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She had three new students this year and she’d already made the rounds to say hello and invite the parents to come into the classroom. Some would accept her offer and, in doing so, would feel reassured about the environment in which they’d left their children. Others would decline, knowing that it would only make saying goodbye that much more difficult for the child. Ashley was supportive of either decision, trusting that the parent knew his or her child better than she did—at least on the first day.
She smiled at Adam Webber, one of the fifth-grade teachers and the boys’ basketball coach, when he came out of the school with the ever-present orange ball tucked under his arm.
“Look at them.” Adam shook his head. “So eager and enthusiastic.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll beat that out of them soon enough.”
He grinned easily at her teasing, because he knew he was one of the favorite teachers at Parkdale. “How does your class look this year? Or should I wait until the end of the day to ask you?”
“Twenty-three kids. Ten boys, thirteen girls.”
“Twenty-four,” he said.
“What?”
“Haven’t you seen Wendy this morning?” Adam asked, referring to the principal’s administrative assistant.
“No, I came directly around the back.”
“She told me she has an updated class list for you.”
“But I just picked up the list yesterday. And I did all of the name tags and locker magnets last night.”
He shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.”
Ashley turned to go into the school, and that’s when she saw her.
The child looked the right age for a first grader, with long, dark hair and wide, terrified eyes. She was wearing a sleeveless pink dress with tiny white daisies embroidered at the square neckline and along the hem, with matching pink canvas sneakers embroidered with the same flowers on the toes.
Obviously the newest addition.
Feeling an instinctive stir of empathy, Ashley had already started forward when she glanced from the child to parent—and froze.
The man holding the little girl’s hand was Cam Turcotte.
Ashley stopped by Wendy’s office and grabbed the new class list before ducking into her classroom and closing the door at her back. She just needed five minutes alone. Five minutes to assimilate the reality that had been shoved in her face. Five minutes to accept that Cam had a child—that the baby she’d once dreamed of having with him had been born to someone else.
She didn’t want to believe it. And yet she couldn’t deny it was true. There was no doubt the little girl with the shiny dark hair and wide green eyes clinging to his hand as if he was the center of her world could be anyone but his daughter.
But how could she not have known?
Cam might have moved away more than twelve years ago, but his parents had remained in town. In fact, it had been from his mother that she’d heard about his marriage to Danica, and that news had hit her the same way.
Gayle Turcotte, apparently recognizing how much the revelation had hurt Ashley, had been careful not to make any further mention of her son’s life in Seattle whenever their paths had crossed. She’d certainly never mentioned the baby girl that Cam’s wife had given birth to.
Madeline Carrington-Turcotte, according to the updated class list she’d inadvertently crumpled in her fist.
Cam had always been very traditional, so she would bet that the hyphenated name was his ex-wife’s idea. Just because Ashley had been foolish enough to doodle “Ashley Turcotte” inside the cover of her notebooks when she was in high school didn’t mean another woman would feel the same way about taking her husband’s name.
In any event, she and Cam had broken up more than twelve years earlier, so she knew it was ridiculous to feel so hurt by the knowledge that he’d had a child with another woman. But that knowledge failed to lessen her sense of betrayal.
Because when Cam had left her, one of the reasons he’d given for ending their relationship was that he didn’t want the life she’d envisioned for them—not yet.
“I’ve decided to go to Seattle,” he told her.
Ashley stared at him, feeling as if the very ground beneath her feet had begun to crumble. “Washington?”
He nodded. “Their School of Medicine is one of the best in the country.”
“But—” She didn’t quite know what to say, how to respond to something that he’d obviously already decided upon, and without even discussing it with her “—but you have at least three years before med school.”
“I know. But staying here, going to a university closer to home, it will only delay the inevitable.”
Inevitable? What was it that he thought was inevitable?
Ashley didn’t ask, because in her heart, she was afraid she already knew the answer. But she pushed aside her fears.
“There are good medical schools that aren’t on the other side of the country. Like Northwestern and Cornell. Even Chapel Hill would be better than Washington.”
“I want to go to Washington.”
She’d heard the finality in his voice, and her eyes had filled with tears. “You’re breaking up with me.”
He glanced away. “This is for the best, Ash.”
“Best for who?” she demanded.
“For both of us. Do you think this was an easy decision for me to make?”
“How would I know—since you never talked to me about it?”
“Because I knew you would try to convince me to stay. And because I was afraid I would let you.” He reached out and took her hands. “Because there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to stay here with you.”
The seemingly heartfelt words and the warmth of his touch failed to thaw the icy numbness that had taken hold of her.
She managed to speak, though she didn’t manage to disguise the anguish in her tone when she asked, “Then why are you leaving?”
“Because we want different things, Ash. Being a doctor has been my dream for as long as I can remember.”
“You said you wanted to get married.”
“I do,” he agreed. “Someday. But I’m nowhere near being ready to make that kind of commitment yet. I’m not even close to thinking about being a husband or a father.”
As it turned out, that wasn’t exactly true.
Because only a few years later, before Ashley had even graduated from teacher’s college, he had married. He’d become someone else’s husband. And now she knew that he’d become a father, too.
He’d had the family she always wanted, and she was still alone.
