Father to Be (6 page)

The aspirin made a difference, and the shower and coffee
helped. It was seven-thirty by the time he made it into the kitchen to fix breakfast. Most mornings he stopped at the diner on his way to wherever he was going and enjoyed Harry’s cooking, Maeve’s coffee, and the company of half the folks in town. This morning he would more or less duplicate the experience at home, he thought as he prepared sausage, eggs, and potatoes. He was fairly pleased with the results when he was done.

He walked into the guest room and flipped on the overhead light. “Come on and get up, kids. It’s time for breakfast.”

Gracie sat up first, hair standing on end, and yawned. She looked extraordinarily cranky. Caleb was next, throwing back the covers and sliding from the bunk above her to the floor. He greeted J.D. with a scowl as fierce as any he’d managed yesterday. “What do you want?”

J.D. bit back the impulse to suggest politely that Caleb ask the question again with a substantial improvement in his tone. The time would come for a firm hand with the boy, but not just yet. “Breakfast is ready. Noah, Jacob, come on.”

The other two boys slowly rolled out of bed, and they all huddled together on or beside Gracie’s bed.

“Get dressed, comb your hair, and come and eat,” J.D. said as he turned away. “Make it quick, before the food gets cold.”

Back in the kitchen, he sat down at the head of the table to wait.

They silently filed into the room, and with quick gestures Caleb directed each of them where to sit. Grasping the edge of a place mat, he pulled his own food around until he was opposite J.D., placing himself also at the head. Gracie was on his right, Jacob and Noah on his left, with their chairs squeezed together to leave extra space between them and J.D.

J.D. started to eat. After a moment he replaced the fork and fixed his gaze on the children, all sitting with their hands in their laps. “Do you usually say grace before you eat?”

“I’m Grace,” Gracie piped up before Caleb motioned her to be quiet.

“Grace is also another word meaning prayer,” J.D. explained. “A lot of people pray before they eat.”

None of them made any response.

“Noah? What’s wrong?”

The boy ducked his head until his chin rested on his chest. The instant J.D. looked at Jacob, he mimicked the action. That brought him to Caleb. “Well?”

“We don’t like eggs.”

“So don’t eat them.” J.D. turned his attention back to his own breakfast.

“We don’t like sausage either.”

His fingers tightening around the fork, J.D. took a slow, deep breath. “So don’t eat it. And don’t tell me you don’t like potatoes. You ate them last night at dinner.”

Caleb waited a beat, then said, “We don’t like potatoes with all that crap in ’em.”

“All that crap” was bits of onion and pepper and melted cheese, and it was a pretty good knockoff of Harry’s famous hash-brown-potato casserole. But the issue here wasn’t what
he
liked. It was what
they
liked.

He stood up and began gathering their dishes. “Let me guess. You don’t like orange juice either, do you?”

The only response was Caleb’s mocking smile.

J.D. dumped their plates in the kitchen sink. “Do you like oatmeal?” Caleb shrugged noncommittally. “Fine. Four bowls of oatmeal coming up.”

Making instant oatmeal was easy enough. Five minutes later he was back in his seat and picked up his fork. Once more all four kids sat there, hands in laps, staring at their
breakfast as if he’d served them shoe leather. “What?” he asked sharply.

It was Caleb, of course, who answered. “There’s stuff in it.”

“It’s strawberry-flavored oatmeal. Those are little pieces of strawberry.”

“Oatmeal’s not supposed to have stuff in it.”

“If oatmeal doesn’t have stuff in it, it tastes like wet newspaper.”

Noah picked up his spoon, poked around in the bowl for a moment, then let the spoon fall with a clang. “I don’t think I’m hungry,” he said with a mournful look that shouted the opposite.

J.D. took a breath for patience, then forced himself to say calmly, “All right. What do you want for breakfast?”

There was a long, tense silence, with the younger kids looking to Caleb. When he didn’t speak up, Gracie ventured her own answer. “Ice cream?”

J.D. got four cartons of ice cream from the freezer, then dropped them in the middle of the table along with four big spoons. “Go to it,” he said stiffly before returning to the kitchen. They were diving for the spoons the instant he was out of sight.

His own appetite gone, he did the dishes and fixed himself a fresh cup of coffee. Leaning against the counter, he stared out the window, wishing he were anywhere but in this apartment with those kids.

He felt incompetent. Granted, it had been a long time since he’d dealt with kids on any but the most superficial basis, a long time since he’d borne any responsibility for a child’s well-being. Once he’d been very good at handling them. Given time, he might be good at it again.

He just didn’t
want
to be good at it again.

But the issue wasn’t what he wanted. In a moment of
insanity he’d agreed to provide a temporary home to the kids, and that was what he would do. He would give them what they needed, and in time they would give
him
what
he
needed.

They would get out of his life.

Chapter Three
 

K
elsey’s meeting with her new boss in Howland had gone extraordinarily well. Mary Therese Carpenter was plump, motherly, and had a mind like a steel trap. She had great people skills and better instincts, and she swore Kelsey was going to love everything about Bethlehem. She’d given Kelsey enough files to fill at least one cabinet and had sketched out the details of her first case—four children found living alone after their parents’ abandonment. Her priority was to visit them at the hospital and find out exactly what she could do for them.

“Oh, they’re not here, dear,” she was told by the old lady at the information desk.

She blinked. “What do you mean, they’re not here?”

“Why, they’re with Dr. J.D.”

“And he is …?”

“J. D. Grayson. Our psychiatrist.”

Yesterday in the parking lot—big man, summer suit, befuddled look. Nothing wrong with him that a good
shrink couldn’t take care of. What exactly had he meant by that? she now wondered. “And where can I find Dr. Grayson?”

