Table For Five

“Nope.”

It figured. Kids tended not to keep tabs on their parents. Now what? Sean wondered.

The phone rang, startling them both. Cameron snatched it up.

“Hello?” His face flashed momentarily with hope, then fell. “Oh, hi, Jane. No, my mom’s not here. You can drop Ashley off with me, I guess, since I’m home.” A pause. “You’re welcome.” He hung up. “I have a ton of homework, but I won’t get anything done now,” Cameron said. “Ashley’s a pain in the neck to babysit.”

Sean’s tiny niece was so cute you’d have to be made of stone not to like her. Babysitting her, though, was another issue entirely. The prospect of looking after a barely verbal toddler was terrifying to Sean. “I bet your mother will be home any minute,” he said.

Cameron shrugged again.

“What about Charlie?” Sean asked.

“Sounds like she wants to come home.”

“Any idea who Lindsey is? Where she lives?”

“Nope.” Cameron looked at the small screen on the phone. “The number’s on caller ID.”

“I’d better give them a call.” Sean punched in the number. A woman’s voice answered, and for a moment he blanked, then said, “Ma’am, this is Charlie Holloway’s uncle, Sean Maguire. I’m calling about my niece.”

“Oh! I’m Nancy Davenport. Would you like to speak with Charlie?”

“Actually, I was just calling to let you know…I’m afraid her mother might not be there to pick her up. She’s been…delayed. Charlie’s brother is here with me, so I’ll come and get her.”

“That’s no problem,” the woman said. “I’ll run her home. I haven’t started dinner yet.”

Sean thanked her and hung up. He looked at Cameron.

“No clue,” the boy said, but his gaze shifted to the door and then to the floor, a little too quickly. “My mom’s always got something going on. She probably forgot to tell anybody.”

Sean wandered into the kitchen. He studied the calendar clipped with magnets to the refrigerator. The current date had a notation. “Conf. w/Lily & D., 3:15 p.m.”

“What do you make of this?” he asked Cameron.

“Lily—the teacher on the answering machine. Miss Robinson. She was my third-grade teacher and now Charlie’s in her class. Maybe there was a conference with her. Charlie’s been doing lousy in school all year.” Cameron rolled his eyes. “How does a kid flunk third grade, that’s what I’d like to know.”

They waited. Talked golf a little, just to fill the silence and maybe distract themselves. “So you have a tournament coming up this weekend,” Sean observed, noting the team calendar stuck to the refrigerator with magnets.

Cameron turned away.

“Don’t bowl me over with your enthusiasm, okay?” Sean said.

The kid hunched his shoulders even more. “My coach is a dick, okay?”

“Greg Duncan? He seems all right to me.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Sean dug in his pocket and took out an Indian head penny. “This was my good luck charm. I’ve used it as a ball marker since I was younger than you.”

Cameron turned, took the penny and examined it. “That’s cool.”

“You want to borrow it?”

“You just said it’s your good luck charm.”

“Was. I said ‘was.’ It kind of deserted me.”

Cameron nodded. He knew about the fiasco that had brought Sean home. “Did you like playing over there, in Japan and Indonesia and stuff?”

“Sure, while it lasted.” Sean tried to imagine what he’d be doing in his old life as a tour professional in Asia. Once he’d started seeing Asmida, he used to play in Malaysia every chance he got. After a round, there would be far too much drinking and plenty of mindless, gratifying sex in opulent hotel rooms or in expensive cars. It didn’t last, of course. How could something like that last? Especially, he remembered with a twinge of pain, with the daughter of a yakuza mobster? No one could ever accuse him of having good judgment, that was for sure. Derek often ragged on him about mapping out a career plan. Of course, in order to do that, Sean needed a career.

Cameron pocketed the token. They called both Derek and Crystal again and got no answer. Cameron drank a slug of milk straight from the carton, then offered some to Sean, who declined.

He didn’t like the unfamiliar feeling in his gut. It was a cold, hard squeeze, brief and intense, like a fist of ice. He said nothing to Cameron. No point in worrying the kid.

He took a stroll through the downstairs, checking out the house. This had been Derek’s world for more than a decade. It seemed strange that Sean had never been here. He’d been too busy chasing prize money and easy women half a world away, and hadn’t bothered to come back even for a visit. There was a big living room and a long hallway where, Sean imagined, Derek had obsessively practiced his putts. The dining room had a table and chairs and a tall glass cabinet that was practically empty, probably because it had once held Derek’s favorite trophies. Sean shook his head, thinking about his brother, feeling love and admiration and envy all in the same heavy wave.

“You don’t have to stay,” Cameron told him. “I can handle the girls.”

“That makes one of us, then,” Sean said. “I’ll stick around until we figure out where your mother went.”

Darkness crept down and shadows crowded into the corners of the large, empty rooms. Sean switched on a couple of lamps. The tense quiet in the house was broken when Cameron turned on the radio, tuning it to a hip-hop station.

A few minutes later, a car pulled up, headlights swishing across the living room walls. Sean’s gut turned watery with relief. Crystal might not be thrilled to see him, but that was too damned bad. He had a few choice words for her.

His relief evaporated when he saw that the visitor was Jane Coombs, lugging a red-faced Ashley and an overstuffed diaper bag. Sean liked Derek’s girlfriend well enough, he supposed, though he barely knew her. At the moment she wasn’t looking to be liked. She had that tight-lipped don’t-mess-with-me expression people wore when their last nerve was about to snap.

“Oh, hi, Sean,” she said, clearly surprised to see him. “I can’t believe Crystal stood up her own kid like this. Anyway, here you go.” She dumped the baby into his arms. The two-year-old regarded him with apprehension.

“Have you heard from Derek?” Sean asked, shifting the baby awkwardly.

“Not a word. We must’ve all got our signals crossed. Listen, I’m grotesquely late,” Jane continued, “so I need to hurry.” Spying Cameron, she said, “Come and get the car seat, will you? God, thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”

When Ashley saw her brother, she squealed with delight and reached for him. “Cam! Cam!”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” he said, and followed Jane out to her car.

When the baby realized he was walking away, she arched her back and let out a wail that penetrated like an armor piercing bullet.

“Hey, now,” said Sean, his chest filling up with panic. “It’ll be all right. He’s coming back.”

She thrashed her head from side to side and cried harder. Her tiny fists alternately clutched Sean’s shirt and pummeled him. He was reminded of the creature in Alien popping from the stomach of an unsuspecting man. What the hell was it with babies? he wondered feverishly. They were like another life form to him, a dangerous and sinister one at that. She was loud and smelled funky, too. He suspected Jane, in all her self-important rush, had not bothered to check the kid’s diaper.

It felt like an eternity before Cameron returned with the car seat. The second Ashley spotted him, she quit yelling and lurched toward him, nearly leaping out of Sean’s arms. He clutched the writhing little body to keep her from falling, then quickly handed her over. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Naw, she’s just cranky. Probably tired and hungry, aren’t you, sugar bear?” Cameron jiggled her on his hip. “I’ll go get her something to eat.”