“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, Sanjeev? You bringin’ Dixie lunch?”
He shook his head. “This came for you today.” He held out two manila envelopes with her name scrawled across them and the company’s address beneath.
She shrugged. “Must’ve gotten mixed up in the big house mail. Thanks, Sanjeev.” She dropped it on her desk and motioned to the chair for Sanjeev to sit.
“Oh, I mustn’t. There’s work to be done at the big house. Are we still on for our Dora the Explorer, Mona and Lisa playdate later this week? I promised those heathens of Dixie’s a meal fit for a queen.”
Em grinned. Dora loved Sanjeev and she loved playing with Dixie’s dogs Mona and Lisa in that enormous football field they called a backyard. “Absolutely. But promise me, no filet for Dora. She’s got a touchy tummy and the vet says we have to watch her weight.”
Sanjeev bowed again. “I promise, no filet. I cannot promise there won’t be gravy. Surely you can’t expect me to allow Mona and Lisa to dine on steak as Dora looks on with only her pitiful dry kibble? It’s unkind.”
Em laughed. “Fine. Gravy it is. Just a little.” For the umpteenth time in as many days, Em found herself counting her blessings. This motley crew of friends might not be what Plum Orchard or her mother titled respectable, but she didn’t care.
She was loved. Her boys were loved. Even Dora was loved. Nothing else mattered. Clifton could, in the immortal words of Landon, “suck it.”
These people gave more to her children than their own father did. She would not allow Clifton to sully it with his sudden bid for morality.
“Then I bid you good afternoon, and, Emmaline?”
“Uh-huh?”
“About your womanhood?”
Her cheeks went bright red.
Sanjeev’s eyes twinkled. “You go, girl!” He glided out of the door as softly as he’d entered, making her smile again.
With a sigh, she turned her attention to the flowery scrawl on the first envelope and slit it open. Probably more hate mail. Usually, it was easy to identify which member in town had sent it.
Jared Tompkins had a penchant for forgetting to cross his T’s just like in high school, and Charla Sue Lawson’s letters smelled like Chanel No. 5.
But this one didn’t smell like perfume, and the T’s were definitely crossed. Em’s eyes flew over the official piece of paper with the raised seal.
It was a birth certificate.
Hers.
Her heart began to crash in her ears while the rest of the world crumbled around her. This was a lie. It had to be a lie. Who would do something so awful?
Her fingers shook, her stomach sloshed with the weight of her lunch. She took several deep breaths and forced herself to read again the line designated for Name of Father.
Well, that was wrong. Of course it was wrong. Someone was playing a cruel joke on her.
Her father was Edward Mitchell. He’d left when she was just an infant then died three years later of lung cancer. He’d been an outsider from Texas. Not from Plum Orchard, and according to her mother, he’d never been happy living here.
He was an accountant. He liked numbers. He’d run off to Texas when he’d left Clora. She remembered very clearly the open-and-shut discussion she’d had with Clora about him. She had one picture of him—a picture of him with her mother on their wedding day. Neither of them looked wildly in love, but then, Clora wasn’t wild about anything.
It was the only picture Em had, old and faded; she’d clung to it when her mother had banished all talk of him.
But he was absolutely not Ethan Davis, husband to Pearl, father to her best friend in the whole world—Dixie Davis.
* * *
The phone rang and rang, just like it always did when he called the number on his phone that was supposed to be Reece’s. This time, he wasn’t hanging up. This time he was going to leave her a message and find out what the hell she wanted because he had other things he wanted to do, and Reece was standing in the way of it all.
He knew she was here—somewhere. He knew he’d seen her at the school and he knew she was trying to get a glimpse of Maizy.
What scared the shit out of him was why. Why did she want to see her after all this time? Was she hatching some crazy plan to snatch her? Was Reece really selfless enough to care that much about another human being?
His lips thinned when he got her voice mail. “Reece? It’s Jax. Let’s stop the bullshit. Meet me down by the bridge off Lambert tomorrow. Five o’clock. If you don’t show up, I’m calling the cops.”
Clicking the phone off, he dropped it on the kitchen table like it was hot.
Time to face your demons, Jackson Hawthorne.
Face them so you can move on to something better. Something in the here and now. Something like Em.
He’d behaved like an ass with her. A total ass, and he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d wanted to stop in her office a hundred times today—smell her perfume, see her smile—apologize for being such a dick, but she’d left work early, and he had things to handle first. He wanted to go to her with a clear head. Reece was muddying those waters right now.
Em played a huge part in his calling Reece. If he could figure out what she wanted, then he’d know what to do next. But if he didn’t clear it all up, see her one last time and let it go for good, he couldn’t move forward with Em.
To Em.
He wanted to move forward. The hell with her protests and her nothing-personal mantra. She wanted him, too. He felt it in his gut—now he just had to convince her to get on board.
A chair scraped, startling him.
“Why you here in the dark, big brother?”
Jax spun the phone around, not looking at Tag. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you tonight, Tag. I’m tired and it’s been a shitty couple of days.”
“So you’re thinking about Reece?”
