When Love Comes Home

“No,” she said, taking them from him, “you’ve done enough. Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.”

He shook his head, shocked by the urge to hug her. Instead he asked, “You going to be okay?”

She smiled tremulously. “Oh, yes. My son is home. He isn’t happy about it, but I knew he might not be, and I really have tried to prepare myself to deal with it.”

“I don’t know how anyone could prepare themselves for this.”

“I’ve been seeing a Christian psychologist for the past two years.”

“Didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Oh, yes. Why wouldn’t there be?”

He shrugged. “Just never thought about it.”

“I wanted someone who shares my beliefs. My pastor recommended her.”

“Ah. Makes sense, I guess.”

“Dr. Evangeline’s been very helpful,” she said. “I’m really not surprised by Vaughn’s behavior.”

Just disappointed. Heartsick. Weary. She didn’t have to say it. Grady saw it in the droop of her slender shoulders, the tilt of her head, the dullness of her beautiful eyes.

Grady looked to the house, escaping the weight of her emotions by wondering what might be going on in there. “I guess.”

Her gaze followed his, and she whispered, “I can’t help wondering what Nolan’s told him about me, though. I mean, how did he explain taking him away from me?”

Grady hadn’t thought of that. “Well,” he said slowly, “any number of ways, I guess.”

“And none of them good,” she muttered, adding wistfully, “He was barely eight when they disappeared, just a little boy. He wouldn’t know what to believe or what not to.” She looked to the house again. “Now he’s almost a teenager, and I have to accept that there’s no making up for lost time. He has to learn how to have a mom again.”

It occurred to Grady that he and Vaughn had something in common: they’d both been denied their moms at very young ages. Suddenly Grady thought of the last time he’d seen his own mother.

No one could have guessed that day as she’d dropped him off at school that she would never make it back home. To his shame, he’d shrugged away the kiss that she’d pressed to his cheek as he’d gotten out of the car, and he hadn’t looked back or waved a farewell even though he’d known that she would watch him all the way through the door of the building.

He’d never seen her again. When his dad had shown up at the school later that morning with his brother sobbing at his side, Grady had known that something awful had happened, but he’d never expected to hear that his mom was gone forever. He hadn’t believed it. Sometimes he still didn’t believe it.

Grady didn’t tell any of that to Paige. He had never told it to anyone. It was just something that he lived with. Suddenly Vaughn didn’t seem like such a brat. No doubt the kid was terribly confused right now. Remembering what that was like, Grady hoped that the boy would soon come to see how lucky he was to get his mom back.

Clearing his throat, he said that Dan would probably be calling her in the next couple of days. She thanked him again, and then there was nothing left to do but get back into the car and head home alone.

He should have been relieved, and on one level he was. It had been a long, trying day. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that he was abandoning Paige.

His last sight of her was in his car’s left side mirror. Bathed in the rosy glow of his taillights, she stood there alone with a bag grasped in each hand, a small woman with a big job before her.

If he’d been a praying man, Grady would have said a prayer especially for her. As it was, he fixed his gaze forward and drove home, even more troubled than the last time he’d done so.

Chapter Four

Paige listened to the door slam and dropped down onto the sofa, sighing inwardly.

Nothing she’d done or said in the past month had made her son the least bit happy. He’d hated his room on sight. Too “babyish.”

She’d rearranged everything and bought new linens and window treatments, keeping her regret buried as she’d put away the boy he’d been, all the things she’d treasured to remind herself that he was real and belonged in this place. He hadn’t seemed particularly pleased once the changes had been made, but given how often he retreated to his room in a huff, he must have felt more comfortable with his personal surroundings than before.

Today’s huff had to do with his impending return to school. Or perhaps it was the gifts he’d received yesterday for Christmas. Or the “do nothing” environment of Nobb. It was all tied up together somehow.

She’d kept Christmas low-key, realizing that it might not be the celebration for him that it was for her. Recalling the dreary Christmases she’d spent without him, she tried not to dwell on the fact that this one hadn’t quite lived up to her expectations. He’d spent most of the day bemoaning the fact that he was missing out on a hunting trip his father had promised him.

