by Arlene James
Orren smiled. “Yeah, Gracie was fond of lipstick and nail polish.” Lipstick and nail polish, not much for a little girl to hang on to. He thought a moment. “Yancy, what brought this on?”
She shrugged a little shoulder. “I dunno.”
He sighed. Why now? He’d always told the kids that if they really needed Mommy she’d come, but it had only been a way to help them feel secure. He’d heard from Grace exactly three times in the more than two years she’d been gone, not counting the half a dozen or so cards that she’d sent the kids. He had no idea where she was now, but he supposed he could always call up her in-laws, the Flattes, and pass along a message for her. She’d been sure to let him know that she’d married Sonny, the man with whom she’d left, during the National Rodeo Finals that first year out in Las Vegas. He didn’t really care one way or another as long as she stayed gone. He’d rather eat dirt than have to see her, but he’d promised himself long ago that he wouldn’t let his feeling about her and her desertion interfere with the kids’ welfare. He looked at Yancy’s little face. Wide-awake and dry-eyed now, she stared steadily up at him with her soft blue eyes.
“Yancy, what do you want Mommy for? Can you tell me?”
She shrugged again. “I jus’ wanna see her.”
He nodded. Well, he supposed it was natural enough for a kid to want to see an absent parent. He’d hoped and dreamed for years to see his own father after he’d walked out, but that had never happened. He hadn’t even seen his mother in years and years. He didn’t even know if they were still alive. God knew what might have happened to his father, but his mother had probably drunk herself to death ages ago. She’d been on the verge of it as far back as he could remember. What he wouldn’t have given as a kid to have them both with him just one day, their attention fixed, for once, on their only child. If he could give that to Yancy or any of his kids, he knew he would. At least he had to try. He hugged Yancy close.
“I’ll see if I can find Mommy,” he said. “It may take a while, but I’ll try.”
Her little arm tightened about his neck, and she kissed him on the collarbone. “I loves you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart. Think you can sleep now?”
She nodded, her thumb in her mouth, her pale, silky hair a sweet friction against his skin. He got up and carried her through the room. He switched off the hall light with his elbow as he passed it, smiling as his daughter relaxed in his arms, snuggling against him, so sure he’d keep her safe that she was already drifting down into sleep. The door to the girls’ room was open. He tiptoed inside and carried Yancy to her bed. He smiled at the square of moonlight on her yellow wall. Another of Mattie’s brilliant ideas. Mattie. He’d been holding thoughts of Mattie at bay, but they came to him now, one after another.
Mattie would be such a good mother, far superior to Grace. Had Mattie’s presence put Yancy in mind of her mother after all this time? How would Mattie take it if Grace suddenly appeared on the scene again? He couldn’t believe she’d be anything but reasonable. Mattie was nothing if not reasonable. Patient. Capable. Wise. She’d understand. Of course, she would. He only hoped that he could find Gracie. Well, he hoped he could find her for the kids’ sakes. For his own, he rather hoped she’d taken a page from his father’s book and fallen off the face of the earth. He still had to make the effort, though. Mattie would understand when he explained it.
He tucked Yancy into her bed, smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead. An’ she pu’s red kisses on you face. He remembered that red lipstick, too. Gracie could be damned inventive about where she put the stuff and how she did it, but Yancy didn’t need to know that. His little girl just needed to know that her mommy hadn’t completely forgotten her when she’d abandoned her father.
“Good night, angel,” he whispered, but Yancy was already well on her way to dreamland. Smiling, he straightened and turned away from the bed, moving toward the door. Another husky whisper halted him.
“Daddy?”
He detoured toward the purple wall, whispering, “What is it, Red?”
“Yancy okay?”
“Yeah. Go back to sleep, honey.”
“She’s been crying for Mom a lot lately.”
“Has she? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t figure you wanted to know because of—”
He thought he knew what she was going to say. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I always want to know what’s going on with my kids, Red. I’ve been working a lot since we got Mattie, I know, but it’s only because I know I can trust her to take care of you while I do. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you guys. In fact, it means just the opposite.”