He remained silent, trying to gauge his brother’s mood by watching his face in the light from above the stove. “Yep.”
“I’ve been really hard on you about her.”
“No harder than I’ve been on myself.”
“She doesn’t deserve Maizy.”
“And it’ll be over my dead body before she gets her. But I can’t just keep ignoring her existence, Tag. If I’m going to move forward, I have to find out what she wants. I’d like your support in that.”
“She pisses me off.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“But I’ve been a real asshole about it.”
“You won’t hear me protest.”
“I’m trying to work that all out. I just get so pissed off. I keep hearing it’s because of my guilt about Harper.”
Guilt and regrets. They had plenty of that going around these days.
Tag based every reaction he had for every situation on his pain over Harper’s death. But it had to stop. “Listen, don’t think I don’t get a thing or two about how you’re feeling, Tag. Remember Jake?”
Tag shook his head. “Totally different.”
“Maybe the reasons for our regrets are different, but it’s the same damn guilt. Harper knew you loved her. But I can’t say that to you anymore, Tag. I’ve only said it a hundred times. Harper knew what you were going through before she died. She understood. She really did, better than all of us, and her death was tragic and it hurt us all like hell, but I can’t keep going over the same shit with you. I also can’t let you take it out on all of us, either. I just can’t stay stuck here in the past with you anymore.”
“So seeing Reece is your way of finding the closure everyone says is so healthy?”
“It’s gotta beat yelling and fighting with everyone all the time. Guilt can eat y
ou alive. I’m done being guilt’s midnight snack. I wish you were, too.”
“What brought this on?”
“A chance at some real happiness and the need for a clean slate.”
“Em?”
He smiled. In the midst of all the misery they’d endured as a family, in the height of Tag’s agonizing trek back from the darkest point in his life, Em still made him smile. Feel. Want. Look forward. “I think so.”
Tag smiled back. It wasn’t the smug upward turn of his lips that had become his standard—it was real, and it was warm. Like the old Tag. “Good on you, man. You need me to come with you when you meet Reece? Somebody to be there for you when you open up all those old wounds?”
He smiled again. The best thing about choosing to move forward was the freedom from all those old wounds. They didn’t feel like wounds as much anymore. They felt like a scar from a lesson learned. “Nah. I’m good. Just keep a close eye on Maizy, okay?”
“Always.” He pushed his chair back and slapped Jax on the back before heading out of the kitchen.
“Oh, and hey, Tag?”
He paused in the doorway, his clothes covered in Sheetrock dust, his knit cap planted on his head, his face open and relaxed. “Yep?”
“Thanks for having my back.”
Tag’s Adam’s apple worked when he swallowed hard. “Always, brother. Always.”
* * *
“Maizy said she don’t got a mommy.”
“Doesn’t have,” Em corrected Gareth, planting a kiss on the top of his head and flipping to the next page in their book. Maizy brought to mind Jax, and Jax brought to mind the empty ache she hoped to ignore. “When did she say that, honey?”
“When we was talkin’ about mommies at lunch. She said she has no mommy. She had an aunt Harper, but she died. All she has is her dad and her uncles and her grandparents.”
So Jax didn’t acknowledge the woman who’d given birth to Maizy? It was almost as if Maizy were hatched. Like she’d cropped up out of the ground after a seed was planted. No wonder he’d been so angry about her picture.
Why? And how did Maizy feel about that? She was at the age when asking questions was second only to breathing. And what had happened to her mother? Maybe she’d left them? That made Em’s chest hurt. Never. Not as long as she had life in her would she leave the boys. Or let Clifton take them.
After getting caught looking Jax up on Google, she’d closed the computer and refused to pry further. He was keeping Reece close to his chest for a reason—one he didn’t want her to know because it was personal and they had Nothing Personal stamped on their relationship.
Yet, it hurt.
But you have no right to hurt. We’ve gone over this. You have no claims to Jax other than the right to say you made him your boy toy.
Gareth tightened his hold on her arm, letting his head graze her shoulder. “I’m glad I have you for my mommy. I don’t want to be like Maizy.”
Em’s heart shifted in her chest. “You do know daddies can be good mommies, too, right? I think Jax is a pretty good daddy.” A pretty good everything. Especially good at not texting her when she was desperate to hear from him.
“Nuh-uh. He’s nowhere near as good as you. He makes dee-sgusting fish sticks.”
But amazing conversation... Em wrinkled her nose and giggled with him. “How do you know?”
“Maizy said so.”
“You and Maizy are becoming real friends, huh?”
“She’s funny.”
Clifton Junior stomping down the stairs interrupted their conversation. When the light from the stairway hit his face, Em’s eyes flew open. “Clifton! What happened to your face?”
“Nothing,” he replied, ducking his head and heading for the kitchen.
Em set Gareth aside and ran after him, grabbing him by the arm to spin him around. “Oh, honey! How did this happen?” How had she missed a lump the size of Ukraine on his forehead? His hat. He’d worn his ballcap all through dinner and right up until he’d gone to take a shower.
“Get off! It’s no big deal.” He pulled away from her, hard enough to make tears sting her eyes.
