Kitabı oku: «Dad In Blue», sayfa 2
When he came to his senses, self-reproach left a bitter taste in his mouth. What had he been thinking? That she was going to embrace him? And, if she had, would he have ruined what surely would have been a gesture of gratitude by covering her mouth with his own?
Lord, he had to be the biggest fool in town. If ever there was a woman who was off-limits, it was Samantha Underwood. Because if he ever told her the truth, she would never smile at him again.
“I can’t thank you enough, Chief Garibaldi,” she said. “You’ve taken such a weight off my mind.”
Carlo didn’t want her thanks. What he did want was for her to go, so he could think clearly again.
When he helped her into her coat, his hand accidentally grazed her cheek. He heard her indrawn breath of surprise in the second before he pulled away from the contact.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked, feeling decidedly shaky.
“You meet Jeffrey. Are you available Saturday morning?”
“Is ten o’clock okay?”
“Ten o’clock would be perfect.” She handed him a piece of paper with her address and phone number.
At the front door, he forced himself to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry about James,” he said. She’d never know how sorry. “He was a good man. It was a privilege to serve with him.”
The sorrow that filled her beautiful brown eyes let him know that, despite the spark of interest he thought he glimpsed earlier, her heart still belonged firmly to her late husband.
“Thank you.”
Carlo didn’t know what was worse. Receiving Samantha Underwood’s thanks, or realizing that, for the next several months, he would be spending a lot of time in her company.
“I really wanted to pay my respects, after James died,” he felt compelled to say. Unfortunately, his injuries had made that impossible.
She nodded her understanding. “And I meant to visit you in the hospital. Thank you again, Chief Garibaldi.”
He followed her out onto the front porch and watched while she climbed into her car and drove away. He was still standing there five minutes later, eyes shielded against the sun, when his brothers arrived.
“Did you speak to him?” her mother asked the minute Samantha walked through the front door.
Samantha shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet. “Yes.”
“And?”
She turned to face the older woman. “He’ll do it.”
Maxine Miller’s hands went to her heart. “Oh, thank goodness.”
“Yes,” Samantha echoed hollowly. “Thank goodness.”
Her mother frowned. “You don’t sound happy about it.”
The euphoria she’d felt after Carlo Garibaldi had agreed to be Jeffrey’s buddy had worn off during the drive home. While she was still thrilled that he’d agreed to help her, she was less than happy about the method she’d used to earn that agreement.
“That’s because I guilted him into it.”
“How did you do that?”
“By basically telling him that he was the only man who could do the job. He would have been heartless to refuse.”
“A less than honorable man would have had no problem refusing,” Maxine pointed out.
“Yes,” Samantha agreed. “And, as we all know, Carlo Garibaldi is an honorable man. Which just proves my original argument.”
A look of sympathy crossed her mother’s face. “You did the right thing, honey. In this case, the ends definitely justify the means.”
“Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.” Samantha sighed. “Where’s Jeffrey?”
“Upstairs in his room.”
Her already heavy heart grew heavier. “I suppose it was too much to hope he’d be outside, playing with one of his friends.”
“Oh, Sam.” Maxine’s eyes filled with tears.
Samantha felt her throat thicken, and she quickly looked away. Though she longed to, she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of a good cry. She was afraid that, once she started, she would never stop.
“I hate to see you worry like this,” her mother said. “You have to understand that what happened to Jeffrey is a tragedy few children his age experience. It’s only natural he would withdraw the way he has.”
“I didn’t.” Nineteen years earlier, under circumstances eerily similar to the ones that had cost James his life, Samantha’s father had been killed in the line of duty.
“You were thirteen when your father died, not seven. And you had your two older sisters to help you through.”
“Maybe. But it’s been a year, Mom. What should have been the hardest part is already behind us. The first Thanksgiving without James. The first Christmas. The first birthday. Yet Jeffrey isn’t getting any better. If anything, he’s getting worse.”
“Have patience, honey. And faith. He’ll come back to us. I know he will.”
