Chapter 12
DEACON ENTERED HIS DAUGHTERS’ bedroom at seven and found them already awake. They sat snuggled side by side in one of the twin beds. Every night, he tucked them into separate beds, and every morning, he found them in one, usually Margo’s.
“Good morning, my little princesses.”
“Good morning, our prince,” they chorused. Well, Margo said prince. Maci still missed her r’s and l’s half the time and said pwince. He was in no hurry for them to grow up, so that was fine with him.
“Doughnuts! Doughnuts!” Margo started the chant, and Maci joined her.
“Not for breakfast, but I do have smiley-face pancakes.” He’d brought them up as a bribe. It’d been over a month since his return from the Dominican and Maci’s scare. After a week in the hospital and two weeks at home with him working minimal hours, the girls still hadn’t returned to a regular routine.
“We’ll have to make some room.” He held up the tray and watched them scoot dolls and stuffed animals to the foot of the bed. A wand, a crown, and a plastic hotdog went to the floor, then the hotdog came back when Margo insisted she needed that.
The amount of stuff two small girls could amass in such a short amount of time still amazed him. He knew they’d been up for twenty minutes, had heard their tiny feet hit the floor as they’d gotten out of bed, first one, then another. He still had moments he felt strangled by the possibility there could have been just one set of little feet.
With the bed relatively cleared, he placed the tray over both their laps. They dove in, each picking up his precut bites. Margo dipped hers in the tiny ramekin of syrup; Maci ate hers plain.
“So,” he said, kneeling beside the bed. “I have surgery this morning—”
“Dog or cat?” Margo asked around the food in her mouth.
“Cat. And Aunt Alex is downstairs. She’s going to take you to school, and Nana will pick you up before lunch.” He congratulated himself on slipping in the news of only a half day. They weren’t crazy about their morning preschool, which was common with twins, or so he’d read. They were more than happy to stay home and play, just the two of them. They were even less enthusiastic about the extra three hours that included lunch and nap. The break in routine had only made it worse.
“My side still huts,” Maci said.
He sighed. She’d been given the all clear, but if she said it hurt, how could he say it didn’t, especially when she looked at him with enormous brown eyes?
“Mine hurts, too, Daddy.”
Margo lifted her pajama top to show him her scar, as carefully applied as a two-and-a-half-year-old could manage with a blue marker. Next to it was yesterday’s mark, still visible in red. He hid a smile behind his hand, noting it was on the right side today. Two days before, it had been straight across the middle.
He leaned in, resting his arms on the white sheets dotted with pink ladybugs. “Don’t you miss your friends?”
“No,” Margo said around a mouthful.
“Girls. You have to go back to school,” he said, using his most serious daddy voice.
Maci’s eyes filled to the brim with tears that hung pitifully on impossibly long lashes. “I don’t want to.”
She scooted under the covers, nearly toppling the breakfast tray. And of course, Margo followed. Sniffling cries, covers over the head, they clung to each other like they were being torn apart. It didn’t matter that they were in the very same class.
He hung his head on a long sigh. Okay, he thought. One more day. As much for them as for himself, because he knew how it went when they didn’t want to go. He couldn’t leave that for his sister to deal with. And aside from the scheduled surgery, he didn’t have it in him to walk away from them while they cried for him not to go. Since Maci’s scare…he just couldn’t.
“Okay. One more day. I mean it.” He kissed them both on top of the head and went downstairs to sweet-talk his sister into staying with the girls since both of his backup sitters had recently gotten other jobs.
“Let me guess,” Alex said, smiling over her coffee. “No school today.”
“No. Not today.” He let out a long, heavy breath and poured a cup for himself. He already felt guilty that she’d come over to cover the hours between his first surgery and the nine o’clock preschool start time. “I’m sorry to ask, but can you stay?”
“I can.” Her smile grew. “It’ll cost you.”
The payment was usually watching his twelve-year-old nephew and ten-year-old niece. The girls adored their cousins, so payback was more like her doing him another favor.
Alex walked to the sink with her coffee. “They’re walking all over you.”
“I know. They’ll go next week, for sure.” He’d just told the girls they had to go tomorrow. He was already caving.
