Dr. Dad (5 page)

Lindsey seemed to deflate, and Susannah regretted her harsh words. She wondered if there was a way to apologize without making the girl feel worse.

“Sometimes what seems like one thing when we view it turns out to be quite different when we live it,” Toby gently explained to his daughter. “Lots of people want to be doctors, but they don't realize how much hard work and stress come with the job. You
know because you live with me. But other people might not see that. They might think being a doctor is more like—like what you see on TV medical dramas.” He sent a smile Susannah's way.

Lindsey said nothing. Her eyes downcast, she pushed back from the table. “Can I be excused?” she asked.

“Would you like some dessert? Ms. Dawson brought those brownies,” he reminded her, gesturing toward the foil-wrapped plate.

“Maybe later.” Lindsey stood, gathered her empty plates and stomped out of the room.

Susannah turned to Toby for an explanation of what terrible thing she'd done. Perhaps she'd spoken sharply, but had she really been curt enough to send Lindsey fleeing from the room?

“Forget about it,” he said, as if sensing her dismay.

“You never know what's going to set her off.”

“I guess she was a little starstruck, and I didn't live up to her expectations.” Susannah sighed. She'd spent far too much of her life trying to live up to people's expectations—and she couldn't even live up to a ten-year-old girl's.

“Storming away from the dinner table is one of her favorite activities. She likes to be dramatic. Maybe she's got a bit of showbiz in her.” He lifted the wine bottle. “Would you like some more?”

She appreciated his effort to make her feel better. “Thanks, yes,” she said, lifting her empty glass toward him.

He filled it, then added more wine to his goblet. “She's disappointed in me because I didn't even know who you were,” he said with a self-deprecating grin. “Yesterday you told me your name was Sue, so I
thought maybe she was confusing you with someone else.”

“She wasn't,” Susannah admitted. “I…” She didn't know Toby enough to confide in him—and one thing she'd come to Connecticut for was privacy. But she still felt bad about his daughter, and about her foolish attempt to deny who she was. “My name is Susannah. I just had this crazy idea that if I left Los Angeles, people might not recognize me.”

“People like me won't,” he said, his smile growing.

“I watch the eleven-o'clock news, basketball and a little football on TV, and that's it.
Mercy Hospital
wasn't on my radar screen until Lindsey started jabbering about it yesterday.” He sipped some wine, his eyes clear and piercing as he studied her. “Susannah's a lovely name, but I kind of like Sue, too.”

“I like Tobias,” she admitted, recalling the name printed on the business card he'd given her. “But I gather you prefer to be called Toby?”

“You can call me anything you want, as long as it's clean.” He grinned and sipped a little more wine.

“Anything but Dr. Dad. That's Lindsey's special nickname for me.”

“She's a wonderful girl,” Susannah said, wishing she could bring Lindsey back into the dining room and make things right with her.

“When she's not being a pain in the butt.” He lowered his glass. “Would you like a brownie?”

“They're not that good,” she confessed, then laughed. “I made them from a mix. I'm a terrible cook.”

“Lindsey will love them. She'll probably pig out on them later tonight.”

He trailed his index finger around the rim of his
glass. His wrists were bony, his hands large yet surprisingly elegant. She imagined him patting the shoulder of his young patient with asthma and soothing that child. She imagined him wiping a tear from his daughter's cheek or writing her a note, signing it “Dr. Dad” in a smooth, sleek script. She'd seen him loosen his tie, and she imagined his nimble fingers tugging the tie completely free of his collar, moving down the front of his shirt to undo the buttons, gliding over a woman's skin, lifting her hair from the nape of her neck so he could plant a kiss there….

She blinked to rid herself of the vision. “I should probably be going,” she said, externally calm, giving no hint of what she'd been thinking, or how those thoughts had made her feel. She was warm inside, tense, restless in a disturbing way. Tobias Cole was an easy man to like, but she didn't want to
like
him.

He glanced at her refilled wineglass, then lifted his gaze to meet hers. His smile faded and he nodded. Apparently, he recognized that she needed to leave. She only hoped he didn't understand why.

