Misty and the Single Dad

by Marion Lennox

  ‘A girl can always try,’ she said, moving right on. ‘Do you want all new stuff?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Old stuff’s more comfortable,’ she said, standing in the doorway of the empty living room and considering. ‘It’d look better, too. This isn’t exactly a new house.’ She stared around her, considering. ‘You know, there are better houses to rent. This place is a bit draughty.’

  ‘It’ll do for now.’ He didn’t have the energy to go house-hunting yet. ‘Do you have any old stuff in mind?’

  She hesitated. ‘You might not stay here for long.’

  ‘We need to stay here until we’re certain Banksia Bay works out.’

  ‘Banksia Bay’s a great place to live,’ she said, but she was still looking at the house. ‘You know, if you just wanted to borrow stuff until you’ve made up your mind, I have a homestead full of furniture. I could lend you what you need, which would give you space to gradually buy your own later. If you like, we could make this place homelike this weekend.’

  ‘You have a homestead full of old stuff?’

  ‘My place is practically two houses joined together. My grandparents threw nothing out. I have dust covers over two living rooms and five bedrooms. If you want, you can come out tomorrow morning to take a look.’

  ‘Your grandparents are no longer there?’

  ‘Grandpa died years ago and Gran’s in a nursing home. There’s only me and I’m trying to downsize. You’re settling as I’m trying to get myself unsettled.’

  He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t be interested. It wasn’t in his new mantra-focus only on Bailey. But, despite his vow, she had him intrigued. ‘By getting a new dog? That doesn’t sound unsettled.’

  ‘There is that,’ she said, brightness fading a little. ‘I can’t help myself. But it’ll sort itself out. Who knows? Ketchup might not like living with me. He might prefer a younger owner. If I could talk you into a really big couch…’

  ‘No,’ Nick said, seeing where she was heading.

  ‘Worth a try,’ she said and grinned and stooped to talk to Bailey. Bailey had been watching them with some anxiety, clutching his teddy like a talisman. ‘Bailey, tomorrow I’m coming into town to pick up Ketchup. If I spend the morning settling him into his new home, would you and your dad like to come to my house in the afternoon to see if you can use some of my furniture?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bailey said. No hesitation. ‘Teddy will come, too.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Misty said and rose. ‘Teddy will be very welcome.’ She smiled at Nick then. It was a truly excellent smile. It was a smile that could…

  That couldn’t. No.

  ‘Straight through the town, three miles along the coast, the big white place with the huge veranda,’ she was saying. ‘You can’t miss it. Any time after noon.’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Her face fell. ‘You probably want all new furniture straight away. I got carried away. I’m very bossy.’

  And at the look on her face-appalled at her assertiveness but still…hopeful?-he was lost.

  Independence at all costs. He’d had enough emotion, enough commitment and drama to last a lifetime. There were reasons for his vows.

  But this was his son’s schoolteacher. She was someone who’d be a stalwart in their lives. He could be friendly without getting close, he told himself, and the idea of getting furniture fast, getting this place looking like home for Bailey, was hugely appealing.

  And visiting Misty tomorrow afternoon? Seeing her smile again?

  He could bear it, he thought. Just.

  ‘We’ll be extremely grateful,’ he said, and Bailey smiled and then yawned, as big a yawn as he’d ever seen his son give.

  ‘Bedtime,’ he said, and Bailey looked through to the little camp bed and then looked at Misty and produced another of the smiles that had been far too rare in the last year.

  ‘Can Miss Lawrence read me a bedtime story? She reads really good stories.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Misty said, smiling back at him. ‘If it’s okay with your dad.’

  It was okay, he conceded, but…

  Uh oh.

  There were all sorts of gaps in their lives right now, and this was only a small one, but suddenly it seemed important-and he didn’t like to admit it. Not in front of a schoolteacher. In front of this schoolteacher.

  ‘We don’t have any story books,’ he conceded.

  What sort of an admission was that? He’d be hauled away to be disciplined by…who knew? Was there a Bad Parents Board in Banksia Bay? He felt about six inches tall.

