by Donna Fasano
A small poster sat on an easel welcoming newcomers to the single parents group and informing them of the room number where the group was meeting. A big, black arrow pointed the way.
Julie heard the rich timbre of Mat’s voice before she saw him. She stood in the doorway, her feet suddenly rooted to the smooth, wood plank floor. He stood, tall and proud, behind a podium at the front of the room, but he wasn’t wearing his police uniform tonight. Instead, he had on a knitted crew neck sweater in hues of brown and rust. The collar of his tan shirt lay against his corded neck.
The sight of him both calmed and excited her. And, once again, she was amazed by the emotions the man incited in her.
Suddenly she realized Mat had gone quiet. Then she realized his intense gaze had zeroed in on her and she felt heat rush to her face.
“Julie,” he called, “I’m so glad you’re here. Come in and join us.” He addressed the group. “Everyone, this is Julie Dacey. Let’s make her feel welcome.”
During each workday, Julie routinely conducted quick headcounts. In the lunch room. At recess. Automatically now, as faces turned to stare, she counted a dozen people. Even though some of the attendees smiled in greeting, the heat in Julie’s cheeks licked at her like tongues of fire.
“Sorry if I’m late,” she murmured, dipping her head and hurrying to take a seat in the back row of metal folding chairs.
“No need to apologize,” Mat said easily. “I haven’t been talking long.” He gave her tonight’s topic: how to tell if a teen is using drugs. He summarized the few points he’d made before her arrival and then continued.
As he spoke, every ounce of Julie’s attention became riveted to the man. He was knowledgeable on the subject, making it clear that it was his special training and experience with juveniles while working with the NYPD that made him so. Once he’d completed his talk, the group arranged their chairs into a circle and took turns discussing their own personal situations. One woman made no apologies about ransacking her daughter’s room when the teen wasn’t at home.
“I need to know what she’s up to,” the woman stressed. “She refuses to talk to me, so I’ve got to take measures into my own hands.”
The man across from her looked horrified. “But what will you do if she catches you in her room going through her things? I’d like to have a trusting relationship between me and my kids. I’m sorry, but I think what you’re doing is wrong.”
Julie listened as the two discussed their positions, finally agreeing to disagree on the subject. The other parents chimed in with opinions now and then, as well. Julie hadn’t even thought of going through Brian’s room to find clues about his new friends or where he’d been going or what he’d been doing. She felt conflicted by the suggestion. Would it be an invasion of Brian’s privacy? Julie could see both sides of the argument.
When the meeting was over, Mat thanked everyone for coming and announced the topic for the next meeting. Before she’d even had time to gather together her purse and the notes she’d taken, Mat approached her.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said, sincerity expressed in his dark brown gaze.
She smiled, but the icy-hot feeling rushing over every inch of her skin seemed to paralyze her tongue. Feeling pressured to say something, anything, she blurted, “You sure seem organized for having just started this group. You gave such an informative talk. It must be a great deal of work to come up with a presentation every week.”
“Oh, I don’t always do the talking.” He chuckled. “I’m a smart guy, but I’m not that smart.”
Julie couldn’t help but laugh with him. She found it appealing to learn that he had the kind of self-confidence it took to make self-deprecating jokes. She liked that he could laugh at himself.
“I only gave the talk tonight,” he continued, “because I have some experience with teens and drug use. Like I said, I worked with inner-city teens. Next week I have a counselor lined up to discuss getting your kid to open up. Lots of people have that problem.”
His eyes clouded, and Julie got the distinct impression that he was thinking of his own relationship with Grace, but before she could ask the questions that rolled into her head, he spoke again.
“Many weeks we won’t be able to have a speaker at all,” he told her. “You see, we can’t afford to pay, so we have to rely on experts’ willingness to volunteer their time to talk to us.” His eyes lit up. “Hey, you’d make a great speaker. You could talk about ways to keep kids interested in their schoolwork. How to get them to do their homework. That kind of thing.”