Samantha wished she could be so certain. She drew a long, shuddering breath. It tore at her heart to think of her child being so alone. Before James’s death, Jeffrey had been so outgoing, so alive. And now…
Swallowing, she said, “To tell you the truth, Mom, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
She was a nurse. She’d dedicated her life to helping others. It tortured her that she couldn’t do anything to help her own son. She could bandage a cut, soothe a fevered brow, but she had no idea how to heal the bruising of Jeffrey’s soul. With every day that passed, he slipped further and further away from her. No matter how hard she tried, Samantha couldn’t reach him.
“Would you like me to come over for a couple of evenings this week, so you can get out on your own?” Maxine asked. “Maybe some time by yourself would help.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. I worry about Jeffrey whether I’m with him or not.”
“I could just come and keep you company.”
Once again, Samantha found herself blinking back tears. “I’d like that, Mom. Very much.”
“I think going to Chief Garibaldi was a step in the right direction. Having Jeffrey spend time with someone who knew and worked with his father might just be able to bring about the breakthrough we’ve been praying for.”
“I certainly hope so,” Samantha said fervently. So much rode on this relationship working out. The stakes were incredibly high. Too high?
“What’s he like?” Maxine asked.
“Who?”
“Chief Garibaldi.”
Samantha’s heart thudded as she recalled her first glimpse of him. “Oh.”
“Well?” Maxine gazed at her pointedly.
“He’s…just like James described him.” And so much more.
“His picture was in the paper last week. He was honored for his actions that day.”
“I know,” Samantha said softly. “I saw it.”
After speaking to Mayor Boyer that morning, Samantha had dug the newspaper in question out of the pile to be placed at the curb on recycling day. Though grainy, the photograph on the front page had arrested her attention. She’d seen his cap of unruly black hair, his broad forehead, his piercing brown eyes that gleamed with intelligence, his classic Roman nose and his determined chin, and had known exactly what to expect when she met him: a man who, like her husband, was filled with an unswerving dedication to right all wrongs.
What she hadn’t expected was his smoldering sensuality, or the helpless way she had responded to it.
Guilt stabbed at her as she faced a truth she’d been trying to hide from since the moment she’d laid eyes on her son’s buddy. Her husband, whom she’d loved more than life itself, had been gone just over a year, and she’d stood on Carlo Garibaldi’s front doorstep, gaping at him like a hormone-struck teenager. Her son needed help desperately, and all she’d been able to think about was the breadth of his shoulders, the depth of his brown eyes, and the fullness of his lips. What had gotten into her?
She supposed it had something to do with the fact that he was nothing like she had anticipated. When he’d answered his door, her first reaction, before awareness set in, had been amazement that he wasn’t taller. After the way James had sung Carlo’s praises, Samantha had expected him to be almost Paul Bunyanesque in stature. To discover that he was a good two inches shy of the six-foot mark had been a surprise.
What he lacked in height, however, he more than made up for with his dark good looks, sheer force of personality and well-muscled physique. He’d looked so strong, so capable, that Samantha had found herself repressing a ridiculous desire to lean her head on his shoulder and tell him all her troubles.
When she’d realized how he affected her, she’d almost turned on her heel and walked away. Instead, for Jeffrey’s sake, she’d forced herself to offer him her hand.
Since there was no way she could talk to her mother about this, Samantha decided that a change of subject was in order. “When do you leave on your cruise?” she asked.
“A week from tomorrow.”
Because Lawrence Miller had been killed on Thanksgiving Day, Maxine always took a cruise over the holiday—the exception being the preceding year because it had been too soon after James’s death. Getting away was her mother’s way of dealing with her loss.
“You really don’t mind me going?” Maxine asked.
“Why should I mind?”
Her mother shrugged. “I’m not sure I should be leaving you alone just now.”
“I’m not alone, Mom,” Samantha said gently. “I have Jeffrey. We’ll be just fine.”
She was stretching the truth somewhat. Things wouldn’t be truly fine until Jeffrey was himself again. But the last thing Samantha wanted was for her mother to worry about the two of them while she was on her cruise.
“If you say so.” The doubt in Maxine’s voice made her ambivalence clear.
“I say so.”
“If only your sisters didn’t live so far away.”
Bridget, Samantha’s oldest sister, was a financial analyst on Wall Street. Colleen, the middle child, was an electrical engineer and lived in Los Angeles. Both were so wrapped up in their careers that they rarely made it back home.
“It’s a sign of the times,” Samantha said.
“A sad sign, if you ask me,” her mother replied.
