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“That’s fine.” It wasn’t. Tomorrow afternoon he had an important meeting with the developers of Moonlight Grove that would undoubtedly run late. But what could he say? “It’s just fine.”
“Sam, I know this puts you in a bind, as far as child care and all. Maybe your mother could help you out.”
Andrea and his mother had always been friendly. His mother had once proclaimed Andrea the perfect daughter-in-law. These days they shared a mutual love and fierce protectiveness of Meggie. But his mother had her own life now—she was scheduled to leave for Central America on a photographic expedition in one week.
“We’ll be fine. If Mom can’t take care of Meggie, I know of a very nice older lady who can. Mrs. Waddle has baby-sat for me a couple of times. Very nice. Very grandmotherly.” This was a somewhat rosy description of Cloretta Waddle.
“Okay. Call me back later tonight.”
“Andrea?”
“Yeah?”
“When did you find out about this?”
“About a week ago.”
Oh, God, he thought. A life could change so dramatically in only a week. Hadn’t Andrea Haynes Solomon suffered enough in her life? First, bearing a severely brain-damaged child when she was only twenty years old, then having her marriage fall apart. And now this. Cancer. “Andrea, I’m so sorry. We will get you through this, all of us. Don’t worry about Meggie. I promise I will take very good care of her.”
“You always do.”
“Yes, well. I love her. She’s my baby.” He was glad he hadn’t said, She’ll always be my baby. Andrea didn’t need reminders of Meggie’s shortcomings any more than he did, certainly not now.
“I know, Sam. Call me back when you’re somewhere where you can write the plane information down. I’m really sorry to spring this on you so suddenly. I just didn’t want Meggie to have to see me in the hospital, you know? I don’t think she would understand any of this.”
“Does Meggie know you’re sick?”
“We told her I have to have an operation. She had a friend who had her tonsils out, so she understands that much. I told her she would probably get to stay with her daddy until I’m…until I’m well.” Andrea rushed on, her voice artificially bright again. “She was very excited about seeing you and her nonnie.”
Sam closed his eyes, but somehow the hot orange light of the sun seeped through his lids, anyway, egging on the tears. “I’ll call you back,” he croaked, trying not to choke up, “in a bit.”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
Sam punched End and stared out over the shimmering apricot surface of the water again, feeling as if the world had suddenly shifted on its axis.
How could life change so completely in only a few minutes? Then again, hadn’t he learned already that life could change just that fast? Suddenly, completely, horribly. In those few tense moments when Meggie had been born, those tortured moments, he had wanted to rip the cord from his child’s neck with his own hands. Those moments had taught him that everything, positively everything, could spin out of control in an instant. When the nurses forced the mask over his tiny baby’s blue face and she did not breathe, hadn’t he seen, with his very own eyes, how in the span of less than five minutes, a life and all the lives around it could shift forever?
Soft-tissue sarcoma. Andrea was dying. No. He would not even think such a thought, would not even allow such a possibility. He would get on the Internet tonight and look it up, and he would find out everything he could about this…disease. He would help the mother of his child fight for her life. By God, he was a man who fixed things—restored things—and he would find a way to fix this, too.
But first, he had to find someone to drive to Oklahoma City and pick up Meggie at Will Rogers World Airport at seven in the evening. There was really no question as to who that someone would be.
GAYLE SOLOMON STOOD STARING out at the runways, thanking God that Will Rogers World Airport was quieter than most. Set on a grassy plain south of Oklahoma City, Will Rogers was a typical, vast, unadorned airport. At least here the parking lots were uncrowded and the traffic flowed smoothly. Even at seven o’clock on a Friday evening at the start of the Memorial Day weekend there weren’t that many people. Maybe Meggie wouldn’t be too scared, arriving in a relatively calm place like this. But the drive to Tulsa would seem unbearably long to the child, so Gayle had come armed with sing-along tapes. Meggie loved to sing.
The jet that carried her grandchild taxied in from a distant runway. She hated to think of little Meggie in a plane that big all by herself. She wondered if any of the other passengers had shown an interest in Meggie, if they’d talked to her. If they’d been kind.
Of course they’d been kind. People were always kind to children, weren’t they? But even if they were kind, they would still be expecting Meggie to behave like what she appeared to be—a normal ten-year-old. When in reality, the specialists estimated that Meggie was, at most, mentally a three-year-old. Meggie could fool people. She wasn’t slack-jawed or slow-moving. She was beautiful, thin and graceful. She moved like a tiny gazelle. And she could parrot the most astounding words, making her seem brighter than she actually was.
