Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father) (3 page)

“Cool.” Debbi smiled. “When can I sign up?”

“I’ve still got some things to work out. There’s another doctor, a pediatrician who’s a good friend of mine. We grew up together. He’d be perfect.”

“What’s his name?”

Sarah hesitated. “Well, I haven’t discussed it with him yet. We used to talk about this kind of thing years ago, but—”

“There aren’t that many pediatricians in Port Hamilton anymore,” Debbie said. “It’s got to either be Dr. Cameron—”

“Yep.”

“He’s fantastic. I used to take Alli to see him. Until I met Curt.”

Sarah felt a vague sense of misgiving.

She watched Debbi try to turn a lock of wiry, recalcitrant hair into something resembling a curl and wanted suddenly to be somewhere else. “Hey, listen, that’s fine. Really.”

Debbi looked doubtful. “You’re sure? Want me to spray it?”

“No.” Sarah stood. Her shoulders felt damp. She followed Debbi to the front of the shop. What did a haircut cost these days? She had no idea. She dug three twenties out of her purse, set them on the counter....

“You need some good conditioner.” Debbi took two of the twenties to the cash register, and returned a ten and a five to Sarah. “The next time you come in, I’ll do a hot-oil treatment.”

“Probably a good idea.” Sarah left the twenty and the five on the counter. “Good luck with your daughter,” she said.

CHAPTER THREE

“C
HOCOLATE
CHIPS
.”
Lucy snapped her fingers, a surgeon demanding an instrument. “Butter. Two sticks.”

“Coming up.” Matthew held out a bag of chips, semisweet, as she’d requested when she made the shopping list for him. He watched as she carefully measured flour into a bowl. Her long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dusted with flour. More flour had fallen like snow around her feet; a dusting of white covered the granite counter tiles.

He couldn’t have been happier.

“Want some music?” he asked.

“Your kind or mine?”

“Since I don’t think of that stuff you listen to as music, it would have to be mine. And if you’d really listen to the words, you’d realize the Eagles—”

“Oh, Dad, no. Please. Not the Eagles.”

He grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quick hug. “Do you know how much I like having you here?”

“No, but hum a few bars,” she said.

“Old, old joke.”

“I learned it from you.”

“I guess that makes me an old, old guy then.” He pulled out one of the bentwood dining chairs, sat on it backward, his chin propped on the curved wood. “If I decide to go with the Seattle company that’s moving onto the peninsula,” he told her, “you could spend every Saturday with me.”

“Do it,” she said.

“Would you like that?”

She beamed.

He grinned back at her. Ultimately, it might not take much more persuasion than his daughter’s approval. “I’m thinking about it. It’s just…” The phone rang. “Hold on,” he told Lucy.

“Pleeese, pleeeese, don’t let it be a boring old patient,” she muttered.

He picked up the phone from its hook on the wall. “Hello.”

“I have no pride,” a female voice said. “I leave you messages—”

He burst out laughing. “Sarah!” No salutation, no polite preliminary chitchat. No acknowledgment that it had been fifteen years since they last spoke. “You haven’t changed.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” she said. “By forty the character’s pretty well established. So anyway, I stopped by to see you—”

“I know. Well, I was pretty sure it was you. I’d heard you were back. But the receptionist said a
lady
came by to see me and the
lady
part threw me.”

Sarah laughed. Same old raucous laugh, somewhere between an engine starting and a gaggle of geese.

“I ran into your mother in the cafeteria last week,” he said. “Almost literally. You know Rose, a hundred miles a minute. She said you were coming back. She seemed surprised that I didn’t know, but I reminded her that keeping in touch was never one of your priorities.”

“Yeah, well…you know.”

“Listen, before anything else, I’m so sorry about—Ted…”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

Something in her voice warned him to move on. “I want to see you,” he said. “Soon.
Now
. Oh, no, I can’t…when are you available? What are your plans?” He could see Lucy in his peripheral vision; the wooden spoon in one hand had gone very still. “My daughter’s here with me,” he said. “Lucy. Fourteen going on thirty and about to set the theater world on fire.” Lucy flashed him a look over her shoulder and he winked at her. “And you didn’t hear this from me,” he stage-whispered, “but she’s a dead ringer for a young Elizabeth Taylor.”

