Season Of Wonder

Who would have guessed that she could take such comfort from the words of a tough deputy sheriff? She wanted to draw them close and hold on tight.

“I did plenty of stupid things when I was her age,” he went on. “So did most of my friends. We even got caught a few times. Despite it, we all turned out okay. One’s the county sheriff, one is an FBI agent and one is the town police chief. Don’t worry. Silver will get through this.”

“I suppose you’re right. I just wish she had chosen something a little less destructive to the community for her first stupid foray into teenagedom.”

“We can’t change that now. The only thing she can do is try to make it right and then move forward. The good news is, the other property owners are pretty reasonable people. As long as she makes the effort to fix what she did, things should be okay.”

She did not want to be in this man’s debt but that was exactly where she found herself. He was being extraordinarily kind and she was well aware of just how much she owed him.

“Thank you, Deputy Morales. I appreciate you bringing her home instead of making this a criminal matter.”

“After three months of being neighbors, don’t you think you could call me Ruben?”

She didn’t want anything that would bring them closer together but she didn’t know how to avoid it. “Ruben, then. I appreciate the way you have handled things.”

“I could have booked her for destruction of property. Technically it is the jurisdiction of the Haven Point PD but I was an officer on scene and could have made that call.”

“Why didn’t you?” She had to ask.

“I weighed the options, believe me. But when she seemed more frightened about coming home and facing you than she did at the prospect of going to the police station, I figured this was the better choice.”

“You must think I’m the meanest mom in the world.”

“Your daughter should be afraid of the consequences of her actions. She needs to fear disappointing her parents. In my professional life, I see too many cases where kids know their parents will never call them on their bad behavior. Guess what? That only leads to kids who don’t know how to function in society.”

“I will help her clean up the mess. Please find out the details of what we need to do. We’ll make it right.”

As if she needed one more thing to worry about in her life right now.

Oh, Silver. What have you done?

“I’ll let you know,” Ruben said. He was watching her with a strange expression, one of almost approval. Why? She was the bad mother who hadn’t even known where her child was that night. She had botched the whole thing, start to finish.

She had no business feeling this warmth seeping through her. She couldn’t let herself be attracted to Ruben Morales. He was a law enforcement officer who would have absolutely no interest in her, once he knew the truth.

“All right. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

He studied her for a long moment and she had to wonder what he saw. She had been watching a movie earlier with Mia, though that felt like hours ago. Her hair was probably messy where she had been leaning back against the sofa and she wore casual, comfortable clothes with no shape or style whatsoever.

“Doc? I know you’re angry but try not to be too hard on Silver.”

“Weren’t you just telling me about the parents who never give their children consequences?”

“She definitely needs consequences. That’s not what I’m saying. What she did was wrong, no doubt about it. But it might not hurt to remember she’s at a tough age, trying to fit in to a new community, which can’t be easy for anybody.”

Dani was entirely too familiar with what that was like. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” she said, forcing a polite smile. “Thanks again for your help. Good night, Ruben.”

He smiled a little at her use of his first name but also didn’t appear to miss the direct hint, especially when she held open the door for him.

“Good night.”

He reached down to give Winky another scratch behind her ears, then headed out into the night.

Dani closed the door and stood for a moment in her living room, feeling the heat of her little dog on her slippers. She wanted to sink down onto the floor of her entryway, gather Winky close and cry until she fell asleep, but that was the sort of thing she might have done as a lonely girl in foster care. She was a mother now, with a mother’s responsibilities.

Right now, she needed to deal with her daughter.

4

She made it as far as Silver’s bedroom, then paused outside, still trying to process what had just happened.

How could her child have jeopardized everything like this? Didn’t she understand how precarious things were? If Dani didn’t do well in this internship, if they couldn’t carve a place for themselves here in Haven Point, she would have to once more pick up her girls and start all over somewhere else.

They had a nice home here in a nice community. Where would they go if Haven Point didn’t work out?

