A Daughter's Trust

“Uh-huh. And will it still be there if I recommend that your niece be placed with your mother?”

He didn’t like the question. “I think so.” His answer was instant, and honest.

“But you aren’t sure.”

“Last night did not happen with any thought in mind of you helping me with Carrie. I was thinking of you. Period.”

She glanced down—so did he—and saw her toes curling around the edge of the door frame.

“I don’t want a serious relationship,” she said when she glanced back up.

She’d said that before. “How about friendship?”

“I’m not going to help you with Carrie. If I think she’d be better off with your mother, I’m going to say so.”

“I know.”

“And you’re okay with that.”

“Not really. But I’ve been forewarned.”

“And you still want to be my friend?”

“I still want to explore last night further.”

When Sue grimaced, the tension between them escalated. “You’re not easy to peg, Rick Kraynick. Or to ignore.”

“Neither are you, Ms. Bookman. So at least we have that going for us, huh?”

She leaned back against the doorjamb, her arms crossed over her chest. “What makes you so…difficult?”

“Me? I’m as simple as they come. Boring, even.”

Her burst of laughter made him smile. “How does it work when you need time to yourself?” he asked. “With the kids, I mean?”

“Same as any other parent with kids. I call a sitter. One of the other foster mothers and I trade off whenever we can.”

“You think she’d be available one afternoon this week?”

“Which one?”

“Any one you’ll agree to spend with me.”

“Tuesday?”

“Tuesday. You think you can arrange it?”

Sue said she would. And before Rick made it back to his place, she’d already called him on his cell and told him that Tuesday was a go. She was going to meet him in the parking lot at school with her bike.

She talked to him for another hour while he sat in his underground parking lot, and had him laughing as she told him about embarrassing moments growing up with her dedicated parents. How they’d wear matching shirts with slogans, traipse through the grocery store as a threesome and flip coins in the middle of the aisle over ice cream flavors. And they showed up at lunch on the first day of school—every year until she started high school.

She had him laughing. Out loud.

Damn, that felt good.

HIS BUTT LOOKED EVEN better on a bike seat than it did in tight jeans. The deep tenor of his voice, familiar to her, from their phone conversations, distracted her from the vision. He told her about his climb from teacher to principal to administration in the Livingston school district—the system she’d attended—as they rode up and down streets she’d once walked on a regular basis. Some had changed. Some were exactly the same.

They were on their way to a new bike path he’d told her about. Along the route of an old railroad track, a paved path that stretched for more than twenty miles.