“She looks like her mother then,” Sarah said.

An almost imperceptible change in her voice reminded him of the last time they’d exchanged anything more than polite formalities and he found himself at a loss for words. “Very much.”

“Don’t you owe me a Frugal burger?” Sarah asked.

“Frugals.” Smiling now, he leaned back against the wall. “Haven’t eaten one of those in years. I’m of the age where I have to think about cholesterol.”

“We both are,” Sarah said. “But you still owe me a Frugals.”

“Hold on.” He glanced at the calendar above the phone. “How about…tonight?”

“Dress rehearsal, Daddy,” Lucy said. “Remember? You promised.”

“Okay, tonight won’t work.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but if we keep our fingers crossed that no one gets creamed on the 101 or mistakes their significant other for a shooting range, I could pay off my debt to you.”

“Great,” Sarah said. “What time?”

“Around six? I’ll pick you up.” He thought for a minute. “Guess I need to know where you’re staying. Your mother’s?”

“Actually, I just rented an apartment,” Sarah said. “Yesterday. At the foot of Peabody, just above Front Street. The Seavu. I was walking back to my mother’s, saw the For Rent sign, called the landlord and moved right in. I’m still bringing boxes over from my mother’s.”

He mentally located the place, a rambling multistory wooden building with fire escapes running up the sides and seagull droppings on the front steps.

“You don’t mean the old hospital?”

“Yep. I always wanted to live there. Especially after it became a place for shady ladies. Kind of appeals to the outcast in me.”

He was still laughing when he hung up the phone.

“That wasn’t very nice of you, Daddy,” Lucy said, her back to him.

“What wasn’t very nice?”

“What you said about people getting into accidents and getting shot at.”

“Oh, honey,” he said, still thinking about Sarah, “it was just a joke.”

“People dying is just a joke?”

“Give me a break, Lulu,” he said. “How’re the cookies coming?”

“They’re not.” She carried the pan to the sink. “Who was that, anyway?”

“I
CAN
’
T
BELIEVE
that out of all the places in Port Hamilton, you actually chose this,” Rose said when she dropped by to see the apartment. She stood in the middle of the tiny living room, gazing out through the window. “Nice view, though.”

“Isn’t it?” Sarah stood beside her mother. Windows on this side looked out over the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the distant coast of British Columbia. From the bedroom, she could see the soaring Olympic Mountains, still covered with snow as they would be for much of the year. “Last night I watched the ferry until it disappeared out of sight.” She glanced at Rose. “Want some coffee?”

“Sounds good,” Rose said. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”

“Actually you could do it from where you’re standing,” Sarah said. “But go ahead.”

She filled the coffeepot with water, took a package of muffins from a basket on top of the refrigerator, and stuck two of them in the toaster oven. On the battered three-burner stove was a blue enamel kettle. Above it, on a shelf she’d tacked up that morning, she’d filled a yellow jug with wooden spoons and whisks, a couple of candles and a wicker basket. Just looking at the arrangement pleased her. Amazing how much better she felt than this time yesterday. Hearing from Matthew was another part of it.

She’d felt so terrific after talking to him that she’d thrown caution to the wind and gone on a shopping trip of sorts. At the Goodwill store, she’d found the coffeemaker, some floor pillows, a couple of rugs. Tomorrow, she would bring over the last boxes from Rose’s basement.
Home. I’m home again,
she thought.
I have a home,
she amended.

“I
SEE
YOU
’
VE
ERECTED
your tent,” Rose called from the bedroom. A moment later, she was back in the tiny kitchen. “I remember you making tents in your room when you were a child. You’d crawl inside, close the flaps and shut out the cruel, nasty world.”

Sarah grinned. Her purchases had also included yards of pale gauzy fabric that she’d pinned on the walls and ceiling around her bed. It did feel rather tentlike, very cozy. Lying in bed last night, covered with quilts, she’d felt completely at peace.

“Long-term lease?” Rose regarded Sarah over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses, strands of steel-gray hair already escaping from the knot at the back of her neck.

“Just six months. I’d like it to have been longer, but apparently the building is up for sale. Actually, I’d like to buy it.”

“Why not just enjoy it while you have it,” Rose said. “Enjoy it for what it is. A place to stay for now.”

