by Luke’s Wish
“And my toof-bwush?”
“Of course. Your toothbrush.”
“She really has a pink one for me?”
“Yes, she does.”
“Wow!” Dani said, pulling open the door and taking off at a run before Joe could stop her.
“Dani? Wait for me. You don’t even know where you’re going.” He took off after her.
“I found the star room!” she exclaimed.
Sure enough, she had. The blue room with the glittering stars in the painted sky was right there. Joe reached inside and flicked on the light, which bounced off the stars, setting them off and making them seem to twinkle in a way Joe couldn’t understand at all.
“Wow!” Dani said again, her eyes big now. “Luke said it was magic, and it is.”
It had to be glitter, Joe thought. A woman who walked around with pockets full of chattering teeth would glue glitter to her ceiling to please the children reclining in the dental chair.
“Come on, Dani. We need to find Luke.”
She skipped down the hall, singing as she went, her hair bouncing behind her. The child had more energy than any seven human beings put together. Like that silly pink bunny on the battery commercials, she kept going and going and going.
“To the right, Dani,” he said, directing her to the office. She pushed her way inside without a knock or a word to the owner of said office. Par for the course, Joe decided. Privacy was a concept totally unknown to his children.
“Luke’s crying,” Dani announced as Joe walked through the open door of Samantha’s office.
Frowning, he saw that Luke had indeed been crying. Samantha had, as well, but he couldn’t tell if it had been fifteen minutes ago, when Joe was here holding her, or more recently, when she was talking to Luke.
What had happened? He had very little patience or even the ability to reason when it came to his kids getting hurt. He was all they had now, and he shot her a burning look.
“Are you going to help me?” Luke cried to Samantha.
“Luke…I have to talk to your father first.”
Luke glared at her, but his lower lip was trembling, diminishing the effect.
“You’re right. We need to talk,” Joe said, flashing back to all the times in the past thirteen months he’d seen his son in tears over another woman, a woman who had all but torn out his heart.
He tried to calm down and not glare at Samantha, knowing he was madder than he had a right to be, considering he had no idea what had gone on in this room.
She wouldn’t hurt his son, he told himself. He would have sworn he knew the kind of woman she was and that she wouldn’t hurt Luke. Of course, he never would have believed Elena would walk out on his kids, either.
Maybe he just didn’t know anything when it came to women. That was a possibility, Joe decided. That was reason enough to stay away from them, or at least to keep them away from his kids.
Looking at Luke, he just couldn’t believe this was happening. Luke was devastated. What in the world had gone on in here?
“Do you really have a toof-bwush for me?” Dani jumped in.
Samantha turned to his daughter and smiled. “If you’re Dani, I do. Pink?”
Dani nodded happily. When Samantha pulled the prize pink brush from her pocket, she took it and asked, “Does it really glow?”
“Yes, it does.”
“I gotta test it.” Dani’s eyes scanned the room, then settled on the door in the corner, which most likely led to a closet. She and Luke had played and played in one of the closets at the house the night before with Luke’s toothbrush.
“Dani, wait a minute,” Joe said, too harshly. “You can’t just go into someone else’s closet.”
“Why not?” She pouted.
Joe winced. He was too worried about Luke to get into it with Dani right now.
“We need to talk later,” Samantha said. When he turned to face her, she mouthed to him, “Without the children.”
Joe nodded, but wondered if he could wait that long. He wanted some answers. Now.
“I’ll call you tonight,” she said.
He took Dani by the hand, despite her protests about not being ready to go. Luke threw one more pleading look in Samantha’s direction, then turned and left.
Joe thought Samantha looked as if she was going to cry again, and he wanted to hit something. What in the world had she said to Luke?
Luke didn’t say anything on the way home. He didn’t eat his dinner, raced through his homework, didn’t even want to play Nintendo.
Joe was absolutely baffled, and if Samantha Carter didn’t call him soon, he was going to break something in two. Maybe a nice piece of crystal, he thought, the stuff his wife had paid a fortune for. She’d been sure they’d have a need for such frivolous extravagances eventually. They never had.
Well, maybe she did now, but she hadn’t bothered to pack the stuff she’d picked out when she was living with him. She’d left behind a lot, including two frightened little children.
One of those children was hiding in the linen closet with her pink toothbrush, which did indeed glow in the dark. The other was nowhere to be found. Joe searched the whole house, calling out Luke’s name as he went. He was starting to get really worried when Dani stuck her head out of the closet and yelled, “He’s in the closet in his room, Daddy!”
He stuck his head in the door. “You could have told me before I searched the entire house, Dani.”
“I thought you’d find him,” she said innocently. Then added gleefully, “Is Luke in trouble?”
“I’ll let you know once I find him,” Joe said.
Joe headed upstairs, walked into Luke’s room, then knocked on the closet door.
“Who is it?” a muffled voice called out.
“Your father. Can I come in? Please?”
The door opened. Joe got down on his knees and found Luke hiding in a tangle of dirty clothes that somehow never made it to the clothes hamper. They lived here in Luke’s closet until he had nothing to wear, and Joe finally came to see why.
