“Those cookies on the platter are for your meeting,” Marsha explained to Lily as he went. “I’ll get the tea, then we’ll make ourselves scarce.”
“What meeting?” Lily wanted to know.
Tyler kept walking, determined to see this through. He was aware that he didn’t have the Graysons’ knack for gently easing people into things they didn’t think they could handle. Helping them work through problems they didn’t want to face. He was a fixer. He kept things moving. Pushed past whatever disappointment stood in his way and focused on the next opportunity.
I’m not up for one of your surprises, Tyler.
He knew he should cancel the meeting. Use the obvious excuse that he was an idiot who didn’t have the first clue what his wife needed. But what if Lily was never ready to accept the truth? What if the new dream he wanted to paint for their future, their family, wasn’t possible?
What if he quit pushing, and ended up losing her for good?
CHAPTER THREE
“I’M SORRY.” Lily knew she didn’t sound sorry, but at least she wasn’t screaming at her husband in front of the social worker Tyler had invited over for a chat. “I…I forgot I have a previous engagement.”
She stood and would have walked out the back door, except that’s where the Graysons had disappeared to, to give them some privacy with the children’s-services caseworker. The couple’s consideration in helping Tyler trap Lily into—how had he put it, facing difficult choices—wasn’t nearly as heartwarming as Marsha’s earlier offer of cookies, pot roast and homemade cobbler.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said to the room in general.
She headed toward the front of the house to find her purse and keys. A small body darted across the den. A scurry of motion racing for the front stairs confirmed that not all of the kids had stayed out of sight as instructed. A crash, followed by a childish “Ouch!” stopped her.
“Everything okay?” she asked as she reached the little body that had collided with the hall table and knocked both it and himself to the floor.
The moment of déjà vu was completed when she found herself for the second time that day setting furniture to rights and helping Dakota Miller to his feet. She’d heard the Graysons had recently taken in another child, but she and Tyler hadn’t talked enough lately for her to be up on all the details.
“We’ve simply got to stop meeting this way.” She looked the little boy over, saw no obvious injuries and resisted the urge to give the kid a reassuring hug.
“He’s here to take me back to the group home, isn’t he?” Dakota demanded. He still wore his red-and-black Falcons cap, this time turned tough-guy backwards.
“Who?” She glanced toward the kitchen. “Mr. Kramer?” Then it clicked. “No, sweetie. The children’s-services coordinator is here to talk with Mr. Brooks and me. It has nothing to do with the Graysons or what happened at school today. No one’s taking you anywhere.”
Dakota’s blue eyes narrowed. Their color was so similar to Tyler’s, Lily couldn’t help but stare.
“He’s here for you?” Dakota sputtered. “But you and Mr. Brooks are mad at each other. Everyone at school says so. And you want them to give you a kid?”
“What? No!” Her sharp refusal echoed up the stairs. Rustling noises came from the second-floor bedrooms, muffled voices, but thankfully none of the other kids emerged from homework exile. “I don’t want to…The meeting was just to get some information and see what it would take if we decided to foster children like the Graysons do.”
So, why did you run from the conversation before it even got started?
“We’re not like puppies, you know.” Dakota squared off, his you-can’t-hurt-me glare pulling Lily’s head out of her own problems. “They don’t just give kids away to everyone. Even screwups like me.”
So much for sprinting to her car and driving far, far away from Tyler and his latest solution to their problems. She knelt on one knee so she and Dakota were eye-to-eye.
“No,” she said. “They give great kids like you to families like this one, because the Graysons are the best there is.”
The kind of family Tyler had thrived with.
Dakota backed away so fast he knocked into the table again. He kicked the sturdy piece of oak, crimson staining his cheeks from either embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t say which. It was equally impossible to tell which was causing the suspicious sheen making his eyes sparkle.
“Great kids don’t get thrown away and dumped in a group home, until some loser place like this opens up.” He edged toward the door that opened to the backyard. “Throwaways don’t get second chances after screwing up at school like I have this week. Like I care,” he sneered. “Tell that man I can’t wait to go back. The Graysons are so lame, I can’t wait to get out of here!”
He yanked the door open and bolted outside. Dust bunnies kicked up in the beams of sunlight as he ran, like the animated puffs of smoke cartoon characters left in their wake. Lily stared after Dakota, wondering what the child’s reaction would be when he came across his lame foster parents cuddling on the back porch swing.
Tyler appeared at her side.
“When you’re scared, it’s a lot easier to run,” he said, “than it is to stay and fight.”
She met his troubled gaze, even though she wanted to shove his latest pearl of philosophical wisdom back down his throat.
“Not everyone’s as good at getting on with it as you are, Tyler.” She fought back the anger that made her want to run every time they were close. “You didn’t tell me Dakota was Marsha and Joshua’s newest lost boy.”
That’s how Tyler had jokingly referred to himself back in middle school, when they’d first become friends. The Graysons had a reputation for taking on cases that other families wouldn’t. Usually angry little boys. They saw it as their chance to do the most good.
