Table for five

by Susan Wiggs

  Maura was just following the usual pattern. Women loved him and they left him. That was the way it worked.

  chapter 33

  “You got some lipstick in your purse, Miss Robinson?” asked Charlie, hovering around her desk at dismissal time. “Or maybe in the drawer here?”

  Lily frowned slightly. “Do you need to borrow some?”

  “No way. I mean, no thank you.” Charlie looked disheveled at the end of the day, but in a good way. Her uncle had given her hair the Heidi look today, braids crisscrossed over the top of her head. Now stray tendrils had sprung loose around her face. “So have you got a comb somewhere?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I figured you might want to freshen up, is all. You know, on account of my uncle Sean’s coming this afternoon for the conference.”

  “He’s…why, yes, he is, isn’t he?” Lily felt a funny little spike of panic. She’d completely forgotten.

  She checked her planning book, which lay open on her desk. Sure enough, it was this afternoon. Memorial Day was practically upon them, and the class was doing a major project at the veterans’ cemetery in Tigard.

  She helped Charlie with her backpack. “Isn’t your Brownie troop meeting in the cafeteria this afternoon?”

  “Yes. I did a crappy job with my badges, though, see?” She showed Lily the brown sash, its badges fastened haphazardly with safety pins.

  “Maybe I could help you with it over the weekend, but you have to promise you won’t say that crude word anymore.”

  “What, crappy?”

  “Let’s make that the last time, Charlene Louise.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Uncle Sean used to say the s-word all the time, but he switched to cr…the other one when Ashley started saying ‘shit,’ too.”

  At least he was trying, Lily acknowledged.

  “That’s a nice pin,” Charlie said, clearly stalling as she indicated the small silver brooch Lily wore on her collar. “What is it?”

  “A student gave it to me one year,” Lily said, touching the brooch. “It’s the owl and the pussycat and the runcible spoon. Remember the poem by Edward Lear—we learned it last Valentine’s Day. ‘They dined on mince, and slices of quince…’”

  “‘Which they ate with a runcible spoon,’” Charlie filled in.

  “You have a good memory.”

  “It’s just Uncle Sean who’s coming.”

  Lily paused in straightening the papers on her desk. “Yes. It’s right here on my agenda.”

  “I mean, he’s coming alone,” Charlie said with a meaningful look. “Without Maura.”

  “I see.” She didn’t, of course. She straightened the already neat pile of papers.

  Charlie pushed her thumb thoughtfully at her lower lip. “Cameron said she either ditched him or dumped him, I can’t remember which.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She went back to her apartment to water the plants and never came to see us again. I didn’t do anything bad, did I?” Charlie’s eyes widened with sudden fear.

  Lily could have smacked Maura Riley just then. Didn’t she know better than to flit in and out of a child’s life with no consistency whatsoever? Didn’t she realize what that would do to a child like Charlie?

  Masking a stab of anger, Lily touched Charlie’s cheek with the back of her hand. The girl’s skin was so smooth and tender, so fragile. “Not at all. You’re even good citizen of the week.” She indicated the star chart.

  Charlie traced her finger around the big gold star. “I wish my mom knew that.”

  Lily put her arms around the little girl. “She does. I promise you, she knows, and your dad does, too.” Oh, God, she thought. How do I do this? In her mind, Charlie had connected her own misbehavior with her parents’ deaths. She had to leave that notion behind. “What happened is not your fault,” she whispered in Charlie’s ear. “It’s so important for you to understand that.”

  Charlie nodded. “I’m trying,” she said, her voice muffled against Lily’s shoulder. “I hate how different everything is.”

  “I think we all do,” Lily admitted. “Tell me one specific thing you hate.”

  “Mom used to cut the crust off the sandwich in my lunch, and Uncle Sean never does.”

  “Boy, I hate that, too. I never eat the crust,” Lily said. “What else?”

  “I used to get to stay up until nine-thirty, but Uncle Sean says that’s too late. He wants us in bed a whole hour earlier.”

  Good for you, thought Lily. “I can see why you don’t like that,” she said. “Maybe after school’s out, you can stay up a little later. Tell me something else you don’t like.”

  “Summer, even though it’s not here yet,” Charlie stated. “Mom promised us a cruise and Dad promised us Hawaii.”

  “Did your uncle promise you anything?”

  She raised and lowered her shoulders in an elaborate shrug. “You could ask him, I guess. He’s got news, too. Kind of.”

  “What news?”

  “Well, Red’s coming to see him this week. He keeps calling him, wanting him to play in tournaments and stuff.”

  “So why doesn’t he? Isn’t he any good?”

  “He’s great. He’s going to the next level. Red says he could be even better than my dad, but Uncle Sean says he’s too busy with us to do any tournaments.”

  Lily tried to imagine what that might be like, turning down a second chance at your dream. “And what do you think?”

  “Same as Red,” said Charlie. “A racehorse has to run.” She sent Lily a meaningful look.

  Lily walked her to the door, straightening the badge sash on her shoulder. “The conference is about you, not about golf. Tell you what. Give me one specific thing to tell your uncle that you don’t think I’ve thought of.”

