Jack said, “Yep. Might not happen overnight, but we’ll fix it.”
“I hope so.” To Burrows, I said, “So, are you going back to Plainview now?”
“Nope. I’m a full-fledged member of the APD.”
“Good. I feel a lot better with you around.”
Jack returned to his office while I chatted a little longer with Burrows. After he left, I stomped around the office, making as much noise as I could. Jack and I had gone straight from the airport to see Betsy and back to the office. I didn’t have my car, and I was counting on Jack for a ride home. He didn’t seem to notice my hints. After another fifteen minutes of waiting around, my stomach growled.
I leaned against Jack’s doorframe. “Are you planning on taking me home any time soon? If not, I can call my mother.”
He jumped to his feet. “Sorry. Clyde emailed me for a status report. He saw the news.”
“Clyde emails?”
Jack’s dimple did its thing. “He dictates them to Betty.”
I shook my head. “That woman is a saint.”
Jack grabbed his coat off the back of one of his conference table chairs. He stuck his hand in one of his pockets and rooted around. He nodded, then shrugged on the jacket. “Let’s go.”
The drive out to Heaven was a quiet one except for the wind whistling as it buffeted the Jeep back and forth. White powder blew in almost a straight line across the road, except during the deep gasps between gusts. The heater struggled to keep up with the cold outside. The interior was warmish, but the pockets of air near the windows stayed below freezing, and the side windows frosted over.
We pulled up to my mother’s house.
“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess. If the weather doesn’t get worse.”
Jack turned off the Jeep. “I want to pay my respects to Agatha.”
“It’s freezing. You don’t have to do that. I’ll pass the message.”
He grinned at me, and the left side of his face came alive, jumpstarting me with it. “I’ll race you inside,” he said.
I shook my head, but when he bolted out the door, I scrambled after him, laughing. I slipped and slid up the walkway in my ancient moon boots. I reached the porch first, but only because Jack stopped to grab my suitcase from the backseat before taking off for the house.
I knocked the snow off my feet. “I win.”
The door opened before I could turn the knob, revealing the figure behind it.
Johnny Phelps. My father.
***
I still couldn’t believe the couple sitting on the couch holding hands was my parents. They looked much the same as my child’s eye remembered them from last time they’d sat with me, although Dad had aged far more in fifteen years than my mother. His strong, broad frame had withered to half its size. He’d kept his hair, but it was nearly white. Deep furrows creased his face and age spots covered the backs of his hands. Still, he held his head high and his shoulders squared. His light blue eyes sparkled as he looked from Mother to where I sat on the hearth with Jack and back again, like he was surrounded by Cracker Jack prizes and couldn’t believe his luck.
Mother was trying to explain it all to me. “Your dad called me a few weeks ago. When he got out.”
“You knew he was ‘in’?”
“Yes.” She smiled at the man beside her. “About a year after he, um, took up residence there, he wrote to me. And to you.”
I jumped to my feet. “He wrote to me?”
“He did.”
My dad nodded. “Once a week ever since the second year.”
Mother smiled, but it was a shaky one. “I kept them for you, dear.”
My voice came out as a screech. “Why didn’t you give them to me before?”
She frowned. “Your father left us, he humiliated us, and his being in jail only made it worse. He was in jail because he killed someone. What would Rich have thought? His family? Your friends? Your employers? I didn’t want you hurt. I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“More like your friends. Your church. Your employer.” I turned to my father. “And you were okay with that?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know. I thought you weren’t answering. I didn’t blame you.”
I paced back and forth in front of them. I whirled on my mother. “I was a grown woman. You deciding for me? That’s not okay. Not okay!”
She hung her head. “I understand that now. I’m sorry.”
Dad put his other hand over their clasped ones. He looked at me. “Sweet Pea, I was pretty angry at your mother, too. But I’ve thrown away a lot of my life, spent it apart from the ones I love. I don’t have time to be angry anymore. I forgave her, and she forgave me.”
I sank back to the hearth and put my head in my hands. Jack slipped an arm around my waist. I couldn’t wrap my head around this. The father who had deserted me really hadn’t. The mother who didn’t leave me had kept him from me, out of supposed misguided intentions, or, more likely, bitterness. And now they’d kissed and made up like the last decade didn’t matter? Maybe it didn’t to them, but it did to me.
I lifted my head, glaring at both of them. “So this”—I pointed at their clasped hands—“came about how and when?”
Dad lifted their hands. “Well, she started writing me back a few years ago. Then, when I got out, I called her. Asked if I could come see her.”
Mother beamed. “He got here Christmas.”
I made a growling noise. “And, just like that, you forgave him, after all these years angry at him, all those years keeping me angry at him, too?”
She cocked her head at me. “He’s my husband. Your father. I love him.”
They looked at each other like two teenagers. Mother giggled. She giggled.
My father touched their hands to his chest, one, two, three times. “And we won’t waste another second.”
“Amen.” She put her head on his shoulder.
I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip. “So I’m supposed to forget how you struggled, Mother? Or that I couldn’t understand why my father didn’t want to see me win Southwest Region Champs my senior year at Tech? Or give me away at my wedding?”
