by Dana Corbit
“Okay, Nannie.”
Joe took a step forward. “I messed up the schedule tonight. Sorry about that, Lindsay.” After he sent an apologetic look her way, he turned back to her parents.
“I was just so excited about the new toy I found that I had to bring it to Lindsay immediately,” he continued. “Emma wanted to try it out right away. Did you see? Lindsay can already walk steadily with it. She’ll be running with it in no time.”
“Lindsay has more important responsibilities than running now,” Brian told him. “She might not have as much free time for her hobbies anymore.”
Joe opened his mouth, looking as if he was about to come to Lindsay’s defense, when Emma made a tortured sound.
“I’m hungry,” she moaned.
Donna reached up to touch her granddaughter’s arm. “Here, Emma, you and I can run into the kitchen and see what we can make for a late dinner.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Mom,” Lindsay said quickly. “We were planning to have something easy tonight. It will only take a few minutes.”
“We’re having hot dogs and macaroni and cheese,” Emma announced, as if it was some great accomplishment.
“Oh” was all Lindsay’s mother had to say about that. It was enough.
Lindsay pretended not to notice the odd exchange between her parents. Her father was the first to look back to her.
“Maybe Emma should spend tonight at our house. Wouldn’t that be fun, Emma?”
“Can I, Aunt Lindsay?”
“Don’t you remember?” Lindsay said, trying to force down the anxiety that gripped like a fist inside her chest. “You’re going to Nannie and Papa’s tomorrow and staying for two whole nights, so it would be best for you to wait until then.”
The child appeared to think it through before she asked, “Can I bring Monkey Man and my pink suitcase?”
“Sure you can.”
Lindsay let out the breath she was holding slowly, but she couldn’t slow her racing pulse. It was to her benefit that Emma didn’t yet have the reasoning skills to realize that her stay at her grandparents’ house could have been extended from two days to three and then from one more to forever. Lindsay knew it only too well. If she’d learned nothing else from her accident, she knew that nothing was forever.
“I had better get inside and get started.” She sent Joe an apologetic look and started backing away. “So, I guess I’ll see you later.”
Joe cleared his throat. “Oh. Right.” He opened his mouth again, but he must have thought better of whatever he’d intended to say because he closed it again.
Relief flooded through Lindsay’s veins. Had he been about to offer to stick around and face her parents with her? As much as she was grateful for the thought, it was about the last thing she needed. Her parents were already upset enough with her without adding that to the mix.
“Uh. Lindsay,” he called after her when she was almost to the front door. “Do you want me to put the jogger on your deck until you plan for a place to store it?”
“Oh. Sure.” She hadn’t thought about storing it yet. Just as she hadn’t thought about whether it was wise to delay dinner or let Emma nap too late or spend over an hour on a walk with a man she found too appealing for her own good. “Yes, the deck will be fine.”
“I’ll just drop it off and head out. See you later.”
“Thanks so much.” She wanted to say more, but how could she, when her parents were right there, listening to every word? She hated that after everything Joe had done for her, she would have to leave him to walk back to the library to pick up his truck. But what could she do?
With a wave, she started into the house, her mother following closely behind and her father taking up the rear and carrying Emma. Brian stopped by Emma’s toy box in the living room and stayed there to watch the child play, while Donna followed Lindsay into the kitchen.
“What was that all about?” her mother said.
Lindsay cleared her throat as she turned back to her, switching the oven on to Broil for the hot dogs. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You were on a date tonight when Emma hadn’t even had dinner, and you were pushing her around in an expensive gift that you never should have accepted. And now that you’re finally feeding her, you’re giving her…that.” She pointed to the boxed macaroni that Lindsay had set next to the stove.
“It wasn’t a date,” Lindsay answered in a low voice.
Her mother made a sharp sound in her throat, causing Lindsay to look up from the pot of water she was watching too closely for it ever to boil.
“Of all the things I just said, that’s the one you chose to comment on?”
Lindsay stiffened, feeling transparent. How could she explain it to her mother when she couldn’t even make sense of it herself? She’d made so many excuses lately about why she was spending so much time with Joe, and they all sounded empty now.
“I just wanted to clear that up.” Lindsay wanted to stop there, knew it was enough. Yet the words kept bubbling like the water on the stove should have been but wasn’t. “Joe—I mean Trooper Rossetti—found the jogging stroller online and thought it might help me out, so he bought it. I insisted on paying him back for it.”
“Well, at least you did that.”
“And the jogger really is great,” Lindsay continued, unable to stop. “Emma loves it, too. It will be good for the two of us—Emma and me—to get some fresh air together.”
Her mother only shook her head until Lindsay stopped talking.
“You’ve always been sensible about men before. Why would you pick now, of all times, to change that?”
Lindsay turned to put foil on the broiling pan to cover her surprise. “Mom, you’re getting the wrong idea about us,” she finally managed to say.
She wanted to believe it, too, but the fact that she was fighting back resentment over her mother’s words gave no support to her argument. It hurt that what her mother called sensibility probably had been awkwardness around men, and it hurt even more to realize that Lindsay wished she could have been different this time. With Joe.
