For the Sake of the Children

“Tell me about it, sister,” Dana agreed.

Dana had known from the instant she’d met Suze on her first tour of the school a month ago that the woman would be a keeper friend.

She couldn’t explain the connection. It wasn’t just the way Suze had jumped in and found her a new place to rent after the house Dana had thought she’d secured had fallen through. It wasn’t even that Suze reminded her of her big sister, Tracy, who was older by four years but shorter by at least that many inches. Dana’s little sister was smaller than Dana was, too.

No, it had to be the snap of mischief in Suze’s dark eyes—a snap you might miss behind the otherwise professional mask. But Dana had spotted it. And that glint had told her she’d found a kindred spirit.

Suze stretched and yawned, her own weariness from the day showing. “So, if I can be nosy, how long have you and your ex been divorced?”

“Three years.” Dana stared up at the ceiling and calculated when Marty had presented the papers to her with a flourish. “No, make that nearly four.”

“But…” Suze hesitated. The silence hung, awkwardly the ticking of the clock bringing to Dana’s mind the morning’s earlier awkward silence between her and Patrick.

“But what?”

“Well, it’s none of my business, but I assumed your ex was the father of your little girl. And she’s, what, three?”

Dana agreed. It was none of Suze’s business. She didn’t tear her gaze from the ceiling tiles. “He is,” she answered cryptically.

“Oh.”

Dana could hear the thrum of vacuum cleaners starting up in the halls. Trash cans rattled as they were emptied room by room, the sound nearing the clinic door.

Suze made a show of groaning. When Dana glanced the vice principal’s way, Suze wiggled toes she’d liberated from pointy high heels.

“It’s getting better, isn’t it? You? The job?”

Dana groaned for real. “I’m as tired as if I’d worked a full-moon shift in the E.R. on New Year’s Eve. I think I seriously underestimated what a school nurse does. I was darn busy, I didn’t even get a chance to pee. And I had at least two kids in here upchucking.”

“Pizza,” Suze said.

“Pizza?”

“Yeah. They served pizza in the lunchroom today, and we always have kids upchucking whenever they serve pizza. It’s some immutable law. You’re lucky it was only two.”

“Cooks can’t figure out what’s going on?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“And what’s with all the neurotic asthma tests?”

Suze cocked her head. “Neurotic asthma tests?”

Dana let her exasperation propel her to a sitting position. “Yeah, the asthma tests I have to do on the kids. Every morning I have to check all twenty-four known asthmatic kids, and every afternoon I have to check them again.”

Her thoughts drifted back over her morning conversation with Patrick Connor. His beloved tests added to an already full day and would put her perpetually behind on her daily mountain of paperwork. “Just doing the checks takes a colossal chunk of time out of my day, and that’s not counting the tallying up I do on Mr. Gorgeous’s Excel spreadsheet.”

“Mr. Gorgeous? Who’s Mr. Gorgeous?”

Dana’s cheeks heated with embarrassment. “Uh, you know. Patrick Connor. The board chairman. The man may be a micromanager and a clean-desk freak, but you have to admit he looks like he’s straight out of a cologne ad.”

Suze bit her lip. “Yeah. He does that, all right. Most of the women around here tend to agree—at least, until they try to date him for more than two dates running.”

“Another commitment-phobe, huh? Figures.” Dana recalled the dates her friends had fixed her up with over the years she’d been single. They’d had terrific nights out—until the guys let her know that her friends had neglected to tell them about her daughter. To discover Patrick was the same way didn’t surprise her.

Suze’s face went blank and she shook her head. “I really shouldn’t comment. But what’s this about asthma tests twice a day?”

“I told you. Twenty-four kids twice a day. If they’ve got asthma on their chart, I’ve got them on my list.”

“I didn’t realize—oh, the lunchroom.” Comprehension eased the furrow between Suze’s eyebrows.

“What does the lunchroom have to do with asthma?”

“We’ve got documented mold in the lunchroom.”

“Huh? That’s why I’m checking twenty-four kids?” Dana tried not to gape.

“Yep. About two years ago the roof on the lunchroom building was replaced. The building’s got a gable roof now, but it used to have an old flat roof, and it leaked so much the lunchroom ladies had to put five-gallon buckets out on rainy days just to catch the drips. Anyway, when the repair people went in to fix the roof, they found mold. They traced it down inside the concrete blocks and under some of the floor tiles.”

