One Of A Kind Dad

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 and 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 the 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—”

“Filled with nurses already.” He saw her face tighten, but she didn’t sound bitter.

“I understand,” he said, and he did. “Nepotism” wasn’t in the local vocabulary. It was simply understood that jobs were passed down from generation to generation. “You seem like a pleasant person, which is important to me, since you’d be keeping house for four foster children. But without references—”

She seemed to sag in her chair.

“Tell you what,” he said, starting to think that perhaps because this woman needed help so badly he could trust her to do the job well. “Give me your address and phone number and I’ll call you with my final decision. I’ve had several applicants,” dreadful ones, he reminded himself, “and I need to think things over.”

“As you said, we’re new here. No phone service yet.” He could tell she was trying to be matter-of-fact, but he could also see the pain in her eyes. “I’ll come by the clinic in a few days. You could leave a message with your assistant.”

She stood up, too, and just as Daniel held out his hand to shake hers again, he heard a familiar sound, one of the boys coming to tell him about some wonderful—or terrible—thing that had just happened.

“Daniel!”

“Mom!”

His job applicant rushed toward the boy who’d yelled, “Mom,” and said, “Honey, you were supposed to stay outside…”

But Nick drowned her out. “This is Jonathan, the one I was telling you about. I saw him in his car, and he said he had a present for me. Look what his mom made!”

Daniel, not as rattled as he had been about the snake but close to it, moved around his desk to stare at the weird thing Nick held in his hand. It could be a voodoo doll. No voodoo in his house. Or it might be a Satanic totem.

A Satanic totem that looked like a Red Sox baseball player?

He tried to clear his head. “That was kind of you,” he said to the mysterious Lilah Jamison, who had an arm around her son. “What is it?”

“A dreamcatcher,” she answered for Nick. Then she relaxed her hold on Jonathan and turned her attention to Nick, her voice soft and musical. “It captures bad dreams before you dream them. You told Jonathan you have nightmares, but if you really and truly believe in it, we’re sure this dreamcatcher will bring an end to them.”

“I do believe in it,” Nick said reverently. “Jonathan told me it worked for him. Look at it, Daniel,” Nick said. “It even has a catcher’s mitt on its left hand!”

Daniel admired this thing they called a dreamcatcher, then gazed at Lilah’s son. He was a little taller than Nick, with his mother’s blond hair and deep-blue eyes. But he didn’t have his mother’s look of despair. Whatever had befallen them, Jonathan was a happy child.

His gaze moved toward Lilah, and she must have had that feeling of being watched, because she looked up at him at once. “I think you’ve just provided your reference,” he said, ruffling Jonathan’s hair, “and he’s an excellent one.”

Her eyes widened. “Thank you,” she said.

He’d decided he could trust her to be good with the boys. Even if she wasn’t a perfect housekeeper, any assistance would be an improvement. He needed help, she needed help—they could help each other and everybody would be better off.

“I’d like the rest of the family to meet you before I make a final decision, and you should meet them so you know what you’d be getting into,” he said. “Stay for dinner. It’s the best way to catch them all at once.”

He saw Jonathan’s gaze turn on her, but she gave him a quick glance and said, “Oh, I’m not sure we should…”

“It’s some kind of chicken stew, it smells great, and there’s apple pie for dessert.”

“Mom?” The look in Jonathan’s eyes was a dead giveaway.

“Well, I…” She was wavering.

Then she turned to Daniel. Her determined expression made him sure she’d say no, but she surprised him. “Thank you for your invitation,” she said formally. “We accept.”

Nick and Jonathan sped away, cheering. Lilah looked limp. “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll just wait outside.”

“Look around, if you want to,” Daniel said. “I’m warning you. It’s a big place.” He opened the back door of the clinic, which led into the house.

She gave him a slight smile. “I’m not afraid of hard work.”

You’re afraid of something, Daniel thought as she ignored the open door and went instead through the waiting room into the yard. He shook his head. She was running scared, and he wished he could figure out why.

IN THE YARD, LILAH tried to still the trembling of her hands. She wanted and needed this job so badly. But she hadn’t intended to become a member of Daniel Foster’s family. She’d imagined herself slipping in at nine and out at five, a human vacuum cleaner, nothing more. This situation might be too intimate. She’d wanted to stay invisible. But she had to have a job. For Jonathan’s sake. And this one was her best bet.

Worry was wearing her out. To distract herself, she studied the house. The patterned wood shingles were painted lavender, with the molding details picked out in dark purple and turquoise. It was an enormous place, with a turret rising into the sky. She’d entered the clinic through a separate entrance that had its own stoop and overhang, with a discreet brass plaque on the door that read, Serenity Valley Veterinary Clinic, Daniel Foster, DVM. and in front of it, the small graveled parking area where she’d left her car.

She gazed back at the fancifully painted building. The man she’d just met didn’t look like a lavender, purple and turquoise kind of person. She’d read his name on the door plate, wondered if he could be the Daniel who was Nick’s foster father, and was expecting to see an old, fatherly country vet, not someone close to her own age, undeniably masculine, tall, lean and muscular. She’d felt a moment of fright when she walked into his office, and she wondered—would the sight of a large, powerful man always have this effect on her?

