Page 37 of One More Baby for the Boss

Oh, I hope he’s just being irresponsible!

It was a strange thing to hope for. But it certainly beat the alternative.

She checked the time on her phone again. Five minutes to go.

Jack was at the front of the room now, carefully arranging and rearranging the ornaments he’d hung on the branches of his family tree. Each one represented a member of the family. He hadn’t ended up adding a cactus to the tree — Alex grinned in amusement at that memory — but hehadadded Alex’s picture, hanging on a branch on the far-right side of the tree. Shehadn’t failed to notice that the branch he’d picked for her was connected to Elijah’s branch, and she wondered if they were going to have to have a talk about what he thought her role in the family was. Maybe they’d already let him bond too intensely with her, given that her presence here was only temporary. Maybe things had already gone too far.

And what could she do if they had? It wasn’t as if she was going to pull away from Jack now. The change in his behavior was mostly Elijah’s doing, she was convinced of that, but at the same time, she wouldn’t deny her own role in it. And she knew that Jack would be hurt if he were to find himself suddenly distanced from a person who had become an important part of his life. He had suffered enough losses already. She couldn’t bring herself to be the next thing that was taken away from him.

I’m in too deep with this family. And yet I can’t pull away…

The woman sitting beside her leaned over. “It’s so hard watching this and not running up to help them, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s my daughter there, in the yellow dress.”

Alex smiled. The little girl in the yellow dress had gone the poster board route with her project, and she was struggling to stand it up so that it could be seen by the audience. Alex felt the mother’s struggle. She knew that if that had been Jack, she would have been aching to run up and help him.

“Sometimes you have to let them fend for themselves,” she said.

“Oh, I so agree with you. It’s been hard, letting Cassidy spread her wings as she’s started school, but it’s so rewarding to watch her turning into a self-sufficient little person. They really do grow up so fast.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Alex said.

“I’m June,” the woman beside her said, smiling.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Alex.”

“Which one is yours?” June asked.

Alex hesitated, wondering whether she should explain, but she decided to just go ahead and answer the question in the spirit in which June had asked it. “The boy in the blue and red shirt,” she said, pointing him out. “Jack.”

“Oh, I know Jack.”

“You know him?”

“I’m a room parent,” June explained. “He’s always so polite. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but… well, he’s one of mine. He always volunteers to help clean up after we have our snack, and he’s always the first one with his hand up when I need something passed out. Just a great little kid.”

“That’s so wonderful to hear,” Alex beamed.

“You’re doing something right at home,” June said. “A lot of these little boys could take a lesson from Jack. But I think having a good mother goes a long way.”

Alex cringed. Now she really did feel as if she ought to say something. June asking which child she was here with was one thing, but openly assuming that she was Jack’s mother was something else, and it would have been too disrespectful of his real mother to allow the misunderstanding to persist. She opened her mouth to correct it, but before she could speak, the lights in the room flashed on and off.

“Let me have everyone’s eyes,” the teacher called out in a sing-song voice that let Alex know this was how she called herclass to order when they didn’t have an audience. The parents cooperated by turning their attention to the front of the room, ready to watch the presentation.

But Alex’s heart sank. They were starting and Elijah still wasn’t here. He was either going to come in midway through and make a scene or else he was going to miss it entirely, and neither possibility was any good. Jack was going to be heartbroken.

Please, let him still make it at all. At least let him show up.

By the time it was Jack’s turn to present, Alex was beginning to hope that Elijahhadbeen in some sort of accident. She could think of no other excuse for his absence, no reason good enough for him to be missing this milestone. As Jack stepped to the front of the room and positioned his tree carefully on the floor in front of him, Alex was glad to see that he wasn’t making eye contact with her. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed his father’s absence. Maybe Elijah would be able to sneak in and pretend — to Jack, at least — that he had been here the whole time.

Maybe.

Jack cleared his throat. “This is my family tree,” he said. “It has all the people who are part of my family and all the important people who are part of my life. At the top are my great-grandparents — my dad’s grandparents. Then this is their son, Victor, who married Grandma Betty. Their kids were my dad, Uncle Rob, and Aunt Julia.” He waved a hand at the carefully arranged twigs under his aunt and uncle and their spouses. “Uncle Rob married Aunt Andrea and Aunt Julia married Uncle Marco, and they had all my cousins. I have seven cousins in all, but I don’t get to see them very often because they don’t live close by. We usually see each other at Christmas.”

He moved over to the other side of the tree. Alex drew her breath, wondering if this part would be emotional for him.

“My dad married my mom,” Jack said, gently touching Stephanie’s branch of the tree. “She died a long time ago, so I don’t remember her very well. But she’s still a really important part of our family, because without her, there would be no me.”

The room was quiet. Even Jack’s fellow first-graders seemed to sense the seriousness of the moment.

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