by Arlene James
Gracie preened. “I just might! I met this man, a movie producer, and he says I’ve got the looks for it.”
She went on, Chaz listening attentively, and Orren had never been so proud of his son as he was in that moment. He squeezed the boy’s shoulder and eased down onto the end of the couch, pulling Yancy onto his lap. Candy Sue scrambled up next to him and sprawled against his thigh. Chaz leaned against his knee. After a moment, he turned a look of such understanding and calm acceptance on his father that Orren felt his throat close. Chaz knew that his mother was a flake who couldn’t hold a candle to the woman who had already replaced her in their hearts. His eyes seemed to say, too, that he’d absolved his father of any guilt or complicity in her abandonment.
I was young, Orren tried to tell him with his eyes. I didn’t know any better. But I wouldn’t change it. Look what I got out of it! He smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair, so like his own. Chaz beamed back at him, and Orren knew without doubt that they were all going to be fine, even Red, once she’d accepted the inevitable. So long as Mattie understood that they loved and needed her as they’d never loved or needed anyone else but each other. He’d make her understand. God willing, he’d make her understand that they belonged together, a complete family. Forever.
Chapter Nine
The timing couldn’t have been worse. But what could he do? He’d taken off the afternoon before so Mattie could have time to rest and recuperate from whatever was ailing her—and this after the boss had generously allowed him use of the big bay for the diesel job and given him the morning. If only he hadn’t let Gracie stay the night before…. She had friends in the area still—like whoever passed along the word that he was trying to get in touch—she could have stayed with one of them. Yet, Grace had pleaded a desire to spend the night with her kids. Then Red had gotten that look of desperation on her face, and he’d found himself wanting to give Grace a chance to redeem herself in her daughter’s eyes, even though he suspected that her desire to spend the night had as much—or more—to do with poverty than any desire to play mommy even for a night.
A closer look had revealed a Gracie worn a little ragged around the edges. Her sandals were marked up. The hems of her jeans were fraying. If he wasn’t mistaken, a safety pin was holding together one bra strap in the back. The Gracie who’d hounded him for money all those years would never have tolerated such little indignities. Obviously she now had no other choice. He’d looked in his son’s knowing eyes and felt a little sorry for her. She’d left her family for nothing more than a doomed affair and a half-baked suggestion that she might find her destiny in Hollywood, provided she could get that far. He’d taken pity and okayed Red’s eager offer to share half of her bed with her mother, on the condition that Gracie be gone by nine o’clock in the morning. He’d assumed that would get her out of the house before Mattie arrived.
Now here he was at six thirty-five, his shoes and socks in his hands, uniform shirt unbuttoned, belt dangling as he hurried to get to work early. The boss himself had called. What could he say? Not until I’ve told my baby-sitter that I love her? He cursed the luck that caused this to happen now. He was already through the living room before he realized that he had to call Mattie. Gracie would be gone by nine. Mattie usually came in between nine-thirty and nine-forty-five. He considered briefly letting the kids stay alone those few minutes until Mattie got there, but he couldn’t do it. Better to explain Gracie’s presence to Mattie over the telephone than risk the well-being of his children. Tragedies happened in split seconds. He simply couldn’t justify leaving the kids unsupervised for up to three-quarters of an hour. He went straight to the kitchen telephone and punched in the numbers. Mattie’s stepmother answered.
“Hi. It’s Orren Ellis. Sorry to disturb you so early. Mattie usually picks up.”
Amy Kincaid paused for what seemed an eternity before answering. “Yes, well, um, Mattie isn’t taking calls this morning.”
Orren felt a shiver of panic. “Is she that ill, then?”
Orren could hear someone speaking in the background: Mattie’s father, he assumed. Then Amy Kincaid said, “Uh, actually, no. She, um, had a very late night last night.”