Before noon on this first day after Christmas he’d declared the video games she’d bought him “boooring,” the radio-controlled car “junk,” the clothes “lame.” Then he’d complained that he didn’t have anyone to do anything with.

Realizing that she was not yet someone to him, she’d made the mistake of suggesting that they invite over a few of the kids from church. He’d rolled his eyes, already having made known his feelings about church, which according to his dad was for “weaklings and nut jobs.”

She wondered if Nolan had always thought that, even during the years that he’d attended with her, starting when they were dating in high school. After Vaughn’s birth Nolan’s church attendance had grown increasingly sporadic, until it finally ceased. Once that had happened, the divorce had quickly followed, but Vaughn didn’t need to know that.

Or did he? She wasn’t sure, and since she wasn’t certain, she kept her mouth shut. Everything she believed told her that it was wrong to point out Nolan’s faults to his son. Yet, she wanted him to understand the importance and value of regular worship. Reminding herself that if she was confused, then he must be even more so, she held on to her patience. And her convictions.

Because Vaughn had nixed inviting over any of the youth from church, she had wondered aloud if he might want to call some particular friend from school. He’d laughed aloud at her idea of contacting one of the boys from his class, declaring that those who didn’t attend the local church were even “dumber” and “hickier” than those who did. In fact, the whole school was “stupid,” he’d declared, and he wasn’t going back after the first of the year. Paige had quietly but firmly refuted that, which had sent him slamming into his room.

Their counselor, Dr. Evangeline, had strongly recommended public school for Vaughn. Paige’s first impulse had been to hold him out until the start of the new semester, giving them a chance to get to know one another again, but Dr. Evangeline had insisted that Vaughn needed the socialization, needed to find replacements for the buddies he’d left behind in South Carolina. When the doctor had pointed out that because of state attendance standards, keeping him home those three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations could cause him to be left behind a year, Paige had been convinced.

She constantly fought the impulse to hold him close and never let go again, so it had been difficult to take him down on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving and enroll him in the Nobb Middle School, which was part of the large, wealthy Bentonville district. He’d hated it from day one.

He hated Dr. Evangeline, too, a fact he’d made known during their first joint session with her. It hadn’t been pretty. Since then he’d repeatedly said that a “guy” would do better, understand more, “actually listen, maybe.”

Paige worried that Vaughn had a problem with women in general, starting with her. He not only disdained the psychologist to the point of rudeness, he disliked his female teachers—though the lone male in the group hardly fared any better—complained that the husband of the couple who taught his mixed Sunday school class deferred too often to his wife, and made sure that Paige knew how far short she fell of the Nolan ideal in parenting, running a household and everything else.

In short Vaughn hated everything and everyone in Arkansas, including her. Maybe most especially her. Those sentiments had grown darker and more vocal over time, especially since Dr. Evangeline had suggested that Vaughn should not be allowed contact with his father at least until he settled into his mother’s household again. That, more than anything else, had enraged Vaughn.

Now Paige no longer knew what the right thing to do was. She only knew that her son resented not being allowed to call his father and that it was just one item on a very lengthy list.

Matthias limped into the living room, his cane thumping pronouncedly on the hardwood floor with every step. The weather had turned sunny and mild, but his arthritis had not noticeably improved. That had nothing to do with the frown on his weathered face, though.

“It ain’t my habit to give advice unasked,” he announced, “but I’m makin’ an exception here and now.”

Resignation weighing heavily on her, Paige crossed her legs, denim whispering against denim. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“It’s time to tie a knot in that boy’s tail.”

“And how would you suggest I do that, Matthias? Take a belt to him?” They both knew that was out of the question.

“Stop letting him walk all over you. Ever since he’s been here you’ve bent over backwards trying to please, but the world just ain’t ordered to his liking. We know who he’s got to thank for that, even if he don’t. Maybe it’s time he was told.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s wise to run down his father to him. That’s Nolan’s game, and it’s bound to backfire. It’s bad enough that Vaughn’s life has been turned completely upside down without me trying to turn him against his dad.”

