by Annie Jones
“Let me have a taste of that pie.” He did not promise to share anything with her.
She slid the stainless steel server in under the crust of the small triangular piece she had cut from the whole. Slowly she lifted it up, then lowered it slowly, then lifted it again. It had the right heft.
She closed one eye and peered at it with the other eye narrowed as if scanning the thing with a laser beam. It had the right look.
She closed both eyes now, pulled back her shoulders and inhaled. It had the right aroma.
The top and bottom crust broke into delicate flakes just as they should. The filling clung to the chunky upper crust that was her trademark, in the way it always did, with the fruit still firm and plump, not watery or crushed under the weight of the top. Still, Josie would not be satisfied that she had done her best until she heard it from someone whose opinion mattered to her.
That thought made her take a sharp right turn with the pie plate still in hand. “Here, Nathan, you take the first bite.”
“Hey! What about me?”
“This is your chance to show your son how to practice patience by example,” she returned, aiming to appear witty when, in fact, she was terrified.
She was a mother. A mother who had lived the past year in fear that at any moment her child could be taken from her. Now, just when it seemed she could put that fear behind her and move on to build a life for herself and her child, this man comes along. Yes, Nathan’s father, but also a virtual stranger to Josie. A stranger, by his own admission, with a secret.
She could not afford to take that lightly. Nor could she allow her own feelings alone to dictate her actions. She had to get her priorities right and keep them right. No matter how she felt about this man, she was first and foremost Nathan’s mother.
She pinched off a bite just right for a one-year-old and poked it into Nathan’s mouth.
He worked it around with his tongue more than with his tiny front teeth. Some of the red dribbled onto his chin, and he rubbed his fist over it and began to gnaw at his balled-up fingers. “Mmmm-nnnnmmmm-nop-nah-nnop.”
“Does that mean he likes it or not?” Adam moved in close behind her and then leaned forward to peer at the child, bringing him closer still.
“I don’t know,” she confessed, her eyes glued on the boy’s reaction in a gargantuan effort not to sense how close Adam was standing. Not to smell the still-fresh line-dried scent of his apron or hear the jingle of his change and keys when he put his hand in his pocket.
“Ya-ya-ya!” Another shriek, then Nathan went on tiptoe and stretched his arms out for the plate in Josie’s hand.
“I think he likes it.” Adam laughed
Josie laughed, too, and offered her son another infant-size piece on her finger. “I think he does.”
“Now how about you let me have a taste and see what I do?”
She spun around, the pie filling still clinging to her hand and found herself nose to nose with the man. “A…a taste?”
“Of pie.” He slipped the plate away, moved to the counter and found the fork he had left lying there. “Don’t worry, Josie. I won’t press you for anything you’re not ready to share. Not your secrets. Not your kisses. And most especially not your—”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“What’s that?”
“Bingo!”
“I didn’t even know we were playing.”
“Not the game, the mailman.”
“We have a beeping mailman?”
“He has a little horn on his scooter to warn people to clear the path or let them know he’s making a delivery. He has bad knees.”
“When did Mt. Knott get a beeping mailman?”
“He’s always been the mailman in this part of town as far as I know.” She hurried across the room. “I can’t believe you don’t at least know about him. He certainly knows plenty about you.”
“He does?”
Josie winced. She probably shouldn’t have reminded him of how she had gotten people talking about Adam right after he came to town, which probably was how his father found out about Nathan, which led to the barbecue that Adam did not want to attend, which—
“So, who else have you talked to about me besides the bad-kneed beeper?”
“Bad-kneed beeper.” Josie laughed. “I’ll have to tell him that.”
“Josie?”
She twisted the lock and pulled open the front door.
“Wouldn’t have bothered you. I know you had big plans for today.” Bingo eyed Adam.
Adam eyed him right back.
“But this looked important. Didn’t want to take a chance of you not seeing it.”
“He reads the mail?” Adam moved through the dining room in a few long strides. “You read her mail?”
“Just what’s on the outside.” The big man looked hurt and just a wee bit defensive. “Gotta read what’s on the outside or else I wouldn’t know what to deliver to where.”
“Yeah, he’s gotta read what’s on the—” Josie turned the letter over and what was on the outside of the envelope hit her like a slap in the face. “It’s the letter I sent to Ophelia to thank her for signing the papers to allow Nathan’s adoption.” Josie’s hand trembled. “Marked ‘Return to Sender.’”
“Really? I didn’t know people actually did that.” Adam moved in behind her, his hand out, but he did not try to take the envelope from her.
“Oh, yeah. All the time. Or they put ‘not at the address.’ The real creative ones sometimes send their own messages. Don’t think I can say what they write on the envelopes, not in front of Josie.” Bingo reached into his bag then and retrieved a stack of bills and advertising flyers. He thrust them toward her. “All means the same, the person on the address didn’t get the mail.”
She ignored the other mail and rubbed her fingertips over the blocky words beside her delicate-scrolled lettering. “Doesn’t look like Ophelia’s handwriting.”
