by Annie Jones
“Fulton?” She stepped forward again, feeling a little like the participant in a grown-up game of “Mother May I?” She approached Riley with utmost caution, which she felt his mood and words warranted.
“Carol explained to Marcia that Fulton was the one to contact to get to me.”
“Contact? By phone? Letter? In person?”
“I wish I knew.” He put his head in his hands.
This time Dixie did not hold back. She went to him, laid the Bible in the middle of her father’s old desk, then put one hand on Riley’s back and the other on his arm.
“What am I going to do, Dixie?” He looked up at her. “We were so close to having everything arranged. If she’d showed up next month, after the court had straightened out the legalities of who really had the right to be Wendy’s parent, things would be so different.”
“I know,” she murmured. “Are you afraid that Marcia will try to take Wendy away from you?”
“Legally, we’ve never believed she’d be able to get anything more than visitation rights. Frankly, I don’t think she’d try for even those. If she hasn’t changed she wouldn’t want the burden of taking care of a child even for a few days at a time. If she has changed, well, then she’d do what’s best for Wendy, which is leave her with me, right?”
Dixie pressed her lips together.
“See, I wouldn’t even have to worry about that if she had popped up after the court date had severed her parental rights. I’d be Wendy’s father, and Marcia would be her aunt. Just that simple.”
“It doesn’t seem all that simple to me, Riley”
He exhaled hard, the sound something that hinted at but did not quite achieve a disheartened ha. “Maybe simple is the wrong word, but it gets pretty simple when you think that this is exactly how Wendy has seen things her whole life. She knows my sister gave birth to her, but she also knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am her daddy.”
“You are.”
“It means so much to me that you see it that way”
“I’ve seen you two together. I’ve heard how you talk about her and how you worry over her. Speaking as a former Daddy’s Little Girl and proud of it, you are her true father. No doubt about it.”
“Doubt?” He clenched his teeth and hissed an indistinguishable unintelligible word. “That’s the emotion of the hour, isn’t it? It’s all about doubt, Dixie. One phone call and I’m doubting everything from my legal position to what kind of lasting effect Marcia’s reappearance will have on Wendy.”
She touched the soft leather grain of the old Bible.
He raised his head and put his hand on hers. He let out a long, slow sigh.
“Riley, from what you’ve told me about Marcia, her greatest fault seems she’s shallow and selfish. Is there something more you’re worried about? Something she might involve Wendy in or—”
“Shallow and selfish is enough, Dixie, when you’re talking about the welfare of a trusting, innocent child. My child.” He tilted the office chair back slightly not seeming to notice that his knee rested against hers. “Marcia has lived a life of reckless self-indulgence. That’s the kindest way I can put it. There are a lot of behaviors that probably go along with that, too many men, drugs, drinking, never taking responsibility for herself or her actions.”
Dixie wanted to stroke his hair, to lend some comfort but she held back. “How did she get to be that way?”
“For one thing, she was born stubborn.”
“Hey! Some of my best friends were born stubborn.” She nudged his leg with her knee trying her best to lighten things so that he didn’t suddenly decide he’d gone too far and withdraw into himself and not talk about what was obviously grieving him.
“You saying you’re your own best friend?” He smiled, not a big smile, but enough to show his appreciation for her effort.
She pulled her shoulders up. “I’m saying stubbornness alone is not an excuse for—”
“Whoa! I’m not making any excuses for Marcia’s choices and actions.” He let the chair fall forward, breaking contact with Dixie. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt—and she stole it right off my back.”
She slipped her hand in his.
“I’ve heard every excuse, made most of them myself at one time or another. She was too headstrong. She felt stifled by life in a mill town. She was rebellious. She fell in with the wrong crowd. Momma spoiled her.” He looked up abruptly, gave her hand a squeeze then winked. “Of course, we know that’s not an excuse, either. Some of my best friends are totally spoiled.”
“If I thought you really meant that...” she warned.
“I do mean it, your family spoiled you—spoiled you with love, attention, kindness, a sense of history, home, and security... all the things I plan to spoil my own child with given the opportunity. God willing.”
Dixie gripped his shoulder with her other hand, closing their connection in a way she would never have done casually.
He went on. “You said it best when you questioned my motivation for buying into the business. You told me I was trying to buy what I had failed to build, that I wanted the stability not found in my own home, a stability I feared I could not provide for Wendy.”
“I didn’t really know you then, Riley.”
“But you knew the truth about me right from the start, Dix.” He swiveled the chair slightly in her direction. “When I spoke with your father and decided to throw in with him, it wasn’t just for the business deal. I liked what I heard from him about fairness and honor, about a company’s social responsibility, and most of all about family.”
A pang of sadness shot through Dixie. She missed her daddy so much. Riley’s dilemma and having just gone through the treasures in the wall safe only intensified her sense of loss.
His smile was tender. “Outlandish as your family can be, they are all there for each other. They will give of themselves for the sake of the people they love, even for people who aren’t related to them, like Wendy, Momma, and me.”
“And Miss Lettie. She’s not a blood relative but she’s a part of our family, for sure.”