Silence reigned while Maxine followed Samantha out to the kitchen. Against her will, Samantha’s thoughts returned to Carlo Garibaldi and her reaction to him. Her mother had grieved for nineteen years now for the man she had lost. To the best of Samantha’s knowledge, in all that time Maxine had never looked at another man.
Samantha had looked long and hard at Carlo Garibaldi. What did that make her?
Her unwelcome awareness of him wasn’t important, she told herself. She certainly wasn’t going to act on it. All that mattered was that Jeffrey get well again.
Pairing Jeffrey with Carlo Garibaldi was a last-ditch effort to break down the walls he had erected between himself and the rest of the world. With all her heart and soul, Samantha prayed it would work. Because, while she herself didn’t know how to reach her son, she was certain of one thing. If someone didn’t get through to Jeffrey soon, she stood a good chance of losing him altogether.
Chapter 2
Hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, Carlo slowly walked the twelve blocks separating his home from the Underwood residence. Overhead, the sky was covered by a blanket of gray clouds that did or did not, depending upon which meteorologist one favored, hold the promise of the first snow of the season.
When he reached the foot of the cement path leading up to 221 Lincoln Drive, he came to a reluctant halt. At first glance, the house where Samantha Underwood lived with her son looked a lot like his own: older—probably built in the early twenties—constructed of brick, square in shape and two-and-a-half stories tall. It was only when Carlo peered closer that he glimpsed the subtle signs of neglect; signs all pointing to the absence of the man who had been in charge of its upkeep.
Leaves from an old oak tree carpeted the yard. The forest-green paint on the shutters flanking the front windows had begun to flake. A jagged crack marred one of the windows of the detached two-car garage.
Carlo shivered when an icy wind stung his cheeks and snuck its way into the folds of his jacket. Once again, he pondered the wisdom of the decision that had led him here. He’d half decided to walk back home when Samantha opened her front door and stared out at him.
She wore a pair of brown corduroy pants and a matching cotton sweater with a deep V neck that drew his gaze to the long, slender column of her throat. Her straight blond hair had been combed back off her forehead to fall freely to her shoulders.
At the sight of her lovely face, Carlo’s breath clogged in his throat. She was like the sunlight to a man who had been trapped in a dark cave for far too long. Try as he might, he couldn’t look away.
Damn. The awareness was still there. If anything, it had intensified. He’d hoped—prayed, actually—that it had just been a fluke, the result of a desperate man latching onto the sight of a beautiful woman standing on his doorstep. Especially now that he knew the impossibility of there ever being anything between them.
But it wasn’t a fluke. The way she made him feel inside wasn’t fading. Which meant he had to ignore it.
“Are you going to come in?” she called.
Since the choice of beating a hasty retreat had been taken away from him, Carlo moved up the walkway and climbed the steps of her front porch.
“Sorry I’m late.”
That she looked happy to see him made his breathing grow even more erratic. Actually, maybe relieved was a better description, an impression she confirmed with her next words.
“For a minute, I thought you weren’t coming.”
“For a minute, I almost didn’t,” he answered honestly.
Hand still on the brass knob of her front door, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Having second thoughts?”
“And third and fourth and fifth. Aren’t you?”
“No,” she replied, without a hint of hesitation.
The way she stood firm in her conviction that he was the one person who could help her son illustrated how deceptive appearances could be. To look at her, a man might mistakenly believe that Samantha Underwood was as delicate as blown glass. But, though she looked slight and insubstantial, the woman had an inner strength that transcended her seeming fragility. Something told Carlo she was as fiercely and stubbornly independent as his sister. But then, she would have had to be, to survive the past year.
Unfortunately, her strength made her all the more attractive to him. He never had been drawn to women who clung tighter than the rose vines that climbed the trellis in his front yard every summer.
“So you’re having second thoughts,” she commented.
About more than just his promise to help her son. “Yes.”
“Why? Don’t you like children?”
“I like them well enough. It’s the responsibility that’s getting to me.”
She seemed to mull his words over. “From everything I’ve heard about you, you’re a man who thrives on responsibility. You wouldn’t be chief of police otherwise.”
A year ago, that had been more than true. He’d once been a man who’d prided himself on his ability to look out for others. The operative word being once.
