Her kids and his try to play Cupid
Jake
To Jacob Adams, Maddie was absolutely the most beautiful girl in the world. She was practically perfect, inside and out. Just thinking about her always brought on a smile. There was no doubt she was the best thing, if truth be told, in his currently somewhat miserable life. But this isn't a story about some hapless sap and his dream girl valentine, not at all. Maddie was nine years old, and she was Jake's daughter.
Jake was a single father, single since two years before, when Madelyn's mother was hit and killed by an out of control pickup truck. Sarah was simply standing at her bus stop, waiting to come home. The driver of the truck had a stroke and died on the spot. It was nobody's fault. Sometimes shit just happens.
Sarah could have driven to work that day, but she'd taken the bus because she planned to stay late for drinks to celebrate a coworker's birthday. She was always conscientious like that. She didn't want to drink and drive, or to inconvenience Jake by asking him to drive her, even though Jake wouldn't have minded at all.
Sarah's death just about wrecked Jake. In a way, it was good she wasn't around to see how poorly he was coping. He tried to hold it together well enough to keep up appearances, and he felt like he was doing a pretty good job of always being there for Maddie. But inside he felt empty, just a shell, unwilling and unable to make plans beyond getting through this day, and then the next, and the next. Everyone told him grief can be hard. He was having a hard time believing it would ever get any better.
Of course Maddie missed her mom, and she loved her dad more than anything, but this September 4th was not a day to be sad. Maddie was excited because this was the first day of a brand new school year, and she'd made a new friend. She couldn't wait to tell her dad all about it.
"Her name's Tara, and she has a purple backpack, just like me, and purple shoes just like me, and she wants purple hair too, but her mom won't let her, just like you won't let me." The new fourth-grader gushed. She went on, "and she has a little brother, and a cat named 'Whiskers,' and she just has a mom, like I just have a dad, and I didn't even tell you the best part..."
"What's that?"
"She only lives six houses away, right behind that big red house across from the park. So we can walk to school together every day!"
"Wow! That sounds great!" He was sincerely happy Maddie had made a new friend, and having a girl her age in the neighborhood she could play with was good news too. Up until now, there hadn't been any kids her age close by.
Maddie and Tara soon grew practically inseparable. They played together after school, and often on weekends too. Jake met Tara's mother, briefly. She had walked down the block to tell her daughter to come home for dinner. Maddie had given Tara's mother a contact phone number, so she could call Jake if needed, but she mislaid it, and neglected to enter it into her phone.
The mother's name was Renee. Jake thought she seemed...okay, if somewhat distracted. She was tall and thin, kind of a dirty blonde, with curly shoulder length hair and pale gray eyes. A nice-enough looking woman, in Jake's opinion, but she seemed humorless. He didn't feel like he had any chemistry with her at all. Aside from the lack of personality mesh, physically, she was almost the opposite of the curvier dark-haired girls he was typically attracted to. Those eyes stayed with him, though. It was like they were trying to tell him something. He wasn't sure what.
Jake wasn't really looking for a woman to date, anyway. He knew he wasn't over Sarah. He didn't want to saddle Maddie with a new "stepmonster" either. Did he ever get horny? Of course he did. He was a perfectly healthy 36-year-old male, after all. He figured he would probably want to hook up with somebody someday, but there was plenty of time for that when Maddie was a little older. He was in no hurry. If the urge hit him, he had the girls on the internet and his left hand to get him through.
Did Jake ever get lonely? That question was a little bit tougher. Of course he had Maddie, and his job, and a few friends and family. Mostly he didn't have too much time to think about it. But in the quiet moments it did sometimes hit him that it would be nice to have someone to share the little things in life with, and the big things too. Sarah had been waiting to come home when the accident ended her life. Ever since then, Jake felt like he was still waiting to come home too, at least his heart was.
As for love, Jake had grown a little cynical about love. His life with Sarah hadn't been perfect, he knew that. But still, he felt like they did love each other. After the hard time she'd had while pregnant with Maddie, they were told not to try for any other kids, but that only made Maddie more precious. He didn't love Sarah any less for it. When he thought about love now, it seemed like a promise that was more than likely not to last, whether because it got cruelly ripped away, like it was from him, or whether it gradually withered and died, as he'd seen with so many others he knew.
