For the Girls' Sake

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Since then, he hadn’t bothered. Nights, Adam stayed up later than he should, because climbing into bed alone was when he felt the loss. Jenny came to him most readily then, with an airy laugh or a teasing tickle of her fingers, and he would almost roll to gather her into his arms, then he’d remember with a painful stab that she was gone for good.

  Her death had come so fast. No time to prepare, to say goodbye.

  The afternoon it happened, he’d talked to her quickly from the office, half his attention on the notes he’d been making on a new software company. He had dropped his car off for new brakes that morning, and the mechanic had let him know they had to wait for a part. "No problem," Jenny had declared. They chose one of their favorite restaurants in downtown Portland and arranged to meet there. He’d walk over, they’d go home together.

  "If you’re sure you don’t mind being seen with a woman shaped like a gray whale," she’d said, so blithely he could smile into the telephone knowing she was only fishing for a compliment. She was well aware of her beauty, body swollen with his child. Jennifer had never lacked in confidence, during her pregnancy least of all.

  Grinning, the last thing he’d said to her was, "Just make sure they seat you before I arrive," and she’d told him he was a rat.

  Neither of them had said goodbye or "I love you."

  He was ten minutes late. Jenny wasn’t there, hadn’t been seated. He had a drink while he waited. Punctuality never had been one of her virtues. When she was half an hour late, he tried her at home. No answer. She had a way of forgetting to turn on her cell phone, but he tried it, too.

  A police officer had answered, told him his wife had been hit head-on by a drunk driver. She had been transported to the hospital with a potential head injury.

  She was already gone, his Jenny. Dead in every way that mattered, except that the beat of her heart and the soft machine-induced breaths sustained their baby.

  From that day forward, he looked at other women, and he saw Jenny.

  So he remained alone, while he longed for something more.

  Like tonight.

  Thinking about Lynn had more to do with his restlessness than the lumpy cushions did.

  At bedtime she’d used the bathroom first. Thinking he’d heard her door shut, Adam went down the hall with his toothbrush just in time to meet her face-to-face outside the bathroom. Her faded flannel bathrobe gaped enough to expose a fine white cotton nightgown edged with lace as pretty as that on her sheets. Brushed until it crackled with energy, her hair tumbled over her shoulders. She smelled like soap and woman, her cheeks pink from scrubbing.

  He’d looked down to see her bare feet peeking out beneath the ragged hem of her robe. Her toes, curled on the cold floorboards, were a lot more tempting than Rhonda McIntyre’s over-plumped lips.

  Blushing, murmuring that the bathroom was all his, Lynn had fled, leaving him with thoughts that kept him awake. Now, being tormented on Lynn Chanak’s ancient couch, every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself tangling his fingers in that mass of glorious hair. He imagined her pretty eyes. The smell of her soap and the lavender and roses drifting from her bureau.

  She was the mother of his daughter. Her body had once swelled with child, and it was his Rosebud she’d carried. Knowing that muddled his thoughts. When he tried to see his Jenny pregnant, he imagined Lynn instead.

  It didn’t help to tell himself that she’d be horrified if she knew he was lying out here on her couch thinking about her.

  What if he acted on it? What if he kissed her? What if she didn’t slap him?

  Would he long for Jenny when he kissed Lynn?

  Groaning, Adam rolled over again and stared up at the dark ceiling.

  Even if he didn’t think about Jenny, what he felt wasn’t love. It was loneliness butting up against involuntary intimacy with a woman. It was encountering her barefooted in her nightie with her teeth freshly brushed and her cheeks rosy. It was seeing her as his child’s mother.

  And it could not be. The inevitable hurt feelings and anger would destroy any hope of sharing their daughters.

  Grimly Adam tried to shut off the show his imagination was directing. Obviously, it was time—past time—he found a woman with whom he could laugh and kiss, if nothing else.

  Any woman but Lynn Chanak.

