For the Sake of the Children

“That’s very nice.”

“You have brothers or sisters?”

“Two sisters. I’m in the middle.”

“Are they as tall as you?” Lissa asked.

Melanie again shot daggers, but now at her little sister. Dana smothered a laugh, remembering how many times her older sister had tried—and failed—to keep her straight.

“Uh, no. My older sister is a little above average height, and my younger one is on the petite side. She likes to say she’s vertically challenged.”

“Oh, that’s like my aunt. She always says—”

“Lissa, can you get us some more ice?” Melanie broke in. “Dana’s glass needs refreshing.”

The interruption caught Dana by surprise. What had that been all about?

But Lissa shoved back her chair with an under-the-breath mumble about bossy older sisters and Patrick interjected a question about where Dana had found a place to live, and she pushed aside her curiosity and answered his question.

The rest of the meal went smoothly enough. Civil, polite on Melanie and Patrick’s part; effusively warm on Lissa’s part. Dana had to admit that Lissa was a sheer wonder with Kate, and acknowledged it was great to have a meal where she had some help retrieving dropped spoons and napkins, cutting up the food into bite-size pieces, making a quick save of a toppling glass. Lissa was a natural.

When Dana remarked on it, Lissa told her, “I like kids, especially this age. I babysit a lot during the summer, and I have a little brother. He’s six now, but you know, my mom needed help. I’m going to school to be a nurse, and I hope I get to work with pedes.”

“Oh. I see. You’ll be good at it.”

Lissa beamed. “If you ever need somebody to watch Kate, I’ll be glad to do it. I’ve got excellent references.”

Dana grinned. Had Lissa’s motivation simply been to drum up business? If so, the gambit had been an effective one. “I don’t get out much, but I’ll keep you in mind.”

Not until the lighting of Patrick’s birthday cake did Dana find herself feeling awkward and in the way. Melanie brought in the cake, aglow with too many candles for Dana to count, though she did try to figure out Patrick’s age.

Then Lissa started singing “Happy Birthday” in a clear, beautiful alto and urged everyone to join in. Kate sang along without any prompting, but Dana hesitated. She felt shy and uncertain about singing “Happy Birthday” to a man she’d only just met.

Her eyes searched out cues from Melanie and Lissa and then finally Patrick. His gaze wasn’t on his daughters or the cake. It was locked on Kate as she lisped out the song. His jaw was set, his lips compressed.

The Patrick Connor she’d seen earlier in the day had vanished. Whatever interest he’d shown in Dana had vanished, as well.

She’d encountered that reaction too many times not to know it for what it was. The first time was the day she’d told Marty she was pregnant. His face had gone from happy anticipation at the prospect of big news to complete and utter gray-white shock when he learned what that news was.

Marty had tried to muscle his way through the moment, but he’d looked a lot the way Patrick Connor did now. No doubt about it. Patrick—as did most of the men who followed in Marty’s footsteps—had a problem with kids.

E VERY LITTLE OFF-KEY note that Kate Wilson sang knifed Patrick.

She’s not Annabelle. She doesn’t even resemble Annabelle.

That he’d even been able to speak when he’d seen the child on Dana’s hip had been a sheer miracle. If he’d just had some sort of warning…

Dana had to think he was a loon. He couldn’t believe it when he’d impulsively agreed with Lissa that she and Kate should join them for supper. Part of him had been eager to seize on anything that would encourage any rapprochement with Lissa.

And the other part?

Sheer insanity.

After supper, Patrick followed the girls into the kitchen with his plate, while Dana stayed at the table, cleaning up after Kate. Kate’s giggle floated after him.

God, so much time had passed since a baby had been in the house. He’d forgotten what wonderful music their giggles made.

Patrick found Melanie and Lissa in an argument, carried on in low hisses at the sink.

“Like you really forgot to tell Dad some woman had called. And to invite her here when you were aware it was Dad’s birthday.”

“She’s nice, Melanie! What’s the problem?”

“The problem is you’re up to something, and I know it, Lissa, so don’t—”

“You never believe me, so why should I bother saying anything at all? I forgot. Take it or leave it.”

“Girls.” At Patrick’s voice, they jumped guiltily. “We have a guest. One whom one of you invited.”

“Not me. Dad, you’re not going to start dating her, are you? I mean, she has a…” Melanie bit her lip.

