Mothers of the Year

by Lori Handeland

  “Lily Brooks will,” Marsha insisted with the same confidence she placed in all her kids, no matter what challenge they faced. “She’s an amazing teacher and an instinctive nurturer. Dakota doesn’t stand a chance of holding out against love like that.”

  Tyler nodded and returned his attention to the loft.

  He’d been out of line back at the school. He’d accused Lily of letting her past interfere with helping Dakota. No way would she let that happen.

  She could do this. And he was going to be right there supporting her—even if it meant clutching the ladder she’d just scaled, and clenching his teeth against the instinct to protect her from the disappointment that would suck her under if this didn’t work.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “YOU LIED!” Dakota yelled from the other side of the loft.

  A fistful of hay sailed Lily’s way as she scrambled off the ladder and tried to crawl to her feet without flashing the fine people below with a charming view of her Friday panties.

  “I lied about what?” Kneeling near him, she brushed her hands on her skirt.

  “You said he had animals here!” The kid peered down the inside steps—presumably at Mr. Palmer waiting below—then backed further into the corner.

  “He does.” A considerate cow mooed in the distance, driving her point home.

  “Boring farm animals. Everybody has those.” Dakota’s shoulders sagged. He plopped down in a heap of hay, his head hanging. He peaked at her from under the brim of his Falcons cap. “You said…Where are the cool ones?”

  “They—” Lily bit the corner of her lip “—they don’t live here, Dakota. They have another home. Mr. Kramer’s friend brings them over for events like the Spring Fling.”

  “So they don’t belong in Silent Springs, either.”

  Lily edged nearer. Sat close enough to touch. Dakota was too engrossed in shredding the straw at his feet to notice. Her arms ached to hug him until some of his loneliness eased. She kept her hands to herself, remembering all the awful times it had felt as if Tyler was crowding her, when he’d only been trying to find a way to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  Dakota shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep at that place.”

  “At the Graysons’? Why not?”

  “They’re going to send me back, aren’t they?” His glare dared her to lie and say things weren’t as bad as he thought. “Why don’t they just go ahead and get it over with?”

  The way his grandmother had finally gotten it over with?

  “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the Graysons don’t want to send you back?”

  Dakota’s next look made it clear she was nuts.

  “Can’t you even try to believe it’s possible?” she asked.

  A rush of tears filled his eyes.

  “What do you know!” He stood, looking wildly around the loft but going nowhere. He swiped at his eyes. “You’re just a stupid teacher. What do you know!”

  “I know that if I expect things to be bad for long enough, things end up being that way—kind of as if it’s what I’d planned all along.”

  “I didn’t plan anything,” Dakota’s forehead scrunched.

  “Well, you’re here, instead of at school. You spent the night in a stranger’s barn instead of in your new home.”

  “That stupid place isn’t my home!”

  “Exactly.”

  It was Lily’s turn to blink while chickens clucked nearby, going about their day as if the world that had hurt this child was a fine and lovely place.

  “Do you really want a new family?” Lily reached for his arm. “Or are you planning to hate every home Mr. Kramer sends you to?”

  Dakota sat, staring at the hay again.

  “The Graysons are downstairs waiting for you.” She nudged him with her shoulder the way she’d seen Tyler do. “They’re worried, Dakota, and they want to take you home.”

  His chest heaved in and out.

  “I’ll just mess up again,” he mumbled. “Just like before.”

  “You will if you keep running away because you’re afraid to try.”

  His watery gaze rose to hers. “I always mess up.”

  “With your mom?” Lily let her own tears fall, hoping they’d reassure Dakota that he wasn’t hurting alone. When he nodded, she asked, “With your grandmother?”

  Another nod, smaller than the last.

  “Maybe they’re the ones who messed up, Dakota. Or maybe things just got so bad that no one could have made them better, no matter how much they loved you.”

  His forehead wrinkled even more than before.

  “Teachers really are lame.” His shoulder nudged hers back.