“Dakota’s only been here a few days.” Tyler closed the back door. “All I know is he’s a tough character who isn’t attached to anything but that Falcons cap and the tennis shoes his grandmother bought him. He refuses to let Marsha replace them. I’ve only seen him at school before today. I haven’t made it by for dinner the last few weeks.”
Not since she’d moved out. She’d disrupted everything in their ordered world, including their regular visits to this crazy, loving household.
“Do Marsha and Joshua know?”
“That we’re having trouble having a baby? Of course.”
“That you’re giving up on me being a mother and already researching Plan B.”
“I haven’t given up on anything. Accepting that having a baby of our own isn’t the only way for us to be parents isn’t giving up.”
“Well, I can’t accept it, Tyler. I’m not made like you. I can’t just—”
“Let go and move on?” His hand curled around hers and his grip firmed when she tried to pull away. “I know you can’t. Just like I know this is about more than whether or not we should keep trying to have our own child. This isn’t the first time you’ve insisted on feeling responsible for something out of your control, Lily. Ever since Carter, you’ve—”
“I have to go.” She reached for her purse. “Make my apologies to Mr. Kramer.”
“Don’t leave.” He followed her to the front door. “I realize this was a surprise. Too much too soon, no matter how excited I am about the prospect of fostering. But it’s going to be okay. We can—”
She lifted her hand for him to stop.
“I want to have a baby, Tyler. More than anything, I want to give you a child. So unless you have some solution for helping me do that, you’ll have to forgive me for not feeling okay.” She heard the words come out of her mouth, heard the selfishness of them, and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know I should be handling this better. It’s not you. I’m the one who’s messed up.”
“No, you’re hurting, and I’m pushing too hard.” Her fairy-tale prince sounded desperate. Pleading. “This was a bad idea. I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of
Mr. Kramer so we can talk. Please, don’t go.”
But she already had the door open. Then she was sprinting down the walk, escaping out a different door than Dakota but running just the same.
Tyler was merely facing facts. It was how he lived his life, how he’d survived his childhood. But for her, letting go of their dream of a family felt too much like giving up. Like failing. Too much like…
Carter…
It felt like losing Carter all over again.
She slid into her car and headed for the school and the now-empty art room, instead of to Ashley’s apartment. Instead of heading to her own home. She slapped her hand on the steering wheel. Maybe a healthy dose of sewing and painting for the Spring Fling would take her mind off memories she thought she’d buried a lifetime ago.
Don’t bet on it, her conscience snickered.
She saw again the worry and confusion and hurt on her husband’s face and pressed the accelerator.
MARSHA WASHED the remains of pot roast and mashed potatoes off another plate, rinsed and handed it to Tyler to dry.
They’d been working side by side in silence for the past fifteen minutes. Joshua was on wash-up duty of another kind, upstairs supervising shower rotation and the nightly room check that prevented weekend cleaning marathons no one had patience for.
“Mr. Kramer seemed encouraging,” she finally said.
“What’s not to like?” Tyler took the next drippy plate and went to work with an age-worn towel that had been around as long as he had. “Two teachers who love kids. Nonexistent restrictions on the type of child we’d be willing to take in. Open to whatever classes and training are required. And we’ve already passed endless background checks to work in the public school system.”
Marsha kept washing while she listened and waited.
“Of course,” Tyler added, “it’s not a stroke in our favor that Lily and I aren’t living together at the moment.”
Marsha nodded. “Josh and I gathered there was a reason you two had made yourself so scarce. Figured you’d get around to talking about it when you were ready.”
And Tyler naturally had hoped he’d work things out before that kind of talking became necessary. He set the plate aside and grabbed the sponge to wipe down the stove and countertop.
“Lily’s messed up about not being able to have a baby. We both are, and I can’t seem to help her through it. I can’t even get her to slow down at work long enough for her body to recuperate from the last round of fertility drugs. Now she’s taken on planning the Spring Fling and some kind of petting zoo she wants to bring in. How’s she supposed to get better with all that going on, on top of teaching her class?”
Marsha slid the cobbler pan into the soapy water to soak, then dried her hands.
“Maybe Lily’s not as ready for things to get better as you are.” Her expression was a shade short of the kind of disapproval that had once left him quaking in sneakers more tattered than Dakota’s. “If I’d known you were surprising her with this thing with Kramer, I never would have set it up for you, let alone become a cookie-baking coconspirator.”
“I’ll make sure she knows you and Joshua had nothing to do with it.”
“Which means Josh and I can move on to worrying about whether the two of you will get through this with your marriage intact. Infertility can trash even the strongest relationship. Josh and I nearly didn’t make it.”
But they had, and look at the life they’d made. What Tyler’s life had become because they hadn’t quit.
“Lily won’t listen to reason,” he said.
“It’s a difficult thing, feeling as if you’ve failed at something as important as giving your husband a piece of himself that will live on, long after the both of you are gone.”
Tyler linked his arm around Marsha’s shoulder.
“You’ve given him so much more. And look at what you’ve done for me and every other kid who came here.”