  * * *

  OF COURSE, BY MONDAY morning, rain dripped dismally from a gray sky, killing his hope of taking the girls to the beach. The kitchen table didn’t seat four, so Adam sat wedged between Rose and Shelly while Lynn munched toast and served them.

  "No movie theater in town," he remembered.

  “Nope. Lincoln City is the closest. And I don’t think anything is playing that they’d enjoy."

  "Any ideas?" he asked without hope.

  "We could hang around here." Whisking back and forth between stove and table, she barely glanced at him. "The girls’ll be happy playing. You can do whatever it is brokers do. Use your laptop to check what prices are going up or down. That terrorist bombing in Rome probably panicked a few stockholders."

  He didn’t care whether Intel had dropped a point and a half because some zealot had blown up himself and half an office building just outside the Vatican. He didn’t want to spend the day with her. But he’d had the girls yesterday. Today was, in a sense, her turn. He couldn’t decide to leave until mid-afternoon at least.

  "Sure," he said without enthusiasm. "Sounds good."

  "You girls could dress up," Lynn suggested. "I’ll get the box down if you want."

  "Dress up?" Rose brightened. "We could have a parade. Like we do at preschool."

  "Yeah!" Shelly bounced. "And maybe sing!"

  "And dance."

  "You could put on a performance for us." Lynn set more bacon on the table.

  "Let’s go practice." The girls were gone in a flurry, Lynn behind them to get down "the box."

  Adam usually avoided cholesterol-laden foods like bacon, but he gloomily began crunching a strip. When Lynn reappeared, he asked, "What’s in the box?"

  “Oh..." She smiled and took a tea bag from a canister. "Dress-up clothes. I’m always adding new stuff from the thrift store. I have feather boas and gaudy jewelry and high heels and scarves. Lots of sequins. You’ll see." Pouring hot water into her mug, she added over her shoulder, "But what makes it magic is, I only let Shelly into it every once in a while. On a day when she’s really bored. Or like today, when she and a friend can put on a production."

  Magic. Adam guessed he did okay as a parent, but he didn’t know how to make magic. This woman did.

  "What are you thinking about?" she asked.

  Surprising himself, he told her.

  "Nonsense." She joined him at the table. "A dress-up box is a girl thing. Why would you think of it?"

  Jennifer would have, he knew.

  "That doesn’t mean you don’t come up with your own ideas. Or at least provide Rose with the opportunity to find them elsewhere."

  "Preschool."

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "If she loved it there, she wouldn’t hate going."

  Lynn lifted out the tea bag, squeezed it and set it on the edge of a breakfast plate. The rich scent of orange and cinnamon overrode the greasier scent of bacon.

  "I don’t know about that," she said calmly. "Just because Rose cries when she has to say goodbye to you doesn’t mean she has a terrible time. Doesn’t she tell you about her day?"

  "Sure she does." He ate another strip of bacon, simply because it was there. "They’re teaching the kids sign language. She shows me new signs every day. The goat tries to eat her hair, which means we have to wash it that night. I catch her sometimes giggling with a bunch of other girls when I get there early."

  "I rest my case."

  He took a last swallow of coffee and tried not to notice that her knees were bumping his under the small table. "Since you’re so wise, tell me this—why do I worry constantly about whether I’m messing up, while you know instinctively what to do? Is it the differ
ence between a woman and a man?"

  That difference was exactly what he didn’t want to think about. So why throw it out on the table for discussion?

  Because it was on his mind, he concluded.

  "I know women who are terrible with their kids and men who are great. No." She shook her head, and her braid flopped over her shoulder. "I suspect it has more to do with the fact that my mother was an affectionate woman and yours wasn’t. Parenting is a learned skill. Maybe it is easier to learn as a child, like a second language. You’re having to work a little harder. That’s all."

  How simple. He felt like an idiot to be so comforted by an answer as obvious as this one.

  "What would you normally do today?" he asked, more abruptly than was polite.

  "Clean the kitchen." Lynn nodded toward the sink. "Do a little housework. Pay bills. Thumb through publishers’ catalogs."

  "Don’t let me distract you."