  Charlie paused. “I feel better,” she said, a tentative smile playing about her lips. “I quit crying a zillion times a day. Sometimes I only cry once, and some days, not at all.”

  Lily felt a rush of affection. You idiot, Maura, she thought. Look at what you walked away from. Lily immediately curbed her thoughts. Who was she to judge? Just a short time ago, she had believed herself perfectly content to live alone forever. It had taken a life-altering tragedy to shake her awake. Perhaps Maura would learn her own heart without suffering such a loss.

  “That’s good,” she told Charlie. “And I’m giving you a special badge today.” She took off the runcible-spoon brooch and pinned it to Charlie’s Brownie sash. “You earned this, and it’s for keeps. It’s the feel-better badge. Now, scoot.”

  A twinkle flashed in Charlie’s eyes and she headed for the Brownie meeting with a spring in her step. Lily carefully waited until she was gone. Then she darted a look at the clock. Sean Maguire would be here any minute. She dove for her purse, hoping she’d find a lipstick there.

  chapter 34

  Sean cleared his throat and straightened his sports jacket. He had no idea how to dress for a parent-teacher conference, so he’d dressed up a little. He wanted to make sure Lily knew he took this seriously. Then he pushed open the main door of the school and followed the signs to the office. Emptied of students, the place looked completely different.

  A woman with long silver hair and a flowing dress greeted him with a smile of Zen-like serenity. “Mr. Maguire,” she said. “Edna Klein. I was at the funeral.”

  “I remember,” he said, shaking her hand. “Thank you.”

  She wrote down his name and the time he checked in, then sent him to Lily’s classroom. Peering through the door, he saw that it looked like Munchkin Land, all bright, primary colors and undersize furniture. He knocked at the half-open door. “Hello?”

  “Sean, hi, please come in.” She looked slightly flustered as she greeted him, a gleam of fresh lipstick on her mouth. She had a truly gorgeous mouth, he thought, and then decided that was an inappropriate observation. Or maybe not. With Maura gone, he was a free agent once again, sort of. A free agent with three kids.

&nbs
p; As he took a seat at a low, round table, he noticed that all the desks, with chairs upended, were aligned in four rows of six. Every bulletin board display had a hand-lettered sign: Our Changing World. Fractions Are Fun. Manners Matter. Today’s lesson was still up on the board: “Things We Remember on Memorial Day.”

  Everything here was excruciatingly neat, earnest and sincere, just like Lily. This classroom explained more about who Lily Robinson was than an FBI profile.

  Then, when she opened a closet behind her desk and started rummaging around, he realized she’d managed to surprise him again. Behind the door was utter chaos, an almost kidlike disorder of brightly colored art supplies, Post-it notes stuck all over the place, a set of Mickey Mouse ears and what looked like a kimono on a hook behind the door. She caught him inspecting the closet and gave a nervous laugh. “My creative outlet,” she said. “Keeping these children engaged takes some creativity. This is a toga I wear when I teach them Roman numerals.”

  “What’s the pig nose for?”

  “Literature, of course.”

  So he still hadn’t figured her out. There were layers of complexity to this woman, and against his will, he found himself wanting to explore them.

  She opened a file folder and turned it toward him. “I have a bit of good news. She’s doing better in math,” she said. “This is a unit test we took on Wednesday.”

  “Eighty-three percent,” he said, looking over the pages. “Not too shabby.”

  “She seems to like fractions and money.” She tapped a pencil idly.

  “I like money, too. Fractions I can do without.”

  “Yes, well, a strong conceptual understanding of fractions is essential—”

  “Lily.” He stopped the tapping pencil.

  She looked up at him, her eyes startled behind the eyeglasses. “Yes?”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Oh.” She looked more flustered than ever. “Now, I want to go over this reading inventory with you.”

  He thought about telling her he could already read just fine, but she never seemed to get his humor. “All right, shoot.”

  “Well, I’m somewhat encouraged. A month ago she was struggling with sound-letter combinations and her comprehension was very low. She’s still below grade level in most areas, but she’s showing genuine improvement. Charlie says you’ve been reading aloud to her every night.”

  “Yes, that’s true. She’s a big fan of Golf in the Kingdom.”

  “I’d venture to say she’s a big fan of you. I’ll bet you could read her the phone book and she’d pay attention. She told me that she’s feeling better about the situation.” Clearly pleased, she went through the rest of the work in the folder. Across the board, Charlie was trailing behind, but doing better. “I think you’re doing a good job.”

  Sean felt a cold tightness inside him. “I’m not.”

  “Not what?”

  “Not doing a good job.”

  “I just showed you the inventory—”

  “Screw the inventory.”

  She flinched.

  “Look,” he said, “you can check off all the lists you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that Charlie’s still way behind, Cameron’s into vandalism and the baby can’t figure out what to call me. So I’d hardly call that a good job.” Agitated, he got up and paced. “It’s all screwed up. Their parents died and there’s no damned inventory for that. I’m trying to do this right, but I can’t fill that empty space.” He felt as though he was on a knife’s edge, trying to balance the immense loss with some sense of hope.

  She looked startled, maybe a little scared. “Sean…I appreciate your honesty. Have you talked to Dr. Sachs about this?”

