North (Wilkerson Dynasty Book 2)

by Kathi Barton

  “I was too for a while. But Mars pointed out that Holly never barred them from coming to see her. Any one of them at any time could have come to the correct information if they’d wanted to get the story straight. They are coming around, and I’m happy about it. But Mars wishes all the time that they’d gotten to know his mom like the rest of them had. She was the pillar of the family. More so than that old man that was her father.” Amy asked her how she’d known Holly. “She saved my life a few times when I was growing up. Much like your family, mine was like that too. But my parents are both dead. Yours are still around, causing trouble. I lived with my uncle Lance for a long time. He used to be the funeral director in town. Boy, did he have a lot of stories.”

  “Thank you for this. I needed it.” Abby told her she was there for her. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me and North. This dinner tonight, it’s going to be epic, I think. But it’s also going to cause some tears. None of the fathers, I believe, have dealt firsthand with how much of an influence Holly did have on their sons’ lives. This will be very telling for them.”

  “I never thought of that. She did influence them a great deal. I think she still is. But I believe you’re right. This will be an eye-opener for them.” As they traveled back to the house, she had Abby stop by the Village Posy Shop right on the main drag of their little town. She wanted to get North a dozen roses. “You know, that’s a wonderful idea. Why do they get to be the ones that give roses? I’m going to do it too.”

  After getting them all flowers, they made their way back to her home. The furniture was being delivered, and there were extras helping them get it all inside. Even Mars, who still hadn’t been able to move into their home, was helping. Abby was barred from even lifting the flowers she got for him.

  Men were very odd when it came to women having babies. Amy decided she was going to tell them all she was going to have a baby someday while lifting weights with the due date written on them. She was reasonably sure North would have a stroke if they were to have a baby soon. She thought she’d just laugh at him.

  Chapter 9

  Wats had forgotten how much fun it was to cook. He’d been really busy the last few weeks and had only been having his meals at the hospital or at some fast-paced place. Tonight, he decided he was going to start cooking more. It was entirely relaxing.

  Chopping vegetables. Cleaning the skins off cucumbers. All of it was like a well worked out play to him. Holly had told them all that timing was really everything. You didn’t want to have your toast finished up while you were still waiting to fry the bacon. Things had to come together in a timely fashion, or you had limp toast and underdone meat.

  “Did you know you can buy carrots and other things like onions already chopped up?” He asked Shawn if he was serious. “I am. When I went by the store to pick up more carrots for tonight, there were containers full of chopped up things. Celery of all things. Chopped up like it’s not one of the easiest things in the world to cut into pieces.”

  “I could be tempted to buy cut up onions. I mean, I hate having my hands smell like onions for days afterward.” Mars told him all he had to do was to wash up with a lemon. “Does that work?”

  They were all giving advice on things they’d picked up here and there. Mars said Abby had told him about the lemons. Then to put the citrusy thing in the garbage disposal to make it fresh. Wats wondered aloud what their aunt would say about them cooking for their dads today.

  “She’d be in there with them telling them they’re lazy and should have learned to cook too.” They all laughed with Booker. “Yesterday I was thinking about some of the things Aunt Holly would tell us about one of her brothers. I have to be honest and tell you I was sure she was making things up about them just to make us not completely write them off. But the more I get to know my own dad, I can see she was telling us the truth. It’s like seeing my dad in different eyes—through her eyes, if you want to know the truth.”

  Just as they were talking about other things Aunt Holly had said, his dad and the others came into the room with them. It was Clayton, North’s dad, who asked them to tell them things about their sister. It had been like that for the last few days with him and his dad. He would ask for stories about her so that they, he supposed, in some way, could feel connected with her again.

  “She loved the holidays. Not just the traditional ones, but anything and everything that was written on a calendar.” North laughed as he continued. “Aunt Holly used to tell us if someone took the time to write it on the calendar, then it was our duty to celebrate it. I think her favorite one was Halloween.”

  “Yes, next to Christmas.” Everyone agreed with him on that one. “When we were hanging around with her, we never really participated in dressing up and going out. I think mostly it was because we were terrified that if one of our mothers’ so-called friends would tell on us, we’d never be able to do things with her again. But each year, she would have a theme for Halloween. The one I remember the best was when she had us all dress up like the cast to that under the sea cartoon. She even had us all costumes to wear.”

  “That’s my favorite too. They were good costumes too. I was Patrick.” His cousins were laughing with Brandon when he spoke up. “She would even have things to give away at the door that were a part of the theme. All the kids would flock to her home. She didn’t cheapen the candy she gave out either. It was full-sized candy bars. Each of us would talk to the kids coming to the house. Aunt Holly took pictures too.”

  “I have them.” When Mars went to get the albums, Wats waited for the rest of his story until Mars returned. “Here they are. I was thinking about this the other day, how she would add a picture of all of us dressed up to her albums, and dug this one out.”

  “She made everything seem like a game. Like teaching us to cook.” Wats thought about telling them how he’d been knocked around once, and she’d taught him how to make a New York style cheesecake, but he didn’t want to bring the room down. “Each visit with her was an adventure. She never demanded anything of us but to not talk about our parents. Unless it was in a good light.”

