Emma perched on the edge of the second chair, wringing her hands, tentative and somewhat fidgety. “Well, as I told you on the phone, Hildie and her mother had been living in a temporary shelter in downtown Atlanta when her mom died. Rather than end up in the system, Hildie took off.”
“Any idea why she came here to The Tanglewood?” the woman inquired.
Emma’s cell phone jingled at just that moment, and she took a look at it. “Fee may have found her,” she announced. “Why don’t you two continue talking, and I’ll see if I can hogtie her and bring her back up here.”
“Good luck with that,” Mrs. Troy teased.
Once Emma had gone, Jackson explained, “It seems that Hildie’s mother had become rather intrigued with the publicity surrounding the opening of the hotel. When the girl found herself alone, she ran to the only familiar place she could find, and we were it.”
“Sad,” Mrs. Troy commented.
“So what are the next steps for her?” he asked. “Will you place her in foster care?”
“Ideally,” she replied. “We’ll evaluate her, investigate whether there are any other family members willing to take on her care. If not, we’ll try to place her.”
“How long will all that take?”
“There are a lot of variables, Mr. Drake. I can’t be certain.”
“And in the meantime? Where will she stay?”
“We have emergency shelters where we place children such as Hildie. If we can’t place her in a foster home, we also have some transitional living programs that we can look at.”
“These emergency shelters,” Jackson said. “Are they safe?”
“We make every effort to protect and care for our children.”
“I’m sorry. Emma has really taken a liking to this girl, and I know these are the questions she’d ask if she were still in the room.”
“I understand,” Mrs. Troy assured him. “Every year, there are more than a million and a half children in this country who join the ranks of runaways and the homeless. Hildie is categorized as an unaccompanied youth, which means a child under the age of eighteen who is on her own without at least one parent or older sibling. In an urban environment like Atlanta, you can imagine the challenges we face trying to provide even very basic needs for kids like Hildie. That being said, we do have programs in place to help us with our efforts.”
“That’s good to know,” he said.
But would it be good enough for Emma? Jackson couldn’t be sure.
“Hildie?”
The girl spun completely around from the waist up, her chestnut eyes sparkling with confusion, fear, and something else besides.
“Emma Rae!” Aunt Sophie exclaimed from her spot on the floor next to Hildie. “Have you met this remarkable young girl? Her name is Hildie. Isn’t that delightful?”
“I have met her,” Emma said as she scooped Sophie under the arms and helped her to her feet. “But neither of you should be sitting on this cold floor, Aunt Soph. There are five hundred chairs in this room. I want you both to sit down on a couple of them.”
She dragged over a ladder-back dining chair with a thick upholstered seat and helped her aunt down to it. When Sophie appeared settled, Emma turned back toward Hildie.
“Honey, I’d like you to come and talk to Mrs. Troy with me. Just hear her out, okay?”
Hildie remained cross-legged on the floor, her chin pressing against her chest as she shook her head adamantly.
Emma squatted down beside her and rubbed Hildie’s shoulder. “You’re kind of running out of options here. And I’d like to see you get a few of them back.”
When she lifted her head, the girl’s face glistened with fresh tears. “Nobody’s going to want me, Emma. People want babies. I’m eleven. All my bad habits are already starch-pressed in.”
“No!” Sophie cried from behind Emma. “That’s not true. You come over here and sit by me. Right this minute.”
Emma looked on, amazed, as Hildie hopped to her feet, scraped a chair toward Sophie, and obediently sat down next to her.
“If nobody wants you at age eleven,” Sophie said, “does that make me completely discardable at fifty-two?”
Emma suppressed the chuckle rising in her throat.
“You’re only fifty-two?” Hildie asked, suspicious.
“Well. No,” she admitted. “But I feel fifty-two, so why can’t I just stay there?”
Hildie giggled. “No reason, I guess.”
“Anyway, do you think I’m discardable, Hildie?”
“Of course not. But you’re different than me.”
“None of us are different. Not one of us!”