“Because I want…” To feel secure, she thought. She poured coffee into two mugs and spread the muffins with butter. In the fridge, she found the marmalade and blackberry jam she’d picked up from the farmer’s market.

“I still don’t understand paying rent for a place when I’m rattling around in a house that’s far too big for me.” Rose spooned sugar into her coffee.

Sarah said nothing. It was pointless to argue with Rose, cruel to voice what they both knew: living together would drive Sarah nuts because Rose was an exacting, demanding perfectionist given to dark, morose moods when things didn’t go her way. Sarah reluctantly conceded she’d inherited the trait herself and, so, found it doubly irritating to deal with in her mother. Ted had once suggested that everything she did was an attempt to prove she wasn’t like Rose. She’d fought him on that, told him he didn’t really know Rose. Later, she wondered if he really knew her.

“Have you spoken to Matthew yet?” Rose asked.

“He was in surgery. But I called him. Actually,” she tried for a casual tone, “we’re going out for a Frugals tonight.”

Rose smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She drank some coffee, set her mug down. “You should look at your face. You look like Queen of the Hop.”

Sarah laughed. “You need to update your terminology, Mom.” Through the window behind Rose, she watched a flock of seagulls circle, their cries faintly audible above the sound of traffic going down Front Street. “It was funny talking to him. All these years and it was as if we’d just seen each other the day before.”

J
UST
AFTER
MIDNIGHT
, Matthew woke to the sound of his beeper. Fumbling in the dark, he picked up the phone from the bedside table. “I’m not the one on call tonight,” he told the page operator. “I changed with Dr. Adams. You need to call him.”

“Then there’s been some kind of mix-up,” the operator said. “I have you down, Dr. Cameron.”

“Call Dr. Adams,” Matthew said. “I’ll come in if I have to, but try him first.” He hung up the phone, rolled over and closed his eyes. Just as he drifted off, the phone rang again. Adams couldn’t be reached. He sat up, switched on the light. The operator put him through to the E.R. The patient was a child with intestinal problems.

“Give me ten minutes,” Matthew said. He dressed then, shoes in hand, padded silently across the hall.

From his room, he heard his pager go again. He sprinted downstairs, scribbled a note to Lucy and went out in the dark cool night.

Something had to give, he thought, as he drove through the deserted streets. As stubborn as he knew himself to be—and as Elizabeth was always quick to confirm—he understood the mess the system was in. If it was a business other than Compassionate Medical Systems coming to the rescue, he could go along with it, but Olympic Memorial, like a desperate spinster, attracted few suitors.

Sure, he could rhapsodize about the joys of a smalltown practice, the majesty of the Olympic Mountains, the achingly beautiful coastal trails. But none of the major players he’d hoped would offer their hand had shown much interest in what was also a debt-ridden, rural, blue-collar town with an aging population.

The truth was, you had to know Port Hamilton to love it. He did. And Sarah did. Sarah. Who he used to think he knew better than anyone in the world and then realized he didn’t really know her at all. Still, it made him feel good to think of Sarah being back. If you were lucky, you had one, maybe two friendships that lasted a lifetime. Like a plant. A few leaves might fall off through lack of nurturing, but the roots never died. That was how it was with Sarah.

He pulled into the parking lot and switched off the ignition. Through the glass doors of the E.R., he watched a nurse in blue scrubs. His beeper went off again.

“Hey, Debbi.” The mother looked young enough to have been the patient. “What’s up with Alli tonight?”

“She’s been throwing up and pooping all day.” Her face pale in the harsh overhead lighting, Debbi soothed the child lying on the examining table.

“Well, let’s take a look at her.” The toddler, listless and pale, eyed Matthew as he examined her but didn’t make a sound: That didn’t reassure him. Healthier children tended not to submit so easily to being poked and prodded. “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

She bit her lip. “We moved out to the end of the peninsula. I met this guy and we bought some property together. He’s into naturopathy, which worked pretty good on my asthma. Really good, in fact. But nothing was working with Alli and I got scared. He went to Olympia to some workshop and I decided I’d bring her in, just in case.”

Matthew said nothing. Mainstream medicine clearly didn’t have all the answers, but there was an almost evangelical zeal about some so-called natural medicine proponents that he found alarming. He’d suspected kidney disease the last time he saw the child and suggested testing. He hadn’t seen her since.