A Family At Last

by Carolyne Aarsen

  “My team,” he said, pushing his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, wondering what he was supposed to do.

  Kelsey stood by the fence talking to another mother who was kneeling down, tying up a child’s shoelace. Kelsey looked up and waved to him.

  “Over here,” she called with a bright smile.

  Matthew pulled his hands out of his pockets, sighed and walked over to where Kelsey and the other mother were.

  “Hey, Coach, glad you could make it.” Kelsey pulled him by the arm. “I’d like to introduce you to your partner,” Kelsey said just as the mother finished tying the lace and got up. She turned to face him and Matthew’s heart sank.

  It was Cory.

  Her smile faded, the hand she had extended dropped and Cory whipped her head around to Kelsey. “What is going on?”

  Kelsey held up her hands. “Matthew is helping you coach the team, okay?”

  Matthew could see from Cory’s expression it wasn’t okay. “Hey, if it’s going to be a problem…” he said, quickly taking a step back.

  “No, no,” Kelsey said catching his arm, detaining him. She turned to her friend. “I couldn’t find anyone, Cory. All the mothers are busy. Matthew said he would help.”

  Cory looked down, poked the toe of her running shoe in the ground, then with a sigh, nodded her acceptance. “Okay. I guess we’re working together, Coach,” she said forcing a smile as she glanced at Matthew.

  “Guess so,” he returned. He would talk to Kelsey later.

  “That’s settled then,” Kelsey said, her tone brisk. “I’ve got a list of the kids here and I thought we could spend this practice just getting to know each other, work on some basics like catching and throwing. That kind of thing. I have only a few more minutes to spare, and then I have to head back to the restaurant.”

  “What about the rules of the game?” Matthew asked. “I don’t have the first clue about T-ball.”

  “I’ve got a couple of books. They’re on the bench. It’s pretty straightforward. I ran over the basic stuff with Cory. She knows where the players list is and the schedule of games.” Kelsey flashed them both a smile. “Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I’d like to stick around, but I have bills to pay and payroll to do. Thanks, eh?” She took a few steps backward, tossed them a quick wave, then turned and ran toward her car.

  “Coward,” Cory muttered, watching her leave.

  In spite of his own disappointment at her reaction, Matthew had to smile at her comment.

  “Well,” he said brightly, “I guess we should start, shouldn’t we?”

  The only acknowledgment he got was a curt nod. Then she was striding back to the bench.

  She picked up a clipboard and walked back to the home plate. “All right, kids,” she called out. “Let’s line up and get to know you.”

  A few children stopped what they were doing, glanced around to see if anyone else heard. When no one else responded, they went back to throwing the balls in the air.

  “C’mon, you guys,” Cory called out again with little effect.

  Matthew walked beside her, glanced at the clipboard with the names, stuck his fingers in his mouth and blew out a sharp whistle. All the heads came up.

  “Tommy, Jasmine, Terena, Scott, come over here.” Those were the only names he could remember, but the children he named, obeyed. “The rest of you can come, too.”

  “I had this under control.”

  Matthew spared her only a quick glance. “Of course you did.” He looked back at the children who were finally gathering in front of him and Cory. “Miss Smith and I are going to be your coaches for this year,” he said. “And the first thing you are going to have to learn is to come when she calls you or when I call you.” He smiled to lessen the reprimand in his voice. How firm should you be with five-year-olds?

  “This is just a first practice, so we don’t have to be real formal,” Cory interjected, kneeling down to get at their eye level. “And I’m glad so many of you could come. We’re going to have fun, aren’t we?”

  The heads nodded.

  “Like Mr. McKnight said, you have to listen when we call you. And my name is Miss Luciuk, okay?” She gave Matthew the barest hint of a smile.

  Point for you, he thought as she turned back to the children.

  “First off,” Cory continued, “I want you to listen as I call out your names. You have to line up when we tell you.”

  More nodding.

  Matthew watched as the first group of the children whose names Cory called off obediently lined up, then across from them, the others.

  “Move a little farther apart,” he told them.

  Cory glanced at him again, then looked back at the children. “I’ve got it under control, Mr. McKnight.” She turned back to the children.

  “Well, the way they throw, I’m sure we’re going to have a few bonked heads and a few tears in a moment.”

  “I said it’s fine,” she snapped.

  Matthew knew Cory well enough to stop arguing but had to smile when she surreptitiously walked through the children, spacing them farther away from each other.

  “Mr. McKnight, can you come here so I can show the children what we have to do?” Cory called to him.

  Matthew saluted and sauntered over, unable to resist moving one of the children a little farther away from the child beside him.

  She gave him a cool glance, then turned to their charges. “I’m going to show you how to hold your glove to catch the ball. Now I want you all to watch. Make sure your glove is in front of you and tilted slightly back.” She showed them the pocket where the ball was supposed to land, how to put their hands in it.

  “Ready, Mr. McKnight?” Cory asked.

  He nodded and Cory pitched the ball at him. She had a surprisingly hard arm and the ball hit his hands with a stinging smack. But he wasn’t about to let her see his reaction.

