Perfect Paige

by Ines Saint

  Dr. Hernandez was silent for a long time. Finally, she began to nod. “Mrs. Galloway, please send me your transcripts, too. Pending the required drug test and background check, I’m thrilled to say I think we’ve found a new nurse.”

  Background check. Nowadays, a background check included an Internet search. Paige’s hopes went up, and then came down so fast, it made her dizzy. But she didn’t allow them to crash. Honesty would be key. “About that . . .” she began.

  * * *

  A beep on the device next to Alex went off. A quick glance informed him that Glenn Galloway was turning off the exit ramp. He’d be there in five. He was early. Good.

  The sun was low, the weather warm. A perfect summer afternoon. Faint voices traveled from the backyard. Alex followed the sound and tried to grab Paige’s attention, but she was on the phone. Riley was sitting on the bottom step, tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Tyler was trying to get a good grip on a football, but he was going about it all wrong.

  Alex wasn’t good with little people, but he was good with footballs. When he approached, Tyler looked up and said, “We’re not s’pposed to talk to you.” At the sound of Tyler’s voice, Paige threw a quick glance over her shoulder. When she spotted him, her eyes narrowed, as if warning him to stay away.

  He cleared his throat. “Can I show him how to get a good grip on the football?” he called over to her. It wasn’t only that Glenn was likely nearing, and it would more than likely make him nuts to see Alex teaching his son to grip a football. It was also that it was driving him a little nuts to see how the kid was grabbing the ball.

  Tyler’s eyes widened. “Can he please, Mom?” he squealed.

  Paige pursed her lips but sent a quick, clearly unhappy nod their way.

  Alex kneeled down in front of the boy. “Here, let me see that football for a sec,” he requested, reaching for the football. Tyler handed it over. Alex quickly realized he had no idea how to explain anything to a six-year-old. He held up a finger. “This finger is called your ring finger, okay?” Tyler nodded. “Okay, well, you have to place your ring finger on the second lace. See?” Tyler looked at his demonstration and nodded again. “Then you take your index finger, which is this one,” he said, holding up another finger, “And you put it just over the stitch line. Your pinkie—”

  “That’s this one!” Tyler held up his pinkie finger with a triumphant, toothless grin.

  The absurd grin made Alex want to smile. “Yes. Good. That one should be here.” He demonstrated. “And your thumb down here. Your thumb and index finger should make an L, see? Now, you try it.” He handed the football over, and Tyler tried to imitate the grip Alex had shown him. “That’s pretty good. Just move your pinkie a little bit this way . . . Good. That’s perfect. Keep it loose, though.”

  Tyler looked over at his mom, who encouraged him with a tight smile. Their backdoor neighbor was working on his yard, and he smiled widely at both Alex and Tyler, as if he approved. It made Alex feel uncomfortable. He was about to straighten and leave the kid when out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Glenn’s car, turning onto West Main, at just that moment. But instead of driving down the street and pulling up to the house, Glenn maneuvered his car into a parking spot behind a van up the street. Alex guessed he meant to spy on them, thinking he hadn’t yet been seen. “How do I get it to spiral?” Tyler asked.

  Alex hesitated, no longer sure what was the right thing to do. But Tyler was looking at him with hope and expectation. Alex relented. “Well, let’s say you want to throw it over to the fence. You have to position your body away from it a bit, like this, while the foot you pivot with should face it, like this—” He faced ninety degrees away from the fence and positioned his left foot toward it, then waited until Tyler did the same. “Good. Now, hold the ball near your ear. Good.” He tamped down a smile. Tyler looked uncomfortable and his position was all awkward angles, but Alex knew the more he practiced, the more natural it would become. “Now, stabilize it with your other hand. Here, like this.” He positioned Tyler’s other hand. “Now, when you’re ready to throw, take that stabilizing hand away, wind your throwing arm back, stop just behind your ear, and then swing it like this.” Alex swung his arm in a quick, circular motion.

