Accidental Parents

by Jane Toombs

  Tim stared at him wide-eyed. “Is it him?” he whispered.

  “No. Jade’s talking to a policeman, that’s all, and I need to hear what he has to stay. It’s better if you stay in your room while we talk to Deputy Haines. Understand?”

  Tim nodded and lifted Freddie from the bed, hugging him close.

  Nathan strode into the living room as the deputy was saying, “I really do need to speak to the boy, Ms. Adams.”

  Jade, obviously not only upset but angry, shook her head. “Didn’t you hear what I said? He isn’t—”

  Nathan cut in. “If you’re referring to the boy Ms. Adams is fostering, my name is Dr. Walker and I’m the child’s physician. Do you have any questions you’d like to address to me?”

  “I’ve been sent to question the boy about the van he was riding in when the accident occurred. We need to know if he—”

  Nathan thought quickly. “I’m sorry, but the child is extremely disturbed and under the care of a psychiatrist. I’d need to check with her before I can allow anyone to talk to the boy. Perhaps you could arrange to ask your questions through her—if she feels that approach wouldn’t harm her patient.”

  “If that’s the case, I’ll need to know the psychiatrist’s name.”

  “Certainly. She’s Dr. Gertrude Severin, practicing in Tourmaline, as I do. You’ll find her office number in the phone book. Mine, too, should you need it.”

  “And the boy’s name?” the deputy persisted.

  “All any of us know is his first name—Tim. As I explained, he suffered a severe traumatic disturbance.”

  Deputy Haines put away his notebook, wished them a good day and left.

  After closing the door behind him, Jade swung around to stare at Nathan. “What’s all this about?”

  “I’ll explain later,” he said, thumbing through his wallet. “Where’s your phone?”

  She showed him. Extracting a card from the wallet, he punched in a private number, breathing a sigh of relief when he heard Gertrude Severin’s voice on the other end.

  “Gert, this is Nathan,” he said. “Glad I caught you home. I need you to cover my ass.”

  Jade shook her head as she listened to Nathan explaining the problem to someone named Gert, presumably the psychiatrist he’d claimed was seeing Tim. He’d been so convincing talking to the deputy that she’d begun to believe he actually had discussed Tim with this woman. But it was clear he hadn’t until this phone call.

  Leaving him to his persuasion, she checked on Tim and found him huddled on his bed with Hot Shot and Freddie. After reassuring him everything was all right, she hurried to her room and flung on her clothes.

  When she returned to the living room, Nathan was just putting down the phone. “Gert’s going to cover for us,” he told her. “I owe her big-time.”

  “You are one devious man,” she said.

  He gave her a very odd look.

  “Well,” she said, “you had me, right along with the cop, convinced a shrink was involved—even though I knew Tim had never been to her.”

  “Gert’s a good gal.”

  Jade brushed away the question of just how friendly he and Gert were. What difference did it make to her?

  “Tim’s scared,” she said. “I hope this thing doesn’t escalate. For now, though, since you’re so effective on the phone, why don’t you call in a pizza order while I try to convince him everything’s all right? Just punch in six—that’s the pizza number.” She started out, pausing to add, “Tim likes anchovies.”

  Nathan happened to hate them, but he placed the order with anchovies. Escalate was a mild word for what he feared might happen. He could stall the cops, but what about the media? He hoped Alice’s plight would turn out to be of only temporary local interest, but there was a chance the story might be picked up by one of the networks and go nationwide. Then how could he and Jade protect the boy?

  The arrival of the pizza cheered Tim considerably. Hot Shot, Nathan discovered, was more than happy to eat the anchovies he. picked off his slices, so everyone was satisfied.

  “We don’t usually feed the cat at the table,” Jade said. But her tone was nonconfrontational. Apparently the threat to the boy had brought them together in one camp—Tim’s.

  “I’ll remember that for next time,” Nathan assured her.