Emma hadn’t seen her aunt so worked up in years. The lines around her eyes stretched longer as she narrowed her eyes and looked at Hildie with a serious and steadfast glimmer.
“Every one of us is flesh and bone and spirit. It doesn’t matter about our age or the color of our skin or where we live or what we like to eat. We’re just plain flesh-bone-spirit. Not one of us is expendable. Not one of us is without worth to other human beings.” Sophie snatched Hildie’s hand and held it to her heart. “Those other people want babies. Good for them! But somebody wants a free-thinking eleven-year-old with a crazy hive of beautiful hair, without a single allergy to anything at all.”
Sophie looked at Emma with a glint in her gray-blue eyes. “Emma Rae, did you know that this child doesn’t have a single food allergy? Not even to peanuts! That’s quite an accomplishment in this day and age, don’t you think so?”
Emma nodded, holding back the thump of emotion rattling her heart. “I do. That’s kind of amazing.”
“Emma Rae has diabetes,” Sophie told Hildie. “Her little body doesn’t know how to create insulin, so she doesn’t process sugar the way she should. Do you think that was easy on her mama?”
Hildie shook her head tentatively.
“No. But Emma Rae was just the child Avery and Gavin were meant to have, diabetes and all. In just that same way,” she said, jiggling the girl’s hand, “you’re just the child someone else is meant to have. But you need to let them look for who that is.”
Hildie gazed at Sophie, her face awash with a smooth combination of disbelief and hope.
“Maybe they’re no good with babies. Or they can’t stand to change a dirty diaper. Or they have no patience for a toddler who doesn’t understand a word they tell them. But an eleven-year-old with an active imagination and a lick of sense? Well, that’s just the right child for them, these people somewhere out there in the world. Do you understand me, Hildie?”
She shrugged slightly and replied, “I guess so.”
Emma knelt down in front of Hildie and gave her a warm smile. “But how will they find you if you don’t let them know you’re here?”
Hildie sighed and tilted her head backward, staring at the ceiling.
“Just come and talk to Mrs. Troy, Hildie. Give her a chance to find you a better situation than hiding in this room and stealing leftover food. Somewhere out there is a home with your name on it. I just know it.”
Sophie slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulder and squeezed her. “My Emma Rae is the most trustworthy person you’ll ever know. You do what she tells you.”
“She’s waiting for us in Jackson’s office,” Emma said as she rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Let’s go talk to her.” Hildie just sat there for what seemed to Emma like several minutes. Waving her hand, she grinned. “Yes? Come with me?”
Hildie groaned softly before taking Emma’s hand. “Yes. All right.”
As they hit the door, Emma turned back and extended her free hand to Sophie. “Come on, Aunt Soph.”
Once they left the storage room and entered the hall, she leaned in toward her aunt. “How is it that you always seem to end up in just the right place at just the right time?”
“Jesus takes the wheel, Emma Rae. I just ride along.”
“Well, it’s freakish . . . But I love you for it.”
�
��Yes. I know,” Sophie said as she smoothed her silver hair. “Perhaps Hildie can come and meet your uncle Tuck. He was orphaned at a young age, too.”
Uncle Tuck died when I was nine, Emma thought. But she didn’t remind her.
Emma cradled Isabel in her arms and swayed from side to side in front of the large glass door overlooking Sherilyn’s back yard. Andy tossed a ball across the length of the grass, and their dog Henry barreled after it.
“So what’s going to happen to her?” Kat asked about Hildie.
“She finally agreed to go with Mrs. Troy, and hopefully they’ll place her in a foster home so she can get her land legs again. I’m just praying it’s somewhere warm and safe and dry, you know?”
“Emma, your tea is on the table,” Sherilyn told her as she sat down. “Come and join us.”
“I will,” she sang softly. Gazing down at the baby in her arms, she grinned. “I’m just having some alone time with my girl, Izzy.”
The baby’s eyes eased open at the sound of her name. The long, dark lashes surrounding her bluish eyes fluttered, and they came to rest on the top of her cheek as she drifted back to sleep. Emma planted a tender kiss on her head before tucking the baby into the bassinet next to Sherilyn and sitting down with Sherilyn and Kat at the dining table.
