“Jelly Bean, you didn’t tell me your teacher was so hot!” Kyle slid behind the wheel of the borrowed Range Rover.
“He’s not hot, Daddy!” Caroline laughed from her seat in the back. “He’s Mr. Hathaway.”
“And Mr. Hathaway is a total fox.”
Kyle had been serious when he’d said he had meant to come into the school earlier and introduce himself, but the move had been all-consuming and Caroline seemed to be adjusting without his interference. And anyway, there was a ton of work to catch up on, so taking the time to stop at the school hadn’t seemed necessary. Kyle had been surprised when Caroline had said her new teacher was a man. He hadn’t thought there were male teachers at Caroline’s grade level very often. Somehow though, when she’d talked about Mr. Hathaway over dinner, Kyle had imagined someone older. Much older. Somewhere between Mr. Rogers and Santa Claus. Instead, he had arrived at the school to find Mr. Hathaway was exactly the opposite, with wavy dark hair that curled around his ears and enough stubble on his jaw to fall into the sexy-not-lazy category. His bright-blue eyes had glowered at Kyle as Mr. Hathaway had lectured him about punctuality.
A shame about the attitude, but Kyle didn’t have to like him to admire him from the school parking lot.
Because that didn’t sound creepy at all.
“Can we have pizza for dinner?” Caroline asked from the back seat.
“We’re having jelly beans for dinner.” Kyle smiled.
“We are?” Caroline’s eyes widened.
“No, Jelly Bean. I’m making good stuff for dinner.” He signaled at the intersection and turned left toward his dad’s house.
“Like what?” Her voice dropped suspiciously.
“Well, owl brains were on sale at the store today, so I made a stew with those along with some dragon tongues and cat whiskers.” They played this game almost every night.
“Daddy! That’s gross!”
“No it’s not! Cat whiskers are very good for you. Lots of fiber. But you have to be careful they don’t get stuck in your teeth.”
“Why can’t we have pizza?”
“You know pizza is a sometimes food, not a weeknight food. Don’t make me tell you what’s in pepperoni. And contrary to popular belief, tomato sauce is not a serving of vegetables.”
“A tomato is a fruit,” Caroline said.
“It is?” He let his voice rise and smiled incredulously at his daughter in the rearview mirror.
“Yes, because it has seeds and only fruits have seeds.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“From Mr. Hathaway.”
“Oh, Mr. Hathaway said so?”
“Mm-hmm.” She nodded, using her whole body for emphasis. Her rubber boots bounced up and down against the edge of the booster seat.
“What else did Mr. Hathaway say?”
“That we need to drink lots of milk so that we have strong bones, and that ice cream is only okay as a treat because it has too much sugar.”
Kyle chuckled. He suspected Mr. Hathaway was one of those my body is a temple gym freaks who believed the answer to everything was whey protein and chia seeds. He’d been tall, and while it was hard to gauge the body under his bulky rain jacket, Mr. Hathaway’s pants had been soaked from the rain, giving Kyle a chance to admire what appeared to be a set of well-muscled legs underneath them.
“Are you learning about the food groups at school?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” Caroline said.
“What else did you learn?”
“Uhhh . . . I forget.” The universal kid phrase for I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, splashing through rain-filled potholes. Kyle didn’t remember it raining quite so much in Red Creek when he was growing up. It was supposed to be one of the benefits to leaving Seattle, having more sunny days for a change, but it had rained pretty well nonstop since they had moved back.
The Bluetooth clipped to his ear chirped, signaling an incoming call. The plastic was uncomfortable, but it was the best way to manage his clients while he was in the car. His regular set of wheels had been built before hands-free had become a thing, and temporarily syncing his phone to Ben’s SUV had seemed pointless when he had already been stupidly late to pick up Caroline from school. Kyle pointed at Caroline’s reflection in the mirror. She mimicked locking her mouth shut with a key, and he depressed the earpiece. “It’s Kyle.”
“Oh thank god!” Shannon sounded stressed.
Kyle put on his crisis-management voice. It was his preferred tone when Shannon called. “Hey, Shannon. Did you get the confirmation about the charity auction? I sent it over last night.”
