The Reluctant Daddy

by Helen Conrad

  “So this is how you do it,” said a voice from close behind. “The artist at work.”

  Glenna lowered the camera and turned to find Tony Perini grinning at her.

  “Tony! What are you doing here in Tyler?”

  “Christmas shopping. I’m taking off for home in a few days.”

  “But you’re going to take a look at my tapes first, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. How about right now? I don’t have much time, but if we hurry—”

  “Right now?” She looked at her children, standing in line. They still had another ten to fifteen minutes to wait. “Can you hang on a bit? I can’t drag my kids away from Santa Claus.”

  Tony rolled his eyes and glanced at his watch. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’ve got, like, ten minutes right now and then I’m outta here. I’ve got places to go, things to do.”

  “People to see—yes, I know.” She shook her head at him. “I’ll have to catch you later. Will you be in your office any time tomorrow?”

  “Sorry.” He shook his head as he began to turn away. “I’ll give you a call on Monday, before I go.”

  “But, Tony—”

  “Hey, I swear I’ll get to them. Honest. Trust me, okay? See ya later.”

  And he was lost in the crowd. Glenna stared after him, distressed. Nothing was working out right in her quest for help with this video idea. She was going to have to face it: Tony was nice, but he wasn’t very reliable. She was going to have to look in other directions and she was going to have to do it soon.

  “Before someone else gets this idea and beats me to it,” she muttered, turning back to start taping again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT FELT GOOD to get back to Tyler. As Lee strolled down Main Street, it felt almost like a homecoming. Some people waved, a few nodded. More looked at him with resentment and anger in their eyes. But that was to be expected. With the fire, the town had changed, and Lee’s own findings might be changing it even more in the next few weeks.

  A town like this, with so much of its economy, not to mention its history, tied up in one industry, was bound to go through a period of readjustment when it received a severe blow like this. With no insurance money, rebuilding was going to be difficult. The town was going to have to pull together, and sacrifices would be necessary. Some people would probably have to move on to other parts of the state, other parts of the country, looking for work. Others would have to tighten their belts and alter their life-styles. Some might have to give up on college for their children. No wonder there was bitterness. Lee couldn’t blame them at all. He was mildly surprised no one had yet threatened to string him up from a tree. It had happened before.

  “Hey,” said an older man in a baseball cap and a jacket that had Tyler Titans on the back. He stopped on the sidewalk in front of Gates Department Store and jabbed a forefinger. “Aren’t you that fire inspector?”

  “Investigator,” Lee corrected automatically, looking wary.

  “Whatever,” the man said. “You better figure out and figure out fast some way to make that fire an accident.” His thick, bushy eyebrows rose and fell with his words in a comic fashion, but there was nothing funny about the emotion blazing in his eyes. “You know what I mean? If you finish off this town, someone’s bound to try to finish you off, too.” He jabbed with the finger again. “You got me?”

  “I got you,” Lee said wearily. “Over and out, good buddy,” he murmured ironically, moving on.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” the man yelled as he left, but Lee didn’t look back. There was no point in arguing in the street with someone who wasn’t prepared to listen to facts anyway.

  Who knows? he thought as he strode away. Maybe I’m wrong and they’ll string me up yet.

  He stopped in at the convenience store to pick up some shaving cream. Though it stocked all the basic necessities—newspapers, milk, groceries, candy bars—the place was old-fashioned, with all sorts of miscellaneous merchandise piled to the ceiling. Fortunately, the shaving cream display was prominent and unavoidable.

  On his way to the check-out counter, Lee stopped to look through some magazines, and that was when he heard a small boy talking to the clerk.

  “It’s for my mommy. For Christmas,” the boy was saying in his childish voice, and looking over, Lee thought he recognized him. “How many pennies is it?” the boy asked shyly.

  Lee moved a little closer, to where he could see and hear better. He was pretty sure this was Glenna’s boy. He scanned the store, but didn’t spot her.

  Then he did see someone he recognized, down one of the aisles. Pam, her sister-in-law, had Glenna’s little girl by the hand. They seemed to be looking at earrings. He quickly figured out that Pam had brought the two children here to pick out Christmas presents for their mother.

  He glanced back at the little boy, who was having problems with the clerk. “No,” he was saying, shaking his head vigorously and looking worried. “No, no. Not like that.”

  The clerk was young and not used to working with children. The twist of his mouth showed he definitely had better things to do than wait on a kid like this. He looked harried, impatient, and he raised his head, searching the store. “Listen, Jimmy, where’s your mom? Let me talk to her.”

  The boy shook his head again, his lower lip stuck out stubbornly. “My mommy isn’t here. This is for my mommy,” he stated insistently. “It’s a secret. You can’t tell her.” His little face scrunched up with the effort of trying to explain these things to this obviously thickheaded man.

  The clerk looked down at him for a moment, then grabbed something off the counter. “How about this one?” he said, holding up a picture of a puppy in a cheap metal frame.

  “No, not that picture,” Jimmy said, his voice beginning to sound tremulous. “This picture.” And he held up a piece of paper, a crayon drawing that was worn around the edges.