Her knee-jerk reaction was to flat out refuse, but before she could, he smiled and rushed to say, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t attack you like that. This is your first night. I’ll wait a few meetings and then ask again.” Light laughter rumbled from deep in this throat. “Forgive me, Julie. I can be a little too enthusiastic about the single parents group.”
There was no need to forgive him, she realized. She found his excitement very alluring, indeed.
He sobered suddenly. “So… I have to tell you, I was surprised to look up and see you standing in the door. When I talked to you last week, you said you wouldn’t feel comfortable coming to the meeting. What happened to change your mind?”
His question was like having the rug pulled out from under her. She guessed it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something had happened between her and Brian for her to do a complete about face.
Mat’s tone lowered. “You want to talk about it?”
Suddenly, Julie felt as if she’d been holding her breath for days and days, and only just this moment was able to take a deep lungful of air.
“If you have the time, I’d love to talk.”
“Good,” he said. “Give me a second to lock up, and we’ll walk across the street to the coffee shop.”
~oOo~
Just after he’d ordered a cup of decaf and she ordered a cup of herb tea for herself, Julie began to talk. And she talked. And talked. And talked. It seemed to Mat that the woman had never had anyone offer to listen to her before.
“So, you see,” she said, adding a teaspoon of sugar to the second cup of tea the waitress set down on the table, “Brian and I both had domineering fathers. Mine was verbally abusive, ridiculing and scornful.” She sighed. “It was almost as if he enjoyed tearing strips off the people he was supposed to love.”
Now, Mat didn’t know Julie’s father, had never met the man and probably never would. But seemingly out of nowhere, he felt this gargantuan urge to punch the man square in the nose. How could anyone be cruel to someone as delicate as Julie? She was like a fragile piece of porcelain that needed to be set high on a shelf somewhere safe and out of reach of the harmful world.
“My father left us when I was just about ten. My mother sobbed as if he’d died. I didn’t understand that. I don’t mind telling the truth; I was happy.” She tapped the spoon against the lip of the cup. “I remember jumping up and down on my mattress with glee. This might be horrible, but I prayed that, wherever it was he went, he’d stay there. Mother and I lived on our own for a year or so. Then she married Robert.” She sighed. “And life as I knew it changed forever.”
Memories drew deep and disturbing lines on Julie’s forehead. Mat fought the urge to reach across the table and smooth them with the pad of his thumb. He didn’t know what changes this Robert brought into her life, but it was clear that they weren’t good.
She was silent for quite a while. Then she seemed to become conscious of the silence, most uncomfortable with it, actually.
“We muddled through,” she whispered. Her tone grew stronger. “Mom had Brian. I stayed out of the way as much as I could.” Her smile didn’t hold much humor. “A kid can become pretty adept at that.”
Unwittingly she bent her elbow, lifting her fingers, worrying them over her lips. Mat became mesmerized by the movement. Began dreaming of what it might feel like to pull her fingertips from her mouth and… kiss those perfect lips.
Keep your thoughts on the conversation, a stern voice in the back of his brain chided him.
Then he noticed the emotion that darkened her clear, green eyes. She might be explaining flashes of her childhood, but it felt obvious to him that he might probably never know all that she’d experienced.
“It was such a relief to go off to college,” she finally said. “I feel guilty saying this, but I felt free for the first time in my life. I couldn’t bring myself to go back home. So I found a job during the summer, and I stayed in that small, quaint college town.”
Her voice grew hushed and she seemed to have difficulty meeting his gaze.
“Even after Mom died,” she said, “I couldn’t go back. I found one excuse after another to stay away. Robert was just so… hard. So mean-spirited. After my mother passed away, my stepfather refused to help me with tuition. So I earned what I could. Borrowed some. Money was always a problem, but I did it. I graduated.”
