Child by Chance Read online

  “I’m going to start by telling you what I see,” she said. “I don’t want there to be any doubt in your mind that my impressions were any way swayed by yours.”

  She slid a tablet and paper over to him. “If at any time while I’m speaking, you have something to add, information that either adds or detracts validity from my interpretation, please jot it down. When I’ve finished, I’d like to turn the floor over to you. Once you’ve added any insights you might have, we’ll determine whether we can come to see the full picture.”

  “You said you had a possible solution...”

  “I have an idea to present to you, a possibility that might help, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If I’m way off, my solution won’t be viable, so to discuss it now would be a moot point.”

  She wasn’t going to make an offer she couldn’t follow through on and if Kent didn’t fit the profile she saw, then she couldn’t recommend him for the program she thought would help him. She wasn’t going to mention the women’s shelter to Kent’s father at all if there was no cause.

  The programs at the Stand were too sensitive—and critical.

  For the next half hour she led Sherman Paulson through her interpretation of Kent’s story. There was the little boy who still liked stuffed animals. He’d chosen a stuffed pickle for his picnic. A stuffed basketball in another section. A stuffed computer for the most alarming part of his collage. She discussed food favorites. Hot dogs and, oddly for a ten-year-old boy, salad. The types of television shows he liked—family sitcoms.

  Sherman made notes.

  His favorite sport was basketball, though he liked athletics in general.

  “The organization here is really quite remarkable,” she stopped to tell him. “Most of the kids I’ve worked with, even the adults, collect their photos and then put them on the board either with no forethought or planning at all, or with shape and maybe color in mind. Kent not only put a lot of thought into the colors and shapes he was using, but he also grouped his pictures in categories, almost as though he was purposely trying to say something with his work.”

  Sherman’s brow rose. He scribbled a note on his pad.

  “In some ways his groupings made reading his story easier.” Her voice grew more confident with every word, every sentence. She was no longer Kent’s mother, a stripper or even Talia Malone. She was on a mission, a conduit doing a job separate and apart from herself or her life.

  It had been that way the first time she’d helped a classmate in college in Vegas do a collage. She’d felt as if she’d finally stepped off the stage forever and into real life. Her professor had told her she had a gift.

  An odd concept for a girl who’d thought her only gift had been her looks, her sexuality.

  “There are school time, home time and what I’ve labeled in my notes as free time groupings. There are day and night groupings, too. And summer and winter. He organized his collage by time. By how he spends his time, where he spends his time.”

  Sherman wrote.

  “Over here is where things start to get more serious,” she said, moving to the part of the poster that had been hardest for her to analyze—and yet was the section she’d been most curious about since the beginning stages of the project. From the first day Kent had kept certain photos separate from the rest. And he’d glued these photos on last.

  “He’s got the stuffed computer, the squirt gun, the cap gun, a sharp winged action figure...” The list went on and on. Some of the photos were big, some tiny. If you didn’t look closely you’d be likely to miss a few of them. Some were fully exposed, others had only a small portion showing, peeking out from underneath other photos. “And there are three cars,” she said, pointing out the upside down one, the one inside a random bicycle wheel and the third, almost completely covered by the stuffed computer. He’d done a kind of hidden picture motif with that one.

  “A lot of these pictures could represent toys that he has now, has had in the past, or wants, but I don’t think so.

  “I’ve discovered in most of the people I’ve worked with that generally when you’re exposing a like or a want, you couch it in something that will keep it safe. Say over here on the grass. Or maybe with the pickle on the table. You’d expect to see something in the bedroom cut out. Or see the basketball hoop over here with the rest of the toys...”

  She spoke for another ten minutes and then said, “The real tell to me here is the color choices. I’d say that Kent’s favorite color is green.”

  She could have asked him during their week together. She purposely hadn’t done so.

  “This is all highly subjective, of course, but if you do a color search on the internet, I think you’ll find that there is an overall consensus about a lot of what I’m about to point out to you. Over most of this collage, Kent is displaying negative emotion, mostly anger.”

  Sherman started to say something, but made more notes instead.

  “Except for here.” She pointed to the stuffed basketball, the picnic with the big green pickle, the outdoor grill and a bicycle. “These all have some brown, either in the border, the background or in the picture itself. Brown stands for security. For being grounded. You’d think that his depictions of family—” she pointed to pictures cut out from ads depicting a mother and father and at least one child “—would include brown, but as you can see, it’s not there. Anywhere.”

  Sherman leaned across the table, studying the collage, as though if he looked hard enough he’d find some brown.

  Talia’s heart lurched as she saw herself over the weekend doing the exact same thing. A parent desperate to know that his or her child felt safe? Knew he was okay?

  “You see green in things that he likes—around this basketball rim, in the relish he colored on the hot dog at the picnic and the border he put on that little piece of garden over there. That’s what tells me his favorite color is green.”