“I know. That isn’t what I meant.”
He made out her shape in the darkness at the head of the bed and pulled her into a sitting position, bringing their faces close together. “What’d you mean, Red?”
She sat silently for several moments, then she whispered sharply, “I saw you kissin’ her.” She shrugged free and plopped back down onto her pillow.
“You saw me kissing Mattie.”
“Out the kitchen window,” she confirmed sullenly.
Boy, what a night this was turning out to be. Orren sighed. “We weren’t exactly hiding.” But he’d hoped they hadn’t been seen—once he’d thought about it, anyway. “Just for the record, Red. It isn’t really any of your business who I kiss or when I kiss ’em. But more to the point, my kissing Mattie has absolutely nothing to do with how I behave as a father. I’m still the same dad I always was, and that’s just what I’ll continue to be. When one of my kids has a problem, I want to know about it. Period. You got that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Now go to sleep. I love you.” He kissed her quickly and stood.
“What’re you gonna do?” she asked in a low voice.
“About?”
“Yancy.”
He folded his arms. “I’m going to try to find your mother. Don’t know what else I can do.” He felt, rather than saw, her smile.
She rolled onto her side. “That’s good.”
“Uh-huh. You oughtta keep it to yourself for a bit, though,” he said, thinking that locating Grace might well be easier said than done. “Go to sleep now.”
“G’night.”
“Good night, darlin’. See you in the morning.”
He checked Yancy and Sweetums to be sure they hadn’t been disturbed by his whispered conversation with Red, then quickly slipped from the room and down the hall. The central air-conditioning had cooled his sheets by the time he slid between them once more, but he hardly noticed.
So Red had seen him kissing Mattie. Well, he shouldn’t be surprised. Chances were she’d see him kissing Mattie again sometime. He grinned at the thought. Who’d have believed that little pixie could pack such a wallop? Gracie, now, she’d been well versed in the sexual arts before he’d even met her, despite their youth, and it had been glaringly apparent from the very beginning. Somehow Mattie was no less potent. Yet, it was entirely different with her. What came naturally to Mattie seemed to have little correlation with what came naturally to Grace. He couldn’t imagine two women more different. He wondered if Grace had changed, if she would come if he did find her. He didn’t know what he hoped for there. One part of him wanted her to disappear for good. Another wanted his daughter to see her mother. None of Mattie’s kids would ever have to look far for her, he thought, and then he smiled. Thoughts of Mattie were never far from mind.
He wondered what it would be like to have kids with Mattie. He imagined her snuggled next to him in bed, her belly huge with his baby. She’d probably complain about her back hurting and her feet swelling up and want to know if he could really find her attractive when she felt like a beached whale. He imagined Mattie’s breasts after she’d had his child, heavy, yet soft and sensitive over their underlying firmness. The thought did crazy things to his body—and his heart. What was he thinking of? Lord, he already had four kids. Could he handle even on
e more? He knew Mattie would want to have a baby, if not with him, then with someone.
He imagined seeing Mattie around town, pregnant and glowing. With some other man’s baby. And his gut twisted cold. He felt as if a weight had dropped onto his chest. He couldn’t quite breathe, and he couldn’t seem to feel his own heartbeat. Mattie and some other man. No way. No way could he stand that. He thought of Gracie with Sonny Flatte. The picture that flashed before his mind’s eye was distasteful but not personally crushing any longer.
He couldn’t even picture Mattie with someone else. She’d never been with anyone else. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name. And he knew, too, that when Mattie went to a man, he would be her one and her only. He knew he couldn’t let that man be anyone but him.
Damn if he wasn’t going to have to marry that girl.
He settled down to think about that, and before long he realized something important. Mattie was just exactly what he’d always wanted. She was everything his mother had not been. Wholesome. Wise beyond her years. Emotionally mature. A natural-born nurturer. Not to mention her numerous other talents. So how come he’d wound up with a Gracie instead of a Mattie the first time?