“Why is there still mold? Why didn’t they get rid of it?”

Suze gave her an amused smile. “The board members sure wished it had been that simple. They figured all they had to do was get in there with a jug of bleach and a scrub brush. But mold, even when it’s been killed, can still cause trouble if it’s not been properly removed. And it can cost half a million dollars to have professionals do a mold abatement. That’s money the school system doesn’t have.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me they left mold—”

“No, well, sort of. They took the do-it-yourself approach. Patrick researched out the yin-yang of how to do it, and one CYA thing he’s apparently still doing is these asthma checks.”

Dana huffed. “Pardon me, but he’s not doing the asthma checks. I am.” Now her irritation at having to do twice-daily checks increased. If the school system wasn’t going to properly abate the mold, then tracking the school system’s most vulnerable population was like holding a hose over a house on fire with no water in the hose.

Suze shrugged. “He’s probably afraid of a lawsuit. The whole thing was all hush-hush. The only reason I know anything about it is that I’m vice principal.”

Dana’s chest tightened. Lawsuits. That was something she knew about only too well. “They haven’t told the parents of the kids?” She hopped off the exam table and started pacing the tight confines of the clinic. “I can’t believe that! The school has a duty to report—” But she cut off her words. Of course she could believe it.

Suze appeared genuinely miserable. “Hey, I’ve said way too much.”

“No, you’ve said just enough. I’m going to talk to him.”

“Who—Patrick?” Suze blanched. “Listen, you should understand—”

She broke off. Dana peered at her. “Understand what?”

“Could you avoid bringing my name up?”

“They wouldn’t fire you for telling me, would they?” Dana gawked at Suze.

“No, no. But Patrick is one stubborn son of a gun, and, well…there’s some history between us.”

“You dated?”

Suze leaned her head against the wall. “No. Not that kind of history. I’d rather not say, okay? I don’t—Patrick’s not a bad guy. He just has…issues.”

Dana glanced at the clock on the wall. Five minutes past the time to pick up Kate. Great. “Well, Patrick Connor is about to have a few more issues—because how he’s proceeding isn’t right.”

CHAPTER THREE

A LL P ATRICK COULD HEAR in the kitchen was the thunk of Melanie’s knife on the cutting board, as she whacked up carrots a little harder than necessary, and the tap-tap of Lissa’s shoes against the tile floor. The girls had their backs to each other, stiff, unbending.

He’d asked for this. Patrick admonished himself. Self-inflicted agony. He had been the one who said the only thing he wanted for his birthday was a dinner at home with his daughters. Right now, he could have been enjoying a gift card from the home-improvement store.

Patrick sighed and opened the door to the cabinet where the plates were. “Lissa, is that chicken about ready?”

“Uh, yeah. I think so, anyway.”

He handed her a plate. “Should I be worried? Should I head for KFC?” he joked.

His effort at levity lifted the corners of Lissa’s mouth ever so slightly. For a moment, he was tempted to push the joke. But this was probably the longest sentence his eighteen-year-old daughter had spoken to him in months, and at least she’d looked him in the eye.

I should be thankful she’s even agreed to be here. She skipped my birthday last year.

“Dad, salad’s ready. Should I toss it with the dressing?”

At Melanie’s question, his youngest daughter’s tiny smile faded. Patrick’s hope for the evening faded right along with it.

He could remember a time when the two girls—no, Mel was a young woman now, and Lissa, for all her immaturity, was nearly one—were not so polarized by sibling rivalry. But then the divorce and everything that had gone on between Jenny and him had destroyed any closeness. The girls had wound up in either their mom’s corner—that would be Lissa—or their dad’s—that would be Melanie.

Just once he wanted them to forget who had sided with whom and be a family.

Melanie hadn’t been happy about Patrick’s birthday request, he knew. She’d planned on taking him out to dinner and, he suspected, not asking Lissa to join them. Which was understandable. Lissa had ignored more than one of his birthdays.

Except when she wanted something. So what did she want now?

In a desire to mend fences between him and Melanie, he said, “Your cake looks so good, Mel, that I’m tempted to skip the leafy greens altogether.”

She beamed, his approval lessening some of the tension in her still-necked posture. “It was a cinch, Dad. Coconut, your favorite.”

“He likes German chocolate, too,” Lissa observed as she drained a piece of chicken before dropping it on the plate Patrick had given her.

