Apprentice Father

by Irene Hannon

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “But didn’t you sometimes feel like you were being…smothered…by all that attention?”

  “No. I felt loved.” She regarded him in silence for a moment, and when she continued her tone was more subdued. “I can ask everyone to finish up and head out if this is too much of a crowd for you.”

  Planting his fists on his hips, Clay tried to assess his reaction. Why was he unsettled by Cate’s family turning out to lend a hand? After all, he needed all the help he could get. He should be grateful. Yet for some reason the scene created an anxious knot in the pit of his stomach.

  “No. It’s okay. I must sound like an ingrate.”

  “My family can be a little overwhelming.” Cate shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts and took a step back. “Come on inside. Mom and I have the place pretty spic and span already.”

  Leaving him by the truck, she headed for the front door.

  As he trailed behind her, trying to decipher his uneasy reaction to the Shepards’ generosity, a conversation he overhead as he passed Pop filling the planter with seedlings gave him his answer.

  “Why are they wilted?” Josh asked.

  “Because they’ve been moved too much.” Pop carefully tucked a small plant into the soil. “Flowers need to stay in one place and be tended by someone who loves them. Then the roots spread out and grow strong, and they can withstand any storm that comes along.”

  All his life, Clay had thought of roots as chains. Pop saw them as an anchor, as a positive force that protected and nurtured and strengthened. Without roots, flowers wilted and shriveled and died.

  It was a whole different concept of roots.

  And he had to admit it held a certain appeal.

  But it was also scary.

  Yet whether he wanted them or not, Clay had roots now, thanks to the children. As Mark had pointed out, if he hoped to convince the court he was a fit guardian he was going to have to settle in one place. And once you did that, you began to form relationships. With neighbors. With coworkers. With church members.

  Perhaps even with a special woman.

  And those relationships brought responsibilities. Obligations. Risk.

  Pain.

  That’s why he was uncomfortable with today’s scenario, he concluded. It implied belonging. Connections. Closeness. All the things that reeked of commitment.

  He’d done a good job avoiding that for his entire adult life. But things had changed when two little children had been thrust into his hands and stolen his heart. When a lovely woman had slipped into his life and forced him to rethink his long-held notions about commitments. When he’d started attending church and been exposed to a loving God who, he was told, wanted a relationship with him. And when a simple meal with Cate’s family had drawn him into their fold.

  That’s why he was anxious.

  All of those relationships were beginning to undermine his resolve to keep his distance.

  And there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do to shore it up.

  Clay had finished collecting the dirty clothes and was weaving his way toward the washing machine through the boxes of new dishes and still-to-be-unpacked personal items when a startled cry of pain filtered in through the open window.

  Josh.

  Dropping the clothes in the middle of the living room, Clay took off at a sprint. It wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning, and they’d only been in the house a week. Already the toilet had overflowed; a backed-up gutter had sent a sheet of water cascading down the front window—which leaked; and the microwave had died. Now what?

  As Clay closed the distance between him and the children, his pulse skyrocketed. Josh was sitting on the ground, crying. Emily was hovering beside him. And there was blood on Josh’s face.

  Lots of blood.

  Clay dropped to the ground beside the children, and Emily looked at him tearfully. “Josh f-falled off the swing.”

  Taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, Clay lifted the little boy’s chin with a gentle finger, struggling to control his panic. “Let me see, Josh.”

  It didn’t take him long to discover the source of the blood—a nasty gash an inch-and-a-half long on the youngster’s chin that would need stitches.

  After pressing his handkerchief to the cut, Clay gave the boy a quick but thorough scrutiny, gently probing his scalp. “Does anything else hurt, Josh?”

  “N-no.”

  “Okay.” Clay gathered him in his arms and ushered the children toward his truck. “We’re going to have to let the doctor fix you up.”

  Josh’s chin quivered. “Can Cate come?”

  Both children gave him a hopeful look.

  He wished she could. If she was with them, the kids would be calmer during the ordeal to come. And so would he. But he was doing his best not to call her on weekends. “This is her day off, Josh.”

  “Off from what?”

  Good question. As far as the kids were concerned, she was part of their family, not a paid day care provider. And he was beginning to think of her that way, too.

  “She has to have some time to do things for herself,” Clay replied, avoiding the question. “I’ll tell you what. After we’re done, why don’t we go out for hamburgers and French fries?” The fast-food treat was becoming his fallback after difficult situations, Clay realized. But, hey, whatever worked.

  “Okay, I guess. But it would be better if Cate came.”

  Clay could only agree.

  Four hours later—after an interminable wait in the emergency room; after ten gut-clenching minutes while Josh clung to his hand, whimpering in fear and pain as the doctor numbed his chin and put in a neat row of six stitches; and after enduring half an hour in a fast-foot outlet populated by noisy, hyperactive children—Clay pulled into their driveway, feeling more weary and overwhelmed than he had since the long, dark, solitary ride to Omaha for Anne’s funeral.

  He set the brake and checked on the children. Josh’s head was drooping, and Emily was struggling to keep her eyes open. They all needed a nap after their trying morning. The laundry and grass-cutting could wait.

