On Mother's Day (Great Expectations #1)

by Andrea Edwards

  His arms pulled her tighter, closer, yet it wasn’t near enough. His heart cried out for more. He wasn’t satisfied with her lips melting beneath his, or her hands holding on to him. He needed more than just a kiss, or a tender caress. The flames of his hunger wanted to climb higher; they wanted to devour everything.

  But then sanity returned. Alex let go and slowly pulled back. His breathing was ragged; Fiona’s face was flushed. Neither of them seemed able to meet each other’s eyes, yet kept darting glances at each other.

  “We ought to get going,” Alex said. His voice sounded as if he’d been running a marathon.

  “Yeah.” Hers didn’t sound any stronger.

  That kiss was a gigantic mistake. Not that it wasn’t mindnumbingly, knee-rattlingly great, Fiona thought. But it still was a gigantic mistake. She was here to worry about Kate, not bat her eyelashes at Alex. She was going to have to be more careful.

  And she kept her vow through lunch and even into the afternoon when they went to a bookstore close to. the apartment. No romances with broad-shouldered heroes in passionate embraces with weak-kneed heroines. No, she chose books she’d always wanted to read. All right, ones she’d always thought she ought to read. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Thirty Days to a Better Vocabulary, and Thoreau’s Walden. Plus an illustrated volume of Irish folk tales, leading off with the tale of Princess Fiona and her brothers.

  “Boy, those look fascinating,” Alex noted when she brought her pile up to the cashier.

  “Yes, don’t they?” She ignored his sarcasm. Her silly heart was going overboard in the fantasizing department. She didn’t need to encourage it.

  And why was it every good restaurant felt hungry patrons wanted dim lights and piped-in violin music? she wondered at dinner. And why did they assume every man and woman who dined together were a couple?

  “We should eat in more often,” Fiona said. They were in the middle of the restaurant’s prescribed gaze-into-each-other’s-eyes time. Except she was gazing anywhere but in Alex’s eyes. The fake plant in the corner had seventeen leaves, spaced in a two-then-one pattern. The double swing doors into the kitchen weren’t hung evenly.

  “The Andrewses want you to be comfortable,” he said.

  Then they definitely should be eating in.

  “I like to cook,” she said.

  “We don’t need to be cooped up in the apartment all the time.”

  She thought back to that morning, to that little scene at the breakfast table. Maybe eating in wasn’t all that safe, either.

  “Fast food is fun,” she said. No candlelit tables there.

  “Fast food is dangerous,” he said.

  “What are you talking about? Maybe years of it increases your cholesterol, but—”

  “I hate fast food,” he said, with a gleam in his eye that somehow captured her gaze and held it fast. “I become enraged when I have to eat it. And that can be dangerous.”

  “I see.” He was joking; she knew that. Yet that gleam in his eye was somehow unconnected to his words. It was talking to some deeply hidden part of her soul, and that traitorous part of her was listening. She grabbed at her water glass and sipped from it slowly. “Well, I appreciate your warning.”

  “Hey, you know. I’m—”

  “A full-service guy.” Her cheeks flamed with dancing images of just what that service might include. Thank goodness for dim lights.

  “No, I was going to say I like to be honest.”

  Thankfully their dinner arrived and she was able to keep her mouth occupied. And to think this was only day one!

  The evening didn’t exactly speed by, but it finally got to be bedtime and, pleading exhaustion, she hurried off to bed. Only to toss and turn for the next four hours. If she wasn’t thinking about Alex being just across the hall from her, she was hurting with loneliness and fear. On top of all that were her fears about Kate. She finally picked up a book. Ben Franklin put her to sleep in minutes.

  Day two was slightly better, or maybe she was more prepared. She got up early and dressed, then went down to the lobby to get the newspaper. By the time Alex was eating breakfast, she had a whole list of suggestions for how to spend the day. They agreed on the Chicago Historical Society.

  “This is a great place,” Alex said as they entered the old brick building on the edge of Lincoln Park. “They have all this melted stuff from the fire.”