  “No doubt about it.” Lily suppressed a mile-wide grin at his tiny show of acceptance. “But you can’t live in a hayloft for the rest of your life, wanting to be with silly pink birds because they sound safer than people. And I don’t think you really want to go back to the group home you lived at before the Graysons.”

  “So?” was the best his ten-year-old wisdom could produce.

  “So, I guess you’re going to have to find a way to want to be somewhere else. With someone else. You know, with people who want to take the time to know you and like you and take care of you.”

  “Who, the Graysons? Why would they want a messed-up kid like me?”

  Lily blinked at the hope and fear behind his disbelief, realizing just how important this moment was. There in a shadowy loft on a warm spring day, talking to someone else’s child, she’d never felt more like the mother she’d hoped to be.

  So, this is what mothers were created to do. What Dakota had never had, and what Rose had always been for Lily’s entire life, including last night when she’d all but shoved Lily out of her car. Someone to give hope and shine light into the shadows, until a child, even a thirty-one-year-old one, learned how to see the success they were born to be.

  Lily had felt the same emotions as Dakota, dueling inside her since…forever. Since losing her brother.

  And she’d had loving, adoring parents to help her. She’d had Tyler.

  Everyone’s weak sometimes, Lily. Sometimes we all lose big, no matter how hard we fight.

  But Tyler had fought through the weakness. And with his patience and love, she would, too. So would this child.

  “You have to let someone new want you, Dakota,” she finally said. “You have to let them see beyond what’s already happened. Which means you have to let the past go. It doesn’t always have to be the way it was with your mother and grandmother.”

  And for her it didn’t always have to be about control and planning things to death and desperately forcing everything to be perfect.

  “You…” He clutched straw between his fingers. “You could want me…maybe you could…you know, you said you and Mr. Brooks were talking with Mr. Kramer about doing what the Graysons do. So…maybe…”

  Lily covered those restless hands with her own and waited until he looked up.

  “Of course Mr. Brooks and I would want you,” she assured the little boy who’d helped her realize how long she’d been running, too. “I’ve told Ms. Emory that I’ll work with you at school, just you and me for as long as it takes for you to believe you belong there, too. But you already have a new family that wants you. A new home. People who’ll love you for who you are now. But you have to learn how to trust them enough to let them.”

  He swallowed. Glanced toward the stairs. Didn’t budge an inch. But he didn’t let go of her hand.

  “It’s your choice, Dakota. It’s your life. So what if you’re a flamingo?” She winked at his surprised snicker. “I think maybe I am, too. Maybe that’s why we get along so well. Because I understand how things can get messed up, and that there’s nothing wrong with being different. Unless we decide to make being different the reason we give up on having what the chickens have.”

  He squinted as he tried to follow her lame attempt to expand on his analogy.
“And what…what do the chickens have?”

  She nodded toward the ladder, where Mr. Palmer was watching from below. Down where the Graysons and Mr. Kramer were waiting for Dakota, and Tyler was waiting for her. Where happy little barnyard birds were clucking away, content that they belonged, and trusting that they and their friends would be okay no matter what might go wrong.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I’m ready to give it a try. How about you?”

  She stood and held out her hand. Still squinting at her, likely debating if she’d gone a few feathers past flamingo, he let her help him up. That gesture alone, such a simple show of trust, made her long to give him a bone-crushing hug that would ruin everything. Flipping up the bill of his cap would have to do.

  He tensed, then in midscowl surprised her by taking the hat off. It took several heartbeats before she realized he was holding the sweat-stained thing out to her.

  His prized possession.

  “Take it.” He shoved it into her hands. “I…”

  His eyes were shiny again, and that just wouldn’t do when he faced the chickens, so Lily took the hat and then did what she’d seen work for Tyler when gentle persuasion wasn’t enough. She grasped the boy’s shoulders and turned him toward the steps.

  You take small steps, her mother had said. One at a time.

  “I’ll be right behind you.” With a gentle nudge, she let go.

