When Love Comes Home

She stared back and finally said, “I’ll pray about it.” With that she turned away from him.

Confounded, Grady watched her bow her head and retreat into herself. He’d made his best case, giving her good, solid legal advice, but he might as well have saved his breath. Obviously they didn’t communicate as well as he’d thought.

This wasn’t the first time his legal advice had been rejected, after all, not by a long shot, but he’d never been more disturbed about it.

Popping his seat back again, he folded his arms and shut his eyes, determined to finally catch a few minutes of rest or at least some peace.

Both would prove to be in very short supply.

They touched down at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport at a quarter past eleven that morning. After renting a car, they drove to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Department where Vaughn waited, having spent the previous night in a group foster care facility. Grady had not pressed Paige for a decision about prosecuting Nolan, which was good since she truly didn’t know what she was going to do.

Now that the moment to see her son again—after three years, six months and one day—had finally arrived, Paige was so nervous she felt ill. Pressing a hand to her abdomen and surreptitiously gulping down air in an effort to settle her stomach, she walked through the heavy glass door that Grady held open for her. They met briefly with a polite, efficient uniformed officer who checked their paperwork and led them through a narrow hallway to a private conference room.

Her heartbeat grew louder and the knots in her stomach pulled tighter and tighter with every step that she took, so that by the time Grady paused with his hand on the plain, brushed steel doorknob, she could barely breathe.

“Ready?” he asked softly.

Reminding herself that Vaughn might be ambivalent at first, she pulled her spine straight and nodded. As that heavy, metal door swung inward, she began to tremble. Grady pushed into the small, crowded room. She practically ran over him, suddenly so eager that she could not contain herself.

Everything registered at once: pale walls, pale floor, pale, rectangular table flanked by lightweight metal chairs with blue, molded vinyl seats. A green-and-white bag with some team logo printed in red sat in the center of the table, stuffed so full of clothing that it couldn’t be zipped. Two women—one young, white and plump with a brown ponytail, the other African-American, slender and slightly older—occupied two of the chairs on the near side of the table.

Across from them sat a boy, a stranger, who shot abruptly to his feet.

Paige’s first thought was that they’d made a mistake. This could not be her son. He stood at least as tall as her own five feet, with no trace of the bright copper-blond hair that had crowned her baby boy. Instead, the thick, fine locks falling haphazardly over his brows, tangling with the thick lashes rimming his warm brown eyes, was a rich auburn. Then he tossed his head defiantly, and she caught a glimpse of a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, the scar he’d gotten tumbling headlong off the porch into the shrubbery.

“Vaughn!”

How she got around the table she didn’t know, but when she threw out her arms, he flinched and backed away. She’d been told to expect this, and yet disappointment seared her trembling heart. Sucking in a deep breath, she forced her feet to slow.

It was like approaching a feral animal, once domesticated but now wild. He seemed uncertain, but she sensed that he definitely recognized her. Carefully, her lips quivering, she slipped her arms around him. Perhaps it wasn’t wise, but she had to, had to, hold him, if only for a moment.

“Mom,” he whispered in a voice she would never have recognized and yet somehow knew.

Only with great effort did she manage not to sob, but stopping the tears completely was impossible. She smiled through them, cupped his slender, oval face in her hands, pulled it gently forward and laid her forehead to his as she had so often in the past.

“Thank You, God. Thank You. Thank You.”

Chapter Three

Vaughn let her hold him for a time, but then the two women at the table introduced themselves, and he pulled away. The young one was a caseworker with Child Protective Services, the other a Victims Services agent with the county sheriff’s office. After making themselves known, they seemed content to sit back and observe, leaving Paige to focus once more on her son.

He had backed into the corner of the room, his arms tightly folded across his chest. It was not a good sign. Paige tried not to take offense. It was only to be expected. He’d spent the last three-and-a-half years with his father. He was bound to be confused. She couldn’t help noting that he was a handsome boy whose shoulders were already broadening, and now that she got a good look at him, she realized something else.

“You look like my dad.”

He frowned. “No, I don’t. I look like my dad.”