A late night? With someone else? Another man? Orren gulped. Well, what could he expect after what Red had told her? He couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around what to do or say next. Finally he followed the instinct to care for those he loved in any way that he could, Mattie included. “Okay,” he said. “Listen, I have to go in early, but why don’t we just let her sleep as long as possible? Things will be covered here until nine. Could you please tell Mattie to be here by then? I don’t want my kids left alone.”
“I’ll see to it, Mr. Ellis.”
“Thank you. A-and could you tell Mattie that I—Tell her that I missed her yesterday.”
To his surprise and relief, Amy Kincaid’s voice softened. “I’ll tell her,” she said. “I think she’ll be glad to hear it.”
He could have kissed Amy Kincaid. “Thank you. I…thanks.”
He hung up the phone and took a moment to close his eyes in relief before going on to the next problem. Should he leave a note for the kids or wake Grace? He decided that motherhood entitled Grace to get awakened hours earlier than she’d planned, probably earlier than she’d been awakened in more than two years. He left his shoes and socks sitting on the kitchen table and headed back through the living room.
“Daddy?”
The sound of his daughter’s tentative voice brought him to a whirling halt. “Red?” He took in the small form huddled beneath the old quilt on the couch. “What’re you doing out here?”
She turned her face away, her wild red hair all but obscuring the wobbling chin. Orren abandoned the rush and sat down at her feet, reaching beneath the blanket to rub her small ankles.
“What’s wrong, honey?” He tried a grin and teasing tone. “Mama snore or hog the covers? Maybe that’s where Yancy gets it.”
Red pushed her hair out of her face but didn’t look at him. In a soft, aching voice she said, “The bed was too small. Ma—She said I should sleep on the couch ‘cause it was too short for her.”
Orren nodded, saddened and disgusted. “I’m sorry, Red. I know you wanted to spend the night with her. More than that, I know you wanted her to want to spend the night with you.”
Red struggled up on her elbows, tears spilling from her eyes. “Why don’t she? What’s wrong with me?”
Orren pulled her onto his lap. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing wrong with you. The problem’s inside your mama. She just doesn’t seem to have feelings that she ought to. I don’t know why. I do know that you’re a fine little girl. Red, you’re so smart that you scare me sometimes.”
She gave him a surprised and puzzled look. “How come?”
“I’m not always sure I can keep up! It scares me a little, but it makes me awful proud, too.” He smoothed down her flaming hair. “And you’re beautiful, you know, one of the prettiest little girls in the whole world.”
The look he expected, disbelief edged with disgust, didn’t materialize. Instead, she very thoughtfully said, “Mattie thinks so, too.”
He chuckled and hugged her tight. “And we both know how smart Mattie is!”
“She is smart, isn’t she?”
“She’s more than smart, Red,” he told her gently. “She’s wise. And she seems to have more feelings in her than anybody I’ve ever known.”
“You got feelings, Daddy. I can tell.”
Orren felt a burn in the backs of his eyes. “Can you, darlin’? I’m glad, because I don’t tell you often enough how very much I love you.”
“More’n Yancy and Sweetums?” she asked in a small voice.
“No,” he told her gently. “It doesn’t work like that, Red. I don’t know how to explain other than to say that I love you all the same and all different. You’re my firstborn daughter, Red. Nothing and no one could ever replace you in my heart. And it’s the same for Yancy and Chaz and Candy Sue, the same b
ut different somehow.”
“And Mattie,” Red stated softly.
“Yes, I love Mattie, too, different from anyone else, even from the way I once thought I loved your mother.”
Jean Marie nodded, then whispered, “Grace is real pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is, in her way.”
“Mattie’s pretty, too, in her way.”
“I certainly think so.”
Red laid her head against his chest with a little sigh. “Mattie loves us, don’t she, Dad?”
“I believe she does.”
Red bowed her head. “I’m sorry I told her you wouldn’t marry her.”
“I know. But don’t you worry about it. I’m not letting her get away. We need her. I need her.”
Red lifted her head and laid it back against his arm, looking him in the eye. “There’s something else,” she said.
Orren smiled. With Red there would always be something else. “What’s that?”