  “I’m doubting there were many conversations about us then.” His dad looked sad about his comment. It was difficult on him, Wats knew, to find out things that had been kept from him. Not so much as kept from him, but that he’d not wanted to know. Wats thought all the dads were having that trouble. It was North that had Dad smiling again, telling him how she always told them about growing up with five older brothers. “She wasn’t your typical little girl. You guys know that, don’t you? She was just as much into things as we were as youngsters.”

  “She wasn’t perfect. Not the way we make her sound.” They all turned to Mars when he spoke from his position at the stove. “Once when I was seventeen, Mom got written up at work for telling one of the people she worked with off. But when she realized she had been wrong about it, or anything for that matter, Mom would be the first person to say she was sorry about it. The one thing I remember her teaching all of us was that once you start to think of yourself as a perfect being, that was when someone out there would take you down a peg or two. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized she meant her own dad. I think it hurt her the most that he’d turned his back on her.”

  “Aunt Holly would tell me often that I was her knight in shining armor when she was down about something. She worked hard too, and made sure we all understood the value of being a responsible person.” Wats remembered one such conversation with his aunt that he thought of to this day. “When I turned sixteen, all I wanted was a car of my own to drive back and forth to school. It was the thing to do—be a driver, not a rider. When I went to her complaining about how I’d not gotten what I wanted, she smacked me, really hard. It was then she asked me if I wanted to be a man or a shit. I was hurt, so I told her I wanted to be a shit.”

  “Why did she hit you?” Wats smiled at his dad when he ask
ed. “I don’t know that I’m going to like this answer, am I?”

  “I know, for a very long time, I didn’t like her answer either. Nodding at my answer, she just went about cooking dinner for the three of us—her, Mars, and I. Nothing more was mentioned about it until we were cleaning up. She told me I could just go to the living room and watch television while she and Mars cleaned up. While I was in there, enjoying the break from having to do chores, I could hear her and Mars in the kitchen laughing. Having fun, as we always do when we’re together. As soon as I entered the kitchen off and on while they worked, they’d shut up and tell me to go watch television. That was when I realized I was being a shit, and she was treating me like one. A shit that didn’t care if others had to work hard to give me something I wanted. The break from doing the dishes and not helping—she was showing me how shits would act.”

  “I don’t get it.” Dad looked at the others, and they didn’t seem to understand either. “She just let you have the evening off from chores. How is that teaching you a lesson?”

  “She was telling him if he wanted a car, he should make it so he could have one. Find himself a job, save his money, and buy it on his own.” Dad understood but still seemed confused. Mars explained. “Mom thought that all of us, coming from money, needed to learn the value of things. Not just have them handed to us on a platter. Having him sit in the other room while the two of us worked was giving him a break, sure, but he was missing out on all the other things that came with working. We were having fun. Wats might well have too, except for the fact he wanted someone to do the job—in this case, clean up while he did nothing at all.”

  “Eight months later, I’d saved up enough to buy a secondhand car and was more proud of it than I was of anything I’d ever gotten handed to me. She not only took good care of us, but she taught us things like working for something, as well as appreciating what you have by sharing with those that have nothing. That was another thing she wanted us to learn. Sharing.” Dad asked him if he still had his car. “I do. So does Booker and the rest of us. Mars, I don’t think he had his own car until he graduated from college. North bought himself his first new vehicle just recently.”

  “I miss her.” Dad looked around the room at the others. “I know it’s our fault for cutting her out of our lives. I know had we done anything at all, she would still be alive and giving us a hard time about this or that. I know all that. But what my head knows and my heart feels are two entirely different things. I miss her so much every day, boys. Just having you guys around, telling us stories about your lives with her? It’s all I can do not to find myself a nice dark corner and sob for all we’ve lost.”

  “But, you’ve lost nothing.” Abby stood in the doorway with Amy when she spoke. “Don’t you see? You’ve lost nothing by her being gone. I know it hurts you. Christ, I miss her very much too. But you have to remember this. If she’d not been cut from your lives when she was if she’d not had the relationship with your sons, do you think any of this would be happening? Do you think you would have been any happier with your wives the way they are? No. Would you have still had your sons? I doubt that either. You have to think of her being gone like this. Without the chain of events the way they were, none of this—not your families, your lives, none of it—would have been possible. You are who you are because of what formed you. Holly formed a relationship with your boys because they needed her as much as she did them. What do you think would have happened if things had been perfect? Not this, that’s for sure. At least that’s the way I think of her being gone. She was and still is the catalyst that has made you all who you are. And who you will be in the future. Holly Wilkerson is the reason for the events that made this meal happen too.”

  Wats kissed Abby on the cheek. She had it right. Aunt Holly, if she’d been here today, would have kicked all their asses for being so sad about things they had no control over. She was murdered, but before she was, Aunt Holly had given the cousins all she could have been giving her brothers. This, Wats thought, was the way it should have been. Just the way it had to be to work out in the way that made them come together once again.