“You’re built like Nolan,” she agreed quickly, aware that she was tiptoeing through a minefield here, “and you have the same coloring, but that’s my father’s chin and nose you’ve got.” He bowed his head, as if rejecting anything she might say. Paige gulped and searched for some way to meaningfully engage him. “Do you remember your grandfather?”

Vaughn snorted, glancing up at her sullenly. “’Course. I wasn’t that little when he died.”

He’d been five and inconsolable. The memory of how he’d cried for his grandpa wrenched her heart. Had he cried like that for her? She wouldn’t ask, for both their sakes.

Chairs scraped back as first the Child Protective Services caseworker and then the Victims Services agent rose. “I think we’ve heard all we need to,” the VS agent said, her dark face parting in a smile that was half congratulatory, half sympathetic. “You should have some paperwork for us.”

“The desk officer has it,” Grady replied.

“Yes, of course.” She stepped forward and addressed the boy. “You take care, Vaughn. Happy Thanksgiving.”

He did not so much as acknowledge her words. The CPS caseworker skirted the table and hugged him.

“Cheer up, honey. It’s going to be okay.” He nodded glumly, but didn’t speak. She patted his shoulder and turned to Paige. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“A very happy Thanksgiving,” Paige murmured, clasping the woman’s hand. “Thank you both from the bottom of my heart.”

“Just doing our jobs,” she said.

The two women quickly exited the room. The instant the door swung closed, Vaughn all but attacked. “What happens now?”

“We’re going home, son,” Paige said gently. “I thought you knew that.”

“I know I gotta go with you,” he declared, his voice breaking with the weight of his emotion, “but it’s not my home, not anymore. What I mean is, what happens to my dad?” He started to cry. “They got him in jail! He always said you’d put him away if you found us. That’s not right! He doesn’t belong in jail!”

“Don’t worry,” she urged, pulling him into her arms again. She couldn’t let herself be hurt by his concern for Nolan. What counted now was putting Vaughn’s fears to rest. She knew what she had to do, had known how it would be. Taking a deep breath, she firmly stated, “I have no intention of pressing charges against your father.”

“That may not be wise,” Grady warned, but she shook her head at him, convinced that she was right in this.

As much as she believed Nolan had wronged her and their son, as much anger as she’d carried with her over their separation, no good would be served by punishing Nolan legally.

“Does that mean they’ll let him go?” Vaughn asked hopefully. “I’ll leave with you if they’ll let him go.”

“You’ll go with her anyway,” Grady pointed out to Vaughn, pitching his voice low. “You don’t have a choice. Paige, you need to think about this.”

“I have thought about it.”

“We need to consider this carefully,” Grady argued.

“My mind’s made up, Grady.”

“For pity’s sake, Paige!” Grady Jones erupted, and that triggered Vaughn.

“It’s none of your business!” he shouted at Grady, then rounded on his mother. “What’s he got to say about it, anyway? Just ’cause he’s your boyfriend or something, that doesn’t—”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” she exclaimed, grasping the boy by the tops of his arms. “He’s my attorney.”

“One of your attorneys,” Grady corrected smartly.

“One of my attorneys,” she snapped, glaring at him over her shoulder.

Vaughn shuffled his feet and bowed his head, muttering, “It’s still none of his business.”

“It’s not his decision, but it is his job to advise me,” Paige pointed out calmly.

“For all the good it does,” Grady muttered.

Paige ignored him, looking to her son, who asked, “So Dad can go home?”

“I can’t say what the South Carolina authorities will do,” Paige told the boy, “but your dad won’t stay in jail because of me, Vaughn, I swear it.” Sliding one arm around his shoulders, she turned to face Grady. “Can the South Carolina authorities keep him if I don’t press charges?”

Grady clenched his jaw and looked away, but then he answered. “No.”

“What about the state of Arkansas?”

He fixed her with a level stare. “They may want him held for failure to pay child support.”

She could feel Vaughn trembling beside her and lifted her chin. “What if I speak in his favor, petition for leniency on his behalf? Forgo the back payments?” Grady was so clearly appalled by the mere suggestion of her intervention that she felt her temper spark.

“That would not be wise,” he rumbled.