Through it all, her family, such as it was, had always had one another, each person always ready to pitch in for the greater good. Thinking about it now chased away some of her blue mood over missing Daddy She wasn’t alone. She had people who loved her...and knowing that made her feel safe and satisfied.
Funny, she hadn’t felt proud of the oddball collection of in-laws and borderline outlaws that made up her family in a long
time. She’d regarded them for the most part as a burden, first to her father then to her, an inherited problem that she had to tend to, supervise, suffer. Now, seeing them collectively through another person’s eyes made her feel blessed and grateful.
Riley was watching her as though he understood what she was feeling. “You see, you don’t know how destructive a single person who thinks only of themselves can be to a desperate family that wants nothing more than to love and help that person.”
Riley sat back and raked his fingers through the thick waves of his black hair. “I’ve felt that hurt and seen the devastation in my mother’s eyes. It’s not something I ever want to see again, and yet Momma prays every day for Marcia’s return. How can I hope for those prayers to go unanswered, even if only for a little while longer?”
He drew his fingers down the length of the worn black
Bible, rubbing them very gently over the gold, stamped letters of her great-grandfather’s name in the right-hand corner. “Why can’t I be excited about this, Dixie? Is something wrong with me? Am I the one who is now being shallow and selfish?”
“No. You said I knew the truth about you. Well, I’m not sure about that, but I do know that you are not putting your feelings first in this.”
“Isn’t that exactly what I’m doing? Putting how I feel about this ahead of everything else?” He picked the Bible up, ran his calloused thumb along the gilded edges of the thin paper. Pages slid over each other, rustling as he
leafed through the find from the safe.
“You’re a father, Riley”
“You’re right. Sitting here stewing isn’t going to help matters any. Guess I’d better call Fulton to give him notice he may hear from Marcia, then go home and have a long talk with Momma.” He blew out a long breath. “I don’t look forward to that.”
“Your mother is stronger than you think, Riley.” Dixie stood and paced out a few feet away from the desk. “And where she isn’t strong, she has you and Wendy and Sis and Grandpa and me and Miss Lettie to hold her up, physically, spiritually, and in whatever way she needs. The same goes for you and for Wendy...and for Marcia, if she comes back into the picture.”
He jerked his head up and narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re saying that if Marcia comes back and wants to try to mend fences and be a part of our lives again, that you’d be there to help deal with it?”
She met his searching gaze without flinching and nodded. “Whatever way it goes.”
“Thank you.” He stood and reached his hand out to her. “For everything.”
“Hey, don’t thank me, thank the family that spoilt me.” She hooked her thumb under the strap of her overalls.
He laughed. “I’ll do that. You can count on it. Now, I’m going downstairs to get some coffee before I try to track down Fulton. Want to come down and shake things up in the showroom?”
“I’ve been shaken up enough for one day, thank you.” The warm memory of the kiss they had shared washed over her. “I think I’ll just stay here safe from shocks, tremors and surprises, and just go through some of these old, familiar family things. You know, sort of remind myself of how boring and stable they really are down deep.”
“Way down deep.” She could hear the teasing in his voice as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Dixie sank into Daddy’s old chair and opened up the old Bible to the stiff center pages. Family Register, it said across the top of the first page. Below the heading were lines for the name of the Bible’s owner and spouse, and below those was the bold proclamation were united in Holy Matrimony, with a place for the date and place of the ceremony.
“Holy Matrimony,” she read softly, glad that Riley had not been near to hear the wistful tone that she could not keep from her voice. Nestling down into the chair, she drew her feet up and pulled the Bible close. ‘“Samuel Prescott Fulton and Eugenia Anne Hamilton were united in Holy Matrimony on the fifteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred eighteen in Fulton’s Dominion, Mississippi.’“
She looked up at the stern-faced couple in the faded wedding photo on the wall and smiled. She knew little about them, really, only the small remembrances Lettie shared, which tended to focus more on Founder Fulton, whom the old woman revered, and his only surviving daughter, whom she’d all but raised.
Dixie sighed and turned the page to glance over the list of births. Samuel Omar, Prescott Warren, Samantha Eugenia...
She frowned at the last name on the list. “Helen Bettina?”
Dixie blinked. Why on earth had her great-grandfather written down Lettie’s daughter’s name with his children? She looked to the next page, as though that might provide a clue. Marriages, the title stood out in boldest black on the stark white page. Two marriages were recorded there. One, she had fully expected to find. The other—
Dixie sat up. She blinked as though that might alter the names on the line beneath her grandparent’s. They remained unchanged—and yet they changed everything she thought she knew about so many people she’d loved and trusted.
“I know you said you didn’t want any but I brought you up some coffee anyway.” Riley appeared at the door, two cups in his hands. “Thought it might jolt the old system into—”
Dixie put her hand to her head as if she expected to find a lump or bump where she something had been dropped on her. “My system has been jolted enough for one day, thank you.”