“No, Mom likes German chocolate. Why is it that you can never remember—” But Melanie didn’t finish what she was about to say. “The coconut’s all right, isn’t it?”

“I’m easy to please. Coconut, German chocolate—doesn’t matter to me. But yeah, coconut’s my favorite.” Patrick figured that if this strained atmosphere went on for much longer, his dessert would be Maalox, not cake.

If just he and Lissa had been having this conversation, he would have come straight out and asked her why she was even here. What had made her say yes this year when he’d asked her to spend his birthday with him? Was he foolish to hope that her coolness toward him was thawing?

He jammed his hand into the silverware drawer, smothering an oath when the tine of a fork poked him.

Damn Jenny, anyway. She was the one who’d left. She was the one who’d thought their marriage—their family, what was left of it, anyway—should be scrapped. All because some other guy listened to her. Listened.

Tonight it seemed that he was about to lose Melanie by trying to salvage what was left of his relationship with Lissa.

But if he’d learned anything, it was that you were never guaranteed tomorrow. That and you’d better take advantage of what you had today. Maybe Lissa felt the same way. Maybe her first semester at technical college had rammed home how quickly time flew and how things could never stay the same.

Lissa, in college now. This was the year Annabelle should have graduated from high school.

The silverware in his fist slipped out of his grip and landed with a clatter on the floor. Everybody jumped at the racket.

For an endless moment, Patrick felt his eyes shift from Melanie to Lissa and back again.

Then Melanie chuckled. Lissa joined in and Patrick laughed himself, but out of relief.

“Boy, we’re strung tight,” Patrick told them.

“Long day.” Melanie went back to tossing the salad. “I swear, the phone at my office rang nonstop all afternoon.”

“At least you’re an accountant and you work in an office. You’re not stuck ringing up groceries. Man alive, but I got chewed out for carding somebody who wanted to buy beer,” Lissa said. “I wish I could quit. I have to keep this job, though, and my other job to earn the car down payment because somebody won’t co-sign a loan for me.”

Patrick caught Mel’s knowing older-sister eye. “Oh, poor baby,” she sniped. “Maybe if you had actually done what you were supposed to do and showed a little responsibility, Dad would have a little confidence in you.”

“I am responsible! What do you mean?”

“The internship you flaked out on. If you can’t get your papers in on time, how can Dad expect you to make a car payment on time?”

“Dad!” Lissa whirled to face Patrick, and jabbed the fork at him. “You told her I missed the deadline?”

Mel didn’t wait for Patrick to respond, just jumped in. “Yeah, he did. How else was he supposed to explain his sudden change of heart? You’re eighteen, Lissa. Grow up, why don’t—”

“Mel, that’s enough.” Patrick stepped between them. Now he regretted having mentioned Lissa’s sad story to her elder sister.

The chicken grease hissed behind them. Lissa broke the stare she had locked on to Mel to attend to it. Her smug look as she turned toward the stove irritated Patrick.

“Lissa, Mel’s right about one thing. You need to be more responsible. It’s not just the internship paperwork. If you’re serious about a job in the nursing profession, you have to manage a lot of deadlines, and that’s part of the reason your teachers set them—”

“It’s hard, Dad.”

Her whine sent his blood pressure up just a tick more. “Yeah, maybe. But when Mel was your age, I never had to worry—”

“Perfect Mel with her perfect husband and her perfect house and her perfect job. Never-screws-up Mel. Never-try-anything-so-you-don’t-screw-up Mel.” But Lissa’s mutter was barely audible. He shook his head toward Mel to stop her retort.

More silence. Patrick grabbed some plates and would have put them down on the small table in the kitchen, but Mel took them from him.

“It’s your birthday, Dad,” she said. “Even if Luke had to work and we can’t all be here, we can eat in the dining room, okay? It’s a celebration.”

Patrick ignored the derisive sound Lissa made at the mention of Mel’s state-trooper husband. “Okay.” He headed for the dining room with his stack of plates. Over his shoulder he called, “I can top both of you on the bad day at work. Today was my first and last day as a bus driver—and I had to break up a fight.”

“You? Drive a school bus?” Lissa laughed and was leaning back against the cabinet when he returned. “This I gotta hear.”

“Why is it that everybody gazes at me like that when I tell them I drove a school bus?” He let mock irritation color his words. “What? I don’t appear competent to drive a bus?”

He ventured a glance at Melanie, who was openly curious.