  Tyler tried it and threw the football, which landed with a thud in front of him. The look of failure and frustration on Tyler’s face made Alex feel like he’d let the boy down. “Your grip was good. All it takes is practice, I promise you that.” He thought back to when he’d learned to throw a football. A friend’s dad had taught him, but only because his own dad had died. The thought gave him a twinge of guilt. This was a dad’s job. A rite of passage. Was he robbing Glenn and Tyler of something? He was no fan of Glenn’s, and everything that was happening to his family he’d brought upon them himself, but still. He was Tyler’s dad, and the boy had nothing to do with anything. “I bet your dad could teach you better, because he knows you.”

  “My dad doesn’t like football. He likes baseball, so he’s teaching me to throw a fastball.”

  Didn’t like football? Another reason not to like the man. At least he was teaching his kid to throw some kind of ball. “How about we try this: I’ll do the entire move a few times, slowly, and you imitate it?” Alex asked.

  They tried it, and it worked better than explaining. The more Tyler practiced the movement, the less awkward he became, and the more he smiled. “Can I throw it now?”

  “Sure. Do you want to watch me first?”

  Tyler nodded, again with the gap-toothed grin that made Alex want to smile.

  “You have to let it roll off your fingers, like this.” Alex threw it, and Tyler’s eyes lit up. He fetched it and asked Alex to throw it a few more times while he carefully observed. On the fourth throw, he wanted to try it himself. On his very first try, he got it to spiral toward the fence. “Yes!” Alex shouted.

  “I did it!” Tyler’s fist shot up in the air, and the surprised, ecstatic look on his face perfectly matched the way Alex felt. The kid was a natural. “That was great!” Alex high-fived him, though what he really wanted to do was throw him up in the air.

  “Did you see that, Mom?” he called out to Paige.

  “I sure did!” She was looking at her boy with wide, happy eyes, but her arms wrapped around her stomach told him she had mixed feelings. It brought Alex back to reality and made him remember that Glenn was watching them at that very moment. A good move would be to put his arm around Tyler’s shoulder a quick moment. That would likely make Glenn mad as hell. It sure would make Alex crazy if someone else was teaching his boy how to throw a ball and then put his arm around him. But Alex couldn’t make the move. Tyler was a kid, not a pawn.

  “Let’s practice it a few more times,” he said instead. He made a quick, surreptitious sweep of the area, and spotted Glenn’s car.

  The boy waited in eager anticipation. When he knelt beside him to teach him how to throw the ball a little farther, he felt like a fraud. The kid’s father was only a few yards away. And the man pretending to want to teach him to throw a football was looking to get his dad arrested.

  From the steps, a small voice called, “Teach me to throw it, too! Aunt Hope says anything a boy can do, a girl can do even better.”

  Alex paused.

  “Well, Dad says Aunt Hope is a frigid—”

  “That’s enough! Aunt Hope didn’t mean ‘better,’ she meant ‘just as well.’ And Dad didn’t mean ‘frigid.’ He meant timid.” Her voice cracked in the end, and Alex’s eyes swept up to look at Paige. He’d only spoken to Hope once so far, but no one in their right mind would describe her as timid.

  They exchanged a look, and somewhere in the look was a smile.

  “What’s ‘frigid’ mean, anyway?” Tyler asked.

  “It means cold. But it’s one of those words you’re not supposed to say in school,” Paige explained.

  “Like the finger we’re not supposed to use even though it’s just a finger?” Riley asked.

&nb
sp; Paige smiled at Alex, and her eyes sparkled with humor, and he was first caught by how pretty she looked, and then caught off guard by her reaction. Why was she smiling at him like that? And why wasn’t she mad at him? He’d been talking to her kids, even though all six women had warned him the kids were off-limits.

  She looked into his eyes and when she saw she had his attention, she slid a quick side glance down to the phone she’d slipped out of her pocket, and flashed the screen his way.

  He and Paige hadn’t been sharing a smile. She’d been tracking Glenn’s phone and knew he was there. She’d been acting again, and he’d been standing there wondering about it all. Alex felt like a stupid schoolboy.

