Father Christmas Read online

  Mike noticed the play area as soon as John let him out of his car seat. He raced over to the fence. “I go on the swing!” he yelled. “I go on the swing!”

  No one was on the swing, or any of the other equipment. It was too cold for children to play outdoors.

  John joined his son by the fence to check out the play area. Besides the swing set there was an expanse of sand and a complicated jungle-gym featuring slides, bridges, tunnels and a small raised platform that children could reach by climbing a rope ladder on one side or a sloping pile of tires on the other. It looked like something an imaginative kid could turn into a house or a fort or an airport under siege by two-year-old guerrillas.

  He should have inspected the outside play area yesterday. He should have inspected the rest of the school, as well. But he’d had only an hour for lunch, and he’d wasted half of the hour visiting another preschool where the kids had been wandering the halls aimlessly while the teachers huddled in a staff room drinking coffee and gossiping. John might not be an expert when it came to preschools, but he knew he’d quit his job and stay home with Mike, collecting welfare if he had to, rather than send him to that dive.

  He took Mike’s hand and pulled him away from the fence, ignoring his top-volume protests about wanting to go on the swings. Around the building, they entered through the front door. Warmth enveloped him and he loosened his hold on Mike, who seemed to have forgotten the swings the instant he noticed the equally exciting enticements inside. Without waiting for permission, he charged down the entry hall, passing open cubbies labeled with children’s names printed on construction-paper teddy-bears. John chased him, then stumbled to a halt when he reached the room at the end.

  It was large, and so glaringly lit he had to blink. Waist-high dividers broke the room into smaller areas, each gated and bearing a sign: Young Toddlers, Older Toddlers, Pre-K and Tiny Tots. John knew the school must serve a reasonable number of children, yet everything was incredibly clean and neat—the art supplies, the book shelves, the fabric-covered mats rolled into cylinders and stacked against the partitions, the cushions, the construction blocks sorted into bins, the dolls seated in tidy rows.

  John’s house hadn’t been this orderly since the day Mike was born.

  What was even more startling than the neatness was that the room was empty. Noises filtered down through the ceiling, though—voices, thumps and laughter. Evidently, all the action was on the second floor.

  Before John could locate the stairs, a door at the rear swung open and Molly emerged, carrying a tray laden with bottles of apple juice, paper cups, and a box of whole-wheat crackers. Seeing John and Mike, she smiled.

  God, what a mouth. Her lips were a natural coral shade, full and wide, designed for smiling. Or kissing. “Oh, good,” she said. “You came.”

  Oh, good. He’d come. As if there had ever been any question that he would.

  “Now I can lock the door. We’re all upstairs, and it’s so noisy I wasn’t sure I’d hear the buzzer if you rang. So I took a chance and left the door open. Let me go lock up.”

  As she drew near, John lifted the tray from her hands. It was heavier than he’d expected. Her smile intensified once he divested her of her burden.

  Mike trailed her down the hall. “You have cookies?” he asked hopefully.

  “Crackers,” Molly told him. “I’m Molly. Who are you?”

  “Michael Russo. I wanna cookie.”

  They vanished into the hall, leaving John holding the tray. Would Molly condemn him as a bad father because his kid was hooked on cookies? Well, hell, he’d never claimed to be the perfect father. Cookies had gotten him through a lot of tough times with his son.

  The cookie-addict and Molly reappeared from the hallway. Mike pranced ahead of her, apparently energized by the room. “I don’t like Harry,” he announced. “Daddy says I can come here and no more Harry.”

  Still smiling, Molly glanced questioningly up at John. She made no move to retake the tray, which was a good thing, because if she had, he would have insisted on carrying it for her, and nowadays some women considered a display of chivalry sexist. As a cop, John had learned to be sensitive about the fact that some people were touchy, taking offense when none was intended.

  “Harry?” she asked.

  Her eyes were as spectacular as her mouth. They were brown, but they looked as if someone had sprinkled gold dust into them. They sparkled like her magic first-aid wand.