Mat saw that her hands were actually trembling as she lifted the mug to her mouth for a sip. His empathy was almost too big for him to bear. It swelled until his chest burned from its volume.
“As soon as I got my first teaching job,” she continued, “once I had some steady income coming in, I went to see Brian.”
Emotion welled in her eyes and Mat thought his heart would split in two. Reaching out, he covered her hand with his.
“Robert was abusing my brother.”
She squeezed the words from her throat with difficulty.
“He was taking out his frustrations on Brian’s back. With a belt. The welts were…”
Her eyelids closed and she obviously couldn’t finish. But there was no need for her to. Mat understood perfectly. In his line of work, he frequently encountered abusive parents.
“I’m sorry, Julie. I’m sorry this happened to Brian. No one should have to endure that kind of treatment. Especially a defenseless kid.”
Her inhalation was shaky. “That’s exactly what I thought. So I took him away from there.”
He couldn’t stop the surprise from showing on his face. Luckily Julie was too lost in her story to notice.
“I don’t know what I’d have done without Tori Landing,” she told him. “She put us up at her bed-and-breakfast. She helped me get the job in the elementary school.” Her smile went taut, as if she was suddenly very conscious of her words. Softly she murmured, “Tori’s been an angel sent straight from above.”
Mat only smiled. As sheriff, he knew about Tori Landing and her dedication to those who found themselves with no way out.
Julie glanced out the window, her index finger and thumb absently moving up and down the handle of the heavy, white crockery.
Caring about this woman wasn’t something Mat wanted to do. With Grace, he had enough problems of his own right now. But he couldn’t deny that he felt drawn to Julie.
“Hey, you seem so far away right now.” He smiled when his softly spoken words succeeded in gaining her attention. The clouds in her gem-green eyes tore at his heart.
“Thanks for listening,” she said.
His grin widened. “Anytime.” Then he slid his fingertips over the back of her hand and fireworks erupted in his chest. He did what he could to ignore them. “But, Julie, you never said what it was that made you come to the meeting tonight. You haven’t told me what it was that changed your mind.”
She looked down into her mug, then tipped up her chin and met his gaze.
Finally she said, “Just as you said, Brian woke up the next morning and apologized for being out late. He was surly and mumbling, but he did say he was sorry.”
Mat remained silent, waiting for the rest of the story.
“But he refused to talk to me,” she rushed to add. “He wouldn’t tell me where he goes or who he hangs out with. He was keeping me in the dark and I didn’t like it.” Julie averted her gaze. “So I pushed him. Nagged at him until he just blew up again. We fought. Horribly.” A heavy sigh rushed from her. “I’m worried, Mat. Brian’s behavior could be a simple case of teenage rebellion, as you’ve suggested. Then again, this could be leading to something… something really bad.”
“You’re not feeling threatened by him, are you?” Mat asked. “Physically threatened, I mean?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t believe my brother would ever lay a hand on me. But he’s so full of bitterness and anger. I don’t know how to get him to release it.”
Oh, Great One, Mat prayed, give me the right words to say. Help me to know what to do to help her.
“That’s why I came to the meeting tonight, Mat. For Brian. I want to learn what I can do to help him heal. And to help me cope.”
She looked utterly defenseless, and Mat was walloped with the urge to protect her. To swoop in and somehow solve all her problems.
Just then, something inside rose up and hit him… hit him hard, warning him not to get too involved with Julie and her troubled brother, warning him he had enough problems of his own, warning him that he didn’t need more difficulty on top of what he already had.
Despite the voice in his head, he plucked a pen and card from his breast pocket and jotted down his home phone number. He should be marveling at his behavior—a cop never gave out his home number—but some higher calling told him this was different. This was necessary.
“I don’t know what I can do to help you, Julie,” he said. The air between them seemed to grow as soft as her expression. “But I can promise that if you need me, I will be there.”
