A Family To Share

Connie sensed the child’s fear, anger and frustration, emotions with which she could strongly identify. She had never known her own father and had few pleasant memories of her mother, but she remembered all too well being separated from her brother and then later her sister. Alone and confused, she had desperately sought comfort from those in whose care she had been placed, only to find herself also suddenly separated from them. That pattern had repeated itself over the years.

At times, the anger and neediness had overwhelmed her, but unlike her older sister, Jolie, Connie could not express herself in cold contempt or outright displays of temper. Instead, she tended to hide away and weep endlessly for hours, then blindly latch on to the first friendly person she could find. All too often, they hadn’t really been her friends at all. It seemed to be an unwritten law that the users of this world could recognize the neediest of their companions at a glance. Thank God that He had led her out of that.

Chilled, Connie folded her arms and turned back into the building. She smiled at Millie and walked down the hallway to her son’s room.

Russell was ready and waiting for her, his coat on, a sheet of paper to which cotton balls had been glued clutched in one hand. Miss Susan held him in her arms behind the half door, rubbing his nose against hers. He giggled, throwing back his bright-red head, and spied Connie.

“Mama!” he called gaily, his big, blue eyes shining.

He leaned toward her and she caught him up against her, hugging him close.

“Hello, my angel. Were you a good boy today?”

“Sweet as pie,” Miss Susan said.

Connie smiled in response. “Say bye-bye to Miss Susan.”

Russell raised a hand and folded his fingers forward. “Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye, cutie. See you soon.”

“Thank you, Miss Susan.”

“Anytime. We’re always glad to see him.”

“Well, if I start school—or when, rather—he’s apt to become a regular.”

“That’d be fine,” Miss Susan told her. “He’s such a happy, little thing.”

Connie knew whom she had to thank for that.

Oh, it was true that Russell possessed a sweet, placid nature, but even the best-natured child would fret and act out in the grip of insecurity, and Russell could easily have been such a child. Being born in a prison was not the best way to start out in life, but Jolie, bless her, had seen to it that he had a loving, structured home until Connie, with the help of their brother, could see to it herself.

She and her son didn’t have much money or even a two-parent home, but they were blessed nevertheless.

Connie thought of Larissa Oakes and the turmoil that seemed to spill out all around her and she hugged her son a little closer.

Truly, they were blessed. They had Marcus and Jolie and now even Vince and the other Cutlers. Whatever terrors and shame her past held, whatever uncertainties and limitations clouded her future, her little boy would always know love and the security of family and faith to keep him strong and whole.

She couldn’t ask for anything more.

Chapter Two

No wedding could have been lovelier, Connie thought, walking slowly down the aisle while clutching a half-dozen red roses nestled in ivory tulle.

Vince was grinning from ear to ear and had been since he’d walked out of the side door of the chapel with Marcus and a trio of groomsmen. Both her brother and her soon-to-be brother-in-law were more handsome than any man had the right to be. One dark, one golden, they made an interesting contrast—Vince with his black hair, dressed in a simply tailored, black tuxedo, Marcus in the sumptuous ecclesiastical robe that he chose to wear on such occasions.

Marcus nodded subtly as Connie turned to take her place in front of the other attendants: Vince’s two younger sisters, Helen and Donna. Sharon and Olivia sat to one side, having taken other roles in the ceremony, while their husbands ably corralled the numerous Cutler children.

Connie took her position and gracefully turned, allowing the short train of the flared skirt on the long-sleeved, high-waisted dress to settle into an elegant swirl about her feet. A moment later, the flower girls stepped into view: Vince’s nieces, Brenda and Bets.

Brenda was a few inches taller than her cousin, but they were dressed identically in pale-yellow dresses with long-sleeved velvet bodices and short, full, chiffon skirts, white anklets edged in lace and black Mary Janes. Their hair had been caught up into sausage curls on opposite sides of their heads and each carried a small basket filled with rose petals, which they sprinkled judiciously along the white satin runner on which they walked. One of Vince’s nephews had unrolled the runner along the aisle earlier before two of his cousins had entered to light the many candles now glowing and flickering about the room, their light refracting against the stained glass windows.

