Deep Dixie

by Annie Jones

  He met her hard gaze. “You know better than that.”

  “I know that’s what you’re trying to do, take my baby away from me but good.” She looked away in a dramatic pause worthy of a character in a telenovella.

  “She’s not a baby anymore, Marcia.” Riley kept his cool and his voice calm. “If you’d ever bothered to come around, you would see that. She’s a little girl with a grandmother whose health is beginning to fail taking care of her.”

  Was he wrong, or did the reference to Momma bring a flicker of emotion to his sister’s hard, hateful expression? “Wendy needs the psychological security of knowing she belongs to someone, that the man she has always looked to as her father is willing to make that a reality in every way.”

  Fulton spoke quietly at that. “Speaking as a father and as your brother’s lawyer, it’s his legal duty to pursue this avenue, Ms. Walker.” Fulton did not move a muscle, and Riley felt he was an anchor of reason in the current of emotions prickling around them. “The child in question deserves the safety net that having a permanent, legal parent provides.”

  “Riley already has guardianship. He has legal custody,” Marcia argued. “I’d say there is a certain amount of psychological security—” she threw Riley’s own words back at him with a sneer—”in keeping a mother and daughter bond intact.”

  “There is so much wrong with that statement, I don’t know where to start dealing with it.” Riley held up his hands.

  “Then deal with this.” She whirled around and stepped toward him the same way she had when they were little and he had something she wanted. “I left my baby with you and Momma because you were the only people on earth I knew I could trust not to do this very thing to me.”

  But unlike when they were kids, he wasn’t going to give up to make her shut up. “Oh, please, don’t try to convince me that any forethought went into your abandonment of your baby. You didn’t leave so much as a note behind when you packed up and left the hospital. Without Wendy.”

  “I didn’t have to leave a note because I knew I had the world’s most perfect big brother to step in and take charge of everything—”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” The whole thing began to make sense to him now. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

  You’re a good man, Riley. Maybe too good. His mother’s assessment echoed in his mind. You don’t think like Marcia. You can’t.

  “Why didn’t you see what?” Challenge colored Marcia’s question, as though she doubted he really had an answer for her or, if he did, that he had the nerve to say it aloud.

  “This isn’t about you keeping your rights to Wendy because you so desperately want to preserve some bond you’ve romanticized exists between you two. This is about you keeping me from getting those rights. This is about punishing me for some grudge you hold against the family because we stopped making excuses for your behavior. You’re using Wendy to get back at the family, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe I’m using Wendy to try to hang on to my family. Have you ever thought of that?” she rushed to ask.

  “Using Wendy is never going to accomplish that.” Despite the raw emotion of the moment, he did not raise his voice.

  Marcia gave no answer.

  Someone else might have taken that as disdain, but the fact that Marcia did not even try to refute Riley’s point gave him a ray of hope that he might be able to reach her yet. “What is it you want to see happen here, Marcia? Do you envision some kind of joint custody arrangement where Wendy ping-pongs back and forth between us?”

  “Riley, listen to me.” Fulton stepped forward. “Don’t say something here that might come back to kick you in the pants later.”

  “Is that legal consequence, counselor?” Riley couldn’t hold back his amusement.

  “That a judicious warning, my friend.” Fulton was not laughing.

  Clearly Fulton took this very seriously, and Riley appreciated that...but if he backed down now he might never get the chance to make his point like this again. He turned back to Marcia. “What do you say, little sister? Are you ready to petition for visitation rights? Will you make the big move to be near our new home so you can play a role in Wendy’s day-to-day life?”

  “Riley, be careful.”

  Riley loved Dixie even more for her whispered warning, but he wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t. Careful—in this instance—was for men who live in fear. That was not who he was. “Or do you think that Wendy will come live with you? That you’ll take over seeing to it that she has food, shelter, clothing, an education, spiritual guidance, and the million other things a child needs to grow into a healthy, self-sufficient adult?”

  He sensed Dixie stiffening behind him, but he kept his gaze fixed on Marcia.

  She shifted, looking from him to Fulton, then back again. “I don’t...that is, I can’t...I’m in between jobs right now and I’m living with...a friend, so I can’t...” She scowled at him, but for just a fleeting moment, Riley thought he saw tears in her eyes. She looked down and when she lifted her head, any trace of tears were gone. “But just because everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows in my life right now does not mean it never will be. I’m working on myself all the time and someday—”

  Riley reached out to her, touching her arm lightly. “Someday will be too late. Wendy needs security right now.”

  “My retaining my parental rights is no threat to that.”

  “Pardon me for saying this, Ms. Walker, but allowing Riley to go through with this adoption is the only thing that guarantees that.” Fulton patted his hand in the air like someone soothing an agitated animal. “Otherwise the threat—your words not mine—is very real, and Wendy and her father have to live under the threat that any day you could come in and alter her entire way of life.”

  “More than that, Marcia.” Riley searched her wary eyes for any sign that they were getting through to her. “Don’t you understand that if anything would happen to me, with the way things are now, Wendy might have to go into foster care? At least temporarily, because Mom just can’t take care of her? If I adopt her, I can name a guardian in my will, or—”

  “Why would she need that?” Marcia yanked her arm away from Riley. “She has me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Riley glanced at Dixie in time to see her cover her mouth, her eyes wide with chagrin at her outburst.