  “Hell, yes, I’ve talked to her. I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face. She claims I’ll see improvement over time, but these kids are living their lives now, they’re suffering now. She wants to send me to a support group, like Parents Without Partners, but how the hell do I find the time to go to a support group?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, what more I can do. I can’t wave a wand and suddenly make everything better. No one can. But we can work on fixing this. Charlie, for example. The signs of improvement are encouraging.”

  “She ought to be spiraling downhill, but you say she’s doing better.”

  “It’s a positive sign no one expected. A welcome sign,” she added. “The main reason I wanted to talk to you today is to discuss plans for the summer. It’s my opinion that Charlie needs intensive remediation throughout the summer in order to prepare for fourth grade.”

  “Explain intensive remediation.”

  “Tutoring. Initially, I recommended the Chall Reading Institute in Portland for Charlie, but obviously things have changed. There’s been so much upheaval in her life that I think it’s best she stay home during the summer and work with a tutor. Two hours a day should do it.”

  “What do you charge?”

  She started tapping the pencil eraser. “I don’t think I should be her tutor.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s difficult to keep the relationship on a professional level when I have such close personal ties with Charlie.”

  “I don’t see the problem here. You don’t need to be professional with Charlie. It is personal.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but…I have a policy of treating all my students the same. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

  “Screw fairness,” he snapped, getting up to pace the room.

  The pencil stopped tapping. “I beg your pardon.”

  “I said, screw fairness. It’s not fair that Charlie’s parents died and she wound up with me. It’s not fair that there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do about it. So don’t tell me about fair.”

  “Sean, why don’t you have a seat.”

  “Because I don’t want to have a goddamned seat.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “For you to admit just once that these kids are special. That they deserve special treatment.” He could see she was fine-tuned to this moment. At last she’d quit hiding behind the teacher persona and he could see the real Lily, the one whose heart ached for Charlie the same way his did. It probably wasn’t right to take comfort in her pain, but at least he didn’t feel so alone.

  Tears glimmered in her eyes. She swallowed and blinked, and the tears were gone. Maybe it had been a trick of the light.

  “So you’ll do it,” he said.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I know how special these kids are. I adore them and yes, I could give them my heart, but then what? Then you move away, or get married, or something changes. Suddenly I don’t have them anymore, and they don’t have me. And there’s not a blessed thing I can do about it.”

  “Wait a minute, so you’re saying you can’t be a part of their lives because we might move or things might change?”

  “They need stability. Having people flit in and out of their lives can cause problems.” Although she’d dodged his question, she regarded him pointedly.

  Somehow, he knew what she was saying with that look. Maura. One day she was there, then she was gone. The kids acted like her departure was no big deal, but maybe he wasn’t looking closely enough.

  He paced some more. “I don’t get you at all. You’re so damned worried about the future that you’re forgetting right now. Yeah, that’s right. Life is what’s happening to you right now, not what might happen in a month or a year. So if you’re afraid now, then you’re spending your life being afraid.”

  “I’m thinking of the children,” she said quietly. “It’s not that I’m afraid—”

  Right, he thought, studying her terrified eyes. “What is it, then?”

  “I have no discretion over them because I’m not the one raising them, so I can’t play that role.”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “The terms of Derek’s will, for starters.”

  “Ask me.”

  “What?”

  “Ask me. T
heir legal guardian. The one who’s giving the kids to you in my will. Ask me if you get to be a part of their lives, if you have a say in their future.”

  “I don’t doubt you, Sean. But suppose you work things out with Maura. Suppose you meet someone new, someone you want to spend your life with. I doubt she’s going to want me hanging around like some maiden aunt.”

  Sean was incredulous. “So you’re afraid to love these kids because they might not always be available to you?”

  “Because it would be cruel to give them the impression that I belong in their lives when I don’t.”

  “That’s shit, Lily, and you know it. The kids are nuts about you. Charlie needs you to be her tutor, not some stranger.”

  As he drove home, Sean tried to figure out if he’d managed to settle anything at all at the conference with Lily. Not really, he decided. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There was something he was now sure about. It was possible for pulled-back hair, eyeglasses and sensible shoes to be sexy. He wasn’t supposed to regard her as anything but Crystal’s slightly annoying, judgmental friend, but lately, he kept catching himself thinking of her in other ways.

  He wondered what she wore under that crisp, buttoned-up Peter Pan collar. A sexy bra or plain white cotton? What would that scraped-back hair feel like falling between his fingers? And those lips, what did they taste like, what would they feel like against his?

  He made himself quit with the schoolteacher fantasies. Maybe it was because of his situation, maybe he wanted a woman in his life because of the kids. Except that wasn’t true. He didn’t want a woman in his life. He wanted Lily Robinson.

  You’re in trouble, buddy, he told himself. You’re in big trouble. He emptied his mind and drove in stolid, mindless focus, frowning when he spotted a rental car parked in front of the house. Inside, Red Corliss sat in the living room.

  “Hey,” Sean said, “where are the kids?”

  “Cameron’s got them upstairs.”

  Puzzled, Sean shook hands with him. “What’s up?”