Reuniting His Family

by Jean C. Gordon

  “Okay then, I’m going to get going. Claire’s waiting.” Renee stood.

  The moment was gone. “Right, sure. Thanks for the information.”

  After Renee left, he rested his elbows on his knees, head in hands. Again, what had he expected? That she’d be excited for him? He felt good about the job and the opportunity it offered him and his boys. That’s all that mattered. He was a CPS client, her former CPS client, and that was all.

  Rhys ignored the hollow feeling in his stomach. Once he had Owen and Dylan back, between caring for them and working, he wouldn’t have much time for friendship—with her or anyone else.

  Chapter Four

  Rhys dropped the wire crimpers into his toolbox and rubbed the back of his neck. He shouldn’t feel like he was pulling a fast one, leaving the job in Ticonderoga early. Neal had okayed his working a short day on Thursdays so he could volunteer at the weekly Bridges meetings for the kids at church. The only stipulation was that he make up the time. Working late was no problem while the kids were living with the Hills. He’d worked ten-and eleven-hour days the three weeks in Watertown. And once he had custody, he could rethink the Bridges commitment. No one had said it had to be for life.

  A couple of the guys eyed him when he picked up his toolbox. He gripped the handle. The supervisor knew about the arrangement. Rhys hadn’t seen any reason to broadcast it.

  “See you tomorrow,” his supervisor called down from the roof where they were installing solar panels.

  Rhys raised his hand over his head. The others waved back without any signs of begrudging his early departure. He should loosen up, he thought as he cranked the old pickup to life. Having some friends besides Pastor Connor could help when his custody request came before Family Court. He needed all the help he could muster.

  A virtual finger poked him in the chest.

  I know. I need to get up to speed at trusting You. Give me time. I’ve trusted only myself for too long.

  Going back to the Thursday Bible study group wouldn’t hurt, either. Rhys hadn’t been there since the group had celebrated Renee’s birthday. For the spiritual support, he could tolerate the social aspects he was less fond of.

  While he waited to turn onto US Route 74, he checked the dashboard clock. He’d have just enough time to get home to shower and change before he was supposed to meet Pastor Connor and the Bridges program director at the church office. He’d missed the volunteer training meeting when he’d been in Watertown, and today was the first meeting of the new group. Rhys had read the literature Pastor Connor had emailed him and was still uncertain about the group’s value, but it would give him another hour a week with Owen and Dylan.

  A short way up the road, a dark-haired woman in a subcompact car cut a turn from a side road a little too close in front of him. He pumped the brakes, gritting his teeth against the word that leaped to his tongue and the picture of another dark-haired woman that popped into his head.

  The woman in the car wasn’t Renee, but the Social Services’ worker had been in his thoughts far too often since their talk after the game on Saturday. With her background, Renee could be a good asset at a custody hearing. He grimaced. Except that the jury was still out on whether Renee was a friend or foe.

  * * *

  Rhys had made short work of cleaning up and arrived at the church a couple minutes early.

  “Come in. Sit down,” Pastor Connor said when Rhys peered around the half-open office door. “Did you have time to look over what I sent?” he asked once Rhys was seated.

  “I did.”

  “What do you think?”

  Rhys stretched his legs under the table, drew them back and planted the soles of his boots flat on the floor. “Can I be honest?”

  “By all means.” The corners of Connor’s mouth quirked up.

  “It strikes me as outsiders, institutions, meddling in families’ lives, especially since the referrals come from the school and CPS.”

  “But you’ve agreed to participate.”

  “Bottom line. I’m not connecting with Dylan, and I can’t afford private counseling. My health insurance is good, but there’s a higher deductible for specialists. The rent on the house is a stretch until I get better situated.”

  “Fair enough.” Pastor Connor leaned back in his chair. “The Action Coalition isn’t only the Building Bridges program. It helps support several other faith-based programs and organizations, like my prison ministry.”

