Dr. Forget-Me-Not (Matchmaking Mamas) Read online

  Seeing her, Mitch caught himself smiling almost automatically. There was something almost infectious about the little girl’s wide, guileless smile and her entire manner was comprised of exuberance, despite the circumstances that she and her mother and brother found themselves in.

  Hers was the face of eternal hope.

  “Where’s your mother?” Mitch asked. Ordinarily, mothers accompanied their children when they were brought in for an exam.

  “She’s busy with Jimmy,” April told him matter-of-factly, as if this was just the way things were. She was the healthy one and her brother was not, which meant that he required more of their mother’s time.

  April willingly occupied herself at the shelter. She was a pint-size goodwill ambassador, wheedling information out of everyone and becoming part of the main fabric of the shelter in an extraordinarily short amount of time.

  “Okay, well, you know the drill,” Mitch told her, patting the top of the exam table. “Get up on the table and tell me where it hurts.”

  He was surprised when his small patient giggled in response, then watched as she scampered onto the exam table. He knew better than to help her up. April was exceedingly independent and proud of it.

  This afternoon her progress was hampered because she was holding a folder in her hand. Mitch assumed that the folder probably contained a note from the girl’s mother, explaining the symptoms that had sent April to him in the first place.

  “Okay,” Mitch said, putting his stethoscope around his neck, “what brings you here?”

  “My feet,” April answered, looking up at him a little uncertainly because he had to ask. To emphasize her point, she wiggled them.

  “No, I think the doctor wants to know why you came to see him this morning,” Melanie explained.

  “Oh.” As understanding washed over her, April nodded her head vigorously. “Okay.” Taking a deep breath, she went into her explanation. “I came to see him because I have something to give him. And you,” she quickly added, looking at Melanie. Indicating the folder, April proudly declared, “This.”

  Then, unable to contain herself, April opened the folder before Melanie could reach for it.

  Inside the folder were two pieces of eight-by-ten beige construction paper. Both had colorful drawings on them vividly immortalized with a number of different crayons. Below each of the drawings was a swarm of Xs and Os. Beneath that someone had obviously helped April print her name in big block letters that seemed to lean into one another. The five letters were all inside of a huge red heart.

  April’s eyes danced as she held out her handiwork to both of them.

  “Do you like it?” she asked eagerly, although from her tone of voice it was easy to see that she thought the answer was a foregone conclusion.

  “Oh, very much,” Melanie told her enthusiastically. Holding it between both hands, Melanie held the drawing out as if she was appraising it.

  “And you’ll keep it forever?” April asked.

  “And ever and ever,” Melanie assured her with feeling.

  April turned her huge bright green eyes on Mitch. “How about you?” she asked hopefully. “Do you like your card, Dr. Mitch?”

  “It’s very nice,” Mitch replied. In his opinion, there was nothing special about it, but the little girl had made an effort and he’d been raised to believe that efforts were to be praised and rewarded if they were to yield something greater in turn. “But what’s the card for?”

  April cocked her head and looked at him as if she thought he was teasing her.

  “Why, it’s for Valentine’s Day, silly. Today is Valentine’s Day and I drew you Valentine cards ’cause you’re both my Valentines. Mama thinks it’s silly to give out cards, but I think everyone should have a Valentine card. We got some big paper from Mrs. Miller today at school. She told us to make a card for someone who we thought wasn’t gonna get one. I asked her if I could make two so then she gave me two pieces of paper,” April concluded, running out of breath at the end of her narrative.

  She punctuated her story with a huge, sunny smile. But her smile quickly faded away when she look at Melanie. There were tears in Melanie’s eyes.

  “Don’t you like your card?” April asked her, disappointed.

  Melanie pressed her lips together, not trusting her voice for a moment. Instead, because April was looking at her intently, she nodded her head.

  “Very much,” she finally ventured in a soft voice that was almost a whisper.

  “But your eyes are leaking again,” April pointed out. “Just like the last time.”

  “Those are happy tears, remember?” Melanie managed to get out. “Because the card you drew for me is so beautiful.”

  “Oh. Okay.” April brightened, accepting the excuse. Her cards delivered, the little girl wiggled down off the table. “Well, that’s all. I’m not really sick,” she confided as an afterthought. “I just wanted to come and give you those cards I made for you ’cause it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  With that, the little girl grabbed her folder and darted out of the room.

  Melanie turned toward the wall, as if desperately trying to collect herself before the next patient walked into the room.

  Debating for a moment, Mitch made up his mind and closed the door before anyone could enter. He thought it best to give Melanie a moment before she had to get back to work.

  As he eased the door closed, he told himself he wasn’t going to say anything, that whatever was going on with Melanie was her own business and in her place, he wouldn’t have appreciated being on the receiving end of any questions, however well intentioned they might have been.

  Despite this new self-awareness, Mitch heard himself asking her a question. His need to know had gotten the better of him.

  “Why are your eyes ‘leaking’?” he asked.