~oOo~
Julie watched Mat approach the school from the office window. The worried expression on his handsome face squeezed her heart. She probably could have handled this situation with Grace on her own. No, she knew she could have. It was just that, well… the man had been so kind to her after the single parents meeting. He’d shown her such compassion. And besides, she hadn’t been able to think about much of anything except him since then.
“Admit it,” she muttered under her breath, “you simply wanted to see the man.”
And Grace had given her a prime opportunity to do just that.
“Pardon?”
The school secretary’s voice took Julie aback. “Oh, nothing.” She smiled self-consciously. “I was just talking to myself.”
The elderly woman chuckled. “Working with children can do that to a person.”
Mat pushed open the front door and came into the office.
“Thanks for coming,” Julie said in greeting. Her heart tripped a staccato beat against her ribs as she took in his intense, deep-set eyes, his silky hair, his high cheekbones.
He nodded in response, then asked, “Where is she?”
“With Mrs. Hailey. In the teachers’ lounge.” Julie hoped the quirky smile she offered would alleviate some of his obvious anxiety. “We thought we should keep Grace at the scene of the crime, so to speak.”
“I can’t believe my daughter’s become a thief.”
Julie grimaced as she led him up the hallway. “That’s a harsh way to describe her behavior.”
“You told me on the phone that she pilfered donuts from the teachers’ lounge. To pilfer is to steal.”
“Well… maybe,” Julie said. “But that description still sounds too severe to me.”
They paused a moment outside the door leading to the lounge. She asked him, “You ready?”
He sighed. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Dealing with this child is going to drive me around the bend.”
Her mouth pulled back at the corners. “Hold firm. And remember you have lots of supporters.”
Without thinking, she reached out and slid comforting fingers over his biceps. The hardness of his muscle nearly had her sucking in her breath, and heated tendrils sprouted to life deep in her gut. She snatched her hand from his arm and quickly focused on grabbing the doorknob and pushing her way into the lounge.
The school’s principal was standing with one hip leaning on the edge of the table, her arms tightly crossed over her chest. The frustrat
ion on Mrs. Hailey’s face told Julie that the woman hadn’t had much success in getting Grace, who was sitting on a chair in front of her, to recognize the error of her ways. Why, the child hadn’t even felt self-conscious enough to wipe the powdered sugar from the corners of her mouth.
It was Mrs. Hailey’s policy to allow teachers to handle their students’ disciplinary problems whenever possible. Julie liked that the principal’s philosophy was based on the idea of not having the children feel ganged up on by adults, so after nodding to Mat and Julie, Mrs. Hailey left the lounge.
“What are you doing in the teachers’ lounge, young lady?” Mat asked his daughter once the door was closed.
“Like I told Mrs. Hailey, the teachers had donuts.” The child’s tone clearly conveyed that she thought this fact was reason enough, and Julie pressed her lips together.
“You couldn’t possibly have been hungry this morning,” Mat asserted. “I fixed pancakes for breakfast. You polished off three. Not to mention the two helpings of applesauce you ate.”
Grace leaned forward, and as though speaking to a blubbering idiot, she slowly enunciated, “We’re talkin’ donuts, Dad.”
Julie’s eyes rounded, her gaze darting to Mat. She thought she saw steam rolling heavenward from his ears as chagrin tightening his expression. Then he evidently noticed something.
“Is that a coffee stain on your top?” Without waiting for an answer, he pointed at Grace. “You helped yourself to a cup of coffee, didn’t you? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinkin’ that donuts taste real good when they’re dunked in coffee.”
Julie thought Mat’s head might explode.
“But you’re not allowed to drink coffee!”
Grace’s bottom lip quivered and tears sprang to her eyes. Julie suspected it wasn’t because the child realized what she’d done was wrong but that Mat had raised his voice.
Confusion knitted her tiny brow as she wailed, “But I always used to have coffee when I lived in the city. And you never said I couldn’t have no coffee. And nobody told me I couldn’t have a donut, either.”
