One of a Kind Dad Read online

  “What color do you think he’d like?”

  “Red and white. He likes the Boston Red Sox.”

  “Just like you.” Lilah smiled. “Okay, red and white it is. Wow, that was quite a talk you had with Nick.” Now, the quizzing. Lilah’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Um, what did you tell Nick about yourself?”

  “What you told me to. My father’s dead and we moved here. And Mom, guess what the Sunday school lesson was about.”

  “What?” She was so relieved she could barely breathe.

  “Telling the truth.”

  God, forgive me.

  LOOKING OUT HIS WINDOW, Daniel saw the woman get out of the car and watched the boy run toward her. He might have called her pretty if she hadn’t been so painfully thin and drawn. Her clothes were wrinkled, and her hair, although it was neatly combed, was dull and lank. But her posture was confident—determined was more like it—and it was clear that she and the boy loved each other. He was curious about her.

  “Okay, spill it,” he said to his passengers as they moved away from the curb. “How was Sunday school?”

  Jason, almost sixteen and the oldest of his boys, spoke up first. “Not bad.”

  “The usual.” Maury, a few weeks younger, was Jason’s sidekick. “Another life lesson.”

  “Which life lesson?” Buzz words irritated Daniel, even when they came from the mouth of a Sunday-school teacher.

  “Being honest.”

  “Us, too,” Nick piped up.

  “Ah,” Daniel said. “A coordinated curriculum.”

  “Whatever,” Nick said. “So this new kid asked me a question and I told him the truth.”

  A breakthrough! Had Nick told this boy the truth about where he came from?

  Act casual. “What’d you tell him?”

  “He said I looked tired, and I told him about my nightmares.”

  “What they were about?” The other boys had fallen silent, as if they were all holding their breath.

  “I told you,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  Hopes dashed, Daniel asked for and got a full report, not on the sin of lying but the inefficiency of it. And then they were home. Home to the scent of braising pot roast, to the comforting sight of Jesse carefully removing an apple crisp from the oven, to the racket of four boys shouting, arguing, laughing, racing up and down the stairs of the huge, creaky old Victorian house and the family dog, Aengus, barking, delighted they’d come back.

  To Daniel, it sounded like the sweet strains of the Westminster Abbey boys’ choir.

  “LILAH JAMISON?”

  “Yes.” Lilah gave the portly manager of the Ben Franklin dime store a confident smile. Don’t be modest. Sell yourself. You have to, for your sake and Jonathan’s. “I saw that you’re looking for a person to handle your crafts section. I’m a crafter myself, and…”

  “Already filled,” the woman said. “Retha, she’s one of our cashiers, says her daughter wants the job.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten this response. Jobs in Churchill went to relatives of current employees. Lilah wanted to say, But have you interviewed Retha’s daughter? Does she know anything about knitting? Or decoupage? Or tole painting? But it wouldn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was Retha’s daughter.

  “Well,” Lilah said, forcing another smile, “thanks for talking to me.” She couldn’t ask the woman to call her if she had another opening. She hadn’t been able to afford a cell phone since Bruce had gone to prison. Her address, at the moment, was CWC 402, her license plate number. “While I’m here, I’d like to look at yarn.”

  Now that Lilah was a customer rather than a job applicant, the woman was all smiles. “You picked the right day,” she said. “We’re having a sale.”

  Lilah fought the tidal wave of discouragement threatening her belief that leaving Whittaker had been the right thing to do. First, she’d gone to the hospital to look for work as a hospital nurse or a home caregiver. “No openings in nursing,” said the head of personnel, looking at her warily.

  “I also have bookkeeping experience,” Lilah said. “Would you have anything in Accounting?”

  “No, but if something comes up, I’ll give you a call.”

  But, of course, Lilah didn’t have a phone number.

  Since she’d arrived in Churchill, she’d followed up on every job offer on the grocery store bulletin board and in the classified ads of the local newspaper. There weren’t many. Apparently Churchill folks didn’t hire cleaning ladies. And the school didn’t need cafeteria workers or teachers’ aides.