  Hearing the six-foot-two, stern-faced doctor using April’s term for crying caused her to smile. At least just enough to help her push back the dreadful wave of sorrow that had suddenly threatened to swallow her up whole.

  “Because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “Do you always cry on Valentine’s Day?” he asked.

  He kept his voice mild, thinking that might just coax a response out of her. If he asked point-blank in his usual brusque manner, he knew she’d just close up and make it impossible for him to find out anything.

  But maybe having this conversation would bring her around enough to be able to at least face working for the rest of the day.

  “Is this something like when Charlie Brown stands by his mailbox and sighs because his dog gets a ton of Valentine cards while he doesn’t get any?” he asked when she didn’t answer him.

  Brushing aside her tears with the heel of her hand, Melanie turned around and looked at the man before her in amazement.

  “You’ve actually read a comic strip?”

  “I have,” he corrected. “As a kid.” It had been years since he’d even glanced at a comic strip. Maybe he should make a point of finding a newspaper and catching up a bit, just for old time’s sake, he thought whimsically. Out loud he said matter-of-factly, “Some things stick in your head.”

  “I guess,” Melanie allowed. And then, because he was trying to be helpful—at least for him—she decided that maybe she owed him a little bit more of an explanation than she’d given him. “I completely forgot today was Valentine’s Day.”

  That was no big deal. Certainly not something to cry over. “You’re not alone,” he assured her.

  But Melanie shook her head. “No, you don’t understand.”

  “So you keep telling me,” he remarked with a patient sigh.

  Melanie drew in a long breath and decided she might as well get the whole thing out rather than harbor it like some deep, dark secret. Secrets usually wound up festering. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was ashamed of what she had done or of Jeremy.

  “I got engaged on Valentine’s Day.”

  The name of her fiancé escaped him at the moment. He sought fo
r a way to tactfully work his way around that deficit without calling attention to it. “To the man who never came home.”

  She felt fresh tears threatening to descend. How could she have forgotten that today was Valentine’s Day? “Yes, to him.”

  “Look, if you want to go home, I can have the director find someone else to—”

  “No,” Melanie said firmly, cutting him off. She knew what he was going to say and she didn’t want to hear it. “I don’t want to go home. I want to be right here, where I can at least be useful to someone for something. I’ll call your next patient in,” she said abruptly, striding past him.

  He saw no reason to try to stop her. By now he’d learned that he couldn’t, even if he tried.

  Chapter Nine

  “You’re good with them.”

  Mitch made the observation half grudgingly in the exam room several days after April had presented them with her hand-drawn Valentine cards. It was the tail end of the day and as usual, a swarm of children had been herded through the makeshift exam room.

  But, unlike usual, the swarm of children had abruptly stopped.

  He’d made the remark grudgingly because he didn’t want to find anything more to admire about Melanie. Things would be a whole lot better for him if he could simply just not notice her at all. But that was like trying not to notice a clear summer day, or a crisp warm breeze on a spring morning.

  The truth was he couldn’t help noticing her and the way the children here not just reacted to her but gravitated to her, as well. It was as if she were this beguiling, all-encompassing magnet and the children were metal filings who instantly were attracted to her the moment they found themselves with her.

  He had a set way of doing things, a way of expecting certain results after certain things were done. She, on the other hand, appeared to be as flexible as a licorice whip—physically, if he was any judge, watching her—as well as emotionally.

  He had no doubts that if Melanie weren’t here, acting as his go-between with the children each time he came to the shelter to minister to them, he would have had a great deal more trouble dealing with his small patients. For the most part, they were lively and exuberant, but they still seemed to want to behave for her, which completely amazed him.

  Melanie casually shrugged off the doctor’s observation. “Most kids want to behave. They just need to be guided a little.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” he countered. “I think they want to please you.”

  And she, he’d noticed, always knew just how to respond to make them laugh and feel good. He didn’t have that gift and, until just recently, hadn’t even felt the lack of it. But working beside this woman, he’d become acutely aware of the fact that the connections he made with his patients were sorely insufficient. It bothered him that it bothered him—and yet, it did.

  “Did you have a lot of brothers and sisters growing up?” he asked.

  The way he saw it, that would have been a reason why Melanie could get along so well with children. He, on the other hand, had been an only child and had kept to himself for the most part, preferring his own company to that of the kids in the neighborhood. Consequently, his people skills—much less his ability to communicate with children—had never been honed.

  “No, actually,” she told him. “I didn’t have any. But I remember what it was like.”

  “What what was like?” he asked, feeling as if he’d lost her.

  “Being a kid,” she explained. “I remember what it was like.” It was right there, a vivid part of her, everything she’d ever experienced as a child. “How scary things seemed. I can relate to all that. Most of the time, there was just my mother and me,” she told Mitch. “My dad was in the navy and we moved around a lot. Every time I turned around, I was the new kid on the block.” She laughed quietly. It hadn’t been easy. “That involved a lot of insecurity and a lot of adjusting on my part. I wound up getting a very broad education.”