Lissa put her hands on her hips. “Say it. You can say it. The world won’t end if you do. She has a child.”

The corners of Melanie’s mouth turned down. “That’s rather obvious. Did you know that when you invited her to party-crash?”

“No. But I sure would have invited her if I had. Because I just love to watch you wig out. You still haven’t gotten over Mom having Christopher and he’s six now,” Lissa said.

Melanie blanched at Lissa’s second mention of their stepbrother. “That’s—I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Girls. Enough.” Patrick glanced behind him to make sure Dana and Kate hadn’t left the dining room, then spoke in a low voice. “Let’s not fight on my birthday, especially when we have a guest. And Melanie, I’ve barely met the woman. Of course I’m not dating her. If I were, though, it’s my business.”

Melanie rolled her eyes at Lissa’s triumphant little “Yes!” complete with dragged-down fist gesture.

“You think you want this, but you don’t have a clue, do you? You don’t care about anybody but you. You’ve completely ruined Dad’s birthday, all because you’re a drama queen,” Melanie said.

After Patrick shot her a warning look, she waved away whatever else she was going to add. “Okay, okay. I won’t say any more. You deal with Lissa.”

“Later. And that’s a promise, Lissa.” He set his plate on the countertop. “Right now, I’m going to attempt to be a good host.”

When he returned to the dining room, Kate was cleaned up and Dana was gathering her things. “I am so sorry to have interrupted this night. I should have thought things through and waited until Monday.”

Patrick curled his fingers around the woodwork on the dining room chair. “You said something about the asthma tests. So what’s on your mind?”

“I should go. It’ll keep—I am so sorry.”

“No problem. We enjoyed having you.”

Dana didn’t seem at all convinced by his words, and he had to admit they sounded insincere. He tried again. “Lissa enjoyed having you guys here tonight, and I’m grateful for that. She’s at a…well, a difficult age.”

Dana’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yes. I’m glad to be of service. Now, I’ll get out of your hair and be on my way, and perhaps we can talk about this on Monday.”

“Talk about what? You never did tell me precisely,” he pointed out.

She stopped in the middle of stuffing some child gear into her oversize purse. “The asthmatic kids. The mold. Why didn’t you tell me about the mold?”

Her accusatory question caught him as off guard as Kate’s rendition of “Happy Birthday” had. Patrick rubbed at his eyes, struggling to figure out how to respond.

“I thought Vann—” No. That was a lie. He knew Vann well enough to realize that Vann wouldn’t have immediately offered up that information without asking him first.

“Yes?” Now her tone had an edge to it, cool and crisp.

“We should have. I should have. I’m sorry.”

“Is this a cover-up? Am I part of a bean-counting process?”

“No! No, of course not. We’re just trying to do due diligence—”

“If you’re trying to do due diligence, how about getting in professionals to eliminate the mold? Instead of tackling a job that’s beyond an amateur’s scope,” she added equably.

“Can I take you up on that offer to talk about this Monday? Because I am not up to it tonight. Consider it a birthday gift.” Patrick added that last bit as a joke, but it fell flat.

Dana scooped up Kate and slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “Fine. You know where to find me. I’ll be the one spending two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon doing useless asthma tests that don’t really tell you much of anything.”

She marched to the front door. Patrick followed her out, down the steps and to her car.

“Listen, if you want, we can talk about this now.”

“No, you’re right. I need a weekend to cool off.”

He took a step back. “Sure. Then okay. I’ll talk to you Monday. It was…nice having you here tonight. You and, um, Kate.”

He hadn’t intended to say those last words and he wasn’t sure where the sentiment had come from.

The words had the effect of arresting Dana as she put a sleepy Kate into her car seat. “If you mean that, then I’m glad.”

She slid behind the wheel of her car, gave him a brief, inscrutable smile and backed around.

Leaving Patrick standing there, wondering, had he meant what he’d said? And what if he had?

CHAPTER FIVE

T HE FIRST THINGS that greeted Patrick when he stopped in Dana’s clinic on Monday morning were a Christmas wreath on the door and a picture of Kate and Dana, prominently displayed on Dana’s spick-and-span desk. He lifted his gaze from the photo to see Dana’s cool expression. Her message could not be clearer had she shouted it from the rooftops: I’m a package deal .