  She didn’t challenge the “next time,” either. His mental picture of her in the white swimsuit forced him to acknowledge it wasn’t entirely for Tim’s sake that he wanted there to be a next time.

  After they finished eating, Tim reminded her about the Disney movie she’d promised he could watch. They left him lying on his stomach in front of the family-room TV, chin propped on Freddie, Hot Shot curled up next to him.

  As Jade led Nathan into the living room, he scotched his half-formed notion that he’d enjoy lounging by the pool with her, lights off, so the night sky was visible. The episode by Zed’s gazebo had been warning enough. If he didn’t want to get any more involved with Jade than he was already, night skies were best left alone.

  He settled onto a white wicker couch, hoping despite his reservations she’d sit next to him. She chose a nearby chair, instead.

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you what that deputy wanted to ask Tim.” she said. “When they checked the van thoroughly, they found some marijuana. Not much, but you know Nevada law. Possession of even a little means a felony charge. So they thought they’d question Tim about it. Imagine! What could a five-year-old possibly know about that?”

  Nathan, with his eye-opening past experience at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, could have told her horror stories about drugs and small children but chose not to.

  “The van was stolen—possibly the stuff belonged to the owner, rather than Alice,” he said.

  “I reminded the deputy the van had been stolen in California, but he insisted he had to talk to Tim, anyway. Thank heaven you threw Gert at him.”

  “She’ll have to see Tim,” he said. “Next Tuesday at ten is the earliest she can work him in. He might open up a bit more to her than he has to us.”

  “Because she’s a shrink?”

  Nathan shook his head. “More because she looks like everyone’s vision of the ideal grandmother.”

  Jade felt annoyed at her spurt of relief when he described Gert as grandmotherly. Why should she care? Tucking her legs up under her, she said, “I was surprised at a psychiatrist practicing in a small town like Tourmaline.”

  “Shrinks are everywhere these days. Actually, Gert returned to her hometown when she retired from the Las Vegas group she was with. But she got bored and began taking on a few carefully selected patients. Now she has more than she wants.”

  Jade nodded, shifting position for what seemed like the hundredth time, wondering if he could sense what was causing her restlessness. If she’d sat next to him on the couch the way she wanted to... But no, that way led to trouble.

  If a relationship, no matter how hot the chemistry, didn’t have a chance to amount to anything more than sex, she wanted no part of it. Sure, seeing him in those swim trunks had made her drool, but one-week stands had never been her style. In any case, Tim’s presence in her house would keep her errant hormones from overriding her good sense.

  Nathan glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going. I told the guy covering for me that I’d be back by ten.”

  What was it now—eight? Since it wouldn’t take him two hours to get home, she had to believe she was boring him. She’d been accused of other things by other men, but none had ever as much as insinuated she bored them.

  Jade rose, hoping she was projecting a here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry attitude. If he was ready to leave early, she was ready to be rid of him.

  “I’ll say goodbye to Tim and be off, then,” he told her, getting to his feet.

  Fortunately Tim was engrossed with the movie and let Nathan go without fuss. So did she, if you didn’t count her hesitation at the front door when it seemed he might want to exchange a farew
ell kiss. Either she misjudged his intent or he changed his mind because no kiss materialized.

  Losing your touch, are you, girl? she chided herself as she closed the door behind him.

  The next day, armed with evidence a doctor had begun Tim’s immunizations, Jade enrolled him in the private preschool in Carson City that her nephew and niece attended. She attended Monday’s session with Tim, whose shyness evaporated as soon as he spotted Danny and Yasmin.

  The following day he was eager to return and sulked when she told him he would be going to school only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, like his new friends.

  He got even gloomier when she told him they were going to see a lady doctor. Even when she said Dr. Severin just wanted to talk to him—no exam or shots—Tim still scowled. He finally lightened up when she promised to stop at Zed’s ranch on the way back.

