Джина Уилкинс: The M.D. Next Door

She seemed to be catching her breath, he noted in satisfaction as she sipped the tea. Her cheeks were a healthy pink now, and the faint lines of pain around her mouth had eased. It had been very thoughtful of her to return Alice’s fugitive mutt despite the discomfort it had caused her.

They didn’t have to worry about making conversation. Alice took care of that for them, chattering almost without stopping while they ate. She told them all the latest news from her school friends, gleaned from phone calls and internet friend sites. She babbled about her hopes for Waldo’s training, and all the tricks she wanted to teach him once he’d mastered basic obedience. She shared a funny story her mom had told her in their daily phone call about a reckless cab driver in Hong Kong.

“I’m going to Europe in June, did I tell you, Meagan?” she asked, using the anecdote as a segue.

“Yes, you’ve told me.”

Judging from Meagan’s tone, Seth suspected Alice had mentioned the upcoming trip several times, but Meagan still sounded encouraging when she added, “I know you’re really looking forward to the adventure.”

Alice nodded with the eagerness and trace of hesitation she always displayed when they talked about her trip. “It’ll be great to be with Mom and see all those countries. But I guess I’m a little nervous about the flight to London. I’ve never been on a flight that long by myself before.”

“You’ll be fine. My younger sister Madison went to France when she wasn’t much older than you to visit a school friend whose family had moved there. She was fifteen, I think, which would have made it about twelve years ago. Our parents were nervous about letting her go, but they knew it was a great opportunity for her. The flight attendants took very good care of her and escorted her straight to her hosts when they reached their destination. She had a fabulous time.”

Alice seemed to find reassurance in Meagan’s story. Seth tried to find some measure of encouragement, himself, though he couldn’t help thinking the world had changed in those past twelve years. He dreaded the day he put Alice on that plane, though he was doing his best to keep her from seeing the extent of his reluctance.

“I didn’t know you have a sister, Meagan,” Alice said, already skipping to the next topic.

“I have a sister and a brother, both younger. Madison and Mitchell. My parents had a thing for the letterM, apparently,” Meagan added with a wrinkle of her nose that Seth found enchanting.

“Are you close to them?”

The faintest hint of wistfulness in Alice’s question made Seth frown. Alice had a few weapons in her arsenal for making-dad-feel-guilty. A couple of times she had pulled out the I’m-an-only-child-from-a-broken-home lament, just to see how far it would take her in an argument. She had learned quickly enough that it didn’t take her far at all, but he knew he would hear versions of the grievance again.

As well behaved as she was, Alice was a normal kid just coming into the hormonal teen years. He suspected there would be conflicts ahead in which she would not hesitate to pull out whatever tool she deemed most useful for manipulating Dad. He’d been warned about it by several friends and coworkers with teenagers, and he thought he was as prepared as he could possibly be. At least, he hoped so, he thought with a swallow.

“I am close to my siblings,” Meagan replied lightly. “As much as we can be, at least, with all of us so busy in our careers. We try to get together at least once a month and to call each other several times a week. Our mom is the one who keeps us all informed about what’s going on with the others.”

“We don’t have a big family,” Alice confided. “Dad’s an only child and his mom died when I was too little to remember her. Grampa Llewellyn lives in Dallas, and we only see him a few times a year. My mom has a sister who lives in Denver. She has two kids, but they’re older than me and I don’t know them very well. I see my mom’s parents, though. They live in Heber Springs and I spend one weekend a month with them.”

Seth wondered what it was about Meagan that turned his normally somewhat-reserved-with-outsiders daughter into such a chatterbox. Even if Alice were looking for someone to fill in for her absent mother, Meagan bore little resemblance to Colleen, either physically or in mannerisms.

Colleen’s appearance was a bit more striking than Meagan’s, a slightly exotic attractiveness she played up deliberately with makeup and fashions. Meagan was more girl-next-door pretty, a look he found more appealing these days. Colleen spoke in a mile-a-minute, no-nonsense tone, all traces of the South deliberately scrubbed from her accent. Meagan’s voice was softer, her speech slower, the slight hint of Southern drawl soothing and charming, in his opinion.

Both women projected intelligence, competence and independence — at least, from what little he’d seen of Meagan — but Meagan was less…well, stressful was the first word that popped into his mind. Maybe Alice focused more on the few qualities her mother and her neighbor shared rather than the differences. Or maybe she just enjoyed having the attention of any encouraging adult, he thought with another little ripple of guilt.

He could sort of understand Alice’s fascination. As the meal progressed, he realized he wouldn’t mind having Meagan Baker’s attention, himself. Granted, it had been a while since he’d spent an intimate evening with an attractive woman, considering how busy he’d been with work and his daughter. But he thought it was more than that, that drew him to his appealing neighbor. Maybe he was falling under the same spell that seemed to have affected his daughter.

He wasn’t sure whether to be more intrigued or unnerved by the possibility.

“Did you hear me, Dad?” Alice asked with an exasperation that made him suspect he’d momentarily tuned her out.

“Sorry, Roo, I was concentrating on this delicious dinner you prepared. What were you saying?”

She rolled her eyes in response to both the childhood nickname and the blatant flattery. “I said I need you to take me shopping tomorrow. You know, for the class party tomorrow night? I tried on the dress I was planning to wear — the really pretty one Mom bought me before she left for Hong Kong — and it’s gotten too little. I guess I’ve grown a little taller in the past six months.”

He heard both pride and disappointment in her tone. She’d worried about being a “late bloomer,” shorter and less developed than some of her classmates, and he suspected she was relieved by the recent growth spurt but he knew she’d wanted to wear that fancy dress. She’d worn it only once, at a Christmas party with her maternal grandparents.

He’d thought when she’d first shown it to him that the expensive garment had been a frivolous purchase at her age. She didn’t attend that many dressy parties, and she was growing too fast to invest too much in clothes that wouldn’t fit her in another couple of months. Colleen wasn’t usually so impractical, but he suspected she’d been suffering from a guilty conscience at her impending move so far from her daughter. She’d given Alice several lavish gifts before her departure.

And speaking of guilt….

“I’m sorry, Alice. I have to work tomorrow. I’ll ask Nina to take you shopping in the morning.”

“But, Dad.”

Uh-oh. He knew this tone. “Alice—”

“Can’t you take just a couple of hours in the morning before you go to the office? I’ll choose fast, I promise.”

Wishing fervently that she’d waited until they were alone to start this particular argument, he shook his head in regret. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have a meeting that starts at nine, before most of the shops even open. It will last most of the day, and that would be too late to find you a dress and get you to the party on time. You should have tried the dress on sooner, rather than waiting until the last minute. Surely you have something else you can wear. You went shopping with your grandmother just last month.”