The Reluctant Daddy

by Helen Conrad

  “You’ve fallen for the propaganda hook, line and sinker, haven’t you?” he said cheerfully, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “Children aren’t our future unless we decide to let them be. In reality they’re like little beasts trying to tear apart the human race. They’ve got to be whipped into shape.”

  The man was an utter barbarian. Glenna had never heard such nonsense. Swinging around, she faced him, eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you go on about your business investigating fires?” she asked crisply. “I’ll handle the children. We’ll both be happy.”

  He shrugged, looking down at her from his great height, laughing at her still. “But that’s exactly what I’m doing. Investigating.”

  There was no use in going on this way. She didn’t want to talk to him, so what was she doing hanging around? Whirling, she started for her car, her dark hair flying out behind her.

  He didn’t take the hint, following close behind. “Wait a minute, Glenna,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  Of course he would. He’d like to get her to dish out some dirt on Judson, wouldn’t he? Amplify on what Miss Grassley had alluded to. Or maybe admit her family were the type of scum who just might have burned down the largest enterprise in town to get even for old wrongs. Well, she wasn’t in the mood.

  “Sorry,” she said shortly, opening the car door and dropping the books onto the back seat. “I’m all talked out at the present time.”

  She slammed the door and started around to the driver’s side. “Maybe some other time. Goodbye, Mr. Nielsen.”

  Don’t call us, we’ll call you. If we feel like it. That’ll be the day.

  She swung into the driver’s seat and shut the door, starting the engine while he stood outside and motioned for her to roll down her window.

  She looked up at him, annoyed, wavering. She would have enjoyed peeling out and leaving him behind in a cloud of burned rubber. But she wasn’t sure her ancient car would cooperate, and it would have been too pathetic to chug away instead. So she lowered the window just enough to let his voice through and waited to see what he had to say.

  “You know I’m investigating the fire,” he said, coming close to the car and bending down so that he could look her in the eye. “I’d like to get all sides on the issue. The more input from the community, the better I’ll be able to make my determinations. And I’d like your opinion. Is there some time we could get together?”

  She turned and looked straight ahead. “I don’t think so, Mr. Nielsen. I don’t have any direct ties to the plant. You’d be better off talking to people who do.” She put the car in gear, but he spoke again, stopping her escape.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. People closely tied are people with their own agendas. I’d like to talk to you as an objective bystander.”

  She shook her head, still staring straight out her windshield and avoiding his eyes. “I don’t have time for talk. Right now, in my life, I only have time for children.”

  She glanced at her watch. She had to make a three o’clock class out at the community college. “Goodbye,” she said again, and this time she didn’t look to see if he was still talking, but took off out of the parking lot as quickly as her car would go.

  Lee Nielsen watched her leave, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted to the side, considering. When he’d first seen her, he’d thought she was trying to steal his car. Now he wondered what she had to hide. But he was looking forward to seeing her again. Because seeing this blue-eyed sprite again wasn’t just a possibility, it was a promise.

  But in the meantime, he had to get out to the fire scene and begin some sampling for tests. Turning, he walked slowly toward his car, hunching against the wind.

  * * *

  GUSTS OF A CHILLING breeze whistled through the scorched evergreens, and Lee Nielsen turned up his collar and buttoned his jacket as he surveyed what was left of Ingalls F and M. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Charred walls still stood toward the back, but the whole front of the building had collapsed, consumed by the flames.

  Lee stopped and looked at it from the parking lot. The scene reminded him of pictures he’d seen of bombed-out cities in Europe after World War II, except for the yellow tape that zigzagged around the ruins as though trying to hold everything together. This had been a thriving enterprise. Now it was gone, burned out, destroyed, the life of the place snuffed out like a candle.

  Though he never would have admitted it to anyone, starting an investigation like this always made Lee shiver inside. There was such finality to a burning. A fire could devour everything in its path and leave nothing behind but cinders.

  A child cried out and Lee jerked his head around, turning to look. For just a second, for the tiniest sliver of an instant, he’d thought it was his son’s voice. But it was a young boy in the park across the way, all bundled up against the cold and running awkwardly toward the slides. He’d been yelling at a friend, and his voice had carried on the wind.

  Lee watched him for a moment. Mark used to run like that at his age, as though his legs were growing too quickly and he hadn’t adjusted to them yet. “Hey, Dad!” he would call out, racing down the driveway toward where Lee was washing his car. “If I help you, could I practice driving?”

  Mark had “practiced driving” from the time he was three, sitting behind the wheel and making driving noises. Lee had loved that in him, loved that the two of them shared a joy in cars. He’d planned out how it would be once Mark turned sixteen, how they would go to car shows together, how they would trade car stories.

  Well, Mark had turned sixteen more than a year ago, and when Lee had called to wish him a happy birthday, he’d been too busy to come to the phone.

  Grimacing against the hollow feeling, Lee turned and paced to the far end of the ruined building, ducking under the yellow tape stretched to keep out intruders. But his thoughts wouldn’t leave him alone. If he was going to remember the kids, better he should remember when they were little. Things had been happier then.