“That may be so,” he said, “but while I’m responsible for directing the actions of the people under my charge, I always leave their mental welfare to others. I’m no mental health expert, Mrs. Underwood. I’ve never pretended to be.”
She seemed to relax. “He’s just a little boy, Chief Garibaldi. A lost little boy who needs a man’s guidance. That’s all. How about we leave his mental health to his grief counselor?”
Put that way, the task didn’t seem so daunting. “Carlo,” he said.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The name’s Carlo. Since we’re going to be seeing each other rather frequently, it only makes sense to drop the formalities.”
She stood aside. “Would you like to come in…Carlo? And please, call me Samantha.”
He stepped into a small foyer, the walls of which were lined with framed photographs. While Samantha collected his coat and hung it in a closet, Carlo rubbed his hands together to restore their warmth and allowed his gaze to rove over the gallery. Some of the pictures were very old, a few appearing to have been taken more than a century earlier; others had been shot more recently.
One in particular caught his eye. In it, Samantha smiled her radiant smile at the camera. Her arms were wrapped around a small boy who wasn’t more than three or four, and her chin rested lovingly atop his head. The openness of that smile, and the look of supreme contentment and quiet joy in her clear, brown eyes, held him riveted.
Suddenly, he wasn’t in such a hurry to leave. Not only did he want to stick around, but he wanted to see her smile that way again. Worse, he wanted that smile to be for him only. He wanted to take away the cares and worries weighing so heavily upon the pair of shoulders that appeared too delicate to bear them.
And he really was losing it, if a mere picture could affect him so deeply.
The click of the latch on the closet door signaled that Samantha had finished hanging up his coat. Tearing his gaze away from the photograph, he turned to face her.
The picture’s impact didn’t even come close to how she affected him in the flesh.
“Why’d you grow a beard?” she surprised him by asking.
His hand automatically went to the growth covering his cheeks. Since the day he’d handed in his request for a leave of absence, he hadn’t shaved or gone to the barber. In that short period of time, he’d managed to cultivate a fairly respectable beard, and for the first time in years his hair now brushed the collar of his shirt.
The question was, how had Samantha known that his beard was a recent addition?
“I saw your picture in the newspaper,” she added, as if reading his mind.
“Oh.”
What had she thought when she’d seen it? Had she wished it were her husband, alive and well, receiving the award instead of him? If he were in her shoes, he knew that was what he would have wished.
“I decided I needed a change of pace,” he said.
“It suits you.”
“Thank you.” He felt oddly pleased.
“Jeffrey’s in the den,” she said. “I’ve prepared him for your visit. I want to warn you, though, that he probably won’t respond very…well, positively to your presence. At least at first. Don’t let it discourage you. Would you like to follow me?”
The house was neat and comfortably furnished. Samantha led him past a living room, through a brightly decorated kitchen and into a room that was obviously the den. A fire crackled in the brick fireplace, the sound and smell of burning wood both welcoming and comforting.
Deliberately forcing his awareness of his hostess to the back of his mind, Carlo turned his attention to the child sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa. Jeffrey Underwood wore blue jeans and a Steel City Wrestling Alliance sweatshirt. His head was bent, his gaze focused on the coffee table. There was a stillness about him that Carlo had never seen before in an eight-year-old. He seemed small for his age, and like his mother, way too thin. He was also unnaturally quiet.
“Jeffrey,” Samantha said gently. “Remember how we talked about finding you a buddy to do things with?”
The boy nodded without raising his head.
“Well, he’s here. I think you’re going to like him very much.”
Samantha gestured to Carlo, and he crossed to the sofa, where he took a seat next to the child. Though the boy didn’t move, Carlo could sense him mentally shrinking from the contact.
“Hi, Jeffrey,” he said. “I’m Carlo.”
The boy refused to look at him.
“Jeffrey,” Samantha prompted.
“Hello,” the child said in a flat voice.
“Carlo worked with your father,” Samantha offered. “He’s Bridgeton’s police chief.”
Jeffrey raised his head, and Carlo saw a flash of emotion in the child’s eyes. That was a good sign, at least. It meant he wasn’t totally withdrawn.
“My dad’s dead,” Jeffrey announced baldly. “He’s never coming home. And I don’t want a buddy.”
