For the first time in my experience playing for the Storm, Martha stopped what she was doing and really looked at me. “She’s my replacement. I’m finally going to retire and travel with my husband. She starts training next Monday.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, trying not to seem too interested. “Thanks, Martha.”
Next Monday. I’d be back in Portland by then.
I was still shaking with excitement by the time I picked Maddie and Tuck up from school that afternoon. They were easy to spot in the crowd of kids coming out of the building and swarming toward me. Both my kids had my same bright-red hair, and they both hated it just as much as I had when I was their age. Redheads get picked on all the time, and being called “carrot top” is nowhere near the worst of it. At least it hadn’t been back when I was in school. I doubted things had changed much over the years.
As soon as I saw them, I raised my hand as high as I could and waved until they saw me.
Tuck ran straight at me and leaped into my arms with a ginormous hug. He dropped his backpack at my feet and let me lift him up into the air. “Guess what?” he said, grinning so big that the two holes where his front teeth should have been were gaping at me, one on top and one on bottom. “Two and two is four!”
“You’re right,” I agreed. I kissed the freckles on his cheeks and mussed his hair as I set him back on the ground. “Did Mrs. Christenson teach you that?”
He wasn’t yet six, and Mrs. Christenson was his second kindergarten teacher. I worried that uprooting the kids in the middle of the school year would hurt their education, but I worried more about what would have happened if we had stayed.
“Nah. I learnded it myself.” He was still learning how verbs worked, how to conjugate them properly. I loved how he would say things like learnded and burnded and fakeded. All too soon, he was going to know the proper way to say these things. He was growing up too fast. They both were. I sometimes wished I could freeze certain moments in time and keep my kids just as they were right then.
That wasn’t possible, though. They were going to grow up and experience whatever life had to throw at them. No matter how much I wanted to protect them from the ugliness life might bring, I couldn’t. Not completely. That wouldn’t stop me from trying, though.
I laughed and picked up his backpack, putting the straps over his shoulders. Then I smiled at Maddie.
She was hanging back like she did so often lately. Maddie didn’t smile much anymore. She used to be completely uninhibited like Tuck, giggling and saying silly things and making me smile. A few years ago, that all changed.
At first, I thought she was just getting older and it was normal. We all become a bit more inhibited, a bit more guarded, as we age. But not like Maddie.
I finally found out what was behind the change about six months ago. I had come home from work one night and relieved Jason so he could go home. Jason was my ex-husband, Maddie and Tuck’s dad. We shared custody, and he would stay at my apartment with the kids while I worked every night. By the time I’d get home, they’d be asleep in bed, and he’d leave. We’d been doing it that way for years, ever since the divorce, when I had started working so I could provide for them.
But one night, when I opened the door to Tuck’s room to check on him, he wasn’t asleep. That shocked me, because Tuck was the soundest sleeper I’d ever known. He was crying these big, huge, gut-wrenching sobs. At first I’d thought maybe he’d had a nightmare. But it had been nothing as simple as that. Jason had spanked him because Tuck had come to investigate the cries coming from Maddie’s room. He’d gone to see what was wrong, and he’d found his father in the act of molesting my little girl.
Through the legal investigation and subsequent counseling for me and both kids, I learned it had been going on for at least three years.
Three years. Under my own roof.
The man who had given me my daughter had also taken her away from me.
She was still here, but she wasn’t the same. Maddie would never be the same again.
At least now I knew he could never hurt her again. Even if he someday got out of prison, the courts wouldn’t allow him to come near her. Now I just had to figure out how to protect her from everyone and everything else in the world.
“Did you have a good day at school?” I asked, holding out my hand to her. She didn’t take it, but she walked along beside me.
Maddie looked a heck of a lot older than her eight years—not in her physical appearance, but something in her eyes. Physically, she had my eyes, green with gold flecks all around them, but hers looked like those of an old soul. She talked like one sometimes, too, not like a eight-year-old child.
“It was fine.”
It was fine was her way of telling me to back off. Her counselor had suggested it back in Texas—a simple phrase she could use when she needed space.
That only made me more curious about what had happened, if anything, but it would have to wait for another time for us to talk about it. It might be nothing and she just didn’t want to talk. Or she might not want to talk in front of Tuck. She was really protective of him, always trying to make sure he was sheltered from things he was too young for. Similar to how I was with her.
“Okay,” I said as we got to my car. “Listen, I have some news. We’re going out for ice cream to celebrate.”
“Yes!” Tuck said as he practically jumped into his booster seat. There were few things in life that could excite him more than ice cream. He fastened his seat belt and picked up a Hot Wheels car off the seat beside him, immediately making it race along his leg while he made vrrrroom sounds. He could entertain himself like that for hours.
I waited for Maddie to get in so I could close the door and go around to the driver’s seat. She looked up at me with wary eyes and dropped her voice so Tuck couldn’t hear. “Can we afford it? We shouldn’t go if we can’t afford it.”
