Raye Morgan - A Little Moonlighting

Scratch, scratch. Scuffle, scuffle. Fred was riffling through the closed closet. And she knew it was going to be her job to catch him.

The children had told her about Fred the day before.

“He’s gone!” Scamp had cried, his eyes huge and filled with horror. “I on’y left the door open fer a little to get him water and he go’d away!” He’d clutched her around the knees, tears threatening. “Aun’ Amy, don’ let that mean ole cat get him!”

Fred was a white mouse. A very pretty little mouse, from what she’d heard. But Fred was on the lam.

Amy shuddered. She didn’t have a lot of experience at catching little white mice. A nice trap would have been her preference. But this was a beloved pet, so traps were out. She was going to have to catch him carefully, so as not to hurt him. How the heck was she supposed to do that?

Sighing, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, firmly determined to get a little more sleep before another day broke over her like a giant ocean wave. That was what the day before had felt like—surfing on the big ones at Makaha Beach—something way beyond her experience and capabilities.

Taking care of children wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Oh, she’d known it wouldn’t be all that easy. But she hadn’t realized caring for them would leave her drained, both physically and emotionally, and wondering how most mothers did it.

But women did do it, and most did it very well. In bygone ages, they did it without modern plumbing and washing machines and fast-food restaurants. Could you imagine? Not even Sesame Street. What she had was a cakewalk compared to what most women had gone through over the ages.

But that only made her feel even worse. If she was having this much trouble when it was so much easier than it had ever been in history, what did that say about her?

Oh, grow up, she told herself impatiently, rejecting the impulse toward self-pity. After all, she’d only been doing this for a little more than twenty-four hours now.

She’d raced over and collected the children from where they were being kept that first night. Paul Hanford, the man Meg had been trying to get her interested in, was the neighbor taking care of them. She’d taken the steps up onto his front porch slowly, feeling a lot of trepidation, anxious that the children wouldn’t want to go with her, and that she would have a hard time getting them to accept her as their interim parent. After all, the last time they’d seen her they hadn’t actually been brimming with friendliness toward her.

But when the chips were down, they had surprised her.

“Aun’ Amy!” Scamp had cried, peering though his wispy bangs of white-blond hair when she’d appeared in the doorway of Paul’s house. “Deedee, it’s Aun’ Amy!”

And the two children had run to her, with Scamp actually throwing his arms around her knees with so much force he’d just about knocked her down.

“I guess blood really is thicker than water,” she’d murmured to herself as she went down on one knee to embrace them both.

A warm feeling of affection curled through her, along with a strong sense of empathy for two young ones who had to be scared and very confused about what had happened to their parents. She must look like a comfortingly familiar face under these circumstances. And luckily, she wasn’t dressed to kill—in a business sense—as she had been days before. They’d at least recognized her for who she was.

“Hey, I just talked to your mother,” she told them, brushing Scamp’s hair back off his forehead and noticing, suddenly, how much like her sister he looked.

Pictures in albums saved from the childhood she and Meg had shared portrayed a little girl whose face was a very close model for this young boy in front of her. That made her want to hug him again.

“Your mother sends you her love and she promises to be home just as soon as she can.”

“Does she have a boo-boo?” Scamp asked solemnly.

Amy nodded, blinking quickly to hold back the tears that threatened to come again. “She has a bunch of boo-boos. And so does your daddy. The doctor is going to fix them right up, though. So don’t you worry.”

Scamp thought about that for a moment. “I got a boo-boo on my arm,” he offered at last, showing her the scab. “Is that like Daddy’s?”

Amy hesitated, then smiled at him. “Sort of,” she allowed. “Just a little worse.”

Scamp nodded wisely, showing he understood. “Are you gonna take care of us, Aun’ Amy?” he asked her, his blue eyes hopeful.

“Of course,” she told them, smiling warmly. “I’ll stay with you until your mother comes home. I promise.”

Deedee sighed happily and cuddled in close, while Scamp pulled back, seeming to suddenly remember that he had his young male pride to consider.

“I’m really glad you’re going to be able to do this,” Paul told her, smiling down at the picture she made with the little dark-haired girl in her arms. “I’ve got a sales trip to Omaha tomorrow and I won’t be back for three or four days. Otherwise, I would have been glad to take over for Tim and Meg.”

“Oh, no,” Amy said quickly. “They’re my family. I’ll take care of them.” She hugged Deedee closer, then put her on her little feet. “Run get your things, kids. I’m going to take you home.”

She rose, waiting for the children to leave the room before saying quietly to Paul, “I really haven’t heard all the details yet. Where were they when the accident happened? And where were Meg and Tim going? Do you know?”

Paul nodded. He was a pleasant-looking man with slightly thinning blond hair and a nice smile. “They were going to lunch to celebrate Tim’s promotion. Did you know his law firm just made him a partner?”

“No,” she said softly, feeling again a sense of having been woefully inattentive to what was going on in her sister’s life. “How great for him.” She swallowed. “So the kids were at home?”

“Yes. Cheryl Park, an older lady from down the street, was sitting with them. But she had to get home, so I took over and brought them over here.”

“Thank you so much,” she said earnestly, holding out a hand to shake his. “I—we all appreciate it. You’ve been a big help.”

“Any time,” he said, holding her hand a little too long and beaming at her significantly. “As soon as I get back from Omaha, I’ll be able to help a lot more.”

Her smile wavered as she witnessed the intensity of his and she pulled her hand away.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Well…” She turned, looking toward where the baby slept in a travel chair. “I guess I’d better get them home. It must be way past their bedtime by now.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked pleased with something and she wasn’t sure why.

Deedee and Scamp came running up, ready to go home. Amy helped Deedee into her sweater.

“’Bye, Pooky,” Scamp called back at the huge orange-colored cat sitting on a pillow in the far corner of the room. “See ya tomorrow.”

“’Bye, ’bye,” Deedee said, copying her brother and waving at the animal.

The cat blinked its golden eyes and lashed its tiger-striped tail and didn’t say a thing.

“I’ll come with you,” Paul offered. “I’ll help you carry the baby, help you get the other two to bed.” He gave Amy a comforting smile. “You’ll need help, all right. They are a handful.”

“Are they?” Suddenly her confidence began to show some wear around the edges. Was she going to be up to this job? She’d never taken care of children before, never even baby-sat as a teenager. She was always too busy entering competitions and running for class office to have time for things like that.

And she hadn’t visited with Meg and her crew often enough to get a feel for it. Whenever she was over, Meg was a whirlwind of activity, usually ordering Amy just to sit and talk to her, tell her everything about what it was like to live in the fast-paced business world.