“I’m teasing you, Deacon. You know you’re a great father. They just give new meaning to the phrase ‘Daddy’s girls.’”
He smiled, loving the sound of that, but felt the swift, bittersweet sting. They didn’t really have a choice since they didn’t have a mother. She hadn’t wanted to have them, hadn’t even wanted to see them. He wondered not for the first time how he’d gotten involved with someone so cold. Had she hidden her true colors? Had he not looked close enough to see them?
“Is that the only thing on your mind?”
He turned to find his older sister watching him.
“I overheard you on the phone the other night. Calling the hotel. Who’s Clare?”
His chest squeezed. He’d called the hotel five times in the past two weeks, looking for someone who would give him some damn information. It was a dead end. He’d seen a last name on a daily itinerary sheet, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But by the time he’d called the hotel, she was no longer a guest there, and they wouldn’t have given him any personal information anyway.
He thought about Clare waking up and going to breakfast, sitting there alone, waiting on him. And worse, infinitely so, thinking none of it had meant anything to him. The thought of that made him sick.
Alex flipped a second batch of pancakes then turned off the griddle. “You know, I never believed for a second you just decided to stay a couple of extra days to sun yourself.”
In addition to the squeeze, that weight of guilt descended, the one that reminded him he hadn’t been here when his daughter needed him. And he also hadn’t been there for Clare. He couldn’t be in two places at once. Exactly why he hadn’t thought about having a relationship with a woman since the girls were born.
“No one’s blaming you,” Alex said. “Every parent deserves a break. That’s the first one you’ve taken. And the first woman I’ve heard you mention.” She stared at him in that big-sister way she had, like she was trying to read his mind.
He gazed out into the backyard at the swing set that had barely been touched in the past month. Margo hadn’t wanted to swing by herself. Was he making his connection with Clare into more than it was? Because what kind of father would leave his children for a few lust-filled days with a woman he’d just met?
“I can’t find her,” he finally said, turning from the window. “I’ve tried. I can’t find her.”
“What do you mean? You don’t have her number?”
“No.”
“Her name?”
“Just her first name.”
“Wow. That’s…something.”
“It’s not like that. She didn’t… We didn’t…” Deacon pressed his fingers between his eyes, where a tension headache was forming. It was too much to explain. He didn’t know how, and looking at his watch, he saw he didn’t have time.
* * *
CLARE MOVED AROUND THE tables of her kindergarten classroom, laying a sheet of paper with six large sorting circles and a baggy of mixed snacks at every other seat.
In spite of the awkward beginning and the challenge of teaching a new grade, she loved her job. Just over two months into it, she was getting used to all the things kindergartners couldn’t do that her fifth graders had long since mastered, like zipping up their coats or opening containers of yogurt.
Twenty-two five- and-six-year-olds were a handful, but they were so sweet with their formal uniforms constantly askew. Their fresh baby faces and minds full of amazingly creative ideas.
“Knock, knock.”
Clare turned to see Nicole in the doorway and smiled at her friendly face. Just a few years older than Clare, Nicole had been married nearly ten years to her high school sweetheart, and they had four children. Petite, with thick blond hair and a quick wit, Clare had liked her immediately.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Want to grab some coffee? Mine are in art until ten thirty.”
“Sure. I’ve got until then before mine are back from music.”
The teachers’ lounge was in the upper-grade building, but they had just enough time. Let me grab my coat so I don’t freeze to death.
Nicole laughed and stepped farther into the room. “This is a warm spell.”
“If you call thirty degrees a warm spell. Which I don’t.” She slipped on her coat, double-checking her hat and gloves were in the pockets.
“I still love these,” Nicole said, looking at the bulletin board to the right of the door.
“Me, too. I haven’t had the heart to take them down.” Before taking early retirement due to health reasons, their previous teacher had used Clare’s nuptials as a writing lesson and had each child write one piece of advice for a happy marriage.
There was the expected; Be nice, Be honest, Love each other, all written in adorable kindergarten inventive spelling.
Et owt a lot. That by Isaiah which made her smile.