  The meal was a huge success, so much so they decided they wanted to do this more often, getting together as a family and cooking a huge meal to share. They talked about everything yet nothing at all. They laughed at the expense of others without being cruel. Laughter rang loudly between them. Sorrow too. By the time they were having pie and homemade ice cream, thanks to the two wives, each of them were groaning about how they’d never eat again, that they’d eaten too much. Wats was sure they had. There were no leftovers.

  Clean up took longer than he thought it should have because they were deciding things, major things, like which part of the meal was the best, who had made what part of it, and when would they do it again.

  Wats would never forget this night. Nor for so long as he lived would he forget the look on his dad’s face when he bit down on his mashed potatoes with white gravy. He’d always remember Uncle Hank’s face when he sipped the first sip of his tea and declared it better than his own mother’s. Wats watched as each of them helped set and break down the table, and knew the moment Uncle Wesley realized they were using a sheet as a tablecloth because no one had remembered to get one. Things like that, little things as well as larger ones, would come back to him, he knew, at the oddest times. Just as things he had learned at the home of the most courageous woman he’d ever know.

  Holly Wilkerson. Mother to them all, friend too. Wats found himself walking away for a moment, just to gather his own emotions. He realized he was never going to get a hug from her again. That she was gone from his and the others’ lives forever. Wats thought his heart was breaking all over when he thought of how much she was missing this day. Wats loved her so much, he wondered if he’d ever find someone to love as much as she did all of them.

  ~*~

  Clayton was as ready as he’d ever been. In the past, when his wife would speak at him, not to him, he would barely listen to her. Knowing she would remind him several times of something he’d have to do so he’d not forget anything. Agreeing with her, all of them was easier than trying to change her mind about anything going on. It wasn’t always right if it was easy, he was beginning to understand.

  Today, he decided, as the oldest male in the family, he was going to set his foot down and make sure these women knew what was what. Clayton glanced over at Amy. She was going to be his ass-kicker if he needed a boost. Not to the wives, she’d explained to him, but to his ass. Clayton was a little intimidated by his beautiful daughter-in-law.

  He felt renewed since last night. Like, instead of just going along with whatever the women told him, he was going to be the one that held the conversation. There would be no more just going along with things simply because he didn’t want to deal with it. He’d done that for far too long, and he’d lost his sister and his father because of his lack of being a man. That was another thing that had been pointed out to him by Amy just last night after dinner. He’d been less than a man, and it had nearly cost him his son.

  “You fuck up this time, and not only will you lose out big time, but Clayton, you might well miss out on having grandchildren that want to visit you. Or even to be seen with you. I shit you not. You fuck this up, and there will be hell to pay. Not only are your brothers depending on you right now, but you could say the entire Wilkerson lineage.” He nodded, then shook his head. “I don’t understand. You want to fuck this up?”

  “No. No, not that. But I don’t care about how my brothers are depending on me. Nor about the lineage of my family. It could all go to hell for all I care about those things. I feel I have to do this for my son. The rest? Well, they can come here and do this better if they think they can. I want my son to finally realize his father is someone that will now and forever forward be someone he can depend on. I need this for him.” Amy got up, and he was sure she was crying, but when she wrapped her arms around him, hu
gging him like she’d never done before, Clayton hugged her tightly back. “You did this for us, Amy. This thing with my son. I was just beginning to break through with some sort of progress, but after you showed up, it was like I became what I should have been all along.”

  So now here he was today, standing in a room that would soon be filled with women that not only killed his wife but his sister, and had destroyed any sort of relationship he could have had with his son when he’d been younger. He had his notes to go over. Points he wanted to be assured they understood. Mostly, he thought, it was to finally get them out of their lives once and for all time.

  As soon as they were brought into the room and locked down, Clayton felt the weight of their eyes on him, just as he did when he’d been married to the ring leader of them all. Bracing himself for whatever they said, it was the most difficult thing he thought he’d ever done. Be a man. Who would have thought it would take him till so late in his life to grow a set of balls again?

  “So? What the fuck do you want, Clayton? And what in the holy name of Christ are you wearing? You are never to come here again, looking like that. Do I make myself clear?” He looked down at his jeans and tennis shoes. He’d forgotten he was wearing them, they’d been so comfy. “And I do hope you’ve moved out of the house. As soon as I’m out of here, Wesley and I will be moving in and running things. Also, you’d better be working on getting that piece of shit Mars out of our lives. I swear to you if he’s still around—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Tina looked at him. It almost took him back to a time when he was afraid of them all when Amy cleared her throat. That was all, she cleared her throat, and he felt himself ready again. “You murdering bunch of bitches are not getting out of here. I don’t have any idea why you would even assume that you would. The lot of you conspired and killed my baby sister for no other reason than jealously. She was only a child, a little girl, and you sold her off to be raped and murdered. But she was so much better than any of you. Even when she knew, she knew all along, that you were the ones that had done this to her, she never once said a bad word against any of you. She raised our sons to be good, powerful men that have more heart than any of you would ever have.”