by Annie Jones
“I realize that.” He nodded. “Which is why I have to get moving.”
“Moving?” The word made her shiver.
“Have a lot to get done, and now that my family knows I’m here, I don’t have much time to do it.”
“What’s the supposed to mean?”
“It’s not supposed to mean anything, Josie.” His dark eyes fixed on her. His expression remained calm, but she could see the storm beneath the surface—as if what he felt and what he thought did not match up and he was going to have to reconcile them or choose. “I don’t skirt around issues or try to pretty up the ugly truth. You know I came here for a reason, a reason I am not inclined to discuss with anyone.” He handed Nathan back to her. “I will tell you this, though.”
Josie pulled Nathan close. “What?”
“One of the reasons I don’t want to tell you details about my plans is that, having met you now, having seen how you and Nathan fit into the fabric of Mt. Knott, I am not as sure of my intentions as I once was.”
“That’s a lot of words, Adam, but hardly any information.”
He smiled, not too much and not with any joy in his eyes. “Maybe all you need to know, Josie, is that no matter what, from this point on I am not going to make a decision without taking you and Nathan into account first.”
“Taking us into account is one thing. Taking us, um, that is, me into your confidence is quite another.” She settled Nathan onto the floor in the front room to let him crawl around and play. As she bent forward the business card slid from her pocket and fell onto the ragged gold carpet. She snatched it up and went on with her point. “Taking us into account sounds nice, but really, it just means you are going to do what you decide anyway without asking me what I think.”
He did not deny it or offer to do anything differently. He just brushed her cheek with his thumb and asked, “Did anyone ever tell you you’re very wise for your age?”
She tapped the card against her open palm. “I’ve had to be to get by.”
He nodded. “And now you have to do the wise thing and take the job cooking for this barbecue deal.”
“You’d rather I not do this, wouldn’t you?” She couldn’t look down her nose at his not confiding in her if she didn’t speak honestly with him.
“If it’s just the money—”
“It’s not.” She held her hand up to cut him off, noticed the card in her fingers and folded her arms.
“If that’s even a part of it, though, I could help you out on that score.”
She took a step backward. “I can’t take your money.”
He looked down at Nathan, who had crawled to the couch and was trying to pull himself up into a standing position. “A case could be made that I owe you a year’s worth of back child support.”
“No. I don’t see it that way.” Josie shuffled one foot in Nathan’s direction, ready to lunge out and nab him if he should fall. “You didn’t know about him.”
Adam shifted to the side, as well, only he seemed to be doing it in response to Josie, not a gut reaction to protect his child. “That doesn’t change the fact that you had expenses.”
“No. If we are going to start ‘making cases’—” she paused and made quotation marks in the air “—in order to ease our guilt, then I should make one for the fact that I didn’t track you down sooner to tell you about Nathan.”
“I thought you didn’t know about me until Ophelia sent you the adoption paperwork.”
“I didn’t. But I didn’t make that effort either.” She scanned the business card, the worn carpet, the baby who had just succeeded in pulling himself up onto his own two feet then promptly plopped back down onto his well-padded bottom. “And deep down I often thought that I should have made that effort. I may be naive about a lot of things. Innocent, even. But I do know it takes two people to make a baby, and I never once really tried to seek out Nathan’s father.”
“You are not just wise, Josie.” He cocked his head. He studied her in much the same way he had on the first night they had met, but this time there was something more in his eyes. Respect. He didn’t bother to conceal it when he said, with quiet conviction, “You are…amazing.”
“Nope. Just someone trying to do the best I can, to be a good person and a good Christian.”
“I know. You are.”
“I try.” She turned to watch Nathan again.
The baby grunted and groped at the couch cushion. He dug his tiny fingers into the fabric. His chubby legs bounced once, twice then his body jutted upward and he stood. “Ya-ya-ya!”
She smiled at her son. “Like everyone, I fail sometimes but I never stop trying.”
“That’s what makes you so wonderful.”
Josie wished she could scoop her son up to take the attention away from herself. But she didn’t want to take anything away from his hard-won accomplishment.
“You have to stop saying things like that or my head will swell up so big that I won’t be able to get my café apron over it.” She pantomimed putting on the apron that covered her from neck to knees.
“Ahh, you’ve caught on to my plan, to keep you from cooking for that barbecue.”
They stood there in silence. Josie didn’t know what to say or do.
Nathan lurched sideways for one step then another, his fingers curled into the soft cushion for support as he cruised toward the armrest.
Josie raised her head and now commanded Adam’s gaze. She wanted to please this man but she was not ready to surrender that kind of trust to him. He had plans he would not tell her about and she had rent to pay.
“I won’t take money from you.” She laid it out as plainly as possible. “Not when I have a terrific way to earn it for myself. It’s the right thing to do and won’t cause you any hardship.”
“I don’t know about…” He stopped, looked down at Nathan, then back at her. “Wait. You think me paying your back child support would create a financial hardship for me?”