Where do you think a girl gets her standards for men? She wants him either to be just like her father or his exact opposite.
It wouldn’t be just girls, would it? Of course it wouldn’t. He sat up in bed, knees draw up, and rested his arms on them. If a girl’s taste in men was dictated by her experience of her father, then a boy’s must be influenced by his mother. And wasn’t he living proof of that? Good grief, why hadn’t he realized it before? Gracie was his own mother all over again, except her addiction wasn’t alcohol, it was men—or sex. Heaven help him. He saw it all now, the self-centeredness, the feints and starts at normalcy, only to derail just when you thought everything was going well. She tried. Just like his mother, Gracie did try. She just couldn’t control the impulses, couldn’t get past them to put others first—not her kids, not her husband, no one. No wonder finding Gracie had seemed so right. She was just what he was used to, what he’d always known. She just wasn’t what he’d always wanted, and the harder he’d tried to make her into that, the more she’d rebelled. Damn.
He was twenty-eight years old, and it had taken a little slip of a young woman to make him see how he’d set himself up for failure—and what he really wanted. How’d she get so smart, his Mattie? Must be that father of hers. Could he really be like Evans Kincaid? Brother, he hoped so! For his kids’ sakes, he’d try to make it so. For love’s sake, he prayed Mattie was right about him, because he had no intention of letting go of her. Now or ever.
“Look who’s here!”
Mattie bit back a groan and forced a smile to her face. “Hello, Brick. What a pleasant surprise.”
“Surprise?” Brick sent a blank look at Evans, completely giving the game away. “Oh, uh, well, I was just driving by.”
Down a dead-end street? Mattie thought, but she said nothing. Evans was already squirming quite enough.
“We, um, we were just about to watch a movie,” Evans said brightly. “But now that you’re here…we could have a game of cards!” He rubbed his hands together. “How does that sound? Anybody want to play canasta?”
Brick shuffled his feet. “Uh, I don’t really know how to play canasta.”
“No? Well, hearts! How about hearts?”
Brick shook his head, grimacing. “I don’t really play cards at all, except…poker, maybe?”
Evans’s expression was more grimace than smile, but he managed to make his voice jovial. “Poker! Ha-ha. No, I don’t think so. It’s a cop thing. Gambling, you know.”
“Oh.”
Mattie stood with arms folded and watched her dear father slowly twist in the wind. He smiled and threw up his hands.
“Oh, well! Who wants to play cards, anyway? Why don’t we all just…sit down.”
Mattie turned and made a beeline for the only armchair in the room. Evans practically knocked her over trying to get to it himself. In the end, though, he wound up sitting on the couch next to Brick, Amy on his other side. Mattie bit her lips to keep from laughing when Brick slung a freckled arm across Evans’s shoulders and crossed his hairy legs, pulling taut the hem of his white duck shorts and inadvertently wiping the sole of one shoe on Evans’s pristine navy slacks. Evans smacked a hand at the dust mark on the side of his knee and edged closer to his wife.
“So, Brick, how’s it going?”
“Fine.” Brick nodded his bright orange head, up and down, up and down, up and down, like one of those nodding dogs that people put in the back windows of their cars.
Evans cleared his throat. “Been busy, have you?”
He shook his head. “Naw. Just hanging out.”
Evans’s smile was growing flat. He sought Amy’s hand and clamped it tightly. “Mattie’s been…busy,” he said.
Brick nodded and nodded, his gaze switching to Mattie.
She smiled and looked at her father. What now, Dad of mine? Evans frowned at her and jerked his head tightly in Brick’s direction. She lifted her brows as if to say, “Who me?” Evans glared. She took pity on him. Folding her hands in her lap she said, “How’s your mother, Brick?”
“Oh, fine. She’s fine.” Nod, nod, nod.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. She likes having me home, likes making a fuss over me.” Nod, nod. “You know how it is.” More nods.
Mattie glanced at her father. “Yes, I know how it is.”
“Parents,” Brick said, nodding and nodding. “I keep telling her that a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, you know.”