  She dropped in at the local diner. “My husband’s the short-order cook, my daughter and I are the waitresses, and we hire the intellectually challenged to bus tables and clean up,” the woman at the counter told her. “Sorry.”

  Before she picked up Jonathan at the park, where she’d discovered the town ran an informal, drop in, drop out, day care in the summer months, Lilah took one last look at the grocery store bulletin board. No job offers, but a brightly colored poster caught her eye:

  Fair Meadows Soccer Camp

  Attention, future soccer stars aged five to sixteen!

  Coach Wetherby and the Town of Churchill offer you this opportunity to sharpen your skills for competitive team play!

  Nine to noon, Monday through Friday at Friendship Fields.

  All Serenity Valley students welcomed.

  Sign up now!

  Registration fee includes…

  Lilah’s eye stopped at “registration fee.” Jonathan excelled at soccer. He could make friends at the camp, and then he wouldn’t have to enter second grade as the “new kid.” The fee wasn’t much, but she couldn’t afford a fee of any size.

  It was the last straw. “Go team,” she whispered. They’d have to go without Jonathan. His mother had missed one goal too many.

  She hurried out of the store before she fell apart. What was she going to do? Would she have to move to a larger town outside the valley, where she’d find more job opportunities?

  “I have an idea,” she told Jonathan when she picked him up, giving him a smile that took all the optimism she could muster. “Let’s blow it all out at the diner—hamburgers, French fries, the works—and then we’ll drive back to our secret hideout and make Nick a dreamcatcher.”

  Chapter Two

  Daniel eyed the mountain of laundry on the basement floor, started a load, stalked up the steep stairs and said, “Jesse, we need a housekeeper.”

  “Last thing we need’s a woman around here,” Jesse said. “They don’t have their priorities straight. Want things to look pretty before they really do anything.”

  A typical reaction from Jesse O’Reilly. A long-retired marine and a widower for many years, he’d been renting the apartment over the carriage house when Daniel bought the property. Because any income to offset Daniel’s investment was a plus, he’d encouraged Jesse to stay.

  Then, when Daniel took in his first foster child, Jason, a rebellious, fighting-mad fourteen-year-old at the time, Jesse had told Daniel if he ran into a problem, he should just call and he’d keep an eye on the boy. And slowly, Daniel had begun to trust Jesse. He took in more boys, and Jesse became even closer to the family, somehow having dinner ready before Daniel got back from picking up the kids after school, somehow producing stacks of laundered clothes, a full cookie jar.

  Last year Jesse had fallen down the apartment stairs, and Daniel had talked him into moving into the house. Now he was chef, chauffeur, child-sitter, homework supervisor—and Daniel’s best friend, next to his brothers. More like a father than a friend. A grumpy father with a heart of pure homemade spaghetti sauce.

  “Let me put it another way,” Daniel said. “You work sixteen hours a day, the boys have their chores, we all help clean on Saturday, but if you could see the condition upstairs you’d have us court-martialed.” He was exaggerating, but not by much.

  Jesse, who was even now engrossed in dinner preparations while the boys—Jason a
nd Maury, Will and Nick—did their homework at the kitchen table, spun around from his stovetop. “It’s dirty?” he gasped.

  “Criminally,” Daniel assured him. “If Child Services came around, they’d take the kids away.” Thinking that might scare the younger boys, he gave them a wink, and they gave him a thumbs-up. “Then there’s the laundry. Imagine Mount Everest.”

  “You’re the one won’t let me go down those stairs any more,” Jesse grumbled.

  “For good reason,” Daniel said. “The housekeeper doesn’t have to be a woman, but whoever it is, I won’t let him or her get in your way.”

  “Well, okay, look around.” His nose in the air, Jesse turned back to the stove. “Just don’t let anybody mess with my kitchen.”

  “Why would I do that?” Daniel asked. “It’s the cleanest room in the house.”

  “THIS IS A FUNNY WAY to wash clothes,” Jonathan said.

