember why.

  They all left the bandstand, and Lori skipped ahead and clasped Logan’s gloved hand. Paige took ahold of Valerie’s hand, and Steven, Mrs. Morris and his father followed along. Logan offered a greeting to everyone he knew, which turned out to be a lot of people. He saw their smiles drop as their attention moved from him to the orphaned kids behind him.

  At the first food truck the kids moved to examine the images on the side of the vehicle and Paige stepped up beside him.

  “How are they doing?” asked Paige.

  “They had a rough night. I found them both in the bottom bunk this morning.”

  “I can only imagine how hard this must be for them,” she said.