For an instant Gayle thought she saw Meggie’s bewildered little face framed in one of the oval windows of the plane, but in the next instant, the glare of the setting sun obliterated it. Envisioning her granddaughter’s face reminded Gayle of how simple, how sweet Meggie could be. Well, Meggie could be sweet if she wanted to be. At least when her routine wasn’t disrupted. Gayle sighed. Being separated from her mother and having to fly across the country was certainly a major disruption.
Not for the first time, Gayle wished Andrea hadn’t taken the child off to California. What was Sam supposed to have done? Abandon his struggling architectural partnership when it was just taking off? Building a reputation as a specialist in restoring historic buildings took time and persistence.
Gayle walked around the passengers waiting at the gate, positioning herself directly in front of the door of the boarding ramp, thankful that the airline security had allowed her to come this far down to meet Meggie.
Airports, Gayle thought, had become such somber, anxious places these days. The long, brightly lit corridor around her, with its boarding gates fanning out in a semicircle, felt subdued, vacant, compared to her last visit to Will Rogers.
Gayle walked over to a rounded bank of windows and folded her arms across her middle. The heat from the prairie sun setting low over the vast tarmac radiated through the glass. The holiday weekend promised to be a scorcher. Gayle watched as the blue-and-white jet aligned its door with the boarding ramp. Meggie was in there. She hoped her baby wasn’t scared. Meggie would remember her nonnie, wouldn’t she?
A stream of passengers emerged from the doorway. A little family. Some college students. A few tired-looking businessmen. Soon the area was filled with passengers. People assembled their parties, then rushed toward baggage claim. Gayle’s view became blocked by a large man. She ducked around him, but she still couldn’t see any sign of Meggie. In no time the stream dwindled to a trickle. Still no Meggie.
Anxious, Gayle took the paper on which she’d written Sam’s instructions from her purse. Flight 1292. She looked at the digital display behind the boarding desk. She was at the correct gate. She stepped toward the ramp and peered down the tunnel toward the door of the plane. Not a soul was in sight. What should she do? Surely they hadn’t let something happen to the child. Gayle’s mind flashed to the time her elderly mother-in-law had been left sitting in a wheelchair while her connecting flight took off in Salt Lake City. Her palms grew damp.
Sam should have flown to Los Angeles to pick up his daughter. Gayle had told him that in no uncertain terms.
In defiance of the rules, she was about to march down the ramp and look into the plane herself when she heard a shriek and then a child’s howling protests.
Behind Gayle, a small cluster of people had formed under a large sign that read Oklahoma City, the new Agenda for Business, next to a stunning blowup of a fire-red Oklahoma sunset. But there was nothing sunny about their faces as they turned anxious expressions toward the sound of the shrieking child.
The suspended alertness of the group fractured as they all heard the young child plainly yelling, “Help! Help me!”
As one, everyone rushed forward, expressions horrified. Gayle was overcome by a sinking feeling. Meggie was acting out again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw security officers jogging down the concourse.
A man in a straw cowboy hat standing next to her muttered, “What the hell?”
“I think it’s my grandchild.”
Sure enough, around the corner came a flight attendant, tugging a screaming Meggie by the hand. Meggie, clutching her beloved stuffed companion, Mr. Bear, and wielding a pink Pokémon backpack at the flight attendant’s arm, dug in her heels and stopped their progress.
Meggie was incredibly strong for such a thin child. Gayle had to smile, though she was mortified that Meggie was making such a scene. The child did have a will of her own. Her little face was so red with exertion that it made her blond hair look almost white. Like the unfortunate flight attendant, Gayle herself had often been jerked to a halt when Meggie didn’t want to cooperate. There was no reasoning with a three-year-old in a ten-year-old’s body. The flight attendant bent forward at the waist, obviously trying to reason with the struggling child.
“Meggie!” Gayle called, “Meggie! It’s Nonnie!” Gayle put on a brave smile and waved frantically, trying to get the child to calm down and see that everything was okay. Nonnie was here.
The flight attendant turned. “Are you Mrs. Solomon?”
“Yes!”
Gayle was relieved when she was waved down the ramp. “Meggie, it’s okay, honey.” She tried to speak calmly above Meggie’s screaming as she took hold of the combative child. “Nonnie’s here.”
“I going back to Cal-forna!” Meggie screamed while trying to tug her hand out of the attendant’s grip and twisting her thin body away from Gayle, back toward the plane.
“She refused to get off the plane.” The woman had to holler to be heard above Meggie’s crying.
“I…want…my…mom-meeee!” Meggie wailed.