The worry that always seemed to lurk at the edges of her subconscious crept ever closer.

She took another deep breath, trying to beat it back again. She had to do her best to be calm and collected when she spoke with Silver. Raging at her daughter would accomplish nothing.

Was this some kind of cry for help, tangible proof of everything Silver hadn’t said? She wasn’t happy here. That truth was becoming unavoidable. She didn’t fit in because of her purple hair and her unique fashion sense and, most probably, because of her defensive attitude. She wanted to go back to Boston where she had friends, or even New York to live with Tommy’s family.

A parent’s job was to discern between a child’s wants and her needs. In this case, Dani knew in her gut that her family needed a community like Haven Point.

When she pushed the door open, she found Silver facedown on her bed, the blanket up around her ears. The only light came from Silver’s phone, which she was not supposed to have in her bedroom past 10:00 p.m. anyway.

She opened her mouth to yell about that but caught herself. She had other things to worry about right now.

Silver didn’t look up when Dani came inside and moved to the bed. She waited her out, standing for a long moment until her daughter finally rolled over and held out her phone.

“Here. I know I’m not supposed to have it. I wasn’t texting anyone. I was just looking at pictures of my friends back in Boston.”

Dani’s heart squeezed with sympathy, but she schooled her features so Silver didn’t see.

“Thanks,” she said calmly. “I’ll put it on the charger in my room.”

She said nothing else, just waited for Silver to speak first and explain herself. “Go ahead. Yell at me. I know you want to.”

She did want to yell—to scream and rant and ask Silver what the hell she was thinking. The pain on her daughter’s face held her back.

“I’m not going to yell.”

“You’re not?” Silver’s shock was evident in her wide eyes.

“What would that do? It would only make both of us feel worse and wouldn’t change what you’ve done.”

“O-okay.”

Dani turned on the bedside lamp then sat on the edge of the bed. “A deputy sheriff, though? Seriously? In what alternate reality would you ever think that was okay?”

Her daughter threw her forearm over her eyes, as protection from the light or to avoid her mother’s gaze, Dani wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It was a stupid thing to do, okay? I know it was dumb. We... I wasn’t thinking.”

Dani didn’t miss that telltale pronoun. She wanted to pounce on it and make Silver tell her who else had been involved, but somehow she sensed further interrogation would do nothing to move the conversation forward.

“Do you hate it here so much that you want to sabotage everything for all of us?”

A little tear leaked out of Silver’s eye and dripped into the hair she had dyed herself. “I miss my friends,” she said.

“You know the way to make the sort of friends you want to keep isn’t to engage in criminal activity with them, right?”

“I know.” She scratched a pattern into her quilt. “Nana says if I really hate it here, I can come live with her back in Queens.”

Dani’s insides twisted at the mention of her former mother-in-law. “When did you talk to your Grandma DeLuca?”

Silver looked more guilty about this than she had about showing up at the door with a deputy sheriff. “She messaged me and sent me her phone number a few months ago. After, you know. In case I wanted to talk to her about...about Dad and what happened. We’ve been texting on and off for a while now.”

“You know I check your texts. I haven’t seen anything like that.”

Silver looked away. “I always delete them. I know you don’t want me to talk to her. I can stop.”

Again, Dani wanted to yell, but did her best to keep control. Silver loved her namesake grandmother, who had been an active part of their lives for her first few years, even babysitting her when Dani had classes.

Dani never would have made it through her undergraduate degree without Silvia DeLuca’s help.

Their relationship had become strained after Dani filed for divorce six years ago, but even then she had allowed Silvia DeLuca to see her granddaughters, until the other woman started slyly undermining Dani to them. The final straw had come when Silvia dragged Silver to visit her father in prison without Dani’s permission.

Silvia was one of those women who could never see her child as he was. Tommy could do no wrong in her book. As far as she believed, anytime Tommy found himself in trouble, it was always someone else’s fault.