Renee
Renee wasn't exactly bowled over by Jake on first impression, either. She'd been annoyed with herself for mislaying that phone number, and annoyed that Tara did not come back home at 6:00 p.m. like they'd agreed, so she wasn't really focusing on him at all. She didn't particularly like beards on guys, especially long ones, and Jake had been growing his out for two years. She was happy Tara made a friend in their new neighborhood, and she liked Maddie well enough, but that didn't mean she had to make any kind of a special effort to be buddy buddy with Maddie's dad.
Jake had a nice smile. Aside from the beard, he had good hair. He was not quite as tall as she preferred, but he was tall enough, average. He seemed like basically an average guy, polite enough, professional. The house and car looked like he was doing OK although not super-successful. But he also seemed sad. She didn't notice him checking her out like he was interested. She wasn't looking, but even if she was, she didn't sense any spark between them.
Renee knew Maddie's mom had died, and she felt sorry for the girl, but that just made her more careful not to send out any signals around Jake that he might misinterpret. It would be far better in the long run for both girls if their parents could get along with each other at arm's length rather than risk something messy. Renee was comfortable keeping people at arm's length. She wasn't looking for a relationship. Between her job and two small kids she barely had any time for herself, much less a relationship. Besides, after how things went between her and Tara and Cooper's dad, she didn't feel all that confident about trusting her taste in men.
Renee's ex was Greek. Renee had grown up in Eagle Creek, moved away for college, and never looked back. Costas was a handsome, charming foreign student she met and fell in love with at school. Everything was mostly good for the first few years. They had Tara and Cooper and then Costas lost his job. He got another job, then lost that one too. It was an old story, and not any less painful for following a well-worn pattern. He started drinking, then drinking more and more. He gambled away their savings. The bank took back their house. He talked about moving the family back to Greece. When she rejected that idea he got angry and hit her.
Renee never felt like her upbringing had been ideal, but her folks both made sure she was raised with enough self-respect not to take a beating from anyone. When Costas crossed that line it flipped a switch in her and she packed up the kids and moved out that night. Just like she never looked back when leaving Eagle Creek, she never looked back when leaving Costas. He made it easy. That chickenshit ran away to Greece on the next plane afraid she'd press charges. After 18 months of trying to clean up his messes and scratch something together in the city for herself and her kids, the standing offer from Renee's sister to take them in started looking better and better.
Renee's big sister Beth still lived back in Eagle Creek, in the house they both grew up in. She owned and ran their old family business, a restaurant. Renee could move back and help out while she got back on her feet. Beth and her partner Jill had plenty of room in the big house, and could use the help with the restaurant, so Renee and the kids moved back. Fourteen years before, she'd sworn that the closest she would ever come to the restaurant business was walking in and out of the door as a customer, but now that she was back in it, strangely, nobody was more surprised than Renee to find that she was actually kind of enjoying it.
Coming back to live in the same house, working in the same restaurant with her sister, in the same town where she grew up, it all felt like kind of a reset. Of course she had kids now, and it was weird seeing Tara so much like she remembered herself as a child. But she felt kind of like maybe she could keep what was good for her there in Eagle Creek, and build on it, rebuild a life for herself and her kids, and avoid the mistakes she'd made before.
Yes, in the back of her mind she did believe it would be best for the kids if they could grow up with a father. But they had their Aunt Beth, and Jill seemed alright too. It had been almost two years since she'd been free from Costas. Maybe she could think about dating again, if the right guy came along, but she wasn't in any hurry. She figured if she had to wait until her kids moved out, that was OK too, and one thing she definitely remembered about Eagle Creek was that when she'd lived there before, the dating pool had definitely seemed pretty shallow.
As for love, Renee still believed in love. She knew it was real, at least for some people. She'd just picked the wrong one. That was her problem. Would the right one come along for her? Maybe someday. Hopefully someday. But right now she had two kids to take care of and the restaurant business to learn/relearn. There wasn't time to worry about love or romance. Maybe the occasional cute guy in a Netflix show or random stranger in a store could give her a slight tingle, but she tried, and mostly succeeded at trying not to dwell on it.
The Girls Hatch a Plot
Like many young girls, Maddie and Tara had lively imaginations. Two weeks before Halloween, Tara's aunt Beth showed them a fun old movie she remembered with lively young girls at the center. It was
The Parent Trap
and their situation was similar enough that the girls took the hint to heart almost immediately. Did Beth intend to plant that seed? To this day, ever cagey about such things, she still refuses to say.
"What if my mom married your dad?" Tara was the first to say what they both were thinking.
"Then we could be sisters!"
"Ohmygod that would be so awesome!"
"We could share a room, and have bunk beds, and be together all the time!"