“He can be glad it ain’t up to me,” Matthias mumbled, heading back into the kitchen where she had a pot of stew bubbling on the stove and corn bread baking in a cast-iron skillet. “I’d show him upside down.”

Paige closed her eyes and fought the bleakness of despair with the only tool she had. Lord, help me do what’s best for my boy, she prayed silently. Show me what needs to be done and give me the strength and patience to do it. Help him understand how much I love him, how much You love him, and thank You for bringing him home to me.

She could only trust that one day Vaughn would be thankful, as well.

“Happy New Year.”

“Hmm?” Grady turned away from the window, a cup of coffee in hand to find his brother standing in their father’s kitchen, grinning.

“What’d you and the old man do last night, party until the wee hours?”

Grady snorted. “Hardly. I might have been the youngest one here, but I went to bed as soon as the ball dropped in New York.”

“Party pooper,” Howard groused, coming into his kitchen with one arm draped around his daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “Look what Katie brought us.”

She slipped free of Howard and carried the enameled pot with its glass lid in sight of Grady before placing it on the range.

“Spaghetti?” Grady noted, surprised.

Katie turned her dentist-perfect smile on him. “You’re not superstitious, are you, Grady?” Katie asked.

“Black-eyed peas are just more traditional.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Never could stand them.”

Grady shrugged, wondering if Paige Ellis would serve black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. He immediately regretted the thought. She should have been out of his head long ago. But at odd moments like this, she suddenly sprang to mind. He couldn’t imagine why.

After the long debriefing he’d had with his brother on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Grady had refrained from asking Dan if he’d heard from her. Other than being pestered more than once by Janet to submit his billing report and expenses from the trip to South Carolina, the case had not been mentioned again except in passing. Grady couldn’t help wondering what the last six weeks had been like for Paige, though.

Had the boy come around? Was he walking the woods that surrounded her old house with that dog at his heels, pretending at some childish fantasy? Did he gaze at his mother with worshipful eyes now and grimace halfheartedly at the way she babied him? Had he made friends with Matthias?

“Where on earth are you?” his father’s voice asked.

Grady realized with a jolt that the conversation had carried on around him. He shook his head, gulped his coffee and said that he needed a good rest in his own bed tonight. He couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d started sleeping over at his dad’s on New Year’s Eve, anyway. Except, of course, that he never had anywhere else to go, and Howard always claimed to need help with the party he routinely gave. He’d started doing that about the time Grady had gotten divorced.

They were a matched pair, Grady and his father, despite the thirty years between them, both big and square-built with deep, rumbling voices and hands and feet the size of platters. Both alone.

“Do you know what your problem is?” Howard asked, and Grady just barely managed not to roll his eyes.

“Here it comes,” he groaned.

He didn’t really resent his father’s lectures. His father’s concern for him was a good thing. They had never discussed those difficult early years after his mother’s death when the distance between them had seemed to stretch into infinity. But it was after his divorce, that he’d discovered how firmly his father was in his corner.

“Your problem,” Harold said, ignoring Grady’s irreverence, “is that you spend too much time alone.”

“And you don’t?”

“That’s different.”

“I’ve been alone four years, Dad. How about you? More like thirty-four, isn’t it?”

“Thirty-three. But I’ve had my family. When are you going to start one, Grady?”

“As soon as some woman throws a rope around him and drags him back to the altar,” Katie said drolly.

“That’s pretty much what the last one did,” Dan noted.

“I blame her for this,” Howard announced gruffly.

“You blame Robin for everything,” Grady pointed out. “It’s not her fault that I’m no good with women.”

“She certainly didn’t help things,” Howard grumbled.

“Listen,” Dan said in an obvious effort to change the subject, “we’re throwing a football party in a few weeks. I want you both to put it on your calendars.”

