Teresa Hill Read Free

woman’s beauty in years. He thought he was over that—that having his and his children’s hearts ripped out by a woman who had pledged to love them forever would have cured him.
    “The tooth fairy!” Luke whispered loudly enough for the mischievous-looking woman to hear. He looked as if he was ready to explode with excitement. “She came to my school, ’cept she was all dressed up then in the blue dress with the stars. She even had her magic wand with her. I know it’s her. And she’s real. She’s the tooth fairy.”
    “Luke, there’s no such thing as—”
    “Uh-hmm.” The woman cleared her throat loudly.
    Joe stopped just in time. “Sorry.”
    She gave him a conspiratorial wink, then turned to Luke and stuck out her hand. “I’m Dr. Samantha Carter. And you are Luke, aren’t you? Please tell me I’m in the right room.”
    Luke took the hand she offered and whispered, “You’re her, aren’t you?”
    “Who?” she said with a smile.
    “The tooth fairy.” Luke was still whispering, as if he couldn’t say it out loud.
    She laughed, a sound that invited everyone around to laugh with her. Joe would have, if he’d been able to make a sound.
    “But tooth fairies are magic,” she said quite seriously. “I’m just a dentist.”
    Then she pulled a quarter from behind Luke’s right ear and handed it to him.
    “Wow! Did you see that, Dad? She is magic.”
    Dr. Carter was still grinning down at his son. Her hand headed for Luke’s other ear, and before Joe could say anything, she pulled a plastic spider ring from behind him.
    “Wow!” Luke just stared up at her and grinned.
    “So, what seems to be the problem here, Luke? Or are you just here for a checkup?”
    “I dunno,” Luke said, Mr. Innocent now.
    “I need to talk to you,” Joe said, not wanting to explain the problem in front of Luke.
    “All right.” Dr. Carter turned back to his son. “Luke, I have a very special chair that goes up and down when you press this little button. How ’bout I let you sit in it and take it up and down?”
    “Can I really?”
    “Sure.” She helped Luke into the chair and showed him the button. “But you have to promise that when Mary comes in to count your teeth and when I check them, you’ll leave the chair alone. Deal?”
    She held out her palm. Luke slapped it with enthusiasm. “Deal!”
    The chair was revving up and down when the dentist led Joe from the room.
    “Don’t the kids wear out the chairs?” he said.
    “Eventually, but it makes them happy to take them up and down.” She said it as if that was the only thing that mattered—making the children happy. “Besides, it’s impossible to keep them from playing with the chairs, kind of like telling them to be still or to stay out of the mud on a rainy day. So I cut a deal with them—they can play for a minute, get it out of their system, then they have to leave the chairs alone while we work.”
    She led him down the hall, opening a heavy wooden door to the right and offering him a seat in front of her desk. The desk was old and solid, made of polished cherry, and he guessed it weighed a ton. Joe couldn’t help but admire it.
    “They don’t make pieces like this these days,” he said, running a finger around the intricate trim work.
    “I know. This was my father’s. In fact, almost all the furniture in here was his.” She stood beside a big leather swivel chair that seemed as if it would swallow her.
    Joe glanced around the room, saw bookshelves overflowing with thick heavy texts, a dozen or so plants of all sizes and shapes that almost took over the room, and another glass cabinet with dozens of fairy figurines inside it.
    “You’re really into this tooth-fairy thing, aren’t you?”
    “My father was. He was a dentist, too, and he’s been collecting fairies since before I was born. He died last year.”
    “Sorry,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
    She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But Joe knew it