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One group of children shuffled offstage and the next entered. The music changed and Drew lifted his face, searching for his niece. As if reading his mind, Mandy said, "She’s on the second row up, third from the left."
Drew narrowed his search to the second row and there she was, wearing a white dress that matched every other girl in her class. Lucy grinned and waved when she caught sight them. Enchanted, he offered a small wave in return.
"She’s adorable," he said, thinking no other girl in her class shared her cuteness.
"You’re biased," Amanda murmured, sounding amused. "But, yes, she definitely rates high on the adorable chart.
He rolled his eyes at her answer but didn’t respond, except to slip from his chair and follow a dozen other dads to the edge of the stage to take pictures, though he doubted none of them toted a four thousand dollar camera to snap off a shot.
As he zoomed in and focused on Lucy, he thought about her mother. It was nice to be around Mandy without listening to her paranoia, without getting badgered about what information he’d discovered for her. He should probably be worried because of that fact. When they were younger and she stopped telling him not to do something, it was usually because she was about to strike and thump him in the shoulder. But this was relaxing … well, as relaxing as anyone could get when they were crammed into a gymnasium with three-hundred other sets of parents.
The concert continued without mishap—except for the time a second grade boy turned nervous and threw up in the hair of the girl standing in front of him. But to Drew, that all narrowed down to comic relief. After clicking a couple candid shots of both Lucy and Natalie, he returned to his seat to find Felix conked out on Amanda’s lap with his head relaxed on her shoulder. His nephew looked so adorable, Drew took a picture of mother and son together.
Once the final song was over and the entire school came on stage to sing their grand finale, he shuffled behind Amanda to pick up her two daughters in their classrooms where they waited. He snapped off a few more shots of Lucy and Natalie in their rooms and then he made all three children pose with their mother.
"Oh, that one was nice," he said after Lucy hugged Natalie in excitement over her big performance. "I might have to put it on display in my studio."
Amanda rolled her eyes, but wasn’t able to hide her smile. "You already have too many of them in your studio."
"Well, if they’d just stop being so cute, I’d probably stop." With that, he clicked off another picture of Felix trying to picking up on an older girl in Lucy’s first grade class.
"You’re going to give me a set of proofs, right?" Amanda asked as she watched him work.
"Don’t I always? I’ll put them on a disk as soon as I get home."
She nodded in approval and then turned to her three children. "Say goodbye to Uncle Drew, guys. We need to get home and into the bath. It’s past bedtime."
After receiving four different hugs from three different children, Drew waved his sister’s family off and started home himself. But once he reached his quiet, echoing house, he felt even more forlorn than usual. There was nothing like a hoard of hundreds of school kids singing, Stand By Me to remind him how alone he was.
He closeted himself in his office, going over each picture he’d taken on his print shop. Glad he grew up in the electronic age, he cut out the background in the picture of Felix draped over Amanda’s shoulder and put them in the living room of Amanda and Jeff’s house. Though he’d said he wanted to blow up the shot of Lucy and Natalie hugging, this is the one that drew him the most.
Working until a quarter after eleven, he packaged his photo card to send to Miller’s Professional Imaging, who’d have his proofs back in record time. Then he turned off his computer and shuffled upstairs toward his bedroom. Five minutes later, he lay in bed with his arms propped behind his head as he stared up at his ceiling. But sleep didn’t come. Wondering if Mia was still awake, he reached for his cell phone on his nightstand, unable to help himself. Earlier, he’d tried calling Mia from his cell, thinking he could surprise her into picking up the unfamiliar number. But she hadn’t.
He pushed redial and waited. It rang once before he disconnected. Man, what was he doing?
She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t want anything to do with him. And if he hadn’t caught that hint, she’d called again with her I-told-you-so call today, letting him know Piper was definitely not seeing his brother-in-law.
Sighing, he tossed the cell phone on his nightstand and rolled onto his side, not finding sleep until he brought up the memory of his non-date with Mia, teasing each other about their pizza preferences and then kissing at her car.
He murmured her name once before exhaustion overcame him.
•
Mia had just reached for the phone when it cut off in mid ring. Frowning at the oddity of that, she checked the caller id and read, "Incomplete Data." Dang. She gnawed on her lip a second longer.
For some reason, she knew it was Drew. But then she boiled that mind-set down to wishful thinking. He wouldn’t call her again after the way she’d yelled at him and hung up. And she didn’t want him to call either, though, oh God, she really did.
Tonight, especially after watching Gary recoil from the idea of dating her, after realizing Piper went around spreading her secret, after the guilt and pain that was still swarming her, she really needed a good, strong dose of Drew. She still had no idea what it was about him that made everything okay again. But it was something she could definitely get used to. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to see him again.
She needed some cheering up for that reason too. It was depressing and ironic to think about how she’d just lost the one person who gave her hope.
Picking up the phone, she dialed him back until she remembered she wasn’t even certain it had been Drew who called, so she slammed the phone down. It could’ve been Piper, one of Piper’s friends, her parents, a die-hard telemarketer … even a wrong number.
Chances were, it hadn’t been Drew.
She moped her way back to her bedroom and crawled under the covers. Falling into a fitful sleep, she woke a few hours later to
hear Piper returning home for the evening, but her consciousness was so distorted, she would’ve sworn she heard double, because it sounding like two sets of footsteps tromping down the hall and disappearing into Piper’s room. And it sounded like two voices talking. But she drifted back into dreamland so quickly, she probably just imagined everything.