  “What fire?” He’d put his hand on her back to guide her through the turnstile and her brain had turned to oatmeal. Soggy oatmeal.

  He frowned at her. “The Chicago Fire. You know, that little conflagration in 1871. Destroyed most of the city.”

  “Oh, that fire.” Jeez, she felt like a jerk.

  They walked through exhibits about the ancient history of the area and then dioramas of the settling of the Lake Michigan shoreline and the Chicago River. Obviously not everyone in the world had spring break at the same time, for all around them were school groups. It would be a great place to bring a class. It would be a great place to bring your own kids.

  She sighed as she watched a group of kids that looked to be in about fourth grade—Kate’s age. Would she ever have kids of her own? And how many would it take to erase that emptiness of not having Kate?

  “You okay?” Alex asked. He took her arm, pulling her close.

  She was grateful for the contact, for the reminder that for the moment she wasn’t alone. “Yeah. It’s just—” She shrugged, unable to finish.

  “Hey, Kate’ll be coming to all these places pretty soon. She’s a strong kid. She’s going to be fine.” ’

  But Fiona wouldn’t be there to share it. “Yeah. You’re right.” That was the deal she’d made. And if it weren’t for Kate’s illness, she would know nothing about her. At least now, she knew that Kate had a good family and was being well taken care of.

  They moved into the room with the fire exhibit. Antique fire engines lined one wall while newspaper clippings and pictures lined the others. Maps, models of the city and halfburned toys and books and clothes completed the display. Everywhere she looked, though, were the kids, oohing and aahing over the display.

  “Do you ever want kids?” she asked Alex.

  The question seemed to catch him off guard. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly, like he was thinking about it for the first time. “Since I firmly believe that kids should be raised by two parents, I wouldn’t have them unless I was in a relationship that was going to last. And I can’t see myself in that.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged and stared at the map showing how much of the city had been destroyed by fire. “I’m like my mother,” he said. “We don’t wear well.”

  Fiona frowned at him. “Your mother doesn’t think that way, does she? Or has she given up on finding love?”

  “My mother is the ultimate eternal optimist.”

  “And so you have to balance it with pessimism.”

  “Realism,” he corrected.

  “Yeah, right.” She didn’t bother to hide her scorn. “Convenient excuse.” She started into the next room, not certain why his dismissal of lasting relationships annoyed her, but certain that she was annoyed.

  He hurried after her. “Well, I don’t see you jumping at relationships,” he said. “Judging from your family’s reaction to my presence at your birthday party, I would guess you don’t even date much.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’ve closed myself off to love,” she snapped.

  “Maybe I don’t see love as this so-great, all-wonderful thing that the movies make it out to be,” he said. “It looks like a big waste of energy to me.”

  “Anything that you’re scared of seems that way.”

  “Scared of?” he cried.

  Fiona stopped, suddenly aware that people were staring at them. Alex seemed to notice at the same time. He took Fiona’s arm and led her along the hallway, leaning in close to her.

  “I am not afraid of love,” he hissed. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, big macho man,” she mocked.

  She could feel him stiffen with annoyance. “You can’t be afraid of something that doesn’t exist,” he whispered.

  “One day you’ll learn that it does,” she said.

  “Yeah. When some woman would rather get her feet wet than me catch a cold.”

  She just stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your fairy-tale kind of love. It should be a fifty/fiftytype arrangement. Sometimes one person throws his coat over the puddle, another time the other one walks through and gets their shoes muddy. But it didn’t work that way for my mother or for me. As long as we were willing to sacrifice our coats, everything was fine. But it was a different story when we needed something. It was goodbye, Charlie.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  He shook his head. “Right. If I don’t ask for the impossible.”

  “Impossible’s a relative term,” she said. “Maybe you didn’t ask the right person.”

  “Look, I never asked for miracles. I wasn’t looking for the world, just a little compassion when I needed it. Face it. Love is a hoax generated by the greeting-card and candy companies.”