  Her clear-eyed gaze saw right through him. He wanted them not to spend the day together.

  "Sure," she said agreeably. "The phone is here. Do you want to spread out on the table? I’ll have it cleared in a minute."

  "Let me help."

  She’d already pushed back her chair. "This is a one-cook kitchen. We’d be tripping over each other."

  Instead of going to the living room for his briefcase and laptop computer, Adam watched as she ran hot water into the sink. No dishwasher. He’d vaguely thought everybody had one.

  In the past twenty-four hours, he had become shockingly aware of how near to the bone Lynn Chanak must live. The furniture was all secondhand. No, third-or fourth-hand. The linoleum in the bathroom and kitchen were both worn to the point where the pattern had become a memory and seams were peeling. She and Shelly had two bedrooms—if you could call Shelly’s eight-by-eight feet with a slanting ceiling a room. Crummy bathroom. Creaky plumbing. A small eating space in the kitchen and a living room no bigger than his den. Woodwork and floors needed stripping or replacing, windows were single pane, and he wondered about the building’s wiring.

  It appalled him to think about the reaction of Jennifer’s parents, if they could see where their granddaughter was growing up.

  Funny thing was, the only uncomfortable part of this apartment was the couch. The place was tiny, too small for two adults and two children, but probably fine for just a mom and toddler. With the same imagination she’d used in creating the dress-up box, Lynn had managed to give the old house charm on a shoestring.

  She’d rag-rolled paint on plaster walls to subtle effect and used bright enamel on wood furniture. Posters of far-off places and wreaths of dried flowers brightened bare spots. The tiny hall was hung with family photos. He’d lingered that morning to study them. Bright pillows were probably hand-sewn rather than bought; he’d bet she had crocheted the afghan, as well. She had an eye for color, he thought, an ability to bring cheer to the drabbest room.

  His own house could use a little.

  "I’m done," she said briskly, whisking a dishcloth across the table. "It’s all yours."

  "Thanks."

  He tried to concentrate after that, but it was hard when the girls kept popping out for an opinion on the latest ensemble or to ask the words to a song. And he remained conscious of Lynn, who murmured apologetically when she slipped into the kitchen for stamps or a cold drink, who eventually heated soup and made sandwiches for everyone. When the girls at last teetered through their dances in gowns worthy of Vanna White and heels high enough to do a swan dive from, it was Lynn he noticed most. Her delight was so genuine, her laughs in the right place, her clapping endearingly enthusiastic.

  She had that magical ability to see through a child’s eyes. In that, she reminded him of Jenny, who had never seemed quite grown-up to him.

  But unlike Jenny, who had never worked, Lynn successfully ran a small business and coped with a young child. On the way to the bathroom this morning, he’d seen her worry as she wrote checks, sighed, laid an envelope aside, then changed her mind and opened it again. She must have nothing put away. What kind of health insurance did she carry? he wondered, when he should have been thinking about the alarming, precipitate drop in the price per share of a small software company that had recently gone public and which he’d recommended to his clients.

  Did he have a right to ask Lynn about her finances? If she was anxious now, what would her checking account look like in March after the winter slowdown in the tourist trade? Would she take help from him?

  Instead of suggesting that he and Rose leave right after lunch, Adam let Lynn put both girls down for a nap. Maybe he’d take them all out to dinner.

  Lynn came into the kitchen. "Well, they’re giggling in there, so I can’t guarantee they’ll actually get any sleep, but it seems worth a try."

  "Rose can catch up on the way home," he said indifferently.

  "I’ll leave you to work." She had some bright catalogs in her hand.

  "Publishers’ lists?" he asked, nodding at them.

  "Yeah. I enjoy choosing what books we’ll carry as much as I do selling them. Of course the reps try to push certain ones, but a bookseller needs to know her own market."

  "What do you look for?" he asked with real curiosity.

  "Um..." She was still hovering in the doorway.

  "Why don’t you sit down?"

  “Can I get you something to drink?"

  "I’ll take a cup of coffee." He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had instant, but it wasn’t bad stuff. The caffeine kick was the same.

