throughout the summer in order to prepare for fourth grade.”
“Explain intensive remediation.”
“Tutoring. Initially, I recommended the Chall Reading Institute in Portland for Charlie, but obviously things have changed. There’s been so much upheaval in her life that I think it’s best she stay home during the summer and work with a tutor. Two hours a day should do it.”
“What do you charge?”
She started tapping the pencil eraser. “I don’t think I should be her tutor.”
“Why not?”
“It’s difficult to keep the relationship on a professional level when I have such close personal ties with Charlie.”
“I don’t see the problem here. You don’t need to be professional with Charlie. It is personal.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but…I have a policy of treating all my students the same. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”
“Screw fairness,” he snapped, getting up to pace the room.
The pencil stopped tapping. “I beg your pardon.”
“I said, screw fairness. It’s not fair that Charlie’s parents died and she wound up with me. It’s not fair that there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do about it. So don’t tell me about fair.”
“Sean, why don’t you have a seat.”
“Because I don’t want to have a goddamned seat.”
“Then what do you want?”
“For you to admit just once that these kids are special. That they deserve special treatment.” He could see she was fine-tuned to this moment. At last she’d quit hiding behind the teacher persona and he could see the real Lily, the one whose heart ached for Charlie the same way his did. It probably wasn’t right to take comfort in her pain, but at least he didn’t feel so alone.
Tears glimmered in her eyes. She swallowed and blinked, and the tears were gone. Maybe it had been a trick of the light.
“So you’ll do it,” he said.
“I can’t,” she said. “I know how special these kids are. I adore them and yes, I could give them my heart, but then what? Then you move away, or get married, or something changes. Suddenly I don’t have them anymore, and they don’t have me. And there’s not a blessed thing I can do about it.”
“Wait a minute, so you’re saying you can’t be a part of their lives because we might move or things might change?”
“They need stability. Having people flit in and out of their lives can cause problems.” Although she’d dodged his question, she regarded him pointedly.
Somehow, he knew what she was saying with that look. Maura. One day she was there, then she was gone. The kids acted like her departure was no big deal, but maybe he wasn’t looking closely enough.
He paced some more. “I don’t get you at all. You’re so damned worried about the future that you’re forgetting right now. Yeah, that’s right. Life is what’s happening to you right now, not what might happen in a month or a year. So if you’re afraid now, then you’re spending your life being afraid.”
“I’m thinking of the children,” she said quietly. “It’s not that I’m afraid—”
Right, he thought, studying her terrified eyes. “What is it, then?”
“I have no discretion over them because I’m not the one raising them, so I can’t play that role.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“The terms of Derek’s will, for starters.”
“Ask me.”
“What?”
“Ask me. Their legal guardian. The one who’s giving the kids to you in my will. Ask me if you get to be a part of their lives, if you have a say in their future.”
“I don’t doubt you, Sean. But suppose you work things out with Maura. Suppose you meet someone new, someone you want to spend your life with. I doubt she’s going to want me hanging around like some maiden aunt.”
Sean was incredulous. “So you’re afraid to love these kids because they might not always be available to you?”
“Because it would be cruel to give them the impression that I belong in their lives when I don’t.”
“That’s shit, Lily, and you know it. The kids are nuts about you. Charlie needs you to be her tutor, not some stranger.”
As he drove home, Sean tried to figure out if he’d managed to settle anything at all at the conference with Lily. Not really, he decided. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There was something he was now sure about. It was possible for pulled-back hair, eyeglasses and sensible shoes to be sexy. He wasn’t supposed to regard her as anything but Crystal’s slightly annoying, judgmental friend, but lately, he kept catching himself thinking of her in other ways.