She had been furious about the divorce and even more upset when Dani left for veterinary school in Boston. Their contact had dwindled to Christmas and birthday cards, which was exactly the way Dani preferred things.

“Are you mad that I’ve been texting Nana?”

“I’m mad that you’ve been hiding it. We can talk about that later, though. Right now, we need to focus on your actions tonight.”

“I made a mistake. It was stupid. It won’t happen again.”

The words sounded far too well practiced to be sincere.

“No. It won’t. You’re grounded until further notice. That means extra chores here and at the clinic, no video games, no YouTube and no phone except at school.”

Silver huffed but said nothing, obviously knowing she was on extremely thin ice. No doubt she could almost hear it cracking beneath her feet.

“Also, I need you to give me the names of the other girls involved so I can let their parents know and they can help you with the cleanup.”

“I told you. It was just me.”

They both knew that was a lie but Dani had no idea how to force the truth out of her.

“Fine. You can do the cleanup on your own.”

“Fine,” Silver said, her voice short. “Is that all?”

“For now.”

With a sigh, Dani rose and squeezed Silver’s arm. “You know I love you, Silverbell, right?”

Her daughter shrugged, not meeting her gaze.

“I brought you and Mia to Haven Point because we’ve been offered a chance to make a good life here, a place where you girls would be safe and healthy. A place with low crime, good schools and nice people.”

“There were good schools and nice people in Boston. And in Queens before that.”

“Agreed. We could have made a good life for ourselves somewhere else. This is the one that felt best. When I got this opportunity, you and Mia and I talked about it and we all agreed we wanted to give Haven Point a chance to become our home. I don’t think any of us has really done a good job in that department. I’d like to try harder. What about you?”

“I guess,” Silver said.

Dani reached down and hugged her daughter and after a moment, she felt small arms go around her.

Silver rested her head against Dani’s chest, just above the thick nest of emotions there. She loved this beautiful, smart, contrary creature beyond words.

“Get some rest. Everything seems better in the morning.”

She hoped, anyway. Because right now things seemed pretty bleak for Team Capelli.

“I get to be the candy cane in the school play. You should come see it! I get to sing a solo and everything. Can you come?”

“Wow. That’s exciting.” Ruben smiled down at Will Montgomery, his boss’s stepson and just about the most adorable kid he knew. “When is the play?”

“The Wednesday before Christmas at eleven.” Will’s mother, Andie Bailey—married to the sheriff and Ruben’s boss, Marshall Bailey—sat in the visitor chair at his desk, waiting for Marsh to get off the phone so the sheriff could take her and their children to lunch on his break.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join us for lunch?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Will said. “You could sit by me and I could tell you all about my part.”

“I hate to miss that kind invitation but I have some paperwork to finish.”

The sheriff’s department wasn’t always a good place for kids, but Andie and the children had brought some shortbread cookies they had made that day to hand out to the other deputies in the office. Ruben had quickly secreted his plate in a desk drawer where everybody else better keep their hands off, if they knew what was good for them.

He loved seeing Will, his sister, Chloe, and their mother, Andie, together with Marshall. The four of them, along with Marshall’s son Christopher made a solid, loving unit.

At the same time, his interactions with the family always left him a little...hollow. Not sad, precisely, only more aware than usual of his solitary state.

Ruben never thought he would be thirty-three and alone. He had always wanted a family, always imagined by this point in his life he would have a bunch of kids, a mortgage, a boat in the driveway and a kind, caring wife like Andie.

He had the boat and the mortgage, but not the rest.

“You might like my school program, too.” Chloe gave him her sweetest smile, that one that always stole his heart. She was a few years older than Will but considerably more mature. Some of that had to do with her personality, though some might have been from the tough circumstances of a few summers ago, before her mother married Marshall.

“Are you a candy cane, too?”

“Ruben,” she said in an exasperated voice. “We don’t have candy canes in the sixth grade program. That’s for the little kids. I’m in the choir.”

“Let me know when it is and I’ll see if I can arrange my schedule.”

