50 - CHARMING
Derek
They came early, most of them, which amused me. Medical people. The whole tribe ran ten minutes early and couldn't help it.
Marissa had the doors open and the food going and eighteen of them filled up the front rooms, the flight crew still half in their off-duty stiffness, the ER people already loosening.
I moved through the crowd the way I move through any room I own, shook hands, got drinks to people who needed something to hold.
The taxi driver came, which I hadn't been sure of.
I found him by the window looking like he'd wandered into the wrong house and got him a beer.
He asked me who this Harrington fella was.
"Some rich asshole," I said. "Let's down his fancy food and booze while we have the chance.
" He laughed and stopped looking for an exit.
I'd laid it out as a buffet, because I hate a seated dinner with its formalities, and a room full of nurses off shift doesn't want to be told where to sit.
I kept my eyes on the door.
The door would open, I'd look, it'd be another nurse or Aaron bringing somebody up from the cars, and I'd go back to whoever I was talking to. Then it would open again and I'd look again.
Jessica was running the party. I tried, early, to slow her down, put a hand on her shoulder, told her to walk.
Pointless. You don't slow Jessica when she's decided, you just spend energy you're going to lose anyway.
She's stubborn like her mother was, though Pamela would have said she gets it from you, Derek, and been right.
I watched her plant both feet on some resident's shoe and grab his leg and order him to walk her across the room like a ride, and the guy did it.
She doesn't get enough days like this. A full house, nobody checking a monitor, her heart just an organ in her chest and not the thing the whole room is quietly arranged around.
The door opened, and it was her.
She'd worn a dress the color of butter, bare at the shoulders. I was talking to someone. I couldn't tell you who. I set my drink down mid-sentence and crossed the room to my front door, which I do not do. Marissa answers the door. Aaron answers the door.
I answered the door.
"Lacey." I put my hand out. "Glad you could make it." And added, "Really glad."
She reached for the handshake and gave me a hug instead. Came right in against my chest, quick, gone before I reacted. I'm not a hugger.
"Come on," I said. "Somebody's been waiting for you all day."
She looked confused, glancing past me at a house full of her colleagues like she was trying to work out who.
"Somebody about three feet tall."
Her face opened, and I pointed her toward the sound of my daughter, who'd already spotted her from across two rooms and was coming at a dead run.
I watched Jessica hit her at the knees and Lacey go down to catch her, the yellow dress folded onto my floor, and when I looked back up, two of the nurses by the window were looking at me, and then quick at each other. Donor watching. I let it go and went to see about the wine.
I kept Lacey near me for the first while.
She put her hand on my arm when she laughed at something, and did it again a few minutes later, and I noted it and didn't make anything of it.
Then Jessica found her again, and I knew how that ended before it started.
I lost her to the playroom for most of the party.
I went looking once and got as far as the door, where the two of them were on the floor in a nest of stuffed animals and I was shooed out of the room by both of them at once.
A couple hours of handshakes and small talk where people told me things about my daughter's heart I already knew, and then I looked up and Lacey was carrying Jessica toward the stairs, the kid gone heavy and half asleep against her shoulder.
I went over. "Here. I can take her."
Jessica leaned back off Lacey's shoulder, suddenly wide awake and braced for a fight, one hand out flat like a small cop stopping traffic. "No, Daddy. Dr. Lacey's going to read to me tonight."
Her chin went quivery.
I never let anyone read to her at night. Anyone. That was a parent's job, and it was the one I'd kept when the other parent stopped being available.
"Please." She switched fronts, because she knew the chin worked on me.
I looked at Lacey. She was tired, it was all over her.
"I'd love to read to her," she said. "Unless it's against the rules."
I put my hands up.
"Okay, Tiger. But only after Daddy gets you ready for bed. Deal?"
Jessica clamped both arms around Lacey's neck. "Deal."
"Up here." I gave up on carrying anybody and just led, and they came behind me.
Going up my stairs with my kid over one woman's shoulder and the woman a step behind me reminded me of better times. I took the stairs a little heavier and kept going.
I got her washed up, which at this point in the night meant propping the phone on the counter so she could watch the Underdog theme on a loop while I did the actual brushing, since that was the only negotiated price that got the job done.
Tucked her in. She started waving me off before the blanket settled.
Lacey sat down on the edge of the bed with the whole tilting stack of books.
"Go away, Daddy. Let Dr. Lacey read. Go away."
Lacey laughed at the look on my face and then took my daughter's side. "Yeah. Go away, Daddy. You're cramping my style."
I left the door ajar and watched them. Jessica laughing, Lacey doing the silly voices. I took a breath, and then another, deeper one.
I could hear Pamela. She's damn pretty, isn't she?
Yeah. She was damn pretty. Smart, loving, tough, and a lot more heat in her than she lets anybody see.
What do you think, Pam?
I'd be up for it.
Yeah. Maybe me too.