“Jeffrey!” To Carlo, Samantha added, “I’m sorry. He’s not usually so rude.”
In Samantha Underwood’s eyes, Carlo saw the pain she fought so hard to hide. And a worry that tugged at his heart.
“No need to apologize,” he said lightly, although his conviction that he wasn’t the person who could help this child had grown. Samantha might believe him capable of working miracles, but Carlo knew better. From the looks of him, Jeffrey was going to fight him all the way.
“Jeffrey’s just being honest about his feelings,” he continued. “I, for one, always appreciate honesty. I’m hoping, though, that once he gets to know me, he’ll change his mind about wanting a buddy.”
Jeffrey’s response was to pick up a toy car from the top of the coffee table. Making revving noises, he began running it across the smooth wood surface. Though he didn’t say the words, they vibrated on the air nevertheless. Fat chance.
Despite the fact that Carlo was fairly certain the battle had already been lost, he wasn’t ready to raise the white flag just yet. He owed Samantha, and her son, that much. Hoping to capture the boy’s attention, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a pocketknife and a small piece of white pine.
“Do you know how to whittle? My grandfather taught me when I was about your age. It looks hard, but it’s really very easy, once you get the hang of it.”
Though Jeffrey seemed focused on the car that was now making circles on the floor, Carlo could swear the boy was watching him out of the corner of one eye. Encouraged, he glanced over at Samantha.
“Do you have something I could use to catch the wood chips?”
She handed him a magazine, which he opened on his lap. In a matter of minutes, the knife moving deftly in his hands, Carlo had fashioned a man’s head. He offered it to Jeffrey, who held it for a few seconds before giving it back.
“Would you like to learn to whittle?” Carlo asked.
Jeffrey gave an indifferent shrug.
A sudden thought occurred to him. “If you’d like, I could buy you a pocketknife of your very own—that is, if it’s okay with your mother.”
The boy shrugged again. “Maybe.”
Jeffrey uttered the word in the tone kids used to indulge their elders when they found the subject under discussion too boring for words, but didn’t want to hurt any feelings. Carlo wasn’t fooled; he’d seen the interest that had flashed in Jeffrey’s eyes. It had been brief, lasting only the fraction of a second, but it had definitely been there. After all, what eight-year-old boy could resist the lure of a pocketknife? When Carlo had been eight, weapons of any shape or size, even sticks and stones, had been endlessly fascinating.
Elated at his tiny victory, and thinking that maybe things weren’t so hopeless after all, Carlo looked up at Samantha for permission. “Is it okay if I buy Jeffrey a pocketknife?”
The gratitude in her eyes took his breath away. That the emotion was for him was enough to render Carlo speechless. It also made the blood race through his veins and obliterated all rational thought as he stared at her and tried to remember what question he had asked.
She was the first to look away, her fingers plucking at a nonexistent piece of lint on her sweater. “I think Jeffrey’s old enough to handle the responsibility. So yes, you can buy him a pocketknife.”
A deep breath did little to restore Carlo’s equilibrium, or lower his heart rate. “It’s settled, then.” He turned to Jeffrey. “I’ll bring it with me on my next visit.”
Jeffrey didn’t say anything. Still, Carlo couldn’t help feeling a faint glimmer of hope.
Samantha pulled a tray of chocolate chip cookies from the oven. Lowering her face, she basked in the warmth of their heat and breathed in their comforting aroma. Some people ate when they were nervous. Others wore out the carpet with their pacing. Samantha baked.
How was it going in there? she wondered as she closed the oven door. From her position at the kitchen’s center cooking island, she could see into the den if she leaned forward far enough and craned her neck like a contortionist. She did so and saw Carlo reading a book to her son. Though Jeffrey seemed to be paying more attention to the car he continued to push around on the floor, every once in a while he grew still as he listened. She could swear that, when Carlo read the part about the evil witch getting turned into a toadstool, Jeffrey actually smiled.
Her heart ballooned with hope. This was the first time her son had responded to someone outside their immediate family. She had done the right thing by going to Carlo Garibaldi. She could feel it in her bones. If things continued to go well, she just might get her miracle. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she wasn’t afraid to trust that everything would turn out okay.