“Clifton, this is a big deal. What happened? You have to tell me so I can decide whether we need to see a doctor.”
“It’s just a bump. No big deal.”
Gareth wrapped his arms around her thigh. “Jared Carpenter beated him up today. After school. Because Clifton called him a bad word after he called Daddy a girl.”
Clifton whipped around, his face red, his eyes bulging at Gareth. “Shut up, Gareth! I told you not to tell anyone!”
Em pushed Gareth behind her. “Do not speak to your brother like that, Clifton. I won’t have it. He’s only telling me to protect you. Now tell me what happened. This instant!”
“Or what?” His eyes grew round with defiance, his small body rigid with more anger than she’d ever witnessed from him.
“Or I’m going to take away all of your privileges. TV, Xbox, all of it, and we’re going straight to the school tomorrow to have a chat with Principal Crawford—that’s what!”
“Good. Then I’ll be a snitch, too!”
Em softened. She remembered this rock and a hard place well. If you tattled on the person who’d picked on you, you were labeled a snitch. If you didn’t, you were subject to more torture. She wouldn’t have this for her boys. “Clifton, I know how hard this has been. I know what it feels like to be teased and picked on. I want to help if you’ll just let me. Please, let me help you.”
Violence was in the mix now. It was one thing to call names, but it was quite another to use your fists. This would end. She’d see to it.
“Just leave me alone! This is all your fault anyway!” he screamed, making Gareth cling to her leg and cry. “If you were a good wife, Daddy wouldn’t have left to live with Gina! I heard Grandma Clora say it!”
The wind soared right out of Em’s lungs and left her with a stinging pain, so sharp, so real, it was like someone had jammed a flaming knife into her back.
Clifton raced up the stairs, and she let him. She was too hot with anger—too incensed with her mother to speak to him.
Gareth tugged on her skirt with a sob. Em scooped him up in her arms and rocked him. “I hate Clifton!”
Tears stung the corner of her eyes. “Never, ever say that, Gareth. Not ever. Clifton’s having a bad time of it right now, but he loves you. He’s saying things out of anger.”
“I shouldn’t have telled you what happened.”
Em sat him on her hip, thumbing away his tears. “Yes. Yes, you should have, Gareth. You were right to tell Mommy. No one is ever to lay their hands on either of you, understand? You must always tell an adult.”
He snuggled down on her shoulder and closed his eyes, his sobs easing to soft hiccups then to a light snore.
But she couldn’t let him go just yet. She had to hold on to something to keep her from getting in her car, driving to her mother’s and screaming her rage like she was off her rocker. It was enough that she’d dealt with her mother’s anger all her life, but she wouldn’t have it infiltrating her children.
Settling into the couch, she held Gareth close and eyed the ugly envelope with the fake birth certificate. It had to be a fake.
She hadn’t given it much thought after opening it and getting past the initial shock of just how far people would go to get rid of them. Obviously, shame the head Call Girl in charge was the latest tactic.
But she knew the Mags and just how far they’d go to get what they wanted. They wanted to embarrass her—humiliate her into leaving her job at Call Girls because it would surely stir trouble between her and Dixie if something like that were true.
It was creative; she’d give ’em that. Instead of paying it much mind, Em had made several copies of it to keep on hand for Ca
ll Girls’ prank files and kept the original.
It was clearly someone’s idea of yet another cruel joke. It wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last. This one was more thought out than the typical, “Dear Emmaline, The devil is saving you a seat next to him” or “You’ve paved the road to Perdition for Plum Orchard” letters she got as GM, but it was also ridiculous. Fun, easygoing Ethan Davis and her staid, purse-lipped, disapproving mother?
Never.
She and Dixie would laugh about it just like they laughed about all the crazy letters and angry email they got from all sorts of people in town and from all over the world, in fact. What they should have done was change the name of her mother. That she might have fallen for. She was nothing like Clora, and when she got her hands on her...
Em took a deep breath and reached for the second envelope. It was thicker and much heavier than her fake birth certificate.
Tucking Gareth next to her and covering him with a throw, she sat back and ripped open the envelope.
The first thing she saw was the legal header—something she was familiar with as Hank’s former secretary.
And then she saw Clifton Senior’s signature.
The breath left her lungs.
She’d thought he’d just been spitting in the wind. Throwing threats around because that’s what Clifton did when he was frustrated and angry.
But this sealed the deal.
Clifton really was suing her for custody of the boys.
Eighteen
“Hey!” Caine yelled to Jax, running to catch up to him as he left Madge’s. “Where you off to, brother?”
To meet the woman who could potentially ruin my life. “Nowhere special. How’s things?”
Caine smiled, clapping him on the back. “How’s anything where Dixie’s involved? Crazy, as always.”
Now Jax smiled. He liked seeing his friend so damn happy. It gave him hope. “But you love it, and you know it.”
He threw up his hands with a bark of laughter. “Fine. I love the chaos. She makes mayhem like no other, but I love it. So listen, been meaning to talk to you since yesterday, just wasn’t sure how to approach it.”
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