“That is not an answer to my question.”

“You haven’t thought this through,” he insisted.

She took that to mean that her intervention on Nolan’s behalf would likely result in him doing no time. She turned back to her son. “I’ll keep him out of jail,” she promised.

Vaughn slumped with obvious relief. Paige put on as bright a face as she could manage and announced, “Our plane doesn’t leave until almost three, so Mr. Jones made lunch reservations for us at a hotel downtown.”

Vaughn put on a sullen face and grumbled, “I’m not hungry.”

“No? But it’s Thanksgiving, and you love turkey. I know you do. Especially the drumstick.” He made a face at that, and she supposed that his delight with drumsticks at Thanksgiving dinners past seemed babyish to him now. She quickly went on, changing the subject. “We should be home before nine this evening.”

He lifted his head, looked her in the eye. “My home’s in South Carolina.”

She felt her heart drop, but swallowed down the part that seemed to have lodged in her throat. “But Nobb’s your home, too,” she said softly. “You’ll see that if you just give it a chance. I’ve missed you so much, Vaughn, more than you can possibly know, and we’re going to work everything out, I promise.”

He said nothing, just ducked his head, sighed and dragged his feet toward the door with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner on his way to the gallows. Pushing aside her heartache, Paige reminded herself that this was to be expected. Only God knew what adjustments they had in store for them, but then only God could make them a family again.

Grady determined that he would not let his own dissatisfaction with Paige’s decision not to prosecute her ex-husband color the meal. He was furious with her, worried about her and just generally disgruntled, but after an hour or so in the boy’s icy, hostile company, he decided that his mood was definitely the brighter of the two.

Paige, for all her quiet joy and steely determination, could not lighten the atmosphere. Nevertheless, she tried, commenting gently on the quality of the food and the service, remarking what a treat it was not to have to cook Thanksgiving dinner for herself, asking quiet, neutral questions about Vaughn’s life, most of which he answered with as few syllables as possible.

Did he like school? Sometimes.

What was his best friend’s name? Toby.

Favorite junk food? Barbecue potato chips.

Last book he’d read? Didn’t know.

She appeared to take no offense at his sullen, almost belligerent replies. When the meal arrived she prayed over it, simply bowed her head and began, as if it was perfectly normal.

“Father, we have so much to be thankful for today. I cannot thank You enough for bringing my son back to me. You have heard my prayers, and I know that You will continue to do so. Give each of us wisdom now, Lord, as we work to make of our lives what You would have them be, and bless the Jones brothers for all that they have done on our behalf. Amen.”

As she spoke softly, Grady looked around the room self-consciously, while Vaughn sprawled in his chair, glaring at him. Grady noted with some surprise that several other diners had also bowed their heads.

The meal crept by with Paige pretending not to notice that Vaughn wasn’t eating. She did try to deflect his glower from time to time, without much success. Grady fumed, uncertain just what the boy’s problem was. The crazy kid seemed to blame him, Grady, for his father’s problems!

Didn’t he understand how lucky he was to be back with his mom? At his age Grady would have done anything, anything, just to share one more meal with his mother. In Grady’s opinion, Vaughn Ellis should be on his knees, kissing his mother’s feet instead of worrying about his self-centered father, and it was all Grady could do not to tell him so.

As soon as the meal was finished and Grady paid the check—determined that this was one part of the trip that wouldn’t find it’s way onto Paige’s bill—Vaughn demanded to see his father. Paige turned troubled, pleading eyes to Grady, and he found himself almost sorry that he hadn’t had the foresight to arrange any such thing. Almost.

He shook his head. “Can’t be done, not on this short notice and a holiday.”

“I’m sorry, Vaughn,” she told the boy sincerely, an arm draped lightly about his shoulders. “You can call him later.”

Grady shook his head at that, at a complete loss. Didn’t she know what Nolan would do if she gave him just half a chance? He’d already absconded with her son once. Did she think he wouldn’t do it again? Grady decided that he was going to have a long talk with his brother about this once he got home. Maybe Dan could make her see reason. What it would take to reach the boy, Grady couldn’t even imagine, but he was glad that he wasn’t in Paige’s shoes. This, he thought morosely, should have been such a happy day, not tense and silent and barely civil.