  Marcia glowered at her, and Riley could tell she wanted to say something cutting and cruel.

  He stepped between the two women. He was prepared to take the full brunt of his sister’s contempt, but he would not let her make this about anything other than the truth. All Marcia’s life they’d made excuses for her, let her divert the blame, let her spew her own misery over her poor choices out onto anyone that got in her way. Not now. He would make no allowances for her today, not where Wendy was concerned—and certainly not if she made Dixie the target of her venom. “Even you can’t believe what you’re saying, Marcia.”

  She opened her mouth, her cheeks flushed, her lips so taut against her teeth that they had almost no color at all. She looked so filled with rage that her shoulders actually shook from it and her fingers coiled into white-knuckled fists. When she spoke, she seemed to force the words out, her breathing ragged and shallow. “What I can’t believe is that you would do this to me, Riley. My own brother, taking my child away from me?”

  “Like you’ve ever spent a day of that girl’s life caring for her, teaching her, loving her—”

  “I have spent every day of her life loving her, Riley!” Her eyes flashed. This time the tears did come, rolling down her cheeks unchecked as Marcia raised her chin and whispered, “Every day”

  He believed her, but he wondered if that was because he just wanted to so badly.

  No...as she stood there, so alone in her silent sorrow, he had to believe. Riley stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders.

  Marcia tensed under his embrace, looked up to meet his gaze, then shut her eyes and sighed, relaxing just enough to put he
r hand lightly on his back.

  He fought the emotions sweeping over him, threatening to steal his voice, his resolve. He drew a deep, steadying breath and said what he knew he had to say. “Severing your rights does not mean we are cutting you out of our lives, Marcia. We love you.” He paused to clear his throat so that he could go on. “We will always love you and there will always be a place for you in our family, it just can’t be as Wendy’s mother.”

  His sister’s response came out small, muffled against his shirt front. “If I don’t fight for Wendy, I’m afraid she will think that I don’t love her.”

  “Then when you’re ready you come to see her, and we’ll all work through it, and she’ll know differently.” Riley knew everyone had a point where they must act on their deepest convictions or confess themselves as frauds. Marcia had just come to that point. “If you truly love Wendy, Marcia, then you have to put your own fears and feelings aside and do what’s best for her. Please, for your little girl’s sake, relinquish your rights so she can have a real family.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I am overwhelmed. Absolutely overwhelmed.” Riley spread his hands out over the legal documents on Fulton’s desk like a man admiring a stockpile of pure gold.

  Dixie couldn’t help herself. She hugged him. “Who can blame you? I think anyone would feel that way if they suddenly had everything they wanted given to them.”

  “Not everything, Dixie.”

  “Well, no, of course, you didn’t get your sister to agree to make contact with your mother or even get a very firm commitment that she’d so much as send Wendy a birthday card, but she did sign over her parental rights. Now you’ll be recognized legally for what you’ve always been: Wendy’s Daddy.”

  “Wendy’s Daddy...” The dampness in his eyes was offset by the sheer, delightful, goofiness of his grin.

  Dixie’s heart soared to see that blend of humility and joy in the man she loved. The man with whom you can’t share your love. Yes, he’s just had a tremendous personal breakthrough, but that doesn’t change the things that stand between us.

  She sighed. It was true. She and Riley could not jeopardize their professional relationship for something as unpredictable as romance. So she’d just have to pray for a different rowboat to come along and rescue her from her loneliness and answer her longing for children and marriage.

  She brushed her fingers through the thick black waves of Riley’s hair and smiled to hide her sadness, even though she knew he could not see it. “Sometimes the answers we want in life come in ways we can’t fully comprehend. Sometimes the answers come a little at a time.”

  “Or not at all,” Fulton added as he straightened a picture of his late wife on the wall. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the good stuff.” He touched the narrow, gold frame on his daughter’s soccer photo. “In fact, it means we’ve got to grab onto the goodness with both hands and shout out our gratitude.”

  “Light a candle, don’t curse the darkness, right?” Dixie caught Riley’s eye and winked. Talk about a perfect opening to deal with Fulton and Lettie!

  “Got to do that.” Fulton turned away from the photographs. “Otherwise it’s awfully easy to lose yourself in that darkness until it gets to be so comfortable for you there that you’re actually a little afraid of the light.”

  Dixie took a deep breath and plunged in. “Is that how it is with you and Miss Lettie?”

  A scowl passed over his face. His mouth opened then shut. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. He huffed out a sigh. “My, but you are direct, aren’t you?”

  “I learned it from my daddy.” She held her hands up as if to imply she held no liability in the matter. “In fact, I fired my last lawyer for not dealing with me in kind.”

  “You saying you’re going to fire me if I don’t make up with my grandmother?”

  “Oh, lands sake, no!” She folded her arms and raised her chin. “But I might just employ that legal tactic you warned Riley about earlier.”

  “What legal tactic?”