Howard shook his head. “Don’t count on me, son. I’ve already got plans.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at Grady. “Well, can I count on you, then?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Dan sent a significant look at his wife, who smiled and said, “I have a couple friends coming who I’d like to introduce you to.”

Single, female friends, no doubt. Grady turned back to the window that looked out over the deserted golf course, hiding his grimace.

His family loved him. They tried to be supportive, and he tried to be appreciative, but he was getting real tired of being everybody’s favorite charity case.

It was time he got a life.

He wondered if Paige Ellis was as much of a sports fan as she’d claimed.

“He did not! You take that back!”

Paige heard the angst in her son’s voice even before she recognized the anger and resentment. She’d run out to find a grocery store open on New Year’s Day and grab cans of the black-eyed peas Vaughn had insisted they were supposed to eat for dinner. Vaughn and Matthias were arguing when she returned to the house. Dropping the bag with the cans on the end of the counter just inside the kitchen door, she glared at the pair of them, Matthias in particular.

“What’s going on?”

Vaughn’s face set in mutinous lines, while Matthias’s eyes clouded. “I was just pointing out a few facts of life to this youngun,” the old man grumbled.

“My dad did not kidnap me!” Vaughn declared heatedly.

Paige sent Matthias a quelling glance. “I don’t see anything to be gained by discussing this subject.” She turned to the counter and began removing the cans from the bag, saying brightly, “I got the peas. They may not be the brand you like, but I was lucky to find any at all. I didn’t realize how many people abide by that old custom.”

“I’ll tell you what’s to be gained,” Matthias said doggedly. “The truth. Any other woman would’ve put that man away for what he’d done.”

“Matthias, stop it,” Paige ordered, whirling around, but it was already too late. Vaughn was already screaming at her.

“It’s all your fault, anyway! He wouldn’t have had to take me if you hadn’t kept us apart!”

Paige fell back against the counter. “What are you saying?”

“He didn’t have any choice but to take me! You kept him away ’cause he wouldn’t give you money! That’s why he wasn’t around for so long! You wouldn’t let him be a dad! And now you’re doing it again!”

Paige gasped. After the divorce she’d gone out of her way to include Nolan in Vaughn’s life. She’d begged him to come around. He’d complained that her demands on his time were unreasonable, saying that Vaughn wasn’t old enough to miss him. He’d even threatened to tell Vaughn that he wasn’t his father if she didn’t give him some space.

Only after she’d proved his paternity and won back the right to child support had he taken any real interest in his son, and only then to punish her. She hadn’t cared, so long as Vaughn was happy. Now to hear her son say that she’d kept Nolan from being a dad to him was almost unbelievable to her.

She gulped and stammered, “W-we always have ch-choices.”

“I don’t!” he yelled. “’Cause if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here!” With that he tore from the room, rocking her sideways as he shoved past her.

“Now look what you’ve done!” she cried at Matthias, but the old man shook his head sorrowfully.

“Not me, girl. That Nolan’s the one who done this, and you aren’t helping that boy by not telling him the truth.”

Paige closed her eyes and put a hand to her head. “Even if he could hear and believe the truth, Matthias, I couldn’t tell him. You just don’t understand the harm it does a child when his parents defame each other.”

“His father don’t have no problem defaming you.”

“All the more reason for me to take the high road.”

“Just be careful you ain’t setting yourself up for a bad fall,” Matthias warned. “If you don’t make that boy understand that his daddy’s a lying, scheming—”

“Stop,” Paige interrupted firmly. “Just stop. Don’t you see? No one can make a child ‘understand’ such a thing.” She shook her head. “I don’t even want him to know it, Matthias. I want him to believe that his father loves him as much as I do. I want my son to grow up believing that both of his parents treasure him beyond anything in this world.”

“Wanting a thing don’t make it so,” Matthias insisted. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, if you ask me.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she hadn’t asked him, but she swallowed the impulse as he limped out of the room. Matthias only wanted what was best for her, but she had to think of what was best for Vaughn.

