It's a Miracle

It's a Miracle

Author's Note: I originally titled this story Running Late, but after it took an unexpected turn, this title seemed to jump out at me. I hope you enjoy it.

*****

"There's my handsome son! How was your first day on the job?"

"Good. Real good, in fact. And I thank can't thank you enough for picking Emma up after school. I feel terrible not being there for her first day."

"Of course. But it's not like this was Kindergarten or anything. She's in fourth grade now, so while I understand wanting to be there, it really wasn't a big deal."

"True. But even so, thanks, Mom."

"So did you arrest any criminals or thwart a bank robbery?" his mom asked, a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face.

Her son laughed then told her neither of those things had happened on his first day as a police officer in the town of Bloomington, Illinois.

"But I did pull someone over for speeding."

"Let me guess. Was it the mayor?"

Her son laughed again and assured her it wasn't.

"No. But I let her off with a warning even though she was doing 48 in a 35."

"Thirteen over the limit and no ticket? Oh, my. Someone's getting soft in his old age," his mother teased.

"She was very apologetic and admitted she was speeding as soon as I approached her vehicle. She told me she was always running late for something then immediately said she knew that wasn't an excuse."

"You know how I feel about the law," his mother replied. "I don't think it's always ironclad, and my sense is that that's one reason police officers have discretion in situations like that."

"I agree. I know we have to apply the law fairly across the board, but laws should be deterrents rather than rigid, ironclad rules. It was clear, sunny, and there was no traffic, so I didn't see her speeding as any kind of menace to society, although I'm sure some who see it differently would remind me that next time she might run over a child. But this was my call, and that's how I saw it."

Now his mom laughed and told him she agreed with him. Even though it was her heartfelt belief that 'the rules were the rules', something she'd instilled in her son his entire life, she also believed there were times when such discretion was more valuable than just enforcing the rules. Right or wrong, those values had served him well in high school where he lettered in football and track, then in the US Marine Corps where he'd been a military police officer.

Since returning to his hometown of Bloomington, Officer Rick Gates had gone through the police academy while living at home, and was now wearing the uniform of the city's police force and had his own place.

"And...it didn't hurt that she was also one of the prettiest women I've even seen," Rick added.

"Oh, okay. Now I understand!" his mom teased. "So did you by any chance ask her out?"

Rick laughed then said, "No. For starters that would be very unprofessional. But I did check her driver's license and to my huge surprise, she was 41 years old. I was shocked because she looked a whole lot closer to my age, but the ID doesn't lie."

"Well, you can't blame me for wanting you to find someone, can you?" his mom replied with a sweet smile.

Her son really did understand. He and his former girlfriend, Ellen Thompson, had gotten married right after graduation, and Emma came long just six months later, a sure sign that Ellen was pregnant while still in school. She happily followed Rick to Camp Pendleton, California, where he served four years after finishing boot camp and MP school.

Rick then reenlisted and was sent to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. Two years into his second enlistment, Ellen told him one evening out of the blue that she'd had enough of being 'nothing but a wife and mother'. A long, emotional talk ensued, but after several days of trying to convince her stay, Ellen walked out of their lives and hadn't been heard from since. Rick finished out the last two years of his enlistment and headed back home to Illinois.

Emma was just getting over the devastation of losing her mother without having actually lost her, and it was her grandmother's greatest joy to be there for the little nine-year old girl she so dearly loved—and her son who was now 27 years old—and a city police officer.

Rick laughed at his mom's reply just as his daughter came into the kitchen and saw her father.

"Daddy!" she said as she ran over to him and hugged him once he knelt down a little.

"Hey, sweetie. How was your first day?"

"It was so much fun! I made two friends, and I really like my teacher."

"That's wonderful, Em!" her dad said as he kissed her cheek before standing up. "So are you ready to go home?"

"Can't I help Grandma finish making dinner?" she asked, her sad eyes tearing her father apart the way they always did.

"Why don't the two of you stay and eat with me?" Bonnie Gates asked both of them.

"We've done enough freeloading, Mom. We don't need to keep being a burden to you."

"A burden. Listen to you! Like I don't love having both of you here with me," she said with a kind 'pfft' attitude.

