His Hometown Girl. Karen Rock

work and reputation. Nevertheless, I understand if this is more than you expected and wish to look elsewhere.”

      Elsewhere? She’d tried everything and had nowhere left to turn. Jodi’s hands twisted. She was failing Tyler and she couldn’t let that happen. Not again. Disappointment settled around her slumped shoulders.

      “I’m sorry to pressure you, Ms. Chapman, but there are many anxious families that would appreciate the chance to attend if you plan to withdraw.”

      “Please. A moment.” Jodi strove to keep the panic out of her voice. She opened her purse to search for her calculator and found a Post-it note with her optimistic reminder: “Wonders Primary 10 a.m. J.” How could she have been so naive? Expert care like this didn’t come cheap. For people like her and Tyler, it might not come at all.

      Her fingers encountered her cell phone and her screen saver flashed on. It was a picture of her and Tyler as she held him on her hip while he pointed at a hot air balloon. The festival had been a wonderful day, one of his better ones. They needed more of those after a year spent struggling through nightly therapy that ended with both of them in tears. Somehow this had to work.

      “I’ll take the spot,” she blurted, then pressed her phone to her chest. What had she done?

      Where Tyler was concerned, she tended to think with her heart.

      “A wise choice,” said Mrs. Garcia, her self-assured voice doing little to soothe Jodi’s worries. “We’ll need your deposit by the end of this week and the balance of the first half at the start of the fall semester. We split our tuition into biannual payments to make it more accessible to families.”

      “Yes,” Jodi agreed, her voice faint. Her body felt limp and light, as though she could blend with the white clouds billowing by the Tribune building across the street.

      “Excellent. We’ll look forward to seeing Tyler in September.”

      Despite Mrs. Garcia’s warm tone, Jodi shivered. September. Only three months to raise twice her current savings balance.

      * * *

      AFTER DROPPING OFF Tyler at her neighbor’s apartment and returning to work, she sat at her desk, numb. Her ex-husband, Peter, hadn’t returned her voice mails and her eyes lingered on her bare left hand, her mind inventorying her belongings. She shouldn’t have flushed away her wedding rings—even though she’d been pushed to her limit by Tyler’s wails for his vanished father. They would have helped to pay for the tuition to Wonders Primary.

      Impulsive, her mother used to call her, just like her father. And look where that’d gotten him. How it had affected their family. She shrank from the memory but it found her anyway. If she hadn’t accepted a friend’s last-minute invitation rather than going home for chores, she would have been there when a borrowed skid loader dislodged and the auger her father had been lifting crashed down. Because of her absence, he’d been pinned for two hours before her mother returned from work and discovered him, the delay costing him his arm and their family their livelihood.

      She buried her head in her hands. Her parents hadn’t blamed her, but she’d never forgiven herself. Never again would she put what she wanted ahead of duty. Yet when she’d tried keeping her failing marriage going for Tyler’s sake, that had backfired, too.

      Her phone buzzed and she snatched it off her desk when she recognized the number.

      “Peter?” It was a rare day when he returned her calls. Thank goodness today was one of them.

      “We need to talk.” His distracted, impatient voice sounded as distant as ever.

      “Yes. About Wonders Primary—” she began, knowing it was a long shot to ask, but for Tyler, anything.

      “What? No,” he barked, and she flinched, recalling previous times he’d used that tone with her. And Tyler. “I’m getting remarried.”

      Her mind skittered over that thought like a tongue probing for a cavity. After a moment, she relaxed. No pain. Tyler was her only priority, and the reason, according to her ex, that they’d split. For the hundredth time, she regretted her impulsive decision to marry Peter. On the other hand, that rash decision had brought her the greatest joy in her life: her beautiful boy.

      “Congratulations,” she said, hoping he’d found a partner who would give him a “perfect” child. He’d resented having a son who couldn’t keep up with the other kids, who brought stares and snide comments from strangers. Her nightly research for autism treatments and insistence that Tyler’s condition was beyond her or their son’s control had only angered him further.

      “I’m suing to lower my child support.”

      Her office seemed to tilt and spin. He might as well have reached into her chest and seized her heart.

      “No!” she exclaimed. “Tyler needs more money to go to a school for autistic children.”

      “That was your label,” Peter blustered. “Not mine. You spoiled him. All that coddling. That’s why the kid wouldn’t walk until he was two.”

      Jodi squeezed her eyes shut and counted backward from ten. “It’s a medical diagnosis, Peter. It’s not my fault.”

      “Look. I don’t have time for this. My lawyers are sending papers over this week.”

      She heard a beep, then silence, yet she kept the phone pressed to her ear for a moment, willing him to come back on, to say that he’d help.

      Hands shaking, she dropped her phone in her purse and opened a file. Anything to steady her. At first she saw only a blur of numbers until her whirling mind settled enough to make out a purchase agreement. The Idaho farmers had agreed to sell their land to her employer, Midland Corp. Several families had even accepted her company’s offer to let them stay in their homes, rent-free, as contracted workers. They’d farm their old land for a paycheck instead of profits.

      Despite her day, she felt some satisfaction in this hard-won deal. It was one of several she’d made that had helped Midland become the world’s largest food producer and owner of agricultural land.

      “Ms. Chapman?” Her secretary’s voice came through the intercom.

      “Yes, Linda.”

      “Mr. Williams would like to see you in his office immediately.”

      Jodi rubbed her throbbing temples. Of all the times to get a summons from her boss. “Please tell him I’ll be right there.”

      The familiar sound of fingers tapping on keyboards, phones ringing and fax machines spitting out paper filled the corridor as she strode toward Mr. Williams’s office.

      “Hi, Gail.” Jodi placed her hands on the granite counter before her boss’s door, noticed her chipped nail polish and yanked them down to her sides. “Mr. Williams wants to see me?”

      Gail slid a candy bowl her way and lowered her voice. “You might want reinforcements.” She glanced at the door behind her. “He’s in a tear.”

      Jodi’s stomach twisted and she ignored the treats. Focusing on work instead of her crisis felt impossible. Facing an irritated boss on top of that might be more than she could handle.

      Well. There was nothing for it.

      She took a deep breath, put on her business face, knocked and then strode inside. Her boss half rose from his seat and waved her to a chair. He was an imposing, florid man whose white comb-over contrasted with his helter-skelter black eyebrows. His thick glasses made his eyes seem to look everywhere and nowhere at once. When she perched on the edge of her seat, he shoved a folder across his desk.

      “Got another acquisitions deal for you, Jodi.” He tugged at the striped tie that half disappeared into his neck roll. “Espresso?”

      Knowing better than to argue, she accepted the minimug and sipped, careful not to make a face. It sure wasn’t chamomile, and she could have used the soothing blend to settle her jangling nerves.