God, I hated how she was worried about things like money. She should be worried about whether she should wear blue or purple barrettes in her hair with her favorite outfit, not about how tight my finances were. I dropped down to my knees so I could look her in the eye. “We can. I’ll explain when we get there, okay?”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
“Okay.”
I gave her a peck on her forehead, and she got in. She buckled her belt, and I closed the door. By the time I got around to the driver’s side, a tear had trickled down my cheek.
Damn it. I brushed it away with the back of my hand while I got in and started the car. I checked the rearview mirror. Tuck was still racing his cars, and Maddie had pulled a book out of her backpack to read.
I took a breath and pulled out into traffic. This was going to get better. Maddie would get better. Otherwise, why did I bring my kids halfway across the country?
“We’re going to live there?” Tuck asked. His hazel eyes were as big as his face as he stared out the window of the ice cream shop.
The condo building Jim Sutter had recommended was right across the street from where I’d brought the kids. There was a park with a play area within walking distance, Powell’s Books was only a short drive away, and there was an after-school program near the condo that I could get the kids into. I’d already gone by this afternoon before they’d gotten out of school and signed a lease, putting down a deposit with the money Mr. Sutter had insisted I take.
A signing bonus, he’d called it. I’d said only players get signing bonuses, but he just shook his head at me.
“Not in this case.”
I’d never in my life seen so much money at one time.
“We’ll go look at it after you finish your ice cream,” I said to Tuck.
His scoop of mint chocolate chip was dripping out of his cone and spreading all over the table. Nothing I could throw at the mess would stop it. I’d given up the fight after tossing a big stack of napkins on it. I’d have to get a rag from the workers once he was done. He had gotten more of that sticky stuff on his face than
he had in his mouth. All I could do was grin at him.
Maddie had asked for a small bowl of vanilla, no cone, nothing on it. I figured she was still worried about money and was trying to get the cheapest thing on the menu.
“They’ll let Pumpkin live with us?” she asked between bites.
Pumpkin was the huge, fluffy, orange tabby cat I’d had since I was twelve years old. I was twenty-five now, which made him thirteen. He was starting to get on in years, and the move had been harder on him than it was on the rest of us.
It didn’t surprise me that Maddie was concerned about him. The day she was born, he’d become her cat more than mine. I’d caught him in her crib on countless occasions when she was a baby, curled up right by her side. If we’d tried to close her door so he couldn’t get in, he’d clawed at the carpet and whined and cried until we let him in out of fear that he’d wake her up. He’d always looked out for her, so now she was looking out for him.
I smiled. “Absolutely. It’s got hardwood floors. No carpet for him to tear up.”
Tuck gave me his best dubious look, raising his left eyebrow so high it was comical. “Are you really gonna work for a hockey team, Mommy?”
“Really, really.” I finished off my hot fudge sundae and wiped my face with one of the few napkins I’d held back from trying to clean up after him. “Mr. Sutter said we can even go to some of the games.”
One of my new job perks was four tickets to every home game. I’d told Mr. Sutter I wanted to donate all the ones on school nights to some charitable cause or another because that was too late to have the kids out. But it would be nice to be able to treat them to something like a hockey game on the weekends.
“Awe-some!” he squealed, emphasizing each syllable. Then the last of his mint chocolate chip plopped off his cone and splatted on the table. He started giggling uncontrollably.
His laughter was infectious. As good as I felt with how today had gone, I was laughing in no time. Even Maddie laughed for a second before quietly going back to her bowl of vanilla. I went to the counter for a bucket and rag to clean up Tuck’s mess.
I was still in awe over it all. I mean, the salary for this job was going to be more than I had ever come close to making before. It had full benefits—health and life insurance, 401(k), vacation and sick time—in addition to all sorts of perks like the game tickets. I couldn’t figure out why Mr. Sutter was giving the job to me. Yeah, he’d said he had a thing for the underdog and that his mom was a single mom, too. But still. It wasn’t quite clicking. Especially not since he’d handed me that check today.
“Get yourself a place to live,” he’d said. “Buy some furniture. Get an appropriate wardrobe, because we have a dress code. Do something fun with your kids and something to spoil yourself, and we’ll see you next week.”
Who did things like that? No one I’d ever met.
It’d been hard to have faith in humanity ever since I’d gotten pregnant when I was sixteen, and instead of loving me through it like I thought the Bible taught people to do, my parents had kicked me out and told me never to come back. Dad was a minister. He’d said he couldn’t allow sin like mine to stay in his house, that it was like inviting Satan to stay. It had gotten even harder to believe in people after what Jason had done to Maddie.
But now, this man I’d only known for the length of a thirty-minute interview was trying to turn my life upside down in the best way possible. I didn’t know how to process it.
When I got back to the table, Maddie had finished her ice cream and Tuck was licking the table.
“You,” I said to him, trying hard to have a stern mom voice instead of falling into another fit of laughter at his antics. “Into the bathroom, right this second. Go clean yourself up. I don’t want any sticky stuff in my car, you hear?”
He was still giggling like a loon while he pranced off to wash. I set to work wiping down the table, and Maddie took all our trash to throw it away. When Tuck came back, his hair and shirt were drenched but at least he was clean.
