Impossible Dreams (12 page)

“Well, you just keep pouring on the butter, and
I’ll work my end of it. I’ve got a party with a DOT board member
tonight. Wish me well.”

Maya grinned. She’d never seen Selene work one of her
“parties,” but she could imagine it. “Sweet talk him good,
sugar. We’ll have that nasty old shopping center installing underground
parking yet.”

“I’ll not go that far. That’s a flood zone
out there. But we’ll find something.”

Selene hung up, leaving Maya to admire the artwork of her
two talented charges. Matty was into dragons at the moment. Constance,
apparently high on earlier praise, was painting more and more elaborate
nurseries.

“Grandmother gave me a baby doll,” she replied
matter-of-factly when Maya asked about the infant in the picture. “But
dolls aren’t like real babies, are they?” Big, serious eyes watched
Maya expectantly, with a trace of wariness behind them.

Maya felt as if she were on a witness stand, sworn to tell
the truth. She didn’t like being pinned down, but she couldn’t lie
to a child. “Dolls are pretend babies.” She dodged the question
agilely, sending a mental apology to Constance’s grandmother. Sandra
hadn’t bought the crystal ball, after all. Apparently, she’d found
a suitable doll elsewhere.

“You’ve got a real baby in your stomach.”
Constance pointed at the figure in the painting. “This is a real baby,
like my mommy had in her stomach.”

Oh dear. Deeper and deeper waters. She wished she’d
taken more child psychology courses, but there’d never been enough time,
or money. She leaned over and taped the picture to the refrigerator.
“I’m sorry you lost your mommy and her baby.”

“I didn’t want the baby,” Constance
whispered. “I
hated
the baby.”

She slid away, back to the kitchen table and Matty.

Shocked, Maya pretended normalcy by taping the picture in
place. Scary little spikes of panic raced through her veins, piercing her heart.
Axell needed to be here —
now
. This was his daughter. He knew the
score better than she.

Without thinking, she grabbed the kitchen phone and hit the
starred code number for the restaurant. She was only an outsider in this
precarious little family drama.

***

Grimly, Axell slammed into the house. He didn’t know
what was so all-fired important that he had to leave his bar to the mayor and
his vipers, but it didn’t appear the house was on fire.

He stalked through the mud room into a brightly lit kitchen
no different from the one he’d left a few hours ago. Maybe there was more
paint splattered across the newspapers and floor, and his refrigerator looked
like a cock-eyed pop art gallery, but he didn’t see any dead or dying. He
watched his daughter decorate Matty’s forehead with a sunburst, then
turned his glare on the teacher sitting on a stool by the counter, stroking her
cat.

“What?” he roared as she met his gaze with a
worried frown. She’d scared him half to death over nothing.

“Daddy!” Constance raced to throw her arms
around his legs.

Amazed by her reaction, Axell didn’t even blink at the
smear of yellow paint across his new Perry Ellis trousers. He crouched to
stroke her hair and gratefully accepted the paper towel the teacher handed him.

“Can you stay? Me and Matty been painting.”

Constance — when she bothered speaking — usually spoke
grammatically. Axell threw the teacher another glare.

“Show your daddy your paintings, honey,” Maya
intervened calmly from her seat.

Axell wondered if she was feeling all right. She usually
bounced around as much as the children. That made him wonder if she’d
been seeing a doctor, which returned his terror of her having the kid on the
kitchen floor. He had to get her out of here — soon. He didn’t want
anything to do with babies.

Constance seemed oddly reluctant to display her art. Holding
her hand, Axell crossed to the refrigerator. Matty’s swirls of red with
polka dot nose holes and pointed ears were easily discerned from
Constance’s carefully detailed scenes. He wasn’t entirely certain
he understood the subject matter, however.

Crouching beside her, he examined a painting of what
appeared to be a room full of furniture. The cat leapt from Maya’s lap to
curl around his ankles, meowing. He scratched its head with one hand while
holding out the picture with the other. “Want to tell me about this
one?”

Pink little lips closed firmly, and her fine hair flew
around her face as she shook her head.

“That’s the nursery,” Maya explained from
her seat.