  What an attitude! Any sympathy that had been simmering in her soul vanished and she turned to concentrate on the Native American exhibit they’d entered. It was a display of a typical forest-Indian clan—a wigwam, warriors, women, and children. And toward the back, partially hidden by the bushes, was an old woman.

  “If love doesn’t exist, why am I here to give Kate bone marrow?” Fiona muttered.

  “That sappy romantic, last-forever kind of love is what doesn’t exist,” he hissed under his breath. “I don’t doubt the existence of a mother’s love for her child, even a child you’ve never met.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  Fiona took a few steps down the exhibit, but her eyes were drawn back to the old woman in the display. There was something about her—

  Fiona froze. From where she now stood, she could see more of the old woman. She looked just like the one who’d spoken to her and Cassie and Sam that day they’d saved Romeo and Juliet!

  “What’s the matter?” Alex asked.

  She just shook her head for a moment before she could find her voice. “Who’s that old woman there supposed to be?”

  He looked at Fiona, then looked at the display, then walked down to the end of the scene where an explanation was posted. Fiona followed him, but her eyes stayed on the scene itself.

  “She represents the Native American’s belief in the interdependence of man and nature,” he said, then frowned at her. “You okay? You look strange.”

  “Wow, what a line!” She forced herself to mock him even though her heart felt shaky. “With smooth talk like that, it’s no wonder you’re single.”

  He frowned at her, but she just hurried on to the next exhibit. Her unease stayed with her for the rest of the day, though. The old Indian woman did not look like that other one; Fiona had to be wrong. Her imagination was just working overtime, what with her attraction to Alex and her worry over Kate. If Cassie was here, she’d tell Fiona she was crazy.

  Still, the old woman haunted Fiona’s sleep, what little of it there was, and kept her uneasy over the next few days. They went one day to the Art Institute and then to the Museum of Science and Industry the next, but once they were back at the apartment each evening», Fiona could barely remember what she’d seen.

  That old woman years ago had said that the spirits would return to help her fight for her love. But she didn’t have a love, unless you counted Kate. So, were the spirits going to fight for Kate? Assuming any of that was true, which it probably wasn’t.

  “You’ve been quiet the last few days,” Alex said one evening just before dinner.

  She shrugged. “Guess I’m just tired.” That was true enough. She was tired physically, tired of being worried, and tired of trying to second-guess fate.

  “Want me to run out and get us Chinese takeout for dinner?” he suggested.

  “Sure.”

  She saw the soft concern in his eyes and felt again that urge to let him shoulder some of her worries. Her heart wobbled for just a moment, wanting to give in and not daring to. One didn’t lean on an ice sculpture, no matter how sturdy it looked. Come the sun and it would be gone. He’d admitted he wasn’t around for the long haul—not that he’d needed to be. She knew this was just a job.

  She picked up the newspaper from the table by the windows and sank onto the sofa. She was stronger when her gaze didn’t meet his.

  “I think I’ll just get started on this crossword puzzle,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  He left a few minutes later. Fiona actually did attempt the crossword puzzle but tossed the paper aside when she couldn’t answer any of the clues. She lay against the sofa back with closed eyes. When had things gotten so complex?

  Weirdly enough, the phone chose that moment to ring, as if someone was calling with the answer. Fiona reached over the end of the sofa to pick it up.

  “Fiona?” a childish voice asked. “It’s Kate.”

  “Kate?” Fiona fell back onto the sofa. Her hand was suddenly shaking so that she could hardly hold the phone. “You’re supposed to be in isolation.”

  The girl snickered. “They have phones in the rooms, you know.”

  Fiona felt a smile slide over her lips. “I forgot.”

  “Mom lets me call my friends,” she said. “It’s not like I can do much of anything else, and TV gets pretty boring after a while.”

  Fiona laughed at the fervor in Kate’s voice. “I wish you could convince my kids of that. All they want to do is watch TV.”