  “You were an only child?” he asked.

  It gave them something in common, and at the same time, they couldn’t have been more different, Mitch thought. She was the very definition of open and outgoing and he could easily be an island unto himself.

  Well, maybe not easily, he amended, looking at Melanie, but he still could be.

  Melanie nodded. “There were years I would have killed for a brother or sister. Especially an older brother to look out for me when we lived in this one place that I swear was populated with nothing but these sharp-tongued ‘mean girls.’” A rueful look passed over her face. “Eventually, I realized that siblings—older or younger—weren’t coming.”

  She stiffened just a little, as if bracing herself against the memory of what she was about to say. “Then my dad met someone else and it was just my mom and me.” And then she brightened a little. “That’s when we settled down in Bedford and for the first time, my life actually became stable. I knew where I’d be from one month to the next. I got to go to the same high school for the whole four years—I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven,” she enthused. “And for a while, I guess I had.”

  He watched as she got a faraway look in her eyes and for a moment, she seemed not even to be in the same room anymore.

  “But then things changed,” she went on to say matter-of-factly, her voice distant and emotionless. “My mom died, and then—” Melanie blinked, as if she was suddenly hearing herself. “How did I get started talking about this?”

  Something akin to what he supposed passed for compassion stirred inside of him. “I remarked that you were good with kids and you took it from there.”

  Melanie cleared her throat as she shrugged dismissively. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you.”

  “You didn’t,” he told her.

  And that made her feel even more self-conscious, as if she was somehow exposed and unable to hide anything. Although Melanie had no problem talking, she didn’t usually talk about herself. Doing that made her feel vulnerable and there was nothing she hated more than that feeling.

  Peering out into the dining area, she saw a few of the residents—the ones who weren’t lucky enough to find some sort of part-time employment in the local shops in the area—milling around. But none of the women appeared to be waiting their turn with the doctor.

  That was a first, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “Looks like you ran out of patients,” she observed, turning around to face him again. “I guess that means you’re free to go.”

  Mitch laughed shortly. “I suppose I am.” He paused for a moment, silently debating the wisdom of the question hovering on his tongue. And then it stopped hovering and became a reality. “Do you want to go grab a cup of coffee somewhere?”

  “There’s coffee in the dining area,” she pointed out, wondering how he had forgotten about that.

  “I mean a real cup of coffee,” Mitch emphasized.

  “You mean one that costs too much?” She assumed that was probably his criteria—if it didn’t cost a sinful amount, the product he was getting couldn’t be any good.

  The man was still a snob, she thought, but at least he seemed to be coming around.

  “I mean one that doesn’t taste like someone dipped a brown crayon in hot water for approximately three minutes.”

  “I’d take offense at that remark,” she told him with a straight face—and then she smiled. “But I guess it is pretty weak at that,” she admitted.

  He was still processing the first part of her statement. “You make the coffee?” he asked. He hadn’t meant to insult her, he just didn’t associate making coffee as part of what she did at the shelter.

  “Some of the time,” Melanie admitted. “Coffee’s not much of a priority around here. There’s more of an emphasis on milk and wholesome food—and a doctor’s care,” she added on for good measure. “You’re the first doctor some of these women have had contact with since—well, forever, I guess.” She looked at him for a moment, as if finally allowing herself to see him. “Frankly, I’
m surprised you stuck around.”

  “That makes two of us,” Mitch murmured under his breath.

  His admission had her regarding him a little more closely. “Does that mean you might stop coming to the shelter soon?” she asked. It was always best to be braced than to stick her head in the sand. That had become her new motto.

  As Mitch watched her, she squared her shoulders and seemed to shut down right in front of his eyes.

  “If I did stop coming here, would that matter to you?” he wanted to know. He told himself he was just making conversation—but he actually wanted to know and the fact that he did bothered him. It shouldn’t have mattered to him one way or another—but it did.

  Melanie shifted the emphasis away from her. It was how she’d learned to survive.

  “It would matter to the residents here—especially to the children like April. She’s gotten very attached to you, Doctor. Children value a routine. They get used to it, depend on it. You take that routine away from them, you risk making their worlds collapse.”

  He didn’t buy that. Was she trying to guilt him into staying because she didn’t want him to stop coming—or was she just spinning a theory? He couldn’t tell.

  “As someone whose father was in the navy, you know that changes are a part of life. It can happen at any time, any age,” he pointed out.

  She thought of how she had felt when she’d learned about Jeremy. How her whole world had completely shattered.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.” And then she forced herself to rally. She didn’t want him asking her any questions. “If you do decide that you’ve had enough of volunteering, I’d appreciate you letting me know before it becomes general knowledge. I’d like to be able to prepare the kids.”

  “I’m sure that it wouldn’t really be that a big a deal for them,” he told her dismissively.

  Her eyes met his for a moment and he couldn’t really begin to guess what she was thinking. “You’d be surprised,” she told him quietly.