“I really enjoyed dinner,” she added.

“Maybe we'll do it again sometime.” He stood as she did, and his smile seemed slightly rueful. She wanted to assure him that yes, they definitely would do it again sometime. Lots of times, if he wished. She would love to have dinner with him—and his daughter, too. She'd love just to observe a normal family, the affection between a father and his daughter, the simple rhythms of ordinary life.

She wanted him to know she was sorry she had to go—but she couldn't stay if merely glancing at his hands filled her with erotic ideas.

But she had to stop feeling sorry about everything
she did. Smiling, she let him usher her through the kitchen to the hall that led to his front door. “Thanks for coming,” he said, opening the heavy oak door and letting the cool evening spill in.

So formal, so stilted. Straight from the book of etiquette. But his gaze wasn't formal. It wasn't even polite. It was dark and bold, reaching inside her, searching, touching places she'd thought she'd sealed up tight, places that had been wounded and not yet healed. He was a doctor. Did he know how to heal her? Could those profoundly dark eyes of his perform a miracle cure?

She didn't want to know. But when she returned his steady, probing gaze, she couldn't help wondering.

F
ROM HER BEDROOM
window, Lindsey had a view of the whole side of Susannah Dawson's house. Susannah hadn't hung any curtains yet, and glaring light filled most of the windows. Perched on her bed, Lindsey could see inside the living room—a couch, a few chairs, a colorful area rug on the hardwood floor—and the dining room—a circular table and matching chairs, the light a little less bright in there. On the second floor she could see into the bedroom that used to be Cathy's.

She and Cathy used to communicate between their windows at night, after their parents had sent them to bed. They'd worked out their own secret system using flashlights. They'd tried Morse Code, but that was too complicated, so they'd invented a code of their own: moving the beam up and down meant yes, moving it from side to side meant no, swinging it in a circle meant “call me tomorrow” and zigzagging meant “I don't know.” Sometimes they'd prop up their dolls in the windows and pretend the dolls were playing with each other. Sometimes they'd draw pictures and display them for each other, although it was really hard to see drawings when the light was coming from behind them.

Mostly, though, it hadn't mattered whether they were communicating clearly. Just being connected to each other had been enough.

Lindsey wondered whether Cathy knew that a famous TV star was living in her old house. Had Cathy's parents told her they'd sold the house to Susannah Dawson? Did they even know who Susannah Dawson was, or were they as out of it as Dad?

Every now and then Lindsey spotted movement in the house next door. Susannah walked through the living room, her shadow following her. She paused at the dining-room table, then moved away. MacKenzie the cat sat on a windowsill in the living room, staring out at the night, flicking his tail back and forth. He was such a beautiful cat, almost as beautiful as Susannah.

The living-room light in Susannah's house went off. Lindsey sighed and flopped across her bed. It was ten o'clock, which was past her bedtime, but there was no school tomorrow so staying up late didn't matter.

Restless, she padded barefoot out of her room and down the stairs. Through the open doorway of the study she heard her father's voice. She knew from the droning sound of it that he was leaving a voice-mail message for one of his partners. They all took turns working on the weekends, and her father liked to leave information about his patients for whoever was on call. He'd sit and yak into the phone as if he was talking to an actual person. It was kind of weird, but Lindsey was used to it.

She slipped past the study and entered the kitchen. The pots from dinner were turned upside down on the drying rack, shining in the light above the sink. The forks and knives lay glistening on a towel next to the rack. The china was stacked on a counter, waiting to be returned to the breakfront in the dining room. Her father's jacket and the stack of mail were gone from the table, although Lindsey's backpack was still there.

She felt guilty for having not helped her father clean up after dinner. She really ought to help more. She always meant to help, but then other things got in the way—like a TV show was on, or one of her friends phoned, or she was angry with Dr. Dad.

She'd been angry tonight, not with her father so much as Susannah. Didn't the woman appreciate that she'd had the chance to live everybody's fantasy? To be a star…It made you more real somehow, more alive. If everyone knew who you were, even when you died they'd remember you, and that was almost like not dying.