The ride to the airport was gloomy at best. Sitting in the backseat with her son, who seemed determined to ignore her, Paige didn’t even try to make conversation. They had to visit a shop in the airport in order to purchase a second bag and get the boy’s clothes safely stowed for the trip, but when Paige began to repack his things, Vaughn elbowed her aside, grumbling that he would do it.

She backed away, her arms locked about her middle as if she was trying to hold herself together. Grady found himself at her side, his voice pitched low.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now.”

She flashed a wan smile at him. “I expected it to be difficult,” she said softly, “but I thought my son would at least be glad to see me.”

“Well, sure he is,” Grady insisted, though they both knew better.

Her eyes gleamed with liquid brilliance, brimming with a kind of bittersweet pain that made Grady want to howl. “I don’t know him anymore,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t even know my own son.”

“You’ll get to know him,” Grady rumbled, squeezing her fingers quickly. “It’ll be okay,” he told her, wishing for an eloquence he’d only ever found inside a courtroom.

Her smile grew a little wider. “You’re a good man, Grady Jones.”

His heart thumped inside his chest. Vaughn rose from his task then, sparing Grady from having to find a reply. He pointed toward the ticket counter, muttering that they had to get the boy checked in for the flight, and walked off in that direction. Only later, when the flight clerk was ready to receive the boy’s luggage, did it dawn on Grady that he’d left Paige and the kid to manage the bags.

He was still mentally kicking himself for that a half hour later when they arrived at the departure gate, having passed through security. The place was surprisingly crowded, and Grady frowned. Weren’t these people supposed to be home eating turkey? He concentrated on finding seats for them in the waiting area, then parked himself against the nearby wall.

Paige had bought Vaughn a couple of magazines in which he’d shown interest at the store, but the brat shook his head mutely when she offered them to him. Deflated, Paige shot a resigned look to Grady, and it was all he could do not to shake the kid. Grady tried not to watch the careful way in which she approached the boy, as if he were a wounded animal, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off them, and every time her son rebuffed her, his temper spiked a little higher.

By the time they were finally able to board the flight, Grady was gnashing his teeth. What was wrong with the kid? Didn’t he see how unfairly he was treating his mother? She hadn’t created this situation; his father had.

Only after they changed planes in Atlanta did Paige again try to communicate with her son. She asked gentle question after gentle question and received in reply only shrugs and sharp glances from the corners of his eyes. When she began to talk about her plans for Christmas, explaining what she and Matthias had discussed, Vaughn finally deigned to speak.

“Who’s Matthias?” he demanded, screwing up his face.

Paige smiled. “Didn’t I say? Matthias Porter is our boarder.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, he rents a room in our house.”

“So we’re poor?” Vaughn surmised caustically.

“No, we’re not poor. We’re not rich but certainly not poor.”

“Then how come you’re renting out rooms?”

Paige looked down, and for a moment Grady thought she’d tell the kid how much money she’d spent finding him. Instead she said, “Matthias had nowhere else to go. He’s elderly but too healthy for a nursing home and too poor to live on his own.”

“What happened to his family?”

“I don’t think he had much. His wife died, and he was left all alone,” Paige told the boy softly. “Like me.”

Vaughn looked away at that. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice like shards of glass, “but if you’ve got Matthias now, why don’t you let me go back to Dad? Or else he’ll be all alone!”

Grady saw the naked pain on her face, even after she squeezed her eyes shut, whispering, “Oh, Vaughn.”

A moment later she reached up and pressed the boy’s head down on her shoulder. He let it stay there, but he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, looking at them, Grady didn’t think he’d ever seen two more miserable people in his whole life. He’d have given his eyeteeth if he could have somehow made it better.

It had never occurred to him that Vaughn wouldn’t be eager to return to his mother, that the boy might actually prefer his father. Didn’t the kid realize that his father had literally stolen him from his mother?

Grady began to understand that finding her son had been a beginning for Paige rather than simply the end of her search. Her waiting and wondering was over, but now she had embarked on a long, new, difficult journey with her son, and that trip promised to make this one look like a romp in the park.