  “Yes, just like that,” Paige said, and for a moment, he wondered if she could read his mind, too. Until he remembered what Riley had said.

  * * *

  Paige studied Agent Hooke. It was strange, he hadn’t been smiling. Not really. But he’d been laughing inside. His eyes were all lit up and his lips had softened around the corners. But the moment she’d showed Alex her phone, to let him know she knew Glenn was there, his expression hardened. “Yes, just like that,” she said to Riley, trying to find a balance between making Glenn nervous and guarding her kids from the unpleasantness. She pretended to glance at her watch. “Let’s go inside. Dad will be here in half an hour,” she said, as if she didn’t know he was already there.

  Grandma Sherry had filled her in about how Glenn had been seen inside the café on April twenty-six. There was now zero doubt in her mind that he’d been up to no good. But no matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t figure out what he’d been thinking, and where he could have possibly hidden evidence. Anger always managed to derail her thoughts each time she thought about how he’d used everyone that day. It was all so much to take in, but she was trying, and she was trying hard.

  “No. Wait. I’m ready and I want to throw the football, too,” Riley said to Agent Hooke.

  Paige glanced down a moment, not sure what to do. “Okay. But only once, and you have to make it quick.”

  “And then me once more, too. And then no more.” Tyler looked at her with pleading eyes.

  He had been fumbling around with the football forever. Alex was the last person she wanted Tyler to learn anything from. But, oh, the look on Tyler’s face! And then there was her resentment toward Glenn, which had been building.

  Glenn loved his kids, in his way, of that there was no doubt. But there was something wrong with him on the inside. It would be good for him to see the moments he’d given up and never really cherished.

  She put her hand on her stomach, where every regret and drop of anger seemed to settle, and forced herself to concentrate on how excited Tyler had been to spiral the ball. It was all so difficult. But she also knew, better than most, that making Glenn mad at her was a good idea. It would trip him up, and that’s what they needed to do.

  * * *

  Alex looked at the kids’ expectant faces. Kids were like puppies—they knew how to get what they wanted. “One each,” he agreed. “Then no more. I’ve got laundry to do.”

  “You do your own laundry?” Tyler asked, looking grossed out. What was so gross about laundry?

  “Excuse me, Tyler?” Paige said in a tone meant to convey that the kid was being rude. The boy looked down, suitably chagrined, and before Alex knew what he was doing, he was rubbing the kid’s hair, to let him know it was okay.

  They each threw the ball, both doing a pretty decent job.

  “What do we say to Mr. Hooke for teaching you how to throw the football?” Paige asked when they headed back to the house. So many moms did that, but he found it unaccountably annoying. Like they were declaring what great moms they were because they were training their kids to respond to cues. As if they were monkeys.

  “We ask him if he wants a cookie,” Riley piped up. “Here,” she said, taking a cookie out of the sandwich bag she’d left on the stoop and lifting it up to him.

  He didn’t want to reject her cookie, but at the same time, he didn’t want to take her home-baked cookie only to throw it away upstairs. “Uh, thank you, but I can’t eat it. I’m allergic to something in them.”

  “What are you allergic to?”

  “Gluten,” Alex answered, itching to get away. Glenn was still up the street, but he’d put on enough of a show.

  “These don’t have gluten! Mom makes them.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. After years of stomach problems, delayed growth, brain fog, heartburn, and aches and pains, he’d been diagnosed with celiac disease at the age of ten. And now everyone thought going gluten-free was the answer to everything. His bane was now a fad.

  He felt bad for the kid, having to give up something so good, for no good reason.

  But the next words out of Riley’s mouth made him feel like a jerk. “I have celiac disease. Do you have it, too? Or are you just doing it to lose weight, like some of my mom’s friends?” Again she flashed her Glenn-like smirk. It was cute on her, ugly on the dad.

  “Yes. I have celiac disease, too.”

  “Oh. Well, then, you can eat it.”

  Alex hesitated a moment before reaching for it. He took a bite. He felt his eyes widen and extra saliva instantly fill his mouth. It was chocolate chip. And it tasted like a real cookie. Crisp, gooey, and with a soft, moist center. It took all his willpower not to flash his badge and demand that the seven-year-old hand over her entire bag.

