“This won’t work,” he said, then turned and walked away.
Hailey watched him leave, the definite tone in his voice cutting her to the core. Though Hailey had known Dan wouldn’t agree, she didn’t think he would be so adamant about it.
She wondered why she cared. Her response to him showed her she wasn’t over Dan Morrow at all. And if she wasn’t over Dan, she certainly shouldn’t be teaching his daughter.
“Natasha, don’t play with that, honey.” Dan took the cardboard-and-cellophane box holding the baby doll away from his daughter.
It was Saturday afternoon and he and his mother had spent most of the day doing damage control, keeping his daughter from running up and down the aisles, fingering the china displays and playing with the toys in the store. Patricia, the store’s only employee, manned the register.
“But it’s pretty and I don’t have a doll like that.” Natasha stuck out her lip in a classic pout as she dropped onto the wooden floor, her green fairy dress puddling around her in a mass of glittery chiffon and satin.
Dan carefully closed the box and put it back up on the shelf with the rest of the toys. “Come with me to the front,” he said, taking his daughter’s hand. “Patricia said she has a game for you to play.”
She jerked her hand away just as his cell phone rang out. Without bothering to check the caller, he pulled it from his pocket and answered it.
“We’ve been trying to call you for the past two days,” a voice accused him.
At the sound of the woman’s voice Dan’s heart sank. Lydia’s mother. Carla Anderson.
“I want the doll,” Natasha called out, pulling away from Dan as he tried to control her and use his phone. Thankfully the store had hit a lull and Dan didn’t have to deal with any customers right now.
“Is that Natasha?” Carla asked, her voice raising an octave. “What is wrong with her?”
“She’s fine.” The only thing wrong with her was she wasn’t getting what she wanted. “And what can I do for you, Carla?” he asked, forcing himself to smile. He’d read somewhere that if you smile even if you don’t feel like it, your voice sounds more pleasant. And he needed that pleasant tone right now. Every conversation with his mother-in-law since Lydia’s death had been a battle over who would take care of Natasha. He had custody, but Lydia’s parents brought it up at every turn.
In the weeks after Lydia’s death Dan deliberately kept everyone out of his daughter’s life just so he could cement his relationship with Natasha. He wanted to give her stability, create a connection. He’d had such little time with his daughter when Lydia was alive. However, in Dan’s opinion that had meant keeping everyone, even his own parents, at arm’s length for those first critical weeks after Lydia’s death.
Now he lived in Hartley Creek and Carla and Alfred were still in Vancouver, and they’d been pushing harder and harder with each phone call.
“I want to talk to Natasha,” Carla was saying. “I haven’t talked to her for a couple of days.”
Dan looked down at his sniffling daughter, then at the checkout counter. His mother was bagging some items for Miranda Klauer. The store was quiet, so he had time to supervise the phone call.
“Okay. I’ll put her on,” Dan said, as he took Natasha’s hand and walked toward the door leading to his and Natasha’s apartment above the store. They stepped into the stairwell and closed the door, leaving it open a crack so he could give them some privacy and yet keep an eye on what was going on outside.
“It’s your gramma,” he said to his daughter, lowering the phone and covering the mouthpiece. “She wants to talk to you. Do you want to talk to her?”
Natasha gave a halfhearted nod and Dan gave her the phone.
She lifted it, frowning just a bit, as if unsure what she would hear.
“Hi, Grandmother … I’m fine … Yes, I love my daddy. And he loves me.” Natasha sat down on the first stair, fidgeting with a piece of her skirt as she listened to her grandmother. “My Gramma and Grandpa Deacon are really nice too…. It’s cold here but I don’t have to go to school.” Natasha looked over at Dan, puzzlement crossing her features. “Because my daddy said so … My daddy can homeschool me, like my mommy did.” Her frown deepened with each pause in the conversation as she listened to what her grandmother was saying. “But I like being with my daddy and I don’t want to live with you—”
Fury rose up in Dan and he had to stop himself from snatching the phone away from Natasha. “I need to talk to Grandmother Anderson,” he said, keeping his voice calm as he held out his hand.
Thankfully, Natasha willingly gave the phone up.
Dan took in a deep breath, then another, then raised the phone to his ear.
“We have all kinds of fun toys and I can take you to the park all the time because it’s not cold here,” Carla Anderson was saying.
“This is Dan.” His words came out clipped and he didn’t bother smiling this time. “What are you doing?”
A pause greeted his angry question, then Carla cleared her throat. “I was merely pointing out to Natasha the advantages of residing with us. And I think they are numerous.”
Dan massaged the bridge of his nose, praying for patience, praying he didn’t lose it in front of Natasha, who was watching him from her perch on the stair.
“We are not having this discussion now.” He pitched his voice low, hoping he sounded nonthreatening. Hoping the fear twisting his gut didn’t come out in his voice.
He’d spent almost six years of Natasha’s short life battling with his ex-wife to get her to respect Dan’s court-ordered weekend visits with his daughter. He had struggled not to run to court every time Lydia had decided this weekend she might take Natasha out of town, or Natasha was too sick to come, or any other lame excuse. He didn’t want Natasha to become a pawn in their battle. But it had been difficult not to succumb when a month could go by with no visit.
Sad as Lydia’s death had been, in one way, for Dan, it had been a relief from the constant tension of battling over visits with his daughter.
Then, shortly after the funeral, he’d received a phone call from Lydia’s brother, a lawyer, warning Dan that his parents wanted to sue for custody of Natasha. Since then the battle lines had been drawn and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson had slowly advanced, revealing their strategy one methodical step at a time.
The past few days their tactic had been to convince Natasha she wanted to live with them.
“We’re not giving up on Natasha.” Carla warned. “We have much to give her.”
Dan bit back an angry reply. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson owned a condo in Hawaii, a twenty-six-foot yacht anchored in the Victoria Harbor, a small private plane and a home just outside of Vancouver with more square footage than both his parents’ hardware store and the grocery store beside it.
“She’s my daughter,” he said, “and I will take care of her.”
“That may be, but she said she’s not going to school. How is that taking care of her?”
Dan should have known Carla wouldn’t have missed one beat in Natasha’s conversation. “She’s having a hard time adjusting.” No sooner had the words left his lips than he felt like banging his head on the wall behind him. Why give them any kind of ammunition? What kind of idiot was he?
“You do realize your daughter needs to attend school. That is still required,” Carla replied, a note of triumph in her voice.
The all-too-familiar panic rose up in him as he felt himself backed into a corner. He glanced over at Natasha. She was smiling at him, rocking back and forth on the stair. He wasn’t letting her go. Never.