“I’m the one who got Yancy to cry for Mama. I just whispered at her, telling her things I thought I remembered so she’d miss them, too, until she cried.”
Orren sighed. “Red, don’t you know that I’d have tried to find your mother as much for you as for Yancy?”
Red shrugged. “I guess I knew it wasn’t fair all along,” she said.
“What do you mean by fair?”
“To Mattie. Mattie’s a good mother,” she said, “better than Grace ever could be.”
Orren put a kiss in the center of her forehead. “I’m sorry, Red. I know you wanted Gracie to be everything Mattie is, but Grace is just Grace. And, thankfully, Mattie is Mattie.”
Jean Marie expelled a short breath and smiled. “Guess we got the best end of that deal, huh?”
Orren laughed and hugged her. “You know it, kid. Now, come on. You need to get some rest. Gracie can rough it on the couch.”
Gracie grumbled protests and finally said she couldn’t get up because she wasn’t dressed, at which point Orren realized that she was sleeping stark naked. But he was determined. He looked at Jean Marie. “Well, somebody has to do the dirty work,” he said. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before and survived, but you close your eyes, girl.” Fighting a smile, Red turned her back and squeezed her eyes shut. Orren located Gracie’s blouse and hauled her up into a sitting position, yanking it down over her head. She sputtered protests and slapped at his hands but he didn’t have too much trouble getting it on her. Obviously it was a new experience for Gracie; no man had ever dressed her before. But there were limits even to Orren’s bravado. He reckoned she’d grasped the sincerity of his intent and tossed her jeans to her, saying, “Get ’em on. Now.”
Cursing like a sailor she struggled into the jeans under the covers while Orren held his hands over Red’s ears and hissed, “Hush up. You wake the babies, you’ll have to deal with them. I’m leaving for work early.”
That effectively stoppered Gracie’s mouth. She tossed back the covers and got up. Funny, but she didn’t look nearly so good in the morning as he remembered. Her eyes were smudged with makeup, and her skin looked sallow, her hair dirty. Grace had been living hard, and it was beginning to show, whereas he imagined Mattie looked as fresh and sweet as she was every minute of every day. Then again, he was prejudiced. He shoved Gracie out into the hall, tucked Red into bed with a kiss and went out just in time to redirect Gracie when she headed toward their old bedroom. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re going to the couch.”
Gracie glared at him. “Why should I sleep on the couch when there’s a perfectly good bed in the other room?”
“I don’t want you in my bed,” Orren said firmly, “for any reason.”
Her eyes gleamed cunningly, and she leaned into him. “What’s the matter, Orrie, thinking of me alone in your bed mess up your day? We could go in together, start the day off right. Remember when—”
He pushed her away. “I stopped wanting you anywhere near me a long time ago, Grace, as you well know.”
Her face hardened, and she straightened. “If you’d been more of a man,” she spat, “maybe I wouldn’t have had to go looking for it!”
“You’ll always have to go looking for it, Grace,” Orren told her lightly. “You’re sick like that. You really ought to get some help.”
Hissing like a cat, she drew back her hand, nails curled inward, her face absolutely venomous. Orren just shook his head. “Don’t even think about marking me. I took your abuse and clamped down on my own temper when we were married in the name of peace, but that’s over and done with, long past.”
“The kids—”
“The kids know exactly who and what you are. They have someone to compare you with now, Grace, and you don’t measure up very well.”
“You’re talking about the girlfriend, aren’t you,” she sneered, “some drudge willing to take on four kids in order to get a man!”
“I’m talking about the wonderful woman who takes care of us, the woman we all love. The woman I love more than I even knew it was possible to love. She would never put a vulnerable little girl out of her bed, Gracie, because she would know instinctively that what Red wanted to share was her need to know she’s loved, her need to be wanted.”
Gracie’s look of confusion was, unfortunately, genuine. “All this is about me sending Jean Marie to sleep on the couch?” she asked incredulously.