  “You got kids?” the girl asked.

  Something stabbed at Fiona’s heart and she bit back a silent cry of pain. “I meant my class,” she said, her voice almost calm. “I teach fourth grade.”

  “Wow, that’s my grade,” Kate said.

  Fiona knew that. Or had known that was where Kate most likely was. Just as she had known last year, when she’d monitored the third-grade lunch period and had wondered if her daughter was like that group, giggling at the boys and fussing with their hair, or if she was more like those others, rushing through lunch to play kickball or tetherball or hopscotch on the playground. Or the year before, when Fiona had watched a little eight-year-old neighbor learn to ride a two-wheeler and had only been able to think that her own daughter might be learning to ride one, too.

  “Maybe you could come over and do my lessons with me,” Kate said, pulling Fiona back to the present.

  Wouldn’t that be wonderful? And impossible. “I think those kinds of tutors are supposed to be licensed teachers,” she said. “And I’m licensed in Indiana, not Illinois.”

  “Too bad,” Kate said. “That woulda been cool.”

  A dream come true. “Yeah.”

  “Hey, I got a question,” the girl said, her tone suddenly different. “Everybody just laughs at me when I ask it and then, when Mommy brought me the butterfly phone book from home so I could call Candy and Steffie and I saw the apartment’s number in it and knew you were there, I thought maybe you’d tell me.”

  “What, honey?” Fiona gripped the phone harder, somehow afraid of what Kate might ask. And more afraid of having to answer.

  “Once I have your bone marrow in me, am I gonna start looking like you?”

  “Looking like me?” Fiona was stunned by the question, and flooded with possible answers, all starting with the fact that Kate already did look like her.

  “Not that I think that would be bad or anything,” Kate assured her. “I’m just kinda afraid of not being me anymore.”

  The child’s fear sent all Fiona’s hesitations scattering like fallen leaves in the wind. “Oh, Kate, that’ll never happen!” Fiona cried. “You’ll always be you.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Obviously that was the answer everybody had given her, and it hadn’t been enough any of the times she’d hea
rd it. Fiona dug into her years of experience with ten-year-olds. How did you address a fear like this? In terms they can understand.

  “Do you know where you get your looks from?” Fiona asked.

  “From my mom and dad.” But the hesitation in the girl’s voice said beyond that her knowledge was vague.

  “Right. Long before you were even born, a kind of recipe was made with parts from your mom and parts from your dad of what you were going to be like. Every one of your cells has a copy of that recipe, just like every one of my cells has a copy of my recipe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Now you’re getting about two cups of my bone marrow in the transplant,” Fiona said. “That seems like a lot, but it’s really small compared to the number of other cells that you have. You’ll have way more copies of your recipe than mine.”

  “I just didn’t know,” Kate said, her tone lighter, relieved. “I was afraid I wouldn’t like our cat Caspar anymore, or wouldn’t be good at soccer or would suddenly start acting like a nerd and my friends wouldn’t like me.”

  Fiona laughed even as her eyes got watery. There was so much love in her heart, it had to overflow. “I think you’re safe. Though I should warn you I was kind of nerdy as a kid and terrible at kickball.”

  “You probably kicked with your toe,” Kate said. “That’s what most people do wrong. They kick with their toe instead of their laces.”

  “That sounds too simple an explanation. I was a very complex nerd.”

  Kate burst out laughing. “I like you,” she said when her laughter slowed. “And I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” Fiona said. “It’s all right. Nobody wants to stop being themselves and start being someone else. Even if that someone is really cool.”

  “Yeah.” There was talking in the background and Kate seemed to leave for a moment. “I gotta go,” she said. “Dracula’s here again.”

  It must mean more blood was being drawn. Fiona gripped the phone tighter at the resignation in Kate’s voice. Fiona should be there, holding Kate’s hand and watching over her. That was her child suffering and she didn’t belong at the other end of the phone from her. She was always making a big deal about looking after people, but the one person she should have looked after, she’d given away.