The double doors at the end of the aisle closed behind the girls. Once they reached their assigned spots, the organist switched from Debussy to the wedding march and the crowd rose to its collective feet.

The doors swung open again, revealing Jolie on the arm of the man who would shortly become her father-in-law. Larry Cutler couldn’t have looked prouder walking his own daughters down the aisle, and none of them could have looked any more beautiful than Jolie did.

She wore her mother-in-law’s circa-1960s dress, and the simplicity of the Empire style, with its delicate lace hem, suited her well. A short, close fitting jacket of ivory velvet was added to make the sleeveless bodice suitable for a winter wedding. Along with the lengthy but fragile veil that rested atop Jolie’s head beneath a simple coronet and trailed along behind her, it lent an elegant air to what would have otherwise been a sadly outdated gown.

The bridal bouquet was made up of pale-yellow roses, their stems tied together with velvet ribbon. To please Vince, Jolie had left her long, golden-brown hair down, the coronet sitting just far enough back on her head to keep her bangs out of her eyes.

This was perhaps the first time Connie had ever seen her sister wearing makeup. Nothing heavy—a touch of blush, mascara and a glossy, pink lipstick that called attention to her pretty mouth. The effect was astonishing, though.

Vince looked absolutely stunned, entranced by the vision that glided toward him, and he didn’t snap out of it until Marcus announced in a clear, ringing voice, “I give this woman in marriage.” At which point, Larry kissed her hand and placed it in Vince’s.

Larry then did something that would stay with Connie for a very long time.

He leaned forward and hugged his son tightly.

It was unexpected, at least to Connie. She wasn’t used to seeing two grown men, father and son, masculine and strong, display a deep, easy affection for a special moment.

Connie couldn’t help but think that Russell would never have that.

Because of her—because of the mistakes she had made—her son would never know the love of a father so complete that embarrassment simply did not exist in the same sphere with it.

Tears immediately gathered in her eyes and she had to look away.

She wasn’t the only one crying at that point. Vince’s mother and oldest sister were already dabbing at their eyes. Sharon, in fact, had a difficult time getting through the Old Testament reading that she had chosen. Olivia delivered the New Testament portion more easily, but she was in tears, too, by the end of the music.

Marcus, bless him, elevated the ceremony from tear-filled to joyous simply by his demeanor as he delivered a short homily on the blessings and responsibilities of marriage and read the vows, which the happy couple spoke loudly and clearly.

In a small departure from the norm, it had been decided that it was best if the ring bearer—the youngest of Olivia’s three sons—make as short an appearance as possible in his formal role. This arrangement also gave him a real moment in the spotlight as he now came forward, carrying the actual rings attached to a small pillow by ribbons. Connie and the best man, Boyd, a friend and employee of Vince’s, met him at the head of the aisle and took the rings from him, then moved into position once more while shepherding the young boy into his spot among the groomsmen, who were his uncles.

The rings were exchanged.

Marcus lit two taper candles and passed them to the bride and groom, who together lit the unity candle while the organ played. Then they knelt at the altar and received their blessing.

Finally, the moment came when Marcus pronounced them man and wife, followed by the admonition “You may kiss your bride.”

To her shock, Connie found that she couldn’t watch.

It was ludicrous. She had seen the two kiss before, and she’d always felt such delight for her sister’s sake. She knew that Jolie deserved the kind of love that Vince showered upon her. Yet, in that moment when they publicly sealed their lifelong commitment to each other, Connie could not bear to witness it.

Somehow and very unexpectedly, it was as if a knife had been driven into her heart, as if she were witnessing the death of all her romantic notions, silly as they had been. Even as the newly married couple turned to be presented to the assembly as Mr. and Mrs. Vince Cutler, Connie could not look at them. She applauded along with everyone else and she truly was happy for them, but she suddenly felt as if a sob was about to break free from her chest.

She knew what it was, of course. She had felt envy before but never like this—never with this searing sense of pure loss—for surely this moment was as close as she would ever come to a wedding of her own.