  “Mr. Hooke has celiac disease, too!” Tyler called over to his mom. “And look at his face! It’s funny. Like he’s been living in a cookie-desert.”

  Alex licked his bottom lip, afraid he’d miss a crumb, and looked over at Paige.

  “You’re allergic to gluten?” she asked. He nodded, chewing slowly, knowing he’d be back in the cookie-desert soon enough. But it would be worse now. He’d had a real-tasting cookie for the first time in eighteen years. Soon he’d be back to the packaged imitations.

  “What was your favorite kind of cookie before you were diagnosed?” she asked. The look Paige was giving him was a look of triumph. As if she had him just where she wanted him. But God help him, right now, she did. “Double chocolate-chip chunk.”

  “Hmm,” was all she said, walking inside and leaving him with a little bit of hope.

  He had to work extra hard to snap out of it. The thought of watching Glenn’s reaction when he picked up the kids, to see if they had him sweating, brought his head back to work, and he walked in after her, eager to get back to his apartment. The first thing he did when he shut the door was go to the dining room window to watch for Glenn’s arrival. While he waited, he called Boyd and Hess, and they agreed to come down and help him search Ruby and Rosa’s places tomorrow—if they could get the women’s permission, that was. A warrant would be nearly impossible to obtain this time. Alex hung up just as Glenn pulled up.

  He watched as Glenn climbed out of the car and walked toward Paige, who was waiting for him in front of the house. Glenn’s jaw was visibly clenched, his eyes were flitting around, his jugular was visibly pulsating, his body was stiff, and when he spoke to Paige, it looked more like short barks than speech. Glenn was furious, but he was also nervous. Paige walked away, but Glenn followed her inside.

  Alex moved to his front door and listened, not expecting new information, but hoping for something to go on all the same. His physical proximity to the case was starting to get uncomfortable. A hard knot was forming in his chest as he worried about an argument breaking out in front of the kids.

  What he heard made him want to unhinge both the door, and Glenn beyond it. It took all he had to control the impulse. “Only a slut would allow that man anywhere near her kids. I should’ve listened to what everyone said about you. Teaches me to fall for trailer trash,” Glenn hissed at Paige. The more they climbed, and the more she ignored him, the worse the insults became.

  Alex’s heart was thumping hard against his chest and blood gushed loudly in his ears. He was responsible for some of that abuse
. He’d put Paige in that situation, and it wasn’t leading anywhere at all. If he could pummel the man, he would. No matter what he thought was going on, how could he talk to her like that, and after everything he’d done? He looked through the peephole, and tried to control his anger. Assaulting Glenn would put the entire case at risk.

  Paige turned, pale and ramrod straight, to face Glenn. “Your entire tirade has been recorded, and I now have grounds for a restraining order. Expensive lawyers will be of no use. No one will take your side after listening to everything you just said, on top of everything you stand accused of. But I don’t want to hurt the kids any more than they’ve already been hurt, so I will hold off, dependent on your behavior from this moment on. If I learn that you or anyone in your family has said one disparaging word about me to the kids, I’ll not only request the restraining order that will keep you from coming anywhere near the town of Spinning Hills, but I’ll also file for full custody.”

  The panicked look in Glenn’s eyes spoke volumes, but Alex was too livid to enjoy it. Glenn needed access to Spinning Hills, and Paige now had the means to deny it. “Let’s see what a judge has to say when they learn who you’re doing—”

  “How will they learn, Glenn? What evidence do you have of anything?”

  Glenn looked like he was about to have an apoplexy, but the kids came out, and both Paige and Glenn took a step away from each other.

  Glenn looked at the kids. “Can you give us a minute, guys?”

  “No need.” Paige smiled at them. “Your dad and I have agreed that you two come first. Always.”

  The looks on their upturned faces said they were anxious. “The kids are eager to spend time with you, Glenn. Good-bye.” Paige went inside.