She sniffed the tea steeping in a large flowered mug in front of her. “Mmmm. Thank you, Mommy. This smells like heaven.”
“No more Mommy for the moment,” Sherilyn teased. “Right now, let’s talk wedding.”
A surge of adrenaline pulsed through her and Emma grinned joyously. “Okay, let’s.”
Kat flipped open Sherilyn’s pink laptop on the table before her. “We went over the details before you got here,” she told Emma. “And I think we have all of the bases covered, but let’s just run through it one time with you.”
“Okay, shoot!”
“The invitations have been mailed, and we’ve already received nineteen RSVP cards back. So that’s just fifteen outstanding. We’ll give them another week, and I’ll make phone calls to confirm the rest.”
Sherilyn nodded as Kat swiped the mouse and moved down the list on the screen before them.
“The flowers are all ordered and confirmed,” Kat stated. “Also confirmed are six chandeliers for the trees in the courtyard, twelve floor-stand candelabras—”
Just about the time Emma’s eyes began to glaze over, Sherilyn interrupted. “No. No. Stop. Too much information for Em’s brain. Let’s just go over the basics with her, and she’ll leave the details to us.”
“Thank you,” Emma said on a sigh.
Kat chuckled and returned her attention to the screen of Sherilyn’s laptop.
“Music?” she asked, and Sherilyn nodded. “Ben Colson has confirmed for the reception.”
“Oooh, goodie!” Emma cried.
“And we have a string quartet for the ceremony,” she continued. “We’ve reviewed the menu with Pearl, reserved the honeymoon suite from the day prior until the following day, confirmed the photographer and Pastor Miguel for the ceremony, and we have Andy set to go with Jackson for their tuxes on Thursday night.”
Emma leaned back and watched Kat and Sherilyn as they put their heads together and whispered over some detail looming on the flickering computer screen.
“Yes. I took care of that today,” Kat said softly.
“Excellent!” Sherilyn beamed. “Check it off then. Emma, did you put the license somewhere safe?”
“Check.”
“And you’ve picked up the rings from the engraver?”
“Check! Well. Jackson picks them up tomorrow.”
“Perfect.”
“Good grief,” Emma said on a sigh as she observed them. “You two could rule the entire world with nothing more than a laptop and a credit card.”
“Emma,” Sherilyn said with a sudden stern look in her eye. “Tell me you’ve narrowed down the cake.”
“Well, I thought I had.”
“Emma Rae! Kat and I have taken care of every minute detail aside from the wedding cake. Please. Decide.”
“It’s not that easy,” Emma defended herself to Kat. “It would be like you picking just the right jewelry for your own wedding, with all of your past creations to choose from!”
“We keep hearing this argument out of her,” Sherilyn told Kat with a grin. “But still no cake.”
“Soon,” Emma vowed. “I promise.”
“Ooh!” Kat exclaimed, and she shared a feline-that-ate-the-canary grin with Sherilyn. “Emma, I have something for you.”
“You do?” Emma set her teacup on the table and smiled. “Do tell.”
Kat reached into her bag; produced a large, forest-green velvet box with a brass-hinged lid; and slid the box toward Emma. “If you don’t like it, please don’t feel obligated to wear it. But I created it with you in mind.”
Emma’s heart fluttered softly as she eased the lid open. Inside, resting on a nest of pale ivory satin fabric with the striking logo of Kat’s new jewelry design firm on the inside of the lid, sat an exquisitely simple ivy-patterned rhinestone headband.
“I tried to use the design of the flower and vines on the cap sleeve of your gown,” Kat told her. “And if you look very closely, the center of a few of the flowers are dotted with very pale amethyst gemstones to tie in your lavender-blue hydrangea.”
Emma’s hand floated to her heart as she took a closer look. She’d never seen anything quite so beautiful, and the afternoon sun caused the array of stones to sizzle before her. The thought that Kat had designed it specifically with her in mind . . .