“Umm.”
Amy leaned forward, peered around her husband’s broad shoulders and said helpfully, “And just what is it that a man your age does these days, Brick?”
“Oh. Hangs out. You know.” A man apparently hung out and practiced his nodding.
Amy looked at Mattie. Her eyes said, “Bor-ring.” Mattie looked away, disciplining a smile. Evans caught enough of the byplay to be irritated. He leaned forward and cleared his throat.
“Want to watch a movie, Brick? We were, uh, going to watch a movie.”
“Sure.” Nod, nod. “Maybe. What movie is it?”
Evans named an atmospheric Academy Award winner that the critics had raved about. Brick practically gagged and quickly changed the subject. “Hey, any of you guys seen the new action flick in town?” They shook their heads. “No? Oh, man, it’s a hoot!” He proceeded to describe it in nodding detail, not the plot—assuming there was one—but the carnage, the exploding heads and disappearing body parts, the smashups and the weaponry. Amy’s eyes glazed over in the first thirty seconds. Mattie entertained herself watching her father try to pretend interest rather than disgust. Finally Evans had all he could take. He was starting to nod himself. He popped up in the middle of the narration.
“How about a drink? Anybody thirsty? I’m parched! I’m just parched. Tea, anyone?”
“I’ll get it,” Amy said eagerly, not waiting for anyone to say they wanted it first.
Evans watched her disappear into the other room with a look of utter consternation on his face. He obviously wanted very much to go after her, but he looked at Mattie and he looked at Brick and he knew one or the other of them would disappear the moment he left the room. Folding his arms, he plopped back down on the couch.
Brick shifted his position and took up right where he’d left off. Mattie crossed her legs and pretended rapt interest while Evans endured. Amy came in with a tray of iced tea in glasses, rescuing them from a description of an alien life-form that spit acid on its enemies and what that did to them. Evans carried his glass over to the television and switched it on. Normally he hated the documentary-type cop shows that were so prevalent, but he snagged the first he came across and began a running commentary on it. Brick was enthralled. It was anybody’s guess how long his head could stay on the end of his neck bobbing like a tennis ball in water. Amy lifte
d her eyebrows at Mattie over the rim of her glass and smiled. Mattie shook her head slowly side to side, determined not to laugh. Poor Dad. Torturing himself like this for nothing.
The evening dragged on interminably, with Evans thinking up one uselessly stupid idea after another to keep it going. Finally he just baldly suggested that Brick and Mattie go somewhere together. Brick was amenable. He just couldn’t come up with anywhere to go. Sighing inwardly, Mattie took matters in hand. Anything to get this evening over and done with.
“I’d like some ice cream,” she announced, getting to her feet. Evans looked like he wanted to kiss her and weep on her neck.
“Oh, sure, honey. That’s fine. You and Brick run along. Don’t worry about us old folks.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Mattie said drolly. “I won’t forget this.”
He hurriedly shook Brick’s hand. “Good of you to stop by, Brick. See you again soon. Don’t keep her out too late. She’s been putting in long hours.”
Mattie shook her head at the not-so-subtle reference to the marathon baby-sitting session of the weekend and steered Brick out through the entry hall to his car. It was a neat little convertible, entirely too fast for a knucklehead like Brick. She wasn’t about to get herself killed over ice cream. She stuck out her hands. “Give me your keys.”
“Huh?”
“Give me your car keys. I’m driving.”
“Oh. Uh, sure. Okay.” He was too busy nodding to be offended.
Mattie got in behind the wheel and started the car.
She managed to put up with two whole hours of Brick’s company, not that she had his undivided attention or anything. They ran into some of his friends at the ice cream shop. They were all mostly younger than her. She sat on the fender of the car and thought about what she was going to say to her father while they threw ice at one another out of their soda cups and generally made idiots of themselves. Figuring she’d given her dad just about enough time to start congratulating himself on how well his little plan had worked, she got back in the car and prepared to leave. Brick had no choice but to leave with her.