Grady leaned against the window ledge behind his brother’s desk and tried not to stare at her. He’d been surprised when Dan had called and asked Grady to join him and Paige Ellis in his office. His dealings with Paige Ellis should have been at an end. Even if legal assistance was required, her case was Dan’s responsibility, not his. Yet, he’d answered his brother’s summons without complaint, interrupting an important telephone conversation in the process.

Her hair was a little longer, he noted, as if she hadn’t found time to get to the stylist recently. Shadows rimmed her exotic sea-green eyes. For a moment he thought she’d taken to wearing smudged eyeliner; then he’d realized that she was tired, so tired that even the tiny smile she’d found for him had seemed to require great effort on her part.

“Anyway,” she said, glancing at Grady and then at her hands. “I just thought I should run it by you before I made a firm decision.”

Dan cast a veiled look at Grady, who knew instantly what he was thinking. The safety issue loomed large in both their minds.

“The contact would be limited to the telephone, I take it?” Dan asked.

She nodded. “Since you made it impossible for Nolan to return to Arkansas without risking prosecution, it has to be.”

At least she’d acquiesced to that much, Grady told himself. Dan shot him a helpless look, and Grady cleared his throat, prepared to be the bad guy. “That was my doing, and I thought letting Vaughn call his dad was a lousy idea from the beginning.”

“I know you did,” she said softly. “My former counselor agrees with you.”

“But the new counselor does not?” Dan surmised.

Paige sucked in a deep breath, her chest rising beneath the lapels of her brown velvet jacket and the plain front of the simple plaid sheath dress under it. “That’s right. He feels Vaughn will benefit from regular, unhindered contact with his father.”

“But the old counselor apparently thought it was harmful,” Grady pointed out. Paige took it as a bid for clarification.

“She concluded that talking with his father would keep Vaughn from making peace with his new circumstances.”

“Obviously my brother finds merit in her argument,” Dan said. “I think I agree with them, though I have to tell you that this is not a legal issue. There is nothing at this point to legally prevent Nolan from maintaining contact with your son.”

“We could fix that if you want us to, though,” Grady added.

She shook her head. “I’m not here to find a legal impediment. I—I just want to do what’s best for my son.”

If you were sure what that was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Grady thought. He truly wanted to help her.

“Can I ask you something?” At her nod, he went on. “Why did you switch counselors?”

The slowness of her reply told him that she was choosing her words with great care. “My son relates best to men.”

Dan made a sound somewhere between recognition and conclusion, and Grady knew what he was going to say before he said it. Groaning inwardly, Grady could only listen.

“I’m wondering if a male in this role is the best choice. I mean, we’ve had experience with this issue ourselves. Our dad’s failure to bring a solid female influence into my brother’s life created some difficulties for him, as they both would tell you.”

Grady briefly closed his eyes. “I don’t think Vaughn could have a more solid female influence than his mother, Dan.”

“Right!” Dan waved a hand, swiveling side to side in his chair with what Grady hoped was extreme embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to imply… Actually the situations aren’t that similar. Ours was a male household after our mother died. Grady was only six, so it’s no wonder he never learned how to relate to women.”

Grady groaned aloud this time. “Thanks loads, Dan,” he rumbled.

“I—I probably wouldn’t have, either,” Dan went on lamely, “if not for my wife.”

To Grady’s surprise, Paige Ellis sat up very straight. “Who says Grady doesn’t relate to women?”

Dan chuckled uneasily, as if he thought she was making a bad joke. When he realized that she was serious, both eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. Paige glanced at Grady and caught him with his mouth hanging open. She flopped back in her chair, huffing with what sounded suspiciously like indignation.

“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I spent at least eighteen straight hours with your brother, and I assure you he’s perfectly capable of relating as well to women as men.” She nodded decisively here and added, “Better, in fact, than a great many men of my acquaintance.”

Now Dan’s mouth was hanging open. He managed to get it closed, babbling, “Ah. Um, I see. That’s…good.”

Grady grinned. He couldn’t help it. In fact, a chuckle escaped as he came to his feet. But, it was time to bring this discussion to an end before his brother got the wrong idea.