  “Harriet,” he explained. “A baby-sitter. He didn’t like her.” Molly smelled of baby-powder and something else, something spicy. Ginger, maybe.

  “Well, let’s see how he does here. Would you like to come upstairs, Michael?” she asked, abandoning John and the tray and snagging Mike before he figured out how to unlatch the Pre-K gate. “There are other children upstairs, and lots of toys to play with.”

  When she turned her back to John, taking Mike’s hand and escorting him to a rear alcove, the room seemed to grow dimmer. John followed her, as if she were the only source of light in the world. She bypassed a door opening out into the back yard, and headed up a flight of stairs. The sounds of children at play drifted down from above.

  Mike scampered up the steps ahead of Molly. When he got to the top, he let out a whoop and vanished into the room. John could understand why, as soon as he reached the top of the stairway. The second-floor room was as well-lit and colorful as the first-floor room, but it lacked walls, dividers and gates. It was wide open and beckoning.

  One corner held a play kitchen, another a collection of plastic blocks as large as the children who scampered around the room. Another area held cartons of dress-up clothing, another a sand table, another a collection of simple musical instruments, another a fleet of wheeled toy vehicles. At the opposite end of the room was an enclosed pen, maybe twelve feet square, filled with what appeared to be foam-rubber balls and scraps. Several children were in the enclosure, jumping up and down and throwing the balls at each other. Standing to one side, a young woman—a teacher, John surmised—kept an eye on the children in the pen.

  Mike didn’t give a second look to the cars and trucks, the dress-up corner, the sand table. He raced directly to the enclosure and wiggled between the ropes that fenced it. In no time, he was giggling, leaping and flopping among the balls.

  “I guess he feels at home here,” John murmured.

  For the first time since Molly had entered the room downstairs with her tray, her smile faltered. “Here, let me take this,” she said, reaching for the tray.

  He shook his head. “Just show me where to put it.”

  She gestured toward a side table out of the flow of activity, and he lowered the tray next to another tray holding a stack of paper napkins, and plates filled with cubes of cheese. “We’ll have a chance to talk later,” she promised. “Right now, I’ve got a Daddy School class to run.”

  He surveyed the room, this time observing not just the toys and his son but the other people present: at least six adult men, dressed casually and trying to find a way to fit into the bedlam. A couple of fathers hovered anxiously over their frolicking offspring. One had taken a shovel and was attempting to lure his kid toward the sand table. Yet another was on the floor, pushing a toy fire engine, ignoring all the children.

  It didn’t look like a class to John. More like a free-for-all, the kids pulling one way and the fathers the other.

  He stationed himself near the snack table, watching as Molly ventured into the fray. He expected her to call the group to order, maybe have the men sit in some sort of formation from which they would be able to hear her as she lectured on a topic. But there was no order, no formation. She simply walked over to the man and the child at the sand table and started talking to them.

  When it came to observing, John was a pro. He remained where he was, mentally recording everything he saw as if he were searching a crime scene for evidence. He couldn’t hear Molly’s voice above the din, but he watched as she nodded toward the father, then bent down to c
onfer with the child, getting on her knees and urging the father to get on his so he would be at the child’s eye level. Molly said something to the father, who said something to the child, and they began to collaborate on the construction of a sand castle.

  Molly rose to her feet and moved on.

  John frowned. That was it? A little father-child match-making? He’d heard about the Daddy School from James McCoy, the syndicated humor columnist who lived in Arlington and who’d wound up at John’s desk last summer, when he’d been trying to track down the woman who’d abandoned a baby on his porch. McCoy had mentioned then that he was taking a Daddy School class from a nurse—Allison Winslow, the woman who’d put John in touch with Molly. From what John had gathered about the nurse’s class, it had been a more structured program, with students meeting weekly to discuss issues in child-rearing.