“Meggie, listen!” Gayle dropped to one knee and bracketed her hands on the child’s flushed, tear-streaked cheeks. “Remember Nonnie?” Gayle brushed back Meggie’s thick blond curls and tried to look into her eyes, but they were squeezed shut. “And Daddy? Daddy wants to see you. Remember? And Brutus. Brutus wants to see you. Remember Brutus?”
Gayle hated to use her poor little schnauzer as bait, but what choice did she have? It always worked. Instantly, Meggie’s body relaxed and her eyes opened wide.
“Bootus?” she said in quiet awe.
“Yes. Remember Brutus?” Gayle encouraged.
“Bootus?” Meggie repeated softly. She hiccuped innocently, then graced the hapless attendant with an angelic smile. The poor woman cautiously released Meggie’s hand, then wilted as if she wanted to slide down the wall of the tunnel to her backside. “You go with your grandma now,” she sighed, “okay, Meggie?”
“My nonnie,” Meggie corrected with an evil glare.
“Yes. Your nonnie. We’ll have fun the next time you fly with us.” The look on the flight attendant’s face said, Which I hope is never.
In a singsong voice, Meggie started chanting, “Boo-tus. Boo-tus. I gonna see Bootus.”
Gayle stood up and took Meggie’s free hand. “They did tell you that my granddaughter is mentally challenged, didn’t they?”
The attendant nodded, looking sheepish but exhausted. “Yes. Her mom gave us plenty of instructions. But they didn’t mention the t-e-m-p-e-r. I let her eat several doughnuts. She refused to touch any healthy snacks and it was a long flight. It was the only way to get some orange juice down her.”
Gayle smiled wanly and patted the woman’s arm. Sugar certainly didn’t help Meggie’s moods. “It’s okay. I’ll feed her some protein on the way home. She loves McDonald’s.”
With that, Meggie changed her chant to “IckDonald’s! IckDonald’s! I gonna go to IckDonald’s!” as she tugged on Gayle’s hand, dragging her petite grandmother down the exit ramp.
“Thank you!” Gayle called over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry she got upset,” the flight attendant called after them. “I did get her to take a two-hour nap during the flight.”
Great, Gayle thought, that means now she won’t fall asleep until after midnight. Not an auspicious beginning on her first night in her daddy’s house.
CHAPTER TWO
GAYLE SOLOMON WAS USED to answering distress calls from her youngest son. And since his pleas for help invariably involved her darling Meggie, she felt she had to heed them. She wanted to heed them.
She was used to coming into Sam’s house and making herself right at home—if one could make oneself at home in such a stark, cold atmosphere. And why her son favored so much black was an inconsistent mystery. Couldn’t the man at least get some green plants?
In his work Sam favored color, lots of it. Persian blue and misty mauve and hot tangerine. He restored Victorian houses in lavish colors, calling them “painted ladies.” The interiors he designed always felt rich, cozy and golden. But in his own home it was unrelenting black. Black, black and more black. Black leather couches. Black granite kitchen counters. Even a black shower curtain upstairs. Sam’s home looked as stripped and clinical as a dentist’s office.
Gayle sighed. What her son needed was a wife. Sometimes she wondered if Sam would ever really get his act together. He worked too much, for one thing. Tonight he looked exceptionally frazzled, exceptionally tired.
She watched him as he trudged down the open stairs into the kitchen, one loose-hipped step at a time, removing his tie.
Sam was an undeniably handsome man. Beautiful, in fact. Although that was a word she would never use aloud to describe any of her very masculine sons. The Solomon Sons. All gorgeous, but Sam had indeed been the most beautiful of all her children except, of course, for— She forced herself to smile up at Sam, focusing her love and attention on him.
Of all her sons, Sam was the most like her late husband, Edward, which had made the constant father and son friction all the more troubling and confusing. She watched as he ran his long fingers through his hair, a habit from childhood that, for Sam, could signal anything from frustration to shyness to happy excitement. The full head of curly white-blond hair from his childhood had deepened to a burnished gold with rich taupe undertones. He wore his hair in a casual lionlike mane, curling behind his ears, touching his collar, stubbornly raked straight back from his brow and temples, an occasional lock falling forward.
At thirty-one, he already had telltale sprigs of gray lacing his sideburns, though his body was still athletically honed and his face had only grown more handsome as he reached full manhood. His forehead was broad, his nose straight, his jaw square, and his deep-set dark blue eyes were as compelling as a midnight sky.
“She’s finally asleep.” He slumped when he got to the last step.
“Have you eaten?” Gayle asked.
“Only the finger food we served to the investors.”
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” Gayle said, turning toward his kitchen.