Not even time could diminish the mistakes that she had made. Only in Heaven would she be able to say that it no longer mattered. As Marcus often said, God removes the consequences of sin in the hereafter, but in the here and now, our choices often yield terrible fruit.

The sad result of her choices was that no decent Christian man would ever want her for his wife, and that was as it should be. She thought that she’d faced and accepted that harsh truth, but suddenly she realized that deep down she harbored a very foolish hope, which now surely had been properly dashed.

It was all for the best, she told herself. She was not like Jolie. Unfortunately, she was much more like their mother, and this just served to prove it. No matter how much she had tried to deny it in the past, the emotional neediness of Velma Wheeler was very much her legacy to her youngest daughter.

Disgusted with herself, Connie fixed her smile and followed her sister and her new husband down the aisle. The best man—a perfectly nice, married gentleman—escorted her, but it was all she could do to hold his arm until they had cleared the room.

At once, she was swept into a joint hug by the newly married couple, and then it was fairly chaotic for several moments as the remainder of the wedding party joined them. Telling herself that she would be thankful for this reality check later, Connie allowed herself to be hurried into a side room while the photographer snapped candid shots and Marcus told the guests how to find the hall where the reception would be held.

After the guests had headed toward the reception site, the wedding party hurried back into the sanctuary for a few group photos. Then the attendants trooped over to the reception en masse while Jolie and Vince struck a few poses as husband and wife.

It was a happy, talking, laughing mob in the reception hall. Connie couldn’t have counted the number of hugs that enveloped her, and yet shortly after the new Mr. and Mrs. Cutler arrived, Connie found herself standing alone in a corner watching the festivities. She felt apart, solitary, sealed away behind an invisible wall of past mistakes.

Some prisons, she had learned, were not made of bars.

Squaring her shoulders, she scolded herself for letting regret stain this of all days. After sending a quick prayer upward, she fixed her smile and forced one foot in front of the other until she was in the midst of the throng once more.

Marcus sauntered forward, free of his clerical robes, a cup of punch in one hand and a relaxed smile on his face. He glanced across the room to the table where Jolie and Vince were seated. Russell lolled on his aunt’s lap, playing with the edge of her veil, which she’d looped over one arm before taking her seat.

“I never expected this,” Marcus said, surprised when his sister jumped slightly. He shouldn’t have been. She held herself apart too much. It sometimes seemed to him that Connie had not yet left prison behind her.

“What?” she asked uncertainly.

He waved a hand. “This. Somehow, I never thought about it. There always seemed to be so much else to worry about, and now suddenly here we are, a real family doing just what real families do.”

“It’s the Cutlers,” Connie said. “They’re just so normal that they make you feel normal by association.”

“I don’t know,” he mused, his green eyes narrowing. “I think we might be more normal than we realize.”

“You, maybe,” she countered softly, then immediately amended that. “And Jolie. Definitely Jolie.”

He cocked his head. “Not you?”

“Not me,” she answered softly.

He looped an arm around her shoulders in brotherly support.

“You may be the most normal of us all, Connie.”

She shook her head and Marcus sighed inwardly. Sensitive and caring, Connie had suffered the most after their mother had abandoned them. As a result, she could not seem to stop punishing herself for past sins. She carried such needless guilt, such overwhelming shame. It was one of the reasons Marcus had convinced her to regain custody of her son. Going against Jolie had hurt him, but he had known Jolie would survive. He hadn’t been so sure about Connie, and yet here she was, as lovely and sweet as ever.

He followed her adoring gaze to her son. No longer entertained by the delicate edging of Jolie’s veil, Russell suddenly flopped over and tried to pull himself upright on Jolie’s lap by tugging at the bodice of her wedding gown. Vince immediately reached over and plucked him off Jolie, settling him in his own lap, but Connie was a very conscientious mother. She had a gift for it, frankly, if Marcus did say so himself.

She immediately started toward her rambunctious son, saying “Uh-oh. Someone is restless.”

Marcus followed in her wake, watching the way that Russell so readily came up into her arms.