The nursery. Axell’s heart plummeted to his stomach.
He couldn’t look at his daughter. His fingers clenched around the
wrinkled painting. The nursery, of course. There was the crib his daughter had
outgrown, the cradle he’d built himself, and the playpen full of toys
they had shopped for every weekend.

Agony shot like fire through his chest. His stomach cramped,
nearly bending him in half. Maybe a heart attack would prevent his ever
thinking about that time again. Apparently aware of his crippling pain, the cat
fled behind the refrigerator.

Carefully, Axell unfolded from the floor, still gripping the
painting. “That’s a very pretty picture, Constance,” he said
with what he thought was admirable calm. “I need to talk with your
teacher for a moment. Miss Alyssum?” He lifted his eyebrows in
expectation and nodded toward the family room.

“You need to talk with your daughter.” Refusing
his commanding gesture, she remained seated.

He’d fire an employee who ignored his orders. He
couldn’t fire a guest. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Axell fought
the dangerous firecrackers popping behind his eyes. Constance had already
returned to the table, but he wasn’t ignorant enough to believe she
didn’t listen to their every word. For two years he’d been
pretending she’d forgotten. He couldn’t pretend anymore.

Holding the picture, he stormed into the family room. If
Maya wanted him to talk to Constance, she’d damned well have to talk to
him first. He didn’t have any idea how to handle this.

Staring at the childish picture, Axell absently swatted at a
dirty tennis shoe in his path. Constance had drawn his son’s nursery. The
child had been delivered dead after the accident — the accident that had killed
Angela instantly. The acid in his stomach spilled through his gut like
wildfire, and he kicked another loose shoe in the direction of the first.

The schoolteacher appeared before him without his knowing
she’d entered the room. She wore the swinging floral dress he’d
bought for her, along with the heavy sweater. The dress was more like summer
wear, and the evening had turned cool. He should turn up the furnace. He never
noticed the cold, but she was so thin-skinned, she was probably shivering.

Dammit, there he went again. She was a grown woman. She
could damned well take care of herself. Avidly seeking lost shoes now, Axell
used his toe to pry a slipper from beneath the leather sofa. It took two slams
to land it in the pile with the first two.

“Your daughter seems fascinated by nurseries. She made
a few revealing comments I can’t fully understand. I thought you might
prefer to deal with them rather than me.”

“What comments?” Axell asked roughly, glaring at
the picture before dropping it on the table as he uncovered a sandal lurking in
a corner.

She hesitated, as if afraid to alight anywhere. He pointed
at the couch as he swatted the sandal out of its hiding place. “Sit
down
.”

She sat. She clasped her hands in her lap. She twiddled her
thumbs. She looked everywhere but at him as he stalked the enormous room in
search of shoes.

At his growl of exasperation, she finally sighed. “I
don’t want to get involved in your family problems,” she stated
baldly.

“Tell me about it,” he agreed with venom. He
didn’t mean to make her flinch, he just couldn’t help himself right
now. He kicked the sandal until it landed upside down on a sneaker. “Go ahead,”
he finished a little less irascibly. “We might as well know each
other’s life stories at this rate.”

She threw him a rueful glance. “I don’t think
so. Comic farce isn’t my strong point.” She pointed at the
discarded picture. “Constance tells me that’s a real baby in the
crib. That her mommy was going to have a real baby.”

Feeling as if a gun had exploded in his face, Axell swayed
where he stood. Pain rippled through him, and in a desperate effort to fight
it, he dropped to his knees and began systematically searching for the rest of
Constance’s shoe collection. “I didn’t think she
remembered,” he muttered from the floor. “I had a decorator take
the nursery apart and refurnish it right after Angela died. It just seemed simpler.”

“No wonder she doesn’t talk to you.”

He bonked his head on the entertainment center. Rubbing the
sore spot, he glared at her as if she were to blame, but he saw no accusation
in her eyes. He threw a dusty patent leather shoe into the pile.

“She’s only imitating you,” she continued
remorselessly. “If an adult like you can’t tell her how you feel,
how can you expect a child to say how she feels?”

