“What’s with the face?” Rebecca picked up Adam’s plate as she walked by.
“What face?” he asked.
“Yours. It’s all grumpy. And you didn’t say three words during dinner.” She turned the sink on to wash the dishes, and Adam went to pull a towel from the rack to help. Upstairs, a herd of elephants thundered down the hall.
“Peter Thomas Burton! David Christopher Burton!” Rebecca’s voice hit a pitch that made Adam flinch. “You go sit down and get your homework started in the next two minutes, or you won’t believe the chores I will find for you to do!” There was laughter upstairs, the sound of a door slamming. “Shit.” She sighed.
“Swear jar,” Adam said. Rebecca glared at him from the corner of her eye, but then fished into her pocket and threw a couple of coins into the half-full glass jar on the window sill.
“Can you go see what they’re doing?” she asked her husband, Cameron, who was sitting at the kitchen table. Cam glanced up from his cell phone, opened his mouth, saw the expression on his wife’s face, and headed toward the whirlwind his sons were making.
“Never have teenagers, Adam.” Rebecca sighed again as she rattled cups around in soapy water. “Sometimes I think you’ve got the right idea with teaching. You get a new set of babies every year and never have to deal with teenage sass. All the sighing and mumbling anytime I try to talk to them. It would be so much easier if they were little again.”
“Says you,” Adam said. Rebecca’s memory on the issue was clearly selective. Six-year-old sass could be very effective, regardless of how she remembered it with her own kids.
“I miss my sweet boys who wanted to sit on my lap and cuddle. I’d go so far as to say I miss the time I found Dave coloring on the upstairs wall with permanent marker. That was easy to fix. The destructive force of teenagers could bring a small country to its knees in a week.”
“At least they’re clean.” Adam picked up a glass to dry it. “I caught one of my students wiping his nose with the back of his hand and then rubbing it on another kid’s sleeve at recess yesterday.”
“Clean’s relative, little brother. The dishes I found under Pete’s bed last week were so moldy they were on the verge of developing language skills and religion.” She shuddered. “And there’s no remorse. When they were small and I gave them a hard time, they were so apologetic, they’d follow me around the house and hug me anytime I stopped moving. These days, it’s a miracle if I can get them to look up from whatever damn screen they have going while I talk to them.”
Adam knew that feeling well. At six years old, half his students were too plugged in already. Every one of them knew how to use a cell phone. He wasn’t sure his family had owned a computer when he had been his students’ age.
He and Rebecca stood side by side in companionable silence for a minute. Their dishwashing routine went back years, and the familiarity of it now was comforting.
Of course, Rebecca decided that comfort should only last so long.
“You didn’t answer my question from before,” she said.
“What question was that?” He’d hoped she might have forgotten. Rebecca shook a soapy hand at him.
“Don’t avoid the subject! You’ve been distracted since you got here. Everything okay at work?”
“Yes. No.” He may have growled the last word. “I don’t know. I met a new parent today.”
“Are they still trying to woo you with pastry?” Rebecca’s nose wrinkled. “Adam, I wish you’d let me drop a few hints with—”
“No!” he said, and she jumped, rattling dishes. “Sorry. No, you don’t need to do that. It’s not . . .” He licked his lips to buy time. “It’s not a mother, it was . . . He was my newest student’s father.”
“Father?” Rebecca’s eyes sparkled with mischief that only big sisters can imagine. “As in a man? A hot man?”
“A young man. I think. I don’t know. He looked young, too young to have a six-year-old. Definitely too young to . . .”
After he’d watched the Range Rover pull away from the school, he’d gone straight into the office and asked to see Caroline Fenton’s file. It had been very thin, with only her enrollment form and vaccination records. He’d read it all anyway. Her last school was Oak Park Public School in Seattle. No known allergies or medical conditions. Under parental information, her father’s name was listed as Kyle Fenton. His marital status said widowed. Caroline’s mother’s name was Olivia Russo. Under Olivia’s marital status, someone had circled Other and then written in deceased. There was a secondary contact listed for emergencies—Gord Fenton: Caroline’s grandfather.
