Releasing Grant, Sully said to the woman beside him, “Maude this is Grant Cutler, my partner, or at least he lets me share his office building. And, Grant, this is Della’s mother, Maude Haynes, and her grandson, Ethan. And sweeping his arm around, “And this is Della’s new house.”
Maude had extended her hand, and Grant was holding it. “I’m happy to meet you, Grant. I feel like I know you from all I’ve heard about you from Sully.” Then a young, dark haired woman came through the door on the left of the stairs, and Maude introduced her daughter, Johnny. She was an attractive young woman, but she didn’t look anything like her mother, Grant thought, noticing that Maude’s eyes were that violet blue like Della’s.
Grant looked around the house saying, “If the inside is anything like the outside, it’s a beautiful house.”
“Della didn’t think much of Donnie’s drawings at first, and she made a few changes,” Sully said. “Now she loves it – is making it into a real home. I’ll show it to you later. We’re expecting Maude’s daughter, Henrietta, and Della, and Addie any minute now...”
“Hey! They’re here,” Johnny exclaimed picking up little Ethan, and rushing out the door.
The other three were following toward that big, black Lincoln that was parking in front of the walk behind Grant’s car.
Was that Addie getting out of the driver’s door? She’s done something to herself. She looks older, more mature than any sixteen years old he’d ever seen. Della was getting out of the passenger door, big with pregnancy. She must be about due, he thought. And as pretty as ever. Ben Martin must be the biggest fool in town.
They had reached the group. Grant hung back from the family.
Della was saying to her sister, who was still in the back seat, “I know you want mama and Johnny to see you get out of the car and walk a short piece, but you’ve had a busy and tiring morning. So let Sully carry you up the porch steps, and then help you up the stairs to your room to rest awhile.”
Then everybody was moving back to allow Henrietta to get out of the car, stand up and hug her mother and sister, and little Ethan. Then Grant saw her.
“Twins!” he exclaimed.
“Mr. Cutler, you’re here!” Addie exclaimed, and Della turned and took his hand.
“We’re so glad you’re back, Grant. Have you met my family?”
“All but this lovely creature, but twins?”
“No. Just look-a-likes. This is Henrietta Haynes. Actually, I’m two years older than she.” But Grant and Henrietta’s eyes had locked, and Della wasn’t sure he was even hearing her.
Grant was suddenly struck with the strangest feeling. It was like he had lived all his life for this one moment. No one else existed but this beautiful woman who was walking toward him, her eyes looking into his. He had to remind himself to breathe. What was happening to him? He wondered as she reached him and stood looking into his eyes. He bent and picked her up in his arms. It seemed the natural thing to do. Hers arms went around his neck, their eyes never leaving each other’s. Grant turned and began walking slowly toward the house, neither of them saying a word, just looking into each others eyes.
Della said in wonder, and to no one in particular, “Well, I’d say those two were just struck ...”
“By cupid,” Sully finished for her as they all began to move toward the house behind Grant and Henrietta.
At the porch steps, Grant said to Henrietta in a voice so low that only Della and Maude, walking close behind them heard, “Do you think you’d like England?”
Maude and Della looked at each other, Maude smiling, Della looking mystified.
“Would you be there?” Henrietta asked in a soft, low voice.
“I’m thinking very strongly about it.”
“Then, I’d like England,” she said as they reached the porch.
Della expected Grant to put Henrietta on her feet once on the porch, but he continued through the open door and toward the stairs. And Sully, who had walked up close to Grant, said, “Watch where you’re going, Grant, we don’t want you falling with her and sending her back to the hospital.”
“Thank you, Grant,” Henrietta said as he paused at the stairs, “but I want to walk up the stairs and to my room to prove to myself that I can do it.”
“I’ll be right by your side,” Grant said as he put her down, but held onto her hand.
“Always,” she said softly, still looking at Grant.
Standing at the stairs, watching her sister and Grant climb them, still gazing into each other’s eyes, Della said, “Mama,” but Maude was just looking at Henrietta and Grant. Smiling at Della, she just shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ll get lunch on the table,” Della declared. “I know everyone is hungry,” she added loudly, hoping Grant and her sister heard her. But they made no indication that they did.
“Do I need to go up and show Aunt Henrietta where her room is?”
“No, honey. She knows the walnut bedroom is hers,” Della answered as the phone rang.
Addie was closest to the hall table where the phone was, so she answered it. “Addie,” Donnie’s voice said, “I was wondering if you’d have time to stop by the house before going to work. We need to talk for a few minutes.”
She wanted to ask, ‘what about’, but her relationship with Donnie had been strictly business after the one or two kisses when he had returned from Florida. She knew their parents’ relationship had given him a guilt feeling that kept him apologizing to her for his mother’s behavior. And she didn’t want to hear anymore of it, and she would tell him so if he mentioned it again. “I guess so,” she said in a disinterested manner. “I’ll be there about three-thirty.”
Johnny went to check on the baby, and Sully and Maude looked at each other. “What can I do to get you to look at me the way Henrietta looks at Grant?” Sully asked Maude.