“I know. And we’re so proud of you, Tyler. Proud of all you kids.” She hugged him back with the same gusto she gave to everything else. Then she took back her sponge and tossed it at him, sending it bouncing, to the floor. “But that doesn’t mean it was easy, giving up what we’d hoped our life was going to be. Change that big is a hard thing to accept, especially…”
“Especially for someone who’s been through what Lily has.” What she’d never really talked about with anyone. Not her mother. Not even him.
“I think she’s always felt responsible for what happened to her brother.” Marsha waited until she had Tyler’s full attention. “Lily’s one of the hardest-working, most loving people I’ve ever met. She’s wonderful for you, anyone can see that. But…”
“She’s so careful.” He put his hands into his pockets. “She needs everything and everyone around her to be okay, and if they’re not—”
“She takes it all on her shoulders.” Marsha sighed. “There were a dozen kids swimming in the lake that day.”
“But Lily was supposed to watch Carter.”
“She couldn’t have known her little brother would hit his head when he jumped in.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Tyler could still feel the panic when they’d realized Carter hadn’t come up for air. “She wouldn’t stop looking for him until her mother dragged her away.” She would have kept diving until they’d lost her, too. “Then she just sat there on the end of the dock until they brought Carter up.”
“It was horrible.” Marsha’s voice filled with the tears of that long-ago memory. The entire community had mourned along with the Jones family. “You’re the only one she’d let near her. You two were already inseparable, even in sixth grade.”
Tyler had tried to help her then, too, but nothing he’d said would convince her. It’s my fault, she’d kept whispering. She had been told to look out for Carter, and he was gone. And now she was breaking her heart over yet one more loss that she couldn’t fix, no matter how hard she tried.
“How do I help her?” he asked the woman who’d seen him through the darkness and anger that could have swallowed his life. “Lily can’t get past losing her chance to have our baby, any more than she ever really got over what happened to Carter. And if she can’t find a way to let it go…”
How was she going to believe in their marriage again, when every time she looked at him, she saw failure and him giving up on her, instead of the amazing things they could still do together?
“You listen to her, son.” Marsha ran a soothing hand down his back. “Until she’s ready to hear anything but what’s in her own head, you listen, and you try to get her to understand that you’re hurting, too.”
“I have. I—”
“You ambushed her with children’s services, just to make sure she felt good and trapped in circumstances she doesn’t want to face!” Marsha thunked the side of his head with her palm. “I said tell her how you’re feeling, not pressure her to hurry up and see things your way.”
He swallowed and realized he was shaking his head again.
“I…” He tried. “I feel…”
The words wouldn’t come.
“You don’t even know, do you?” Marsha’s smile slipped away. “You learned how to do damage control so young, and you’ve conquered everything since. Class president. Most Likely to Succeed. Varsity basketball captain and MVP. Teacher of the year. You have a solution for everything and never stop fighting until you find the answer you need.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he demanded, a rush of defensiveness adding extra punch.
“Nothing. Unless solving this problem has become a substitute for letting yourself feel the disappointment that—”
“Of course I feel it!”
“Does Lily know that?”
Yes! he almost snapped back. But then his mind replayed a slice of their last argument.
I’m not made like you, she’d said. I can’t just—
Let go and move on?
Marsha went to work on her soaking cobbler pan.
&nb
sp; “Lily’s problems aren’t yours to fix, Tyler. She loves you. But push her too hard before she’s ready, and you’ll cause more problems than even you can solve.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“MRS. BROOKS?”
Lily looked up from the sheet of lamination she’d been trimming into multiplication flash cards, then stood as Mr. Kramer stepped into her classroom. Tiny bits of plastic slid off the pile of scraps she’d amassed, sparkling in the fluorescent light from the overhead fixtures.
Brushing at the shavings that clung to her navy sundress, she checked the clock above the whiteboard. In less than fifteen minutes, the first of her students would start trickling in.
“Mr. Kramer.” She rounded her desk, smiling as she shook the social worker’s hand. “I…I’m sorry I had to leave so abruptly yesterday afternoon. Tyler and I appreciate you coming all the way out to the Graysons, just to give us a rundown on the county’s foster program.”
“Not at all.” Mr. Kramer was a shorter than average man, though he still towered over Lily, with a receding hairline and a little more than average around the middle. His eyes were kind and he had a way of talking that should have put her at ease. “Your husband sounded very motivated when I spoke to him over the phone, and it’s always my pleasure to help new couples take their first steps toward becoming foster parents.”
First steps…
“Yes, well…” She toyed with her dress and the shiny leftovers of the mindless work she’d distracted herself with for hours that morning. “If there’s something else you needed to tell us, my husband should be in the gym by now. He’s the best person for you to talk with…I mean, he’s collecting all the information about—”
“I left Mr. Brooks a stack of pamphlets yesterday afternoon,” Mr. Kramer assured her. “Brochures to read through. He has all the information you’ll need to begin the first of the training classes.”
Mothers of the Year Page 18
