She had to scale herself back. Way back.
Maybe just the ceiling fans. And the faucets.
Or just the ceiling fans.
And they could see about the faucets....
* * *
ABE WOKE JON up at six. Laundry was done by seven. Two loads was all it took. One with jeans and pants, the other with the rest of their clothes.
Sitting down with his son for a bowl of nonsugared cereal with fresh bananas and a piece of toast at the little four-seater, faux butcher-block table that had come with the furnished, two-bedroom apartment he’d found for them, Jon checked the strap on Abe’s booster seat one more time and, reaching under the table, pulled it more firmly up to the table before placing Abe’s plastic bowl within sight, but not reach.
“Eat,” he said clearly, holding the big handled little spoon. “You’re hungry,” he said, leaning down just a bit so that his lips were right in Abe’s line of vision. “You want to eat,” he said, keeping his voice steady, kind. But firm, too. “Tell Daddy you want to eat.”
Abe grunted, looking at the bowl of cereal, and kicked Jon’s knee under the table. Repositioning himself so that his legs were together and angled away from the little boy, he leaned forward a little more. “You’re hungry,” he said again. “Tell Daddy you want eat.” And when Abe grunted again, he repeated the process a third time, putting more emphasis on the word eat each time.
Abe’s face puckered and Jon could see a bout of tears on the horizon. “I’m not giving in, Abraham.” He almost smiled. But this wasn’t a game. “It’s just you and me, buddy, and if you want to scream to he―Hades and back, you go ahead.” In his former life he’d used more colorful vocabulary. It came naturally to him. But he was working on not slipping up. “You want to eat. I understand that. I just need you to tell me.”
Slamming his hands on the table, Abraham started to cry. Jon moved the boy’s cereal bowl a little farther out of reach. He’d cleaned up enough spilled milk.
And he took hold of his son’s little hand, rubbing it lightly.
Abe stared at him.
“Your breakfast is here, son,” he explained slowly. “So is mine. And I’m hungry, too. I just need you to use your words. Tell Daddy you want to eat.”
With drops of tears wetting his lashes, Abe stared.
“Eeeeaaat,” Jon said again. Slowly.
“Eeeeeuh!” The word wasn’t offered gently at all.
Jon didn’t give a damn about that. He almost spilled the cereal himself in his haste to reward Abe’s milestone.
The boy was not stupid. He’d just had a father who’d been too good at reading his mind and not good enough at forcing him to do for himself.
* * *
“SO...WHAT DO you think?” Lillie stared back and forth between the two people she loved more than anything in the world—her stand-in parents, Jerry and Gayle Henderson, who’d taken her into their hearts long before they’d become her in-laws, and kept her there in spite of the divorce.
“I think you look happier than you have in a long time.” Gayle’s soft-spoken words settled a bit of the unease deep inside of Lillie.
She turned to Jerry. “What about you, Papa?” Not Dad. Or Daddy. Lillie couldn’t give another man that name. But neither could she call Jerry anything but a variation of it.
“I trust you, Lil. You’ll do the right thing.”
She’d told them about Jon and Abraham. Every Sunday morning over breakfast, she gave them a rundown of her week and they did the same. They were her family.
The only close family she had.
“What does that mean?” she asked, shaking her head. “I’m asking for your opinion, Papa. That’s when you tell me what you think even if I’m not going to like it.” They’d been over this point before. She needed Jerry’s honesty. She wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what he said to her.
“I think that you obviously feel something for this little boy. And it could be a bit personal. Frankly, I can’t imagine that your personal experience doesn’t play some part in the work you do. How could it not? What happens to you becomes a part of you. You can’t just leave it behind. No matter how badly you want to.”
There was a message in there for her. Unrelated to Jon and Abraham Swartz.
“You think I’m trying to leave my past behind? I thought you approved of my move to Shelter Valley. You encouraged me to branch out on my own.”
Gayle’s blue eyes were filled with concern. “We did,” she said. “We do.”
“Papa?”
“Gayle and I fully support your move—and your career choice,” he said, his words coming slowly, as if he was choosing them carefully.
Gayle. It was what Kirk had called his father’s third wife. So that was what Lillie called her, too, although she’d always been closer to Gayle than to Kirk’s biological mother—Jerry’s first wife, who’d left him for a man richer than he was back when Jerry had been fresh out of college and starting his own PR firm.
“We thought you’d have found...someone...by now,” Gayle’s gaze was direct. And filled with love.
Shaking her head, Lillie looked between the two of them, her broccoli quiche and fruit untouched on her plate. “I don’t understand.” Either they thought the move to Shelter Valley had been a good decision, or they thought she was running away. It couldn’t be both.
Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she’d asked for this conversation. That she wanted—no, needed—their insight and perspective.
Everyone needed a sounding board.
“Your career choice, your location, isn’t the problem, Lil,” Jerry said. “It’s your lack of close relationships that concerns us.”
“You want me to take a lover?”
What did this have to do with Jon and Abraham? She’d asked them if they thought she was crossing a line getting involved with the Swartzes.
During the final months of her pregnancy, Lillie and the Hendersons had had many frank conversations. Gayle had been present during the birth.
Gayle’s smile was too knowing, but Lillie wasn’t sure what the older woman thought she knew.
“No, Lil, we don’t mean you should take a lover,” she said. “Unless you meet a man you’re in love with and want to sleep with, of course,” she added.
“We just want you to open your heart and let people in again,” Jerry said.
Oh.
As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. “Hearts break.”