The thought was enough to dim her mood, her hopes, the illusion of confidence she’d been able to maintain after that first uncomfortable minute. If Daniel offered her the job, she’d stay as far away from him as she could.

He seemed to be a kind person. His sandy hair, which fell across his forehead, made him look boyish. His eyes were an interesting color—mocha, she’d call it. They were thoughtful eyes, assessing, analyzing her while they talked.

But you never knew. Bruce had been attractive, too. And she’d let herself become dependent on him; too dependent to run away from his abuse, too afraid she couldn’t raise Jonathan on her own.

His years in prison had changed her. Now, even though she had no money, she was independent. Confident in her ability to give Jonathan the important things—love, support, emotional security. She’d never again let a man take control of her life. But just being a housekeeper wouldn’t be taking a risk, would it?

Daniel appeared at the back door. “Come on in,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Here we go. My future and Jonathan’s depend on the next few hours.

DANIEL HADN’T CALLED THE boys to dinner yet. He wanted them to barrel in one or two at a time, as they usually did, so Lilah wouldn’t grab her son and run screaming from the chaos.

The fact that the kitchen was relatively empty seemed to unnerve her for a second, but then he saw her face as she took in her surroundings. The old-fashioned maple cupboards, which rose high enough so that even he needed a stepladder to reach the upper ones, the big range and the even bigger refrigerator. The old brick floor, worn smooth by the feet of several generations of occupants. The round table that sat in the middle of the room surrounded by mismatched chairs. The table centerpiece: a bicycle helmet instead of flowers.

He couldn’t read her expression. Was she thinking it wasn’t quite as clean as a kitchen should be for a houseful of children? Was she appalled by the oilcloth cover on the table? If that was it, was she out of her mind? Did she have any idea what laundry problems real tablecloths and napkins would cause?

He reminded himself to postpone showing her the laundry piled in the basement until after she’d accepted the job.

“Jesse, meet our job applicant, Lilah Jamison. She and her son are staying for dinner.”

Jesse, stirring something in a gigantic pot, wheeled around on his good leg. “Major Jesse O’Reilly at your service, ma’am.” Having done his duty, he whirled back to the stove. Jesse didn’t want a housekeeper, and he’d spoken pretty crisply. Then he stopped stirring, and slowly turned back to take another look at Lilah. His expression changed. Daniel could tell that now he was seeing her not as a potential interloper, but simply as a nice-looking young woman who needed feeding.

Jesse dipped a spoon into the pot and held it aloft. “Mind tasting this stuff?” he asked her. “Might need more salt.”

She joined him at the stove, instantly looking comfortable with the situation she’d walked into. “It’s just right,” she told him, licking her lips.

“When’s dinner?” Nick and Jonathan shot through the door, Nick yelling the question at Jesse.

“Hold on, hold on,” Jesse grumbled, and focused his attention on Jonathan.

“This is Jesse,” Nick said to Jonathan.

“And this is Jonathan, Lilah’s son,” Daniel explained.

Jesse gave Jonathan the same thoughtful gaze he’d given Lilah. “I need a junior opinion on this stew,” he said, and handed spoons to the boys.

Daniel wondered if Jesse was starting to look a little obvious. At just the right time, Will raced in through the door. “Brunswick stew,” he shouted. “I could smell it all the way upstairs.”

“Hey, Will, you almost knocked Nick over.”

Daniel smiled at Jason, noticing how his voice had deepened even more in the past few weeks, seeing how he ruffled Will’s hair and smiled even as he scolded him.

“You said four boys?” Lilah murmured, looking stunned by the sudden frenzy of activity.

“Yeah, it just feels like more. That’s why we do a lot of yelling around here. Have to, if you want anybody to hear you. Meet Jason, he’s the blond one—and Maury, the one who looks like a football player, which he is. This is Lilah, and this is Jonathan. Did anybody let Aengus in?”

“I’ll do it,” Jason said.

“We’re moving in on it, kids,” Jesse said. “Grab a couple of those round loaves of bread out of the pantry, Sergeant Jamison. Step lively. It’s that door over there.” He pointed with his stirring spoon and juices dripped on the floor.

“The rest of you boys get that table set and everybody sit down. You’re startin’ to make me dizzy.”

NOBODY’S LIFE COULD BE this good. The boys threw cutlery and plates haphazardly onto the table and sat down at once, including Jonathan. Shyly, Lilah joined them.

“What can I get you to drink? Water? Wine? Beer from my secret stash?”

“Water, please,” she said, “and thank you.” Secret stash? He was a closet drinker? While he harbored a houseful of foster boys, he drank himself into oblivion night after night?

“Good choice,” he said. “I was down to my last beer—I have one every Saturday night after I get the kids to bed, and the wine is the stuff Jesse uses for his fancy beef stews. The alcohol boils off,” he explained, as if he thought she might be planning to report him for serving wine to children.

So. Not a big drinker. He had to have a different fatal flaw. All men had a fatal flaw.

Or maybe just the ones who’d had some impact on her life.

Already stretched as tight as a bungee cord, every bone in her body went stiff when the biggest dog she’d ever seen leapt into the room and ran directly toward Jonathan. She gasped, jumping up so rapidly she knocked over her chair.