Susie gave him a look that was almost pleading. “Please, let me do this, Sam. Bobby probably needs a mom’s touch right now.”
Alarmed by her choice of words, Sam glanced at Mack, who gave a subtle shake of his head. That was enough to convince him his instinct to do this himself was right.
“I’ve got it,” he said, standing up. “Thanks for the offer, Susie, but he’s bound to be scared. Besides, I need to get to the bottom of what the fight was about in the first place.”
Susie looked as if she was about to protest, but Mack reached for her hand and gave her a pointed look.
“Go,” Mack told him.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Sam promised. “Here are a couple of things you might try while I’m gone. I think we were getting close to fixing the problem.”
“Don’t worry about it. Focus on what Bobby needs,” Mack said.
Sam had a hunch this was yet another of those tests of parenthood, and for just a minute there, he’d almost failed it.
Mack steeled himself for a fight with his wife as Sam left the newspaper office.
“Why did you do that?” Susie immediately demanded. “I could have taken Bobby to the doctor.”
“Of course you could have,” Mack agreed reasonably. “But it wasn’t your place.”
“A friend can’t step in to help?”
Mack sighed. “Sweetheart, if I thought it was nothing more than a friendly gesture, I’d have gone along with it, but it was more than that and we both know it. So does Sam.”
Susie scowled at him. “Such as?”
“You said it yourself. You thought Bobby needed a mother’s touch. You’re not his mother.”
“I know that.”
Mack held her gaze and this time he knew he could no longer dance around the issue in an attempt to protect his wife’s feelings. “Do you really? I’ve seen how you are with Bobby. I’ve seen the longing in your eyes. I have to wonder sometimes if you’re not hoping Sam will decide being a dad is too much trouble, so we can step in.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” she said, but she was trembling and the sad look in her eyes told the real story.
“Can you deny it?” Mack asked gently.
He saw how much she wanted to, but Susie never had been very good at lying, even to herself.
“Okay, no, I can’t deny it,” she conceded wearily. “On some awful, selfish level, I think that child deserves two parents who would love and nourish him the way we could.”
“Sam’s doing his best. And today is a chance for him to take one more step along the difficult learning curve of being a parent. You might have been able to handle the situation, but in the end, Sam has to fill the role of Bobby’s dad and we need to give him that chance.”
Tears spilled down Susie’s cheeks. “You’re right. I know you are.”
Mack stood up and closed the door to his office, then pulled his wife onto his lap. “Suze, I know how badly you want a child,” he said, holding her tight and brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I want that for you, for us. And it will happen when the time is right. If I could make it happen today, I would.”
“I know,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I get so crazy. And I’m sorry I keep doing things that necessitate my apologizing to you, to Carrie, to practically everyone in my family. Sometimes I think this is the only thing in my entire life that matters, even though when I’m rational I recognize that I have so much to be thankful for.” She gazed into Sam’s eyes with regret. “I’m sorry if I make you feel as if you don’t matter enough.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” Mack chided. “It’s not about me. I know that.”
She sighed heavily. “I hope so, because I do love you more than anything.”
“And we are going to get through this,” he said, praying it was a promise he could keep.
19
Sam found Bobby in the nurse’s office, holding a bandage to his lip, a bruise already forming under his eye.
“Hey, buddy,” Sam said, sitting down next to him. “You’ve got quite a shiner coming on. How’d that happen?”
The six-year-old regarded him with stoic silence. The nurse gave him a shrug suggesting that she knew no more than he did about whatever had caused the fight.
“Let’s get over to the doctor’s office and let him take a look at your lip,” Sam suggested. “That’s a pretty bad cut.”
Fear sparked in Bobby’s eyes. “Will he have to use a needle?”
“He might,” Sam told him honestly.