  “I believe you called it a...kick in the pants?”

  “Don’t turn your back on her, man, she’ll do it.” Riley swiveled the chair around and shot her a cocky grin, his eyes dark and appreciative. “Now that our worries over Wendy are under control, you know our Dixie is going to turn her full attention to getting you to reconcile with Miss Lettie. Trust me, as a man with some experience in dealing with this woman when she’s got her mind set on something, you have only got two choices.”

  “And those are?” Fulton’s suspicion sounded remarkably good-natured.

  “Do it now or do it later.” Riley held his hands up.

  “Except we don’t have a later, Fulton.” Dixie ignored the smart-aleck shading this conversation had taken on and went straight for her point. “Miss Lettie will be one hundred in June, if she lives that long. She is old and frail and at the end of a very long and faithful life. Now, you’ve had more than twenty years to make up your mind to try to repair this rift between you. That’s enough time. You have got to do this now.”

  “Are you speaking as my highest paying client or as Miss

  Lettie’s little lamb, Dixie?” The soft quality of his voice had such a powerful, aching sincerity that it drove any hint of harshness from the question.

  Dixie moved toward the man then stopped, her breath caught in the back of her throat. Fulton had her mother’s eyes. She had not noticed it before, or if she did it had not registered completely. But his eyes were so like those that had looked on her with unconditional love and acceptance when she was little, and so like the eyes she’d seen in even the sternest photos of her great-grandfather. Those eyes confirmed to her that this man deserved to know his heritage even while her heart told her that news could only come from one source. “I am talking to you as someone who loves Miss Lettie as if she were my own grandmother and has come to think of you as a trusted friend.”

  He set his jaw then put his hand to his forehead. “I just...she’s the one who said never to come back.”

  “Right or wrong, and for what it’s worth, she tells me that was meant only for your father. And there’s no sense in either of us pretending we don’t have some idea why that was.”

  “Yes, granted. There were a lot of reasons why she might turn my dad away, but she knew doing that would turn my mother and me away, too. Why would she do that?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person, Fulton.” She shut her eyes. “Why don’t you come over to the house and put that question to your grandmother in person?”

  “Do it now or do it later,” Riley mumbled, making great pretense of organizing the papers on Fulton’s desk.

  Dixie nodded. “And please bring your daughter. Out of respect for your feelings I haven’t told Miss Lettie that she has a great-grandchild, but do you know how much it would mean to her to find that out? To see your little girl?”

  “If she wanted to know how my life has gone, if I have children or not, she could have made more of an effort to find out from me personally.”

  “Fulton, hon.” Dixie did go to him now and touched his arm lightly.

  He glanced down at her pale hand.

  She could feel the tension working through him, but she did not back away. “Miss Lettie is one hundred years old, Fulton. I don’t know how better to get that point across to you. The last time you saw her she was already, what? Eighty? She spends most of her days in bed either sleeping or watching her stories on TV. Or she sits in a rocker in the front parlor keeping time to hymns neither you nor I can hear. Her biggest exertion comes from commenting on the eccentricities of my family—which does, I admit, tend to keep her quite occupied.”

  “Your point is?” He did not remove her hand, but his back stayed as rigid as his attitude toward his grandmother.

  “My point is, what exactly did you expect that ancient, little old lady to do to put things right with you again? She can’t drive over here, or even ride over here. Just taking her to the doctor
is an all-day, three-ring circus.”

  “With clowns.” Riley’s grin was evident even as he kept his head bowed over the files. “Lots and lots of clowns.”

  Dixie ignored him. “Miss Lettie can’t hold a pen to write a letter, and has no means of finding what address to send it to if she could. She cannot send an email, or a text. Fulton, as long as I have been alive I don’t think she’s heard well enough to use the telephone, even if she decided she wanted to try it.”

  “She could have asked someone else to write or phone. She could have sent someone to find me.”

  “Hello?” Dixie did raise her hand now and gave a quick wave. “We’re heeere!”

  “Gee, I guess that means I am a rowboat.” Riley looked up at no one particular.

  “A what?” Fulton pushed up his glasses.

  “It’s that story about the man on the roof who prays for help and God sends a rowboat—” Dixie made a circular motion with one hand to imply that the story went on in that vein rather than rehash the whole thing.

  “Oh, yes, sure. I’ve heard that one.” Fulton nodded.

  “Miss Lettie thinks Riley came as a rowboat in answer to my prayer for help, and I think you’ve been one, too. For me.”

  “And for me.” The chair creaked as Riley leaned back slowly in it.

  “Seems the least we can do is return the favor.” Dixie made the assertion as firm as she could manage.

  Fulton met her gaze. “With your sights set to help me or my grandmother?”

  This she could answer with all her heart. “Both, Fulton. Both.”

  * * *

  Fulton had put three conditions on his meeting with Miss Lettie. First, he did not want to introduce his daughter into the situation until he saw for himself that all old hostilities had been resolved. Second, he did not want Dixie’s family lurking about, trying to get a peek at him or even to make him feel welcome in their home. And last, he wanted Dixie to stay in the room, at least at the beginning, to act as a buffer for the possibly awkward situation.