Ignoring the growing crick in her neck, her gaze returned to the man who had occupied so much of her thoughts over the past couple of days. Everything about him was larger than life: his broad shoulders, his muscled arms, his stubborn chin. The faded jeans that fit his thighs like a second skin, and the white cotton shirt that he wore with the sleeves rolled back to his forearms only accentuated his maleness. He was definitely the most forceful man she had ever met.
He turned the page of the book, and she followed the movement with fascination. His fingers were long and capable looking. Without consciously summoning the memory, she vividly pictured the way they had moved so expertly over the piece of wood he’d held earlier. From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine how they would skillfully caress a woman’s body. Samantha’s stomach fluttered at the unbidden thought.
It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. She could easily think of two or three movie stars who made her feel the same way when she watched them on screen. She didn’t lose any sleep over them, and she wasn’t going to lose any over the new man in her son’s life.
Carlo chose that moment to look up, caught her watching him and flashed her a grin. Samantha went all hot inside. Resisting the urge to fan herself like a menopausal woman in the middle of a hot flash, she pulled back out of view and busied herself removing the cookies from the tray.
She shouldn’t be looking at him that way, she told herself. She had no business looking at any man that way, had never been tempted to, until she’d met Carlo.
She’d never felt this way when James looked at her. She’d never burned inside like a forest fire raging out of control. She’d never yearned…for exactly what she couldn’t say.
Her love for James had been gentle and sweet. It had been quiet and steady, a rock upon which to depend in this crazy, topsy-turvy world. It had been real and lasting. There had been nothing frivolous about it.
And every thought she had about Carlo Garibaldi that didn’t relate to her son definitely fell into the frivolous category.
Even though the attraction was purely physical and meant nothing, it still felt like a betrayal. She loved her husband. She missed him with every fiber of her being. How, then, could she fantasize about the touch of another man?
The love she and James had shared was a love to last a lifetime. But it hadn’t lasted a lifetime. Because of a cruel twist of fate, they’d had only ten short years together. She wasn’t about to sully James’s memory by giving in to a foolish infatuation.
It was time for more baking, she told herself, and began mixing up a batch of snickerdoodles. Wryly she acknowledged that if she didn’t calm down soon, the welcoming committee at church was going to have more than its share of refreshments for their reception tomorrow.
She didn’t hear Carlo enter the kitchen. When she turned and nearly collided with his warm, hard body, she let out a gasp and her hand went to her heart.
“I did call your name,” he said with a smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I didn’t hear.” Then, after a steadying breath, which helped slow her heartbeat appreciably, she asked, “Done already?”
“I think that’ll do it for today,” he confirmed. “I don’t want to push my luck.”
“What’s Jeffrey doing?”
“Watching a Disney movie.”
Because she didn’t know how to act around him, and because he made her feel so unsettled, Samantha picked up a plate mounded high with cookies and clumsily thrust it at him. “Would you like one? They’re fresh from the oven.”
“Thanks. They smell delicious.” He took a bite, chewed and his smile widened. “Incredible. Is that real butter I taste?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She watched in fascination while he quickly devoured three cookies, then demurred when she offered him a fourth, saying he didn’t want to spoil his appetite for lunch. The appreciation in his eyes warmed her heart.
Then he spoiled it all by reaching out a hand and brushing it across her forehead. Samantha nearly dropped the plate of cookies in her haste to get away from the contact.
“Don’t!” she cried.
“Sorry,” he said stiffly, pulling his hand back, and she knew she had offended him. “You had some flour on your forehead. I was just brushing it off.”
She forced an uneasy laugh. “I’m the one who should apologize. I don’t know what made me overreact like that.”
But she did know. It was Carlo and the way she had no control over her body’s response to him. And the guilt that swamped her because she couldn’t.
“Forget about it,” he dismissed, adding what had to be the understatement of the year. “We’re both a little on edge today.”
“You did a good job in there,” she told him, feeling more in control now that she wasn’t standing so close to him. “I think you made some progress.”
Carlo gave a short laugh. “That depends how you measure progress. To my way of thinking, I made a millimeter’s worth of headway, and we still have miles to go.”
“Baby steps,” she said.
“Baby steps?”
“You take one step forward, teeter for a bit, fall down on your butt and climb back to your feet. Over and over again, until you get where you’re going. Baby steps.”