  Sherman met her gaze and nodded, and she could almost feel the energy surging through her. The man might not know it but they were mother and father, connecting over their son.

  No! Wait. They weren’t connecting, and Kent wasn’t her son. The man was just unusually attractive to her. Which was pretty incredible in itself as she’d learned to look past and through men a long time ago. Anything remotely having to do with sex was pretty much at the bottom of her list of priorities now.

  At least for the moment. Sara, the counselor at the Lemonade Stand who’d facilitated her collage program, had told her over a friendly cup of coffee one night that Talia would most likely experience a full realm of normal human emotions again.

  When she was ready.

  “But you see,” she pretty much blurted, “the rest of this poster is dominated by deep reds, black and some dull yellow.”

  “Colors of the rainbow,” Sherman said. And Talia felt sorry for him. Because she’d grasped for hope, too.

  “Colors of anger. Of violence. Lashing out. And—” she pointed to the pale yellow “—illness of some kind.”

  Not physical, though. She’d bet her life on that one. Not in Kent’s case. “The yellow surrounds the computer,” she said. “There’s some kind of issue there.”

  Sherman wrote some more, his pen sliding lightly across the paper.

  “And then we have the lighter red and the purple,” she finished softly. “These colors represent peace, love, nurturing.”

  She shouldn’t have looked at him then. Her words stuck in a throat gone suddenly dry.

  “You could think that your son has just used all of the colors of the rainbow,” she said slowly, with a thickness not natural to her. “But look where the lighter reds and purple are...”

  One place. Around a vase of flowers. And the stuffed, green-bordered basketball.

  “Kent obviously feels or has felt a healthy kind of love. It lives and breathes in hi
m.”

  Sherman’s eyes were bright again, and Talia turned back to the poster. “But it’s very clear to me that anger is the dominant force in his life right now. Look at all three of the cars. They’re all black.”

  Pen hit paper across the table again. Watching, Talia said, “I understand that your wife...Kent’s mother...was killed in a car accident.” When Sherman looked up and nodded, she held his gaze and continued, “That would explain one black car. I think the fact that there are three is an indication that a lot of his anger somehow stems from that incident. Or maybe he just saw three cars that spoke to him about his anger.”

  Could be he just liked black cars, too, her gaze tried to tell him. But her words couldn’t. Because she didn’t think it was true. They’d have some green on them, if he liked them, based on the rest of his work.

  Her palms were sweating.

  Could be she’d taken on more than she could handle. “Mr. Paulson—”

  “Call me Sherman,” he said. And added, “Please.”

  She nodded. Took a sip of water. And then another, holding the cap to the water bottle in her hand like some kind of talisman that would ensure her involvement would turn out for Kent’s good.

  Putting down his pen, Sherman also picked up his bottle of water. “So is it my turn?” he asked, his expression dead serious, but not the least bit defensive.

  Talia nodded.

  And tried so hard to find a level of detachment in spite of her need to soak up every morsel he was about to give her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHERMAN WASN’T HIS usual self. He couldn’t find the composure that normally saw him through life—the good and the bad. Sitting in that conference room with Talia Malone, there was no even keel.

  “First,” he said, relying on his notes to help him choose what he had to say, “what you said about Kent giving us messages...” He read what he’d written. “It fits with what his psychologist says. He thinks that Kent’s anger and acting out is his attempt to express something—obviously anger for one thing—that he can’t express in a healthy way. For whatever reason.”

  Her accuracy excited him. Or something about her did. Maybe just the idea that at the end of this exercise was a possible solution. A way to help his son.

  “I’d suggest that you take whatever you get from this meeting today to Kent’s counselor,” she said.

  He already intended to do so.

  “Except for the collage,” she added. “I promised I’d get it back to him by the end of the week. But you can ask him for it. Or take a picture of it here to email to his counselor.”

  “Dr. Jordon,” Sherman told her. “His therapist is Dr. Neil Jordon.” He wanted to tell her everything he could think of. Give it all to her.

  “You might discuss with him whether or not Kent should know that you’ve shown him the collage,” she said now, frowning. “Keeping secrets, even when you think you’re doing it for someone’s good, is sometimes far more harmful than telling would have been. It’s a matter of trust.”

  When he found himself interested in whether there was more to her emphasis on trust than what met the eye, something personal maybe, Sherman looked again to his notes. His allowing Talia Malone to distract him from his purpose—even for a second—had to be a defense mechanism. An attempt to distance himself enough to give Kent the best of him, not merely an emotional reaction.

  “I’ll certainly speak to Dr. Jordon about it,” he said now.

  She nodded. Took a sip of her water. And turned those remarkable wide blue eyes on him. That look could really suck a man in.

  “And most likely Kent, too,” he continued. “We have an open-door policy at our house. I’m not in the habit of keeping secrets from my son, not that I tell him all of my adult stuff, of course—that would be inappropriate.”

  What in the hell?

  Years of practice, a lifetime of practice, of choosing his responses carefully so that he didn’t blurt out words that weren’t meant to be said, gone, just like that?