“He looks so adorable in that little suit,” Jolie said, her eyes shining.

Her smile looked permanent, Marcus was thankful to note.

“Marcus insisted that he had to have one,” Connie said, sliding a look at Marcus. “He spends too much on us, doesn’t he, munchkin?”

“Don’t be silly,” Marcus scoffed. “If you’d let me pay you for keeping house—”

“You do pay me,” Connie interrupted tartly. “You’re putting a roof over our heads.”

“It’s more than a fair exchange,” Marcus argued.

“Somehow, I don’t think he minds,” Vince told Connie, smiling at Marcus and clasping Jolie’s hand in his.

Marcus saluted him with his punch glass.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Connie replied, “but I do. That’s why I’m intending to go to school and learn a trade of some sort.”

Marcus studiously kept a grimace off his face, even as Jolie sat forward, exclaiming “That’s great!”

“You have to know that we’ll help in any way that we can,” Vince assured Connie.

“Thanks, but that’s the point, isn’t it? I have to be able to help myself. Still, since you’re not working at the cleaners now, Jo, maybe you could watch Russell a couple of days a week? They won’t charge me to keep him here at the day care, but I know he’d rather spend some time with you. It would give him a nice change, at least.”

Jolie literally beamed. “That would be wonderful!”

Marcus smiled to himself, so very proud of both of his sisters.

While Connie had been in prison, Jolie had cared for Russell as if he were her own child, and in many ways he was. It was entirely understandable that Jolie hadn’t wanted to give him up, but once Connie had been released, Marcus had known that—for her sake as well as Russell’s—she had to take over guardianship of her son. She hadn’t believed herself worthy of mothering a child, but no one who knew her could say that now. Marcus’s one regret was that Jolie had gotten hurt in the process, and he had feared that the resulting break in the family would be permanent.

Thank God that had not been the case.

Vince had helped Jolie find a way to forgive and reconnect with her family. Considering that they’d fought a custody battle over the boy, Connie showed great compassion and wisdom in asking Jolie to help care for Russell. Thankfully, Connie understood that Jolie would always share a special bond with Russell and that he needed Jolie to be his aunt. Now, she could be.

Marcus only wished that Connie could forgive herself for her past mistakes as readily as she forgave others. He hated to think about Connie not spending her days with her son, but he understood why she felt that she had to go to school. Somehow, though, something told him that it wasn’t the right thing to do, not at this time. Still, he kept his opinion to himself.

One thing he had learned was that God always had a plan for His children, and Marcus had no doubts, that, when the time was right, God would reveal His plan for Connie.

Connie tacked her smile into place and took her son to find his sippy cup and something appropriate with which to fill it. She loved her sister, and she had no doubt that it was wise to have Jolie watch Russell whenever she could, but she felt stretched thin at the moment. She had not expected this day to be so hard for her. That it was seemed irrefutable proof that she was not the person she should be.

Father, forgive me, she prayed silently. I want to be better. I really do. It was a familiar but heartfelt refrain, and she determinedly set out to enjoy her sister’s wedding reception.

Russell was yawning by the time the bride and groom cut the cake. It finally seemed acceptable for Connie to make her escape. The Cutler sisters, however, would hear nothing of it. The bridal bouquet was yet to be tossed, they declared, and Connie was one of only four unmarried ladies present over the age of twelve. She couldn’t very well refuse to line up with the others. It was her only sister’s wedding, after all.

She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole when she actually caught the thing, though caught was too fine a word for what happened.

As was usually the case, the florist had made a replica of the bridal bouquet for the traditional toss. That way, the bride could keep her real bouquet and the lucky, next-to-be-married recipient could keep the silk copy. The silk flowers were quite lightweight and sailed merely a few feet over Jolie’s shoulder before bouncing off Connie’s chest.

The bouquet plopped to the floor, as Connie had made no real attempt to catch it, but Russell, who was at her feet, promptly snatched it up and presented it to her, proud as a peacock. Everyone laughed and Connie felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment because surely too many knew how ridiculous the idea was that she would be the next to marry.