  Rhys gripped the armrests and narrowed his eyes. He owed Pastor Connor and his prison ministry big time. Was the man looking for payback to get the Bridges thing going here?

  “Rather than looking at Building Bridges as an interfering institution, try seeing it as God’s hand guiding His followers in helping families in need.” Connor grinned and Rhys relaxed.

  “I can give that an apprentice’s try,” Rhys said.

  “That’s all anyone can ask.”

  The office door creaked open. “Renee, come in,” Pastor Connor said.

  Renee. “I thought we were meeting with the director.” Nice job, Maddox. He accepted the well-deserved frown from Connor. Renee’s new job must be as the director of the Christian Action Coalition. That was some step up from a graduate student internship with Social Services. Was it a who-you-know rather than what-you-know position?

  Rhys couldn’t help losing some confidence in the Coalition and its programs, nor stop the sinking feeling that Renee was acting again as a wall between him and his sons. At least he wouldn’t be dealing with her one-on-one after today. From what he’d read, each Building Bridges meeting had a designated facilitator. Pastor Connor had said the director would run the Hazardtown meetings only until someone had been appointed.

  “Congratulations on your new job,” Rhys said.

  Renee gave him a puzzled look. “Thanks.”

  What had he done now? Rhys was well aware that his upbringing and incarceration hadn’t helped anything when it came to the nuances of interpersonal relationships. But what could be wrong with congratulating Renee on such a big career move?

  Pastor Connor tapped his finger on the desk. “Let me clear things up. You must have missed the email I sent last night, Rhys.”

  “I didn’t see it.” Rhys dropped his gaze to the desktop. He’d said enough about the health insurance and rent. He didn’t want to add that generally he checked his email only when he had free Wi-Fi so he didn’t use the limited data he had with his cell phone plan.

  “Renee is the facilitator for our meeting and the other elementary school meetings in the county,” Pastor Connor continued. “Originally, the director was going to do the Bridges kick-off meetings this week because he wasn’t sure when he was going to have Renee on board and up to speed. But he was able to get her into the monthly training session at the national Building Bridges program in Atlanta this week when there was a last-minute cancellation.”

  Rhys caught Renee’s side glance and the tilt of one corner of her mouth. He sank into the hard wooden chair as best he could. She’d picked up that he’d thought she was the Association Director. He’d known she couldn’t be. His logic filter had sent out alarms that the rest of his brain and his mouth had ignored. For whatever reason, Renee’s presence drained him of what intelligence he had. His blood heated with embarrassment, fueled by the hint of understanding he’d seen—or wanted to see—in her brief smile.

  “I just got back this morning,” Renee said. “Hazardtown Community is my home church. I wanted to be here to get the program going.”

  She certainly seemed excited, strikingly more so than he’d seen at any of their CPS meetings.

  Rhys studied her while her gaze was on Pastor Connor. Her jeans, long-sleeved red T-shirt that brought out the pink in her cheeks and her dark hair falling down her back in a simple ponytail formed a picture of a more approach
able Renee. Someone who lacked the icy veneer that the crisp, business-casual pants and drab shirts she’d worn at CPS had given her. Was this the real Renee? He shook the question from his mind. What did Renee Delacroix’s “true” identity matter to him?

  “Is there a problem, Rhys?” Pastor Connor asked.

  He must have shaken his head. “No.”

  “Okay, then. We need to get things going. The kids will be here in fifteen minutes. Here’s the list of who we expect today.” He handed them each a sheet. “Five are here already in the child-care program and the other three, including your boys, Rhys, will be dropped off.”

  Rhys read the list of six boys and two girls for the names of any friends of Owen’s or Dylan’s. He didn’t see any he knew. Not that he’d expected to. The friends he’d met—his boss’s son, Alex, and Renee’s nephew—or those Owen had mentioned, came from intact families. His chest tightened. That was the kind of family he’d wanted for his sons, the kind he and Gwen had had before he’d messed up.