Lindsey didn't want to die. If she became a star, maybe it would be like never dying.

She spotted the foil-wrapped dish of brownies on a counter near the refrigerator. She hadn't had any dessert earlier. Just seeing the plate convinced her she was starving.

She crossed to the counter to get the brownies, thinking she'd bring them up to her room and maybe eat a few while she flipped through a magazine or something. Tiptoeing so as not to alert her father that she was prowling around the house this late, she headed out of the kitchen.

Her father must have finished lecturing into the phone. A rectangle of golden light spilled into the hall through the study doorway, but she didn't hear his voice. She didn't hear anything at all.

She crept down the hall and peeked into the study. Her father was standing in front of the window seat, staring out at the house next door. He had his hands in his pockets. His slacks were just baggy enough not to look dorky, and his shirt was wrinkled. He needed a haircut. But she kind of liked when he looked sloppy.

Right now he looked more than sloppy. Something in the hunch of his shoulders and the angle of his head, something in his utter silence and stillness, made him seem terribly alone to her. “Daddy?” she whispered.

He spun around, startled. Then he relaxed and smiled. “What are you doing up, Hot Stuff?”

“I was hungry.” She padded into the room. The oversized T-shirt she slept in fluttered around her thighs, and her hair felt heavy on her neck. She was so ready for summer. She wanted to wear T-shirts all the time, and shorts, and go barefoot.

She peeled back the aluminum foil on the plate. “Want a brownie?”

“Thanks.” He helped himself. She took one, as well, and put the plate on the window seat.

“Were you leaving messages on the phone?” she asked, taking a bite of her brownie. It was dry.

His mouth full, he only nodded. Once he swallowed, he said, “I was thinking, before I go to the supermarket tomorrow I'd like to stop by Arlington Memorial to visit a patient of mine.”

“Who? How come?”

“He's a very sick little boy. He was diagnosed this morning with leukemia. Do you know what that is?”

“It's a kind of cancer, isn't it?”

“That's right.” He popped the rest of the brownie into his mouth. “He's under a specialist's care now, but I'd still like to see him, just to cheer him on. He's got a rough stretch ahead of him.”

“Chemo?” Lindsey asked. She knew more about medicine than any of her friends, mostly because of her dad, but a little bit because of her mother, too. And maybe a little bit from watching
Mercy Hospital.

“Chemo and radiation both. Not much fun, huh?”

“Poor kid.” She took another bite of her brownie and sat on the window seat, bending her knees to her chest and pulling her T-shirt over them so it covered her to her ankles. “Is he going to be all right?”

“I promised him he would be, so I guess he'd better.”

Lindsey chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe you should bring him some brownies.”

Her father smiled, but he still seemed sad to her. “I don't think he'll have much appetite. But you're a sweetheart to suggest it.”

“Actually, these brownies aren't very good,” she said as she reached for another.

She got a laugh out of him. “Sue warned me they weren't. Susannah,” he corrected himself, then took a second brownie, too.

“Did she tell you to call her Sue?”

“Originally. I think she was trying to hide her identity from me. Little did she know I'd never heard of Susannah Dawson.” He joined Lindsey on the window seat, the plate of brownies between them. He'd taken off his shoes, she noticed. He had on dark socks, but with the desk lamp providing the only light in the room, she couldn't make out the color.

“Why would she want to hide who she was? It's so cool being famous.”

“Maybe she doesn't enjoy it as much as you would.”

“I wish I could trade places with her,” Lindsey admitted with a sigh. “On top of being famous, she's so beautiful.”

“You're beautiful, too.”

Yeah, right. Fathers always said icky things like that. It was like some obligation, a clause in the Daddy con
tract: Even if your kid has three eyes, green hair and zits, tell her she's beautiful.

“You look more and more like your mother every day,” he added quietly, and Lindsey felt her skepticism slip away. She knew her father wasn't just doing the standard dad routine. He was telling her something important.

Her own memories of her mother were sometimes vivid, sometimes blurry. But in her dreams her mother came to her perfectly clear. Maybe Lindsey did look like her. She didn't remember her mother as being beautiful, though. Sure, she was beautiful because Lindsey loved her, she was beautiful the way mothers always were. But she wasn't beautiful like a TV star.