  Evidently, Molly Saunders had a very different idea of what a Daddy School should be. She ambled over to the father playing with the fire engine, sat on the floor, and engaged him in such a serious chat that he tossed aside the fire truck and gave her his full attention. John noted their body language—the father gesticulating with his hands, frowning, shaking his head, and Molly leaning toward him, speaking softly, patting his shoulder.

  Some class.

  At least Mike seemed to be having a blast. John sauntered across the room to the ball-filled pen. The young woman overseeing the children sent him a smile.

  “Is it safe?” he asked, motioning toward the penned-in area with his head.

  “The foam pit? Sure.” She turned her gaze to the scrambling children. “They love it in there. Is your boy going to be attending the Children’s Garden, or are you just here for the Daddy School?”

  John wasn’t sure if Mike would be attending the preschool, but he certainly wasn’t here for the Daddy School. “I’m hoping he’ll be a student here.”

  The woman extended her right hand. “I’m Shannon Hull,” she introduced herself. “I teach the Pre-K class. What’s your boy’s name?”

  “Michael Russo,” John told her.

  “He’s, what? Around two years old?”

  John nodded.

  “That would put him in the Young Toddlers group. His teacher will be Amy.” Shannon watched the children in the pen for a minute. “Your son is a bit aggressive, isn’t he.”

  John studied Mike’s behavior in the foam pit. Mike repeatedly stood up and hurled himself down onto the soft balls, shrieking and making exploding noises as he hit. He wasn’t aiming his body at any of the other children, though. He wasn’t even throwing the balls at anyone. “No,” John said quietly. “He isn’t.”

  “Watch the way he moves,” Shannon suggested, following Mike with her gaze. Mike struggled to his feet, then let out a roar and catapulted himself back into the balls. “He isn’t aggressive in the sense of wanting to hurt anyone. But the way he flings himself out, the way he just pushes himself through space... He’s letting off a lot of steam.”

  John shrugged. Why shouldn’t Mike be letting off steam?

  “That’s one of the things we use the foam pit for. The kids think it’s just for fun—which it is. But when a kid has a lot of tension inside him, we’ll bring him to the foam pit and let him work it out. This is a safe place to vent physically without hurting yourself.”

  “You think Mike is tense?”

  “Just watching him, I’d say there’s a lot of stress inside that little boy. A lot of anger. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong,” she added with a knowing smile.

  John ground his teeth together to prevent himself from telling her that she had a hell of a nerve critiquing his son’s emotional state. Two-bit psychology wasn’t what he wanted out of a preschool. All he wanted was for Mike to be safe and under supervision while John was at work.

  If he weren’t desperate for child care, he’d haul Mike out of the pit and leave. He’d be damned if he was going to leave his son to the mercies of some twenty-three-year-old Freud wannabe who was going to take the kid’s psychic temperature and report on how much anger Mike had inside him.

  She’d invited John to correct her, but he didn’t. Slowly, gradually, as his rage over her instant diagnosis waned, he forced himself to admit that she might have a point. Of course Mike had a lot of anger, of course he was aggressive. What little kid wouldn’t need to let off steam after having gone through what Mike had gone through in the past few days, the past few months?

  Rattled by the teacher’s perceptiveness, he turned and stalked away. He felt her eyes on him for a moment, but by the time he reached the center of the bustling room, he heard her addressing the children in the pit. He reined in what was left of his temper. The teacher had just been showing off, that was all.

  Before he could make it back to the snack table, Molly emerged from a group of fathers and children in the music area. With the deftness of a cop seizing a suspect, she curled her fingers around his forearm and eased him toward the play kitchen. “Let’s talk,” she murmured.

  He caught a whiff of her ginger scent again. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, and as he gazed down he saw the silky thickness of her hair, the tip of her nose, the gentle swell of her bosom in a cream-colored sweater. Her hand arched around his forearm, warming him right through the lined leather of his jacket, the flannel of his shirt.

