Michael's Discovery - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,36
a couple of cruise ship social directors determined to see that everyone had a good time. Introductions were accompanied by anecdotes designed to provide insight and provoke good-natured laughter. Kelly was in awe of them, and more than a little envious.
So, apparently, was Michael. She turned to find him watching his foster mother with a dazed expression. Leaning close, she noted, “She’s an amazing woman, isn’t she?”
“Even more so than I realized,” he admitted. “I thought she’d feel threatened by having my brothers suddenly thrust into the middle of our lives, but she’s not. She’s simply opening that generous heart of hers and adding them to her family as if they’d just been rediscovered after a long absence. And my dad and sisters are following her lead.”
“I’m glad for you,” Kelly told him sincerely. “It would have been hard if they hadn’t gotten along. I’m sure you would have felt torn.”
Before Michael could respond, Sean moved into the vacant seat on his other side. “You really lucked out in the foster family department,” Sean told him. “The Havilceks are terrific people.”
Michael nodded. “No question about it.”
“I’ve tried to get my last foster family in here to spend some time with Ryan and Maggie, but they’re not much interested. Deanna and I go by to see them once in a while, but I always have the feeling if we stopped going they’d hardly notice. They’re good people, but they’ve moved on. I always had the feeling that they knew there would always be another foster kid waiting just around the corner, so they tried not to get too attached to any of us.”
Sean shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him, but Kelly could see that it did. And it must be even harder on Ryan, who’d never stayed with the same foster family for more than a few months at a time. There was no one from his past to whom he felt the slightest sentimental attachment.
“Well, it looks to me as if you can all count on being part of the Havilcek clan from now on,” Kelly told Sean. “Mrs. Havilcek will see to that.”
Sean grinned. “Fine by me. I’ve heard about her apple pie.”
Ryan joined them. “Did I hear somebody mention apple pie? Who’s baking?”
Michael shook his head and regarded his big brother with amusement. “You’d think that a man who owns his own pub wouldn’t have any trouble getting all the food he wants.”
“Rory is a genius when it comes to cooking up an Irish stew or anything else he learned in Dublin, but he’s yet to master an American apple pie,” Ryan said with apparent regret. “Maggie’s offered to teach him, but he’s vowed to leave the day she starts trying to take over his kitchen the way she’s taken over the rest of this place. Now, when my Caitlyn gets a little older, it’ll be another story. That daughter of mine has our Rory wound around her little finger. She could sit in the kitchen all day long, banging on his favorite pots and pans with a spoon, and he’d never complain about the noise or the scratches.”
“Speaking of Caitlyn, where is my niece tonight?” Michael asked.
“Upstairs with the baby-sitter and, with any luck, sound asleep,” Ryan said.
“As is my son,” Sean said. “Though I imagine he’s playing video games rather than sleeping. He told us he wasn’t a baby like Caitlyn, so Deanna bribed him to stay out of our hair for a few hours. I think Kevin’s destined for a top-level management career in business. He’s already a tough negotiator. Deanna and I come out on the losing end more than I’d like to admit.”
Kelly listened with fascination as the talk centering on the kids went on for several minutes. Apparently both Ryan and Sean had been able to put their own bad experiences with abandonment behind them and had taken to parenting like the proverbial ducks to water. She wondered if Michael would eventually do the same. Because he’d been younger and because he’d landed with the Havilceks right at the beginning, he seemed to have fewer issues than his older brothers had had growing up.
And yet, she sensed that Michael still had moments when he felt like an outsider. His failure to call the Havilceks the minute he returned to Boston was evidence of it. Though he’d made perfectly rational excuses for that, Kelly wondered if he hadn’t been just a little bit afraid of how they would perceive him now