“What?” He came to her, setting the two coffee mugs down on the desk as he did. “What is it? Dix, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I feel like I’ve seen a ghost, or at least like something I can’t fully explain has just come back to haunt me. And, truthfully, Riley, I have no idea what to think about it.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Oh, no you don’t!” With the weathered, black Bible in his hand, Riley jumped up from his chair and took two thundering strides across the room.
“Oh, no I don’t what?” Dixie started to shut the wall safe where she had just haphazardly replaced the boxes and file she’d pulled out earlier.
“Oh, no, you don’t close that safe without this Bible in it, Princess.”
She bristled at the nickname, just as he knew she would, but it accomplished his goal and stopped her dead. “I am keeping that Bible out, Riley. I need it.”
“For what?” The direct approach had always worked with her before. In fact, that was one of the things he valued so much about this woman. Despite the delicate nature of this issue and the reality that both of them were running with their emotions cranked to full throttle, he decide not to change the way he dealt with Dixie now. “You want to keep that Bible out of the safe and do what with it? Take it home to confront your family and get them all lathered up over something that is none of your business?”
“None of my business?” She snatched the oversized book from his hand and let it fall open to the pages of the family register. “Did you not read the names listed here under the marriages?”
‘“Samantha Eugenia Fulton married to George Robert Cunningham, July seventeenth, nineteen forty-seven,’“ he read, then raised his eyes to her.
“What about the one after that?”
“That’s the one that’s none of your business.” He hit the last four words hard. If she’d have been a man, he’d have poked her in the chest with one finger to force the point home more fully.
“None of my...” She clenched her jaw, then lifted the Bible up and ran her finger along as she read, ‘“Samuel Prescott Fulton married to Letticia Sarafina Gautier, August first, nineteen forty-seven.’ That’s Miss Lettie and Great-grandfather Fulton! This says she was his wife, and over here, listed under Samuel Fulton’s children, Helen Bettina—that’s her daughter, Helen Betty”
“Yeah, it didn’t take a mathematical genius to put that two and two together, Dix. Now, let’s move on to an English lesson—you said his wife, her daughter, personal possessive pronouns, neither of which indicate you.” He pointed at her, immediately saw how intimidating the gesture looked and backed down, just a little. “Leave it be. This is something that many people have obviously gone to great lengths to keep private.”
“Don’t you mean secret?” She put the open Bible to her chest and closed her eyes. “Family secrets, to be precise. The secrets may not be mine, but the family is and that makes it my obligation to—”
“To shut up and leave it be.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Dixie, if Lettie wanted you to know about this, she would have told you. She’s had your entire life, to do that. Not to mention most recently when you started trying to write her life’s story. Maybe this is the reason she’s been so evasive about that.”
“Yes, but—”
“She is a very old woman, very dear and very revered. It’s not your place to go against her wishes by bringing this into the open. There will be time enough to deal with this after she’s gone. For heaven’s sake, Dixie, she’s one hundred years old. Let her finish her life with dignity”
“That’s exactly what I want to do, Riley.” Dixie glanced down at the painting, still propped against the credenza, of the house where they all now resided. “What kind of dignity has she had living most of her life posing as the maid, then having to rely upon the self-sanctioned benevolence of people living in the home that should have been hers?”
“Dixie, you are jumping to a lot of conclusions. You don’t know what was or wasn’t willed or given to her by your family. Maybe your great-gran
dfather gave her something else besides the family home. He must have felt pretty strongly about defending Lettie’s privacy on the matter. He did lock this Bible away and evidently took the story of Lettie’s marriage and Helen Betty’s parentage to his grave.”
“Maybe he did that for all the wrong reasons, Riley We can skirt around it all we want, but it’s a little like trying to ignore an elephant in the parlor, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure—”
“Oh, c’mon. A racially mixed couple in Mississippi in nineteen forty-seven? Did you ever think that all this secrecy, the lies, the cover-up might have been, well, forced on Miss Lettie? A condition my family put on her and she had no choice but to honor? To suffer in silence?”
Riley laughed. “Somehow that does not sound like our Miss Lettie.”
“Allowing me to believe she was the retired family maid my whole life, living a lie...that doesn’t sound like her either, does it?”
Having no ready answer to that, he just frowned.
“I wonder who else knew. Or knows.”
“Do you suspect your grandfather or Aunt Sis have any idea?”
“They’ve never given any indication of it. But obviously Daddy knew. He was the one who had the Bible.” She raised her head and the shadow of the safe’s door fell across her face. “He had the Bible and kept it locked away in a place no one but he and I have gotten to without some drastic means like a court order or a short stick of dynamite.”
Riley looked up at the bullet hole in the office ceiling. “You know, John Frederick might not have considered resorting to TNT all that drastic of a measure.”
She glared at him.
He could see in her dispirited eyes, her slumped posture, her white-knuckled grip on the old Bible how her father’s less- than-forthright treatment of this matter hurt Dixie. That made him think twice before offering yet another possibility, but he felt he had to say it, to make her look at this from more than just her own narrow angle. “Dixie, honey, you do understand that it’s possible that you are the only member of your family that does not know about this big secret you think you’ve just uncovered? That maybe it’s already been resolved by those directly involved?”
