Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) (16 page)

“I was a short-order cook at a
little diner when I was in college. I loved that job.”

She lived with him for eighteen
years and she’d never heard that story. It made her wonder what else there was
that she didn’t know about her father.

He lifted the bowl of eggs in her
direction. “Cheese omelet?”

Her father wanted to cook her
breakfast. “Sure.” She sat down hard on the wooden chair, glad when the oak
bruised her tailbone. At least some things were still solid. “How was the
couch?”

“Fine. I think I was more tired
from the drive than I had anticipated. I could have probably slept on the floor
and not really minded.” He looked up and smiled at her. “Of course, if your
mother had had her way, I’d have slept in the street.” He pulled a paper towel
off the roll and scooped the now perfectly-browned bacon on to it. Then he
flipped the omelet and laid a thick piece of Swiss cheese in the middle of it.
In less than a minute he had it all on a plate and it was sitting in front of
her. “Eat,” he said. “Enjoy.”

She ate and watched while he
fixed a second omelet for himself. When it was finished, he loaded it, along
with the rest of the bacon, onto a plate. He refilled his coffee cup and took
the chair across from her.

She could hardly remember the
last time they’d had a meal together. Maybe when she’d been home for Christmas
two years earlier. Maybe they’d stared at each other over the customary oyster
stew.

“So you and Sam have something
going on?” he asked casually.

Something? She just wasn’t sure
what. She’d started down a slippery slope the night she’d cut her hand.
Somewhere, probably right about the time he’d carried her through the emergency
room with a bad appendix, she’d gathered speed. She’d hurdled all the normal
speed bumps and roadblocks and when he’d held her in his arms at Amy’s farm and
she’d cried on his shoulder, she’d realized that she’d landed at the bottom on
the hill, flat on her back and out of breath.

Since then, she’d been sucking in
air, trying to get enough oxygen.

“Seems like a nice guy,” her
father said.

He was more than nice. However,
since her father had maybe had something to do with pairing her up with young
residents, she thought the comment might be more than idle chitchat. 
“He’s fine,” Maddie said. “I mean I barely know him.”

“So you’ve said.”

She was twenty-eight years old,
and she’d never talked to her father about boys. But suddenly, he seemed like
the only person she could talk to.

“Sam was married,” she said.

Her father put his fork down.

“His wife died.”

“Recently?”

“Three years ago.”

Peter Sinclair drained his orange
juice glass. “What do you think about that?” he asked.

She wanted to know what he
thought about it. “I don’t know.”

Her father started eating again.
He took several bites before he spoke again. “I’m a neurosurgeon,” he said.
“Give me an acoustic neuroma or a meningioma, I’m in my comfort zone. I don’t
think I’m all that qualified to speak to matters of the heart." He put
down his fork again and pushed his half-eaten omelet away. “I’m not doing so
well in that area myself.”

The fluffy eggs felt pretty darn heavy
in her stomach. “Did you come to ask Mother for a divorce?”

His head jerked up, and he looked
pale under his tan. “Is that what she wants?”

She should so stay out of this.
“I don’t think so,” she said.

“It’s a hell of a mess, Madelyn.”

Wasn’t everything? “The two of
you need to—”

The back door opened and Carol
stepped into the kitchen. Her hair didn’t look combed, her eyes were bloodshot,
and she had her sweatshirt on backwards.

“I wondered whose car that was,”
Carol said. “Morning, Maddie. Dr. Sinclair.” She poured herself a cup of
coffee. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late.”

Carol could gossip with the best
of them, but she didn’t share well. Maddie knew she’d have to pry. “What’s
wrong? You look like you haven’t slept at all.”

Carol patted her ratty hair. “I’m
doing grunge. Maybe going Goth next.”

Maddie reached for Carol’s cup.

The woman wrapped her hands
around it, protectively. “All right. Fine. Travis’s mom is bad again. We got a
call a couple hours ago.”

Mrs. Muldoon had turned eighty
the year before and not much had been right for the woman since. “Her heart?”

“Yeah. More of the same. They
admitted her in the middle of the night to Memphis Memorial with chest pains.
Travis’s on his way to Tennessee now. He’s catching a ten o’clock flight out of
Milwaukee.”

Maddie stood up. “Then why are
you here?” she asked. “You should be on that plane with him.”

“It’s okay. He understands that I
have responsibilities here.”

“I’ll be fine. Good grief, Carol.
You have to go. Travis thinks the moon rises and sets on his mother’s
shoulders. He’s going to need you. Mrs. Muldoon is going to need both of you.
That’s what family is for.”

“But—”

“I’ll find someone to help,”
Maddie said. She picked up Carol’s half-empty coffee cup and carried it over to
the sink. “Go. Now.”     