"It does smell good," her son said, his stomach grumbling with pangs of hunger.

"So can we stay?" Emma asked hopefully.

"Well, I suppose so," the brand new police officer said as he caught his mother's eye who smiled and winked.

"But we have to leave in time to let me get home, shower, change, and get to your open house, okay?" he warned his daughter.

"Okay!" she replied, a happy smile on pretty face.

She then turned around and asked, "Grandma? What can I do to help?"

By 6 o'clock they were back home leaving Rick with one hour to get ready and get to Oakland Elementary School, located on, what else—Oakland Avenue.

They arrived with five minutes to spare and walked into the auditorium just as the principle was getting ready to welcome everyone for the start of the new school year.

She was mercifully brief then excused everyone to find their child's homerooms and teachers. Rick loved that Emma still wasn't too old to be embarrassed holding her father's hand as they walked down the hallway toward her classroom.

"It's right here, Dad!" she said as they got close to room #17.

Rick let Emma go in first and heard her teacher say hello and call her by name. He stepped in right behind her, looked up, saw the teacher's face and froze.

"Hi! You must be Emma's father. I'm Ms. Peterson. Or...Karn...to you."

She was smiling at him, and Rick noticed her hand sticking out. He shook it, smiled back, then said, "I uh, I believe we've met."

She gave him a puzzled look then the expression on her face changed dramatically.

"Oh, my goodness! You're the police officer who pulled me over this morning!" the embarrassed fourth-grade teacher said.

"Yes. That would be me," Rick replied with a smile.

"Dad? You gave my teacher a ticket?" a horrified Emma asked, her eyes wide and her jaw agape.

"No! Your very nice father let me off with a warning," Ms. Peterson explained. "Which was very much appreciated."

She was looking at Emma then looked at her father before saying, "Ms. Peterson is always late for everything and sometimes she drives too fast. And she most definitely does not need another ticket on her record, so she's going to work very hard on changing her bad habit."

Emma smiled, satisfied with the explanation, then said to her dad, "Come on. Let me show you were my desk is!"

On their way over, another very cute little girl saw her and said, "Hi, Emma!"

"Hi, Sophie!"

"Is that your dad?" the girl asked as she stared her friend's father.

"Uh-huh," Emma replied before introducing them just like an adult would do.

Rick told Sophie 'hi' and that it was a pleasure to meet her, and just as he turned away he heard her say to Sophie, "Your dad is very handsome!"

"I know," Emma said matter of factly before showing her dad her desk and the supplies inside it.

Not surprisingly, Rick felt pretty sure he was the youngest parent there, but he'd never cared about such things. In fact, the only thing he cared about was being the best dad he could be to his little girl, and with that he sat down and waited for Ms. Peterson to get things started.

She took about ten minutes going over her her goals and procedures then asked if there were any questions. Rick found himself mesmerized as he tried to listen, but it wasn't due to her words. It was her beauty that that had him spellbound, and as she spoke he was taking inventory. Inventory of her hair, her eyes, her smile, and everything else about her.

She was dressed very modestly for the open house, but Rick could tell she was what his late father called 'a bombshell' underneath the pale pink blouse and knee-length blue floral skirt. In spite of that his brain was telling him she was much too old to even think of as someone he might ask out, and yet he found himself also looking at her left hand for a wedding ring. There wasn't one, and as the battle raged in his mind he suddenly became conscious—and then self-conscious—of what her beauty was doing to his body.

Rick casually crossed his legs and forced himself to think of something awful in order to reduce the embarrassing growth he was now trying to conceal.

"So if there aren't any other questions from the group, please feel free to see me individually," he heard Emma's teacher say.

"Do you want to talk to Ms. Peterson?" he heard his daughter ask as other parents stood up and moved her way.

"Um...yes. But why don't we give the other moms and dads a chance first, okay?" he replied as nonchalantly as he could.

"Can I go talk to Sophie?"

"Oh. Sure. Go ahead, honey."

Emma got up, walked over to her friend, who was clearly bored as her parents asked her new teacher a few questions, and Rick smiled when the girls went to the back of the room to talk. Another girl joined them a minute or so later, and by then, the um...swelling...had subsided.