  They did own books, but they’d been put in storage in England until he was sure he was settled. Containers took months to arrive. Meanwhile… ‘We’ll buy some tomorrow,’ he’d told Bailey.

  ‘I have story books,’ Misty said, seemingly unaware of his embarrassment.

  ‘We’ve been living in a hospital apartment. Story books were provided.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain,’ she said, cutting through his discomfort. ‘My car’s loaded with school work-there’ll be all sorts to choose from. If you would like me to read to Bailey…’

  They both would.

  Forget vows, he told himself. He watched Bailey’s face and he felt the tension that he hadn’t known he had ease from his shoulders.

  For the last twelve months the responsibility for the care of his little son had been like a giant clamp around his heart. He’d failed him so dramatically… How could Bailey depend on him again?

  Over the last year he’d been attempting to patch their lives back together and for most of that time he’d had professional help. But today they’d left behind the hospital and all it represented. This was day one of their new life together.

  To admit that he needed help…to have Bailey want help and to have it offered… It should feel bad, but instead it made his world suddenly lighter; it made what lay ahead more bearable.

  ‘We’d love you to read to Bailey,’ he admitted, and it didn’t even feel wrong.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ she said, beaming down at Bailey. ‘I’m so glad you started school today. All weekend I’ll know I have a new friend. Right, you get into your pyjamas and clean your teeth and I’ll fetch a story book. I have my favourite in the car. It’s about bears who live in a house just like this one, but every night they have adventures.’

  ‘Ooh, yes, please,’ Bailey said and the thing was settled.

  So Nick sat on the front step, watched the sunset and listened to Misty telling his son a story about bears and adventures-and he found himself smiling. Unlike the bears, they’d come to the end of their adventures. The house was terrible but they could do something about it. This place was safe. This place could work.

  He’d chosen Banksia Bay because it was a couple of hours drive to Sydney. It had a good harbour, a great boat building industry and it was quiet. He should have come and checked the house before he’d signed the lease but to leave Bailey for the four hours it’d take to get here and back, or explain what he was doing… He’d have had to come during office hours, and those hours he spent with his son.

  Choosing this house was the price he’d paid, but even this wasn’t so bad.

  He couldn’t see the sea from here but he could hear it. That was good. To be totally out of touch with the ocean would be unthinkable.

  He’d set up his office over the weekend. On Monday Bailey would start regular school hours. He’d be able to get back to work.

  Work the new way.

  The bear story was drawing to its dramatic conclusion. He glanced in the open window and Bailey’s eyes were almost shut.

  He’d sleep well in his new home-because of this woman.

  She was so not his type of woman, he thought. She was a country mouse.

  No. That was unjust and uncalled for. He accepted she was intelligent and she was kind. But her jeans were faded and her clothes were unpretentious. Her braid was now a ponytail. She’d changed since she’d c
radled the dog this morning. She’d lost the bloodstains, but she must have changed at school because this shirt had paint on it already.

  She was stooping now to give his son a kiss goodnight, and her ponytail looked sort of…perky? Actually, it was more sexy than perky, he thought, and he was aware of a stab of something as unexpected as it was unwanted.

  The thought of those curls… He’d like to run his fingers through…

  Whoa. How to complicate a life, he thought-have an affair with the local schoolteacher. He had no intention of having an affair with anyone. Let’s just keep the hormones out of this, he told himself savagely, so when Misty came outside he thanked her with just a touch too much formality.

  And he saw her stiffen. Withdraw. She’d got his unspoken message, and more.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have given you the book and left. I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  She was smart. She’d picked up on signals when he’d hardly sent them.

  ‘You didn’t intrude,’ he said, and this time he went the other way-he put more warmth into his tone than he intended. He gripped her hand, and that was a mistake. The warmth…

  How long since he’d touched a woman?

  And there was another dumb thought. He’d been shaking hands with nurses, doctors, therapists every day. Why was Misty different?

  He couldn’t permit her to be different.