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She hugged her friend.
“I’ll say a prayer for you, for Travis, for his mom.”  She walked with her
to the door. “Call me when you can. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”

Maddie watched until her friend
got into her car and pulled out of the driveway before she shut the door and
returned to the table. Her father sat in his same spot. He was staring at his
folded hands. 

“When I was a young doctor, fresh
out of medical school, and I saw patients in their eighties, I thought, why
bother? Why go through the turmoil of surgery and recovery only to die of
something else a few months or even years later?”

Maddie refilled both their coffee
cups. “I’m sure your patients never realized.”

“I hope not. Now that I’m sixty,
eighty doesn’t seem all that old. Now I wonder why people don’t fight for every
single day, every single breath.”

Someday she’d watch her own
parents die. The enormity of what that would be like felt heavy on her chest.

He looked up at her and it scared
the hell out of her when she saw tears in his eyes. “When a person gets scared
that time is running out, he does foolish things, Madelyn.”

She really didn’t want the
details, but she needed to understand the motivation. “Why did you do it, Dad?”

He didn’t answer right away. When
he did, he surprised her. “I was lonely.”

“But you had mother. Your
practice. Your teaching.”

He pushed his chair back and
carried his plate over to the dishwasher. He kept his back to her. “You don’t
have to be alone to be lonely.”

She supposed not. She just hadn’t
expected it to matter to her father. He’d always seemed so confident, so
self-reliant. “Do you love this other woman?”

His head jerked up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t
mean to call her that, but I don’t know what else to call her.”

“Her name is Sally.”

He hadn’t answered the real
question. “Do you love her?”

He shook his head. “No. Nor does
she love me. I’m no less lonely, and I suspect she’s not either.”

He didn’t sound bitter, just
factual. 

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Me, too.” He turned around and
looked every one of his sixty years. He took a deep breath and glanced at his
watch. “What time do the kids show up?”

The first one would arrive in
less than fifteen minutes. “Soon. I need to start making phone calls, see if
one of my friends can help out.” She stood up and carried her own plate to the
sink.

“You know I could probably help
out for a few days. I’ve got some vacation time.”

Maddie’s eggs turned in her
stomach. “You came to talk to Mother.”

“I did and I will. That is if she
ever stays in a room with me for more than five minutes.”

If her father stayed for a few
days, her mother would have to stop avoiding him. “You’re welcome to stay, but
you don’t have to help.”

“Didn’t I just hear you tell your
friend that family was for helping?”

“But…”

He reached out and touched her
arm. His tanned hand looked stark against her paler skin. “Madelyn, I’ve made
my share of mistakes. I know that I could have been around a lot more, that I
could have been a better father. Please. Let me do this.”

What was her mother going to
say? 

When her mother came downstairs
and saw her father reading to five toddlers, she stopped dead in her tracks and
put her hand over her mouth. She stayed that way for almost a minute. Then she
tossed her freshly shampooed red hair and walked past him without saying a
word. 

Maddie did something she rarely
did. She stuck in a DVD and got her four kids settled.  She walked in to
the kitchen just as her mother was flipping over the front page of the
newspaper. “Good morning,” Maddie said.

“What’s he doing?” Frances asked,
her voice hard.

“Carol had to leave town
suddenly. Travis’s mom is sick. Father offered to help.”

Frances sat up in her chair. “
I’m
already helping. You don’t need him. We don’t need him.”

“It’s just for a few days.”

“I was here first.”

Maddie counted to ten. “Mother,
this is not the first day of a sale at your favorite department store. I am not
a great purse that you’re grabbing before the next person can get her greedy
little hands on it.” She stood up and starting pacing around the room. “I’m
running a business. I have a responsibility here. I am not going to put myself
in a position for you and Father to fight over.”

Frances put her nose in the air.
“Well. There’s no need to get your panties in a twist. By the way, if you’re so
focused on your business, where exactly are the children you’re supposed to be
watching?”

Maddie gritted her teeth.
“They’re watching a DVD.”

“I didn’t think you let them
watch television."

Maddie threw her hands up in the
air. “I don’t. That’s just one more thing that’s going to hell around here.”
She strode out of the kitchen.

When she got to the play area,
her father looked up, a concerned look on his face.  “Everything all
right, Madelyn?”

She made an effort not to scream.
“Everything’s great. Just keep reading.”

She sat down on the couch next to
Robbie Simmons and kept one eye on her father and one on the kitchen door. She
wanted to be ready if her mother decided to charge out with a sharp knife in
her hand.