  He threw the ball carefully back at her and she caught it neatly with her glove, showing the children how it landed.

  “Now I want you to try.” She handed them out and soon the air was filled with balls flying back and forth, most barely reaching the other line. Kids laughed and squealed and Matthew and Cory walked along the lineup, showing how to throw and how to catch. Matthew chatted with the kids, trying to remember their names.

  But as he was talking with one boy the inevitable happened. A ball thrown awry arched through the air and landed directly on top of Sasha Thibault’s head. She looked around, her large blue eyes wide, then she sat down and began to cry.

  “That was a big bump, wasn’t it?” Matthew crouched down beside her and held her by the shoulders, smiling encouragement at her. “I bet that was a surprise?”

  Sasha nodded and wiped her tears with a sleeve of her sweatshirt.

  “Where did it hit you?”

  She showed him and he made a big fuss about feeling the top of her head.

  “There’s no bump and your head didn’t dent so I guess you’re okay.” He sat back on his haunches, grinning at her.

  “I guess so.” She felt her head just to make sure, and then Matthew helped her up.

  “Atta girl, Sasha. You’re pretty tough.” He patted her once on her head.

  He looked up in time to see Cory staring at him. He frowned, wondering what he had done wrong this time. But her expression was bemused and he could see a faint smile teasing her mouth.

  He winked at her, her expression hardened and they were back to where they started. Again.

  The rest of the practice went by quickly, and Matthew discovered, to his surprise, that he was having fun. The kids were noisy and rambunctious, but for the most part willing and eager to please.

  When the parents came to pick up the children, he took the time to chat with them, reminding them and the children of their regular Wednesday practice. He realized what Kelsey said was true. It was a good way to meet people from the community. He spent some time with Alana Thibault, Sasha’s mother, explaining to her what happene
d. Fortunately she waved the incident off and thanked Matthew profusely for spending time with her daughter.

  As the last child was picked up, Matthew turned to Cory. “Well, that went pretty well, didn’t it?”

  “What, the practice, or chatting up Sasha’s mother?” Cory said with a wry look.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Don’t tell me you couldn’t tell how she was flashing those big blue eyes at you?”

  Matthew forced a grin, determined not to let her get to him. “You’re not jealous are you?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  And when she bent over to pick up the stray baseballs, Matthew was surprised to find out that her easy dismissal bothered him. A little. But what bothered him more was her obvious antagonism toward him.

  “So, McKnight, next Wednesday we can do this again,” Cory said when all the equipment was picked up.

  “I guess so. I’ll have to see if I’m caught up on Nathan’s work by then.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re planning on working nights while you’re here?” Cory asked, zipping up the bag. She was about to pick it up, when Matthew took it from her. “I can carry it,” she protested.

  “Maybe, but my momma raised me better than that,” he said taking it from her. He swung it over his shoulder and waited as she gathered up the clipboard and the books of rules. “As to your other comment, I had come to help out Nathan, so if it means working late, then I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  Cory walked alongside him, silent for a while. When they reached her car, she turned to him. “You’ve got a really driven kind of personality, haven’t you?”

  “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

  Cory shrugged, opening the trunk of her car. “Maybe not. It just seems to me that life should be more than working, shouldn’t it?”

  Matthew dropped the bag in the back of the car and closed it. Then he leaned against it and tilted his head, wondering why she was probing. Ever since he had come to Stratton she had kept herself aloof from him, had only spoken to him with tones of irony in her voice, or not at all. A few moments ago she had neatly pushed him aside. Now she was challenging him on a personal level. “Is this the beginning of a conversation, Cory? ’Cause if it is, then I’m allowed to ask questions, too.”

  Cory held his gaze then looked away. “You’ve asked me enough questions in my life,” she said.

  Matthew understood what she alluded to. “I was just doing my job,” he said, careful to keep any inflection from his voice. She wasn’t going to let the past stay in the past. Not even now that Zeke was dead.

  “Of course.” Cory went to walk past him, but he caught her by the arm.

  “I don’t think I’m too out of line to ask you what you mean by that comment?”

  She yanked her arm back and to complete the affront took a step away from him as well. “It means that your answer is an easy out. Where is justice and truth and all the things that lawyers are supposed to be championing?”

  “I was helping a stepfather who wanted to see his beloved daughter. Someone who was getting no help from his ex-wife.” He knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth.

  Cory clasped her arms around her stomach and leaned back against the car, her eyes closed. “I wasn’t as beloved as Zeke has led you to believe, Matthew.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “And you’ve practically called me a liar.” She glared at him and then looked away. “I don’t know why you keep coming back to him, why you keep defending him. You’re not his lawyer anymore.”

  “No, but he was more than just a client.”

  Cory acknowledged the comment with a curt nod. “Lucky him. Our lawyer just saw us as another chance to try to defeat the formidable McKnights.”

  “We weren’t so formidable. We lost cases.”

  “Not against our lawyer.”

  “It was the judge who made the ruling. Your father had court-ordered visits. That was preestablished and not by me or my father. We were just making sure that it was done.”

