She closed the door and backed away, bending a little to look at him through the window and fold her hand in a kind of wave. “Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
He watched her turn and walk across the dusty yard to the stoop. She climbed the steps, opened the door and paused to wave once more before going inside. He slipped the folded crayon drawing into his shirt pocket, then started the car down the street, telling himself it was over. He’d done his duty. It was all anyone could expect of him, all he ought to expect of himself.
But he couldn’t help remembering the way Cody’s face had lighted up when he’d believed that Mr. Tyler was there to court his mother, or the exhaustion and regret in Heller Moore’s eyes when she’d admitted that she couldn’t do it all alone. He couldn’t help thinking, either, that Cody’s conclusion was right, despite his method of trying to solve the problem. She did need someone, someone who would appreciate her strength and determination, her honesty and spunk. Someone who loved and enjoyed kids. Someone who wouldn’t cheat.
He shook his head, surprised at himself. Was he honestly contemplating involvement with Heller Moore? What if he did see her again? Would he find that she wasn’t the woman he thought her to be? Would disappointment lead to regret? He’d been disappointed before, bitterly so. Perhaps he ought to consider that a lesson learned and let well enough alone. Perhaps he ought to find someone with whom he had more in common. Another educator? Yes, that was the kind of woman in whom he should be interested. A safe, sensible, middle-class lady with her life together and time to consider him and his needs. He’d give the matter some serious thought, he promised himself. Someday.
Heller caught the baby by the ankle and pulled him back into the middle of the bed.
“Sit still, Davy,” Cody scolded, shaking a finger at his little brother.
Davy plopped onto his bottom, stuck his tongue out and waggled his head side to side. “Sit, you’se’f!” He fell back, laughing in two-and-a-half-year-old glee.
Cody scowled. “Why don’t you go in the other room, Davy? I’m trying to talk to Mama.”
At the very suggestion of being parted from his mother, Davy lunged up and threw his arms around her neck from the back, crying out, “No-o-o!”
Heller patted his chubby arms, swaying beneath his weight against her back. “It’s all right, honey. Just settle down now so I can talk to your big brother.” She stifled a tired sign and smiled down at Cody’s pouty face. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say, son? Marriage isn’t like a garage sale, Cody. You can’t just post notice and take your best offer.”
Confusion dulled his hazel eyes. “But, Mama, Mr. Tyler’s a real nice man. He don’t drink or nothing, ‘cause he’s always telling us how dangerous it is, and he likes kids. I know he does! Even when you’re bad he still rubs you on the head and stuff. He don’t even cuss when he’s mad!”
Heller didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She shook her head, hoping to shake some new idea into it, but all she could do was repeat what she’d already said. “Mr. Tyler is a very nice man, Cody, but he would no more marry some woman he met through an advertisement than he would…cuss in front of you children.”
Cody’s thin brows drew together. “I don’t see why not, if he likes you.”
Heller rolled her eyes, then clamped down on the impulse to tear at her hair, closing her eyes and pulling in a deep breath instead. Calm again, she smiled. Davy drummed his knees against her spine, turning the smile to a grimace. She pulled him around into her lap and tucked his head beneath her chin. “There’s one thing you haven’t taken into consideration, Cody,” she told him smoothly, “and that is that I don’t want to get married again.”
He cocked his head to one side. “How come? Don’t you like Mr. Tyler?”
Flabbergasted, Heller just stared at him for a moment. Davy slid down her lap, flopped over and eased himself onto the floor, where he promptly began running circles around Cody. She caught him and pointed him toward the door. He ran screaming down the hallway, then turned around and headed back. Heller pulled Cody to her side, an arm draped around his shoulders. “Cody, honey, it doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Tyler.”
“But don’t you like him?”
“Yes, of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to marry him.”
“How come?”
She searched for the right words. “You have to have a special feeling for the person you want to marry.”
“What kind of special feeling?”
“Well, it’s kind of like…” She thought suddenly of that moment back at the café when Jack Tyler had covered her hand with his and electricity had shot up her arm, practically knocking her out of her seat. She shook herself, alarmed. Man, she really had to get some sleep! She hugged Cody and said, “I can’t explain it, Cody, and I know you were trying to help me when you put up that advertisement, but please, please don’t do anything like that again. All right?”
He set his mouth glumly, but then nodded.
She kissed the top of his head. “Thank you, sweetheart. I love you so much.” She tilted his face up with one fingertip. “You’re all I need, son, you and your brother and sister.”
He put his arms around her neck and mumbled against her shoulder, “I love you, too, Mom.”
“I know you do, and I’m so glad.” She ruffled his hair. Davy burst through the door, squealing like a stuck hog, and threw himself against the bed. Heller caught him by the arms before he fell to the floor and bent down low to hug him. “Okay, who wants to take a nap with Mommy?”
Cody snorted with disgust. “Huh! Not me. Davy, you want to take a nap?”
Davy squirmed free of his mother’s hold, shaking his head so hard his eyes wobbled.
“Go on then,” Heller said, getting up and throwing back the bed covers. “Betty will give you a snack, then I’ll make us lunch before I go to work.” She crawled into the bed, settled back onto her pillow and tossed the covers over her lower body. “Kiss-kiss.”
Cody smacked her, then held up Davy so he could smear his mouth against her cheek. Heller smiled and closed her eyes. Cody tiptoed out, herding Davy ahead of him, and quietly shut the door. Davy yelled fit to raise the dead and ran down the hall.
Heller turned over, already drifting into a badly needed sleep. She tuned out Davy’s grab for attention and Cody’s troubling questions and the knowledge that she would have to rise again in less than two hours. A picture formed before her closed eyes. Jack Tyler. She saw that silly little grin he’d worn as he’d sat there across the table from her, heard the flip—yet almost serious—way he’d said, “Maybe I mean to apply for the position.”
She felt again the lurch of her heart, the spurt of euphoria and then the immediate, crushing, bitter return to reality. For the briefest of moments she had actually believed him, and then the absurdity of it had hit her, and she had laughed at that silly little woman inside of her, that undying romantic, that foolish, hopeful, needy woman who could believe, even for a moment, that a man like Jack Tyler would seriously want to build a life with a woman like her. She had laughed at herself.
She wasn’t laughing now. And in her heart of hearts, she knew she never had.
She