“Are you sure it’s the wrong idea?”
“I’m sure. Really. It’s not like that.”
“How did you even come across Trooper Rossetti in the first place? We haven’t seen him since—” Her mother’s breath caught, and her eyes shone with another round of the many tears she’d cried over the past six months. “Since that night.”
“His name was on the original police report, so I went to the state police post to ask him some questions. I thought he could fill in some of those blanks about the night that D…the night of the accident.”
Would it ever get easier to talk with her mother about Delia’s death? Would she ever get over feeling responsible for separating two mothers from their daughters?
“I told you that some stones are better left—”
“Unturned? That’s what you’ve said, Mom, but these questions were making me crazy. I had to know.”
“Fine. But how did you get from asking questions to gallivanting around the neighborhood with him, pushing Emma in a stroller?”
“We weren’t gallivanting. It was just a walk.”
But semantics aside, she couldn’t blame her mom for asking because she wasn’t entirely sure herself how she and Joe had reached that point. Maybe in the beginning, she’d been looking for answers and he’d been searching for absolution, but somehow they’d gone from there to laughing together and pushing a jogging stroller. She’d enjoyed the whole ride more than she wanted to admit.
“If you think you’re keeping some big secret, that grin gives you away.”
Lindsay hadn’t even realized she was smiling, hadn’t felt the expression slipping onto her face, but she removed it. What did it mean when she couldn’t stop smiling when she thought of him?
“Mom, he’s just a friend,” she said, as much for her own benefit as her mother’s. “He felt badly for us and was
trying to do something nice. You always taught us to do things for other people. Why is it not okay for me to accept kindness from someone else?”
“Don’t turn this around on me. We also taught you not to go accepting gifts from men.”
“I said I was paying him back for it.”
“Don’t you get it?”
Lindsay jerked at the sharp tone of her mother’s voice, and she swallowed as she turned to look at her.
“Have you thought for one minute about who this man is that you’ve invited to spend time with you and Emma?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it.” In the beginning, she’d thought of little else, so it surprised her now to realize how long it had been since she’d let Joe’s role in the accident matter to her.
“Then you have to remember how he came into your life? Into our lives?”
“No, Mom, I don’t remember.”
“Well, I do. I remember that young man in the soaked uniform walking up to us in the hospital hallway and telling us how sorry he was—” Her voice caught then, and she took a few steps away to the window so she could stare out at the darkening sky.
“Was Joe—I mean Trooper Rossetti—the first one to tell you…what happened?”
Her mother shook her head. “No, the officers who came to the house did that, but he met us at the hospital. Outside your room.”
“Is that why it bothered you so much that he was here? Because he reminds you of that night?”
“That has nothing to do with it. We have nothing to do with it.”
Lindsay doubted both of those claims, and her skepticism must have shown because her mother folded her arms over her chest. “This is about you. Delia put a lot of trust in you when she named you as Emma’s guardian.”
“I know that, Mom.” Trembling inside, Lindsay poured the pasta into the finally boiling water and put the broiler pan in the oven, leaving the door partly open. “You know I’m honored that she thought of me.”
“If you’re as honored as you say, then I’m surprised that you’re thinking about your social life—friends or whatever it is—when you should be focused on Emma.”
Lindsay opened her mouth to argue the point, but then she closed it. Could she really say she’d been making Emma her top priority when she’d been spending so much time thinking about a certain state police trooper?
“But, Mom, I’m doing everything I know how to become the best caregiver I can be for Emma.” At least she’d thought so, but now she wondered if it was true.
“Do you think Delia would agree?”
The words struck Lindsay with more force than a blow ever could have. Eyes burning, Lindsay turned away to pull the broiler pan from the oven. What would Delia think about the time Lindsay had been spending with a man instead of focusing on Emma? What would she think about which man?
As if she realized her comment had hit its mark, Donna reached for the pan on the stove and poured the cooked pasta into the colander in the sink. “Let’s get this…dinner on the table before the child starves.”
“Did someone say dinner?” Brian said as he came into the room with Emma on his back.
“Dinner!” Emma lifted a fist into the air as her grandfather lowered her to the ground.
Lindsay’s thoughts flashed back to another recent dinner, one with just as much tension, but ultimately a lot more laughter. But the fact that she remembered that dinner now only frustrated her more. Even after her mother had pointed out that she needed to get her focus in the right place, she still couldn’t get Joe out of her mind.
“Would anyone else like to eat?” She quartered the hot dogs to avoid a choking hazard and waited for her parents’ polite refusals. “Okay then. Dinner for one coming up.”
“She really was hungry,” Brian said as they watched the child eating with gusto.
“I love hot dogs,” Emma announced, waving her little fork in the air. “Mommy liked hot dogs.”
For the span of a few seconds, Lindsay and her parents exchanged looks that mirrored the pain and loss they all shared, but then the child started talking again.
“With ketchup. Yuck.”
