What The Nursery Needs.... Terry Essig

Isn’t that the best, Maura?” Amy asked.

      “Oh, I hardly ever see my mom,” Maura informed Catherine. “She sends me cards and stuff, but she’s too busy with her new family in Chicago and can’t get away to see me too much anymore. But I could ask my dad.” Maura, who’d been looking quite pleased and eager over this new development in her life, appeared suddenly doubtful. “Maybe he’d let me.”

      Catherine smiled, briefly flashing her dimples. “It can’t hurt to ask, right?” she said to her new neighbor. But she couldn’t help wondering what kind of father wouldn’t let a child go out on a well-chaperoned excursion to such a nearby and unexotic destination as the local mall. “Amy, has Maura met your mom and dad? Maybe you’d better introduce them.”

      Maura turned to beam a smile at Monica and Don. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Davies, remember me? I met you at the girls’ basketball game the other night.”

      Before Monica or Don had a chance to respond, there was another knock on the door.

      Don eyed the cartons of takeout in long-suffering martyrdom. “Good grief, this is turning into Grand Central Station. We’re never going to get to eat.” He groaned as Monica gave him an elbow in the ribs and a warning frown.

      Catherine opened the back door to find a large and rather handsome, albeit frantic-looking, male on her back patio.

      “Excuse me,” the stranger began before Catherine could get out a single word, “I live right next door,” and he pointed right next door to illustrate his claim. “My daughter seems to be missing, and I was wondering if by any remote possibility—Maura, there you are. My God, child, you almost put me into an early grave. Don’t ever just take off like that again, do you hear me?”

      Catherine looked over her shoulder to see how Maura was taking this parental outburst. The child wore a long-suffering expression that made Catherine smile.

      “Daaad,” his progeny moaned in despair. “What did you think, that I got kidnapped or something? I was making a salad like you said for me to do. I looked out the window and saw my friend Amy. I ran over to see if this was her new house, but it’s not. I’m just saying hello, and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes to finish the salad, okay?”

      Jason took a calming breath, wondering as he did so if he would live through his daughter’s preadolescence. You could forget the actual teenage years. There was no doubt in his mind he’d be six feet under long before he managed to shepherd her through adolescence, but he would like to eke out another year or two of life before his heart gave up in disgust. “Maura, it wouldn’t have even taken two seconds for you to yell up the stairs and tell me what you were doing. Two seconds.”

      “It’s not like I knew you were going to blow a gasket or anything.”

      “Honey, I thought you were still mad at me and had taken off again. It took me three hours to find you after I yelled at you for the cigarette pack I found in your room.”

      “Well, that wasn’t fair because I was just keeping it for Marissa. She didn’t want her mother to find it at her house.”

      Jason arched a brow. “The only reason I even thought to look through your things was because some of your clothing smelled like smoke when I was doing the laundry.”

      “Oh. Well—”

      “Don’t bother. The point is I’d made it halfway through the student directory before Kelsey Earling’s mother admitted you were there. I wasn’t looking forward to going through that again.”

      Jason took a deep breath to settle himself. “Okay. You didn’t run away. You have my apology for thinking such evil thoughts. Now, since you’ve already barged in on the new neighbors, why don’t you introduce me?”

      “Cath,” Don practically barked, “the plates?”

      “For heaven’s sake, Donald,” Catherine replied tersely. “I found you a fork, didn’t I? Just eat it out of the dam carton and keep quiet.”

      Great, thought Jason tiredly. As if he didn’t have enough of it, the new neighbors were the kind who sniped at each other. How wonderful. Patiently he stuck the introductions out. “I understand your husband’s irritation. You’ve had a long day with the moving and all. And we’re interrupting your dinner. My name is Jason Engel, that’s my daughter, Maura, and we are leaving—right now. Maura, say goodbye to your friend. Welcome to the neighborhood. Nice to meet you all. Come on, kiddo, you’ve got a salad to finish up.”

      Maura immediately dug in her heels. “But, Dad...”

      After a year of raising his daughter all by himself, Jason was finally beginning to understand the necessity of heading this kind of thing off at the pass, child-rearing books be damned. “No ands, ifs, or buts about it, sweetie, we’re going. This falls under the general heading of rudeness and learning how not to be.”

      Catherine was enjoying Maura’s antics. As for Jason Engel, well, he seemed frazzled, but all right in his own way. His heart seemed in the right place, at any rate. If she wanted to get to know the daughter better, maybe borrow her if she needed a kid fix and Amy was busy, Catherine knew instinctively she’d have to walk a fine line with the father and avoid alienating him. She could tell he was very protective of his offspring.

      “If it’s any consolation,” Monica said to Jason, “your daughter waited a year longer than Amy here before trying a cigarette. Fortunately, it made her as sick as a dog and that was the end of that.”

      “Mom,” Amy wailed with a horrified look. “How did you know?”

      “You think I didn’t know what was behind your green complexion and upset stomach when you came home from that overnight last fall? With the way your clothing reeked of tobacco? Get real, kid. I wasn’t born yesterday.” Monica looked Jason Engel up and down speculatively. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. You could almost see the proverbial lightbulb flash over her head. “Don bought enough Chinese for one of my brothers and his wife, too, but they had to leave. Why don’t you and Maura finish up your salad and bring it over here? By the time you get back, Catherine or I will have found the plates and we’ll all share what we’ve got.”

      Maura looked pleadingly at her father, and he knew if he said no, he’d be out buying more candy bars tomorrow. Oh, well. “Maura, it’s infringing. They haven’t even had a chance to open a box yet—”

      “They could all come to our house, couldn’t they, Dad? That wouldn’t be infringing. It would be gracious on our part, right?”

      Catherine had to hide a grin at the child’s ingenuousness. She turned her attention back to Jason and waited.

      “Ordinarily, you’d be right,” Jason replied. “But as you well know, there are exceptions to every rule. Times when normal protocol doesn’t apply.”

      Maura scowled suspiciously. “Like when?”

      “Like when somebody gets so excited at seeing somebody they know, they race out of the house without turning off the kitchen faucet.”

      Maura studied the floor. “Oh. But nothing bad happ—”

      “Like when the lettuce that somebody was washing covers up the drain in that sink, causing it to overflow.”

      “Uh-oh.”

      “And finally, like when that same somebody’s father races into the kitchen to get to the tap, slides on the wet floor, tries to catch himself only to knock a bottle of salad dressing off the countertop and have it smash all over the floor leaving glass shards everywhere that he hasn’t had time to clean up yet because he went looking for his daughter. That’s like when.”

      Maura looked everywhere but at her father. She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, sorry about that, Dad.”

      Catherine finally took pity. “Sounds like you’ve had a heck of an afternoon,” she told Jason. “Let the mess sit there for a while. It won’t