  He remembered picnics with them in the old days. Shelley had laughed a lot back then. She’d been beautiful, with her flaxen hair long and straight, flowing down her back. At the time, her smiles had been as loving as the feelings in his own heart. They’d packed lunches in a big old wicker basket and driven out into the hills, or to the lake, as far away as they could get from the little house in the shabby suburbs they’d lived in then. Mark had run everywhere. He’d never stopped moving, and there had been a constant spark of mischief in his green eyes that made people grin when they saw him. And Jenny had been so cute with her braces and her ponytail and those little white boots she always insisted on wearing.

  Where did it all go wrong? Had there been one pivotal day when his children turned and looked at him and decided he wasn’t worth it, when they looked at each other, shook their heads and walked away? It was as though Lee had accidentally pulled at a loose string somewhere and the fabric of their love had begun to unravel while his attention was on something else. All of a sudden he’d looked up and it was gone, and his life lay in ashes at his feet.

  Turning, he walked into what had once been the main entrance of the building, careful not to disturb any of the charred remains. Pulling a camera out of his pocket, he began taking pictures, one after another, in a predetermined sequence he could easily identify later on when he did his documentation. But his mind was still on the past.

  “What did you expect?” Shelley had asked him acerbically the last time he’d begged her to help him analyze what had happened. Her hair was cut short now, short and chic, as befitted her new life as a realtor. She kept her nails long and red and drove a large, expensive silver car. “You were never around for them. When they were little, you were always gone, always busy at that awful club you tried to run.”

  That had hurt. The “awful club” had been an intimate coffeehouse where he’d tr
ied to run a thriving business and help young jazz talent in the neighborhood at the same time. A saxophone player himself, he’d tried to live out his dream. It hadn’t worked. He’d had to sell the place and go to work for other people when he failed.

  “That business took all our savings and practically left us homeless.” That was the way Shelley had seen it.

  His own view had been somewhat different. “That business was the legacy I was trying to build for our family. That was why I spent so much time there. If it had worked out, the kids could have worked there when they were teenagers. It would have provided us with money for their college and with a decent living right into our retirement years.”

  Shelley was never impressed with that side of things. “But it didn’t work out, did it? So you wasted all that time when you could have been working regular hours and helping me with the children. You missed them growing up. You missed too much. Then when you completed your training to be a fire investigator,” she told him, “you were gone all the time again—investigating disasters all over the place. Once more, you left me stranded.”

  “Shelley, I’m sorry it seemed that way to you. But I made a good living for us.”

  “But where were you when Mark had his bike accident and ended up in the hospital? I had to handle it on my own. Where were you when Jenny came home and found an intruder in the house? You were in Chicago that time. I had to handle it again. I had to handle everything. You were always gone.”

  The hell of it was she was right. He had been gone. He’d basically left the raising of the kids to her, and he’d gone out and made the money for them to live on. And he’d made a darn good living in the end. That was supposed to make up for the absences, wasn’t it? Did she really think he would rather be out on the road than at home playing ball with Mark?

  Lee swore softly and shook his head. What was the matter with him, anyway? This was all old news. When Shelley had told him she wanted a divorce, he’d spent weeks mulling these things over, agonizing over every mistake, hating, resenting, regretting. But it was past and he wasn’t able to bring it back. There was nothing to be gained by obsessing about it. His marriage was over, his kids estranged from him. He was a different person now, and that was that.

  Another cold gust tore at him and he grimaced, pushing away the regrets. He ought to finish up here and get back to the bed-and-breakfast where he was staying. It was getting colder all the time, and the light was fading. There wasn’t much use in going on in the dark.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “GLENNA, CAN YOU SET the table for me?” Anna Bauer Kelsey asked her daughter, calling from the warm, brightly lit kitchen. “I’m elbow-deep in pastry dough I’m making.”

  “Sure thing, Mom.” Glenna smiled, thinking how often this same exchange had taken place between them over the years.

  She dug out the silverware and napkins and snagged a pile of place mats before she turned to the long table in the dining room and began arranging them carefully. She enjoyed the look of the heavy stainless-steel flatware against the bright blue napkins and blue plaid place mats. “Are five places enough?” she called into the kitchen.

  Anna thought for a moment before answering. “You’ve already fed your little ones, haven’t you? Then five ought to do it—no, six. Bob Quentin is home, and so are Penny Barker and Drew Stirling.”

  The number of people at the table always varied, but was never small. The Kelsey house was huge, with rooms everywhere, and Glenna’s parents had long ago decided to take in boarders to help with funds for maintaining the place the way they liked it.

  “We should sell this old white elephant and move into one of those fancy condos,” Johnny Kelsey, Glenna’s irrepressible father, was always saying.

  “Not on your life,” his wife would respond cheerfully. “I want to have my family around me, and if I can’t have that, I’ll take friends. This old place is our home, it’s where our children were born. I’m not leaving until they carry me away.”