“I don’t care about the auction. I’m freaking out right now.”
Kyle hoped she didn’t hear him sigh. Freaking out was Shannon’s general state of being.
“Really? What’s the problem?”
“Madison’s got a birthday party tomorrow, and she didn’t bother to show me the invitation. I found it in her backpack this afternoon. Honestly. The kid thinks I’m a mind reader.”
“Okay. So you want me to RSVP?” It was important to keep Shannon on task. She had a tendency to spiral into panic.
“No, I took care of that. I know the girl’s mom from skating club. I told her I’d sent an email RSVP weeks ago, and when she said she hadn’t got it, I pretended like it got lost in a spam filter.”
Kyle couldn’t help his eye roll. Spam filters: the perfect escape clause. He scrunched up his face at Caroline in the rearview mirror, and she giggled.
“So what can I do to help?”
Shannon had been his boss since he’d left college, first at the charity, and then when he’d gone virtual with his business. She’d agreed to keep him on as a virtual assistant when he’d announced he was moving back to the East Coast, and he was grateful for that, but it still baffled him sometimes that she was a grown woman managing a million-dollar charity and a family.
“A gift, Kyle! I don’t have time to go shopping. The party’s at four o’clock tomorrow. You can work with that, right?”
Kyle turned onto his father’s street.
“Sure thing. How old is the birthday girl?”
“She’s in Madison’s class. Haven’t you been listening?”
“Okay, so eight, then? I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks,” Shannon said. “Put it on the Amex if you can.”
“No problem. I’ll email you the confirmation when I get it sorted.”
“Do you have to work tonight, Daddy?” Caroline asked when he’d finished his call.
“A little bit,” he said. Caroline crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her lower lip. “Don’t give me that look. I taught you that look and it has no power over me.”
They pulled into the driveway. Kyle hopped out and came around to open the SUV’s back door and take Caroline’s bag. Ben would be by to take back the Range Rover later.
“Daddy?” Caroline asked as Kyle hung his own coat by the front door.
“Yes, Jelly Bean?”
“If you’re working tonight, does that mean we can have pizza?”
Shopping for Shannon only took twenty minutes online. Kyle found a Princess Amazonia gift set, no doubt a new release since the movie had been spun out into a TV show too. It was a too-convenient ploy to separate doting parents from their money. The set was complete with all the dolls and the Princess’s jungle tree hut. Caroline assured him that it was super awesome amazing excellent. He pretended not to see the wistfulness on her face when he showed her the picture of the giant tree fort. A toy like that would earn him at least a month’s worth of Dad Points if he bought it for her, but the total cost was more than Kyle’s income that week, and maybe the week after too. Enough of Shannon’s money spent though, and shipping was guaranteed to arrive, wrapped, to the birthday girl’s house by noon the following day, so at least one little girl would be happy.
He was pulling a lentil loaf out of the oven when his dad got home from work.
“Hey, Dad!”
A month into his return to Red Creek, and Kyle still wasn’t used to how much older his dad had gotten since Kyle had gone away to college. His thinning hair had turned silver where it had once been a soft brown. The strain of the last few years had etched new lines in his face that were visible all the time, and not only when he laughed or frowned. His shirt stretched over a gut that balanced precariously on his belt.
“That smells amazing,” he said.
Kyle grinned. “Bet you say that to all the girls. The kale will be ready in five minutes.”
“Kale?” His father’s expression clouded.
“You liked it last time, Dad. You’re worse than Caroline sometimes.”
His dad smiled, the way he always did when Kyle said his daughter’s name. “It amazes me that you know how to make all these things. Did you at least make mashed potatoes?”
“Yes, Dad. And if you eat it all, you can have two scoops of ice cream instead of one for dessert.”
“Can I have two scoops of ice cream?” Caroline asked as she wandered into the kitchen.
“We’ll see.” Kyle meant no, but he knew she’d take it as yes. It was a trap he fell into less lately. “Go wash your hands. We’re going to have dinner.”
Ten minutes later, the Fenton clan, all three of them, were circled around the small kitchen table.
