Vital Signs (22 page)

The bus driver honked again as Roy leaned across the gearshift and the sad, sleeping boy and kissed her, but Hailey didn't think it was an angry or impatient honk.

She chose to believe it was a benediction.

H
E WAS TALL
for five, taller than most of the kids starting kindergarten that warm September morning. He'd used gel on his hair, brushing his unruly dark curls nearly flat, and the green backpack he'd chosen looked too big for his shoulders.

He clung to his beloved daddy's hand until they reached the door where the teacher waited. She was a slender young woman in jeans and a Batman sweatshirt, and Hailey smiled at her. Her name was Amy, and they'd met the previous week at a welcome-to-kindergarten evening. Hailey felt she could trust someone who wore a Batman shirt the first day of school.

“Hello, David.” Amy crouched down so she was at his level. Hailey noticed that he'd already let go of Roy's hand.

“Welcome to kindergarten. Want to come in and meet the other kids?”

David nodded. Amy stood up and smiled at the three adults.

“He'll be just fine,” she assured them, her hand on David's shoulder. She bent to him again. “Maybe you oughtta say goodbye to your little sister?”

David turned and grinned at Emily Ann, en
throned in her stroller. The grin revealed the gap where his two front teeth hadn't yet grown in. His blue eyes danced with excitement, and his husky voice was confident.

“Bye, Em. Bye, Mom. Bye, Lee. See you after school, Daddy.”

Without a single backward glance, he turned and went inside.

Emily let out an imperious howl and banged her heels against the footrest. “Me, me, me go David!” she demanded, struggling to get out and follow her brother. Her red curls stood out like a flag, and her imperious personality was evident in her voice.

Hailey wheeled the stroller quickly away, pulling a toy car out to distract her howling daughter. Emily Ann threw it on the sidewalk.

Shannon picked it up. Her eyes were wet, and she swiped at them with her sleeve as she stuck the toy into the carrier. “Well, I guess Davie's a big boy now. Our baby's grown up.” Her voice was wobbly. “I'll probably see you guys tomorrow. Right now I've got to get to work.” She gave Hailey a quick, hard hug and then loped toward the bus stop. At twenty, she still resembled a skinny kid, tight black pants hugging nonexistent hips, hair dyed a shocking pink and cropped within an inch of her scalp.

The familiar, comforting weight of Roy's arm came around Hailey's shoulder, and she blinked away the suspicious dampness in her eyes as she turned and smiled up at him.

“He'll be okay,” she said. It was really a question.

“He'll have made friends with half the class by now,” Roy assured her.

She knew it would be like that. David had a winning personality, a kind, caring and generous nature that attracted adults and children alike. In many ways, he was old beyond his years. He'd had to be. He was still helping to raise his mother to adulthood.

“If only your daughter was half as agreeable as our son,” Hailey teased. Emily Ann was this minute taking off her sandals to pitch at her mother in protest at not being allowed to go with her adored big brother.

Roy recovered one and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “We ought to let Ingrid raise her—they're so much alike.” The words were tough, but the tone betrayed that Em had her daddy wrapped around her tiny finger. She also had her paternal grandparents completely charmed, as well as Ingrid and Sam. Even Jean was beguiled, although these days Jean was preoccupied with the retired doctor she was seeing.

As for Em's godmother, Nicole—well, thanks to her, Emily Ann had a wardrobe to rival any royal princess, and she already knew a weed from a flower. She couldn't quite climb into the tree house Nicole had built, but the scrapes on her arms and legs attested to Em's strength of mind—nothing was going to deter her for long. Nicole, either. She'd finally given the legal firm her resignation, effective the end of the year, and she'd had cards made up that read, “Need a cultivated gardener? Call the Ace of Spades.”

“Shannon seems to like this new job.” Hailey said to Roy; David's mother was selling aromatherapy products. Hailey couldn't count the number of jobs Shannon had held and then sabotaged in the past three years. She'd been in drug rehab twice more since the first time, but it had been fourteen months now since the last episode. Maybe it was safe to hope that this time she'd make it.

“I've been asked to give a talk on open adoption at the upcoming convention,” Roy said. “Any chance you'd come along and tell them your side of things?”

“I'd have to be honest about how tough it is,” Hailey warned. Shannon had been as much a part of their lives as David had, and the challenges she'd presented had been far greater than any they'd faced with him. There'd been times when Hailey wished she'd accepted the offer Shannon had made that long-ago night in St. Joe's ER. She and Roy had started their marriage with a two-year-old crying for his mother and a troubled teen to nurture, and it hadn't been easy.

Gratifying, though. It had been gratifying.

“Maybe it's not always as challenging as it's been for us.” Roy leaned over and kissed her windblown curls. “But then, we're the type who thrive on challenge.”

It was a common bond, one of the many they shared. Roy's job was difficult and draining. He'd turned down two offers of promotion because a move into upper management meant he'd no longer be directly involved with people like David and
Shannon, and he understood that they symbolized the work he was born to do.

Hailey worked two or three days a week at St. Joe's, doing her best to comfort the kids in the pediatric ward and make them laugh. She'd worked as head nurse for a full year after Margaret's death, but it hadn't suited her.

She was lucky that day care had never been a problem. Laura had taken care of David from the first, and after her own sweet Matthew was born, Laura had started an exclusive and very successful day care center, remaining defiantly single while staying very much in love with Michael.

“I think this contrary girl of ours needs a nap.” Roy now had Em's other shoe poked into his jacket pocket, along with her pink socks. He was carrying her fluffy sweater. Their little daughter was red-faced and screaming, struggling to remove her shirt. Her major form of protest for the past few weeks had been stripping off all her clothes.

“She's a nudist by nature, like her daddy.” The memory of that long-ago dinner always made Hailey grin.

“I don't have to be at work until after lunch,” Roy said, giving her a lecherous look. “Got any leftover lasagna?”

“I keep a supply frozen, just for romantic moments like these.” She laughed with him, loving him, wanting him more than ever, as he did her, and her heart swelled with gratitude and joy.

He leaned toward her and whispered something wicked and erotic and enticing in her ear, and around them, the September morning seemed to shimmer.