Josh shrugged. “He lights out of here almost every afternoon. Turns up again for dinner. I don’t know where he goes, but it’s somewhere he wants to be a lot more than he wants to be here.”
“Good.” Another one of her nods. She consulted her folder once more.
“Good?” He had just about had it. “You come here once a month and tell me to take things slow. That a boy abused the way my sister claims she and Daniel were needs time and space to settle in. But when I tell you that he can’t bear to be in the same house as me, you’re finally encouraged?”
“He stood up to you, Josh.” She fingered through her notes. “And from the sketchy details we have of his past before his mother brought him to Sweetbrook, I can only imagine how much courage that took. You’ve remarked about how wary he is around you.”
“He’s downright terrified every time I touch him.” Why had Josh let his mother’s need to protect their family’s reputation, her insistence that Melanie was exaggerating as always, shame his sister into silence about her relationship with Daniel’s father? A man their mother had been mortified to learn Melanie had lived with for five years, but had never married. Josh would give anything not to be piecing together the disturbing details now. To have been there for Melanie when she’d needed him most. To understand what her son needed now.
“Daniel’s nervous around all adults,” he added, “but men especially. He watches every move I make, like he’s expecting me to shout boo or something. Like he can’t turn his back, or I might come after him.”
“And when he first came here, he was nonresponsive and withdrawn if you confronted him directly.” Barbara’s gaze measured Josh’s frustration.
“Yeah.”
Just like Melanie had been.
“But this time, when you pressed him, he pushed back, at least for a moment.”
Her words rattled around in Josh’s head, then came together in a startling flash of clarity.
“Yeah,” he repeated, amazed. “He actually shoved me out of the way.”
He and Daniel had taken a haphazard step in the right direction, and Josh hadn’t even seen it.
“Good.” She nodded and gave him a smile. She headed toward the back of the house. “Why don’t we start with Daniel’s room, then. I can usually tell from a child’s personal space how he feels about his surroundings.”
Josh’s warm feeling of accomplishment fizzled, heartburn rushing to take its place.
Like a bloodhound, Barbara had sniffed trouble and was heading deeper into his nightmare. He shook his head and followed in her wake.
He was three steps from the bedroom when the doorbell chimed, then jingled again.
He bit back a curse as Barbara disappeared into Daniel’s sty of a room. Relieved, actually, that he wouldn’t have to witness her disappointment and shock, Josh turned and retraced his steps to the front of the house.
What now?
* * *
AMY PUSHED HER REBELLIOUS curls behind her ear as she waited at the Whites’ door. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.
She hadn’t taken the time to change out of her sapphire-colored dress suit. That would have given her one chance too many to talk herself out of this.
She needed more information about Becky. End of story. And that made apologizing to Josh her first course of business. Asking for his help was the hard-to-swallow second step, but there was no avoiding that, either. She reached to press the bell a third time. Midring, the heavy door jerked open, revealing an all-grown-up Joshua White she should have been expecting but wasn’t.
She’d been prepared for something along the lines of the boy she’d left behind. But the man before her was so much more than a replay of days gone by. Tall and classically handsome, broader at the shoulders, firmer at the jaw, Josh no longer sported the relaxed ease of the comfortably wealthy. The lines on his face spoke of responsibility and determination. Of a life not quite under his control, but he was determined not to give up.
Still blond and too good-looking by anyone’s standards, dressed in rumpled but clearly expensive business attire, he stared at her for a moment before his pale-blue eyes widened with recognition.
“Amy?”
Just the sound of her name rolling off his lips with the same hint of Southern inflection as before made her incapable of saying anything in return. To her horror, her pulse gave a hiccuping flutter and her breath caught on some unexplainable obstruction in her throat.
What was wrong with her?
She realized a sappy grin was spreading across her face, and forced herself to stifle it.
“Amy?” he repeated. He checked over his shoulder, then turned back. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, um…” She tucked back the hair that refused to stay where it belonged today. Straightened her purse strap on her shoulder. Fidgeted with the tail of her jacket like a schoolgirl. Get a grip! “I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time—”
“Not right now.”
The coldness of his words washed over her. Where was the caring, it’s-going-to-be-okay Josh from last night?
“I’m sorry.” He winced and propped the hand not holding the doorknob on his hip. “I don’t mean to be rude. But this isn’t a good time—”
“Well, Daniel’s room is certainly an odyssey into the mind,” a feminine voice said from behind him. “And I was glancing through one of his homework notebooks. It looks like— Oh! I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
A middle-aged woman dressed in a nondescript brown suit stopped at Josh’s side. Her gaze cataloged Amy’s appearance, then she turned her attention to the man shifting his weight from one foot to the other between them.
“I’ll leave you to your guest. But there’s an important matter we need to discuss before I leave.”
Amy watched the other woman walk into the sitting room off the hall. She and Josh had often done homework in that room, sprawling on the heirloom rug in front of an overstuffed couch and chairs, devouring snacks and trying to master the intellectual acrobatics required to complete assignments in geometry, history and American lit. Josh had tackled each assignment with ease, of course. He’d been brilliant, even in elementary school. A little bookish and preoccupied with making sure everything was perfect, but alarmingly smart. And he’d also been kind and genuinely interested in helping her do well. There’d been a lot of teacher in him even then.