  As Clay fitted the key in the lock and stepped inside, the aroma of burnt—or worse, burning—food greeted him. The lasagna, he concluded. Cate had made it last week, and with the microwave out of commission, she’d left instructions to heat three portions at a low temperature in the oven. He’d put it in shortly before Josh’s accident and forgotten about it in the ensuing rush to the hospital.

  After easing Josh onto the couch, he wove through the booby-trapped living room and headed toward the kitchen. At least there wasn’t any smoke, he noted in relief. But the smell was more pronounced in here.

  Grabbing a towel, he opened the oven door.

  Now he had smoke. Plenty of it. A billow surged out, and he waved the towel at it as the smoke alarm went off. Clay ignored the piercing whistle and pulled the lasagna from the oven, coughing as he deposited it on the counter and lifted a corner of the foil to peek in.

  From the charred mess inside, it was obvious something had gone very wrong.

  Leaving the smoldering pan on the counter, he retrieved Cate’s instructions. Her neat script said to heat the lasagna at two hundred and fifty degrees for several hours. That was what he’d done. Wasn’t it?

  A quick check of the dial on the oven told him otherwise. With a sinking feeling, he saw that he’d misread the worn knob and set it at four hundred and fifty.

  He was still flapping a towel at the raucous smoke alarm when Emily tugged urgently at his sleeve.

  “There’s somebody at the door,” she shouted at him.

  “Okay.” As the smoke alarm fell silent, he wiped his forehead with his bloody handkerchief and picked his way through the living room. Josh was sprawled on the couch, sound asleep, his complexion pale beneath the large, unwieldy gauze pad the nurse had taped to his jaw. Clay shook his head. Amazing.

  Emily hung back as he opened the door to reveal a middle-aged woman d
ressed in a tailored, navy blue suit. Her gaze dropped to the bloody handkerchief in his hand, and he stuffed it back into his pocket as his neck grew warm.

  “Mr. Adams?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Martha Douglas from the Division of Family Services. I’ve here for a home visit.”

  Several beats of silence ticked by as he stared at her. This had to be an episode from The Twilight Zone.

  But no. The woman on the other side of the door was all too real.

  His first instinct was to shut the door in her face—a reaction he quashed at once. That would do nothing to help his case.

  Yet neither would the scene on the other side of the door.

  He was wedged between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Faced with two bad options, there was only one possible choice. He forced himself to swing the door open.

  “Come in, Ms. Douglas. We’ve had a rather trying morning. Josh fell off the swing and cut his chin. We spent four hours in the emergency room, and the kids are pretty worn out.”

  Instead of responding, or offering the reassurance he was hoping for, the woman simply stepped inside. She smiled at the little girl hovering behind Clay.

  “You must be Emily.”

  Emily gave Clay an uncertain look, and he somehow managed to force his lips into the semblance of a smile. “This is Ms. Douglas. She came to visit for a little while. Say hello.”

  “Hello,” Emily parroted in a soft voice.

  “That’s a very pretty shirt,” the woman told her. “Pink is one of my favorite colors.”

  “I brought this from Omaha.”

  “Omaha is a nice place.”

  “I like it better here.”

  Clay let out the breath he was holding. Thank you, God!

  “Washington is nice, too. Is that your brother over there?” She gestured toward the couch, which had been delivered yesterday and was still covered in plastic. Josh continued to sleep.

  “Yes. He falled off the swing and cut his chin.”

  “I see that. Have you had lunch yet?”

  “Uh huh. We got hamburgers and French fries. And I had a milkshake.” She named the fast-food outlet.

  Clay cringed. Not good.

  “I figured they deserved a treat after the morning we had,” he offered. “We don’t eat fast food, as a rule.”

  “Do you cook, Mr. Adams?” The woman’s expression was placid and unreadable.

  “A little. The woman who cares for the children shops for me and often makes casseroles for us. I’m afraid I burnt her lasagna this morning. I put it in the oven to heat and set the dial too high. When we got home it was pretty charred. This is our first week in the house and I’m not familiar with the appliances.”

  He knew he sounded defensive. But he couldn’t help it. Not considering the power this woman wielded. Her report could be a major factor in the court’s decision about the future of the children.

  “Moving can be very traumatic.” Her tone was noncommittal. She refocused on Emily. “Do you like your new house?”

  A vigorous nod preceded the little girl’s response. “It’s the bestest place Josh and I have ever lived.”

  “Maybe your uncle will give me a tour.”

  “Sure.” Clay scanned the cluttered living room, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. “We haven’t finished unpacking yet. The extra boxes are all in here. The couch arrived yesterday, and I have a couple of chairs coming, too.”

  “You have no furniture of your own?” The woman was surveying the pile of dirty clothes in the middle of the floor.

  “I was on my way to the washer when I heard Josh crying, and I dropped the clothes and ran.” Clay answered her unspoken question first. “And no, I have very few possessions. I spent twelve years in the Army, and my job takes me all over the country. I didn’t want to lug furniture with me from one place to another.”