It was dark when the plane landed in Tulsa. Vaughn perked up a bit when he saw the Mercedes, asking his mom, “This yours?”

“No,” she answered evenly. “It belongs to Mr. Jones.”

Vaughn’s manner was almost derisive as he climbed inside, as if she had somehow proven herself a failure in his eyes by not owning the car. Grady had to bite back the impulse to point out that Vaughn’s precious dad had been picked up in a four-year-old truck with a crease in the tailgate.

As chatty as Paige had been on the drive from Arkansas, she was that silent on the long drive back from the airport in Oklahoma. In fact, if a single word was spoken during the first hour, Grady remained unaware of it. Vaughn leaned into a corner of the backseat, crossed his arms and feigned sleep, while Paige sat beside him and bowed her head. Every time Grady looked into the rearview mirror, there she sat with her head bowed, as still as a statue. He began to think that, unlike Vaughn, she really had fallen asleep. Then Grady saw her lips moving and realized that she was praying again.

She looked up at the sigh that gusted out of him, and their eyes seemed to meet in the mirror, though he doubted that she could actually see him. A small, tender smile curved the corners of her mouth before she looked away again. He couldn’t imagine that her smile was for him, but it kept him looking at her in the mirror when he should have been concentrating on his driving.

Eventually Vaughn sat up and complained that he was hungry. Considering that he hadn’t eaten his Thanksgiving dinner, Grady wasn’t surprised. At Paige’s request, Grady found an open drive-through at one of the little towns that they passed along the way to Nobb. Vaughn ordered a burger, tater tots and a drink that looked like it could fill a fifty-five-gallon drum. Grady didn’t say anything about the kid eating in his car, though it was not something Grady normally would have allowed.

Vaughn had wolfed down the food and was sucking air through his straw by the time Grady turned on to Paige’s drive. For the first time, the boy showed some interest in his surroundings. The house came into view, and for an instant Grady thought he saw something pleasant in the boy’s reflection in his rearview mirror before Vaughn sat back and remarked derisively, “Hasn’t changed a bit.”

Grady held his tongue, recalling perfectly well that the address given on Nolan’s arrest record had been that of an apartment complex in Curly, South Carolina, a small town on the outer edge of Greenville County. He heard Paige murmur that she’d had the back porch remodeled into an office, but Vaughn didn’t ask why as Grady parked the vehicle and got out.

The big black dog came down from the porch to greet them, and Grady assumed that his car was now familiar enough that the animal wouldn’t bother barking. The thing hadn’t let out a peep when Grady had arrived in the dark that morning, but no sooner did Vaughn step out of the Mercedes than the dog sat back on his haunches and lived up to his name, throwing back its head and slicing the air with yips and yowls and some sounds Grady had never before heard a living creature make.

Vaughn clapped his hands over his ears, while Paige attempted to scold the dog into silence. Light spilled out of the front door. Matthias appeared, and as before a command from him shut off the awful cacophony.

“Howler!”

Subdued now, the dog’s pink tongue lolled out of its mouth as it waited eagerly for Vaughn to pet it. Instead, he stomped toward the house, leaving his mother to retrieve the bags that Grady pulled from the trunk of the car. Matthias came down the steps toward the boy, a smile—or at least what passed for a smile—on his craggy face.

“Don’t mind old Howler,” the old man said. “He’s all alarm and no guard.”

Ignoring Vaughn’s scowl, he stuck out a hand, but the kid twisted past him and all but ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. Matthias stood for a moment, gazing toward Paige, who sighed. She seemed tired and sad. Finally, the old man turned and made his painful way up the steps and back inside.

Paige turned to Grady. “I tried to prepare myself,” she said, and he heard the trembling uncertainty in her voice. “Knowing intellectually how difficult it might be and going through it are two different things, I guess.”

He wanted to tell her that time would heal all wounds, that the worst was past her, anything to make it better. But what did he know? As she’d pointed out earlier, he had no experience as a parent and no hope of it. She likely would not appreciate words from him, anyway, so he just hoisted the bags and muttered, “I’ll carry these in for you.”