  “Oh, I see what you want,” the clerk exclaimed. “You’ve already got the picture. You want to put it in a frame.”

  Jimmy nodded, his full, curling eyelashes surrounding huge blue eyes.

  “Okay,” the clerk said, scavenging through a pile of frames. “Let’s see. This ought to do it right here. You like this one?”

  Jimmy hesitated, and Lee looked over, eyed the frame and realized what the clerk was doing. The jerk thought he could palm off flawed merchandise on the kid. The frame he was offering him was scarred and bent and ugly.

  Up to now, the clerk hadn’t noticed Lee, which was the way he liked it. But this was something he couldn’t let pass.

  “How about this one?” he suggested pleasantly, picking up a nice wooden frame and holding it out to Jimmy. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

  Jimmy’s smile broke out and he looked up into Lee’s face, nodding happily.

  “Well, I don’t know,” the clerk mumbled, taking back the inferior model and looking a little resentful at the interference from Lee. “He might not have enough money for that one.”

  “He’s got enough,” Lee announced confidently, and under his breath he said, “I’ll handle the extra.”

  That made the clerk happy again, and he held out his hand. “Let’s see that picture, Jimmy. Let’s see if it’ll fit in this frame.”

  The picture was a crayon drawing of four stick-figure people around a table, having what seemed to be a holiday feast. One of the people had long black hair and very blue eyes. Two were smaller, probably meant to be children. And then there was one with a tie on at the head of the table. Among the dishes on the table was what looked like a small elephant—probably a turkey. The faces all had smiles on them.

  “You drew this, did you? So who are these people?” the clerk asked him, holding it up to the light and squinting.

  “That’s me and my mommy and Megan and...” He didn’t finish, his voice trai
ling off.

  The clerk turned away from him and winked at Lee, then leaned over and murmured, “His father disappeared when his little sister was born, they say. Fat chance on him showing up for Christmas dinner.”

  Lee looked at Jimmy quickly to see if he’d heard what the insensitive clerk had said, but the boy was busy looking over a display of belt buckles in a glass case.

  “Wow,” he breathed, bending over a particularly garish one depicting a snake in silver, its one eye emblazoned with a phony ruby.

  Lee looked at the crayon picture again. Yes, that was definitely supposed to be his father at the head of the table. Poor kid.

  Glenna had never really said anything about her marriage, or her divorce, and yet he’d sensed a sadness in her that probably stemmed from it. And the kids—how much had they been damaged?

  But he wasn’t here to get sentimental over any children’s lives. Hardening himself, he paid for his shaving cream, with an extra dollar to help Jimmy pay for the wood frame, and turned to leave, barely acknowledging Pam when she turned around and saw him. He didn’t want to get involved. He’d said it before and he would say it again: no more kids in his life.

  Still, he couldn’t stand to see a child being cheated. He’d been right to step in. But that was as far as he was willing to go.

  * * *

  EVERYONE MADE SURE Glenna knew right away that Lee was back. It was two days after the bazaar and she was at TylerTots, helping to get the place ready for the kids’ Christmas party the next day. She and her good friend Wendy Friedman were working in a room off the play area, sitting in folding chairs at a card table covered with newspaper, which had been taped down to catch glue spills. Currently, they were working on reindeer heads made out of corks with wiggly eyes and a red yarn nose and toothpicks for antlers. But other mothers and volunteers were bustling about or dropping in with baked goods, chatting companionably and creating a pleasant, lazy buzz in the center.

  Liza poked her blond head in as she was leaving the playroom with Margaret Alyssa. “Hey, Glenna. I heard your fire investigator was back,” she said, winking outrageously.

  Glenna jabbed a toothpick into the cork a bit more roughly than she had before. “I know,” she said shortly.

  Liza pretended to be shocked. “And you’re running around loose, out in public? Watch out, he may just find you.”

  Glenna turned to protest, but Liza was already gone.

  “My, my,” said Wendy, watching this exchange with interest. She set her little reindeer heads up in a row and smiled at them, pleased with the jolly picture they made, then turned back, her sleek brown hair rippling as she moved. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or do I get to make up my own stories about you?”

  Glenna gave her a fierce look and Wendy put up her hands as though to defend herself from an attack dog. “Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll be good.”

  Glenna sighed, relenting. The other women were conferring on the best way to move the piano to a better location for tomorrow’s event, and she edged closer to Wendy so they wouldn’t be overheard.

  “It’s nothing, really,” she told her. “It’s just that everyone seems to think I have a thing for the fire investigator.”

  “Lee Nielsen?” Wendy asked, her eyes widening appreciatively. “Ooh, I met him. What a hunk. Go for it, Glenna! You could use a little bit of that sort of thing in your life.”

  Glenna’s shoulders sagged. “Not you, too,” she moaned. “What do I have to do to convince you people that I’m not interested in the man?”

  Wendy shrugged and smiled at her. “Maybe if you stopped blushing every time he was mentioned, it might help,” she suggested.

  “I don’t blush.”

  Wendy considered, head to the side. “Could have fooled me,” she mentioned dryly. “I guess that’s just pixie dust reddening your cheeks, isn’t it?”