“You’d better zip your coat up tight before we go outside,” I told him. None of us were used to the colder weather here yet. In Texas, we were more likely to have temperatures in the seventies than in the thirties in December.
“Yes, Mommy.” He got his arms in and was struggling with the zipper, but Maddie helped him close it.
I pulled my own coat on and slipped my purse strap over my head so it hung across my body. “All right. Ready to go see the new place?”
“Are we staying there tonight?” Maddie asked. She sounded nervous.
I hated that there’d been so much change for her, but change was necessary. “Not tonight. We’re just looking tonight.” That’d give her time to adjust to the idea and me time to get some furniture in there, some beds to sleep on.
“Okay.”
A minute later, I’d parked the car and was leading the kids to the elevator. Our unit was on the twelfth floor. We got off, and I led them down the hall to our door. I’d just put the key in the lock when the door to the unit directly across the hall from ours opened.
Out of habit, I turned to smile at my new neighbor, my Texan nature shining through.
Then I froze.
Brenden Campbell—the too tall, too big, and entirely too good-looking hockey player who’d hounded me for a date earlier—was standing in the hallway between our doors. He had a wheeled suitcase in his hand and a question in his eye.
“Hi, Rachel,” he said.
Shit.
“Mommy?” Maddie moved closer to me and reached up to put her hand in mine.
She never wanted to hold my hand anymore.
I finished unlocking the door and opened it. “How about y’all go check it out? I’ll be in in a minute, okay?”
They went in, and I closed the door after them. I could hear Tuck’s little feet clomping along as he raced from room to room. I turned around to find Brenden staring at me. Hard.
“So you live here?” I finally asked.
“Yeah, me and Babs—one of the other guys on the team. And you’re moving in?”
I nodded.
His eyes practically sparkled when he smiled at me, and my belly flipped with awareness. “Martha told me you were going to be Jim’s new assistant. And now we’re living across from each other? Well, that’ll make things nice and convenient.”
Convenient? Hardly. Awkward would be a heck of a lot more like it.
He rocked on his feet. “Yeah. Well, I’ve got to go. I’m heading to Seattle for the week. If you need anything, Babs is a good kid. He’ll help you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said. I had no intention of asking this Babs person for help, or Brenden Campbell, or anyone else. It had been hard enough to accept the help Jim Sutter had insisted on giving me.
Brenden started heading toward the elevator, but then he stopped and turned around. He was smiling again, that same smile he’d given me a moment ago that made me tingle in a way I hadn’t experienced in years. “Just don’t let Babs cook,” he said. “Unless you want your kids to die of food poisoning or the place to go up in flames.”
I was pretty sure he was flirting with me. How sad was that, that a man might be flirting with me but I didn’t know for sure? I laughed briefly, but then he got onto the elevator and was gone.
A nervous zing raced through me. I tried to convince myself that it was because of the job, the new condo, all the changes taking place. Not because of Brenden Campbell.
But that was a lie, and I damn well knew it.
I unloaded two of the dozen boxes from my trunk and stacked them one on top of the other. Then I tested their weight. It wasn’t too bad. These boxes mainly had Tuck’s and Maddie’s clothes and some pillows, so nothing too heavy. I could add another box, but then I wouldn’t be able to see where I was going very well. This was one of the many disadvantages I’d come to accept as simply part of being short.
Still, I’d rather make fewer trips and be done with it sooner. I pulled another box out
, set it on the top of my stack, and closed the trunk.
At least we didn’t have too many things in boxes. I’d sold or donated most of our furniture and household goods back in Carrollton before we left because I hadn’t known how long it would be before we could get a place to live. It made more sense to do that and start fresh than to try to haul everything halfway across the country and find somewhere to store it in the meanwhile.
My plan for today was to get all of our belongings out of the hotel room and into the condo while the kids were at school. Yesterday, I had gone to a warehouse furniture store and bought the barest of necessities. They’d delivered it this morning, so we could realistically get checked out of the hotel and move in all the way today…if I could hurry.
I picked up the boxes, wrapping my hands beneath the bottom box, and twisted my torso until I could see where I was going if I did a sideways crab-walk. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to move, but I could manage.
When I got to the door to the condo building, I bumped into the handicap button with my hip so it would open the doors for me. That little bump altered my center of balance, though, and the top box fell to the floor.
Of course it did.
I set the other two down, picked up the fallen box, and resituated it at the top. By the time I’d rearranged the boxes and picked them up again, the door had closed.
Being more careful this time, I tried to push the handicap button again. The door wouldn’t open. I angled my hip a little more, trying to push the button more firmly, but still nothing happened. Damn it.
Now would be a really great time for someone else to come by, but I had no such luck. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I couldn’t really expect people to be around in the middle of a workday. That was hoping for too much.
I set the boxes down and pushed the button with my hand. The door opened. I picked up the stack again, but the middle box shifted in a perilous manner as I straightened my body. I tried to hurry through the open door anyway, but the second I took a step all three boxes went flying.
On the Fly Page 3