The woman checked her clipboard. “At home, I imagine. He didn’t come in today. I don’t believe he’s coming in tomorrow either.”

Kelsey was bewildered. The children she was supposed to interview and place had been taken home by the staff psychiatrist on his days off.
Why?
If he was counseling them, surely that was best done in a controlled environment. If he and his wife were providing emergency care to the children, it should have been cleared through her office and noted in her files. Hoping she had somehow misunderstood, she said, “He took the Brown children to his home?”

“Why, of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Well, honey, what did you expect him to do? He can’t have custody of them
here
.”

“Custody?” She drew a deep breath and forced an unsteady smile in what she was sure was a dismal attempt to look unshaken. “There must be some mistake here. The Brown children are currently in the custody of the state. No placement’s been made yet. My department has to make recommendations and there has to be a hearing with a family court judge. Dr. Grayson can’t simply take them, even if he is the only psychiatrist in town.”

The volunteer finally lost her rosy smile. “But Dr. J.D.—a judge did—I think you’d better speak to our administrator.”

When she reached for the phone, Kelsey stopped her.

“Right now I really need to speak to Dr. Grayson. If you could give me his home address …”

“Well, now, I don’t know …”

Another volunteer, young with the kind of long, silky
brown hair that Kelsey had always envied, interrupted. “I’m sure it’s all right. Everyone in town knows where J.D. lives. It’s on Sixth Street. Turn left out of the parking lot, go down to Sixth, turn right, and it’s behind the first house on the right.”

Kelsey curled her fingers around her briefcase handle and left the building. This was amazing. She’d seen such carelessness on occasion back home, when overworked hospital staff lost track of who had a right to whom, but she hadn’t expected it here in Bethlehem.

Maybe it was part of the small-town charm. Maybe Dr. Grayson had believed the kids would be better off waiting for her in the comfort of his home rather than in the sterile confines of a hospital. Maybe, in a small town where everyone knew everyone else, that seemed a reasonable choice.

But it wasn’t. The moment they were taken into custody, those children had become wards of the state. No one had the right to just claim them, not even an apparently well-liked psychiatrist.

The volunteer’s directions took Kelsey straight to the doctor’s home, a garage apartment behind the corner house. Interesting quarters for a psychiatrist, she thought as she climbed the stairs to the door. It suggested rental, bachelor, temporariness. Was there no Mrs. Grayson? And if there wasn’t, didn’t that make his taking four young kids home with him on his days off just a little more curious?

When her sharp rap was answered, she immediately recognized the man from the parking lot yesterday, though a rumpled version. Instead of a suit, he wore faded denim shorts with more than their share of rips and a T-shirt with permanent stains, and his hair stood on end. On the positive side, he didn’t look befuddled but handsome—six-feet-plus, blond hair, blue eyes, square jaw. How had she missed noticing that yesterday?

Oh, and one other thing—he didn’t appear to recognize her at all.

“J. D. Grayson? I’m Kelsey Malone, Department of Family Assistance.” She offered him a business card, then a handshake. She expected a so-so grip and softness. She got restrained power and calluses—and not of the golf club or tennis racquet variety. “Can I come in?”

He stepped back and allowed her entrance into an apartment that was large, beautifully decorated, and scrupulously clean if she discounted the two dozen cartons of books stacked just inside. The combined fragrances of wood polish and fresh flowers perfumed the air, and the sound of a television was muted in the background.

She shifted her attention back to the doctor. “I understand you have the Brown children here.”

“Of course I do. Where else would I have them?”

She ignored his testiness. “Can I see them?”

He gestured down the hall, and she followed the television sounds into the living room, where four children sprawled together on the sofa. Four pairs of identical brown eyes subjected her to a scrutiny as thorough as she gave them, then dismissed her as unimportant—meaning not their parent—and turned back to the television.

They looked as good as could be expected for four children who’d lived on their own for six weeks—a testament to the oldest boy’s determination. According to their records, they were relatively healthy, though undernourished, and they hadn’t suffered any apparent harm in their unauthorized time with the doctor. Still, he shouldn’t have taken them. Though his intentions had no doubt been good, it was still against the rules.

When it came to protecting the children in her care, Kelsey was a stickler for following the rules.

She shifted her attention back to J. D. Grayson. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

“Down here.” He led the way to a room that had hastily been converted into sleeping space, with nothing on the walls and a small collection of toys and children’s books on the shelves. A dresser didn’t quite cover the deep indentations in the rug where a larger piece—a desk, perhaps—had recently stood, and a few unfaded patches on the wall showed where photographs had been removed.

She turned in a slow circle between two sets of unmade bunk beds. The lower left bed was obviously the little girl’s—Gracie’s—with its pink sheets and lace-edged candy-striped spread. The bunk above hers sported a football theme, while race cars and cartoon characters roared across the other two. “This room is a bit small for four children.”

“No one seemed to listen yesterday when I said I didn’t have room,” he said dryly as he leaned against the dresser. “What is it you want, Ms. Malone?”

She gestured toward the door. “Can we close that?”

“I’d rather not. Caleb has a habit of listening around corners. A closed door might be more temptation than he can resist.”

And J.D. was standing where he could see if anyone so much as stepped into the hallway. She acknowledged the wisdom of his strategy. “I came to pick up the children.”

“You what?”

“I assume you meant well, Dr. Grayson, but you can’t just take them.”

He was staring at her as if she’d begun speaking an alien language. “
I
meant well? Hey, lady, this was
not
my idea. You people came to me. You
asked
me to take them.”

“There seems to be some misunderstanding here. This is my case, and I couldn’t possibly have asked you—”