“So how was school today?” Kyle’s dad asked Caroline.
“Good.” Caroline pushed her lentils around her plate. “Daddy was late to pick me up, and Mr. Hathaway was mad.”
Kyle wondered at his daughter’s ability to always zero in on the details he least wanted to talk about. Hadn’t anything notable happened at recess?
“Mr. Hathaway was mad?” his father said.
“Yes. Because he got all wet and Daddy was supposed to call to say he was going to be late, but he didn’t and that made Mr. Hathaway angry, but he said it was unfor . . . unfor . . . What did he say, Daddy?”
“Unforeseen.”
“Unforeseen and so it was okay. And then Daddy said Mr. Hathaway was hot.”
A mouthful of mashed potatoes lodged itself in Kyle’s throat, and he choked.
“Are you okay?” Caroline asked. He tried to smile, but that seemed to make it harder to breathe somehow. His eyes watered and he flailed, knocking over Caroline’s juice cup as he reached for his own drink. Caroline leaned over to pat him on the back, and Kyle gave a weak smile and wobbly thumbs-up. His dad appeared next to him, with a cloth to wipe up the spilled juice. Caroline kept patting him, her little hands becoming increasingly forceful, although they didn’t cover enough area to really make any difference. Eventually he held up a hand and gulped down big swigs of water from his glass.
“Sorry. I’m okay, Bean.” He smiled at her and wiped his eyes with a napkin. Her lower lip wobbled, so he pulled her onto his lap and buried his face in her hair. The smell of his daughter, warm bread and a hint of sweetness from her No Tangles shampoo, was one of his favorite things.
“Well, I think that’s pretty much it for dinner, don’t you?” his father said as he came back to the table. “Caroline, how about we watch a movie tonight?”
“Princess Amazonia!” Caroline shrieked as she scrambled from Kyle’s lap. “Come on, Grandpa!”
He smiled at her. “Why don’t you go get it set up? I’ll be right in.” As he glanced at Kyle, the expression on his face said We Need to Talk. Kyle had seen that pointed glint in his eye so many times over the course of his life, and it almost never boded well for him.
The two men sat in silence at the table while they listened to Caroline’s little feet thump toward the den.
“You’re going to rot her brain if you keep suggesting after-dinner TV,” Kyle said when he heard the TV turn on. “Aren’t I supposed to be signing her up for endless cello and tennis lessons?”
“Kyle.” His dad was apparently unwilling to be distracted by the idea of his only granddaughter as a prodigy. “I’m not sure that telling your daughter you’re attracted to her first-grade teacher is the best way to get settled here.”
Kyle rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m not attracted to him, Dad. I was simply stating an empirical fact. It was nothing.”
“It’s not nothing if she’s bringing it up at dinner.”
“It was nothing. Although if you’d seen him, you’d know I’m not wrong.” Kyle smiled and waited for his father’s returning smile at the joke. It didn’t happen.
“That’s not the point. Your daughter has lost her mother, and you don’t want to confuse her about . . .” His father’s brow creased as he searched for words, showing those worried lines Kyle didn’t remember again.
“Please, Dad, spare me. I’m not going to do anything stupid. My daughter’s ogre of a teacher gave me a lecture for being late, and I wanted to lighten the mood afterwards. I didn’t mean it and Caroline knows that. We play around all the time,” he said. When his father grimaced, Kyle sighed and tried a softer approach. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll tell her I wasn’t serious about it, but trust me. I know my kid. In an hour, any thoughts of hot Mr. Hathaway will be replaced by Princess Amazonia and her jungle friends, and nothing else will matter.”
On cue, Caroline’s voice called from the other room.
“Grandpa, it’s starting! You’re going to miss it!”
“There’s popcorn in the cupboard if you want it.” Kyle stood to collect their plates.
“It’s not the all-natural crap you bought last week, is it?”
“Yes, it is. Fake popcorn butter is all chemicals. I don’t want Caroline eating that.”
His dad rolled his eyes. It was a Fenton trait, passed down through generations.
“Grandpa!” Caroline called again.