Rick casually stood up, stretched a little, then made his way to the front of the class and waited for his turn to talk to the beautiful blonde teacher whose hair showed no trace of having been bleached that color. It was parted at the right side and fell to halfway down her neck and was slightly turned under at the bottom.

She smiled happily when it was his turn to ask her something, but she spoke first saying, "I really did want to thank you for not giving me a ticket. I have so many points on my record, I can't afford to get another one."

Rick laughed and started to reply when she said, "I know. I know. The simple solution is to slow down. But that would require me to leave the house on time, and I'm one of those people who's going to be late to her own funeral."

She smiled as she spoke, and Rick again found himself unable to avoid staring. Fortunately, he was at least listening this time, and was able to respond.

"Well, if there is a next time, I may not be able to be so nice," he told her, a smile on his face, too.

She laughed then asked if he had any questions or concerns just as Emma walked up and stood next to her dad.

She looked back at him then said, "That don't involve my driving."

"Yes, but none that I should probably ask someone I just met," Rick told her making sure to keep smiling.

He watched her very closely, and once she realized what he meant, her smile faded but it was obvious she wasn't angry or offended. He just couldn't tell what effect his not-so-subtle flirting had had on her. Emma got bored and wandered off again as they talked.

"Well, if you think of anything please ask or send a note with Emma. I'm sending a folder home with each student that also has my cell number if you ever need to call me. Or if you prefer, you can use the school's email site. My name is there under KMPeterson at.... dot edu," she said filling in the rest of the email address for him.

"Okay. I'll do that," Rick told her. "And it was really a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Peterson. Both times."

She smiled then said, "Same here, Mr.... Sorry, Officer Gates."

"Rick is fine," he replied with a little laugh.

"And so is Karn," she told him politely.

"Karn. I've never heard that name before."

"Me, either," she told him. "But one day I'm going to run into another woman with my first name!"

"Just not in your car, okay?" Rick said as though her were seriously warning her.

Karn laughed and promised that wouldn't happen.

"It really was a pleasure meeting you, Karn," Rick told her before stepping away to let another parent talk to her.

"You, too, Rick," she said, that smile of hers nearly causing another 'event'.

He walked around the room mostly to give Emma some more time to talk with her friends, and as he glanced over at her, he had a flash of anger, something that rarely happened anymore. His wife was long gone, he was divorced, and she was never coming back. And while he'd made his peace with that, it still hurt knowing how much Emma had suffered as she dealt with the aftermath of her mother's selfishness and need to 'find herself'.

"Find myself, my...." he said quietly just as a voice asked him if he was Emma's father.

He turned around and saw a woman of about 30 smiling at him.

"Hi. I'm Grace. Sophie's mom?"

"Oh, right. Yes. Hi, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Same here," the woman said. "Sophie just loves Emma."

"I believe the admiration is mutual," Rick told her as they looked over at their daughters.

"I uh, I understand you're a police officer," Grace said, a huge smile on her face.

"Well. For one whole day now, anyway," he admitted.

"I'm a huge supporter of law enforcement and just wanted to thank you for doing such a thankless job."

Living in a modest-sized city of just under a hundred-thousand people, Rick wasn't likely to see too many of the things police officers in large urban areas saw every day. Anything was possible, but speeding, domestic disputes, and other misdemeanor offenses were likely going to make up nearly all of the 'evils' he'd be dealing with.

"Oh, thank you. I appreciate that."

"I uh, I was also wondering if you might like to, you know, maybe get together sometime. With Emma and Sophie. And...me."

Grace wasn't unattractive, but she was definitely not gorgeous or even beautiful. 'Cute' was the better word, and while she seemed nice enough, there just wasn't anything there that could draw Rick to her.

"Oh. Well, I suppose that might be possible. I am pretty busy, but maybe we'll see," he said as nicely as he could.

"I'd...we...Sophie and I...we'd like that," Grace told him, the look in her eyes unmistakeable, a look that Rick had had in his just a few minutes earlier when he was looking at Karn Peterson.

Grace excused herself to go get her daughter, and after giving her a few seconds, he went over and asked Emma if she was ready to leave.

"I can't believe we're having dinner at Sophie's house!" she told her dad excitedly as they got ready to go.