Or maybe that was just him, not her at all. Maybe she didn’t even think about him as date material and she was simply pissed about the mold.

Dana didn’t spare him much of a glance as she finished up with a freckle-faced kid. She jotted down some numbers in a file and tapped on her keyboard to enter the same numbers into an Excel spreadsheet—his spreadsheet, he realized, the one that he’d devised to track all the asthmatic kids. “Okay, you’re good.”

“So why do I have to stop by here every day?” the boy asked. “My asthma’s not bad. I haven’t had an attack in, like, ages. This is embarrassing!”

“Uh…” Dana shrugged. “Beats me, kiddo. I just do what they tell me to do. It’s probably for tracking purposes.”

“Oh. Okay. But can you tell ’em that the other kids tease me? And I promise I’ll come if I need to, but I’ve got my inhaler.”

Dana fixed an eye on Patrick but continued to address the boy. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell ’em.”

The boy left. Once the door shut behind him, the silence in the room stretched to the breaking point. Patrick cleared his throat and leaned against the clinic counter.

“So. You wanted to talk. I’m here.”

“Thank you. I know you said the other nurse did this, but already I’m getting huge complaints from the teachers and the parents about pulling their kids out of class. The asthma kids.”

Patrick considered. He’d never heard complaints about how Nellie had done it. Maybe Dana was doing it in a different way. “It won’t kill them. It takes, what, five minutes per kid?”

“Right.” Dana reclined in her desk chair, crossing those fabulous legs of hers. She folded her arms over her chest. “That’s five minutes for me to do a peak-flow meter reading and to listen to their chest and to note the results. But it’s five minutes here and five minutes back to class. That’s fifteen minutes. Multiply that by two times a day, and that means that each of those students is losing thirty minutes of instruction a day.”

Patrick found himself nodding and froze. Was he agreeing with her just because she was so damn pretty? He had to remember that he’d had good reasons for asking for this, reasons that didn’t disappear because some kid felt embarrassed by the attention or an attractive nurse was questioning the task. “Well, can’t you do it at recess? Or during rotation?”

“You want parents to really get riled? Take away a kid’s recess. Besides, you requested this twice a day, remember? That means morning and afternoon.”

“We have to be certain the students aren’t—”

“You mean, you have to be certain the school isn’t making them any sicker,” she snapped. “Isn’t that the bottom line? Liability?”

Patrick shifted on his feet. On the bulletin board, the middle finger on the laminated hand still stuck up in an offensive gesture. It annoyed him, so he scooped up Dana’s stapler and crossed the room to the board. He rammed the stapler harder than he should have, fixing the fingers.

As he pounded the last staple in, the door flew open, sending the Christmas wreath askew. The principal stuck his head in, gasping for breath. Harrison’s eyes were wide, his tie flying. “Ms. Wilson! Ms. Wilson, come quick!”

“What’s happened?” Dana was on her feet, pushing past Patrick.

“One of our second-graders…on the monkey bars.”

Patrick dropped the stapler and pursued the two adults down the hall, out the back doors of the school. A kid’s high-pitched screams punctuated the dreary gray morning of early December.

Dana’s long legs had overtaken Harrison’s short, stubby ones. Harrison’s potbelly slowed him down more, and now Patrick pulled up even with the struggling principal.

“What happened? Did someone fall? Do we need to call an ambulance?”

But Harrison couldn’t get the words out. He bent over, palms on his knees, and sucked wind. “She’s…on…” Unable to say more, he pointed a finger toward the monkey bars.

High up, on the top rung of the ancient metal jungle gym that Patrick remembered the PTO putting in when Lissa and Mel were in elementary school, sat the source of the screams.

Patrick drew to a standstill beside Dana at the foot of the monkey bars, joining a crowd of small-fry onlookers. The girl had one hand on a rung, and was using the other hand to shoo away the angry buzzing yellow jackets swarming around her head.

“Honey, honey!” Dana called. “Are you stung?”

“Get ’em away! Get ’em away!” the girl shrieked.

“Are you stung?” Dana asked again.

But the girl couldn’t answer. Patrick heard Dana sigh. Without warning, Dana yanked a rung and began the climb to join the girl, whose head poked through the cloud of buzzing insects.

“Okay, sweetheart, no—no, don’t swat at them. That will just make them angrier,” Dana cautioned. She took the little girl by the shoulder. “Are you stung? Let’s get you down.”