Luke had made a nest of the clothes, hunkering down inside the pile clutching his flashlight and a jar.
“Can I sit there?” Joe indicated a spot to his son’s right.
Luke shrugged and said, “’Kay.”
Joe sat. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Uh-uh.”
Joe saw that Luke had the jelly jar with the baby teeth in it. “Pretty impressive collection,” he said, taking the jar from Luke’s hands.
Luke grabbed it back. “It’s mine.”
“Sorry.” Joe decided to back off. “Luke, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong. I might be able to help.”
“You won’t,” Luke said.
Joe leaned down so he could look his son in the eye. “Hey, partner. I would do anything in the world for you. Don’t you know that?”
Luke’s bottom lip started to quiver. His whole face puckered, his little nose scrunched up like a cat’s, and he began to sob. Joe pulled his son into his arms and for the second time that day, let someone cry all over his favorite shirt for reasons he didn’t understand and wasn’t likely to hear.
He’d never really found out what had upset Samantha, either, he remembered.
Samantha had Luke’s address in her patient file at the office, and she copied that down before she left. She went to her house, but was too nervous to stay there. She expected an angry phone call from Richard after the conversation she had with Abbie today, and she wasn’t up to dealing with Richard tonight. She felt too fragile, her feelings rubbed raw, all the old hurts exposed.
Looking at Joe’s little girl had taken her back to another time, when Abbie was Luke’s age and Sarah had been so much like Dani. She’d ached to hold Joe’s daughter close, but knew he wouldn’t have allowed it this evening.
Joe had been angry when he found Luke crying in Samantha’s office, and there simply hadn’t been a way to explain quickly or privately what Luke wanted. So she decided she’d
have to go and see him tonight. He had a right to know what was going on with Luke. She couldn’t leave him totally unaware of the fact that his kid was going to try to collect one hundred baby teeth in a jar and trade them for a mother.
In the car she took out her map, because she still didn’t know a lot about the city, and drove for about three miles before she found Joe’s house. It was in an older neighborhood, a narrow but deep two-story house with all sorts of bushes and big trees, toys scattered here and there, a pretty swing on the porch. It looked lived-in, Samantha decided. She liked it, just as she liked Joe and Luke and Dani.
Getting out of the car, she studied the front of the house and found the bedrooms dark, but lights on downstairs. That was good. She wanted to wait until the kids were asleep so she and Joe could talk privately.
Samantha hadn’t quite decided what she was going to say to him. Walking to the door, she ignored the doorbell and knocked quietly, instead. No one answered, and she knocked again, more forcefully this time.
“Coming,” she heard Joe call.
Then the door swung open and he stood there, his hair wet, smelling all clean and new. When he propped one of his arms against the door frame and leaned into it, the light from the porch fell across his handsome face, and the sight made her mouth go dry. She forgot everything she’d said about needing to keep her distance from this man, particularly about staying out of his arms.
“I probably shouldn’t have come here,” she said stupidly.
Probably? she mused. As if there was any question?
He reached out and snagged her arm. “Well, you’re here, Doc, and you’re going to tell me what had my son so upset this evening.”
“He wouldn’t tell you?” she asked, letting him pull her inside and shut the door behind her.
“No. He hid in his closet with that jar of teeth he’s collecting and cried until bedtime. He didn’t tell me a thing, but you will.”
Samantha stepped away from him and found her back pressed against the wall. Joe protecting his children was something to behold. Obviously no one was going to mess with his kids without hearing about it from him. It only made her like him more.
“That’s why I came over here,” she said. “To tell you.”
He folded his arms across his chest, totally oblivious to the effect that had on her. Right then he was totally focused on his son.
Good, Samantha thought. She would focus on Luke, as well. After all, that was why she was here.
“Could we sit down?” she said, thinking she might put some distance between him and her, that the distance might somehow diminish the power he had over her.
He gave her a look that said she was pushing her luck by stalling this way, but stepped away and nodded toward the sofa. It was a buttery soft leather, expensive, and not what she would have expected from a man like him. She would have thought his tastes ran to simpler things.
Glancing around the room, she saw it was done with equally expensive taste, the effect of its quality pieces, obviously chosen with the help of a decorator, softened somewhat by the tiny shoes piled in the corner by the door, the coats thrown across the big leather chair in the corner, the toys scattered here and there throughout the room.
Samantha sat on one end of the sofa and ran her hand along the arm.
“My wife,” Joe said. “She liked expensive things.”
“Oh,” Samantha said softly. “Liked?”
“Hmm?”
“You said liked. Not likes. Does she still like expensive things? Or is she…”
“I wouldn’t know what she likes anymore. I haven’t seen her in thirteen months. Did Luke talk to you about his mother?”
“A little.” This was going to be more difficult than Samantha realized, and she was nervous. “I know this isn’t any of my business, but…why did Luke’s mother go away?”
“Because deep down inside, where it really matters, she’s selfish and immature, and being a mother to two little kids was just too hard for her. It wasn’t fun anymore, not when it called for putting the happiness and the needs of two little children ahead of her own.”