Adam took the mail from Bingo, his eyes always trained on her. “That good or bad?”
“Well, if it were in her own hand, I’d know she was there and just didn’t, for whatever reason, want to hear from me.” She looked up and blinked, half expecting tears to flood over her eyelashes, but they did not come.
“Family can be tough on each other.” Adam brushed his hand over her shoulder.
“Some more than others,” Bingo observed.
Adam smacked the mail in one hand against his open palm. “Don’t you have mail to deliver?”
“Miss Josie?” Bingo looked to her to send him on his way.
She nodded.
“Now don’t go fretting too much about that. Could be any number of things behind it, not all bad.” He limped out the door, got onto his red scooter and gave a beep goodbye.
“You think that’s true?” she asked Adam as they walked back to the counter. “That there are a lot of reasons mail gets returned and it doesn’t mean that something bad has happened?”
“What do you think?”
“I think this means that Ophelia isn’t at this address anymore.”
“Then where is she?”
Where indeed? You have a baby with her, why don’t you know? Josie pressed her lips together to keep her questions and quasi-accusations from exploding into the open. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows. At last she fought to keep from bursting into tears.
“Maybe you can contact your mother. She might know how to find Ophelia.”
“She might. But in order to ask her, I’d have to first know where my mother is.” That did it. The tears flowed, though less like a dam bursting and more in sobbing fits and starts.
Adam slapped the mail down and came to her. He started to touch her arms, then thought better of it. He tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but their shaking made that difficult. Finally he crooked one finger under her chin and lifted her face so he could look her in the eye as he said, “I don’t understand.”
“I haven’t seen my mother since my grandmother’s
funeral.” And at the mention of that, Josie felt completely and utterly alone all over again, just as she had the day of that funeral when her mother had driven off with her grandmother’s car loaded down with anything of value from the house she and Josie had shared. “I spoke to her a time or two, but she called me. I don’t have a number to call her. She stays on the move most of the time.”
“On the move?” He dropped his hand and reached out to get a napkin from the dispenser on the counter. He handed it to her.
“Not running from the law or anything like that. At least not that I know of.” She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, then grimaced. “Seems like Nathan might come by that tendency to stray from both sides of the family. You can’t be too shocked by that, I mean, you and Ophelia…”
“I know.” He hung his head. “I have no excuse for my behavior, Josie. I was hurt and angry and acting like a…a—”
“Like a toddler trying to get the people around him to stop everything and do his bidding?”
Adam chuckled softly at his own expense, then his expression went somber. He shook his head. “It was wrong. I was wrong. Doubly so to involve your sister. I didn’t care that what we were doing would take its toll on her, the drinking, the carelessness of that temporary…relationship.”
He struggled to get the words out without offending her, without embarrassing her.
For that Josie was grateful. And she showed it by trying to lift some of Adam’s guilt. “You can’t blame yourself for my sister. She was…careless and prone to the temporary for a long time before she met you.”
“I know.” He nodded. “She has her own pain. Her own deep-seated fears. Her own longing to make the people she loves notice her, to love her in return.”
“Ophelia?” Josie had never thought of her sister that way.
Willful. Selfish. Haughty. Wild.
All of those things she had ascribed to the woman who shared her physical attributes but none of her spiritual convictions. But hurting? Fearful? Longing to be loved?
Josie had thought she alone had those feelings, that she alone deserved them. Had she really misjudged Ophelia so harshly?
The very notion rattled her to the core of her being.
“I never thought of her in that way. To me she was always Ophelia, the inspired. Ophelia, the nonconformist. Ophelia, Mom’s favorite.”
“Favorite?” Adam’s whole expression clouded. “Burke said that about me today. Called me the favored son because I came back and because I gave my father a grandchild. But if you ask me there is no reason to favor me. I’ve handled so many things so poorly. The fact that Nathan is here and healthy, that’s all you, Josie.”
“Not all me,” she spoke deliberately as the full measure of what her sister had done dawned on her. “Ophelia had Nathan. She carried him and chose not just to give him life but to give him a chance by bringing him to me and letting me care for him, be his mother.”
“She knew you could do it.”
Josie shook her head in awe. “That was a selfless act of pure faith, Adam. I never saw it until now. I never saw the real Ophelia until you showed her to me today.”
“Me? I can barely see beyond the tip of my own nose, Josie.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“How could you not? The whole time I’ve been in Mt. Knott I never once tried to find out about you and your family, just whined about my own.”
“You’ve been so focused on your own issues…and rightly so. I’m nothing to you…”
“That’s not true—about you being nothing to me, not about me being focused on my own issues. That, I hate to admit, is completely true.” He took her by the arms and pulled her around so that he could look her in the eyes. “But I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Actually, I think you should.”
“What?”
“Go,” she said.
“But I—”
“Please, Adam. Just give me some time to myself. I have a lot to think about and a lot to do.”
