Rhys waited until she pulled out of her parking space and followed her out. She turned toward the highway and he headed down Hazard Cove Road. He would have liked to show her the house he’d rented for Owen and Dylan and himself. Memories of his pregnant wife and him walking through the house they’d bought in Albany before Dylan was born, and talking about how perfect it was for their family, flooded his mind. Rhys winced. Renee wasn’t Gwen. He had no reason to show her what a great place his rental was for Owen and Dylan.
Rhys hit the steering wheel. Renee not only got his insides churning, she also messed with his head, making her one dangerous woman.
Chapter Eight
A week later Rhys leaned against the side of his truck in the Tops parking lot waiting for Renee. He touched the back pocket of his jeans and fingered the edge of the letter from Family Court folded inside. The letter had thrown him like a sucker punch to his solar plexus. His initial plan after reading it had been to crack open his Bible for some guidance on anger control—done—and to give himself some time to cool down—hence the grocery trip—and then to show the letter to the Hills this afternoon for his scheduled visit with Owen and Dylan. That was before he’d seen Renee’s car in the parking lot when he’d come out with his groceries.
Within a couple of minutes, Renee exited the store and stopped out front beside the row of returned carts. She eyed her bags. Rhys pushed away from his truck and closed the distance between them in several long strides.
“Need some help?” he asked as he came up behind her and reached for the bag she’d lifted out of the cart.
“Eek!” The bag slipped from her hand before she could add it to the one she gripped in her other hand. It hit the asphalt, sending a head of cabbage and several nectarines careening toward the cars.
Rhys dashed out into the parking lot and retrieved the last of the nectarines just before it rolled under a van. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He held out the produce, feeling himself shrink before her eyes when he took in the dirt and gravel on the cabbage leaves, and the split and bruised fruit. “I’ll replace them.”
“No, it’s fine.” She opened the bag and waited for him to drop the vegetables in.
He pulled out his wallet, a conciliatory, “I insist,” on the tip of his tongue.
Before he could get the words out, her eyes grew wide. Her gaze had darted from his face to the parking lot beside him. His letter lay on the asphalt, the Family Court insignia clearly visible. He scooped it up and ordered his thoughts.
Rhys Maddox didn’t grovel. Ask anyone who knew him at Dannemora or anywhere else. But this was his kids. And he needed someone with authority on his side. He didn’t know who to turn to except Renee. She knew him and his sons as well as anyone here—anyone anywhere—and had experience with the workings of CPS. Rhys stared at the court insignia and his heart slammed against his chest. He was about to grovel as he’d never groveled before.
“Want to go someplace to talk?” Renee nodded at a woman with two kids walking past them.
He breathed in and completely filled his lungs for the first time since he’d opened his mailbox this morning. “Yes. Where?” He’d suggest the coffee shop, but he didn’t think his nerves needed any more caffeine.
“At the park. The bench by the waterfall. Give me a few minutes to pick up a prescription for my grandmother at the drugstore. I’ll meet you after that.”
He nodded, lifting the remaining bags of groceries from her cart and carrying them to her car in silence.
“Thanks,” she said, popping open the trunk. “See you in a few minutes.”
Since he had time to kill, Rhys left his truck in the parking lot in favor of walking the few blocks to the park to grind the edge off his anger, fear and helplessness. He repeated to himself Isaiah 41:13, one of the passages he’d read this morning. “For I the Lord thy God will hold your right hand, saying unto thee, ‘Fear not, I will help thee.’”
The Lord knew he needed all the help he could get, understood how much of a work in progress he was. He swallowed his pride and distrust of authority. If he was going to get Renee and Social Services behind him, he might have to crack open the man behind the iron bars, a person he’d revealed to God but had allowed no one else to see except Gwen and his boys.
Renee passed him and pulled her car onto a side street next to the park. He crossed US Route 9 and joined her at the waterfall. She motioned to the bench where she sat, on the side closest to the water.
He pulled the court letter from his pocket and sat. Calm, rational, open, Rhys counseled himself before speaking. “I’ve done everything everyone has asked me to do concerning Owen and Dylan, and this is what I get.” He lifted the letter to wave it at her, then thought better and dropped his hand to the bench.
“I—” Renee started.
“Let me finish. Please.” Before I chicken out. “I’m a man who takes care of his own. I don’t ask for help.”
Renee’s expression remained placid.
She could be placating him, but he took it as a good sign and felt his tension level go down a couple of degrees. He was stating the obvious. “I’ve rented us a good place, a house with three bedrooms. It’s in the Schroon Lake school district, so Owen and Dylan won’t have to change schools. I have a job, a good job, and I’ve talked to Neal about staying local. I haven’t missed a single scheduled visit with my guys. I have spots reserved at the Hazardtown Community Church day care. I followed Pastor Connor’s suggestion that I volunteer with Building Bridges. I’ve been taking it slow and easy with Dylan like you and Suzi told me to.” He reached for anything he was missing, hating the note of desperation that had crept into his voice.
“Now this.” Rhys unfolded the letter and pushed it toward Renee. “I need your help making sense of it.” He pressed his back against the hard wooden slats.