  “I have a short agenda for today’s meeting,” Renee said. She pulled a copy for each of the men from a leather bag on the floor between her and Rhys. “I thought I’d leave things open so we can get to know each other.”

  Rhys laughed as he read the short bullet points. Introductions. A game. Food. “Hey, it sounds good. Playing and eating. I can handle this.”

  Renee smiled with what looked to him like relief, but he dismissed the thought. She’d never seek his approval.

  “I don’t have anything else,” Pastor Connor said. “Do either of you?”

  Renee shook her head.

  Rhys had in the ballpark of one hundred questions, but none to be answered here.

  “Let’s close in prayer, then.”

  Rhys folded his hands in his lap before he caught the motion of Pastor Connor reaching across the desk to them. He took Connor’s hand and reached for Renee’s, wishing he’d wiped his against his jeans first. Joining hands in prayer took some getting used to. The Bible study group he’d participated in with Pastor Connor at Dannemora hadn’t been as demonstrative as his church congregation’s. He bowed his head and blocked out the soft grip of Renee’s hand on his, along with memories of what it felt like to hold a woman’s hand not in prayer.

  “And bless Renee and Rhys in Your service. Amen,” Pastor Connor said in closing.

  “Amen,” he and Renee said, dropping hands.

  Renee rose. “We’re meeting in my first-and-second-grade Sunday school room. Upstairs.”

  Rhys stopped halfway between sitting and standing. “You’re Dylan’s Sunday school teacher?”

  “I will be when classes resume in a couple of weeks.” She paused by the door while he straightened. “We can go right up. I already put the box of materials for the meeting and the snacks in the room.”

  “I could have carried them for you.” Rhys hated how his voice had the same overeagerness he often heard in Owen’s.

  “No problem.”

  Rhys walked beside her in silence down the hall to the stairs, his mind swimming with potential problems. He cleared his throat. “Out of curiosity, did you know that I’d volunteered to work here with the kids?” He forced himself to breathe in and out evenly while he waited for her answer.

  “I knew before I came today.”

  She must not have known, then, when they’d talked on Saturday.

  “I think it’ll be great for the kids,” Renee said.

  But not for her, at least according to what he remembered about body language from the one psychology course he’d taken. She held her leather bag like a shield between them.

  “You don’t have any problem with us, uh, working together, do you?”

  “No.” She opened the first door at the top of the stairs and led him inside. “Why should I?”

  Right, why should you?

  * * *

  Renee tucked the doorstop under the door as she waited for his answer—if he was going to answer at all. She understood how he might have seen her as an adversary in her position at CPS. But he didn’t need to carry it over to the Bridges program. They were both here for the kids.

  “Hi, Miss Renee.” A little girl with long blond braids skipped past her into the room. “Mrs. Hill let me walk upstairs by myself, since this is my Sunday school room.”

  “Hi, Emma. You’re right on time to help us set up.” Now that Emma was in the room, Renee let her question to Rhys drop, even though she would have liked to hear his answer. Any insight into the man would help them work together better, which could benefit both them and the kids.

  The little girl looked at Rhys. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s my helper, Mr. Ma—”

  Rhys frowned, and Renee remembered him asking her to use his first name at the home visit she’d supervised at the Hills’ house.

  “Mr. Rhys.” She corrected herself.

  “Hi, Emma,” he said.

  His face broke into a welcoming smile that charmed Emma. It also calmed some of the apprehension Renee had had about Rhys working with her and the children, while filling her with a wistful emptiness. Okay, the rational professional in her said. So he never smiles that way at you. Why should he?

  Or maybe the bigger question was why did part of her want him to?

  Emma faced off with him, hands on her hips. “Are you Miss Renee’s boyfriend?”

  “Ah, n-no,” he sputtered.

  The pink that tinged his sharp cheekbones shrunk the hollowness inside Renee. Rhys did have human emotions that extended beyond his sons. But not for you.