Ashley wiped the tears from her cheeks, reminding herself that she wasn’t going to be alone forever. Despite her initial appointment at PARC having to be rescheduled, she was going to have a baby. And while she couldn’t deny a certain amount of disappointment that her child wouldn’t also have a father, she’d made her decision.
She wouldn’t regret that the baby she’d so often dreamed of having with Cam Turcotte would never be. And she absolutely wouldn’t let herself consider the possibility that his return to Pinehurst could change anything. Especially now that she knew he already was a father.
The ring of the bell jolted her out of her reverie. She hastily wiped the last of the moisture from her cheeks, pasted a smile on her face and opened the door to greet her new students.
She wasn’t sure how she made it through the day, but when the bell sounded at three o’clock, Ashley nearly wept with relief.
It took a few more minutes, of course, to ensure all the kids had their agendas and the assortment of documents that always went home on the first day. But the halls eventually emptied and quiet descended, and Ashley sank back into her chair.
“One day down, only one hundred and eighty-something to go.”
Ashley looked up, startled to see her sister in the doorway. Megan rarely ever came to the school to see Ashley, and the fact that she’d done so now indicated that she had something on her mind.
“One hundred and eighty-six,” Ashley told her. “But what dragged you out of the lab in the middle of the day?”
Megan practically floated into the room. She wasn’t usually the floating type, but she was obviously excited about something so Ashley tried to muster some enthusiasm for her.
“I had an appointment this side of town.” Megan came further into the room, some of the sparkle in her eyes fading as she looked more closely at her sister. “But let’s talk about what’s going on with you first.”
Ashley shook her head. She couldn’t talk about it. She didn’t know what to say, how to explain.
“Come on, Ash. You love the first day of school. I thought you’d be ready to go out and celebrate the beginning of a new year with a great big chocolate fudge brownie sundae at Walton’s.”
“Let’s just say that the day didn’t go exactly as planned.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sighed and pushed her class list across the desk. Megan picked up the page, frowning. Then her eyes widened.
“Madeline Carrington-Turcotte?”
Ashley nodded. “Cam’s daughter.”
“Oh, Ash.”
“She’s beautiful,” she said softly. “And very sweet and shy. She doesn’t say much, but she watches and she listens, her big green eyes taking everything in.”
“Of all the classrooms in all the schools in all the world, she walks into yours.”
Ashley managed to smile at the deliberate misquotation. “I just … I didn’t know how to react. I was completely unprepared. I had no idea that he had a child, never mind one I would end up teaching.”
“But he lives down the street,” Megan reminded her. “You never saw her?”
She shook her head. “He only moved in on the weekend. I saw the truck, saw furniture being unloaded, but I didn’t pay attention to anything else.” And she was regretting that now.
“Chocolate fudge brownie sundae?” Meg prompted gently.
Ashley managed to smile. “That sounds like the perfect way to end a crappy day.”
One of the reasons Cam had moved back to Pinehurst was to be able to spend more time with both his parents and his daughter. Another added benefit was that his parents were not just willing but happy to provide after-school care for Maddie on the days that he couldn’t get away from the office in time to pick her up. But he refused to let her first day of school be one of those days, and when she came racing across the grass and into his arms, he was more certain than ever that this move was the best thing for both of them.
He felt a slight twinge when he recalled the shock—and the pain—he’d seen in Ashley’s eyes when she saw him with Madeline that morning, and he realized the first-grade teacher might not agree. But he refused to worry about that while he walked home, hand in hand with his daughter, listening to her animated conversation the whole way.
He remembered her kindergarten teacher expressing concern that Maddie was too quiet in class, silent and withdrawn. But Cam knew it wasn’t a character flaw, just her personality. She’d always been shy with strangers, but at home and with her family, she was quite the little chatterbox.
“Do you want a snack?” he asked.
“Ice cream,” she said hopefully, hopping onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar.
“We don’t have any.”
She pouted. “You promised to get ice cream.”
“I know I did, but I forgot.”
His admission of guilt didn’t appease her and though Cam knew the dangers of being over-indulgent, he figured the first day at a new school warranted an exception to the rules.
“So why don’t you go wash up and we’ll go to Walton’s?”
“Who’s Walton?”
He smiled. “Walton isn’t a who but a where, and it’s where we go to get the very best ice cream in all of Pinehurst, New York.”
“Really?” Her eyes were almost as wide as her smile.
“Really.”
She hopped off of her stool and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thanks, Daddy. You’re the best.”
Twenty minutes later, he handed a strawberry sundae to Maddie before accepting his double scoop of butter pecan from the teenager behind the counter and turned to look for a vacant table. A quick glance around the room revealed that there weren’t any.
“There’s my teacher, Daddy.”
Maddie’s words registered at the exact moment his gaze landed on Ashley, seated with her sister at a table for four on the other side of the room.
“Her name’s Miss Ashley,” his daughter reminded him.
Cam nodded.
“She’s very pretty,” Maddie said. “And she smiles a lot and she doesn’t yell. Not even when the skinny boy with the curly hair forgot to ask to go to the bathroom and went pee right in his pants.”
His lips curved. “Not even then?”
Maddie shook her head solemnly.
“So maybe first grade won’t be so bad, huh?”
“Maybe,” she allowed. “But it’s really too soon to tell.”