Axell cringed and continued prowling the room. “She
was so
little
,” he protested. “How could I explain? Her
mother was dead. That was difficult enough. Damn.” He pounced on another
sandal. “It was
all
so difficult. Angela and I hadn’t been
getting along. We’d hoped the baby would cure our differences,” — the
sandal hit the pile with the first throw — “but it only made things worse.
We had a furious fight that morning. I stormed off to my office. She must have
decided to follow.”

The words poured out, words he’d never told anyone,
words that ripped his soul from his gut and tears from his eyes. Men
didn’t cry, dammit. He jerked a dollhouse away from the wall and located
the missing leather shoe. Something wet streamed down his cheek, and standing,
he kicked the shoe so hard, it flew past the stack.

In a dead voice, Axell finished the sorry tale.
“We’d just had a thunderstorm. The roads were slick, leaves and
limbs everywhere. I’d taken the big car because she liked the little
convertible. She didn’t even fasten her damned seat belt.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly.

“Hell, I don’t know.” Wearily, Axell
pinched his nose and wiped the tear before turning to face her. Why go over
this now? It wouldn’t change anything. But she stared at him with those
damned open-as-the-sea eyes, and he struggled for words. “Angela died
instantly from a blow to the head after she was thrown from the car,” he
said with a sigh. “The doctors couldn’t save the baby. Angela was
only five months along.”

He
. His son. They hadn’t even given him a name.
He’d just had “Infant Son” inscribed on the gravestone. He
hadn’t cried. He’d simply stood there at the funeral, holding his
young daughter’s hand, watching them bury the last of his dreams.

Fighting the tears he hadn’t cried then, Axell slammed
his foot into the pile of shoes, scattering them across the room again.
“What the hell does any of this have to do with the urgent reason I had
to come home?”

“Now that I know the story,” Maya replied
quietly, “I suspect it means that your daughter thinks she’s
responsible for her little brother’s death.”

“
What
?” Axell yelled, swinging to glare
at her.

But he already knew. For two years, his beloved daughter had
been living the same nightmare hell as he had.

All generalizations are false.

“What do I
say
?” Collapsing into a chair,
Axell covered his eyes.

Maya thought she ought to preserve this moment in her
memory. She didn’t think it was often that this big, self-assured man
crumbled, especially before an audience. If she was any good at this astrology
thing, she’d say he had a Scorpio moon — which would make him passionate
and profoundly emotional, but for some reason far beyond her ability to
understand, he was obsessively disguising it.

She had the nonsensical urge to stroke his hair and pat his
cheek and tell him everything would be all right. But Axell Holm wasn’t a
child.

Glancing at the scattered assortment of shoes, she spoke cautiously.
“You tell her you love her, then go from there.” When he
didn’t immediately leap up and kick anything else, she offered, “It’s
amazing how much children can understand, the untold insecurities we could
relieve if adults didn’t insist on hiding things. You can’t hide
things from a child. They always know when something is wrong, and they almost
always blame it on themselves.”

Lifting his hand from his eyes, he threw her a shrewd
glance. “Spoken from experience, I take it?”

“The voice of experience,” she agreed grimly.

She saw the sudden look of curiosity in his eyes at her
remark, that archeology-professor-studying-a-new-hieroglyphic look, but she
didn’t explain. “Now,” she said softly. “Go to her
now.”

He grimaced and threaded his hand through his hair. “I
trust you realize I left the mayor and my mother-in-law at the bar, conspiring
to take Constance and your school away. Maybe while you’re at it, you
could wave your wand in that direction.”

With that gloomy warning, Axell rose from the sofa and gaining
momentum, strode out the door.

Maya had no magic wands. Instead, she lingered where she
was, soaking in the ambiance of the messy family room — the only room in the
house that looked lived in. It looked as if every pair of shoes Constance owned
had been under the furniture, and she owned a lot.

This was the kind of room she’d dreamed of as a
child — a room where she and Cleo could kick off their shoes and safely sprawl on
the floor and watch TV and color pictures and read books to their heart’s
content. She’d probably painted in a happy mother and father at the time,
but she knew better than that now. The happy mother and father was an illusion
even in the dreamland of wealth.