“I—I can’t.” Tears streaked down the girl’s face. “I’m scared. What if they sting me?”

“Uh, they will if we stay up here much longer. C’mon. What’s your name?”

“Jakayla.”

“Jakayla. That’s a pretty name. C’mon. I’ll bet you’ve climbed down lots of—”

The girl shook her head violently and tightened her grip on the bar. The movement kick-started the yellow jackets into even more activity.

“Okay, okay.” As she pondered the problem of how to get the girl down, Dana seemed mindless of the two yellow jackets that had landed on her scrubs.

Patrick swung up. “Jakayla?” He was now face-to-face with her. “I’ll help. Ms. Wilson and I’ve got you. You just close your eyes.”

“But then I can’t see ’em!” she protested.

That’s the point . “Trust us. We won’t let you get stung, but we do need to get you down. I’m holding you.” He wrapped his hands around the girl’s chunky waist. “Close your eyes.”

Jakayla sucked in a labored breath and squeezed shut terrified eyes. Patrick tugged, but the girl’s grip hadn’t lessened. Dana made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a smothered chuckle and began peeling the girl’s sweaty fingers, one by one, off the metal bar.

Patrick took a step down, and with one hand still on Jakayla’s waist, he used the other to steady himself. But he’d miscalculated and not looked where he’d placed his hand. The sting of a yellow jacket needled through his palm.

Dana could tell he was attempting to stifle the groan the sting evoked. “Patrick?”

He shook his head, unwilling to alarm Jakayla any more than she already was. Tears still oozed from the girl’s eyes. At least the shrieking had stopped, though.

Together, he with his sore hand and Dana with her good hands lowered the little girl to the ground. Then, Dana at once began inspecting Jakayla for stings. Finding none, she gave the girl a quick hug and turned her attention to Patrick.

“Let’s have a look at that palm.”

Now Jakayla barreled from between them to her teacher, who waited with comforting arms.

Patrick refused. “It’s okay.”

“It’s swelling. You’re not allergic, are you?”

He inspected his hand, which had indeed swollen to a princely size. “Well, this will be a pain.”

“I need to check if the stinger’s still in there.”

“Wait. Harrison?” Patrick found the principal among the crowd of onlookers. “Do you have any wasp or hornet spray? There must be a nest in one of those pipes.”

Harrison shuddered. “Oh, dear, yes, I expect that is what happened. I’ll get the janitor to spray it.”

“Got any of that foam aerosol insulation? The stuff to fill cracks?”

“I’m not sure.” Harrison seemed befuddled by the question and amazed that Patrick expected him to instantly recall what maintenance supplies the school had on hand.

“If you do, we should spray those pipes.” He gestured at the open ends. “That way, no yellow jackets or wasps can nest there.”

Patrick’s hand throbbed now. He shook it. Dana jerked her head toward the school door. “C’mon. Ice and a dose of Benadryl—how about it?”

This time he didn’t have to be asked twice. He followed her in.

“Thanks,” Dana told him.

“For what?”

“Helping. You saw how tight a grip that girl had. She wasn’t going anywhere. I would have had to hit her over the head to get her down without your help.”

“Natch. Well, except for the hand.” He stared at the puffy hand in disgust. “Why hasn’t Harrison inspected that playground equipment? We have kids with severe allergies to bee stings.”

They were back at her clinic. She pulled out the chair and pushed him lightly into it. With nimble fingers, she ran a hands-free magnifying glass over his palm and surveyed the damage. “Yep. A stinger, still in there.” One tug with some tweezers, and she was done.

She wheeled her stool around to the fridge and drew out an ice pack. “That will help the swelling. If we could have gotten bleach on the sting before it began swelling, you wouldn’t have had such a reaction.”

“Bleach?”

“Yeah. Bleach. No matter. Open up.” Dana flicked on a penlight and wielded a tongue depressor.

“Huh?”

“Your airway. I need to be sure it’s not swelling.”

“I’m not—oh, okay.” He complied, feeling silly. The click off of the penlight told him she was satisfied with her exam.

“A dose of Benadryl and you’re good.” Dana presented him with several petal-pink tablets. “Sorry. Only have the chewables. They’re berry-flavored, but they’ll do the job.”

He chomped on the sugary-tart tablets. “You’re terrific at this.”

