Not that they minded. All the members of her large family were only too eager to help her since Kenny’s death. She appreciated it. She just hated needing it.
She walked into the living room. The chintz furniture always looked a little worn and the coffee table bore the scars of the six children who’d been raised here. And now her own two would be here too much, probably, since she’d started work. Her parents deserved to relax in their retirement, not take care of her children.
“Mom?” She crossed to the kitchen, drawn by the aroma of baking chicken. “I’m here.” She’d almost said I’m home, the phrase the Flanagan kids had always shouted when they rushed in from school or play.
The phrase said that you belonged, that here you were important and valued and sure of your welcome. She thought again of Luke. How must it feel to him to be back in the house where he’d grown up, with his mother gone?
Maybe similar to the way she felt now each time she came here—torn between longing for the reassurance she’d felt as a little girl in this place and feeling as if she ought to be able to handle everything on her own.
“Mary Kate.” Her mother straightened from bending over the oven door, pushing the pan back inside. Her cheeks were rosy from the heat and her dark hair curled around her still-youthful face. “You’re just in time. Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes. I promised Michael biscuits with the chicken.”
Siobhan Flanagan never seemed to look any older—or at least any less beautiful. Why couldn’t she have inherited her mother’s ageless beauty instead of her father’s red hair and freckles?
“You don’t need to feed us. We can go home for supper.” And have frozen pizza again.
“We want you to stay. Your father and I can’t eat all this chicken by ourselves.”
She should take the kids, go home, prove to herself that she could manage the whole working-single-mother thing. Still, it was a family joke that after cooking for so many for so long, her mother couldn’t fix a meal for two. Twenty, maybe, but not two.
“You spoil us.” She’d work on self-reliance tomorrow. “Where are the kids?”
“In the backyard, playing ball. I’ve been keeping an eye on them from the window.”
Shawna and Michael were fine. Of course they were. So what compelled her to step out onto the back porch, just to be sure?
“Hi, Mom.” Shawna waved a bright red plastic bat. “Look at the neat ball set Grandpa got for us.”
“Very nice.”
Michael came running to give her a hug. She held him tightly for an instant, wondering how soon he’d begin to emulate Shawna’s independence, making these embraces a thing of the past.
Michael squirmed out of her arms. Looking at his blue eyes and golden red curls was like looking into a mirror. Everyone had always said the kids had little of their daddy in their appearance. That hadn’t bothered her too much until Kenny was gone.
“Grandpa says the ball set is ours, but we should leave it here to play with when we’re here,” Michael said, with his typical determination to do everything according to the rules. “They’re our Grandpa’s house toys.”
“That’s a good idea.” She ruffled his red curls. “I’m going in the house with Grammy. You two stay right in the yard, okay? If you hit the ball outside, you come and tell me. Don’t go after it yourselves.”
“We know, Mom.” Shawna gave an exaggerated sigh.
Was she being overprotective? Maybe that was inevitable. She’d learned that disaster could strike just when everything seemed fine.
She went back into the kitchen, to find her mother pouring glasses of iced tea. She handed one to Mary Kate. “It’s so warm for the first of May that I thought I’d make iced tea. So, tell me. How did it go with Luke? Did he actually let you in the house?”
“Not exactly let me in. I’m afraid I barged in.”
Her mother’s brow wrinkled. “Brendan thought we should respect his wish to be left alone.”
“Brendan doesn’t know everything, even if he is a minister.” After having been raised with her cousin Brendan, she didn’t have quite the same reverent attitude toward their minister that the rest of the congregation did. “Anyway, this was business.”
“Poor Luke.” Her mother’s fund of sympathy was unending. “How did he take it?”
“Not well.” She still trembled inside when she thought about that encounter. Had she handled it the right way? Someone with more experience might have done it differently, but at least she’d gotten results. “He finally agreed to the therapy. But he put some conditions on it.”
“Conditions?”
She swallowed, trying to ease the tension that tightened her throat. “He’ll go through with the therapy, but he insists on home visits. And he’ll only do it if I’m his therapist.”
Her mother clasped her hand. “That’s fine, Mary Kate. You’re a good therapist. He couldn’t be in better hands.”
“I’m not sure Mr. Dickson will agree with that.” She gave a wry smile.
“Then you’ll just show him how good you are.” Siobhan always had high expectations of her kids, and more often than not, they managed to meet them, maybe feeling they couldn’t let her down.
“I hope so, but—”
The back door flew open to allow Shawna and Michael to surge through. “Is it almost time for supper?” Shawna surprised Mary Kate by diving into her arms, face lighting up with a smile. “We’re starving!”
“In a minute.” Mary Kate hugged her and then opened her arms to include Michael. “Group hug, please.”
The feel of those two warm, squirming bodies against hers chased away the doubt she’d been about to express. Of course she could succeed. Fueled by the fierce love she had for her children, she could do anything.
Chapter Two
The silence stretched in the clinic director’s office when Mary Kate finished describing her visit with Luke—stretched just like her nerves. She fixed her gaze on Carl Dickson’s face, determined not to look at the floor like a kid called into the principal’s office.
Dickson had a smooth, expressionless face, rather like an egg. It was the perfect mask for a bureaucrat, impossible to read. Why would someone go into physical therapy, the essence of hands-on helping, and then choose to be an administrator?
He cleared his throat. “Well, Mary Kate, you’ve brought us to a difficult place.”
Her heart sank. He was reacting negatively, probably thinking that she was trying to use her one-time friendship with Luke to grab extra hours of work.
“I don’t see what else—” she began, but the telephone rang.
Dickson
