Man With A Mission. Muriel Jensen

when he was little. The only time he spent with him was to show him around the mill and to teach him how the company worked. Some people have to be shown how to give love, and no one ever did that for him.”

      “You did,” Erica said. “He didn’t notice though, did he?”

      Jackie was astonished by that perception. “No, I don’t think he did.” Now she couldn’t help but stop, realizing this was important. “But when I came along, your father was an adult. Sometimes adults don’t learn as well as children.”

      “Is that why he was with that lady in Boston when he had the heart attack?”

      Erica asked the question so directly that she must have known the truth of her father’s death for some time.

      Jackie felt shocked, breathless.

      “I heard Mrs. Powell and the principal talking about it when I brought in the permission slip so Glory could start picking us up from school.”

      “You mean…after I became mayor? You’ve known for that long?”

      Erica nodded. “I think everybody knows. A lot of people look at us like something bad’s happened. Not just Daddy dying, but something that isn’t fair. Like they look at you when you’re in a wheelchair. Like they don’t want to hurt your feelings and they’re pretending they don’t notice, but you know they’re really glad they’re not you.”

      “You should have told me,” Jackie said, touching Erica’s arm, waiting for withdrawal and relieved when it didn’t come.

      “You couldn’t fix it,” she said sensibly. “He was gone. But why do you think he did it?”

      Jackie struggled for the right answers. “I think,” she began carefully, “that when someone doesn’t love you when you’re little, your heart is always empty and looking for love, and sometimes doesn’t even recognize it when it gets it. So it keeps looking.”

      Erica shook her head. “Didn’t that hurt you?”

      “Well…” Jackie felt curiously embarrassed, as though Erica was judging why she’d stayed in a loveless marriage all those years. “It did hurt me, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Because I understood how he was. And being married to him gave me you and Rachel, and the two of you are absolutely everything to me.”

      Erica frowned. “And the baby.”

      The baby. Erica seemed to be ambivalent about the baby, excited over the feel of a kick one moment, then unhappy about its eventual arrival the next.

      “What is it you don’t like about the baby coming?” Jackie asked directly.

      Erica looked guilty.

      “You can tell me,” Jackie encouraged. “Are you afraid the baby is more important to me than you are?”

      Erica shifted her weight, looking down at the floor. “No,” she said. It had a convincing sound.

      “That it’ll get more attention than you?”

      “No.”

      “That it’ll change everything?”

      Erica heaved a ragged sigh then looked up, her eyes pooled with tears, her lips trembling. “Mom, what if you die?”

      “What?” Jackie couldn’t help the surprised outburst.

      “Well, what if you do?” Erica demanded in a tearful rush. “Nobody expected Daddy to die and he did. And you’re at risk!”

      Jackie took Erica’s hand and led her back to the table, where she pushed two chairs together and lowered her onto one. “What do you mean, ‘at risk’? Where did you hear that?”

      “Sarah Campbell’s mom’s a nurse. She was talking about it with Mrs. Powell at the Valentine’s Day party at school. Mrs. Campbell brought treats.” Erica drew an anxious breath. “All ladies over thirty are at risk of stuff going wrong when they have babies ’cause they’re really too old. You should only have babies when you’re young.”

      Caught between the need to calm her daughter and the personal affront at being considered “old” at thirty-four, Jackie focused on soothing Erica.

      “Honey, that just means that they take special care of you if you’re over thirty. Sometimes there’s a problem, but most babies and mothers come through the delivery safe and sound. And I’m not old enough to be that much at risk anyway.”

      “Are you sure?” Erica looked worried. “You’re not as old as Grandpa or Addy Whitcomb, but you’re pretty old.”

      And feeling older by the moment, Jackie thought. She went to the counter for a tissue and brought it back to Erica. “My last checkup at the doctor’s proved that the baby is growing perfectly, and I’m healthy as a horse. There is nothing to worry about.”

      Erica swiped at her eyes and dabbed at her nose. “We didn’t know there was anything to worry about with Daddy.”

      “That was a heart attack. My heart’s fine. My checkup was perfect, remember.”

      “What would happen to us if you died?”

      Jackie accepted that as a legitimate question and was grateful she was prepared for it. “When Daddy died and I found out I was pregnant, I put it in my will that if anything happened to me, you and Rachel and the baby would go and live with Haley.”

      Erica brightened. Jackie tried not to be offended. “Really? And that’s okay with her?”

      “Yes. And her new husband, too. She talked about it with him when they got married.”

      “Wow.”

      “Yeah. So there’s nothing to worry about. Now, you’re not going to bump me off so you can go live with Haley, are you?”

      Erica smiled—finally. “No. I was just worried. Brenda Harris’s dad left when she was little, then her mom died in a car accident, and she’s lived at a whole bunch of different places and hasn’t liked any of them. All the houses have different rules and new people you don’t know. I’d hate that.”

      “So would I.” Jackie leaned forward to wrap her in a hug. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got everything looked after.”

      Jackie felt the strength of her daughter’s return hug. “Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

      “Sure.”

      Erica went upstairs to do her homework and Rachel came down to report that she was bathed. She stood in footed pink pajamas patterned with black-and-white Dalmatian puppies.

      “When I’m grown up,” she said, dragging a stool over from the lunch bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room, “I’m going to wear one of those floaty nightgown things with the feathers around the neck and the bottom.” She had a predilection for “floaty things” that was fed by Glory’s love of old movies from the thirties and forties where the women wore glamorous nightclothes.

      “I like those, too,” Jackie admitted, closing the door on the dishwasher and setting it to run. “How was your day?” she asked, wiping off the counters.

      “Pretty good. Things are kinda dull in first grade. How was your day?”

      Jackie rinsed off the sponge, squeezed it dry and propped it up behind the faucet. “Well, things are never dull at City Hall. Some new tenants moved into the basement offices today. One of them is a man the city just hired to take care of our electrical repairs. And his mom is going to work in his office some of the time, and guess who she is?”

      “Who?”

      “Mrs. Whitcomb.”

      Rachel smiled. She loved Addy Whitcomb. “Does she do electric stuff?”

      “No. She’s just going to answer the phones, take messages.”

      “Erica’s