  “Sounds like you’re on the move a lot.”

  “In my current job I am. I’ll be in Washington for another year, overseeing the construction of a large manufacturing plant. But I’m already looking for a position that will allow me to stay in one place.”

  He hadn’t gotten very far with his search, however. For one simple reason. He couldn’t decide where he wanted to live. The only place that had ever felt like home was Washington—for a lot of reasons he wasn’t ready to consider. Yet this small town would never even have been on his radar screen, let alone his top-ten list, until a few weeks ago. He wasn’t prepared to settle on it too fast.

  The silence lengthened, and he realized the social worker was waiting for the rest of her tour. “Let me show you the kitchen,” he offered, leading the way. The charred lasagna sat on the countertop, and a faint haze hung over the room. A card table and four chairs occupied the dinette area, and a stack of paper plates and plastic utensils sat in the middle.

  “I have dishes and cutlery, but I haven’t unpacked them yet,” he told her.

  The bathroom was in reasonable condition, as was his bedroom. Years of military training had taught him to keep his personal living quarters in tip-top shape. Most days, that philosophy carried over to the rest of the house. But his housekeeping had suffered during the past week, between the move and a few emergencies at work that had kept him laboring on paperwork long after Josh and Emily had gone to bed.

  They moved on to the children’s room, and Clay doubted she could find much fault there. He’d bought twin beds for them, and two matching dressers. Cate’s mother had contributed a colorful mobile for the ceiling, and during the past week Cate had found bright, cheerful bedspreads and curtains. Anne had already taught Emily to make her bed in the morning, and she, in turn helped Josh. The room was in good shape.

  “The children share a room?”

  The woman’s question deflated Clay’s brief surge of optimism. He guessed that was a no-no.

  “Yes.” At this point, one-word answers were all he could manage.

  By the time they completed their tour of the house and the yard, and she spent a few minutes talking with the children, Clay wasn’t merely discouraged—he was scared. And as he tried to quell his growing panic, he did something he hadn’t done in years.

  He prayed.

  It wasn’t an elaborate prayer. Just a few simple words. But his plea was heartfelt—and desperate.

  Please, God. Give me one more chance.

  Chapter Nine

  “Cate? Clay. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  Though she tried to stifle the rush of pleasure at the sound of his mellow baritone on the other end of the phone, Cate didn’t quite succeed. While she’d always considered her weekend break from child care duties essential to recharging her batteries, this job was different. Now the weekends dragged by. Thoughts of her young charges and their uncle—not always in that order—dominated her days, and her nights were filled with restless dreams that left her on edge when she awakened.

  None of those were good signs, she knew. Not if she wanted to keep her distance from the apprentice father. But while she couldn’t change her feelings, she didn’t have to act on them. Polite, pleasant, helpful. That was the manner to strive for, she decided.

  “No. I have a few minutes. What’s up?”

  “The social worker stopped by today. It was a disaster.”

  The bottom dropped out of her stomach. “What happened?”

  Sliding onto a stool in her kitchen, she propped her elbow on the counter and listened with growing dismay as he gave her a recap. When he finished, she could only manage one word. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  At his disheartened response, Cate’s heart contracted in sympathy. Lord, it isn’t fair! she protested in silence. He’s tried so hard. Please don’t let him lose the kids because of this!

  “How are things now?”

  “Quieter. I put the kids to bed early, and I’m not far behind. Pretty pathetic for a bachelor on a Saturday night, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve all had a trying
day.”

  “We’ve had a trying three months. This was just the icing on the cake.” He let out an exhausted breath. “Look, I’m sure you have better things to do than listen to my litany of woes. I promised myself I wouldn’t bother you in your free time anymore, but I needed to hear a friendly voice. I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

  She looked down at her left hand and tried to flex her fingers. Their sluggish response reminded her of one of the reasons she’d resolve to keep her distance from this man. Yet the words came out anyway.

  “To be honest, I was thinking about you.”

  “Yeah?” There was a faint echo of hope in the word.

  “Yeah.” Then she forced herself to temper her response. “I was wondering if you remembered to replace the broken picket on the back fence. With Emily’s fear of dogs, I’d hate for a stray to get into the yard while they were playing.” That thought had crossed her mind a few minutes ago, so it wasn’t a complete fabrication, Cate told herself.

  “Oh.” Disappointment edged out hope in his voice. “Yeah, I did it Friday night. Josh helped me. Meaning it took twice as long. But you know what?” Affection softened his tone. “I might have worked faster alone, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. And I’m starting to think that might be true about a lot of things.”

  His subtle message wasn’t lost on Cate. But she wasn’t ready to have another discussion about them. Not yet. And maybe never.

  “With the kids around, you won’t have to worry about being alone for a very long time,” she teased. “Now get some rest and I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”

  She was grateful he didn’t push. “Okay. Sorry again about disturbing you tonight.”

  As the line went dead, she slowly set the phone back in its cradle.

  Disturbed was an apt way to describe her state of mind, Cate decided.

  And it had nothing to do with an interrupted Saturday night.

  “Clay! Could I speak with you for a minute?”