Free Emergence by Denise Grover Swank Page A

waved his hand toward the door. “Sure, Emma. Take off the afternoon. Take off the rest of the fucking week.” He glared at her. “But if this happens one more time, you won’t have a job to come back to. Threat or no threat.”
    “Thanks,” she muttered in a sarcastic tone as she shut the door.
    After pulling out of the employee parking lot, she allowed herself a short moment of victory. She may have gotten away with getting the afternoon off, but Tyler Matheson was the golden boy of Schiller and Schiller Accounting, quickly climbing the rungs to a corporate executive job in the nationally respected, commercial accounting firm.
    Tyler wouldn’t fall from his pedestal without a fight.
    Emma’s days were numbered.
    She didn’t have time to dwell on it long before the daycare center came into view. Pulling into a parking spot, she turned off the engine and gripped the steering wheel. A woman in scrubs walked up the steps and through the entrance. It was shortly after three-thirty, and parents from the University Medical Center would be getting off their shifts and picking up their children. She considered, not for the first time, making an appointment for someone to examine her son.
    Jake wasn’t a normal child.
    Emma followed the mother, entering the daycare office instead of buzzing into the children’s area. Jake sat in a chair, his short legs dangling over the edge. He looked up at her with his big, deep blue eyes, his mouth turned into a frown. He’d changed so much in only a few weeks’ time. No longer the happy, bubbly child she’d known for two years, Jake was now withdrawn and sullen.
    But if he really saw the things he claimed to see, she couldn’t blame him.
    She scooped him up into her arms, hugging him tight. He buried his head into her shoulder and she felt his body shake with a sob. Stroking his short blond curls she whispered in his ear, “It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be okay.”
    “Ms. Thompson.”
    Emma lifted her head to glance at the director, a middle-aged woman who wore a perpetual scowl. Why had she enrolled Jake in this dreary place? Then she remembered it was because she’d only had two days to find a replacement. She’d had no choice.
    “If you could come into my office so we can chat.” The director backed up and waved her in.
    Emma took a step toward the opening when the director held up her hand. “Leave Jake outside. Lori will sit with him.”
    Glancing from Jake to the young woman at a desk, Emma hesitated.
    “It will only take a few moments.”
    Emma set Jake in the chair and knelt in front of him. “I have to talk to Miss Martha. I’ll only be a minute, okay?”
    He nodded, his eyes shiny with tears.
    She hesitated. The conversation with the director would be pointless. This was the second incident here, and Emma was sure Jake was going to be expelled. Jake clearly needed her more than she needed closure with Discovery Zone Daycare.
    “It’s okay, Mommy.”
    How had this happened? How had he turned into this little old man in a two-year-old’s body? She choked back a sob of fear.
    “Ms. Thompson.” The daycare director’s impatience grated on Emma’s already frazzled nerves.
    “Mommy, you need to talk to her.”
    Emma didn’t dare ask how he knew that. She didn’t want to know.
    Leaning toward him, she cupped his face, touching her forehead to his. “I’ll be right back, and then we’ll go home, okay?”
    His face softened, some of the seriousness leaving his eyes, and he was her Jake again. Her little boy. “I want chicken nuggets,” he whispered.
    Her chin trembled and she wiped a tear from her eye. “Chicken nuggets it is. I promise.”
    “Okay.”
    She kissed his forehead, fighting her tears as she stood, and smoothed her skirt. She wanted to get this over with and take her son home.
    The director shut the door, and sat behind a metal desk, folding her hands on top of a planner. Her mouth pursed, deepening the wrinkles in her forehead. “There