Emma made a face to match her sentiment. Lindsay’s chest squeezed, and she blinked back tears.
“You know, I didn’t remember that about your mommy, but you’re right.” Lindsay paused to clear her throat and forced a smile. “She did like hot dogs and ketchup. You’ll have to tell me more things about her, and I’ll tell you more stories about when she was a little girl.”
“Can you tell me some stories at bedtime?”
“Absolutely. So get your pajamas, and I’ll be right up to give you your bath.”
Lindsay waited, expecting Emma to argue or to ask again to spend the night at her grandparents’ house, but she popped out of the chair and rushed out of the room.
“She was in such a hurry, she forgot to kiss us goodbye.” Brian smiled. “Maybe someone has her priorities in order after all.”
“I do, Dad.”
Well, if she hadn’t had them in order before, this was the wake-up call she needed. Emma had to come first. And if putting her niece first meant creating distance between herself and the friend who’d come to mean so much to her in a short time, then she would do it.
Sure, she’d thought she might be able to help Joe reclaim his faith, but she was probably as unqualified to help with that as her parents worried she was to be Emma’s guardian. And her plan to convince him to tell her what he was keeping from her about the accident…well, maybe her mother was right about leaving some stones where they were.
Lindsay glanced outside to the last place she’d seen Joe, and her breath hitched. If keeping her distance from Joe Rossetti was the right thing to do for Emma and for herself, then why did just the thought of it hurt so much?
Chapter Ten
Joe pressed his ear to his phone as Lindsay’s cell rang once and then a second time. She hadn’t automatically sent his call to voice mail this time, but he didn’t hold out much hope that she would answer, or even if she did, that she wouldn’t immediately shut him down. He knew what was happening, and he had a pretty good idea why.
The phone clicked after the fourth ring, so he waited for the call to go to voice mail. What did it say about a guy that he was tempted to listen to a voice-mail greeting just to hear a woman’s voice, and when had he become that guy?
“Hello?”
His pulse leaped at the sound of her live voice. He cleared his throat. “Lindsay?”
“Oh, Joe. I didn’t realize it was you.”
“Forgot to check your caller ID this time.”
“No, that’s not—I mean I didn’t—oh, whatever,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“Now that we have that settled…” He chuckled. “So how has your week been going?” He wouldn’t tell her his had been the loneliest since…well…ever.
“It hasn’t been a week. I talked to you two days ago.”
“Oh, you mean the time that you turned down my offer to take you and Emma out for ice cream?”
The sound she made was some combination of a cough and a laugh. “And we talked two days before that.”
“You mean the time I asked you if you wanted to go running—I mean walking—again, and you said Emma was tired and you needed to make sure she got to bed on time?”
“That’s not…”
It didn’t surprise him that she didn’t finish her thought. Both of them knew she was kicking him to the curb, which would be a difficult job since they weren’t even dating, but she was doing it anyway. What was far less clear to him was why it bothered him so much.
“You probably think I’m dense by now,” he said. “I was supposed to get the hint, especially after all of those ‘missed’ calls.”
Something had changed from the moment Lindsay had come home to find her parents waiting for her with disappointment in their daughter and distrust of her friend painted on their faces.
“Come on. It isn’t like that.”
/>
He wanted to know what it was like, wished she would tell him what her parents had said the other night to make her avoid him, but asking her would be like begging her to hang up on him. Then he wouldn’t be able to even try out his new plan. The one that just might work.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know rejection when I hear it.” He also knew what a challenge was like. That had to be what kept him asking when he could have simply slunk away, discarded.
“It’s just that, well, I really have been busy.”
“Washing your hair?”
She cleared her throat. “No, Joe. I’m been busy being Emma’s guardian.”
“I know. How’s she doing?” He felt as if he was speaking in code, asking about the child, when his real questions were about her aunt.
“She’s fine. Really.”
“I miss her.”
“She misses you, too,” she answered, in a quiet voice.
Something tightened in his throat, but then it struck him that he was the only one talking in code about the two of them, and she was probably really referring to Emma. Silence stretched between them so long that he wondered whether the call had been dropped, but then she sighed loudly into the receiver.
“Look. Thanks for calling, but it’s getting late and I’d better—”
“It’s only eight forty-five on a Saturday night, and you probably already have Emma in bed.” He paused long enough for her to tell him he was wrong, but when she didn’t, he started again. “I have a question to ask you anyway.”
“Joe, are we going to keep doing this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said lightly. “Here I was, just trying to invite you and Emma to church, and you seem to think I have some ulterior motive.”
“Church?” Her voice dripped with skepticism.
“I know you already have your own church, and this would be a little bit more than services, I guess, but—”
“Joe.” Lindsay spoke in the same warning tone she used when Emma tried to sneak a cookie before dinner.
“Now, just hear me out. You see, it’s just that my friend Brett from the Brighton Post and his wife, Tricia, keep bugging me about coming to their church in Milford and then to lunch at their house. Their pestering is excruciating, believe me.”