“Everyone in town knows you went through your inheritance right away.”
“Oh, everybody knows that, do they?”
“You don’t have to be ashamed. Like I said, we all fail. The important thing is to keep trying to do better.”
He opened his mouth and raised his hand, like a man about to launch into a speech. Then his eyes shifted. His brow crinkled. He exhaled in a quick, hard huff. “I can’t stand here and talk about this now, Josie. Just believe me when I say that if you should decide not to take the job, I will support you emotionally and financially in that choice.”
Thump.
Nathan reached the end of the couch and sat down on the carpet, hard. He did not cry or fuss about it, just plunked down and sat there.
“It’s not just about money, Adam.” Now Josie did go to her child and pick him up. “It’s also about me giving something back to the people who have been so kind to me.”
His brow furrowed. “My family?”
“The people of Mt. Knott.”
“Even if you have to take money from the people who have let the whole town down to do it?”
“I don’t see them as having let the town down. They certainly did not want their business to flounder. I don’t understand your animosity toward your father. As a father yourself now, it just seems that you’d be more forgiving.”
He hung his head. “Maybe I haven’t been a father long enough.”
“But you’ve been a son for most of your life, a brother and a—”
“And a stray.”
You don’t have to be a stray, she wanted to say. You have Nathan now. Nathan and me. “Why can’t you let go of that?”
He paused.
For a moment she thought he might break down, then he gathered himself, squared his shoulders and shook his head. “I have to go.”
She could have offered to walk with him. He’d left his motorcycle behind the Home Cookin’ Kitchen, after all, but she knew he wouldn’t want to be seen with her and Nathan. A protective move, he’d say, but Jo
sie could not make herself accept that without some reservation. So she watched Adam leave the house via the back door and disappear into the night without anything more demonstrative than a mumbled goodbye.
Ten minutes later she shut her front door behind her, not knowing what to do first about all this. Should she panic or praise the Lord?
Praise. Definitely praise.
Once she had spent a little time in prayer and thanksgiving, she would surely not feel so overwhelmed by everything and underequipped to deal with it. She had to stop and marvel at that notion. She had lived from one crisis to the next for so long, hung on by her virtual fingertips to survive from her childhood to her son’s infancy.
But now she wasn’t quite sure how to act when so much good news came her way. One thing after another, each brighter and more positive than the last. Who knew that even that would carry its own kind of stress? Have its own unique way of needing to lean on the Lord?
Josie hummed a hymn and walked toward the Home Cookin’ Kitchen with a spring in her step that had not been there in a long, long time. She carried Nathan in her arms and from time to time he would lay his chubby cheek against hers as he gnawed his fist and “sang” along with her.
“Ya-ya-ya.”
It wasn’t exactly to the tune of “Blessed Be the Tie that Binds” but the child did manage to keep the right rhythm. Of course, every mother thought her own child was some kind of genius. And while Josie didn’t see a musical career in Nathan’s future, she did think he might have an affinity for listening and repeating.
“Ya-ya-ya.”
“No. Not ya-ya. Try this, ma-ma.”
“Ya-ya.”
“No. No. Listen—” Josie pressed her lips together to sound it out. “Mmmma-mmma.”
“Na-na-na.”
“Mama.” She hadn’t encouraged the child to call her that before now. She couldn’t. Not until…
Josie could not dismiss Ophelia’s fickleness and that, until now, she had to be aware of the fact that there was an unknown father who could show up and take Nathan away. Now she had Adam’s word, knew that his father was a sweet gentleman willing to welcome her into the family—if only on the fringes—and Ophelia’s signature on the proper legal documents that meant that Nathan would soon be hers forever.
The only thing that could make this day better was to hear him form the name she hoped he’d call her for the rest of his life. “C’mon, Nath. Mama. Ma-ma-ma. Mama.”
“Na-na-na.”
“Mmmmmama. Ma-ma.” She pointed to herself.
“Mmmmmya-ya.” He pointed to himself.
“No, Nathan, that’s me. Mama.” Just saying it lifted her heart. So she pressed her fingertip more emphatically to her chest and said it again. “I’m your mama.”
The child touched one finger to her face. “Ya-ya. Na-na. Da-da!”
“D-dada? Where did that come from?” Why was she asking him that? Even if he could have responded, Josie already knew the answer. “I have had you since the day you came home from the hospital. Walked the floors with you, prayed over you, spent every possible moment I could with you, and you call me the same thing you call your boo-boo bear and your big toe. He has you for a morning and a few hours in the afternoon and already you know the name, Da-da.”
She hugged her boy close, not minding one bit that he had formed an instant and irrepressible bond with his father. Josie couldn’t help noticing the man’s charms herself.
“Dada. Da-da-da.” He waved is hand around.
“Okay, I got it. Save it for when you see—” She followed the line of her son’s finger and gasped. “Adam?”
Across the street from the Home Cookin’ Kitchen and down about half a block was the unmistakable shape of a man in black standing by a gleaming Harley. He had his back to them and showed no probability of turning around, not when he was leaning with his forearm on a sleek silver car, talking to…someone. She couldn’t see who.
