Tara Quinn - Child by Chance

Her schedule was tight. She couldn’t afford to be flexible.

So she sat diligently at her computer Friday night. Tried to focus. And kept seeing a little face in place of the text on the screen.

Picking up her laptop she moved from the spare bedroom she was using for an office out to the kitchen table. There were no lights on the private beach, but she knew it was out there. That the ocean beckoned beyond.

A child needs to be touched, to be held, to be nurtured. Scientific studies show that a baby that is not held often or at all is far more prone to exhibiting signs of antisocial personality disorder or sociopathic tendencies.

She read the paragraph three times.

She’d given him up so he’d have a great mother to see him through all of the difficult times of growing up.

He didn’t have a mother anymore.

A child needs boundaries. He will test them. He is doing so, not to have them moved, but to assure himself that they don’t.

Was Kent testing his boundaries?

In part, he finds his security in unmoving boundaries, in the things he can count on.

A kid should be able to count on his mother. On having her be a boundary that didn’t change. Just always there.

Unlike the woman who’d given birth to Tanner, Thomas, Talia and Tatum.

Where had Kent’s mother been driving to, or coming from, that night she’d been killed? Why had she been alone in the car?

Careful. The inner voice that had decided to show up a little late in her life was speaking loud and clear suddenly. She couldn’t cross the boundary she was standing behind. She wouldn’t. Because she’d be hurting someone other than herself.

She’d looked up her son to assure herself he was okay.

She was going to work with him the following week for the same reason.

Anything beyond that was clearly out of her jurisdiction and not her business.

Tonight, child development was her business.

For the rest of the night, she stuck to it.

Mostly.

* * *

“NO, DAD, I don’t want to go putt some balls and get ice cream.”

The knife in Sherman’s hand was in danger of losing its blob of butter as it stilled, suspended over the toast he’d been buttering Saturday morning. “What do you mean you don’t want to go? It’s already planned,” he explained patiently.

The grief counselor had told him to be patient. Two years ago.

“I thought you’d like the surprise,” he added.

“I don’t.” Kent sat at the table, already dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt and a sweater—green today—with his hands in his lap. Awaiting the cold cereal and toast Sherman was in the process of getting for him.

The butter dropped from his knife to the toast, catching the side of his hand, as well. Sherman spread quickly, dropped the toast to the counter and licked the side of his hand.

He poured milk. Added a spoon to the bowl of Kent’s latest choice in sugared cereal, took that and the toast to the table, a smile on his face. “Why not?”

“Where’s your cereal?”

“I’m not having any this morning.” He’d pulled off at a twenty-four-hour diner on his way home from the city and wasn’t hungry.

“What time did you get home?”

“Sometime after midnight.”

“Way after midnight. I got up at 2:00 a.m. to pee and Ben and Sandy were still here, sleeping in the recliners.”

The love seat portion of the leather sectional he and Brooke had purchased the year before she...

Yes, well, he was glad that Ben and Sandy made use of the love seat.

“I was with a client.”

“I don’t care if you’re out screwing someone, Dad.”

Anger burst through him. He very carefully took the space between stimulus and response, to make certain that, for his son’s sake, he didn’t say something he’d regret.

Then he sat. Crossed his hands. Leaned over. And looked his son square in the eyeballs. “There are many things wrong with that comment,” he said slowly, but with no doubt to his seriousness. “First, screwing is an inappropriate way to describe any relationship I might have with a woman. Second, if I was making love with a woman it would be absolutely none of your business. And third, I was with a sixty-year-old man at a basketball game and then we went to a restaurant, where I had a glass of sparkling water and he had a whiskey sour while we discussed Sadie Bishop’s county auditor campaign, after which I got in the BMW and drove home, stopping only for a plate of greasy scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. I have done nothing to deserve your disrespect.”

Kent chewed. Crunching his cereal as if he was set to win a contest. His throat bulged when he swallowed.

“Yes, sir,” he said then. “You’re right. On all three counts. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

Kent crunched some more. And Sherman sought to understand the boy.

Patience was the key. He was certain of that. He just wished he knew what to say sometimes, while he was waiting for patience to work its magic.

“So...how about that trip to the driving range?” he asked, back to his cheery self, when no other words presented themselves. Clark Vanderpohl and his son were meeting them at the course in less than an hour.

“Uh-uh.”

Patience.

“Why not?” His tone was right on cue. Easy and nonthreatening.

“You’re only taking me because you have business to do,” he said.

“That’s not true, son.” He was completely sure about that.

“So we’re not meeting someone who has something to do with one of your precious campaigns?”

Kent’s tone wasn’t easy. Or in any way upbeat or even particularly kind. But then, he was only ten.

Sherman was the adult here. Didn’t matter how much he hurt, too, he had to maintain the order in their lives.

“I didn’t say that,” he said after giving himself the few seconds pause he needed to choose his response.

“Ha! See, I knew it.” Kent slurped his milk.

Brooke would have said something about that. Sherman started to. But pulled himself back.

“What I said,” Sherman continued, his tone as even as ever, “was that I’m not just taking you because I have business to do. It’s the complete opposite, in fact. I invited Mr. Vanderpohl and his son to join us because I’d already planned to take you to the driving range, as I promised last weekend, and I wasn’t going to disappoint you.”

Kent came first. He always had.

“Cole’s going to be there?” Kent’s face lit up as he mentioned the banker’s son.

“Yes.”

“Cool!” Picking up his bowl, Kent put it to his lips, emptied it, licked the spoon and then very carefully wiped his mouth with his napkin, put the spoon in the bowl and carried the ensemble over to the sink.

Some moments he was still pretty much a perfect kid.

* * *

HER PALMS WERE SWEATING. Tanner had said she’d be fine. She’d believed him. He was wrong.

Making a beeline for the teacher’s lounge, Talia made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. And then sat there shaking. She must have the flu.

Her forehead was cool to her touch.

But she definitely felt off.

Emotionally, she was a rock. Could count the number of times she’d cried since she was five.

Maybe it was something she ate.

Did that make you shake?

She could call someone. Sedona.

Pulling out her cell phone she pictured her new sister-in-law in her legal office, all capable and smart, answering her phone. Asking Talia questions that she wouldn’t want to answer.

No, calling wasn’t a good idea.

Kent Paulson, Sherman Paulson’s son, was sitting in the principal’s office, working on his assignments for the week. She was permitted to work with him at any time over the next hour.