Maude took his arm. “Maybe, if we go sit in the swing and talk about it ...”
“Talk?’ Sully said as he followed Maude. “They’re not talking.”
“They don’t have anything to talk about yet. We do. We have some very serious talking to do.”
Chapter Forty-six
“We do?” he asked in surprise at her answer. “I don’t like serious talking except when I’m being paid to do it.”
Maude led him to the wicker swing with floral, padded cushions and took her seat. Grumbling, Sully sat down beside her. “The only thing serious that I want to talk about is why you never wrote to me like you promised. I’ve asked you twice before, but you still haven’t answered.”
“Sully, I had to know where our relationship was headed first.”
“Lord! Maude, you should have known that from the beginning.”
“No. I don’t take anything or anybody for granted anymore. I learned a very costly lesson by doing that.”
“I know. Sorry,” he said.
“If you recall,” she said, “I had just started work as a receptionist at Carl’s Cut and Curl ...”
“Ah, yes, where my mother got her hair done every Friday on her lunch hour, come rain or shine.”
“Like clock work,” Maude, smilingly agreed. “And right after you left, Amy Adams shows up pregnant with no husband and no hopes of getting one, so Carl let her go. I took on her nighttime job of cleaning the place and doing the wash. I never got home before midnight, and I was too tired to do anything but fall into bed.”
“Yeah. Mother wrote me about that. But you could have dropped me a line or two on your lunch hour.”
“If I’d had a lunch hour. My lunch hour consisted of Carl bringing me back a sandwich from his lunch, and expecting me to eat it while I worked since he paid for the sandwich. When I took Amy’s job I needed the money. I was barely making it on what he paid me as receptionist. But it wasn’t long until I begun to suspect that Amy and I were in the same boat.” She paused, took a deep breath and said, “So I told myself I was going to accept the next proposal of marriage that I got, regardless of who the man was.”
“We were both pregnant, no husband, and no prospect of one.”
“You mean that you, that we, that when we went all the way that one time, you got pregnant?” Sully asked, almost in shock.
“It does happen, Sully.”
“I made you pregnant! We have a child? You’re telling me I’m a father?”
“Sshh,” Maude said. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper, disbelief written all over his face.
“I can’t believe this!” he exclaimed as he grabbed Maude to him, hugging her so tight she squealed. Then he held her back. “That’s why you married that Odell Haynes?”
“Yes. He needed someone to look after his mother who was going mad, and I needed a father for my baby.”
“But it was my baby. Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked in anger. “Surely, you knew I’d come home and marry you.”
“And you would have never become the lawyer that you and your mother wanted you to be, and besides, you had just met Emma. Your mother said Emma was the answer to her prayers. She was the daughter of a professor, the school secretary, and she knew of a full scholarship that she could get for you. Your mother said that now, she could quit her job, take your grandmother out of the nursing home and care for her at home. Sully, how could I?”
Sully hugged her to him again. “Oh, Maude, Maude, Maude,” he said with tears in his voice. “It was my responsibility. You should have told me.”
“When you love somebody, Sully, you want what’s best for them. And my telling you then would not have been best for you. I hope and pray that my telling you now is what’s best for you and our daughter.”
“A daughter! I have a daughter! I can’t believe it! I have a daughter? You don’t know how much I’ve wanted a child – someone to say that I was here, that I had lived.” He had to bite his lips hard to hold back the tears that flooded his eyes.
Maude pulled his head down to her shoulder and rubbed her hand up and down the back of his neck. They sat in silence for a few minutes. When he raised his head he saw that tears had dampened Maude’s cheeks. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, and tenderly dried her eyes and wiped her cheeks, then his own. “How about telling me about my daughter?”
“She’s right here in Riverbend. Her name is Jimmy Lee Haynes Willis, but she calls herself Janie.”
“Janie Willis? That beautiful wife of Col. Willis’ is my daughter?” He was so excited he couldn’t contain himself. Maude had to caution him again to whisper.
“Yes, Sully. She has your eyes and black hair. Your hair was black at one time, remember?”
“Oh, my, yes. But a jealous wife can turn your hair white in no time. Does she know I’m her father?”
“No. Jimmy Lee has had a very hard time. There’s a lot I need to tell you before we can figure a way for us to tell her.”
“Sounds like we need to do some serious talking.”
Addie came to the door. “Mama said tell you that lunch was ready.”
“Addie, dear, tell Della we’re going for a walk down to the river for a little while. We’ll eat when we get back, and I’ll clean up the kitchen. And she is to go rest. Okay?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
Addie walked back through the house thinking how happy her mother was with her new house. She had made it absolutely beautiful in every room. And it was big enough for her to have all of her family with her, except Jimmy Lee, of course. She had said she hoped she could come by sometimes this afternoon to see Henrietta and the house. It all depended on the Colonel letting her have the car to go grocery shopping at the supermarket when he got in from golfing.
