Desperately Seeking Daddy. Arlene James

still ahead of her and knowing that she would be aching in every bone come morning. Jack Tyler seemed to take her hesitation as a lack of concern. He put on his principal’s face, the one he must use when doling out discipline. She’d have taken issue with that assumption on his part—if she hadn’t been busier than a starved cat in an aviary. Cody was her oldest—a good, solemn little boy who sometimes got strange ideas. Oh, Cody. Cody, honey, what have you done? No use thinking on it now. She wouldn’t know what was up until Jack Tyler chose to tell her, and she didn’t believe in borrowing trouble. She had plenty already, thank you. Just living was trouble.

      “I must insist on a conference,” Tyler stated firmly.

      Heller sighed and nodded. “Okay.”

      “I’ll expect you in the morning at eight, then.”

      “Eight,” she confirmed, following him out the door with her eyes even as she smiled at the next person in line. Her son’s principal was limping, but it wasn’t her problem. “What’s this,” she quipped, winking at the elderly gentleman who pushed forward a pint of milk and a banana, “moo juice and monkey pod?”

      “Health food,” the old man replied, a twinkle in his eye.

      “Dollar fifteen.”

      He forked over two bucks and gave her a good look at his dentures. “Keep the change.”

      “Ooh, a true gentleman! Thanks.”

      The jaunty tone was so practiced that it was second nature, a useful trait for a single mother with too much worry and too little of everything else. She’d buy something sweet for the kids with her extra eighty-five cents, a small treat for Betty to give them with their lunch tomorrow, something to let them know that Mom was thinking of them—a package of cherry licorice whip, maybe, something they wouldn’t recognize as a pathetic attempt on her part to give them what other children routinely took for granted.

      Her manner was a little softer with the next few customers, her eyes glistening with a brightness that no one watching her would have taken for tears. She couldn’t have said herself why she had to beat down the impulse to cry. Maybe it was the combination of a new worry and a small kindness. Maybe it was the unending weariness of working two jobs just to keep body and soul together, and maybe it was the vision of a future that was merely the present all over again, never changing—unless it was for the worse.

      

      Jack gritted his teeth, determined not to look at his watch again. It would only tell him what he already knew. She was late—and getting later by the second. He told himself again that she would definitely show. The subject of this conference was her own son, after all. Of course she would come. He looked at his watch.

      Thirty-five minutes! Where the devil was that woman? Sleeping in? Sipping an extra cup of coffee? If she didn’t care enough about her boy to expend just this much effort on his behalf, then he was wasting his time trying to help.

      It wasn’t his problem, anyway. He couldn’t force her to listen to him. Fact was, he wasn’t even certain what he would have said. Well. So. That was that, then.

      He leaned back in his comfortable leather desk chair and expelled a long, cleansing breath. Okay, what now? Might as well do something useful since he was already here. He consulted his calendar, thumbing through the daily pages. The few items on his agenda were either already in the works or simply held no interest for him. Oh, well. He was supposed to be on vacation for the next couple of months, anyway. He’d do something fun, maybe call up some of his old teammates, set up a fishing trip or two, talk about old times. He could even drive down and hang around training camp when that started—except he really didn’t want to. He’d lost his enthusiasm for football even before he’d pulverized his knee.

      He laid his head back and closed his eyes, waiting for a good idea to come to him. He thought of movies he wanted to see and books he wanted to read and letters he ought to write. Problem was, he didn’t want to do any of those things just then. Golf. He’d get out the clubs, rent a cart and make a day of it. All he needed was a partner, someone who could get away on the spur of the moment and hit the links. He picked up the phone and started calling some of the other educators he knew. The three he caught at home, he also woke. He put down the phone with a mutter of disgust, snatched a pencil from the hand-painted cup presented to him at the end of the year by Mrs. Foreman’s first-grade class and began bouncing the eraser on the edge of his desk, tapping out words and phrases in Morse code. When he realized that he was tapping out H-E-L-L-E-R, he threw the pencil at the trash can. It ricocheted off the rim and flew into the corner, the lead breaking off.

      Blast that woman! Didn’t she know her kid was hurting for her? Didn’t she realize that Cody could see her struggle, that it scared him? He was a little boy who desperately needed some reassurance. Jack pushed his hands over his face, telling himself that it wasn’t his job to see that the kid had his fears eased. His job was to educate children, not baby-sit them. But just how well could a worried little boy learn?

      Jack bit back an oath, the sound coming out as a choked growl, as he launched himself out of his chair and left his office, slamming the door behind him. No woman, he reflected savagely as he strode out of the building and toward his car, was ever more aptly named than Heller Moore.

      The place took about five minutes to find. He sat in his car next to the mailbox, which clung to a leaning metal post and bracket by a single screw, and just looked around for several minutes. The house itself, a mobile home sitting up on cement blocks, was small and sagging and rusty in places, but it had a neat, orderly look about it, a certain aura of “home.” The far end sat smack up against the trunk of an old cottonwood tree. A hickory that had been planted too close to a wide side window stood at an odd angle, its upper branches literally lying on top of the structure’s metal roof, while its lower ones jutted out over the rickety stoop. The back of the long, narrow lot was a tangle of woody shrubs and withered cedars. Someone had tied bows to one of the bushes with strips of cloth.

      Leaving his car parked at the side of the street, Jack got out and walked hesitantly across the yard to climb a trio of steps to the stoop. He paused, combing his mustache with his fingers, then abruptly sent out a fist and rapped on the door. He heard a muffled voice speaking unintelligible words. It sounded as if Heller Moore might have tied one on the night before. He raised his fist and rocked the door repeatedly in its frame. Suddenly the door swung open and a large brunette with long, stringy hair waved a hand at him before disappearing inside.

      Jack stuck his head into the dim interior. “Hello?”

      “What do you want?”

      The croaking voice came from his left. He looked into a small, open kitchen to his right. A round maple table with a scorched spot, four rail-backed chairs and a painted wooden high chair took up almost all the space, leaving a mere path in front of the L-shaped cabinet and stove. The enamel on the sink was chipped, the countertop faded. An empty plastic milk jug and an open sleeve of crackers sat in the middle of the chipped yellow stove. An assortment of cereal boxes were lined up neatly across the top of a small, ancient, olive green refrigerator. Jack stepped inside and turned in the direction of the voice.

      The living area was little more than a wide hall. A worn, brown, Early American-style sofa with small, round, ruffled throw pillows sat against the wide window, over which ugly green vinyl drapes had been parted to allow the sunlight into the room. A small coffee table had been pushed up beneath the window on the opposite wall. Upon it rested a small television with rabbit-ear antennae wrapped in strips of tin foil, a can of wildflowers at its side. A brown, oval, braided rug covered most of the pockmarked linoleum. A half-eaten bowl of popcorn had been tipped on its side, spilling fluffy white puffs of popcorn across the clean brown rug. The fake wood paneling on the walls gleamed with fresh polish. The glass in the windows shone crystal clear. A dark, narrow hall led, presumably, to the bedrooms. It wasn’t much, but it was somehow welcoming.

      The brunette was lying in a heap on the couch, her face turned into a pillow. A thin blue blanket was crumpled at her side. She was wearing pink knit shorts which had long ago lost their shape and a huge T-shirt sporting a cartoon character front and