And then there was Leo’s: furst you haf to git mareed.
Smart kid. Plus, he gave the best hugs.
In addition to marriage advice, she’d been greeted on her first day with congratulations from parents—understandably, most of them were there to get a look at the new teacher—and a banner decorated with each child’s handprint. And then there were the rapid-fire questions from the children.
Did you have cake? Was there a flower girl? Where’s your ring?
She’d been able to answer honestly that yes, there was a cake and a flower girl. The ring inquiry from the little girl holding her hand was more difficult. Thankfully, she’d been saved by the girl’s mother, who shooed her away to hang up her coat. That had left her with two other mothers, watching her expectantly, their bright smiles slipping as she told them the truth.
It was all very sweet, entirely thoughtful, and thoroughly mortifying. And since no one mentioned her new marriage after that, she figured news traveled fast.
“Oh, hey,” Clare said, closing her door. “I had an idea.”
“Let’s hear it.”
They left Clare’s classroom and started down the hall. “Okay. I was thinking I would ask each student to bring in food labels, things they’re familiar with. We can alphabetize them, sort by food group. I could put prices on them, maybe follow up with a field trip to a local supermarket.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
“Really? You don’t see any problems?”
“Nope. Just maybe include a note to the parents to send a variety of foods so you don’t end up with all cereal and chips. If you really want to do the food-group thing.”
“Good point and why I always ask you. You’re a genius.”
“You can call me genius, but really it’s because I have a five-year-old who only wants to eat cereal and chips.”
Clare smiled and wrapped her scarf around her neck as they pushed through the door and crossed the courtyard to the other building. March was going out like a lion, and spring in Chicago, she was told, was still a full two months away. But she loved the school. Loved the history of it, the way the chapel smelled of wood oil and candles and age. The dark-green ivy leaves dusted with snow that clung to the weathered brick and stone.
Bracing herself, she quickened her steps against the icy wind howling through the breezeway. It made her long for the white sand and warm breezes of the Dominican Republic—which made her think of Deacon. She couldn’t seem to go a day without thinking of him.
Nicole kept pace beside her.
The blast of heat when they entered the other building felt instantly suffocating, and Clare fought her way out of scarf and coat as they walked the short distance to the teachers’ lounge.
They passed the first-grade teacher, Patsy, and her cohort, the third-grade teacher, Mary Margaret, coming out as they went in.
“Good morning,” she said.
They each gave her a bland reply and the same sour look they wore every day.
“Miss Franklin.” Patsy insisted on calling her that. Whether to send a signal they were not friends or to point out that she was indeed not married, Clare wasn’t sure. “I need to ask you to please keep your playground time to twenty minutes. When you’re late, I’m forced to change my schedule.”
“Oh. Okay.” Because God forbid more than two classes should overlap times on the playground. But they had their rules. She was just the new girl on the block.
“Good Lord,” Nicole said. “Could they be any more uptight? I feel sorry for the kids in their classes.”
“Yeah.” They hadn’t been the most welcoming to Clare, and still, she wasn’t sure why she wanted them to like her.
“It’s not you. Patsy criticized the new priest last week for passing out yo-yos. She said it got her class riled.”
When Clare stepped into the lounge, the smell hit her like another blast. “Oh, my gosh!”
“Good grief. Were they boiling cabbage in here? Burning broccoli?”
“I don’t know”—Clare put a hand over her mouth and nose—“but it’s really bad.” Her stomach turned and rolled, and her mouth filled with a slick, acidic saliva. She bolted for the toilet in the attached bathroom.
When she’d emptied what little she had in her stomach, she lifted her head.
Nicole was there with a wet paper towel. “You okay?”
Clare held the paper towel to her forehead and sat back on her knees.
“I had the same problem when I was pregnant with my first,” Nicole said. “It was awful. Everything in the world made me gag.”
Clare’s stomach clenched again at the word pregnant.
Nicole’s eyes went wide. “You’re not—”
“No. I couldn’t be. I…”
“You sure? Because that’s what I said with my third.”
“No. I mean, yes. I’m sure.” But she wasn’t sure. And she leaned over the toilet again.