So intent was she that Sam and
Kelsie were in the room before she even noticed them. Kelsie wasted no time.
She might have only been four, but she knew that having a Disney movie at eight
in the morning was a big deal. She climbed up on the couch and wedged herself
between the Simmons twins.

“Hi,” Sam said. He looked over
her shoulder at her father. “What’s going on?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to
keep her voice light. “I’m running a retreat for docs with time on their hands.
You were last week, now it’s his turn.”

“What does your mother think?”

At that moment, Frances came out
of the kitchen. She had one of Carol’s aprons on.  “Darling,” she said,
“where do you keep your extra flour?”

Sam’s mouth dropped open.

Frances smiled at him. “Hello,
Sam. How’s your sister? I heard you saying last night that she wasn’t feeling
well.”

Maddie felt her own mouth
drop. 

Frances turned and bestowed a smile
on Maddie. “I sleep with my windows open.”

Maddie shut her eyes. What else
had Frances heard?” She opened one eye and looked at Sam.  He shrugged,
much as if it was way too late to worry about it now.

“My sister’s feeling better.
Thanks for asking.”

“Wonderful.” She turned back to
Maddie. “Flour, darling?”

“What are you doing, Mother?”

“I’m baking a cake. For lunch.”

Peter Sinclair laid his book
down. He walked over, shook Sam’s hand, and then turned to his wife. “Frances,
you’ve barely turned on a stove for five years.”

Frances lifted her chin another
inch and pointedly ignored him. “I’ll need sugar too,” she said.

Her father took a step closer to
his wife. “There’s nothing to prove here, Frances.”

“Shut up, Peter,” she said.

“Shut up! Shut up!” Ricky Simmons
got to his feet and started jumping on the couch.  “You shut up,” he said
to Kelsie.

It took everything Maddie had to
keep her voice at a whisper level. “Now look you two. I appreciate that both of
you want to help. I’m going to assume that you’re doing it for me. That you
don’t have any other motive. But you listen to me. You will not, I repeat, not
fight, swear, or do anything else that these kids will pick up and take home to
their parents. Are we clear here?”

Her father nodded.

“I’m sorry, darling,” her mother
said.

It didn’t make her feel any
better. “I’m going to walk Sam out to his car,” she said. “Please watch the
children closely.”

Sam moved quickly to get the
door.  He didn’t say anything until they were halfway down the front sidewalk.
“You’ve got your hands full.”

“It’s crazy.  Individually,
each one of them is fine.  But they get in a room together and it’s
becomes professional wrestling.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Oh, please.” She leaned against
his car. “Look up dysfunctional in the dictionary and it has my parents’
picture next to it.”

“I’d stay if I could,” Sam said,
“but I got a full surgery schedule.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going
to go hide all the sharp knives and lock the gun cabinet.”

He jerked back. “You have a gun cabinet?”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Of
course not.  Look,” she said, feeling awkward, “there’s not going to be a
lot of privacy around here for a while.”

“I sort of gathered that.” He
reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I thought about you all
night,” he said, his voice serious.

If it was supposed to make her
feel better, it didn’t work. “I hope your short-term memory is good.”

He brushed the pad of his thumb
across her cheek. It was an intimate gesture, and she was glad the car was supporting
her knees.

“It’s times like this that I
really miss having my own place,” he said.

“There is a lounge at the
hospital.”

His eyes got big. He took a step
back and rubbed his chin. “You had me there for a minute.”

She’d been sort of kidding. “Just
an idea.”

“Keep thinking.” He leaned
forward and kissed her. Gently. Sweetly. Sort of the way he’d started out last
night. Having had first-hand experience with how quickly it could change, she
backed away. Parents would soon be dropping their children off.

She could see the headlines of
the
Conover Gazette—
“Daycare Owner Gets It On With Local Physician”.

“I guess I should be grateful
that I’ve got a game to coach tonight,” Sam said. “It’ll give me something to
think about. Year-end tournaments are a big deal.”

“How old are the kids?”

“It’s a sixth-grade team, so
they’re eleven or twelve. They’re old enough to have some technique but young
enough that they still play for the pure fun of it. Or at least most of them
do.”

“Maybe I could come
watch?”    

Was that her talking?

He pulled back. “You’d want to
spend your free time doing that?”

“Sure.”

He stuck his hands in his pocket
like he didn’t know what to do with them. “Can I pick you up?” he asked.

The fact that he was tentative, a
little unsure, made him sexy as hell.

“Yes.”

He nodded, looking satisfied.
“Great. Then it’s a date.”

She guessed it was. She was
officially dating a doctor.
And she’d done the asking.
 

“I’ll be here at six,” he said.

She let out a breath. “Perfect.”

