Judy Duarte: The Daddy Secret

“Should I tell them to come back another time?”

Rick glanced at his wristwatch. It was 2:25. “Is there anyone in the waiting room?”

“Just Mrs. Reilly and the boy. Tom Randall called and cancelled his two-thirty appointment. He said Duke seems to be doing much better today.”

“Tell them I’ll be right there. I need to put Samson back in the kennel until the Hendersons come to pick him up.”

“I can do that for you,” Kara said.

Rick knew he’d told Alice she could bring Lucas to visit the clinic, but he hadn’t expected them to show up so soon. Besides, he’d hoped to have that talk with Mallory first. But apparently that wasn’t to be. So he’d have to keep his rising suspicion at bay and play things by ear.

When he entered the waiting room, Lucas, who’d been sitting next to Alice, jumped to his feet. “Hi, Dr. Martinez. Thanks for letting us come see your office and all the animals.”

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” Alice said. “I really hadn’t meant to bring Lucas today, but he was so insistent.”

“That’s fine,” Rick said. “Come with me. I’ll show you around.”

After a tour of the exam rooms, as well as the hospital boarding area, where Lucas met several of the recovering furry patients, Rick showed him the pharmacy area and the lab. He then let them peer through the glass window into the operating room.

“When I grow up,” Lucas said, “I’d like to be a veterinarian, too.”

An unexpected sense of pride surged through Rick. Apparently they both shared a love of animals. Did they share anything else?

It’s not what you think, Mallory had said.

Oh, no? Then, if Lucas wasn’t Rick’s son, what had happened to their baby? Had she given it up as she’d said she was going to do? And if so, why did the boy look more like a Martinez than a Dickinson?

According to what Lucas had told Rick yesterday, he had a father. When we lived in the city, my dad said it wouldn’t be fair to an animal to keep him cooped up inside all day long.

So who had Mallory married? Did he look like Rick? Did he have dark hair and an olive complexion?

Were they still together? Had he moved to Brighton Valley with her?

Rick didn’t think so. She hadn’t been wearing a ring yesterday. He’d checked again last night. When she’d stood behind the door—hid behind it was more like it—he’d checked out her left hand again. And just as it had been earlier, her ring finger had been bare.

Is that why she’d moved home? For a fresh start?

Probably so. That’s why she’d gone to Boston and stayed there, wasn’t it? To put Rick behind her?

Alice’s voice drew Rick from his musing. “I think you’d make a good veterinarian, Lucas. How good are you in math and science?”

“Pretty good, I guess.”

Before Alice could respond, her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her purse and checked the lighted display. “Uh-oh. This is a dear friend whose husband is having some serious health issues. I need to speak to her, Doctor. Would you mind if I left Lucas with you and talked to her in private?”

“No, go ahead.”

As Alice stepped through the door that led to the waiting room, Lucas sidled up to Rick. “Where do you keep Buddy?”

“He’s in the back, near where I live. Come on. I’ll show you.” Rick took Lucas out the door that led to the yard enclosed by a chain-link fence.

As they made their way to the gate, Rick said, “I used to let Buddy have the run of the yard, but he kept jumping over the fence.”

“He must be a supergood jumper,” Lucas said.

“Yes, he is. So I had to lock him in one of the dog runs now, which he doesn’t like, but I can’t trust him to play in the yard without supervision.”

Buddy barked when he spotted them, then wiggled his rump and wagged his tail like crazy. The boy and dog sure seemed to have hit it off. But then, that’s the way it was with kids and pets.

But kids and adults?

That wasn’t always the case.

Maybe it was best that Rick wasn’t the boy’s father. How the hell would he ever relate to him? He hadn’t had any kind of role model growing up. Of course, even if the boy was his—and Mallory certainly had implied that he wasn’t—Rick didn’t have to become any kind of SuperDad. Maybe he could just be a friend or a mentor, like Detective Hank Lazaro had been to him.

If Hank hadn’t come along when he had and seen something worthwhile in Rick, something that was salvageable and worth tapping into, no telling where Rick would have ended up.

In jail or dead, he supposed.

Either way, that didn’t mean Rick wasn’t curious about the man who’d replaced him in Mallory’s life.

He’d save his big questions for her, but it wouldn’t hurt to quiz Lucas a bit—just a few random things that wouldn’t seem unusual for a neighbor to ask.

“Hey, Lucas,” he said. “I have a question for you. Yesterday, when we were talking in front of Mrs. Reilly’s house, you mentioned that your dad wouldn’t let you have a dog when you lived in the city.”

“Yeah, we had a big brick house but no yard. Now we have a little house and a big yard.”

They downsized, huh? “What does your dad do for a living?”

“He was a teacher, but he died when I was seven.”

Oops. Rick hadn’t seen that coming. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, me, too. People said it was a blessing when he died, since he was so sick. But I don’t know about that. I mean, why’d he have to get cancer in the first place?”

Rick, who had never been much of a churchgoer except for a couple of times with Mallory when he’d been stuck on her as a teenager, didn’t have an answer. And he knew enough not to try and blow heavenly smoke.

No answer had to be better than a wrong one, right?

“I know he’s in Heaven now,” Lucas added. “And that he has a brand-new body, with hair again and everything. So that’s good. But I still wish he was here with me. Know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do.”

Rick didn’t especially like the idea that Mallory had met another man that she’d fallen in love with, a guy she’d decided would make a much better husband and father than Rick would have made. But apparently the guy had been good to Lucas, so Rick was grateful for that.

And he was truly sorry the kid had had to lose his father, especially since the boy had obviously cared deeply for him.

As Rick opened the latch on the gate, Buddy let out a howl. The minute he was out of the dog run, he rushed out to greet Lucas as though the two were long lost friends.

“You missed me,” Lucas said, ruffling the fur on Buddy’s neck. “Didn’t you, boy.”

Buddy gave him a wet, sloppy lick.

As Rick watched the two wrestle and play on the grass, it was hard to guess who was happier—the kid or the dog.

“So, tell me something,” Rick said. “What was your dad like?”

“He was just a regular guy, but really nice. Know what I mean?” When Rick nodded, Lucas continued. “He worked at my school and would have been my fourth-grade teacher this year, but he died. So then I had to have Mrs. Callaway instead. And she’s cranky and yells all the time.”

“I guess it’s lucky that you moved to Brighton Valley then. I hear the teachers are much better here.” Rick, of course, had heard no such thing, but he wanted to say something to make the kid feel better, although he’d never been very good at stuff like that.

“Dr. Martinez?” Kara called from the doorway to the clinic. “Fred Ames is here with Nugget.”

“I’ll be right there.” Rick strode over to where Buddy was playing with Lucas and grabbed the dog’s collar. “I’m afraid I need to go back to work now, so we’ll have to put Buddy back into his pen.”