His First Choice

“And?”

“He had that nightmare at Tressa’s. He was particularly clingy the next day when I brought him home.”

“Was that the first time?”

“No. The first couple of days after he broke his arm he was off.”

“And no other times?” Mara had said his demeanor had changed noticeably over the past months.

“Not that come to mind. Kids change every day, it seems. One minute he’s a baby wanting to be held. The next he’s pushing away from me to get down. He wants me to cut his meat, and then suddenly it’s all about him doing it himself. His personality is changing, sure, but nothing that seems alarming or abnormal.”

She didn’t see Levi every day—or hadn’t until recently. Mara had known him since he was a baby. Mara was around developing toddlers and preschoolers every day. She’d know about normal developmental personality changes.

Still, Mara wasn’t a professional counselor. “Have you talked to Tressa about the clinginess?”

“No. But she’s talked to me about him being upset. Mostly because of the nightmare.”

“What does she say about it?”

“That he’s afraid you’re going to take him away from me. That he won’t be able to live with me anymore.”

She’d known. Her instincts were still honed—in spite of her personal involvement. But there were a couple of things off...

“How would he have known why I was in your house? Or why he came to my office? Did you tell him?”

“Of course not. Absolutely not. He’s a four-year-old. There’s no way he’d understand that on any level that could be okay for him.”

“Agreed. But you’d be surprised what some parents do. Kids, even ones with advanced intelligence, still believe pretty much everything their parents tell them. Some parents, those with something to hide, will manipulate their kids into believing or hiding things.”

And someone had told Levi why Lacey had first come into their lives.

“Tressa didn’t tell him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You didn’t. And I didn’t. Who else is there?”

“I don’t know, but I’d bet my bank account and future earnings that it wasn’t her.”

He had her attention. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he told me that she told him you were a friend of hers. That you just wanted to get to know us because she’d talked all about us and made you want to know us.”

She frowned. Watched as a lone surfer rode a lame wave in the waning sun. “That doesn’t sound like something he’d have made up.”

“He didn’t. I asked her if she’d told him who you were and she was as shocked at the idea as I was. Seeing it as cruel. Which was why she didn’t want him there when Sydney showed up on Friday night. She was afraid she’d get upset, or cry, or say something, and he’d catch on. If she’d told him that you all were trying to take him away from me, she could have just let him stay. Sydney was just there to talk, like you were at my house with him present the first time.”

He was right.

“So maybe she’s wrong and this doesn’t have to do with me at all.” Which brought up the second thing wrong with the theory. “If he thought I was out to separate the two of you, wouldn’t he be panicked at the thought of us alone together? Wouldn’t he want to keep the two of you away from my house? And certainly shun me as a friend?”

“He’d move into your house if I’d let him.”

The words brought a vision to mind she hadn’t allowed herself to focus on. She was the woman who found good and loving homes for children. Not the woman who brought them home.

“I guess we’ll just have to keep a watch on things and see what brings on the episodes,” Jem was saying. And she figured they’d used up fifteen mi

nutes, at least, of their twenty-two.

“It could just be that he’s clingy when he’s tired,” she said against her better judgment. If there was even a slight chance that Levi was in danger, she couldn’t be giving his father reason to put his guard down.