by Annie Jones
“Not at all. We need to be getting Willa home, as well.”
“We? You mean the three of you going to your one home, together?”
“We all live in the same house,” Willa piped up.
“So I've heard, darling.”
“I rented that space in the Dorsey house months before the family—the whole family—came down for their holiday stay.”
“Did I suggest otherwise?” She practically pouted like a hurt child as she spoke.
Nic shifted her feet and huffed.
“No.” Sam put on his best preacher-in-the-pulpit face in order not to fuel any talk that he had implied Claire LaRue was a liar or gossip. All the while he searched her eyes for any sign of what she might be one or the other, or both. “Of course not.”
“No, I didn't.”
The heavy emphasis on the I meant something, but for the life of him Sam had no idea what.
She patted his arm. “It was a fine time. A good idea, really.”
He held his breath a moment as if he could somehow discern her sincerity through that fleeting gesture. He sensed nothing. What good would it do trying to read her motives anyway? She had come tonight and brought her children. She had said she would come to church, and if she did that, especially if she brought others with her, he would be grateful. “I look forward to seeing you in services, Claire.”
“And I'll look forward to seeing you, Reverend.” She smiled, then turned to Nic. “You, too, Nicolette.”
“Uh-huh.” Nic kept her hold on Willa, all but tucking the child under her protective wing when Claire bent down to touch the girl's nose.
“And so good meeting you, too. Aren't you just a precious little baby-doll baby?” She straightened and as she turned to go called out, “Night, y'all.”
“Good night.” Sam waved though she already had her back to them.
“Good night and good riddance.” Nic crossed her arms.
Willa, standing directly in front of her mother mirrored the pose to a tee.
Sam chuckled. “Oh, come on now. She wasn't that bad.”
“She came over here to try to sniff out a little trash on you or to rub your nose in the trash she thinks she and that Dewi's set already have on you, knowing that as a minister you'd be virtually helpless to defend yourself to her.”
“As a minister the last thing I feel is helpless or defensive.” He laughed.
“I don't care.” She raised her chin. Her line of vision followed Claire LaRue, who gathered her young boys, said her good-byes to those cleaning up, and strolled to the nearly empty parking lot. “I don't trust her and I don't like the way she handled herself.”
“Me neither!” Willa added an emphatic nod. “She called me a baby!”
Sam started to make a case for Claire, but when he tried and it became clear to him he couldn't do it convincingly, he just sighed and shook his head. He had to admit the woman had left him feeling a little unsettled, too, though he couldn't put his finger on just why.
“I'm not a baby, am I, Mommy?”
“Of course not, honey. You are a big girl. Big enough to scoot along over to the refreshment table and collect the cookie plates we brought so Hyde Junior can fold up the table and take it back inside.”
“Okay, Mommy. I can do that.” She stepped forward, then paused just long enough to say to Sam, “Because I am not a baby. I am eight and a quarter years old!”
“Eight.” Sam blinked at the child, then turned his gaze to Nic. “Eight?”
“And a quarter years old!” Willa smiled with pride before she hurried off.
“Since before you were a gleam in your daddy's eye.” Claire s coy choice of expressions suddenly struck him like a bolt out of the blue. He faced Nic, not sure what to think, what to do, what to say.
“I'd better go help her. You've got enough broken cookies scattered around the church yard already without her spilling another half a plateful.” And fast as a rabbit running from a loud noise, Nic was gone.
He thought about stopping her, about grabbing her by the arm and holding her in place until she explained everything to him. But he did not stop her. He did not demand an explanation. It was too big. Too new. The idea that Willa was his child was something he simply could not take in all at once.
Sixteen
Mommy, why did you rush me up to bed so quick? I'm not sleepy.” Willa raised both hands to let Nic drop the flannel nightgown down over the child's head. “I don't go to bed so early. I'm not a baby.”
“Oh no, you're not a baby. You're eight and a quarter years old.” She tugged the gown in place.
“I am. I asked Aunt Collier how long until my next birthday, and she showed me on the calendar. Then she showed me how to group the months.”
“She did?”
“Uh-huh. How to group them and count them. There are twelve months in a year.”
“Only twelve?” Funny. These last few years had seemed about sixteen months long, each filled with about fifty workdays, no weekends, and hour after hour that never seemed to have enough time in them. Still, Nic could not let her weariness overshadow this moment when she could affirm and reinforce what Willa had learned. “Actually, honey, that's very good.”
Willa tipped her chin up. Her cheeks rounded high to frame a wide grin. Without her glasses on, her eyes seemed deeper brown, and the Dorsey family resemblance was more pronounced than ever. Sitting here in the halo of the bedside lamp she looked like the image of Collier transported through time. At least to Nic she did.
Other folks, even those who knew nothing about Nic's past or had some speculation about who Willa's father might be, had told her, “She must take after her daddy.” But Nic had never seen it. To be fair, she had never looked.
She never searched her child for similarities to anyone but the Dorsey family. Self-preservation, she believed. Seeking clues or confirmations of Willa's parentage in the girl were pointless. It would prove nothing.