“Well, that didn’t work out so well, dear.”
I glared at my mother. “That’s not the point. The point is how do you propose we forget all of this?”
Her blue eyes made big Os. “We don’t. We just move forward.”
Dad stared at his knees or his feet or something on the floor away from my face. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Emily. For everything. I’ve got so many regrets.”
“Well, at least you’re sorry.”
“Emily—” Jack said.
I turned on him, reclaiming a bit of my earlier anger. “What about you, Jack? Are you sorry? Sorry for hiding things from me and lying to me?”
His face lost color. “Uh—”
I jumped to my feet again. “How come you all think I’m so fragile, that I can’t handle the truth?”
Dad’s wrinkles deepened and sagged. Jack stood beside me, but it was Mother who spoke. “Oh, honey, it’s not about you being fragile. It’s about you being loved.”
I looked at the three of them, wanting to pounce, but it stopped me mid-leap. Love. Love stopped me. All that love, imperfect and painful and real and waiting. I didn’t want to waste any more time either. I took three big steps toward my father, and he stood in time to catch me in his arms as my tears fell.
I saw Jack motion to my mother and the two of them slipped from of the room. Dad patted my back and rocked me until I quieted and my tears dried up.
Dad held me away from him. “Once your mom came around, she started sending me pictures, keeping me up-to-date on you. I’m so proud of you.”
I wiped my eyes, shaking my head. “I’ve made such a mess of everything.”
“Oh, Sweet Pea, I’m an expert at making a mess, and I can promise you, you are a minor-league mess.”
I laughed.
“About the time I found out
about you being back here with your mother, Jack got in touch with me. I’m sorry if the way I decided to handle things upset you. I wanted to come home and talk to you face-to-face myself.”
“I understand. I don’t like it, but you’re the dad I’ve known and loved all my life, and I understand.”
His big hands squeezed my shoulder. “I hear you’re the big hero once again. I swear, Emily, after hearing what you did to save that little girl and all those people in New Mexico in the fall, and now how you saved those kids and Mickey, I’m two inches taller again.”
I fell back into his chest, unable to stop the tears again. “Oh, Daddy, it was all you. Everything I did, it was all what you taught me.”
He laughed against my hair. “They just didn’t know they were messing with the wrong girl.”
***
Half an hour later, Jack sat at the kitchen table talking with my dad, while Mother chopped vegetables for a salad and I stuck the steaks in the oven on broil.
“I’m having a glass of wine. Anyone else want one?” I opened the refrigerator door.
Jack stopped. “Not me. But I need to talk to you before dinner.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so talked out.” I groaned as I unscrewed the cap from the white zin. “What do we have left to talk about?” I pulled a glass down from the cabinet and began to fill it.
“Betsy.”
I stopped mid-pour. “Did we forget to do something for her?”
“It’s not that. But maybe we could step out back for a moment?”
“Are you crazy? It’s”—I looked the thermometer in the window—“seventeen degrees outside. Colder with wind chill.”
“So wrap up. It’s important, and last time I told you we needed to talk and then we didn’t, you got pretty darn mad at me.”
“Honey, don’t be difficult with Jack.” Mother, taking Jack’s side, his biggest fan as always.
“Okay.” I capped the wine box. “Where’s my ski suit?”
Twelve layers later, Jack and I stepped onto the back patio. It was a hair past seven thirty and dark outside. The porch lights shed enough illumination that I could see the shadowy outline of our dilapidated little barn at the back end of our property, looking abandoned. Well, now that Dad was back, that would change. A lot of things would change.
I realized Jack was speaking. “What?”
“The state of Texas isn’t going to move you to the front of the line to adopt, not with the way things stand now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you live with your mom for one thing. And dad now, too, I guess.”
“I’m putting my money down on a duplex this week.”
He shook his head. “That won’t get you past the unmarried issue.”
The skin prickled on the back of my neck. “That’s not as big a deal as it used to be.”
“Why give them any more red flags than you have to?”
“You’re depressing me. I’m trying my best, Jack. This is me, trying.”
“I know it is. And you’re doing good.”
I shivered. “It’s freezing. If you’re done busting my chops, can we go back inside?”
He crouched on one knee on the snowy concrete. He pulled a small box out of his jacket pocket. “I’m trying, too. Here.”
“What the heck are you trying to do?”
“Just open it, please.”
“Why are you down on the ground?”
“I’m beginning to wonder that, myself.”
I pulled the wrapping paper off the box. Inside was a jeweler’s box. A small one. My heart and breath froze, and time stood still. I opened the lid. In it was a piece of paper folded over and over and over.
“Cute. I almost fell for it.” I snapped the box shut.
“Open it. And please be very careful when you do.”
I reopened the box and unfolded the edges of paper. Inside it was another piece of paper, folded up like the other.
“You know, some people think the whole psych-out gift thing is funny.”
“This was supposed to be easier.” He stood up, brushed snow from his knees, and straightened the paper out in front of me. “Look at it.” He shifted the partially shadowed real-estate flyer. “Gorgeous new 4 BR/3 BA family home on 5 acres w/fencing/stables in Bushland, TX.” There was a cross-out mark through Bushland. Above it HEAVEN was written in block capitals. Jack’s handwriting.