  “But it works,” Lilah told him, smiling brightly and trying to hide the sickness she felt inside. “The sun dries them, they smell fresh and sweet…This is the way the pioneers did their laundry. How about a bologna-and-cheese sandwich before I take you to the park?”

  Their hideout hadn’t been easy to find. After scouring the back roads of the three towns that made up the valley, Lilah had found, just outside Churchill, a lumber road that led up to a forested area, beautiful and serene, with no heavy equipment around to indicate that the trees were marked to be cut any time soon. This is where she and Jonathan were living. They slept in the car, bathed in the icy stream and washed their clothes there, leaving them to dry in the dappled sunlight.

  They ate cereal and milk, sandwiches made of the least expensive sandwich meat and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly, with a piece of fruit for Jonathan each day. Lilah ate as little as she could without making herself feel faint, saving everything possible for her son. They’d been living like this for almost two weeks now. She couldn’t hold out much longer. It wasn’t fair to Jonathan.

  “What do you think about the dreamcatcher?”

  “It’s great,” Jonathan said, his face lighting up.

  Together they admired her handiwork. She’d cut a circle out of a cereal box and had painted it with scarlet nail polish she’d found among the things she’d hastily thrown into garbage bags when they left Whittaker. When had she ever worn bright-red nail polish? Long years ago, when she was still in love with Bruce and had no idea what he would eventually do to her, to their lives? The love hadn’t lasted long. The bottle of polish had been almost full.

  When the polish dried, Lilah filled in the circle with the yarn she’d bought, a twisted red and white, and then she attached red-painted twig arms and legs, crocheting fanciful feet and hands to fit over the twigs.

  In a moment of whimsy, she crocheted a baseball cap and attached it to the top of the circle. A Boston Red Sox dreamcatcher. And then, giving it one last critical look, she decided it needed a catcher’s mitt.

  “Is Nick right-or left-handed?” she asked Jonathan.

  Jonathan looked at her as if she’d asked a pretty dumb question, but then he thought about it. “Left,” he said suddenly, “because when there’s a new kid at Sunday school everybody writes himself a name tag, and Nick was sitting over here,” he gestured to his right, “so our elbows kept bumping and we thought it was funny and that’s when we started talking.”

  “You’re a great detective,” Lilah congratulated him. So she’d crocheted the mitt onto the left toothpick hand, smiling to herself as she worked.

  Making the dreamcatcher had been as good for her as she hoped it would be for Nick. It was the first time in ages she’d found anything humorous to think about her in life.

  “Okay, kiddo,” she said, giving him that forced bright smile. “Off to the park.”

  And back to her desperate job search. This week, she didn’t even have to buy the Valley News. Someone had left a copy on a park bench, which she spotted after dropping Jonathan off at the soccer field. In the classified ads section, she read, “Single father is seeking housekeeper. Call 802.555.4432. References essential.”

  It was as if an angel had left the newspaper for her to find. She felt a glimmer of excitement, and then the glimmer began to shine. It would be a perfect job for her.

  She had no references, however. If she asked for one from the son of the woman she’d cared for these past three years she’d be letting him know where she was, and she didn’t want anyone in Whittaker to know where she was. She raised her chin resolutely. She’d have to convince this single father that she’d be the housekeeper of his dreams, references or not.

  Gathering change from the bottom of her handbag, knowing every penny had to be spent carefully, she sought out the pay phone on Main Street and dialed the number. If no one answered, she’d just have to call again and again. In her mind’s eye she saw dollars and dollars clinking through that slot…

  “’Lo.”

  She blinked. She hadn’t expected such a gruff, grumpy voice. “I’m calling to apply for the housekeeping job,” she said. The assured voice she’d planned on using came out timid and shaky.

  “He’s working now,” the voice said, skipping several conversational steps. “What’s your number? He’ll call you back tonight.”

  This time, Lilah got her voice to cooperate. “I don’t have phone service just now,” she said. “Is there a time I could drop by?” She held her breath and crossed her fingers.