  He coughed. Ignored the heat rising up his neck and said, “I make it clear I expect that same honesty from him,” he finished, choosing to ignore the middle part of his spiel.

  “That’s good,” Talia Malone said. And then she added, “I have to tell you...it’s important.” Her lips snapped shut. Had she said something she regretted, as well?

  No, it was Kent. That was all. The kid was just so damned...compelling. He drew you in until you felt his pain and would do pretty much anything to ease that pain. So it wasn’t just Sherman. She must be feeling it, too.

  His notes were in focus again. “The time management thing,” he said, trying to find his business mind-set—the one he never had a problem using when he was with clients, either in the office or outside it. “It makes total sense that Kent would approach this project from a time-oriented standpoint.” Another validation that this woman’s work could very well be accurate. Relief was a heady thing. But he couldn’t get ahead of himself. Another lesson he’d learned young that had seen him through some pretty atrocious times.

  “Brooke and I...Brooke, Kent’s mother...” He had to pause then. Not because he chose to, but because he still couldn’t bring himself to talk about her.

  Unresolved issues, the social worker who ran his grief counseling class had said. Maybe from the way she died. From the suddenness. A need to know why. Or who. She’d said only he could know what those issues were.

  His only issue right now was getting help for his son.

  “We’ve always had...and now I have this calendar on the refrigerator. We kept...I keep our appointments on it, mine and Kent’s, and schedule in the time for chores, too. Every Sunday night we sit down at the kitchen table and make a list of everything we need or want to do that week. We go over everything. And then put it on the calendar, which then goes back up on the fridge. That way if something comes up, we can look at the calendar and know exactly where we can slot it in, or move something else if need be.”

  Her gaze had shadowed. Prompting him to blurt, “It’s the way we keep control of our lives,” he said. “We get so much more done, have more time for fun and are generally more successful and thus happy and at peace, because we’re able to choose what we want to do with our time rather than just have our time taken up putting out fires.”

  “Yet, fires happen sometimes,” she said softly with a glance at the collage on the easel next to her.

  Pursing his lips he went back to his notes.

  “How did you arrive at the conclusion that Kent likes old family sitcoms?” He hadn’t seen evidence of a single one of the shows that they watched together. Or that Kent had watched with Brooke. And still watched on occasion.

  Turning to the board, Ms. Malone touched first one clipping and then another. “These pictures all feature the types of families you find on old sitcoms. Every single one of them has a smiling mother, a dad in the background, sometimes facing the camera with a smile, sometimes turned sideways, and at least one kid. If you look, in every one of these it appears that the mother is doing something to please the kid. Each one seems to me to represent the family sitcom formula of an earlier day. A more simple time.”

  “Kent didn’t live back then.” He was being difficult. And there was no reason for it. He wanted her help. Had a pretty good idea he needed her help, though heaven help him, he couldn’t explain why she’d been able to breach walls that no one else, including a professional therapist, had been able to breach.

  But then, that was the point of her particular program, wasn’t it?

  “No, but there are plenty of cable stations that play reruns,” she said. “And as I said from the beginning, I’m not necessarily right. I’m only here to give you my impressions and I’ve just told you what I based those on.”

  Falling back in his chair, Sherman twirled
his pen between two fingers and said, “Your impressions are right.”

  * * *

  SHE HAD TO get out of there. She was in too deep. Falling fast. Heady and needing time to assimilate. Her interpretation was spot-on.

  She’d sensed that it was. But her instincts had been known to let her down. In a big way.

  And...

  She liked Kent’s father. Loved how much he loved her son.

  She’d done what she’d come to do. Ascertained that the boy was fine. Well loved. Well cared for.

  It was time for her to bow out.

  “Kent’s mother used to watch all of those old shows with him,” Sherman Paulson was saying.

  He couldn’t be “Sherman” to her. That would make it personal.

  She needed to like this guy professionally. So that she could be sure that she was reading him right, where Kent was concerned.

  Giving herself a mental shake at the internal confusion she was causing herself, she listened to him talk about the woman who’d mothered her son when she’d chosen not to do so.

  “From the time he was a baby, she’d sit with him and watch old reruns. Or have them playing in the background while we cleaned or did other things. She was a big believer in the theory that we’re shaped by the television we watch. She insisted that those shows would instill good family values in Kent.”

  Wow. She hadn’t dared hope for Kent’s home life to be this good. She’d made the right choice, giving him up.

  Relief flooded her. And some sadness, too.

  “My wife was a walking mother machine,” Kent’s father said, his gaze somewhat distant now. “Everything she did was done with forethought. I’m the same way. It’s one of the things that drew us together, our desire to think first and avoid making choices that we’d regret.”

  The exact opposite of her.

  “She applied the philosophy to parenting, and it worked wonders.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “When I hear myself talking it’s no wonder Kent’s angry. Look what he lost.”