"What? Dinner? At Sophie's? When?"

"I don't know. That's her mom said just before you came over to get me," Emma told him as she tried to read the look on her father's face.

"Ah, okay. Yeah, we'll have to see about that, okay?" he told his daughter with a smile that seemed to answer the mail without dashing her hopes.

"Okay!" she replied, letting her father breath a sigh of relief.

As they walked by Karn, she stopped talking to one of the parents and waved to Emma.

"Bye, Emma! See you tomorrow!"

"Bye, Ms. Peterson!" Emma said.

Rick was also looking at her, and when she smiled at him in a way he understood as possibly meaning something more than just a smile, he smiled back.

Neither of them spoke, but as they left to go home, Rick Gates was making plans to find the right time and place to see whether or not his instincts were still as good as they'd once been where it came to reading women was concerned.

"Did you like my teacher?" Emma asked on the way home.

"You know what? I did. I really like her a lot."

"She's very nice," Emma told her father. "And she's really pretty, too, huh?"

"Um, yes. She uh, she's definitely very pretty."

The rest of the way home Emma talked about Sophie and her other friend, Olivia, and all Rick had to do was occasionally say 'oh' or 'huh'. Again, he was hearing the words but not paying any attention as the image of this beautiful, blonde teacher with the amazing blue eyes and dazzling smile was the only thing he could think about.

Yes, she was 41-years old, but for the first time in his young life, Rick Gates didn't care about something that would have been an automatic deal breaker in the past. He had his first serious crush going on since high school, and a part of him told him this wasn't just some kind of puppy-love thing.

He had no idea what it was, but it wouldn't leave him alone, and he woke up the following morning with a smile on his face, still thinking about this beautiful, older, single woman named Karn Peterson; a woman who just happened to be his daughter's teacher.

Rick was having a second cup of coffee when his new 4th-grader walked into the kitchen.

"Morning Daddy!" she said with a smile.

He said it back to her then marveled how a child her age could wake up on her own and get up at the same time every morning and unfailingly be in a good mood.

"You hungry?" he asked.

"I can get it," the independent young girl told him as she stood on the folding stepladder they kept in the kitchen and got down a bowl and a glass. She folded the ladder then moved it over to the panty and used it again to get down a box of cereal then opened the refrigerator for some milk.

Rick had no idea how or why she was so responsible at such an early age. All he knew was that he was very grateful that she was. Doing little things for her wasn't difficult, but when Emma did them herself, it made things a lot easier for him. Especially with him starting a new job.

Once she finished getting her cereal ready and finished a first bite, her dad asked, "So is Sophie your new best friend?"

"Uh-huh," she replied as she slurped another spoonful then said, "And Olivia, too."

"Two best friends. Lucky you."

When they moved out of his mom's house, they changed school districts, and even though Emma hadn't been in her old school very long, Rick hated making her leave. But now that he knew she'd be okay, he felt relieved.

"Maybe we could have them come over sometime."

"For a sleepover?" Emma asked hopefully.

"Eventually. At first maybe just to spend some time one evening. Then we'll see. How does that sound, sweetie?"

When Emma set her spoon down and got up to come hug him, Officer Rick Gates nearly teared up, and he wasn't an emotional kind of guy. But with Emma's mother turning her back on them, and Emma being so grown up already, it made him feel the kind of thing he tried to avoid feeling. He did that because feeling that way made him sad, and sad just wasn't something any self-respecting Marine would willingly do. Or newly-minted police officer, for that matter.

Rick was almost relieved his daughter didn't tell him she loved him, because that would have forced him to pretend there was something in his eyes that was making them water. Emma was probably already too smart to buy the line, but he wasn't ready to let his daughter see him do that.

When she finished, Emma rinsed out the bowl, put it and her spoon in the dishwasher then told her dad she was going to brush her teeth and get ready. He knew she'd also make her bed and didn't need to bother checking.

"Sounds good, honey!" he told her as he drained the last of his coffee.

He'd already showered and shaved and only needed to get dressed. He wasn't into checking himself out in mirrors, but he always took a quick look to make sure he was 'squared away' before leaving the house. He knew everything was exactly where it was supposed to be down to a sixteenth of inch just the way he'd done during his time on active duty.