Her mother was so happy since she had found her family, and she was happy to have a grandmother, aunts, even cousins, and an uncle by marriage. She like Uncle Wayne. He was always smiling and happy, always telling funny stories about patients he had known. And Grandma Maude was such a loving person. She was always hugging every one of them. Addie thought it was almost like she was afraid of losing one of them again. Aunt Henrietta wouldn’t see about having her knee fixed until she saw her mother again and spent some time with her. And even then, mama had to promise her that she and grandma would stay with her in the hospital until she said they could return to Riverbend. And her mother and Mr. Sully had faithfully taken grandma to see her twice a week, but as much as she had come to love them all, none of them could take the place of her daddy. And he wasn’t here – in this beautiful house, the house she wanted for her family.
She had been so busy with school and everything else, that it left little time to brood over her daddy not being in her life anymore. But after six months she had given up hope that her parents would get back together.
“Addie, are you coming?” her mother called. And when she entered the kitchen alone, she asked, “Mama and Sully coming?”
“Not right now. Grandma said they were going down to the river for awhile. They seemed awfully serious about something. Mama, do think they’ll get married?”
“Would you like them to?” Della asked as she took her seat at the large round table heavy with delicious smelling food. Miss Mattie had sent dozens of rolls along with two boxes of freshly cooked foods.
“Oh, yes. Then I’d have a real grandfather. I love Mr. Sully. The first time I saw him, I thought if I had a grandfather, I’d want him to be someone just like Mr. Sully.”
“I think you’re going to get your wish,” her Aunt Johnny said.
Her Aunt Johnny was always so positive. “I hope so,” she said, admiring the beautifully set table with its bright yellow table cloth. She remembered the day she and her mother had bought it at Elaine’s. It was a couple weeks after the open house. Her mother had seemed so despondent. She had thought it a great idea for the two of them to go shopping at Elaine’s. They had purchased everything necessary for setting up housekeeping like they were two brides-to-be.
They had had a wonderful time together, and her mother’s mood had changed remarkably, and had seemed to stay that way. Perhaps it was the fact that she was creating another human being. And she wanted it to be a happy, well adjusted person, as she had said before. Whatever, Addie thought. She was glad, and yet sorry that her mother seemed to have adjusted to life without her daddy. If her mother could, maybe she could too. But she missed him so much. Life seemed so empty without him.
Chapter Forty-seven
Maude and Sully walked slowly, arm-in-arm, up the rise from where the river meets the road. Maude had just finished telling Sully about Jimmy Lee’s life during the thirteen years that they were lost to each other, and her hopes for a better life with some security for herself and Henrietta by marrying Col. Willis. “But, Sully, he’s making her life miserable. She says she could abide his stingy ways, since she’d never had more than the absolute necessities before, but his extreme, unreasonable jealousy is making her a nervous wreck.
“He brings in the mail to see who she might be getting mail from. He has to know who she is talking to on the phone before she can carry on a conversation with anyone. When he allows her to use the car, he has to know where she’s going, who she is going to see, how long she’ll be gone, and even checks the mileage on the car before she leaves and when she returns.”
Sully shook his head in disbelief. “I know all about jealousy. Emma finally confessed to me, when it was too late for us to have children, that we had not had any children because she didn’t want to share me with anyone. Sounds like the Colonel is as bad as she was, if not worse.”
“He gave up their Country Club membership,” Maude continued, “because he said she attracts too much attention from the men. He can only play golf now when another member invites him. And when he doesn’t get invited, he blames her.”
“My daughter doesn’t have to put up with that. I’m not the richest man on earth, but Emma left me a sizable sum. Money she inherit
ed from her parents and both sets of grandparents. They were farmers on both sides, with lots of land that became very valuable by the time they had quit farming. Emma never used any of the money. Just stuck it in the bank and let it sit there and draw interest. She wouldn’t travel because she got car sick, air sick, sea sick, and didn’t like strange places. All she wanted in life was me and good food. She got both. And now my daughter, the child she wouldn’t give me, no longer has to live a lie with an older man who makes her life a hell on earth.
“She can live life in any reasonable style she wants to, anywhere she want to, and I can’t wait to meet her and tell her so.” He stopped walking, turned to Maude, “And now, Maude, don’t you think it’s about time we got married?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” she answered smiling real big.
“When?”
“How about the next opening at Wylene’s lovely wedding chapel? Is that too soon?”
“Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough for me,” he said pulling her to him and kissing her soundly. A few straggling, Saturday workers whistled and yelled. Sully raised his head and his arm and whistled back, Then the two of them walked, arm in arm, hurrying back to Della’s pretty white house.
Chapter Forty-eight
Addie was about to leave for her own little house when they walked through the kitchen door. Della, Henrietta, Grant, and Johnny were still seated at the table talking. Little Ethan was playing on the floor at his mother’s feet.
“I’m glad everybody is still here,” Sully said. And grinning from ear to ear, he announced, “I want you to know that this beautiful woman has just agreed to become Mrs. James Sullivan Morgan.”
Addie screamed, “Grandma!” And took the few steps from behind her mother’s chair to grab her grandmother and Mr. Sully in a big hug. “I’m so happy for you and for me. Nothing could make me happier than having you for a granddaddy. Now, I don’t have to call you Mr. Sully anymore. Granddaddy! That’s your name now.”
The Daughters of Julian Dane Page 74