  “No matter the cost?”

  “To whom?”

  “Me.” Cory pushed herself away from the car, her face hard. “I was the one who had to go and see him. I was the one who had to put up with his abuse. Me. No one else.”

  Matthew kept silent. He knew that she required a stand against Zeke and for her. To choose Zeke would be to deny what she was saying. He didn’t want to do that. Yet, to deny Zeke would be to acknowledge that he had been wrong those years. And he couldn’t do that.

  “So now you see why we can’t really have a conversation, don’t you?” Cory continued. Her shoulders slumped and she turned back to her car to open the door.

  “Why does Zeke even have to come up? Surely we can get to know each other apart from him?”

  Cory shook her head. “I don’t see how.”

  “He’s gone. It’s over.”

  Cory fiddled with her keys, then looked up at him, her expression sorrowful. “Maybe. But the reality is my mother and I are still living with the repercussions. I don’t think it will ever be over.” She got in the car and drove away.

  Matthew watched her go, his hands planted on his hips, puzzled. He hadn’t thought she was a vindictive woman, yet her tenacity in her dislike of Zeke didn’t seem to fit with the other glimpses he got of her. And it was going to be challenging in the coming months to meld all the different impressions he had of this puzzling woman.

  Chapter Seven

  “What in the world were you thinking of?” Cory shut the door to the restaurant’s office and stood facing Kelsey, her arms clasped tightly across her chest. “You led me to believe I’d be coaching with another mother.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said I would get you some help.” Kelsey leaned back from her desk, pushing her unruly hair back from her face as she grinned at her friend. “And I did. I think it’s a really good idea to have a guy helping you with all those kids.”

  “Not Matthew McKnight.”

  Kelsey just smiled.

  “And you can forget that ‘methinks thou dost protest too strongly’ stuff you like applying to him and me,” Cory said.

  Kelsey just shrugged.

  Cory tried glaring harder, then placed her hands palms down on the desk, leaning closer. “You have to find someone else, either to replace him or me.”

  With a sigh, Kelsey straightened. “You can’t go because Chris is counting on you to be there. And trust me, Cory, I went through the Stratton phone book starting at A trying to find someone who could help out. Matthew was a last resort.”

  “I don’t know if I can work with him.”

  “Chris really likes him. He’s a decent guy, Cory. Besides, it’s only for a while.”

  Cory bit her lip and looked away. Everything surrounding Matthew was “only for a while.”

  Yesterday had been difficult, pretending nothing had ever happened between them. But all those years of frustration and anger didn’t disappear in a few days.

  Help me get past this, Lord, she prayed, I don’t like feeling this confused.

  “This is really a problem, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Well, and no.”

  “It’s not just your stepfather, is it?”

  Cory shrugged.

  “Talk to me, Cory,” Kelsey said leaning forward. “I’m your friend. I’ve prayed for you, and you know that I care what happens to you.”

  Cory smiled as she held Kelsey’s sincere gaze, conceding that she was right. So she dropped into a chair across the desk and tried to explain. “He just makes me feel so confused and frustrated. That’s all. I feel like I shouldn’t have signed that will. I feel like I’ve gone against my principles. My mom keeps ragging on about how she doesn’t trust any of it. I’m just all mixed-up.”

  “You know, Cory, you can get yourself all tangled up in the right and wrong of this, or you can let go of all that stuff you’re carrying around. Next time you plan to
talk to God, let Him help you with this. Let Him take care of it.” Kelsey rested her chin on her hands, her expression thoughtful. “You don’t have to solve this on your own. But I don’t think it’s fair of you to take all the sorrows of your life and dump them on Matthew McKnight’s shoulders.”

  Cory pressed her hands against her face and shook her head. “I know, but it sounds too easy.” There was more, but she didn’t even want to acknowledge her attraction to Matthew to herself, let alone her friend.

  “It isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as you’re making it.” Kelsey got up and walked around the desk to kneel at Cory’s side. “Matthew is a really nice guy. And whether you want to admit it or not, I think he likes you too.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t start on that.” Cory didn’t want to hear that. It just added to the problem.

  “Look, if you really want, I can try to find someone else. Maybe twist one of the mother’s arms. Some of them hang around for the practice anyhow, maybe they can help out.”

  “No. You’re right. I should be more mature.” Cory rubbed her forehead with an index finger, as if trying to force away her agitation.

  “Well, you have to admit, he’s easy on the eyes. You can’t fault me for that,” Kelsey said with a laugh as she got up.

  “No, I can’t,” Cory admitted. And that was the closest she dared venture to part of how she really felt about Matthew McKnight.

  “Let go of all that past stuff,” Kelsey said. “Try to treat him like you’ve never met him before, like he’s an ordinary guy. It will make your summer a lot more pleasant.”

  Cory admitted the truth of Kelsey’s words. Even though she knew she could never truly get past everything that happened, she realized that it would be far easier on her if she followed Kelsey’s advice.

  Matthew bit his lip, glanced one more time at the telephone and then made the phone call before he changed his mind.

  Kelsey picked it up on the first ring.