  So they stayed and continued to take in boarders. Tisha Olsen, owner of the Hair Affair, the local beauty shop, and Zachary Phelps, retired chief of police, were both longtime residents. More recently Bob Quentin, a quiet and unassuming salesman for a tie company, and a rather mysterious middle-aged lady named Penny Barker were staying with them, as well as the handsome Drew Stirling, sales manager for Britt Marshack’s very successful yogurt business. Tisha was on vacation with Judson Ingalls at the moment, and the chief was out of town, on an extended visit with relatives in Florida, but the other three were here, in the home they shared with the Kelseys.

  Glenna was glad her parents had stayed put. Things were very much as they had been when she was growing up, and when she came back to Tyler after her divorce, the continuity was just what she needed to help her heal. There was comfort in the fact that her mother was in the kitchen every evening, preparing wonderful meals, and her father in his den, working on papers for a while before he lit a fire in the main fireplace and chatted with guests who began wandering down for dinner. They would all gather around the big, long table in the dining room, talk and laughter flowing, and eat her mother’s scrumptious food. Then everyone helped clear the table and do the dishes, and Glenna would feel once again part of something warm and good, and those cold, lonely feelings of failure were kept at bay for one more evening.

  And her children had grandparents around; that was the best part. Plus a houseful of caring adults who were genuinely fond of the little tykes, who were always eager and willing to help keep an eye on them.

  As if on cue, Megan and Jimmy came storming into the dining area at that very moment. Jimmy was chasing Megan, who had found his favorite Transformer and was waving it in front of her as she ran.

  “Mommy, she’s got my Megaduck. She’s gonna break it!”

  The note of real anxiety in his voice and the spark of determination in his blue eyes—Kelsey eyes—made Glenna stop and take stock of the situation rather than absentmindedly restoring calm. “Give your brother back his Transformer, Megan,” she said firmly, standing in front of her daughter and making sure she followed through on the order. Then Glenna shook her head and laughed. “You two had better learn to get along. You’re going to spend a whole life being brother and sister. There’s no way to get out of it, you know.”

  “He won’t let me play with him,” Megan muttered, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “She always takes my toys,” he muttered back, shoving the Transformer into his pocket.

  “You two calm down. We’re about to have dinner and I want you to play in the den while we eat. Why don’t you read for a while? Come on, let’s go find some books.”

  Glenna soon had them ensconced on a comfortable sofa, each with a favorite book. But as she went off in search of another volume Megan wanted, she missed the crafty smile that began to grow on her son’s freckled face.

  “Lookee,” Jimmy cried suddenly to his little sister. He held his arms out in a circle in front of him and gazed at her slyly. “I got something. I got something you don’t. I got—” his eyes widened dramatically “—puppies!”

  Her nose wrinkled suspiciously. “Puppies?” She stood and gazed at him doubtfully, her dark eyes searching every nook and cranny on his person just in case she was missing something. “‘S no puppies,” she scoffed at last, shaking her head from side to side.

  “Uh-huh,” Jimmy declared, holding out his arms as though he were holding a big basket. “I got puppies. And you got no puppies.”

  She edged closer curiously, and he snatched the invisible basket out of her reach. “No, sir. You can’t touch my puppies,” he chanted. “My puppies are for me. And you can’t have one.”

  Megan couldn’t resist the bait, nor could she keep from suspending her disbelief. She reached a hand toward the invisible litter. “I—I want a puppy.”

  Jim
my’s triumph was supreme, his blue eyes sparkling. “Too bad. These are mine.”

  Her lower lip was beginning to tremble. She looked at him again, then turned toward the den. “Mommy!” she shrieked. “Jimmy’s got puppies and he won’t let me have one.”

  Glenna was already back in the room, carrying several books. She looked from one to the other curiously and noted the tears beginning to well in Megan’s eyes. “What on earth?”

  Jimmy’s smile was triumphant. “My puppies,” he said softly, walking away, his invisible puppies held snugly in the invisible basket in his arms. “I’m gonna take ’em to my room. Bye.”

  Megan’s tears were coming fast. “P-p-puppies!” she shrieked again.

  Glenna turned to her sobbing daughter in exasperation. “Megan, Jimmy doesn’t have any puppies.”

  “Does too.” She rubbed one eye with a little fist. “He had ‘em. An’ he won’t let me—won’t let me.... I wanna puppy!”

  The tears were a torrent now, and Glenna pulled the girl into her arms and soothed her, half laughing, half sympathetic. After all, she’d had a brother herself and knew how easy it was to get caught up in their fantasy worlds.

  She finally got the children settled and calmer and reading books in the den, and then she went back to the dining room, where her mother was just serving dinner. All the guests had assembled by now, and so had her father, taking his usual seat at the head of the table. Glenna gazed at him lovingly as she sat beside him.

  Johnny Kelsey was an older version of Patrick, tall with dark curly hair—her dad’s just starting to gray—and a twinkle in his eye that was seldom extinguished. He was laughing now, reacting to a joke Bob Quentin had just told.

  “I got one for you, San,” he said jovially, using the salesman’s nickname. “What do you get when you cross a philosopher, an insomniac and a dyslexic?” Johnny grinned as everyone demurred. “A guy who sits up all night wondering if there really is a dog.”