Renee scanned the paper. “It’s a notice to appear in Family Court a week from Monday.”
“I know.” He might not have the education she had, but he could read. “What I don’t know is why. After I petitioned for Owen and Dylan’s custody, at the fact-finding hearing, Social Services recommended a postponement of the dispositional hearing for three months to allow the boys and me to get reacquainted. My lawyer convinced me to agree. The disposition is still nearly ten weeks away.” Nine weeks and two days, to be exact.
Rhys moved to the edge of the bench and motioned toward the letter. “It has to be something CPS did, something they told the court. I know it’s not coming from Jack and Suzi.” A thought made his stomach sink. Tyler’s mother. Did the Building Bridges’ director contact CPS? “What’s going on? You’ve got to help me here.”
She shook her head. “No.”
* * *
The bench shook with the sudden change as Rhys propelled himself to his feet.
He stood, towering over her. “What?”
Her first thought, despite his show, was that Rhys wasn’t the dangerous man she’d initially thought he was. She knew now where that dangerous aura came from—an overpowering desire to have his sons back, not from whom he’d been in the past.
“I meant, no, the director was fine with our report. He wouldn’t have contacted CPS. We didn’t do anything that intentionally violated the Building Bridges’ procedures, and I told him about other behavior problems I’ve observed with Tyler. I can’t see anything you’ve done that would trigger a hearing. If you had, I think your CPS caseworker would have contacted you. You have been checking your email?”
“Yes, every day.”
She saw both Owen and Dylan in his sheepish expression.
Rhys dropped back onto the bench and held his head in his hands. “Read it again. Please.” He lifted his head.
His eyes, which she’d previously found so cold, stared into hers as if he could ferret out the answer he wanted there. They were ble
ak, not cold. She reread the letter.
“Well?” He leaned toward her and she resisted pulling back. No matter what his background, here, now, Rhys was a man—a parent—in pain.
“It’s a standard notice.”
His shoulders slumped. “You don’t know what this court date is about.” It was a statement not a question.
“No.” She dropped her hand from her lap to the bench between them. “You have a lawyer, right? Did you contact him or her?” She was sure he would have, but needed to say something.
“Yes, the court appointed one for me. It’s the weekend. I called and left a message.” He tapped his foot on the ground in front of the bench.
“The letter isn’t necessarily bad,” she said.
He straightened. “I know.”
Renee hesitated, gathering her thoughts before she said the first thing that popped into her mind. She didn’t work at CPS anymore. There might be something about Rhys that had come to light since she’d left.
“You don’t know how hard I’ve prayed it’s not about denying my petition for custody.”
Renee knew about Rhys’s rebirth and baptism in prison and hated the seed of skepticism she harbored about his prison conversion. She acknowledged her shortcoming. Lord, help me. I know I should be more forgiving and accepting.
“I’ll put you and the boys in my prayers. My Meme...”
His brow wrinkled at the unfamiliar French-Canadian word.
“My grandmother is on the prayer chain at Hazardtown Community. I can ask her to put you on it.”
“No!” His voice boomed over the muted sounds of the other people in the park. He softened it. “No thanks. It’s private. I’m private. I’m well aware that there are people at church, others in town like Tyler’s mother, who don’t believe I’ve changed. People who think I’m faking my faith to get custody, that I used it to get my job, whatever. I’ll deal with it.”
She winced when she realized she might fall into that group. “That doesn’t stop me from praying for you.”
His jaw relaxed and his eyes softened. “No, it doesn’t.”
Warmth flowed through her, and she looked up at the midday sun, acknowledging that not all of the heat was solar.
“I’m going to show Jack and Suzi the letter when I go over for dinner tonight, see if they know anything.”
“Good plan.” She stood to leave. “Do you want a lift back to your truck?”
“No.” He smiled what she’d come to think of as his true smile, the one he gave Owen and Dylan. “I’ll walk. I’m just killing time until my visit at the Hills’ later. See you at church tomorrow.”
She didn’t want to decipher why his no struck her as a rebuff or why she should care. Her only connection to him was as her Bridges volunteer. “Right. Your caseworker and lawyer should have information for you on Monday.”
His shoulders slumped. “I’m sure they will.”
Renee watched Rhys head out of the park. She honked and waved as she drove past him on her way to Meme’s, self-doubt creeping into her. The director hadn’t questioned anything in their report. She’d thought it had showed Rhys in a good light, and she’d touched on behavior problems she’d had with Tyler at the two meetings he’d attended so far. She blew a puff of air that ruffled her bangs.
Ten minutes later she pulled into the driveway of her grandmother’s house on a small side road near Paradox Lake.
Meme met her at the door. “Thanks for picking up my medicine, honey.” She held the screen door for Renee. “Come in. I have our lunch all ready.”
“You didn’t have to do that. I had to come to Paradox Lake today anyway to drop off the vacuum bag I picked up for Natalie in Ticonderoga. It only took me an extra few minutes to swing from the parsonage to the pharmacy for you. And I got some specials at Tops while I was there.”
“Ah.” Meme ushered her into the kitchen. “But this way I get to catch up with you. I don’t see as much of you or Claire since you moved to Ticonderoga.”