“Go on, Dad. I want to hear.”

So he started telling them, spinning the story light and funny and eviscerating from it all details of his momentary heart-stopping look at that little girl. Lissa and Mel were laughing now, a beautiful, beautiful sound.

The doorbell rang, and Melanie wiped her hands on a dish towel, then went headed to answer the front door. “Are you expecting someone? It’s not Luke. He won’t get home until nearly two in the morning.”

“No. But if it’s Vann, tell him to come on in. We’ve got plenty, don’t we?”

Lissa lifted her eyebrows in disbelief and held a little tighter to the plate of chicken in her hand. She was the spitting image of Jenny when she did that. “Vann’s huge, Dad. Linebacker huge. He could probably clean us out and still ask for seconds.”

“According to Vann, it’s all muscle, not an ounce of fat.” Patrick grinned at Lissa. “But I agree, all that muscle has an appetite.”

“Dad?” Melanie’s strained voice pierced the house. “Someone’s here for you. A Dana Wilson?”

The name jolted Patrick back to this afternoon, back to the school nurse who’d shifted papers from one pile to another and who had admitted maybe she wasn’t up to the job. A good thing he hadn’t interviewed Dana Wilson for the job. He might have been inclined not to hire her based on how pretty she was. All that blond curly hair and those big brown eyes. And those long legs. Even though her legs had been hidden beneath scrubs, he could tell they were nice.

“Dad?” Melanie sounded even more strained.

“I’m coming. Give me a minute to get there. Why don’t you just invite her in.”

“She—she—”

Patrick rounded the corner to the living room and saw Melanie at the door, blocking his view. Mel usually had excellent manners. What was her problem?

He walked up behind Mel. “Dana, hi. Why don’t you—”

But Patrick could get no more words out. His throat closed up and he gripped the door. Dana wasn’t alone. On her hip was a little girl, blond hair curling softly around her face, thumb in her mouth, sky-blue eyes heavy with drowsiness.

B EWILDERMENT PARALYZED Dana for a long moment. She stood there on Patrick’s front porch, switching her gaze from Patrick’s befuddled face to his daughter’s, and then back again. Both Patrick and his daughter wore expressions of shell shock.

What? Had she grown horns or a second head? Had her hair turned purple?

“I—I thought this was a good time. To talk about the asthma tests,” Dana ventured, shifting Kate from one hip to the other. “On the phone you said to come by?”

Patrick frowned. “You called me?”

“No—your daughter here.” Dana nodded toward the young woman. “I stopped by your shop, and they said you were on your way home, so I phoned your home and your daughter—”

Melanie folded her arms across her chest. “I haven’t spoken to her, Dad. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

For a second, Dana considered whether she’d dialed the wrong number, but then she recalled the conversation, her careful check to be sure she had the right Patrick Connor. “Well, I certainly talked to someone who said it was okay for me to stop by. Otherwise, why would I be here?”

Patrick pursed his lips. “It’s okay. Come in. Forgive my manners.” He stepped back, and Dana brushed past him and his daughter.

She knew she wasn’t bonkers. She had talked to someone who said she was his daughter.

“I’m hungry, Mommy.” Kate lifted her head from Dana’s shoulder and tugged at her. “Do they got a snack?”

“No snack, sweetie. We’ll go home in a few minutes, okay?” Dana patted Kate on the back.

“But you said that a while ago. I’m hungry .”

“In a minute. Um, I just had some concerns over the asthmatic kids at school.” Now that she was here, in the man’s living room, Dana had no clue what had possessed her to barge in. This could have waited until Monday.

“Is there a problem?” Patrick seemed to tense from head to toe.

“It’s just that—” Shoot. She should have waited. She was totally unprepared, without any sort of speech or script.

“Dad! Dinner’s getting cold!”

That sounded more like the person on the phone. Of course. He had two daughters.

The owner of the voice arrived into the living room, and Dana saw a girl with long highlighted hair, dressed in a hoodie and skintight jeans——the complete opposite of the dark-haired older daughter in business casual.

“Hi! You must be the nurse,” the younger daughter said. “Sorry, Dad. I completely forgot to tell you she phoned. My bad.”

Out of the corner of one eye, Dana caught the older daughter’s eyes narrowing in disbelief. Ooh, a good case of sibling rivalry here. With two sisters, Dana knew a thing or two about that.

