Page 12 of Stay Away from Him

Bradley started crying when Melissa pulled her car into Thomas’s driveway.

“Are you going to leave me here?” he blubbered from the back seat.

Melissa’s heart crumpled in her chest, and she felt herself regretting the decision to go on a date with Thomas so quickly.

What was she thinking? Thomas was so convincing with his charm, his persistent texts, his refusal to take no for an answer.

His obvious interest in Melissa had prevented her from thinking clearly, but now, sitting in her car outside a near-stranger’s house with a scared and crying five-year-old in the back seat, she finally saw the absurdity of Thomas’s plan.

Bringing her son to be babysat by a strange man’s daughters, while they went on a date ?

It was a terrible idea in about a dozen ways at once, starting with the fact that Melissa and Bradley had only just moved to town, and Bradley was still adjusting to a new place, a new home, a new set of routines.

He wasn’t remotely ready to be left behind with a sitter.

He’d already had one meltdown that day when Melissa tried to drop him off at daycare.

What he needed now, in the evening, was some quality time with his mom, his trusted person—with Melissa .

Not to be dumped with some strangers again.

Add to this the fact that the babysitters in question were the two daughters of a man Melissa was going on a date with, and this bomb of a bad idea became practically nuclear.

Leaving aside the question of whether she was ready to be dating at all, her son certainly should not have been meeting Thomas’s kids so soon.

It would only confuse them all, bring uncomfortable questions that Melissa wasn’t ready to answer.

What if Bradley came home asking if Thomas was his new dad?

If Thomas’s girls were his sisters? There was a right way to handle these things, Melissa realized—and this wasn’t it.

She spiraled where she sat in the driver’s seat, leaving Bradley’s question— Are you going to leave me here?

— unanswered. Thomas’s house was located in a cul-de-sac near the same lake that Lawrence and Toby’s house sat on a half mile away, and the circle of houses felt like a crowd of faces surrounding Melissa and staring.

One of the houses must have been Amelia’s, and Melissa wondered if the other woman was standing just inside, watching through the window, wondering if Melissa was going to get out of the car.

“Mama?” Bradley prodded, calming but still with a shaky whisper in his voice. “You’re not leaving me here, are you?”

“Just for a little bit,” Melissa said, not quite comfortable with the idea herself but too embarrassed to flee, now that she’d come this far.

How would she explain it to Thomas later?

She turned around in her seat and looked Bradley in the eye, summoned her most comforting smile.

“Remember what I say when I have to leave you somewhere for a little while?”

“Mama always comes back,” Bradley said. He was pulling it together, his eyes still wide and trembling with tears, but not actively crying anymore. Trying to be brave.

“That’s right,” Melissa said. “Because I love you. My love’s like a rubber band, right? Whenever I go away, it yanks me right back.”

Bradley giggled, like he always did when Melissa used the metaphor. “If you went really far, would it boing you back hard enough that you’d fly through the air and land right on top of me?”

“It might. My love is just that strong. I might even come crashing into the house and make a mom-shaped hole in the wall.”

Bradley’s giggle rose to a cackle. “Okay,” he said. “Do you think they have toys?”

“Let’s see.”

***

Thomas met them at the door, with a teenage girl standing a few paces behind him in the foyer.

“Bradley!” Thomas said. “How about a high five, bud?”

Thomas reached out a hand, and Bradley smiled and slapped it.

Thomas sunk to his knees to speak to him eye to eye.

He was ignoring Melissa, but she didn’t mind.

What she wanted most just then was for someone to help her son feel comfortable, and once again seeing Thomas’s ease with kids, his pediatrician’s bedside manner, her temporary objections to the evening began to melt away.

Thomas extended an arm behind him. “So, Bradley, this right here is Kendall. She’s my daughter. And I was telling her about this really cool kid I met last night, and the awesome race car bed he has in his room, and she told me she wanted to meet you and hang out. Isn’t that right, Kendall?”

The girl at Thomas’s back gave a little eye roll, but when she answered “Yeah, Dad,” her voice was sweet and earnest. Her shoulders were narrow, her limbs thin and lanky, and she had sandy-brown hair reaching past her shoulders.

“Kendall recently completed a babysitting course at the Y,” Thomas said, addressing his words to Melissa. “She knows the Heimlich, CPR, all sorts of safety stuff.”

“ Dad ,” Kendall said with another eye roll, though the smile didn’t leave her lips.