  “I was just asking,” Emma said. “Because my daddy has a girlfriend. That’s why Mommy says I have to come to this club, to adapt.”

  Renee stifled the giggle Rhys’s raised eyebrow brought to her lips. “Emma’s parents are divorced, and her father is marrying again.”

  “I see.” Rhys’s lips twitched as he schooled his face into a serious look.

  “So, if you’re not Miss Renee’s boyfriend, why are you here?”

  “To help her with the boys.”

  “Boys can be such a problem.” Emma continued to scrutinize Rhys. “Do you have kids?”

  “I do. I have two boys.”

  “Oh, no,” Emma said, turning her head to the open doorway where Owen and Dylan stood with Suzi Hill behind them, waving to Renee.

  “It’s Dylan Maddox.” The little girl turned her gaze to Renee. “He’s going to be here?”

  Rhys’s jaw tightened at Emma’s tone as Renee’s mind scrambled for a fast way to defuse the tension.

  “Dylan’s in my grade and thinks he’s so smart because he can read chapter books.”

  Rhys pulled out his kid smile again, the one that had an irritating habit of going straight to Renee’s heart.

  “I’m Dylan and Owen’s dad.”

  The pride in his voice registered with Renee, if not with Emma, who turned her head from father to son and back as if she couldn’t fathom the connection.

  “Hi, Dad,” Owen said, moving toward Rhys with Dylan trailing behind.

  “Hey, Owen, Dylan.”

  Emma nodded. “That’s why you’re here. You’re building your family, too.”

  Rhys shrugged and shuffled his foot. “Something like that.”

  “Everybody come in and sit down so we can get started,” Renee said, motioning to Karen Hill, Suzi’s mother-in-law and one of the teachers at the child-care center, and the four boys she was herding in from the hall. A preschool-age girl clung to Karen’s hand as if the woman was her lifeline.

  “Grandma Hill.” Dylan ran toward the door and flung his arms around the woman’s waist.

  Rhys winced. While Renee had given plenty of thought to working with Rhys, she hadn’t thought about Karen being here and the dynamic
s between Rhys’s boys and him and Karen. She’d talk with Karen and Pastor Connor before the next meeting.

  “This is Melody,” Karen said, extricating herself from Dylan’s hug and moving toward the little girl in front of her. “She’s four and joined our pre-K class this week.”

  Renee squatted to Melody’s level and the girl stuck her thumb in her mouth. “I’m Miss Renee. Do you want to come and sit next to me? We’re going to play a game and have brownies and a drink for snack.”

  Melody nodded, grasped Renee’s hand—thumb still firmly in her mouth—and walked with her to the table. Melody was the only one of the kids she didn’t already know from helping with Sunday school last school year.

  “Come on, guys, Emma. We need to sit down, too,” Rhys said. The boys jostled each other to get to the table first.

  “Can you get the journals from the other table?” Renee asked him as she pulled out a chair for Melody and sat next to her.

  “I’ll save you a place, Dad,” Owen said, indicating the seat beside him at the opposite end of the table.

  “Me, too,” Emma echoed, sitting on the other side and throwing her arm across his.

  It looked like Rhys had made himself a friend, although Renee imagined he’d prefer to have Dylan sitting there, rather than next to her, where he’d chosen to sit.

  “Dylan, would you please help by bringing me half of the books?” she asked.

  “I guess.” He pushed back from the table and went to his father.

  Renee caught nearly identical unreadable expressions on father and son’s faces as Rhys gave Dylan half of the journals to carry. Rhys placed the remainder on the table in front of him.

  Renee breathed deeply. “Okay, most of you know who I am, Miss Renee, and I know you. But not everyone knows each other. To all get to know everyone better, we’re going to go around the table and introduce ourselves by answering three questions. Your name, your grade and what you want to do when you grow up. I’ll start and pass the books I have for you to Dylan. He’ll take one, answer the question and pass the pile to the next person.”