  While she boiled water, he thumbed through spring catalogs from Little, Brown, as well as Simon & Schuster and Scholastic. Every single book looked bright and appealing.

  As they drank coffee, Lynn talked about what she found did well for her: local history and flora and fauna, of course, fiction set in the Northwest, a few paperback bestsellers, children’s books. "When it rains," she said with a quick grin, "the kids suddenly need indoor entertainment." Gardening books, she continued; something about going on vacation in a place like Otter Beach inspired people to think they’d go home and transform their yards into cottage or Japanese gardens.

  "I have some sidelines, too, including a few needlework and latch-hook rug kits. Vacation makes people dream."

  "And you don’t have to worry about a Barnes & Noble opening in the next block."

  "Right." Her pretty, round face looked rueful. "Of course, the reason I don’t have to worry is that there isn’t enough volume of business here to attract one. Which also limits any possibility of expansion or growth for me, too."

  "How about a second store? Say in Cannon Beach or Lincoln City?"

  "I’ve thought about it. They each have independents now, and it doesn’t make sense for two of us to compete. And with Shelly a preschooler, the travel and headaches don’t seem very appealing. But maybe someday..." She shrugged. "If one of those stores should come up for sale..."

  Adam drummed his fingers on his thigh. "What do you do about health insurance?"

  "I have coverage." Her formerly artless tone became wary. "Were you worried about Shelly?"

  "I want her well taken care of." Even he recognized how tactless that sounded, but too late.

  Gentle green eyes became fiery. "Are you suggesting I don’t take adequate care of her?"

  "No." He grimaced. "I’m sorry. I don’t always express myself well. I know you’re doing the best you can. It’s probably better than I do. I just got to worrying about whether you make enough to manage."

  "Well, don’t," she said stiffly. "I’ll let you know before Shelly and I are out on the street."

  Irked, he said, "I was trying to offer help."

  Brows lifted, she said coolly, "Were you?"

  "Clumsily."

  "Then thank you." She gathered up her catalogs. "But we’re doing just fine. I happen to believe that luxurious surroundings aren’t essential to emotional well-being."

  "I won’t argue." Although he’d never forgive himself if he left
Shelly with her and they both died some night in a fire started by antique wiring.

  She stood, tiny curls escaping the severe braid to frame her face. Instead of leaving the kitchen immediately, Lynn hesitated. "I know today wasn’t what you had in mind."

  "Actually," he said, "I didn’t have anything in particular in mind."

  "You would have preferred a movie or a day at the beach."

  "I thought the girls might," he corrected her, knowing he was lying.

  "Real life, remember?"

  "What about you?" he challenged. "Was this a good visit?"

  "Yes." She sounded surprised. "I’m not totally comfortable with you sometimes, but otherwise...yes."

  "Will things get better between us?"

  "I’m sure they will." But she wasn’t meeting his eyes. "Once I’m sure you won’t try to take Shelly from me."

  Adam felt an instant of disappointment that irritated him when he realized its source: he’d wanted her to admit she felt an attraction to him that was a problem. Either she was being less than honest, or she didn’t feel any of that edgy awareness that had him concentrating on her face so he didn’t imagine wrapping his hands around her small waist.

  "We have an agreement, don’t we?" he said.

  "We have nothing in writing. Nothing that will keep us out of court."

  "Goodwill."

  "I don’t trust it. I want to trust you, but I don’t completely. How can I?"

  He did trust her, he realized somewhat to his shock. Lynn Chanak didn’t have a deceitful bone in her body.

  "We could do a written parenting plan."

  She sighed. "No. I just need time. And...and a routine. I’m happiest when I know what’s coming."

  "Like a child."

  "I suppose." She tried to smile. "Living on the edge is not for me."

  "And yet," he said softly, "you must feel as if you are all the time."

  "Financially, maybe."

  "Is your ex-husband helping?"

  "He was. Until this happened." She gestured toward Shelly’s bedroom, where silence had finally settled.