  It wasn’t appropriate for him to feel that kind of warmth from a teacher, a woman to whom he was entrusting his son. Frankly, John didn’t want to feel any kind of warmth from any women right now. Women would only complicate his life and consume his dwindling reserves of trust. He didn’t need that.

  As soon as they reached the kitchen Molly released him. He flexed his hand, as if restoring sensation to his arm, and took a safe step back from her. He knew he’d have to spend the next few minutes with her if he wanted her to accept Mike into her school. Ordering himself not to think of her scent or her surprisingly firm grip or her full, soft lips, he surveyed the miniature kitchen in search of a place to sit.

  Molly fit reasonably well on one of the pint-size chairs. She gestured for him to sit on one, too, but there was no way he could do that without breaking it, or dislocating half his joints, or both.

  “Sit on the table,” she suggested. “It can hold your weight.”

  Nodding, he lowered himself onto the sturdy kitchen table, the surface of which was as high off the ground as a regular chair’s seat would have been. He had no place for his legs, which bent sharply at the knees as he tried to squeeze them into the narrow space between the table and Molly’s chair.

  She peered up at him, her gaze unflinching. “I’d like Michael to attend this school,” she said. “I think he could really benefit from our program.”

  He was so relieved, he forgot all about Shannon’s freeze-dried evaluation of his son’s personality. “Thank you.”

  “But.” A hint of a smile traced Molly’s lips and vanished. “I confess to being a little worried about him.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing—” her lips thinned and her chin rose defiantly “—his father brought a gun into a preschool filled with children. That makes me very leery.”

  John took a deep breath and returned her steady stare. If she was going to judge Mike because his father carried a gun, he’d skip this school. He’d make other plans. He’d beg Harriet Simka to take Mike on, and he’d beg Mike to accept Harriet. Because, damn it—

  “In order for us to work successfully with a child, we need to know what’s going on in that child’s life. It’s not like I want to know your personal business, Mr. Russo. But as it is, we’d be pushing our enrollment limits to let Michael in. I’d really like to help you out—and to help him, too. I think he’d be very happy here. But...your gun makes me nervous.”

  She had guts, he’d give her that. She knew her mind, and she knew her school. “I know gun safety.”

  “Gun safety doesn’t include bringing a pistol into a preschool, Mr. Russo. Guns are weapons. They’r
e deadly.”

  “I know exactly how deadly guns are.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m a cop.”

  Her brow creased in a frown. “If you’re a—a police officer, you ought to know better than to bring a gun into a day care facility.”

  “I was on my lunch break yesterday,” he told her. “I had an hour to visit day care facilities. I kept the gun holstered and hidden. It’s not like I went into your classrooms and did show-and-tell with it.”

  “Thank heavens for that,” she muttered, a hint of her smile returning.

  “Mike doesn’t touch my gun. I’m not even sure he’s ever seen it. It’s kept unloaded and locked up when I’m home.”

  She held his gaze for a moment, then glanced past him. He turned but saw nothing in particular going on where she was looking. When he turned back, she was studying her hands. They were small, not much bigger than a child’s.

  “I’ve seen what guns can do,” he remarked. “I know just how dangerous they are.”

  “I’m sure.” She seemed fascinated by her clear, shiny nail polish.

  “You don’t like cops,” he guessed.

  She glanced up again. Her eyes seemed to take up half her face, and the thick dark lashes fringing them made them look even larger. “I never said that, Mr. Russo. And I’m sorry if you think I’m a busybody. But this is my school, and I’m concerned about children’s safety. And violence. And weapons.”

  “We have the same concerns,” he told her. He didn’t like civilians passing judgment as if they knew more about violence and weapons than cops did. When it came to children, she was the expert. But safety? That was his profession, not hers.

  Her gaze skittered past him again, and when she returned it to him her expression was pleasantly neutral. “I suppose one concern we share is your son. To get his enrollment in place, I’ll need to have the forms I gave you yesterday, plus a tuition payment.”