  ‘You want to tell me about Bailey?’ she asked and he did the withdrawal thing again. Released her hand, fast.

  ‘It’s on his medical form at school.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said, backing off again. ‘I left school in a hurry because I wanted to get to the vet’s, so I haven’t caught up with the forms yet. I’ll read them on Monday.’ She turned away, heading out of his life.

  She’d see the forms on Monday…

  Of course she would, he thought, and he’d been frank in what he’d written. He’d had no choice. There were a thousand ways that keeping what happened to Bailey from his classroom teacher could cause problems. Okay, boys and girls, let’s pretend to be pirates…

  She had to know, and to force her to read the forms on Monday rather than telling her now… What was he trying to prove?

  ‘I can tell you now,’ he said.

  He was all over the place.

  He felt all over the place.

  ‘There’s no need…’

  ‘There is a need.’

  Why did it feel as if he were stepping on eggshells? This was Bailey’s teacher. Treat her as such, he told himself harshly. Treat her professionally, with cool acceptance and with an admission that she needed to know things he’d rather not talk about.

  ‘I’m not handling this well,’ he admitted. ‘Today’s been stressful. In truth, the last year’s been stressful. Or maybe that’s an understatement. The last year’s been appalling.’ He paused then, wanting to retreat, but he had to say it.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt your evening any more than I already have, but if you have the time… You’re Bailey’s teacher. You need to know what he’s been through.’

  ‘I guess I do,’ she said equably. ‘We both want what’s best for Bailey.’

  That was good. It took the personal out of it. He was telling her-for Bailey.

  He paused then and looked at her. She was a woman without guile, his kid’s teacher. She was standing on the veranda of the home he was preparing for his son. She was a warm, comforting presence. Sensible. Solid. Safe.

  His parents would approve of her, he thought, and the idea sent a wave of emotion running through him so strongly that he felt ill. If he’d chosen a woman like this rather than Isabelle…

  Someone safe.

  Someone he could trust if he let his guard down.

  When had he last let his guard down?

  ‘So tell me, then,’ she said-and he did.

  There was no reason not to.

  It took a while to start. Nick fetched lemonade. He said he’d rather be drinking beer but he hadn’t yet made it further than the supermarket. He apologised for there being no food but cornflakes. She said she didn’t need beer and she wasn’t hungry. She waited.

  It was as if he had to find his mindset, as well as his place on the veranda.

  Nick didn’t look like a man who spent a lot of time in an easy chair, Misty thought, and when he finally leaned his rangy frame on the veranda rail she wasn’t surprised. She was sitting on the veranda steps. The width of Bailey’s window was between them. Maybe that was deliberate.

  For a while he didn’t say anything, but she was content to wait. She’d been teaching kids for years. Parents often needed to tell her things about their children; about their families. A lot of it wasn’t easy. But what Nick had to say…

  ‘Bailey’s mother was shot off the coast of Africa,’ he said at last, and the words were such a shock she almost dropped her lemonade.

  No one ever got shot in Banksia Bay. And…off the coast of Africa?

  If this was one of her students, she’d give them a sheet of art paper and say, ‘Paint it for me.’ Dreams needed expression.

  But one look at this man’s face told her this was no dream. It might not happen in her world, but it did happen.

  ‘She was killed instantly,’ he said, and he was no longer looking at her. He was staring out at the blank wall of the fisherman’s co-op, but she knew he was seeing somewhere far off. Somewhere dreadful. ‘Bailey was shot as well,’ he told her. ‘It’s taken almost a year to get him this far. To see him safe.’

  What to say after a statement like that? She tried not to blurt out a hundred questions, but she couldn’t think of the first one.

  ‘It’s a grim story,’ he said at last. ‘Stupidity at its finest. I’ve needed to tell so many people over the last year, but telling never gets easier.’

  ‘You’re not compelled to tell me.’

  ‘You’re Bailey’s teacher. You need to know.’

  ‘There is that,’ she said cautiously. If she didn’t know a child’s history, it was like walking through a minefield. ‘Oh, Nicholas…’

  ‘Nick,’ he said savagely, as if the name was important.

