Rick said with a smile. “Couldn’t hurt.” He looked down at Johnny. “Let’s go. The car’s about to turn into a pumpkin.” He put his hand lightly on the back of Johnny’s blond head and guided him into the hallway.
For a moment she watched Johnny’s slight body walking away, his pipe-cleaner arm raised to hold his father’s hand, then stepped back into her apartment. The door closed with a light click behind her. She still heard their footsteps—Rick’s heavy plodding and the tap of Johnny’s run—disappear like music at the end of a song. When they were gone and she knew she was safely alone, she smiled. The weekend was hers. She didn’t have to make a single vegetable if she didn’t want to. In fact, she could eat Cap’n Crunch over the sink for two nights in a row if that’s what she wanted.
She had forty-eight hours to unwind the stress that had wound her up all week and she had to start right away.
She got the Cap’n Crunch out.
Chapter Two
“The thing is, I don’t think doctors actually give babies opium for teething anymore.” Kit leaned her elbows on her desk and listened to the old medical columnist’s patronizing response over the telephone line before responding, “I know it’s called paregoric, but it’s opium.” And four years ago she would have given her right arm to have some for her screaming baby, but still. Come on. It was a narcotic. “How about you just try describing more homemade remedies, like teething rings, freezing a sock, that kind of thing….” She listened on the line again. “A sock. Like, for your feet. You soak it in water, then freeze it and…” She sighed. “Never mind. Just go ahead and finish your column.”
She would edit it later.
Home Life magazine had been around for a hundred and twenty-five years, and Kit was willing to bet Orville Pippin had been writing his “Ask the Doctor” column for at least half that time. She would also bet his exploration of modern medicine stopped with whatever the Stenberg School of Medicine class of ’38 had taken away under their graduation caps.
Kit had only been the managing editor of the magazine for five years, but in that time she’d researched and written more of his columns than he himself had, thanks to all of the outdated advice he had a tendency to dole out. She had a hotline to her own pediatrician’s office to double-check just this kind of thing.
Opium.
Jeez.
“Hey, Kit!” Lucy, a young editorial assistant, barked from the hallway. “Phone, line two. Johnny’s babysitter again.”
Kit glanced at the clock. Two fifty-five. Damn. Five minutes ago it had been noon and even then she hadn’t had enough time to finish everything she had to do today. She closed her eyes and counted to five. If she didn’t pick up the phone, they couldn’t tell her to come pick him up early again. It wasn’t as if they’d put him out on the sidewalk.
She waited just a beat longer, then picked up the receiver. “This is Kit Macy.”
“Ms. Macy.” It was the director, Ellen Phillips. She always pronounced Ms. as if it contained twenty-two z’s. “We seem to have a problem.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Johnny has been fighting with Kyle again.” Big surprise. It was like saying Churchill and Hitler had had another disagreement. “It seems both of them wanted to ride the fire engine, but Johnny refused to let Kyle have a turn.”
Kyle was a bully. Easily two years older than Johnny and at least twenty pounds heavier, the kid picked on Johnny every single day. One would have thought the facility administrator might have taken the older, bigger child to task, but she never did. Kyle’s parents were a whole lot richer than Kit, and if Mizzzzzzz Phillips had to alienate either boy’s parents, it was going to be Johnny’s every time.
And it was.
Kit took a short breath. “Ellen, look, can’t you please just separate them for the rest of the day?” She looked at the clock. Three o’clock. “It’s only another two hours or so, and I have a million things I have to get done.”
“I’m trying to do my job, too, Ms. Macy, but that’s difficult to do with these hellions creating chaos for me.”
Hellions. Man, she’d hissed it like a curse. “Well, maybe Kyle’s parents can pick him up this time.”
The phone line seemed to crackle with the chill of her response. “But you are in the building next door to ours. I would hate to ask Mr. Cherkins to come all the way downtown when you’re right here.”
Yes. Yes, she was right here. And that was the only reason she still had Johnny in the Petite Care Center. She was seriously thinking it wasn’t worth it.
If Johnny hadn’t been caught in the middle of this, Kit’s response would have been different, but she didn’t want to instigate an argument only to have Ellen take it out on the boy.
She looked at the clock on her desk. Three-oh-three. She sighed heavily. “I’ll be right there.”
“He wouldn’t let me ride.”
“I believe you.” Kit toted Johnny along the sidewalk toward the old building that had served as Home Life’s headquarters since 1948. “But I’ve told you before to avoid that kid. If he’s playing with something, you have to find something else to play with. If he’s not near you, he can’t fight with you.”
“But I was there first!” Johnny’s voice rang with the injustice of it. Obviously he’d had to explain this to Ellen, too, because his face crinkled the way it always did when he was truly frustrated.
“Then you should have walked away.” Kit heard her own advice and stopped. To hell with hurrying back to work. This was more important.
She knelt down in front of her son on the grungy sidewalk, holding his slight shoulders in her hands. “I take it back, Johnny. You shouldn’t have. You can’t walk away every time a bully tries to take something from you. You did the right thing. I’m glad you stood up for yourself.”
A dent formed in the perfectly smooth skin over his brow. “You are?” His blue eyes went dark with confusion. “But you just said—”
“I know, baby. But I was wrong. It’s easier to walk away from bullies sometimes, but it’s not always right.” She pulled him close for a hug, reveling in the soft, soapy smell of his skin and hair. She kissed the cottony-soft blond head and drew back. “Okay?”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
It broke her heart. He was there for her convenience, not because it was best for him. There was no pretending otherwise. She was best for him. And since she couldn’t be there all the time, she was going to have to find something else. Something that wasn’t Mizzzzzzz Phillips. “Remember how I told you I was going to try and put you in that Montessori school near our new house?”
“School?” His eyes lit up. He was enamored with the idea of school in the way only a person who had never been could be.
She nodded, but fear surged in her heart rather than the hope she saw in his. What if it didn’t work out? It didn’t bear thinking about. “Well, the application came in the mail today and I’m
