go for ice cream? Would you like that?”
“Can I see Edie, please?” Molly finally asked.
Edie…a name he didn’t recognize. “Is she one of your little playmates? Because you’re welcome to invite her over. Or I could take you to her house to play, if that’s OK with her parents.”
No response from Molly. She simply continued standing there, staring at him, causing the tension between them to rise to the point that it was giving him a dull headache. One little girl inducing more pressure than he’d ever felt when he was in surgery. Truth be told, it was grinding him down. Besides losing sleep, he’d lost his appetite. Of course, that could also be the effect of coming home to Lilly Lake, where bad memories infused the very air he breathed. But Rafe had an idea Molly played a big part in his queasy feelings as he truly didn’t relish the idea of what he had to do. So finally, in desperation, he said, “Look, Molly, why don’t you run up to your room and play for a little while so I can make a phone call? After that, we’ll figure out what to do with the rest of the day.” Other than simply hanging around, staring at each other, not having a grasp on how to remedy the situation. “OK?”
On impulse, he held out his hand to Molly, and she grabbed hold quickly. Clung tightly as the two of them made their way through the house, now emptied of all its guests, and parted company when she continued on upstairs and he didn’t. Rafe watched until Molly turned the corner, then he continued standing there until he heard the sound of her door shutting. “What am I going to do, Aunt Grace?” he asked her portrait hanging over the fireplace mantel in the parlor, on his way to the study to put out a distress call to the man most likely to know what to do. “It’s a hell of a mess you’ve gotten me into, so the least you could do would be to tell me how I’m supposed to get myself out of it and do what’s right for Molly at the same time.”
Rafe actually paused for a moment, like he expected an answer from his aunt. Then, when he realized how absurd that was, he continued on his way, thinking about how really alone he was in this. It was him, no one else. Jess had his responsibilities elsewhere, and his own private hell to wade through every waking minute of every day. Then after Jess, there was…no one. Absolutely no one. Sure, Rafe could have easily turned and walked away, and let Aunt Grace’s attorney handle the remaining affairs for him. One of those being Molly. But that wasn’t the kind of person he was. He was…dutiful. That was what Aunt Grace had always said about him. Jess was sunny, Rafe was dutiful.
Except these days Jess was sad and Rafe was…well, he wasn’t sure what he was. But he sure as hell was sure what he was not, which was daddy material!
The dutiful tag, though, was the thing causing the tension to quadruple in him right this very minute, as finding Molly a new family seemed almost cruel at this particular time. But she needed love, and that was something he knew nothing about. More than that, had no earthly desire to learn about. Love caused pain, and he’d had enough pain to last a lifetime. That attitude probably made him selfish, but so be it. He’d loved his aunt, he loved his brother. But no one else. It was a hard choice, but he was OK with it, for himself. Molly stood a chance at better things in this world, however, and she needed the kind of love he simply didn’t have in him.
So with the resolve firmly in place that he was going to find that perfect adoptive situation for her, Rafe stepped into the study to phone the man he hoped would do most of the solving for him and shut the door behind him, grateful for the thick wooden walls that had always felt so safe to him when he was a child. All those nights when his dad had been drunk, or bellowing for the sake of bellowing, this was where he’d found his sanctuary, in Aunt Grace’s study right across the street from his own private hell. In the red leather chair behind her desk, where she’d let him sit.
He ran his fingers over the back of the chair, picturing himself as a little boy, feeling so safe and important there. For a moment, when he sat down, he could almost see Aunt Grace standing across the desk from him, telling him to take a few deep breaths to help him calm down.
“Calm down,” he said to himself, taking those few deep breaths, noticing, for the first time, a small, custom-made desk in the corner of the room. An exact replica of Grace’s massive mahogany desk. Next to it, an exact replica of the leather chair. For Molly. The way it had been for Jess and him, and countless others.
“I don’t suppose there’s a simple way out of this, is there?” he asked Henry Danforth. Henry was Aunt Grace’s confidant, her lawyer.
“Do you actually believe your aunt would have made things simple for you, son? She left this world the way she lived in it day after day…and you know how that was.”
He did. In a word…complicated. “So tell me, what am I going to do about Molly?” Glancing at the big leather chair, then the smaller replica, he felt the first real knot of emotion constrict his throat. I’ll do my best, Aunt Grace. I promise, I’ll do my best. “And do you know where I can I can find her little playmate called Edie?”
* * *
“Shall I let him in?” Betty Richardson, Edie Parker’s secretary, asked from the door separating her office from Edie’s. “He’s not on the appointment list, but he said he’s here about Molly, so I figured you’d want to talk to him.”
Rafe stepped up behind Betty, expecting to find little Edie’s mother, ready to plead his case to her, but Edie, as it turned out, wasn’t so little. And she wasn’t anything close to the kind of friend Rafe expected Molly to have. In fact, his first impression was that Molly’s friend was a very curvaceous friend indeed. Stunningly so. “You’re sure that’s Edie Parker?” he asked Betty, simply to make sure.
“That’s Edie,” she confirmed, stepping out of Rafe’s way.
One without a wedding ring, he noted at first glance as he looked around the ample figure of the secretary. He also noted the long blonde hair, the blue eyes, the impeccable smile. Edie Parker, or Edith Louise Parker, as it stated on her name plaque, shoved her desk chair back and stood, staring straight at the man who hadn’t waited but had followed her secretary through the office door. Yet before she could speak, Molly shot around him and ran straight into Edie’s arms. “Edie,” she squealed. “I was afraid I’d never get to come see you again.”
Edie scooped her right in. “You know I’d have come out to Gracie House to see you,” she said, holding on to Molly for all she was worth. “I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you.”
“I don’t like it there any more, Edie. It’s too…quiet.”
Edie glanced up briefly at Rafe. “Then we’re going to have to see about you coming back to work here, at the hospital, as soon as possible. We have a lot of things for you to do. Janie, in the gift shop, needs someone to straighten her shelves. And André, in the kitchen, needs some help getting his pantry rearranged. Oh, and Dr. Rick mentioned, just yesterday, that he needs someone to help him pick out what kind of fish he’s going to put into the new aquarium in the front lobby.”
“I like yellow-striped fish,” Molly said, almost shyly. “The ones with the blue stripes.”
“Then that’s something you and Dr. Rick should talk about.”
For a moment, watching the exchange between Edie and Molly, the only thing that came to Rafe’s mind was the phrase from an old song…something about the mother and child reunion being only a motion away…That was what it looked like he was witnessing right now, not just on Molly’s part but on Edie Parker’s as well. He was surprised how well they connected. Pleased, actually, as he hadn’t observed that kind of emotion in Molly since he’d been here, and he’d