  Dr. Severin, white-haired and casually dressed, didn’t seem to frighten Tim. He wasn’t happy about Jade’s having to stay in the waiting room rather than accompanying him inside, but, clutching Freddie, he went without fuss.

  Jade couldn’t settle to so much as glancing at a magazine. Some mother she made, worrying about a psychiatrist frightening him, when she knew perfectly well Dr. Severin would do her educated best not to scare him.

  When the doctor finally shepherded Tim back to her, all she told Jade was that she’d back up Nathan as far as police questioning Tim went. It definitely should not be done.

  “I’ll call you this evening between seven and eight, if that’s convenient,” Dr. Severin added.

  Back in the truck, Jade couldn’t resist asking Tim, “Did you think the doctor was okay?”

  He nodded.

  She held back anything else, aware she shouldn’t probe and wasn’t likely to get anything back if she did.

  At Zed’s, Tim went off with Danny, not giving her a backward glance, returning a few minutes later to say, “Danny says I can come here after school tomorrow, okay?”

  Jade glanced at Karen.

  “Fine with me,” Karen said. “I meant to tell you that anytime you want to leave him here overnight, we’d love to have him.” After Tim ran off again, she added, “When he’s around, Danny and Yasmin don’t seem to get into as many arguments. That alone makes him welcome.”

  Karen went on to discuss some new petroglyph findings out near Pyramid Lake. “I know you’re interested in local Native American culture,” she said. “They think these are even older than the ones near Fallon. The Paiutes at Pyramid say the Ancient Ones drew them, people who were there before them.”

  Jade made a mental note to check out the petroglyphs when she had a chance.

  That evening, when Dr. Severin called at seven-thirty, Jade took the call in her bedroom for privacy, even though Tim was preoccupied with a new jigsaw puzzle.

  “When I asked him why he didn’t want to talk to me,” the doctor said, “Tim told me he wasn’t supposed to remember. I took that to mean he’d been punished in the past for mentioning anything about what he calls ‘back there.’ I’m afraid I got nothing else of any use except my observation that Tim is certainly a disturbed little boy, exactly as Nathan told me. Since he appears to trust you more than anyone else, my advice is to keep him with you as long as you can.”

  Jade hugged Tim a little longer and harder than usual when she put him to bed that night, aware their time together might end at any time. If only there was a way she could keep him forever.

  Nathan called around ten.

  “I spoke to Gert,” he said. “We can stop worrying about the police. She called the sheriff and told him it could well cause irreparable damage to Tim if they tried to question him.”

  “She told me to keep him as long as I can,” Jade said.

  Nathan didn’t reply for so long she wondered if he’d gotten a call on another line or something of the sort. “Tim needs you,” he said finally. “But I think he needs me, too.”

  What was she supposed to make of that? That they share custody?

  “I’ve been thinking that the two of us should try to do things with Tim,” he went on. “Not just an occasional hot dog here after I give him a shot. We need to take him places. I’ve got a boat stored at Topaz Lake—maybe we could take him fishing.”

  Certain Tim would enjoy that, she started to suggest that maybe the two of them could go alone, guys together, but found herself saying, instead, “Set a day when you can take the time off and we’ll be ready and waiting.”

  Two days later, Nathan called to say he’d arranged the fishing expedition for the following Tuesday afternoon. Jade agreed, forgetting until the next day that Tuesday was when Karen and Linnea were taking all the kids, including Tim, to the children’s festival in Gardnerville.

  She had an appointment to meet with a prospective customer that morning at his ranch near Tourmaline, but that wouldn’t take long so she’d thought Tuesdays was fine. Tim’s excursion posed a problem, though, because he was eagerly looking forward to going to the festival.

  She had no choice but to call Nathan and ask if he could set another date.

  “I can and will,” he said, “but since this is already arranged, why don’t you and I go? We’ll take Tim another time.”