  ‘Nick,’ she said-and waited. ‘It’s okay,’ she said gently. ‘Just tell me as much as I need to know.’

  He shrugged at that, a derisory gesture, half mocking. ‘Right. As much as you need to know. I was working on a contract in South Africa, Bailey and Isabelle were with Isabelle’s parents. They were on a boat coming to meet me, they were robbed and Isabelle and Bailey were shot.’

  ‘Oh, Nick…’

  His face stopped her going any further. There was such emptiness.

  ‘What’s not obvious in that version is my stupidity,’ he said, and she sensed that she was about to get a story that he hadn’t told over and over. He no longer seemed to be talking to her. He seemed somewhere in his head, hating himself, feeding his hatred.

  The hatred made her feel ill. She wanted to stop him, but there was no way she could.

  If this man needed to talk, ugly or not, maybe she had to listen.

  ‘As a kid I was…overprotected,’ he said at last into the silence, and the impression that he wasn’t talking to her grew stronger. ‘Only child. Protected at every turn. So I rebelled. I did the modern day equivalent of running away to sea. I studied marine architecture. I designed boats, won prizes, made serious money. I built a series of experimental boats, and I took risks.’

  ‘Good for you,’ she murmured. Then she added, before she could help herself, ‘Half your luck.’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Risks are stupid.’

  ‘It depends on the risks,’ she said, and thought of how many risks she’d ever encountered. Approximately none.

  But then…this wasn’t about her, she reminded herself sharply. Listen.

  ‘My kind of risks were definitely the stupid kind,’ he said and, despite her interjection, she still had the impression he was talking to himself. ‘Black run skiing, ocean racing in boats buil
t for speed rather than safety, scuba-diving, underwater caving… Fantastic stuff, but the more dangerous the better. And then I met Isabelle. She was like me but more so. Risks were like breathing to her. The stuff we did… Her parents were wealthy so she could indulge any whim, and Isabelle surely had whims. In time, I learned she was a little bit crazy. If I skied the hardest runs, she didn’t ski runs at all. She skied into the unknown. Together, we did crazy stuff.’

  ‘But you had fun?’ She was trying to keep the wistfulness from her voice, not sure if she was succeeding. Nick glanced at her as if he’d forgotten she was there, but he managed a wry nod.

  ‘We did. We built Mahelkee, our gorgeous yacht, and we sailed everywhere. I designed as I went. We had an amazing life. And then we had Bailey, and that was the most amazing thing of all. Our son.’

  He hesitated then, and she saw where memories of good times ended and the pain began. ‘But when I held him…’ he said softly, ‘for the first time I could see where my parents were coming from. Not as much, of course, but a bit.’

  ‘So no black ski runs for Bailey?’

  He was back staring at the side of the co-op. No longer talking to her. ‘There were no ski runs where we lived but there was no way Isabelle was living in a house. We kept living on the boat. It caused conflict between us but we kept travelling. We kept doing stuff we loved. Only…when I saw the risky stuff I thought of Bailey. We started being careful.’

  ‘Sensible.’

  ‘Isabelle didn’t see it like that.’

  Silence.

  This wasn’t her business, she thought; she also wasn’t sure whether he’d continue. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to continue.

  ‘You want to finish this another day?’ she ventured, and he shook his head, still not looking at her.

  ‘Not much more to tell, really. I’d married a risk-taker, and Isabelle was never going to change. Bailey and I just held her back. We were in England when I got a contract to design a new yacht. She was to be built in South Africa. I needed to consult with the builders.’

  ‘So you went.’

  ‘We were docked at a pretty English port. Isabelle’s parents own the world’s most ostentatious cruiser and they were docked nearby. Isabelle was taking flying lessons and they were keeping her happy. Everyone seemed settled; we were even talking about enrolling Bailey in kindergarten. So I flew across to South Africa. But Isabelle was never settled for long. She got bored with her flying lessons and persuaded her parents to bring their boat out to surprise me.’