He had a nephew in her grade at Haven Point Elementary School, so would definitely try to make it.

“It’s right after Will’s class program.”

“Easy enough. I’ll add it to my schedule.” Maybe that was his destiny, to always be the kindly uncle and friend.

He pushed away that depressing thought as Marshall finished his phone call and came out.

“Did I hear talk that somebody brought cookies?”

Will giggled. “We did! We’ve got some for you, too, Dad.”

That was a new thing, the kids calling Marshall dad. Ruben had noticed it the last time he saw them all together. Their own father had been a police officer killed in the line of duty. Marshall had stepped up to take care of all of them and it was obvious the kids loved him.

He could tell Marshall was touched by the word. “Bring them in here before somebody else eats them,” he said gruffly.

Will and Chloe grabbed one of their remaining covered plates and charged into their stepfather’s office, leaving Ruben with Andie.

“Those two,” she said, shaking her head.

“They’re wonderful.”

“I can’t argue with that. I’m enjoying them at this age, but who knows what trouble they’ll bring me in about five years or so. Which reminds me, Marshall tells me you had some excitement at your place last night. Some vandalism on your beautiful new boat. How is The Wonder?”

He found himself reluctant to discuss Dani and her daughter with Andie, almost protectively so, which he knew was completely ridiculous.

“It was just kids messing around.”

“I understand you caught one of them in the act. The new veterinarian’s daughter, the one with the cool hair and the unusual name.”

“Yes. But please don’t spread that around.” He really hoped the identity of his vandal wasn’t common knowledge. He knew Andie would be discreet. She wasn’t going to talk, not even to her friends at the Haven Point Helping Hands, a service and social organization in town.

“I won’t,” she assured him.

“Silver wasn’t the only one involved, but she was the only one I caught. She won’t tell me who else was there.”

“Snitches get stitches,” Andie said.

“Funny. She said the same thing.”

“I understand her reticence to implicate others. She’s probably worried about retribution. She’s, what, thirteen? That’s a hard age to start at a new school.”

Andie could be a good source of information, he realized. The kids were busy helping Marshall shred some papers in his office so he decided now was as good a time as any to dig a little into his intriguing neighbors.

“What’s their story? Dani and her kids? Do you know her at all?”

“She seems very nice and she’s a good veterinarian. Right after she came to town, we went to her when Sadie got a bad bee sting in her eye.”

“Ouch.”

“Right? I would say Dani has a more abrupt bedside manner than your dad, but seemed very kind and caring.”

“What about socially? Have you interacted much outside the veterinary clinic?”

Andie shrugged, though she looked intrigued at his line of questioning. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t need his friend’s wife matchmaking.

“Not really. She seems very...private is I guess the word I would use. She came to a few social events when they first moved to town. Again, she seemed nice enough but I’m afraid maybe we overwhelmed her. When McKenzie asked if she wanted to join the Helping Hands, she said no, that she was too busy with her girls and settling into a new town, starting a practice. Same thing when we asked her to join the book club.”

“That’s fair. Not everybody is a joiner.”

“I get it, believe me. The women of this town can be intimidating for even the toughest constitution.”

“There are so many of you and you always travel in packs.”

“Not always,” she protested with a laugh.

“Most of the time, then.”

Before she could answer, Marshall came out with the kids and Andie’s face completely lit up.

Ruben was aware of a little pinch of discontent again as the two of them kissed. He did his best to ignore it. Marsh had been Ruben’s friend long before he became his boss and Ruben was glad the sheriff and Andie seemed so happy together.

He was always aware when he was with them that if the two of them hadn’t found each other first, Ruben definitely would have made a move. Andie was the kind of woman he had always thought he wanted—someone soft, warm, compassionate.

Worlds away from a certain prickly, cool, reserved veterinarian.

Somebody should probably tell that to his subconscious, which had filled his dreams with all kinds of inappropriate situations involving the woman the night before.