“Not that it matters,” she murmured to Nathan, thinking that even a one-year-old had to know she had really been talking to herself. “What the man does is his own business. Though…that doesn’t look like business. Unless it’s funny business.”
Josie pulled Nathan close and stepped into the doorway of the vacant building next to the Home Cookin’ Kitchen. She needed a moment to gather herself. She did not know what Adam was up to, though he’d made it clear he had no intention of telling her, so she couldn’t be hurt by his need for privacy.
But the fact that it was not privacy that the man wanted but secrecy, that’s what needled her.
She recognized the signs of it from all her years dealing with her mother and Ophelia. Master manipulators, they always had schemes and small subterfuges working behind the scenes. Always had to be someplace, meet a person here or there, never in the open. Never on the up and up.
Josie’s heart sank. She would not condemn Adam or write him off based on what little she did know. But she also could not simply believe in him blindly.
Adam had asked her to trust him and said he would take her into account when making decisions. But judging from his effort to get her not to cook for the barbecue and this sneaky behavior, the only thing he was taking into account was his own clandestine plans.
If it were just her, she might…but it wasn’t just her. And if the adoption plans went well it would never be just her again.
Adam could promise to take her into account, but Josie didn’t have a choice, she had to think of Nathan first and do what was best for him. That meant keeping both the doors of her business and the lines of communication between herself and the Burdetts open. And if Adam didn’t like it, then…
A pang of guilt made her look in his direction just in time to see him point the way out of town, then step away from the silver car to reveal he had been speaking to a woman. A pretty woman. Poised. Even from this vantage point she gave off a sense of power and professionalism that Josie could never posses.
The woman started her car and pulled away from the curb.
“Dada.”
“Shh. Nathan,” she snapped.
The baby silenced.
“Mama’s not mad at you, honey, it’s just that…”
Adam got onto this Harley and took off, right behind the woman in the sleek sedan, without so much as a backward glance.
“I need to think.” She tucked the child close and hurried to the front door of her well-lit diner, mumbling as she did, “Now, where did I put Burke Burdett’s business card?”
Chapter Eight
“Thank you for meeting me out here on such short notice.” Adam extended his hand to Dora Hoag. A compact, athletic woman with short black hair and the kind of personality that made people around her feel as if they were always running behind the power-walking, Bluetooth talking, multitasking, no-quarter-asking executive.
“It’s just that once people know I’m in town it would only take a Web search to connect me to Global…”
“I understand your personal issues in all of this, Burdett.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, so he was glad she’d used his name.
Dora tended not to look people in the eye unless they were her superiors or somebody she could get some good business out of. More than once Adam had almost commented on something she had said only to realize in the nick of time she was carrying on an electronic conversation and was hardly even aware of his presence.
She took only a moment to sweep her gaze over their surroundings.
Adam did the same.
He scowled that the half asphalt, half gravel parking lot that Adam had promised employees time and again they would finish off—only to have his father say it was fine the way it was—had not been fixed. And the long, low building painted buttery yellow and…well, the color had originally been called café au lait meant to evoke one of the flavors in their famed Crumble Pattie, had not been repainted in years. Now the butter color looked more like someone had mixed mud into vanilla ice cream, and the café au lait had sun-
faded to a pinkish color not unlike the pancake makeup he’d seen elderly ladies wear to church. Separating the two colors was a border of bright blue-and-white checks and what was supposed to be an image of their lone product stamped like a large seal of approval to one side.
Corporate logos were supposed to be so easily identifiable that even without the red script “Carolina Crumble Pattie” emblazoned next to it, everyone who had ever seen the product would immediately recognize it. Adam had grown up making and eating that product and he still had no idea what the image on the building was supposed to be.
Luckily they had not used it in packaging or anything official. One of the ongoing battles Adam had had with his father was about that very image. Adam had suggested they tap a fresh-faced local girl for the image of “Carolina Pattie”—and as he recalled that, Josie came to mind. But his father had flatly refused, not because Conner believed in the power of the disproportioned artwork but because he loved the artist, his wife, Maggie Burdett.
Adam had to force down the lump in his throat then. He looked away from the facade of the building and narrowed his eyes on the hills in the distance.
“But to me there is nothing personal at all here.” Dora gave a sniff, frowned, then brought her full attention to bear on Adam, or as much of her attention as she gave to anyone in his position. “It’s just business.”
“But it won’t be to my family.” He motioned toward the back door marked Employees Only and pulled a key from his pocket. He unlocked the door, feeling a twinge of guilt about it. Dora didn’t want to recognize the personal connection but she had no problem using it to give her a slight edge in her decision-making process. “My older brother and father would rather drive this business into the ground than to have to admit they needed me to broker the deal that would keep them afloat.”
“That’s why they are in the shape they are in.” She crossed the threshold into the dimly lit hallway. “Can’t run a successful business like that, right?”