“I didn't know you and Aunt Collier had worked so hard on your months,” she said too brightly as she folded back the covers on Willa's bed.
“Uh-huh. She spent the afternoon showing me the calendar. I liked it.”
“First time I think I ever heard you say you liked having someone teach you something.” She helped the child slide her legs between the crisp sheets.
“It wasn't like teaching, Mommy.”
“It wasn't?” Collier did have a way of making everything a game, especially where Willa was concerned.
“No. It wasn't like teaching at all. It was like...” Willa cocked her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It was like learning.”
Nic sat back a bit, startled by the child's subtle grasp of the difference in how she, at least, perceived the two. “That's neat, Willa. That really is.”
“I wish I could learn like that all the time.” She put her chin in her hand.
“Maybe you can.”
“Really?”
“Sure. They have all kinds of teaching methods at your new school. Things that I, or even Aunt Collier, couldn't begin to know how to do.”
Willa pulled her arms in close to her body.
Nic reached out to quiet the flailing hand motions she knew would follow.
Willa curled her fingers into fists and bowed her head. She sat perfectly still.
“Willa? Willa, honey, are you okay?”
“Shh.”
“Shh? Willa did you just shush me?”
“Shh, please, Mommy. I'm praying.”
Praying. Nic longed to ask what for? but in her heart she already knew. Willa did not want to go away to school. It broke Nic's heart to see how much her child did not want to go, almost as much as it broke her heart to have to send her. But what could she do? She had to think of her child's future.
Sam had to talk to Nic. He needed answers.
He stood at the door of his office in the church. Monday was usually his day off, but today when his frustration at not getting any time alone with Nic made him snap at Collier for the
lumps in the oatmeal, he knew he had to get out of the Dorsey house.
Willa had asked him to take her along. She had wanted to show him the surprise her aunts had helped her make for her mother. The little girl's mother seemed to have enough surprises already to Sam's way of thinking. And he'd done nothing but think on the surprise he'd been handed since Willa announced her age last night.
He'd wanted to talk to Nic about it after things settled down in the house last night, but she had gone up to tuck Willa in and never came back downstairs. Though what he would have said to her, he was not sure. How would he ask? Would he demand? How could he curb his anger over her keeping this secret from him? Over keeping him from knowing Willa was his child while living under the same roof with the girl and her mother?
Funny how all this time the one thing they had avoided, avoided like the proverbial elephant in the room which everyone was painfully aware of but pretended to ignore, was their shared past. Even when others had alluded to it, when situations had brought it to the forefront, when it seemed the only reasonable thing to discuss, they had suppressed the subject. Last night, that all changed.
A night of rest, and reflection was what they'd both needed, he'd told himself. But looking back at all the lost opportunities he wondered. Maybe, just maybe, he had not really wanted to know the truth.
Willa, his child? The thought staggered his imagination, humbled his heart, and angered him to the depths of his being. He braced his arm against the door frame and looked through his office and out the window that faced toward the house on Fifth and Persuasion.
“Nic, I know I did you wrong.” He spoke with quiet power as if she might hear him all the way over here in the church. “I told you I'd love you forever and convinced you to give yourself to me against your faith and judgment in order to prove your love for me. Then I ran off and betrayed you.”
He bowed his head.
The wind kicked up. The window rattled. The old church creaked.
“But what you've done, Nic... How do I come to terms with that?”
“We ain't got much of a congregation here to speak of.” Bert's palm landed dead center on his back, the heat of her touch spreading out slowly through his tired muscles. “But don't tell me things gone and got so bad you've taken to preaching to yourself.”
He lifted his head, wondering how long she'd been standing there, how much she had heard. Instead of asking, though, he simply faced her and tried to make light of things. “Not preaching, thinking. Thinking aloud. Just trying to sort through a few things, figure them out.”
“Me, I've found I get a far better caliber of answer when I stop thinking out loud and start praying out loud or otherwise. Stop looking for answers in my sad old self and take it to a higher counsel.”
“I've done my share of that, believe me. But for this one? I'm afraid I need some answers directly from an earthly source.”
“Nicolette?”
Tell me about Willa's father. The request burned on his closed lips but he held it in. This was not fodder for a third party discussion. “I need to have a long talk with your niece, but the right time never seems to present itself. Something always interferes.”
“Conveniently.”
“What?”
“You left out conveniently. Something always conveniently interferes.”
“Are you implying I'm secretly thankful for the missed opportunities?”
“You are here in your office. Nicolette is at her home. Can't get much talking done that way—unless it's to yourself.”
“I tried to get Nic to come over here more than once, but she has resisted the idea.” He scratched his scalp, his eyes shut tight. “And the house is always too full of people. That won't improve any with Petie's kids coming in this afternoon.”
“With good reason.” Collier said it the way only a sister could, head high and loyalty unwavering. “You went through heck back then.”
Nic laughed. “But that's past me now. You know, reviewing it through the kind perspective of a lot of years and seeing how Sam is struggling to overcome the long ingrained attitudes around here, I can't feel nearly as hurt and angry about it all as I once did.”
“Nic, really?”