  Go fishing alone with Nathan? Realizing she wanted to, Jade told herself there wasn’t any danger in being with him in a boat on Topaz Lake, for heaven’s sake. She liked to fish, and besides, it would give them a chance to discuss Tim without the boy being present.

  When Karen heard about it, she offered to keep Tim at the ranch on Tuesday night and take him to school the next morning with Danny and Yasmin. “That way you won’t have to pick Tim up and I won’t worry about what time we have to get home from the festival.”

  Tim’s instant enthusiasm when she asked him if he’d like to stay over at the ranch sold Jade. The closer it came to Tuesday, though, the more she wondered if she’d made a mistake both in agreeing to go fishing without Tim and also allowing him to spend the night at Zed and Karen’s. Not that she worried he wouldn’t be all right; it was herself she had doubts about.

  Was she actually intending to spend a day with a man she was already far too attracted to, with the added problem of having no obligation to get home at any set time? A prescription for disaster if ever she saw one.

  Chapter Six

  Driving away from the Yerington ranch where the new well would go, Jade sang along with the tape—some real golden oldie about sitting on top of the world. That was exactly how she felt at the moment. The home well her crew would start on next week had come about because the rancher saw a Northern Nevada drilling rig up the road from him the previous month and went to see what kind of flow his neighbor got after they hit water.

  Northern Nevada Drilling was its own best recommendation. It always gave her a lift to get a new job because of a previous drill where her well-trained crew had done exactly what they were supposed to do—hit water and get a good flow when they reached it.

  If the day continued as good as it had begun, she and Nathan wouldn’t even have to throw out a line—the fish would be jumping into the boat. In case they didn’t, she’d picked up some power bait with silver sparkles in the puttylike stuff you rubbed onto the hook.

  Her grandfather had taught her to fish only because she put up a fuss if he didn’t take her along with him and Zed. Grandpa couldn’t help being old-fashioned in his ideas about what was appropriate for girls and what for boys, just as she couldn’t help disagreeing with his beliefs, even though she loved him.

  Because lining up the new well hadn’t taken as much time as she’d allotted, she was going to arrive at the clinic before noon, not that it made any difference. Betty would probably just shunt her upstairs.

  She didn’t mind waiting, not when it was her fault for being early.

  She slowed the truck when she reached the curving potholed road along the river. When she came to the site of the accident, she saw county trucks repairing the blacktop. Or trying to. The road really ne
eded to be completely resurfaced.

  If it hadn’t been for that accident, quite possibly she never would have met Nathan. At this moment she wouldn’t be looking for the turnoff to the clinic. Or anticipating a glorious afternoon of fishing. Alone with Nathan, admittedly, but on such a perfect day she refused to think negatively. They’d have a good time fishing and that would be it.

  As she’d expected, Betty told her to wait upstairs. In Nathan’s living room, she turned on the stereo just to see what he’d been listening to. Country-and-western, this time, a woman singing sadly about unrequited love, which she found hard to relate to. Maybe she was lucky that had never happened to her because it did seem to be fairly universal.

  Her problem to date had been trying to find someone she could love, requited or otherwise.

  The phone rang, startling her. Four rings, then the answering machine picked up, making her realize he had a separate line for his private phone.

  “This is Laura,” a woman’s voice said. “Just wanted you to know I finally applied for another job. It’s a grant deal—I’ll be studying wild horses. May not get it but at least I’m trying. So stop worrying about me.”

  Did Nathan worry about Laura? Apparently. Come to think of it, he seemed reluctant to talk about her. Jade wondered why, then shrugged. None of her business. Every family had its secrets—hers had been no exception.

  When Nathan finally came upstairs, she was reading a magazine called Medical Economics. When she heard his step on the stairs, she tried to convince herself that her heart skipped a beat only because he’d startled her. What other reason was there?

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he came in.

  “No problem,” she told him. “I’ve been listening to all those tragic tales on your country-and-western CDs. Each song seems to be a story, most with unhappy endings.”