Chapter 14

 

With the smallest touch of Toby’s shoulder, or an idle rustle of his hair, Seth calmed and redirected the boy in a manner that seemed downright supernatural. He didn’t even need eye contact. When Toby had toyed with the sugar dispenser on their table, Seth hadn’t been distracted from their conversation even a moment. One little touch of Toby’s right shoulder, and Toby put the sugar back, sank onto his bottom, and resumed the artistic defacement of his placemat with the crayons the diner provided.

Seth’s eyebrows drew up, and she stared into his open face a moment before realizing he’d probably asked her something.

“I’m sorry. I’m a bit loopy today.” Wasn’t quite a lie. “Was in front of my computer too many hours trying to dumb down some phrasing. Having a hard time concentrating now.”

“Yes, I’ve been distracted this week as well.” He didn’t elaborate, just twisted the paper from his straw between his thumb and first two fingers.

Wasn’t he more of a talker than this? She could have sworn she remembered that about him. Where was that gregarious guy always telling bad jokes and relentlessly teasing his friends?

“Um. So, we went on a tour of the preschool today, me and Toby,” she said. That seemed a benign enough conversational topic. Toby was easy. There’d always be plenty to say about Toby.

Seth stopped twirling his paper and turned his head to the left, spreading an expression of feigned disappointment on his face. “Toby, you didn’t tell me. I thought we had no secrets, man.”

Toby put his hands up in exasperation. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

That pretty much summed up Meg’s impression, too, but she kept quiet to see if Seth could draw some words out of Toby about it.

“Okay. You don’t have to talk about it. I’ll just talk to your mother about important things like coordinating your car’s tune-up. It’s loud.” He turned pointedly to Megan, wearing a half grin that made her smile. “Would you like me to take the car for you, or perhaps you could—”

Toby yanked on Seth’s left shirtsleeve. “They won’t let me wear Crocs there.”

“Crocs?”

“Yes.” Meg chuckled and leaned back as the waitress placed their meals on the table. “Those rubber sling-back sandals with the holes in them. He can’t tie shoelaces yet, so combined with Velcro, they’re a mommy’s dream come true.”

“They won’t let me wear them,” Toby reasserted. “Say kids trip and fall in them. I never trip. I’m good at running.”

“Oh, I see.” Seth nodded and unwound Toby’s utensil roll for him. “Is there anything you liked about the school?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

Toby pursed his lips and shook his head. 

Meg couldn’t blame him for being unable to explain what it was he didn’t like about the place. She’d felt it, too, and her gut had transmitted all kinds of warning flags to her brain. The school and its progressive curriculum were highly touted, and one of the top private prekindergarten programs in the area. It damn well should have been with tuition that high.

The school should have been the perfect solution for a boy like Toby. They were used to sheltering the children of celebrities and politicians. Two of the governor’s grandchildren were enrolled for the fall.

But something during that tour had rubbed them both the wrong way. Maybe it was the noses held high in the air—which Meg was certainly no stranger to, given how she’d grown up. Being short, she knew most of those folks didn’t have clean noses in both the literal and figurative senses of the phrase. Or maybe it’d been all the structure. So much focus on the academic, on precise art and music creation, there was no room for exploration. For outside time.

“I think we’re going to keep looking,” Meg said. “I haven’t told them yet, but I think I’ll just forfeit the deposit. I’m sure the school is a great fit for a lot of people.” People who wanted their children to be little automatons who grew into the precise kind of person their parents wanted them to be and nothing beyond that. “Just not Toby. He needs more than fifteen minutes of recess time per day.”

“Yes, most little boys have grasshoppers in their pants.”

She groaned but didn’t bother correcting the idiomatic blooper. Close enough, especially given Toby’s energy level.

Seth gave Toby’s hair a ruffle that started the child into a cascade of giggles. “By the time I started school at six, I had just developed the self-control to sit down for five minutes straight. Even then, I was a handful. Drove the teachers insane with all the questions. I was just curious. Had interests they weren’t equipped to give me enrichment for.”

Meg straightened up. That was the exact thing she worried about with Toby. She didn’t know just yet where the boy’s interests lay and what path he’d pursue later in life, but she never wanted him to feel limited to what some curriculum said was possible. “When did you decide you wanted to study astrophysics and engineering?”