“Her eyes were the same shape as yours, and just as dark,” he told Lindsey. “And your nose is exactly like hers.”

“She had a big nose, huh,” Lindsey muttered. If she was going to take after her mother, at least her mother could have had a little nose.

“She had a perfect nose. So do you,” her father said. He looked as though he wanted to put his arm around her, and she hoped he would. It would be nice. He hadn't hugged her in a while, which was probably her fault. She would have liked a hug now.

When he got this way, his voice kind of hushed and his eyes distant, Lindsey understood how much he missed her mother. She missed her mother, too, but not the same way. She missed her when all the other kids had their mothers in class, like during the Native American festival, when the class had been broken into groups of four and each group had to research an American tribe and make a presentation. Lindsey had been in the Lakota group. They'd drawn a couple of
posters about the Lakotas, and they constructed a teepee out of sticks and this fabric that looked like cowhide, and Abbie Croce dressed one of her dolls as a Lakota maiden. The mothers of Lindsey's classmates would stop by their table at the fair, and she and Abbie and Robbie Crofton and Christopher Chou, who were both jerks but their names started with a C like hers and Abbie's so they'd gotten stuck working together, would explain how the Lakotas hunted and what their weapons were, and how they roamed the northern plains and what good horsemen they were. Every mother in the whole class, and quite a few fathers, too, came to the fair.

Her father hadn't been able to come. He couldn't sneak out of work for even an hour during the day. But if her mother had come, Lindsey would have been so happy. It was hard being the only kid in class without a mom.

Her father had to miss her mother even more than Lindsey did. If it was hard for her to be the only kid in class without a mom, it must be just as hard for him to be the only dad she knew without a wife. Except for the divorced ones, of course, but they still had their wives around, to talk to and argue with and stuff.

He must be so lonely. All those years when she'd been talking to Cathy at night through their windows, who had he been talking to? His partners' answering machines?

Maybe he and Susannah Dawson could be friends, so he wouldn't have to be as lonely. Not romantic friends—that would be so weird, a nobody Connecticut doctor going with a famous TV star—but just friends, so he could talk to someone real instead of voice mail.

“Do you like Susannah?” she asked.

He peered at her, curious. “She seems very nice,” he said.

“Do you think Mommy would have liked her?”

“Absolutely.”

“Mommy wasn't glamorous, was she?”

He shook his head. “Neither is Susannah. Look.” He gestured at the plate. “She baked brownies. That's not glamorous.”

“Especially when they're bad, like these. You'd think someone as famous as her could have done better. Unless maybe she's used to having maids cook for her.”

Her father shrugged. “It's possible.”

“Could we maybe invite her over again sometime?” Lindsey asked, noticing a crumb on her finger and licking it off. “I'd love to talk to her about
Mercy Hospital.
I wouldn't press or anything, but, I mean, Lucien Roche was so cute….”

“Who's Lucien—what?”

Lindsey checked the urge to give him a hard time for being so clueless. “Lucien Roche. The guy she fell in love with last season. That's the name of the character, anyway—and her character had an affair with him.”

“They
are
just characters, you know,” her father reminded her. “You shouldn't confuse Susannah with the character she played on TV. She isn't really a doctor. She's an actress.”

Lindsey pursed her lips. “Duh. I
know
that,” she said, then regretted her sarcastic tone. “Anyway, she probably never wants to talk to me ever again because of the way I bolted after dinner. She probably thinks I'm like a creep.”

“No, she doesn't.”

“She probably thinks I'm obnoxious.”

“Lindsey.” Again he looked on the verge of putting his arm around her, but he didn't. “She probably thinks you were done eating and wanted to be excused.”

Lindsey snorted. She hadn't made a good impression on Susannah Dawson, and she knew it. “If she comes over again, I promise I'll be better,” she said, hoping that Susannah would come back at least once more, if only so Lindsey would have a chance to stick around after the meal was done, and act like a proper hostess.