Renee slid into one of two seats set for lunch. “You can have me all afternoon. I have nothing planned except helping Claire clean the apartment.”
Her grandmother opened the oven door and Renee’s stomach rumbled at the mouthwatering scent of her grandmother’s homemade macaroni and cheese. “Excuse me.”
Meme waved her off. “You’re hungry.” She eyed Renee. “You girls don’t eat enough.” Meme placed one casserole dish on the table and lifted a second one out. “I made one for you to take home.”
“You’re the best.” Renee poured herself and her grandmother each a glass of lemonade from the pitcher on the table. Real lemonade, from fresh lemons. Her mind went back to dinner with Rhys and Claire when she’d apologized to him for having lemonade from a can.
Before taking the seat across from her, Meme scooped a large helping of macaroni and cheese onto Renee’s plate and a smaller helping onto her own. She sat and offered thanks before lifting her fork. “So, who did you see at the store this morning? You and Claire aren’t the only ones I haven’t seen much of this week, being laid up with that summer bug I’ve had.”
Renee gave herself a moment to enjoy the comforting taste of cheese, cream and butter on her tongue before answering. “Mainly tourists and Rhys Maddox.”
“I was glad to see him at church last week,” her grandmother said. “He’d been coming regularly with Suzi and Jack Hill and his little boys, and then he stopped going for a while.”
The hint of censure in Meme’s voice made Renee come to Rhys’s defense. “He was working in Watertown for a couple of weeks.” But that was several weeks ago, and she could remember him missing only one Sunday during that time, not that she was counting.
“Hmm.” Meme nibbled on a half forkful of macaroni.
To escape her grandmother’s probing gaze, Renee pushed her food around her plate. When she looked up, Meme was still studying her. “What do you think of Rhys?” Renee asked, the words bursting from her of their own accord. She scooped up a mouthful of food as much to keep herself from randomly blurting out anything else as to fill her empty insides.
Meme laughed. “I think he’s one fine-looking man. If I were fifty years younger...”
Renee choked down her food. “Meme!”
“What? His dark, brooding looks remind me of your Pepe when he was young.”
Renee couldn’t argue. Rhys was attractive, if you liked dark, brooding and taciturn. She raised her napkin to hide the warm, indulgent smile her grandmother’s indignation and dreamy expression had brought to her lips. No need to encourage this line of conversation. She knew Meme’s thoughts on her and Claire finding “a nice young man.”
“I meant his coming to church, whether it’s sincere or a show to get custody of his kids,” Renee said. “Some people at Hazardtown Community have questioned his membership.”
Meme placed her fork on the table, fingers splayed over it, and pinned her gaze on Renee. “I think a man’s relationship with God is between him and God.”
Meme’s reprimand made her feel ten years old, as it should. “Of course, you’re right.” Rhys’s beliefs, custody petition, his relationship with Owen and Dylan and theirs with him—none of it, beyond their participation in the Bridges program, was her business. She sipped her lemonade, the tang of the fruit overpowering the sweetness of the sugar Meme had added.
She wouldn’t allow herself to read more into her relationship with Rhys—as she’d done with the medic in Haiti—than there was to it. The sooner she let go and instructed her feelings to stay where they belonged, the better off they’d all be.
* * *
Monday morning Rhys sat in the County Social Services’ office, tapping his foot in anticipation of meeting with his caseworker, Ms. Bulmer. He’d talked with Suzi and Jack. They’d had no more idea what might have preci
pitated the Family Court notice than he had. All they’d known was that Ms. Bulmer had had a death in the family and hadn’t been in the office last week.
“Mr. Maddox.” Ms. Bulmer appeared in the waiting room doorway, looking more frazzled than he’d seen her the few other times they’d talked in person. He didn’t know if that—or the fact that he hadn’t had to wait long to see her—was a good sign or a bad one.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she led him to one of the cubicles at the far side of the room. She sat and opened the folder she’d held. “My father died last Monday. I was out of the office all week.”
Rhys held tight to his impatience. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. You should have received a letter from me early last week. I drafted it Monday and left a message when I called in Tuesday to send it to you. The letter never went out.” She lifted her hands, palms up, in entreaty. “We’re more short-staffed than usual. We haven’t been able to replace Ms. Delacroix.”
“I understand. Ms. Delacroix would be hard to replace.”
His caseworker gave him a funny look.
What had he said wrong? He had no doubt Renee would have had that letter out to him on Tuesday. Best he keep quiet and only answer questions.
“We need to place another child with Jack and Suzi Hill. This child has special emotional needs that necessitate our removing your sons from their home, for their welfare as well as the other child’s.”
Rhys leaned forward. Another foster home? How did that require a Family Court hearing? He bit back his questions and the other thoughts racing through his mind.
“I know the Hills have been a good fit for...” Ms. Bulmer glanced at the open folder. “Owen and Dylan.”
He gripped the edge of the table. She had to check their names?
“But the Hills are the only foster parents we have with the necessary training to care for the other child. You understand?”
Not at all. He nodded.
“So, we’ve recommended a provisional placement with...”
Reuniting His Family Page 11