“I can make it myself,” he said as he followed her. “Mom? Do you remember that woman—the one the Barretts used for child care before their kids were old enough for school? You know, that older lady? The one you got to take care of Meggie a couple of times for me on Saturday nights? Mrs. Waddle?”
“Cloretta?”
“Yeah. I wonder if she’s available now?”
Gayle turned to him with a look of horror. “You aren’t considering Cloretta Waddle as a possible full-time caretaker for Meggie?”
“Why not? Bob Barrett always talked about how efficient she was. He said she was clean. Sensible. I think he even told me the woman used to be a nurse.”
“That woman used to be a Panzer tank,” Gayle practically shouted, “and just because she’s strapped an apron around her middle that doesn’t mean she can take care of my grandchild on a daily basis!”
“Shh. You’ll wake Meggie.”
“Sorry. But you listen—” Gayle hissed, grabbing Sam’s arm and hauling him around the corner into the kitchen as if he were still five years old. She flipped on every last one of the recessed lights. Sam knew his mother hated his dark, sleek kitchen. But he liked the shimmering stainless steel, the professional chef-style gas stove, the massive nickel fixtures.
Gayle whirled to face him. “Cloretta Waddle ran the Barrett household like an absolute drill sergeant. You cannot possibly be serious about bringing her into your home.”
Gayle watched as Sam rammed his fingers through his thick blond hair again. His frustration level was definitely peaking. Putting Meggie to bed could try anyone’s patience, but it was this whole situation that was killing him. In the twenty-four hours since he’d found out Andrea was ill, he’d probably repeated that gesture so often that it was a miracle he wasn’t bald.
He flipped off several of the lights, then jerked open his massive side-by-side—black, naturally—built-in refrigerator and started pulling out shaved ham, cheese, mustard. “As I recall, Bob Barrett told me that Mrs. Waddle is a licensed practical nurse who is trained to care for children.”
“Trained to care for children is one thing. Doing it kindly is quite another.”
He turned to his mother, his rugged features, highlighted by the cold light from the refrigerator, looking older than his years. “Mom, look. I can’t exactly be picky here. Meggie is upstairs right now—” he pointed at the kitchen stairs “—and just getting her tucked in wore me out. I have got to have somebody here—tomorrow. The investors are in town. Men like Mr. Yoshida do not understand the concept of a family crisis, and they do not like to be ignored.”
Gayle’s heart clutched at the worry and sadness etched in her son’s face. He had withstood so much. Lord, when will it end? “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I will keep Meggie tomorrow.”
“And what about the next day? And the next? Andrea is going to be sick for a long time and you can’t stay away from your work forever. Now, let’s think. How can we find out if this Cloretta Waddle is still around Tulsa?”
Gayle took the sandwich things from him and placed them on the center island. “We simply must find a better solution.” She tried to keep her tone from sounding overbearing, but she knew how her son tended to act in a crisis. Just like his father. Efficient to the point of ruthlessness. And sometimes that efficiency vanquished things of greater importance—like Meggie’s contentment and happiness, for example. Putting Meggie in the hands of Cloretta Waddle would be like putting a wild bunny rabbit in the hands of an ape. “Sam, that woman is not an appropriate match for a sensitive child like Meggie.”
“Then exactly what do you suggest?”
“I told you, I will keep Meggie myself.” She found a knife in a militarily neat utensil drawer.
Sam sighed. They had tried this arrangement before on one of Meggie’s summer visits. His mother had raised four rowdy sons almost single-handedly while his father had been off building his legal dynasty. Sam, being the youngest of the Solomon sons, felt the most strongly that his mother deserved some peace and quiet—or at least the luxury of pursuing her own interests for once in her life. It bugged him that he was the one who seemed to call on her for help the most often. His brothers and their wives were all too involved in their high-powered careers to help with Meggie. His mom seemed like the only one in the family who had time for Meggie and her problems. Yet, every time Gayle took over with Meggie, Sam ended fighting a roaring case of the guilts.
“Mom, are you telling me that you are going to drive across town to my house at the crack of dawn every weekday, then haul Meggie around to school and her therapy and her various activities in your minivan?”
“Absolutely.” Gayle calmly spread mustard on two slices of bread.
Sam threw up his hands, then planted them on his belt. “And then I suppose you’ll go home and somehow find the energy to pursue your photography, which, I’d like to remind you, is going rather well these days.”
“Oh, poo.” Gayle flapped her palm at him. “Let’s be honest. My photography is merely a hobby.”
“You’ve been winning awards, selling some stuff at art fairs. And what about your trip to Belize?”
“My photography is not going so well that I’d turn my helpless granddaughter over to a battle-ax like Cloretta Waddle.”