“To what?” Rebecca said.
There were so many ways to answer that question. Too young to have lost his wife? Too young to be managing on his own? Too young to show the easy aptitude for parenting the man in skinny jeans had shown when he’d swaggered up to the school? Had he swaggered? Adam’s mind was wandering.
“Nothing,” he said. “Too nothing. I don’t see a lot of dads at work. It stood out. That’s all.”
The arch of Rebecca’s eyebrow told him she wasn’t buying it.
“You know . . .” she said, keeping her hands busy with a grimy lasagna pan, “if there was a hot dad—”
“I can’t date a parent.”
“Says you. But it’s practically May, so he won’t be a parent for long and—”
“The answer’s still no. Anyway, that’s not what I was thinking about when I brought up Caroline and her dad.” Despite the memories of Kyle’s long fingers and easy smile that had kept intruding over dinner, he really had spent most of the time wondering about their story.
“Caroline?” Rebecca straightened. “As in Caroline Fenton? Gord Fenton’s granddaughter?”
Shit.
Adam’s jaw tightened, and his ears were on fire. He hated small towns sometimes.
“Are you blushing? You’re blushing!” Rebecca’s tone was teasing, but she removed the plate that he had in a death grip from his hands before he snapped it in two.
“How do you know about Caroline?”
“Holy shit, it is Gord’s grandkid!”
“Swear jar.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I heard him talking. Gord. He comes into the café all the time. Sweet guy. He works at the hospital. He has the best stories about the things that happen there.” She paused, like she was waiting for a response. The hospital was down the street from the café, but Adam didn’t see what that had to do with what they were discussing. “Anyway, he came in a couple months ago, all excited, talking about how his son and his granddaughter were coming to live with him. He had her picture on his phone, showed it to anyone who would stop long enough to see it. Cute kid.”
“Did he talk about his son?” Adam asked. “Or maybe his son’s wife?”
“Not really, I don’t think so. Oh! He might have said the mother wasn’t in the picture anymore, that his son and the kid were coming to start over? Why?”
“Nothing.” Adam shook his head. “Caroline said her mother was in heaven.”
“Poor thing. Six years old and she’s lost her mother.” Rebecca’s expression grew sad. “How long ago did it happen? How did her father seem to be holding up?”
Adam shrugged. They were gossiping like old ladies now, which he hated doing, especially when it came to his students and their parents. At least he’d managed to distract Rebecca from his love life, or lack thereof.
“I couldn’t tell. He was late, picked up his daughter, apologized, and they were gone again.”
“We should have them over for dinner.” Rebecca put the last pot in the dish rack.
“What? Why?” Adam asked.
“Because moving someplace new is hard. Losing loved ones is harder. And I know Gord would come at least. He said his son only cooks things made of soy.” She wrinkled her nose. “Everyone deserves a good meal.”
Adam couldn’t argue with that last part. Rebecca had done her best to keep him from starving after he’d moved to Red Creek. It felt awkward to be extending the invitation to Caroline and her father though. Adam didn’t want them to think he and Rebecca were being nosy.
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “His father lives here, you said it yourself. He probably grew up here. I’m sure it’s not all that bad for them.”
“Well, you don’t have to come.” The taunting big sister look had returned. “Despite the amount of time you spend in this house, you don’t actually live with us. If you don’t care about Hot Young Daddy Fenton, I’ll schedule them for a night when you’re not around.”
“He’s not Hot Young—” He bit his tongue. She was baiting him now. “Fine. That’s nice of you, Rebecca. Let me know how it goes.” He put the last pan away in the cupboard above the stove and then went out to the front hall to collect his still damp coat.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca called from the kitchen.
“I have to go; I’ve got work to do.”
“Let me know if you change your mind!” Her voice followed him out the front door. He ground his teeth at her teasing. He didn’t need her matchmaking, and anyway it was a moot point. The school year was nearly over, and then he wouldn’t have to think about Kyle Fenton and his daughter again.