*

Her mother and father sat across
from one another at the lunch table and managed not to fling macaroni at one
another. When her mother had wanted the saltshaker, her father had passed it,
without comment. Maddie counted it as a small win. 

After lunch, it took them another
forty-five minutes to get all eight of the kids settled on cots. Once the last
one was breathing deeply, Maddie backed out of the room.

“They’ll probably sleep a good
hour,” she explained to her parents. “Once they’re up, it’s only another half
hour before the older kids will be home from school. This will be your last
chance for quiet. You better take advantage of it.”

“I think I’ll make some calls,”
her father said.

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Let
me guess. Would it be 1-800-hot-date?”

Her father mumbled something
under his breath before he walked away. Her mother watched him go. “I’ve got a
call of my own to make,” she said. “I don’t plan on eating at home tonight.”

That was probably a good thing.
She’d joked with Sam about hiding the sharp knives, but it wasn’t sounding so
funny right now. “Who are you going to call?” she asked.

“Tom Holt.”

“But I thought…I mean, you said
that your date wasn’t all that great.”

Her mother gave her the
I-pity-people-who-are-as-stupid-as-you look. “I don’t want your father thinking
that I’m going to pine away for him.”

“The two of you are going to have
to talk sometime,” Maddie said.

Frances shrugged. “We will.
Sometime. I’m sure he’ll be quite happy enjoying your company tonight.”

“Yeah. Well, here’s the thing.
I’m probably not going to have time for dinner. Sam’s picking me up at six.
He’s coaching a kid’s basketball game and well, I’m going to go watch.”

Frances sat down on the couch
outside the blue room and patted the seat next to her. “Sit, darling. Please.
There are things I need to tell you.”

“Mother, if this is a discussion
about the birds and the bees, I saw the movie.”

“Funny.” She again patted the
seat. Maddie sat.

“What are you hoping happens
tonight?”

Maddie shrugged, like she hadn’t
given it much thought. “Well, since I won’t get a chance to eat here, I’m sort
of hoping they sell hotdogs or popcorn, at the least. If they win, that would
be a plus.”

Frances didn’t even smile. “Maybe
you and I are past the stage where you want my advice. But I’m going to give it
to you anyway. Earlier you told me you weren’t a great purse that your father
and I should argue over. Well, let me give you another little shopping
analogy.  A woman doesn’t go to a shoe sale unless she’s got money in her
purse for a new pair. She needs to be prepared to buy, because it’s highly
likely she’s going to find the pair she wants.”

Maddie squirmed on the seat. It
had not been that long ago that Carol had said that her life was a pair of
taupe shoes with a sensible one-inch heel. That had stung. She wondered where
this one was going. “It’s a kid’s basketball game, Mother.”

Frances shook her head. “I’ve
seen the way you look at Sam, darling. I just don’t want you to get hurt. I
probably shouldn’t have listened last night, but I did. I heard something odd
in Sam’s voice last night when he talked about his wife. I’m not sure what it
was. But there’s emotion just bubbling under the surface in that man.”

Maddie stood up, feeling awkward,
like her arms and legs didn’t belong to her. “He lost his wife. She died. Of
course, there’s emotion.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. There’s a
reason that second-hand shoes aren’t all that popular. Even good leather gets
worn.”

Maddie stared at her mother.
“Seems to me like you did a little shopping this past weekend for something
similar. The fit wasn’t all that good but you’re still going back to the
store,” she added.

“Once again, Madelyn. You don’t
want my life.”

Maddie swallowed hard. “Mom, I’m
sorry,” she said. She reached for her mother’s hand. She didn’t know why, it
just felt right. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Mom.”

Her mother squeezed her fingers
tight. “None of us do. Just be careful, darling.”

*

 At twenty minutes after
five, a mere forty minutes before Sam was due to pick her up and a full ten
minutes after she’d finished dressing, Maddie decided to shave her legs. She
declined to examine exactly why. 

It certainly wasn’t for Sam?

After all, she would be wearing
jeans tonight. She knew a person could hide a whole lot of lost shaving
opportunities with a good pair of jeans.

He’d be focused on lineups, and
plays, and game strategy—not on the potential of stubble on her knees.

That didn’t stop her from stripping
down. Naked, she turned on the water and squealed—a little like the pigs on
John and Amy’s farm. The water was freezing. She twisted the knob to what
should have been very hot, but cold water kept coming.

Her hands were literally shaking
and her teeth were chattering by the time she rinsed off the last of the
shaving cream and knew she was damn lucky she hadn’t sliced an artery open. She
got out, wrapped a towel around her, and turned on her hair dryer. She aimed
the nozzle toward her uncovered skin and kept it on until she felt almost
thawed.