“No,” Orren said, “this is about you not even knowing that your little girl needed to be with you just one night, one lousy night out of your life.” The look on her face told him that she still didn’t get it. She couldn’t. She didn’t possess the necessary sensitivity. It was a physical as much as a mental impossibility. And it didn’t matter, not in the least. Orren sighed. “I’ve got to go to work. You’re to stay here until Mattie arrives, then I want you gone. You understand me, Grace? You leave before she gets here to stay with the kids and I’ll have you up on charges of child endangerment.”
She lifted her chin. “They’re my kids, too, Orren.”
“Now if you only knew what that meant, I could rest easy,” he retorted.
“I won’t leave before she gets here, I swear,” Gracie muttered through her teeth.
“See that you don’t,” he said, turning away. He glanced at his watch. Damn. He hurried away without another word.
Mattie knocked, then waited ten full seconds before letting herself in. Appropriately steeled, she slung her bag on the counter and looked around. Orren was not at the table. Neither was he in the living room. So why had he insisted that she come in early? She’d come over her father’s objections but only after promising that she’d be home promptly at seven that evening—if not earlier. She wasn’t certain that she wouldn’t be given her walking papers that day, assuming that she’d been summoned early for that long-delayed talk. Now she didn’t know what to think, with the truck gone and Orren nowhere in sight. She knew he wouldn’t leave the children alone, and a strange car was parked in the drive. Had she been replaced already? Would he do that without telling her first? She couldn’t believe that he would, but then where was he? She moved through the living room toward the hall with the intention of checking on the children, only to draw up short when a tall, frazzled blonde stepped into the doorway.
“Oh! I was coming to let you in.”
Mattie stared in shock at the blonde. Her low-cut blouse was wrinkled and appeared to have just been pulled on, as did her jeans. She was barefoot, and her hair looked as though she’d just lifted her head from the pillow after an arduous night.
“Orrie must have left the door open when he left,” the woman purred.
“No,” Mattie murmured. “I have a key.”
The woman ignored that, saying, “The poor thing had to go in early, and after getting so little sleep. He always did let them take advantage of him down at that shop.” She extended a graceful hand with long, red nails. “I’m Grace Ellis, by the way, and you are? I mean, I know you’re the baby-sitter, obviously, but no one mentioned your n
ame.”
So this was Orren’s ex-wife. She had been replaced. Pain slashed Mattie as she brushed her palm against Grace Ellis’s, murmuring her name. “Mattie. It’s Mattie.”
Grace smiled insinuatingly. “Well, Mattie, you know how it is. Orrie never could say no, bless him. If he could, I’d have had to sleep somewhere else last night.”
Mattie gulped. “You slept here. With Orren?”
Grace twinkled a smile at her. “Looks that way, doesn’t it? Not that I’m the sort to sleep and tell.”
Suddenly Jean Marie pushed past Gracie into the living room. “You’re a liar!”
Gracie and Mattie gasped at the same time, but it was Mattie who automatically corrected the girl. “Jean Marie, you know better than to—”
“She’s a liar, and I hate her!”
Mattie was more than shocked; she was in a state of shock and behaving by rote. “That’s enough! Don’t you ever speak to your mother that way again.”
“She isn’t my mother anymore! She’s a—”
Mattie laid a hand over the girl’s mouth, afraid of what she might say. It wouldn’t be any worse than what she herself was thinking, but such thoughts were best left unspoken. And Jean Marie couldn’t be allowed to think that such disrespect was acceptable behavior on her part. It never occurred to Mattie that Grace ought to be the one to do the correcting. It never occurred to Grace, either.
“That’s enough, young lady. Not another word or I’ll be having a conversation with your father come dinnertime. Now apologize.” Jean Marie’s eyes filled with tears. Mattie took her hand away. “She’s still your mother, Red, and an adult, as well. Show a little respect.”
Jean Marie’s face contorted into a familiar expression of mulish rebellion, but then, unexpectedly, it softened. She swallowed hard and without looking at Grace said, “I’m sorry.”