“Isn’t it amazing, Em?” Sherilyn asked her. “It’s so understated and elegant. Not like those huge tiaras so many southern brides seem to wear. I was thinking that, since you’ve chosen such a delicate veil, and you said you wanted to wear your hair up, it’s going to really look stunning.”
“It’s perfect,” Emma said on a sigh, and when her eyes met Kat’s glistening brown ones, a single tear escaped and streamed down Emma’s cheek. “Kat, I can’t believe you did this.”
“You’ve become such an important part of my life,” Kat told her with emotion. “Everyone at The Tanglewood has. I would never have met Russell, or jumped off the ledge from being Audrey’s assistant to creating my own line of jewelry . . . So many wonderful things have happened to me because of you and Jackson and your beautiful hotel.”
And at that, Sherilyn burst into tears and bolted from her chair.
“I’m going out to check on Andy,” she called over her shoulder as an afterthought before rushing out the door.
“Did I say something wrong?” Kat asked.
“No. Jackson did.”
Kat chuckled. “But Jackson’s not here. What did he say, and when?”
“He said yes when asked what Sherilyn believes to be a truly horrible question.”
“Which was?”
“ ‘Will you sell this hotel?’ ”
Kat gasped. “No.”
“Afraid so.”
“Well, no wonder she’s crying. I think I might cry, too.”
“Oh, good. That makes it official. You’re one of us now, Kat.”
Tips for Combining a Tiara and Veil
When wearing the hair down:
Hold the comb attached to the veil upside down,
with both the veil and the blusher pulled back.
Rotate the comb forward and slide it into the hair
with the concave side facing the scalp.
Slide the tiara onto the head at an angle and adjust it
so that there is no gap between it and the veil.
If the tiara has pin loops, secure it with bobby pins
to hold it in place.
When wearing an updo:
The tiara or headband should be placed in front of
or against the bulk of the hair.
Attach the veil behind and underneath the bulk of
the updo, and be sure that the tiara connects to
the edges of the veil, leaving no gap in-between.
10
If everyone has a glass of something, I’d like to propose a toast.”
Jackson’s arm rested loosely around Emma’s shoulder, and he looked down at her and smiled as she beamed at her father. Gavin stood at the other side of the room from them, glass in hand, waiting for the rest of the guests to join the circle.
“Tonight,” Gavin said, “two families come together in anticipation of the questionable blessing of being bound together for life because of these two.”
Avery jabbed Gavin’s rib with her elbow as she shook her head. “Really.”
“Well, come on, Avery,” he teased. “You don’t think these people would actually choose us if they had their choice, do you?”
“Don’t be silly!” Madeline chastised with a sweet smile. “We’re three-illed to consider y’all fam-ly.”
Jackson surveyed the room amidst the hum of the ooohs and ahhhs of the guests’ reactions. His oldest sister, Georgiann, looked radiant as she leaned in close to her husband, gripping middle sister Madeline’s hand. Norma, the youngest of the Drake sisters, crinkled her nose as she laughed at Gavin’s joke and shared a smile with her husband, Louis. Miguel and his wife—Jackson’s niece—rounded out the Drake side of the well-wishers gathered in Norma’s parlor.
The Travises were well represented by Emma’s parents and her aunt Sophie, who stood just to Jackson’s left, clinging to his arm and seeming extraordinarily present-minded at the moment. Sherilyn, Andy, Fee, and Sean, also stewards of the Travis clan, joined the circle, glasses in hand. The room brimmed with one cohesive family unit of well-wishers and support, and a hot ember of emotion flickered in Jackson’s chest.
He leaned over and kissed Sophie’s cheek with a tender peck. “We’re so glad you’re here, Sophie,” he told her, and she nuzzled against his arm.
“As Emma and Jackson approach their upcoming nuptial—” Gavin continued, “and at long last, I might add—I think every one of us in Norma Jean and Louis’s gracious home offers them prayers of hope and encouragement toward a marriage built on our shoulders, the people who love them the most.”
Always the Baker, Finally the Bride Page 11