“Uh, Dana, this is my older daughter, Melanie, and I guess you’ve already talked to Lissa, my younger daughter.” Patrick’s mouth jerked in an awkward attempt at a smile, but it was considerably dimmer in wattage than the earlier one at Dana’s clinic. “Girls, this is Dana Wilson. She’s the new nurse at the elementary school.”

Melanie’s smile was as tight and awkward as Patrick’s had been—no small wonder, since she favored him in appearance. Lissa’s grin crinkled the girl’s big blue eyes and seemed ten degrees warmer than Melanie’s.

“Cute little one you’ve got there,” Lissa said. “How old is she?”

“Um, Kate’s three. She’ll turn four in the summer.”

Had Patrick just winced? Was Kate what this cool reception was all about? Figured. He’d been nice enough at the clinic when he hadn’t known she had a kid, but the minute he saw a child, he was like every other guy she’d dated since Marty.

Maybe she should save herself a lot of time and trouble and have single mom tattooed on her forehead. At least then she wouldn’t have to endure a guy’s hot and cold reactions.

“Mommy,” Kate whimpered. “I’m hungry. Please?”

“Hey, why don’t you guys eat with us. Does fried chicken, tossed salad, butter beans, cream corn and rolls sound good?” Lissa rubbed her hands together. “Dad was just saying we had plenty.”

CHAPTER FOUR

F OR THE LIFE OF HER , Dana couldn’t figure out how she came to be sitting at a dinner table with Patrick and his two daughters, one of whom was staring daggers at her.

She cast a glance at Kate, who was eating up Lissa’s attention. Usually, Kate was shy and hesitant with strangers, but not with Lissa. Lissa had her in giggles within seconds—and the fried chicken on Kate’s plate had sealed the deal.

At least one daughter was kid friendly.

The jury was still out on Patrick. After Lissa’s off-the-cuff invitation, he’d heartily agreed. Yes, absolutely, she must join them.

She’d overheard Melanie hiss, “But, Dad! This is your birthday supper!” and Dana had tried to leave then. Patrick wouldn’t hear of it.

“No, no, it’s fine. This is no big deal. Only supper and a cake. You like cake, don’t you? Melanie makes a mean coconut cake.”

The tension at the table dissipated as Patrick shook out his napkin and passed around the platter of chicken. “I was just telling the girls about my two wannabe professional wrestlers this morning. How’d they do, anyway?”

“I didn’t hear a peep out of them all day long, so I guess they must have survived.” Dana took a piece of chicken and handed the platter to Melanie. “This looks great!”

“Lissa fried it. I hope you can eat it.” If Dana was reading Melanie’s underlying sentiment correctly, the truer words would have been, I hope you get an ulcer .

But Dana just ignored Melanie’s remark and switched her praise to Lissa. “You’re a better cook than me. I never fool with frying chicken.”

“My mom is the best cook, and we do a lot of cooking together,” Lissa told her.

Dana recalled Suze’s allusions to Patrick’s divorced status and wasn’t sure what to say. She mumbled, “That’s nice.”

On the heels of that awkward moment came another when Lissa skewered her with blue eyes alight with curiosity. “So are you and Dad seeing each other?”

Dana dropped the piece of chicken she held and Patrick choked on butter beans he was eating.

“Uh, no, actually, we’re not. I met your father for the first time today.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” Lissa beamed. “I just figured, you know, you calling, looking for him on his birthday—you know.”

Dana picked up the drumstick with numb fingers. “No. No. Remember? I mentioned on the phone that this had to do with the clinic at school.”

Melanie seemed to relax a bit then. Dana wondered if perhaps Melanie’s earlier reaction derived from the same wrong conclusion Lissa had jumped to.

“I like this corn, Mommy! Why doesn’t our corn taste this way?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Dana felt her cheeks heat up. She chuckled and said to Patrick and his daughters, “I did say I wasn’t much of a cook.”

“Kate, it’s probably because we grew this corn ourselves,” Patrick offered.

Kate frowned. “My mommy buys corn in cans.”

Lissa laughed; Melanie managed a subdued chuckle and Dana cringed. At least Kate’s confession indicated Dana attempted to cook. If Kate kept going, she’d probably tell them just how many trips to the McDonald’s drive-thru she and Kate made.

Patrick nodded to Kate. “Well, yeah, I guess she does. That’s what a lot of people do. But we grow it.” He turned to Dana. “My older sister and her husband live out in the country and we grow a big garden together.”