His tone was dead even as he said it, although from the tension she saw come into his shoulders and the hard line of his jaw, she suspected Joe Morgan was bitterly angry about what he’d just told her.
Selfish? she thought. Immature? How did he ever get tangled up with a woman like that?
If she truly was a woman like that. Samantha didn’t know that for sure. She barely knew this man, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to take every word he said as gospel. She couldn’t give any man’s word that much credibility, not ever again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“It’s all right. And it’s not all her fault. I married her. I had children with her, without ever seeing what she was truly like. It’s my fault, too.”
“You’re not the one who ran out on your kids,” she pointed out.
“No,” he said. “I could never do that.”
“And she could?” Samantha found that difficult to believe.
He shrugged, the gesture holding a world of hurt. “Elena was indulged her whole life. Her parents have a lot of money. They made things easy for her. She always got whatever she wanted, and at some point, she decided she wanted me. I think I was part of the shock-your-parents phase, because at the time I didn’t have much more than I could fit in the back of the camper I was hauling behind my truck, and most all I ever did was follow the rodeo from one town to another.”
“You?” she said.
Joe nodded. “Elena went through a phase in the middle of her college education where she wanted to be a photographer. She came to take pictures of the rodeo one night, and one thing kind of led to another. Next thing I knew, she was in the truck with me and off we went. One rodeo after another. Her parents hated it.”
“I can imagine,” Samantha said.
“She was a lot of fun back then. We had a lot of good times together, and for a while that was enough for me. But we all have to grow up sometime. For me, it was when we got married and she got pregnant with Luke. The rodeo just didn’t cut it anymore. Texas wasn’t that appealing to her, either. We came to Virginia to tell her parents, and somehow we ended up staying here. I think she thought her daddy would step in and make everything all better then.”
“Better?”
“Money,” Joe said as if it was a dirty word. “We needed a house, one she approved of. And furniture and all kinds of baby things. I think Elena believed her father would cough up enough for all that. But he didn’t, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have taken it. He did offer me a job in his electronics firm, which I wasn’t at all qualified for and also refused to take.”
“Which didn’t sit well with Luke’s mother?”
“No,” he said. “She might have forgiven her father and me for the house. Or the lack of a house she approved of. But she got pretty steamed over the job offer I refused and all the money that came with it. We settled in here…” He glanced around the little house. “She grew up in a mansion. Or what I think of as a mansion. And this place…well, it’s in great shape now, compared to what it was when we first bought it. I’d done some construction work before, and I took a job with a local builder, worked on this place on the side. Luke came along. Things were a little rocky, and then Dani came along. And that’s when it got really tough.”
“Two kids are a lot of work,” Samantha sympathized.
Joe didn’t look a bit forgiving. “I know.”
“So what happened?”
“I think it was just too hard for Elena. Too much work for her. I mean, the money was part of it. She always resented the fact that we didn’t have as much as she thought we should, or that I wouldn’t work for her father, or that her parents wouldn’t give her more. But mostly I think she had no idea what she was getting into by having kids. You said it, it’s a lot of work.”
Samantha nodded. “It’s unr
elenting.”
“Yeah. And Elena still wanted to have fun, to spend money, to see her friends. There wasn’t a lot of time for that with two kids. She was miserable, and I shouldn’t be so bitter about the fact that she left. She never would have been happy here, and the kids would have known that in time. She would have made them miserable, too. It never would have worked. I know that. It’s just hard to explain to a kid who’s lost his mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Samantha said.
“Well, now you know. And I guess I owe you an apology, too. I see red at the thought of another woman hurting my son. He’s cried himself to sleep too many nights already, and I…I’m afraid I was a little rough on you today, Doc.”
“It’s all right.”
“It’s just that I’m all they’ve got left,” Joe said. “The only one left to protect them and take care of them.”
“I understand. I’d growl at anybody who hurt them, too.”
“Thank you,” he said, relaxing just a bit for the first time since he’d found Luke sobbing in her office. “So what did Luke tell you?”
“He wants his mother back.”
Joe turned his head to the side and uttered a cry of frustration and pain. Samantha flinched at the raw power and the anger behind the carefully controlled sound.
“I can’t make her come back,” he admitted. “No matter how much Luke wants her.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean that you could. Or that you should. I was just telling you what he told me. And, Joe?”
“Hmm?”
“Luke has this ridiculous idea that I’m the tooth fairy, because he saw me in that silly costume I wear when I talk to kids at schools, and now he’s decided I can bring his mother back to him. He’s trying to collect a hundred teeth in that jar of his so he can use them to make a grand gesture to the tooth fairy in exchange for getting his mother back.”
“Oh, God,” Joe said, looking like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. “A hundred teeth?”
Samantha nodded.
“Well, that’s a problem.”
“I know. I tried to tell him I wasn’t really magic, but he saw me do those silly little magic tricks, and now he thinks I can do anything. That’s why he’s so mad at me—he thinks I could bring his mother back if I wanted to, that I just won’t do it.”