  Wiping at her own eyes, she held her breath as Dakota took the first step down. He looked back once, to catch her putting his cap on. She nodded and waited, her heart racing as he disappeared below.

  TYLER SAW himself in the scared young man that slowly turned from the bottom of the barn stairs to face his future. There was strength and too-old wisdom in those shadowed eyes. But there was innocence still. A promising flicker of hope.

  Dakota walked slowly toward where the Graysons were waiting just outside the barn, eyeing Ralph Kramer who stood beside them. Tyler’s attention shifted to the woman making her way down the same steps Dakota had. He reached for Lily’s arm before Mr. Palmer could. By the time her feet hit the ground, the good-natured farmer was ambling away to get on with his day.

  They turned to watch as Joshua held his hand out for Dakota to shake.

  “Ready to go home, son?” Joshua hugged Marsha to his side.

  Both adults smiled down at the boy, relaxed, calmly waiting. Like they could wait forever for Dakota to puzzle out the answer. Tyler had every confidence they could.

  And then Dakota reached for Joshua’s hand.

  “I…I’d like to go home now.” He gave a small shake. Looked to Marsha next, then Mr. Kramer. “If…if that’s still okay.”

  “Well, of course it’s okay,” Marsha announced. She offered no mushy, sappy hug that the kid would hate if he was anything like Tyler had been—even though she’d been wringing her hands, worried sick, up until the moment Dakota emerged from the loft. She turned and headed for the cars. “Let’s get going. I’m two loads of laundry behind already, and this boy needs to be in school.”

  Joshua followed in her wake, guiding Dakota at his side. “You’ll learn,” he said with a conspiratory wink. “Marsha and her laundry. A smart man never wants to get in the way of that.”

  Ralph Kramer waved, on his way out, as well. Tyler found himself chuckling. He looked down to where Lily was laughing beside him, only to realize it was sobs shaking her shoulders instead.

  “Lily?” He folded her in his arms. Over the top of her head—Dakota’s Falcons cap, actually—he asked, “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  She clung to him. She’d done such an amazing job with Dakota, Tyler had forgotten for a moment about all the rest. He shifted back, trying see her face, expecting more of the confusion and the fear and the hurt that he couldn’t make go away. But one look at her radiant smile, the promise and the hope there, and he was crushing her into another hug.

  “Lily?” he asked, almost afraid to believe.

  “Take me back to school,” she whispered, “so I can see what Dakota’s up for today.” She slipped her hand in his. “Then I want to go home and hear more about what Mr. Kramer left us to read.”

  “Are you sure?” What was he saying! “I mean…that’s great, but…”

  She shook her head, as she wiped the last of her tears away. “I don’t need to be sure anymore.” There was that smile, lighting up her face and laying claim to his heart all over again. “I need to feel what I did upstairs, Tyler. And I need to hear you laugh. And I need to…”

  “Let go?” he asked, holding on tighter.

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  Yeah.

  His new favorite word.

  He walked with her to the Explorer, following her lead, playing it cool the same as she was, meanwhile his head was spinning.

  “Nice hat, by the way,” he said once they were seated.

  She took it off and held it to her heart as if it were the finest bouquet of roses.

  “I…I had no idea…” she said. “I knew what the Graysons did. I saw the world they made possible for you. But I never realized what it must have meant to them, to be there when you learned how to trust again. If that’s not being a parent, a mother, I…I don’t know how I could have seen it as failing. It would be such a privilege…the chance of a lifetime. And I almost…I’m so sorry, Tyler. I had no idea.”

  “No sorries, Lily.” His arms were around her. “As long as you’ve found your way back to me, as long as you can love the life we can still make, the kids we can help together, you’re giving me everything I’ll ever need.”

  EPILOGUE

  “I’VE GOT HER,” Ashley cried.

  Squawk! screeched the flamingo she was trying to corral back into its pen.

  “Look out!” Lily warned when the bird faked left then crossed right, leading Ashley toward the—

  Shriek!