  “All right.” Glenna wilted. What was the use of denying something that was so obvious to everyone around her? “I’ll admit it. I...well, I could be really attracted to him if I let myself be.”

  Wendy’s wide mouth twisted sympathetically. “And why are you keeping such a tight rein on your heart, pray tell?” she asked.

  Glenna frowned. This was the part that could hurt if she let it. “Because he as much as warned me off,” she said, her voice as matter-of-fact as she could make it.

  “What?” Wendy had a hard time believing that.

  “When you stop and think about it,” Glenna went on, determined to be adult about this, “he was really doing me a favor to tell me straight out like he did. He brought up the fact that he was only going to be here for a short time and it wouldn’t be fair to me to get involved. And then...” Should she add this? Why not? It was the truth, after all. “Well, he said he didn’t want to get involved with anyone who had children.”

  “Oh, Glenna.” Wendy threw up her hands and her dark eyes mirrored her indignation. “What a Neanderthal. What’s he got against kids?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what’s so odd. He seems so...” She’d been about to say perfect, but she stopped herself. There was no point in getting maudlin about this. If the man didn’t want to get involved, that was that. She’d better stop whining and get on with things. “Anyway, what’s done is done. It’s not like anything was broken, you know. He’s just a man, and a man passing through at that. No big deal.”

  “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t like kids,” Wendy told her sternly. “I think you’re right—he did do you a favor by telling you right away. At least you didn’t waste any real emotional energy on the jerk. Did you?”

  “Of course not,” she lied stoutly.

  “Good.” Wendy looked at her uncertainly, but there didn’t seem to be any more to say on the subject. Then she sighed. “But that brings up another matter. Pam came by the other day and I brought out Ruthie.” Ruthie was her six-month-old baby, the absolutely adorable sister of three-year-old tough guy, little Andrew, who was playing in the next room. “I thought she might like to hold the baby, but when I offered, she backed away.” Wendy frowned, shaking her head. “Glenna, I swear her face was white as a ghost. She was scared to death. Didn’t you say she was thinking about adopting?”

  “Yes,” Glenna said, frowning herself. Her heart sank a bit. She’d been afraid of this. Pam just wasn’t reacting the way she’d expected to plans for the adoption. Instead of more excited, she was getting more frightened of the entire situation, and Glenna wasn’t sure what to do to counter her growing reluctance. And at the same time, she knew how badly her brother wanted children.

  “Well, she’d better think again,” Wendy said. “That gal isn’t ready, believe me.” She rose and dusted off her pants. “I’ve got to get going. Dennis can take only about an hour or so with the baby without a backup system.” She gave her a salute and a wink and was out the door to collect her son.

  Glenna began to gather the reindeer into a box for the glue to dry, thinking of Wendy and her family. She and Dennis had a loving relationship and a couple of great kids. Life for them was good. It was comforting to know that some people could make it all work out.

  Glenna had always thought she would be one of those people. After all, she came from a great marriage. Her parents were role models to the entire community in that regard. But it hadn’t happened for her.

  Marriage wasn’t easy. She supposed it might help if you were madly in love. Then you might be more ready to forgive the differences you had to learn to tolerate, might be able to laugh at things that broke others apart. Then maybe things could be worked out instead of simmering until they formed a bone of contention that tore the relationship in two. If you were madly in love, she supposed that things might look less annoying and you might learn to give a little more. It hadn’t happened with her and Alan.

  Glenna blamed herself. She real
ized now that she hadn’t known him well enough. Nine months seemed like a long time, but it obviously wasn’t long enough to really understand what he wanted, and for him to know what she had to have. She should have waited longer. They should have done more things, talked about different issues, tested each other.

  Once they were married, she’d realized pretty quickly that this was not going to be an infinite love that would defy the ages with its heat and intensity. What had possessed her to go ahead and have two children under those circumstances? She knew what it was—the age-old delusion that children would bind them together more strongly. Instead, children were pretty much what had torn them apart.

  She’d wanted children so badly, she’d blinded herself to the truth. She’d been so sure those sweet little faces would win him over. Not only did they fail to do that, they’d actually pushed him away. And now she’d doomed her children to growing up without a father. Some mother she was.

  Rising, she got a broom and began sweeping up the remnants of the craft activities, pushing bits of white cotton and red felt into a pile, along with broken toothpicks and a few crumbling corks. She needed movement and bustle to help get her mind off unpleasant things.

  And yet unpleasant things wouldn’t leave her alone. Once she’d pulled her thoughts away from her bad marriage, they moved straight to another problem—Pam and her adoption plans.

  What was she going to do about Pam? It was so unfair that her sister-in-law had to go through this, that she couldn’t just do what came naturally and have a baby like everyone else. It seemed that, with her MS, she couldn’t do anything easily. Everything had to be second-guessed and worried about.

  And so now Glenna had to worry about Pam. Well, it was better than worrying about herself.

  * * *

  “OH, GLENNA,” her mother called from the kitchen when she returned home, her children spilling away from her toward the tree that her dad and Drew Stirling were setting up in the living room. “That friend of yours stopped by this afternoon.”