Dana laughed and began cleaning up. “I’d hope so. Why? You have doubts about my ability?”

“No, but you said it yourself. That first day we met.”

Her face colored. “Great way to inspire confidence in your boss, huh?”

“It’s okay. From what I saw out in the school yard there, I have no doubts we hired the right nurse. Nell wouldn’t have climbed up there after a kid, and if we’d waited on Harrison, Miss Jakayla would have been stung about a dozen times by now.”

“All part of a day’s work.” Dana rose and crossed to the sink, where she began scrubbing the tweezers.

“Well, it shouldn’t have been. Harrison has to keep a closer eye on the playground equipment. If that child had fallen and broken an arm or her leg or—God forbid—her neck, her parents could have sent our liability rates through the roof.”

Dana’s back stiffened. “Ah. More lawsuit paranoia. And I thought you actually cared about Jakayla. But it’s like the mold, isn’t it? Some parent might sue.”

Patrick rose to his feet, his hand hurting like crazy. “You make it sound as though we’re heartless. But we’ve done all we can, I assure you. Once we found the mold—and God knows how long it had been there undetected—we moved rapidly to get it abated. We called in crews to do the work—hell, I got in there myself. I wanted the job done this summer, before school opened.”

“But you’re still worried. Or else you wouldn’t be insisting on this neurotic testing slate.” She shook water droplets off the tweezers and faced him. “Your whole testing regime is positively phobic, especially when these tests, without a good baseline from the children’s doctors, are practically useless.”

“Of course I’m still worried. Only an idiot wouldn’t be. I had three choices, Dana. I could hire a professional mold abatement company. Now, that’s a racket—the cheapest one wanted a half-million dollars! Or I could put in mobile units—figure two hundred grand there. Or we could do the best job we could ourselves for about sixty thousand dollars.” He blew out a long breath. “We’re a small, rural school in one of the poorest counties in Georgia. So I didn’t have much choice at all.”

“Why not go with the mobile units?” she asked. “Surely that would have been the better solution.”

“No. Because for one thing, we’d have to pay big bucks for a lunchroom-size unit, or use several smaller ones, instead. Plus, from a health standpoint, a lot of area schools have had health complaints from students when they do put in mobile units for classrooms, and we get severe weather here in the spring. We’re at risk for tornadoes off any hurricane that might hit. What’s more, I can put that spare hundred forty thousand in the bank toward a brand-spanking new school, which would solve all our problems.”

Had anything he’d said sunk in? He couldn’t tell. Dana twirled the tweezers in her fingers absently.

“Funds for school facilities are limited,” he continued

“Why not build the school now? This building is old. Sure, it’s been renovated, but—”

Patrick scoffed and pushed the chair back into its place. “Because I had no other choice. We just don’t have the money, not without going to the taxpayers with a hefty tax increase.”

“Do it. Ask them. I’ll back you up. I’ll explain how the mold endangers—”

“No! I do not want to start a panic. You have no idea what you’re suggesting. Talking about this would be like crying ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

He could deduce from her stubborn expression that she just didn’t get this at all. “Look,” he said, modulating his tone. “If a parent asks, give them the truth. I’m not saying cover anything up. But I’m suggesting that we simply don’t volunteer the information.”

“Uh-huh.” Her voice was flat, the tweezers in her fingers still.

“Let’s hear it from your point of view. What good would it do to sound the alert? Since we have no funds to do anything else beyond what we’ve done.” He splayed his hands. “I’m open to suggestion.”

Now the tweezers beat out a rhythm against the palm of Dana’s hand. “An informed parent is always the one less likely to sue,” she noted. “And suing is what you’re actually worried about.”

“No, it’s not. At least, not the only thing. And I’m insulted that you think that about me. I have two daughters myself.” Patrick found the clinic too small to get a decent pacing going, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. “You met them. You believe I don’t understand the concerns of the average parent?”

“Then think like one!” She pushed from the counter and stood toe to toe in front of him, blocking his pacing. “Remember, these parents don’t have all the information they need to decide whether their kids should attend this school.”

She was so close to him that he caught her scent. Some sort of fruit? Peaches. It was peaches. He shut his eyes and swallowed, trying hard to focus on her words. If he could just focus on the mold issue and not on what scent she wore, he could defend his reasoning.