A great deal of effort went into her smile for the photos, and when she left the room a few minutes later, a sleepy Russell snuggled against her chest, she felt like the worst sort of ingrate. God had blessed her, despite her mistakes, and she told herself firmly that she would not allow envy and regret to rob her of gratitude. Nevertheless, she was glad to finally get away.

Draping her coat over her shoulders, she pulled the edges together around her son and carried him swiftly across the compound. By the time she reached the neat little house that they shared with her brother, her feet were killing her and her arms felt like lead weights. It was a great pleasure to kick off her satin pumps, deposit the silk bouquet on a handy shelf and gently lower Russell onto the changing table.

Russell was sleeping already, but he roused as she changed him. Softly singing a lullaby, she kept her movements slow and easy as she removed his wedding finery and slipped him into footed pajamas. She dropped down into the bedside rocker with him. Moments later, he was deeply asleep again without a care in the world, his face sublime.

Then it came, the sense of awe, the vast relief.

How could she feel envy when she was here in this warm, cozy house instead of a cold, impersonal cell? She had her son with her—not only an empty ache in her heart—and she had just come from her dear sister’s wedding. Moreover, her kind, generous big brother would be home shortly, still beaming, no doubt.

“Thank you, God,” she whispered, blinking back tears as she lay her son in his crib.

Perhaps she would never have what Jolie did, but she had more than she deserved. It was enough.

Kendal gently closed the door to his daughter’s room and leaned against it, sighing with relief. Bedtime had not been the ordeal that he had feared it would be this evening, which was not to say that the day hadn’t been difficult enough. The session with Dr. Stenhope had not gone well.

Usually, Larissa tolerated the grandmotherly psychiatrist with cool indifference. Today, however, she had wailed and struggled until Dr. Stenhope had yielded the direction of her exercises to a younger assistant. Kendal didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell him that his child was fixated on younger women, women who apparently reminded her of her mother on some level, women such as Connie Wheeler.

He turned off thoughts of the petite, compassionate woman, allowing himself instead to indulge a remnant of the rage that he’d felt since the death of his wife. Intellectually, he knew that he was as much to blame for this situation as Laura was and the great guilt that he carried quickly eclipsed the anger. True, she’d shut him out after Larissa was born, but he’d allowed it to happen. It was as if Laura hadn’t known how to be both a wife and a mother at the same time, and he hadn’t known how to overcome his own hurt and disappointment to help her.

He now realized how selfish and convenient that had been. Oh, he’d told himself that, as Larissa grew older, Laura would relax and allow him to take a hand in raising their daughter, but Larissa had needed him then as much as she did now. He could not escape the fact that he had been as unfair to his daughter as Laura had been to him.

It had been horribly easy to take a backseat. His mortgage brokerage had burgeoned with the lowering of interest rates and he’d been focused on turning it into a real player in the field. That, too, had been a convenient excuse.

The ugly truth was that his marriage had never been what he’d hoped it would be. Even before Larissa was born, the relationship had shriveled into cold politeness. He should have fought harder to breach Laura’s defenses of silence and impersonal interaction. He should have been the husband and father that God had meant him to be, even if Laura hadn’t been capable of being the wife and mother he’d envisioned.

Now, it was too late to be a husband to Laura.

Who could’ve imagined that she would die so abruptly, especially from something as seemingly innocuous as a few ant bites? It was Larissa who needed him now.

To think that Larissa had been there, alone, with Laura at the time of her death was bad enough, but for the child to have spent the next day and a half wailing in her crib, waiting for her mommy to come and get her…

He shuddered at the memory. As long as he lived, he’d never forget how Larissa had fought and struggled, reaching for her mother as the ambulance crew wheeled the body from the room.

He hadn’t even handled that part of it well.

Yes, he’d been in shock himself, but a real father would have instinctively protected his child from such a sight. Nearly nine months later, he was no closer to being an adequate father. His little girl merely tolerated him, preferring even a strange woman to him, and all Dr. Stenhope could say was that he shouldn’t take it personally!