She nodded. “Well, what did I expect, Collier? A good girl from a solid, church-attending family has a baby out of wedlock and doesn't put it up for adoption? People were bound to talk.”
“I suppose”
“Of course. Especially when so many people knew about Reggie's party, and me and Sam and what happened that night.”
“Nic, are you saying you've forgiven the small-minded, mean-spirited gossips in this town for making life so hard on you, on Daddy—on all of us—back then?”
“God is good, sugar, even when people are rotten. I decided last night I have to let it go.” She hugged her sister. “So you can see why I really don't want Willa, even innocently, popping off and starting a new wave of gossip about any of the Dorsey sisters.”
“Ooh, that's right.” Collier pulled away and perched on the edge of her seat. “You were going to tell me what's up with Petie.”
“Nothing earthshaking. It's just that Petie has to tell the kids something about their father. I honestly don't know what she will do. I do know I don't envy her situation.”
“Oh yes, because your situation is sooo much better.” Her younger sister stood and began to wedge the spatula under one of the cooled, over-baked gingerbread men.
Nic opened her mouth to make some smart reply, then found she had nothing to say. Maybe she could thank the sights and smells of the holidays, or the sweetness of her baby sister in supporting Willa and her. Or maybe it was finally giving voice to the ideas that had run through her head last night.
Forgiveness. She often talked about how she expected to have it demonstrated toward her, but how often had she examined how she directed it to others? The gentle nudge of seeing Claire, of facing her own feelings about the people who had hurt her and realizing she needed all her focus to decide what was right for Willa had had an impact. “My situation? It really isn't all that bad, Collier. Not if you think about it. I have so much, have been blessed with a loving family and an opportunity to choose the best path for my child's future.”
“That's true.”
“It's not that bad. Not bad at all.” Nic laughed with a lightness in her spirit she had not known in a very long time. “In fact, I'd go so far as to say that even though I didn't want to come here and have met certain, um, obstacles to my original plans along the way, this has all the earmarks of being one of my best Christmases ever.”
“Gosh, I hope you hang on to that good mood.” Collier frowned at a cookie with a shriveled black clump where his arm should be. “So we can all draw on it when we need it.”
“I plan on it, honey. In fact, I'm not sure anything could dampen this mood now.”
“Nic!” The door swung open so hard the knob banged against the wall. Sam stepped over the threshold but did not shut the door. A chill wind whipped at the tablecloth and made the curtains flutter like frightened birds. “I have to know.”
Collier rushed to close the door, her eyes never off the man who suddenly seemed to fill the room.
“Sam, not here.” Nic shot a glance toward the living room. “Not now.”
“Yes, now. We've let this hang between us long enough and now I have got to know.” He pushed back his leather jacket and put his hand on his hips. “Is she?”
“Sam, no!”
“Answer me, Nic. I have a right to know now. Is Willa my daughter or not?”
Seventeen
“Are you out of your mind? Marching in here and barking out something like that?” Nic's chair legs squawked over the linoleum. The whole chair would have toppled over backward when she leaped up if Sam had not lurched forward in time to catch it.
She didn't care. Floor-bound furniture was nothing compared to the crashing blow Sam's thoughtless question might deal Willa if she overheard it. Nic rushed to the doorwa
y to check on her daughter.
Not even noticing her mother, Willa stood over the coffee table carefully arranging the Mary and Joseph figurines in the nativity scene. Leaning back against the door frame, Nic shut her eyes and exhaled.
“I think I'd better go see if Scott and Jessica are settled in or if Petie needs my help with anything.” Collier brushed past Nic and into the living room. “Hey, Willa, honey, how about you come with me to find what your big cousins are up to in the back room?”
“Thank you,” Nic whispered, fairly certain her sister was too far away to hear.
“I'm sorry.” He sounded more agitated than remorseful. “That was uncalled for, but I had to know—I have to know.”
“Not now. Not here. Not with Willa just a few rooms away.”
“Then let's go to the church office.”
Nic clenched her fists at her side. She battled back the swell of nausea rising from the pit of her stomach. “Not the church. That's hardly the place for what I have to tell you, Sam.”
“That's where you're wrong.” His whole demeanor had shifted in the blink of an eye. “I can see you're hurting. This is obviously not as simple as I let myself believe it must be.”
“No.” She wet her lips. “It's not.”
“Then let's go to the church because—at least as long as I'm still the minister there—that's exactly the place for someone to come to pour her heart out, no matter how bad she thinks her story is.”
“You...you really believe that, don't you?” At last she dared to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “I am totally amazed that both of us could have come from points of desperation and disappointment through such different roads and yet come to this same place.”
“Persuasion?”
“Home.”
“Ah.” Only the vaguest hint of a smile played on his lips as he nodded.
She took a deep breath. The quelling in her stomach calmed. “I only hope you can apply those principles to what I have to tell you, Sam.”
“I'll try, Nic. I really will try.”
“Because regardless of how bad you may feel hearing all this now, I refuse to beat myself up over it or feel like I have to make a show of how a single misdeed has ruined my life.” She looked to the nativity where Willa had stood seconds earlier.