“What? I’m proud of you. Maybe you’ll follow your old man into the medical profession?”

“It’s just babysitting, Dad,” Kendall said.

Thomas turned back to Melissa. “Kendall’s started babysitting for parents around the neighborhood. Some of the kids are just babies. She’s doing great.”

“Wow,” Melissa said, and raised an eyebrow. “Making any money, Kendall?”

“A little bit,” the girl said, blushing.

Melissa nodded and left it at that. She remembered what it was like to be that age.

The feeling of being not quite at home in her body, in her personality, that could set in around the start of puberty and stick around for a while.

The nonspecific embarrassment of being seen, spoken to, questioned by adults at that age.

Sometimes it was best to leave them alone.

“Do you want to show Bradley our board games?” Thomas asked. “Do five-year-olds still like Chutes and Ladders? Candy Land? Sorry, I’m out of touch now that my kids are basically grown-ups.” He nudged Kendall on the shoulder, which brought another wave of embarrassment.

“Dad, stop,” Kendall said. “Come on, Bradley. I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

She reached for Bradley’s hand, and he took it without hesitation, happily walking alongside her as she led him back into the house. Melissa felt a happy little pang as she watched the two of them walk off together. Bradley looked back once, and she nodded him on.

“Didn’t you say you have two girls?” Melissa asked after Kendall and Bradley had gone.

“Rhiannon,” Thomas said. “My older daughter. Seventeen. Sulking in her room. You know. Teenagers .”

Sulking. The word made Melissa wonder. Sulking about what? About her ?

Thomas moved to the end of a staircase close to the front door and called up.

“Ree! Come out and say hello to Melissa.”

Above their heads, a door clicked open, and footsteps creaked down the hall.

Melissa shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “She doesn’t have to…”

But it was too late. In the darkened hall above, a teenage girl appeared. She looked a lot like Kendall, but older, her face sharpened, angular, and guarded where her sister’s had been rounded and open.

“What?” the girl asked from up the stairs.

“Aren’t you going to say hi to my friend? This is Melissa.”

“Hi,” Rhiannon said after a pause, her voice deadened. Then she turned and walked back to her room. The door clicked shut.

***

“I’m sorry about that,” Thomas said in the car.

“What?”

“Rhiannon. She was rude.”

“It’s fine,” Melissa said. She thought it was pretty obvious what Rhiannon’s coldness was about—and she didn’t blame the girl at all. Her dad was going on a date. And she wasn’t sure what she thought about it, at best. At worst—she hated it. Hated Melissa.

“She’s a great kid, actually,” Thomas said. “A great student. Honor roll. Varsity volleyball. She’ll be a senior in the fall.”

He drove through a tangle of winding suburban streets to a destination he hadn’t yet told her about. Steering and working the blinker with one hand, he draped the other casually on the console between him and Melissa.

“But she’s also gotten a little complicated the past few years. She used to be really sweet, like her sister. But now—well, you saw. She’s quieter than she used to be. Not as warm. Sullen. Sometimes she gets angry. I don’t know, we’re working through it.”

His voice was tight with pain and worry, and Melissa touched his hand, a light caress with the tips of her fingers.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “It’s all right. I was Rhiannon’s age once. Kendall’s too. She’s, what?”

“Fifteen,” Thomas said.

“I thought so. Something happens to girls around their age, Thomas. They get complicated. Because life gets complicated for them .”

Thomas sucked air, hissing through his teeth, his eyes pained as they gazed ahead at the road. Melissa knew he was imagining losing Kendall too—his sweet youngest daughter, slipping into the opaque depths of adolescence.

She touched him again, to bring him back to her, but this time she left her hand resting on his, and he gave her a brief look.

“They’re still your girls, though,” she said. “They’ll always be yours. And they’ll always love you.”

“You think so?”

“You’re a good dad. They feel safe with you. I can tell.”

Thomas blinked a few times, his lashes whipping up and down furiously, and he heaved a huge breath that seemed to bring him a measure of calm.

“They’ve had a rough go of it, is the other part,” Thomas said. “It’s not just their ages. It’s also their mother. Losing her. That was hard on everyone. Traumatic.”

“I know. I’ve heard.”

Underneath Melissa’s palm, Thomas’s hand tensed.

“So people have been talking,” Thomas said. “Telling you things about me.”

Melissa gave his hand a squeeze, willing him to turn it over and lace his fingers in hers.