Friday was a long, difficult day. She would have liked to take the day off since the girls were out of school but her time off was limited as a new veterinarian.

She was lucky enough to have a few good caregivers in her rotation and Gloria, the clinic receptionist and office manager, had a daughter home from college for the holidays who was looking for a little extra cash.

Dani had hoped to be done by two, her usual schedule on Friday, but a bichon frise with an abdominal obstruction came in right as she was wrapping up for the day and the dog required emergency surgery.

The surgery had been much more complicated than she had expected and she had ended up calling on Frank to help. She found it demoralizing that she had needed his expertise, yet more evidence she wasn’t up to the challenge of her new vocation, but Frank wouldn’t let her beat herself up.

“Don’t ever be embarrassed to ask for help.” His eyes—so like his son’s—were warm and kind. “I’ve been in the vet business for more than forty years. Just when I think I’ve seen everything under the sun, something new walks through the door to prove me wrong. You should never hesitate to call me, even after the practice is officially yours.”

She wasn’t sure that day would ever come—or ever should come. Who was she kidding, to think she had what it took to be a veterinarian? She was a failure. A nothing. Hadn’t she heard that enough when she was growing up?

As usual when that negative self-talk intruded, she did her best to focus on how fiercely she had worked to get where she was. All the sleepless nights of studying, the hand cramps from propping a textbook in one hand while rocking a crying baby in the other, the many creative ways she had found to stretch a dollar.

We can do hard things. That was the message she tried to reinforce to her girls. She couldn’t help wondering when it would be her turn to do the easy things.

By the time she finally made it home just after five, three hours later than she’d planned, she was exhausted.

“Thank you for staying extra with them,” she told Heidi, Gloria’s youngest daughter.

“Not a problem. I need the extra cash. I’m saving up to get my belly button pierced.”

Since the girl had four rows of pierced earrings and a ring in her lip, what was one more puncture wound? “Glad I could add to the pot, then. Have a good evening.”

“Thanks, Dr. C. Silver’s been in her room most of the afternoon doing homework and Mia is in the family room.”

“Thanks.”

After Dani let the babysitter out, she headed to find the easier of her children and found Mia playing quietly with her dolls.

“Hey, sweetie pie. How did your day go?”

Mia shrugged, without looking up at her.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“You said we should never lie but you lied.”

Dani scanned over her day, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong this time.

“About what?”

“You said you would be home right after lunch and we could put our Christmas tree up today. Lunch was a long time ago and now it’s almost dark and I bet you’re going to say you’re too tired to put up a Christmas tree.”

Going through the hassle of putting up a tree was the absolute last thing she wanted to do right now. After the difficult day, her brain was mush and she wanted to collapse on the sofa and sleep for the rest of the evening.

She had made a promise, though, something she took very seriously.

She sat on the floor beside her daughter. “I’m sorry, Mia. I did tell you I would be home after lunch but then I had a dog emergency. Sometimes that happens when you’re a veterinarian. We’ve talked about it before, remember? This time the emergency was a little bichon frise who had something stuck in her stomach. She was throwing up and couldn’t eat or poop.”

Her compassionate youngest child looked distressed at that. “Is she okay?”

“She is now. Dr. Morales came in and helped me fix things. It will take a day or two, but Princess Snowbear will be back to herself in a few days.”

Apparently saving a dog’s life warranted a few points in her book, at least where her youngest was concerned. Mia cuddled up to her. “I like Dr. Morales. He’s nice.”

“He is, indeed.” She would have been in trouble without him during the surgery. What would she do when he finally retired?

She put that worry away for another day. “How’s your sister been?”

Mia looked down the hall toward the bedrooms. “I don’t know. She stayed in her room almost all day. Earlier, I asked if she wanted to play with my Shopkins and she told me they’re stupid and I am, too.”

Apparently at least one of her children had no problem being a snitch. “She shouldn’t have said either of those things. You’re not stupid and neither are your toys, honey.”