eating a second breakfast, because Maggie offered and it seemed polite and, okay, Jared needed something to do with his hands, he ushered everyone down the stairs and out to his truck.
“Really,” Maggie insisted. “Cassidy and I can walk to the school. We always do.”
“We’re already late,” Matt protested.
“I want to walk,” Caleb volunteered.
“Matt’s right,” Jared said. “We’re already late. Plus, there’s something I’d like to ask you. I don’t know if I’ll have another chance to get away.”
Jared’s sons quickly piled in the backseat. Matt and Ryan sat by the coveted windows, while Caleb was more than annoyed to be in the middle. Cassidy, looking way too pleased, climbed in the front, quite content to be in the middle. She snapped on her seat belt and looked at Jared as if he were Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all rolled into one. Jared knew the look well. It usually meant the kid using it was about to ask for something.
“Why don’t you have a girl?” Cassidy asked, once he’d put on his own seat belt and started the truck.
The snort from the backseat might have been Ryan or might have been Matt. For the first time, Jared got what Grandpa Billy meant when he said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. It was all Jared could do not to snort, too. The only obvious non-snorter was Caleb because the five-year-old said, “Yeah, Dad, I want a sister. We can name her Molly.”
“We don’t need a—” Jared stopped, suddenly realizing that not just one but both females in the front seat were staring at him.
“We have a girl,” Jared revised. “Her name is Beth, and she’ll have to be in charge of giving you girl relatives.”
“But—” Caleb started to say.
Jared held up one hand. “End of conversation.”
“Dad has to be married in order for there to be a sister,” Ryan told Caleb.
“And Dad doesn’t like girls,” Matt added.
Jared almost drove off the road. Where did Matt get that idea? As for Maggie, she was looking away from him and out the window. He could tell by the way her cheeks were sucked in and her lips were puckered, that she was doing all she could not to laugh.
“Why don’t you like girls?” Cassidy asked.
“I do like girls,” Jared assured her, “especially ones who eat blueberry pancakes and ones who show me exactly where to park.”
Cassidy giggled and pointed to a visitor’s spot right by the front walkway of Roanoke Elementary. “Am I a visitor?” Jared asked.
“Yes,” Cassidy decided. “Because you’re not a kid and you don’t work here.”
“Good enough,” Jared agreed.
A moment later, both he and Maggie had signed their children in as tardy and watched as all of them, clutching late slips, scurried to their classrooms.
Well, Matt didn’t scurry. He looked at Jared accusingly. The only thing worse than being late, to Matt’s way of thinking, was being late alongside Cassidy Tate.
* * *
Jared had never stopped at Roanoke’s only coffeehouse just to have coffee. What he was paying for two cups could buy a whole pound, not that he would have. He didn’t like coffee. Plus, the concept of just sitting around, doing nothing, felt strange. He resisted the urge to fidget.
“You always come here after dropping Cassidy off at school?” He shifted in the brown hardback chair and stretched out his legs. They didn’t fit under the tiny table.
Maggie took a sip of something that was more chocolate than coffee and nodded. “As often as I can. It’s my one treat before I open the store for the day. Usually, though, I’m alone so I sit here and write in my journal. Or I read. Do you like to read?”
He hadn’t been asked that question in almost fifteen years, not since high school. “I read the Bible.”
“Oh.”
She visibly recoiled, her withdrawal so tangible it made him stop thinking about where to put his feet and how much he’d paid for the stupid cups of coffee.
“When I have time,” he added, hoping to get her to relax, “I read the newspaper.”
“Online or paper?”
“A little bit of both.”
Instead of looking at Maggie and trying to figure out why his reading the Bible could put such a look of vulnerability—or fear?—on her face, Jared took a drink of his coffee. Bitter stuff, downright nasty. Good thing the cup wasn’t that big.
He decided to get right to the point. “Beth has pretty much insisted that I come talk to you.”
“And here I thought you just stopped by because you knew I needed help with breakfast.”
When she smiled, it about made him want to forget the real reason he had stopped by. But, only for a moment. “She thinks you can give me some ideas on how to help my son Caleb. He’s having trouble at school.”
Maggie was already nodding. “I told Beth she could send anyone my way. When Cassidy started having trouble in school, I felt so alone. My husband wasn’t around and when he was, he didn’t really understand. For months my only friends were the specialists and the books and articles I was reading practically every night on how to deal with Attention Deficit.”
He looked at her empty ring finger and desperately tried to remember what Joel had said about why a Mr. Tate wasn’t around.
“I’m not sure that anything is wrong with Caleb,” Jared said finally. “I think I just need to be stricter and—”
He knew the moment he lost her. Her smile flattened. Her stare was suddenly focused on something other than his face. His late wife, Mandy, used to get the same look on her face, usually when he was saying something about why the living room wasn’t picked up or why they were having hamburger for the third night in the row. It was only when Mandy got sick and couldn’t do anything that he realized just how much she’d been doing.
And how clueless he’d been.
“Look,” he backtracked, “Caleb is just five. He lost his mother when he was not yet two, and he pretty much lost me for almost a year. That he can focus at all is a miracle. I want to be a good dad. Beth says you have more parenting tips than Dr. Spock.”
He was trying to be nonchalant, but he was out of his comfort zone. He was used to women who wore comfortable shirts tucked into jeans. She wore enough pink to be a flamingo. She didn’t look old enough to be a parent, let alone one who gave advice when the going got tough.
“The most important thing I can tell you is don’t be afraid to ask for help, take all the advice that is offered and also be willing to sacrifice to get it.”
“Sacrifice?”
She