  “…for the peacock,” Lily finished as her friend collided with the other bird and people scattered.

  Pebbles the flamingo honked her way toward the dunking booth, where Tyler was enjoying the show from his lofty seat above freezing-cold water. Joshua Grayson waved from his place in line. Dante the peacock strutted in the opposite direction, stopping for a drink from the wading pool the younger kids were fishing plastic prizes from. Ashley sat in a stunned sprawl, rubbing her backside.

  The spontaneous giggle at Lily’s elbow was a beautiful sound. It went a long way toward smoothing over the day’s disaster. But Ms. Emory was glowering from the other side of the Spring Fling, so Lily plastered on her best responsible adult look and shook her head down at Dakota.

  “It’s not funny,” she insisted.

  The animals were everywhere. Poop was everywhere. Parents were snapping pictures and recording the show with their digital cameras. Her guess was America’s Funniest Home Videos was about to hit the mother lode in animal-disaster material.

  “It’s cool.” Dakota surveyed the chaos that had been unleashed when someone opened the temporary pen Mr. Palmer had erected to contain the larger animals. At her speculative glance, he raised his hands in innocence. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know how they got out. But…” he gave her the devilish grin he knew was her weakness “…it’s still cool.”

  “Got him!” Mr. Palmer shouted, his hands full of Lenny the llama. He started herding the beast, which had kicked over the lemonade stand, back to the farm’s trailer. Catching sight of Dakota’s grin, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Grab the shovel out of my truck and clean up that mess.”

  “What?” Dakota’s gaze followed the thumb to the steaming piles of llama leftovers scattered about the carnival. “No way am I picking up all that sh—”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a job to do, son.” Marsha Grayson appeared beside Lily and Dakota, her eyebrows raised at her youngest foster child’s colorful vocabulary. “Helping set up and clean up after the carnival is part of your detention. If you want your afternoons free to take horseback-riding lessons, better fetc
h that shovel and get to work.”

  “Man…” Dakota dragged his feet as he headed after the farmer.

  But he was going, and he’d do his job. And tomorrow his after-school hours would be free to hang out at Mr. Palmer’s as much as he wanted.

  “They’re becoming fast friends.” The hope in Marsha’s calm voice wasn’t lost on Lily.

  “Thanks to you and Joshua, Dakota’s starting to believe that he deserves friends.” She smiled. “And you’re making sure he works off the trouble he’s made for himself, so he’ll appreciate his time at the farm even more. Nice job.”

  Marsha waved away the compliment. “Mr. Palmer doesn’t seem to mind that Dakota likes to help with the animals. The kid must be doing a good job of staying out of the way over there, because the riding lessons were Palmer’s idea. Dakota’s making it work on his own.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lily wasn’t buying it, but she was watching every move the Graysons made, taking mental notes and hoping she and Tyler could do half as well. “We start our introductory class tonight. I hope we’re better at being foster parents than I am at creating a picturesque Mother’s Day surprise for the carnival.”

  Marsha took in the families huddled together in hysterics and snapping pictures as Mr. Palmer rounded up the uncooperative Pebbles and Dante and ended the disaster Spring Fling had become.

  “You’ll do all right,” she said as Dakota slipped. He and his brand-new sneakers landed in the pile of poop he’d been shoveling into a wheelbarrow. “Lord, give me strength,” she muttered, heading after the child and presumably planning the afternoon’s first load of laundry.

  “The photographer wants to know if he should pack things up.” Ashley stepped to Lily’s side, still rubbing her bruised assets. “Looks as if everyone who wants to has finished the art project.”

  Over by the stuffed hens was the case of soft, fluffy chicks that the kids and parents had flocked to when they first arrived. Digital pictures had been taken and printed and glued to card-stock and decorated by messy little fingers—but that was before the real show had begun. Then safe and conservative had been abandoned by the families who’d delighted in Lily’s petting zoo catastrophe. Even Gayle Emory was laughing now, as Dakota and Mr. Palmer chased the last of the pigs toward the trailer.