“You’re buying a new house?”
He sighed and kneeled again. “Open the other paper.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the kitchen window. Two heads together, watching us. I examined the white paper and felt something hard sliding around inside it. My irritation gave way to confusion. I unfolded it, and poured its contents into my hand.
A ring. A gold band with a big fat shiny teardrop diamond.
Jack took it from me, grasped my left hand, and held the ring toward it. “Emily, will you please marry me and move into this house with me and let me adopt Betsy with you?”
A million thoughts flashed through my mind. The first time I’d seen Jack’s face. My palms sweating when he offered me a job. Jack at the emergency room with me when I lost the baby. Our first kiss. Jack, angry and hurt and remote. Learning about his wife and kids. Jack at their graves. That I hadn’t told him about my own pitiful reproductive situation and needed to, soon. Realizing I was in love with him, that of all the men on Earth, he was the man who did it for me.
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Instead I gave his shoulders a shove. He toppled off the patio, and I followed him. Down, down, down to a drift of snow, where I landed on him with a windblown, icy-nosed kiss.
The End
Now that you’ve finished Earth to Emily, won’t you please consider writing an honest review and leaving it on the online sales site of your choice and/or Goodreads? Reviews are the best way readers discover great new books. I would truly appreciate it. Also, be sure to watch for Hell to Pay, the third book in the Emily series, coming soon. — Pamela
Excerpt from Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Mystery Series #1)
Chapter One
Last year sucked, and this one was already worse.
Last year, when my parents died in an “accident” on their Caribbean vacation, I’d been working too hard to listen to my instincts, which were screaming “bullshit” so loud I almost went deaf in my third ear. I was preparing for the biggest case of my career, so I sort of had an excuse that worked for me as long as I showed up for happy hour, but the truth was, I was obsessed with the private investigator assigned to my case.
Nick. Almost-divorced Nick. My new co-worker Nick who sometimes sent out vibes that he wanted to rip my Ann Taylor blouse off with his teeth, when he wasn’t busy ignoring me.
But things had changed.
I’d just gotten the verdict back in my mega-trial, the Burnside wrongful termination case. My firm rarely took plaintiff cases, so I’d taken a big risk with this one—and won Mr. Burnside three million dollars, of which the firm got a third. That was the total opposite of suck.
After my coup at the Dallas courthouse, my paralegal Emily and I headed straight down I-20 to the hotel where our firm was on retreat in Shreveport, Louisiana. Shreveport is not on the top ten list for most company getaways, but our senior partner fancied himself a poker player, and loved Cajun food, jazz, and riverboat casinos. The retreat was a great excuse for Gino to indulge in a little Texas Hold ’Em between teambuilding and sensitivity sessions and still come off looking like a helluva guy, but it meant a three and a half hour drive each way. This wasn’t a problem for Emily and me. We bridged both the paralegal-to-attorney gap and the co-worker-to-friend gap with ease, largely because neither of us did Dallas-fancy very well. Or at all.
Emily and I hustled inside for check-in at the Eldorado.
“Do you want a map of the ghost tours?” the front desk clerk asked us, her polyglot Texan-Cajun-Southern accent making tours sound like “turs.”<
br />
“Why, thank you kindly, but no thanks,” Emily drawled. In the ten years since she’d left, she still hadn’t shaken Amarillo from her voice or given up barrel-racing horses.
I didn’t believe in hocus pocus, either, but I wasn’t a fan of casinos, which reeked of cigarette smoke and desperation. “Do y’all have karaoke or anything else but casinos onsite?”
“Yes, ma’am, we have a rooftop bar with karaoke, pool tables, and that kind of thing.” The girl swiped at her bangs, then swung her head to put them back in the same place they’d been.
“That sounds more like it,” I said to Emily.
“Karaoke,” she said. “Again.” She rolled her eyes. “Only if we can do tradesies halfway. I want to play blackjack.”
After we deposited our bags in our rooms and freshened up, talking to each other on our cell phones the whole time we were apart, we joined our group. All of our co-workers broke into applause as we entered the conference room. News of our victory had preceded us. We curtsied, and I used both arms to do a Vanna White toward Emily. She returned the favor.
“Where’s Nick?” I called out. “Come on up here.”
Nick had left the courtroom when the jury went out to deliberate, so he’d beaten us here. He stood up from a table on the far side of the room, but didn’t join us in front. I gave him a long distance Vanna White anyway.
The applause died down and some of my partners motioned for me to sit with them at a table near the entrance. I joined them and we all got to work writing a mission statement for the firm for the next fifteen minutes. Emily and I had arrived just in time for the first day’s sessions to end.
When we broke, the group stampeded from the hotel to the docked barge that housed the casino. In Louisiana, gambling is only legal “on the water” or on tribal land. On impulse, I walked to the elevator instead of the casino. Just before the doors closed, a hand jammed between them and they bounced apart, and I found myself headed up to the hotel rooms with none other than Nick Kovacs.
“So, Helen, you’re not a gambler either,” he said as the elevator doors closed.
Earth to Emily Page 29
