Susan Meier - Single Dad's Christmas Miracle

The policeman released Althea. “So everything’s good?”

Althea forced a smile. She didn’t know whether to be angry with herself for not letting Clark know she was taking the kids shopping, annoyed with him for being so damned paranoid, or to feel sorry for him.

In the end, she decided to feel sorry for him. He’d lost his wife. He didn’t want to lose his kids, too. She got it. “Everything’s fine. Really. Let me get them home.”

* * *

The policeman looked to Clark for confirmation. He nodded. “I’m sorry. I panicked.” He nearly said, “Ever since my wife’s death I’ve been panicky,” but he knew that would only make him look like an idiot. God knew it made him feel like an idiot. So he said nothing.

The two policemen walked back to their car. Althea ambled over, looking warm and snuggly in her new blue coat and black mittens. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He put his head back, closed his eyes. He’d just had her nabbed by the cops and she was asking him if he was okay? “I should be asking you that. I’m so sorry.” He opened his eyes and forced himself to look at her. “You have the right to use whatever schedule you want.” He sucked in a breath. “But I don’t like the kids going into town without me. I wish you had called me before you left the house.”

“You’re right. I should have called you.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “That’s my mistake. I never thought to call. But I should have.”

She put her hand on his arm consolingly. “Let’s go home.”

He couldn’t believe she wanted to go with him. Were he in her shoes, he’d probably quit. But when he pulled his SUV off Main Street and onto the mountain road, she was right behind him. When he drove onto his lane, her little red car was in his rearview mirror. When he got out, she got out.

They walked into the echoing foyer with Teagan asleep on his arm. A dull sound rang in his ears, making his head pound. He’d never been so mortified.

Or so confused. Jack thought they lived in a jail? Teagan had laughed with an outsider?

Althea said, “Why don’t you put her on her bed and I’ll make us all some cocoa.”

Jack sniffed with disdain. “I don’t want any cocoa.”

All the control he thought he had slipped through his fingers like melted snow. “Good. You can go into the den and take a look at today’s lesson.”

“Whatever.”

He watched Jack stalk away and knew he’d handled that badly, but his head hurt and his thoughts swam like fish in a bowl. How had he gotten to this place?

He slid his gaze to Althea. “I don’t need any cocoa.”

“Bourbon then?”

A surprised laugh escaped. “Actually, bourbon sounds really good right now. But I’ll be fine. You go work with Jack.”

She shook her head. “Jack needs a minute. Forcing him to set things up on the computer by himself will be a good way to occupy him and give him some space.”

He took Teagan to her room and lingered over removing her coat and boots. There wasn’t any part of him that wanted to confide in anyone, let alone Jack’s teacher—a woman he was actually attracted to. But, more than that, he was mortified that he’d panicked. And not just panicked. He’d panicked publicly. He’d called the police when his kids were happily strolling down Main Street.

Of course, he hadn’t known that.

Still, a sensible man would have at least looked in the obvious places—

But a man who’d been blindsided by his wife’s death and double blindsided by her infidelity jumped to all kinds of conclusions.

When he couldn’t delay any longer, he walked downstairs. Hoping Althea had gone to the den to be with Jack, he turned right, into the living room, and there she stood in front of the discreet bar housed in a black built-in beside a huge window. She held a short glass with two fingers of bourbon.

She handed it to him. “Is neat good?”

He smiled. “I don’t sully whiskey with frozen water.”

She laughed. “Have a seat.”

He lowered himself to the gray sofa. “You’re going to quit, aren’t you?”

She sat on one of the two white club chairs across from him. A glass-and-chrome coffee table sat on the gray, white and black printed rug that connected the small conversation group in the big living room.

“I’m not going to quit.”

“I sent the police after you.”

“You were afraid.”

He downed his drink, savoring the soothing warmth as it ran down his throat. He rose to get another. “Right.”

“I saw the look on your face. You were terrified.”

He grabbed the bourbon bottle and poured.

“You’d thought I’d taken your kids. There has to be a reason you were so suspicious.”

“I was angry with myself for leaving the kids with someone I really didn’t know.”

“Maybe. But something pushed you to the point that you panicked rather than check things out.”

He sighed. This time he sipped the whiskey. There was no way in hell he’d recount his private failures to a stranger. A stranger he’d wronged no less.

“All right. You don’t want to talk. I get it. But I also see your kids are in trouble emotionally and so are you.”

He snorted in disgust. “Are you saying we all need therapy?”

“I’m saying you need to give yourself a break and need to give your kids a break. You’re overorganized. Your kids seem to feel they need to be super quiet to please you.”

Heat of shame filled him. The day before, he’d noticed that he’d been taking advantage of Mrs. Alwine. Was it such a big stretch to consider that he’d forced his kids to overbehave?

He ambled back to his seat. She rose from hers. “I can understand that you don’t want the help of a stranger. I’m also not a therapist. But I have spent six years with kids Jack’s age. I know they sass. I know they experiment with cursing. I know they sulk and whine and roll their eyes and in general make the lives of adults miserable. And Jack does a few of those things, but not often. He’s too concerned with pleasing you.” She sucked in a breath. “You have an opportunity here. It’s four weeks before Christmas. Four weeks when you can decorate together, tell him stories about Christmases past with his mom. Watch old Christmas movies. Make snowmen. Sled ride.”

He raised his gaze to meet hers.

“The choice is yours. Use Christmas to turn your family into a family again. Or let this go on. Pretend Teagan’s not talking is shyness. Pretend Jack’s simmering silence is part of being a twelve-year-old. And six years from now when Jack leaves home without a word of why, and with no intention of ever coming back, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

Jack’s angry comment about living in prison rumbled through his brain. He was failing as a father and though he was loathe to talk about any of this, he’d be a fool if he didn’t realize he was drowning.

He blew his breath out, rubbed his hand across his mouth and finally decided he had no choice. He didn’t want his kids to hate him or to be unhappy. But he also didn’t want them going into town, and if the way to keep them home was to tell their current babysitter the whole story then maybe that’s what he had to do.

“The day my wife died, I came home from work to find the house empty and cold.”

“So when you came here today and found we’d gone, the empty house scared you?”

“Not as much as having the kids go to town.” He scrubbed his hands across his mouth again. He hated this. Hated his misery. His humiliation. But he did not want his kids in town. “My wife had been having an affair. Apparently for at least a year. Brice Matthews, one of our employees, showed up at the funeral overcome with grief and sobbed over her coffin. He called me every name in the book for not letting her go—not giving her a divorce—when she’d never asked for a divorce.”