Seth looked down at Toby, who was staring at the contents of Seth’s plate and pushed his plate closer to the child’s chicken-nugget dinner. Toby promptly scraped all of Seth’s creamed corn onto his dish.

Meg cringed.

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t. To answer your question, I don’t know. I’m more of an engineer at heart. The astrophysics just gave me a focus. While my PhD is in astrophysics, my undergraduate degree and my master’s work were in engineering.”

“And you use that now to design missiles?”

“Missiles. Small airplanes. I’m more interested in rockets, though. That’s where the space component comes into play. About a quarter of what I do is try to develop private space-faring craft that can travel farther into space than what’s available now.”

“Wow.” Of all the thoughts and pictures fluttering in her mind, that was the best she could come up with. She thought she was doing impressive things writing booklets telling people how to program their remote controls. “I feel like I should have known that.”

His expression softened, and he opened his mouth but seemed to think better of what he was going to say. Instead, he put fork to plate and shoveled up a heap of green beans.

She looked down at her own meal and had no appetite for grilled chicken and rice pilaf all of a sudden. In fact, she didn’t have much of an appetite for anything at all.

“If you were closer,” he said after eating half his meatloaf, “I’d suggest you check out the school on the corporate campus where I work. Employee benefit. I hear it’s a great program for inquisitive kids, but I haven’t had reason to look into it. I can if you want.”

“Down in Fayetteville.”

He nodded and brought his beer to his lips. “Two or three days a week, nine to two, I think.”

“Hmm.” The idea was intriguing, to say the least, and two days per week wouldn’t be that much of a hassle if it were the right program for Toby. While he was in school, she could hang out at a coffee shop or in a library and get some work done. Go exploring.

“Would you like me to find out more? I think there’s some information on the company intranet site. There may be some space left for this coming term, but you’d have to hurry.”

“If it’s no inconvenience. I’m curious about it.”

“No inconvenience.” There was a bit of an edge to his words that made Meg look up. The kind expression from earlier had morphed into something less placid. Maybe even a bit aggrieved.

Maybe she deserved it. He was trying to help her in some small way, and she was committing the pet peeve Sharon was most vocal about—refusing help. “Don’t be that person!” Sharon always shrieked. She did that shriek every time Meg dropped Toby off at Sharon’s office so she could go to the gynecologist or complete any number of errands that needed discretion. She always apologized, profusely, when she dropped him off and then made sure she didn’t have to do it again for a long, long time.

“And I’ll be around if he has a problem. That’s the point of having the facility right on-site.”

Definite perk. “I’ll be around.” And those words were none she could ever expect Spike to utter. The man didn’t have the spirit of volunteerism anywhere in him, even when it came to his own son. If he perceived inconvenience on his part, he’d beg off. Sometimes Meg thought the only reason the man was present for his son’s birth was because he was hungover and knew there’d be someplace to lie down at the hospital.

“Maybe he could stay over Tuesday and Wednesday nights or something. Give you a break.”

“Oh.” She scoffed and pushed her plate back. “That’s right. I forgot for a minute that we have special considerations.”

Their considerations were so easy to forget, too. When they were together like this, having meals, talking, her brain made the logical leap in assumption that this was their normal.

It wasn’t.

And she was broken enough to admit at this point that she wanted it to be her normal…whatever that meant. She didn’t know how to make that happen and how much they’d have to go backward first in order to go forward. Did they need to start from scratch to make it work, or just go forward with expectations in check? How did those happy people in arranged marriages let down those walls—go from resignation to infatuation and the irreversible emotions beyond?

What she felt couldn’t be turned back, and it pained her to no end that she had no control whatsoever over yet another thing in her life. But at least this time, no one was going to call her “Poor Meg” over it.

“Yeah.” He set his fork on the plate edge and tipped the dessert menu off its little stand without breaking eye contact. “I think you need an ice-cream sundae, Megan. With sprinkles.”

She nodded, and whispered, “Okay, order it,” before edging off her bench and walking with a forced ease to the ladies’ room.

Wouldn’t do for them to see her cry and think it was over the ice cream.