  Silence. Then, “Ay-uh. Might talk to you around five. In his office.” He gave her the address. “Side door,” he added.

  Limp with relief, Lilah almost slid to the sidewalk. She had an interview. At five o’clock this afternoon she would get that job. She had to.

  “ANOTHER APPLICANT,” Jesse told Daniel.

  Daniel blew a breath into the hands-free mouthpiece of his cell phone. “When can I talk to her?”

  “She made an appointment. I told her five—figured that would work.”

  Daniel sighed. “I didn’t realize how much time it would take just to hire a housekeeper. What’s your take on that first one I talked to last night?”

  “She gossips. Everybody knows it.”

  “Hmm. The next one had an excellent reference.”

  “From Shaw’s Supermarket, yes. If you were needing a butcher, then she’d be your woman.”

  Daniel had disliked the other two he’d met after five minutes with each of them. “You’re not much help,” he grumbled.

  “I’m not too excited about this housekeeper idea.”

  “Duh,” Daniel said, and frowned. “Well, okay, I’ll make the decision about the one who’s coming in this afternoon. I’m not even going to let you see her.”

  “Humph,” Jesse said, and hung up.

  It was a busy afternoon. Jesse had caught Daniel on the way to the Dupras farm to check on Maggie, a prizewinning pig who should be delivering her piglets in the next few days. After he’d seen Maggie, he went back to the office to see two cats, a dog, a mynah bird who called him “pond scum” in a radio announcer’s voice and a boa constrictor that kept wrapping itself around Daniel’s arm.

  He was still a little rattled by the snake’s fondness for him when Mildred, his receptionist—actually, she did everything except practice medicine—put her head through his office door and said, “Your five o’clock is here. No pet.” She gave Daniel a quizzical look.

  “Housekeeper applicant,” he said.

  “Hmm,” she murmured. “Can you see her now?”

  “Sure. Whoever she is, she can’t be worse than the snake.”

  Mildred shuddered and went back to the waiting room.

  A minute later, he heard a timid knock on the door. The woman who stepped in wasn’t what he expected, not at all like the other applicants. She couldn’t be more than thirty, but her face looked old with worry. She was tall, or at least not short. Her sedate dress was clean but wrinkled, and her blond hair hung limply around her shoulders…

  Hadn’t he said th
e same thing to himself about some other woman recently? Yes, she was the woman he’d seen at the church, the one whose little boy had made friends with Nick.

  She hadn’t seen him there, he thought, so he wouldn’t mention it. He stood and held out his hand. “Daniel Foster,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, shaking his hand, “Lilah Jamison.”

  Her hand was damp, and she was trembling. “Good of you to come by,” Daniel said. “Have a seat. So you’re new in town?”

  “Yes.” Her voice grew firmer. “My husband died, and my son and I needed a fresh start.”

  He nodded. “You have references?”

  She flushed, but she looked him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid not. I’ve never worked as a housekeeper but I’ve always kept a spotless house, even though I worked full-time.” She stared him down as if she expected him to say, Sure you did.

  “What sort of work did you do?”

  When she told him she’d been a nurse doing home care, it occurred to him that it wouldn’t be bad having a nurse in the house to deal with four risk-taking boys. But his attention was distracted by how desperate she looked.

  She wasn’t merely thin, but haggard. The half-moons under her eyes, which were dark blue, indicated sleep deprivation and worry; lusterless hair suggested a poor diet. A modest sundress showed off arms that were too thin. Ivory skin that might once have been beautiful was now dry and lifeless. Her husband’s death must have thrown her a knockout punch. Either he had been much older than she, or he’d died tragically young.

  And she had a little boy. His blood suddenly ran cold. How could she take care of a child in her condition?

  This was hitting him too close to home. The boy—what kind of life was he living? Nick had liked him. Nick was scared of his own shadow, so her son couldn’t be a bully or a troublemaker. But still, Daniel was looking for a housekeeper for his kids and he was taking no chances.

  “Why didn’t you take a nursing job?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle. “The Churchill hospital is—”