“I wanted to help you.”
“If you want to help me, then pray for me.”
“Okay.”
“And for Nathan,” she called as she watched him make his way to the door.
“Of course.”
“And…” She folded her hands together, knowing she had to say one more thing and yet selfishly wishing she could just leave things as they were. To ask Adam to make his priorities that simple, her and Nathan.
But now she knew there was another person out there who needed God’s love and compassion. And nothing would ever be right in their family until they faced that. “And pray for Ophelia, too.”
Chapter Twelve
“You’re too young to know this, Nathan, but there is an old saying. ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’” Josie lifted the baby from his crib.
She’d gotten up early. Even after staying up late into the night baking, she’d been too excited to sleep in. “This is not just the first day of the rest of my life. Except for the day that I knew for sure that I was going to be your momma, this is going to be the best day of the rest of my life.”
She’d made up her mind about that as she’d baked and prayed and baked and prayed some more. The more she put her situation before the Lord—Ophelia, their mother, her feelings for Adam—the more she had come to appreciate the promise of the future. And that future started with this wonderful day.
“Dada.”
“Yeah. Dada is going to be there right alongside you and me at the family barbecue. And for the first time ever I am going to be part of a family.”
Her whole life she’d wanted this. She’d dreamed of it. She’d prayed for it. Now, if only for a few sunny hours, she would know what that felt like.
“A family. I know I’ve always told you how everyone in this town, all the members of our church and all my customers who so kindly keep us in their prayers are our family, but it’s not the same.”
“Ya-ya-ya.”
“And who knows? Maybe after the Burdetts see the community the way I do, they will see that the Crumble and the Crumble Pattie are a part of our family as well. And together we can…” Josie raised her head half expecting to hear fife-and-drum music playing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” or some such patriotic and inspiring tune to accompany her homage to the power of people all working for a common good. Instead she saw her baby happily making spit bubbles and motor noises.
She sighed.
“It could happen. Especially with Adam back in town and you here to stay. Those both seem like reasons enough to make it work.”
“Ya-ya-ya.”
“And then with everyone working again, my business will pick up and I’ll have enough money to finish up the adoption once and for all. All being me—” she poked him in the tummy to make him giggle “—you. Our own little family.”
“Dada.”
“And Dad, too, but not exactly…that is…” Josie considered not saying anymore about it.
Nathan didn’t understand, after all, and she had started the day out in such a great frame of mind. Why muddy things up trying to wade through the complexities of their family dynamic?
One day Nathan would be old enough to understand and she needed to have practiced this speech often enough that she did not botch it up when it counted the most. “Okay, here’s the deal, sweetheart. I have no idea what the deal is.”
Nathan laughed.
Josie exhaled, her shoulders slumping forward. If she were Nathan’s birth mother, if she were Ophelia, it would be different. Not easier, she realized, thinking back to the day before and her newfound empathy for her sister’s situation. If she were Ophelia, she would still have to account for her behavior.
Josie might be well on her way to a new understanding of her sister, but Ophelia still had to be accountable for her past and for the things she had done to bring Nathan into the world. Among other things, she’d have to explain to her son about not being married and abo
ut keeping Nathan’s existence a secret from his own natural father.
But from the legal end of things, if Josie were Nathan’s birth mother, there wouldn’t be lawyer fees and court costs to worry about. Unless Adam or his family had wanted to fight her for custody.
“If I were your birth mother, things wouldn’t really be easier, would they?” She kissed her son’s cheek. “They might be cheaper, but I can’t even say that for sure. The only thing that would be different would be that I would know that Adam was not confusing his emotions for me with his emotions for the mother of his child, because I’d be both! But as things stand now, I have no idea how to know if he really cares about me, or—”
Ding-dong.
“Pack mule at your service!” Adam nudged the front door and presented himself for her inspection.
He wore jeans with holes in the knees. Sported a faded orange-and-blue T-shirt with the old Carolina Crumble Pattie logo on it from back in the days when they had enough workers to sponsor a softball team. And squashing down his dark, gorgeous hair was a bright-green John Deere baseball cap.
“I want you to know I don’t do this for just anybody,” he said.
“Do? Do what?” She tried not to laugh outright. “Dress up like a scarecrow?”
“Haul pies. I mean it, Josie, not only am I going to a place I had wanted to avoid, and to spend time with people I had wanted to ignore, I got up early on a Saturday morning to take pastry to a bakery. If that’s not a sign of blind devotion, then I don’t know what is.”
“Blind devotion? Well, that certainly explains the way you’re dressed. No one with 20/20 vision could have put that outfit together.”
“I think I look adorable. What do you think, son?”
“Dada.” A squeal. More spit bubbles. A laugh.
“I have half a mind—”
Josie opened her mouth to second that, jokingly.
He held one finger up to silence her. “Half a mind, but a full heart.”
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip to let him know she wasn’t going to try to best that.
“Half a mind, full heart and an empty bakery truck. All of them at your disposal.”