She shook her head at the folly of looking back, when she’d made such a disaster of everything since.
She squared her shoulders. Josh clearly had company to get back to. What had the woman said about his nephew? “I’m sorry to barge in like this, but I came to talk about Becky. I’d hoped you could tell me a little more about this SST meeting you’ve scheduled for tomorrow. Maybe give me some idea of what to expect. What to talk with Becky about tonight.”
Josh chewed on the side of his mouth, glancing into the sitting room, then back at her. With a sigh, he dropped his head and opened the door wider for her to enter.
“Of course we can talk,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve made it down for the meeting.” The slight smile he gave her softened his features. His eyes, however, had her wishing she knew what was wrong, so maybe she could help. “I’m sorry I was so short on the phone last night. I had no cause to question your commitment to caring for Becky.”
“Yes, you did.” She tried to lighten the awkward moment with her own smile. His frown confirmed she hadn’t quite pu
lled it off. “I don’t blame you for jumping to conclusions, Josh. And I wasn’t exactly on my best behavior. It’s been a rough year.”
He nodded his acceptance of her roundabout apology. A flick of his wrist allowed him to check his watch again. “Just give me a few minutes to finish up with my social worker.”
“Your social worker?”
“No… I mean, yes.” He tugged at his partially undone tie. “She’s my nephew’s caseworker from Family Services.”
As if that explained everything.
He squinted when she didn’t respond. Then his expression became guarded, as if he was bracing for an invisible blow. “You haven’t heard, have you?”
“I didn’t even know Melanie had a little boy.” She measured each word carefully as she tried to keep pace with his shifting mood. “After the way we…the way you and I left things… Before my wedding, that is…”
She cleared her throat, remembering again exactly what they’d done the last time they’d seen each other, feeling saddened anew by the chasm that had stretched between them since.
“Well,” she said, when Josh continued to stare. “After we fought, and I married Richard, I haven’t really kept up with Mother’s Sweetbrook gossip. Especially since my divorce. I’ve barely had time to think straight.”
“Yes, well.” The simple effort it took to breathe seemed to cost him dearly. “That woman in the other room is trying to help me find a way to give my nephew some chance at a normal childhood. If you’ll just give me a few minutes, we can talk some more about Becky.”
“Is Melanie okay?” Amy asked.
What on earth was he talking about? Why wasn’t his sister meeting with her son’s social worker?
“No.” Josh turned toward the other room, leaving her by the front door. “My sister died in a car accident in January.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JOSH COULDN’T SHAKE Amy’s image from his mind as he tried to gather his thoughts enough to face Barbara Thomas.
It had been an unreal moment, opening his front door to a sophisticated redhead, who in a blink had transformed into a grown-up reflection of the girl he knew. Maybe if there’d been even a hint of the friendship they’d once shared, it wouldn’t be so hard to accept this new, closed-off Amy. An Amy who had made every day of his childhood brighter. The Amy he’d driven out of his life with his own stupidity.
She hadn’t even known that Melanie was dead. She’d had no idea that he was trying to be father and mother to a little boy who wanted nothing to do with him. The blue-eyed businesswoman cooling her heels in his foyer was like some kind of stranger that Josh didn’t need to be dealing with today. Even if she still wore her auburn hair in waves that begged a man to bury his hands in them.
“I’m all yours, Barbara.” He stepped into the sitting room, an agreeable smile plastered on his face. He came to a halt at the sight of his colleague flipping through one of the family photo albums his mother stored on a low shelf by the couch.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Her glance told him she knew otherwise. She closed the satin-covered book. “It was lying open on the table when I sat down.”
Josh scanned the cluster of albums on the shelf. Several more were missing, in addition to the one in her lap.
“Daniel must have been looking at the pictures,” he reasoned out loud.
It seemed a perfectly logical thing for the kid to be doing, trying to learn as much as he could about the people and places he’d come from. Except that Daniel flat-out refused to discuss anything about the family with Josh. He hadn’t even wanted the picture of Melanie Josh had offered to let him keep in his bedroom. Yet he’d been secretly poring over photographs of holidays and vacations from aeons ago?
“Perhaps Daniel isn’t as detached from you and this house as he’d like for us to believe,” Barbara said, completing Josh’s thoughts in that unnerving way of hers. She cocked her head to the side. “These pictures say a lot about how close you and your sister were growing up.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Before Melanie had run off and had a baby with someone he and his folks had never met. Before his mother had disowned her. When Melanie returned to Sweetbrook their mother had spent the last months of his sister’s life reminding her of every mistake she’d made.
When Josh hadn’t immediately stood up for his sister, she’d figured he’d sided with their disappointed mother. And that was the end of the special bond between big brother and little sister, which Josh hadn’t appreciated until it was gone.
His stomach felt as if it was trying to digest broken glass.
He loved his family, but sometimes he wondered if the money they’d all been raised with had somehow damaged their ability to love the way the rest of the world did. It certainly hadn’t guaranteed them happiness.
“Daniel never got to see his mom and me do anything but fight with one another,” he finally said.
“Maybe looking at these pictures will help him understand that it wasn’t always that way between you two.”
“Maybe,” Josh agreed, though he couldn’t get excited about the possibility.
He was more than a little amazed, actually, to be standing there having such a surreal heart-to-heart with someone he had to work with on a daily basis. Barbara’s understanding expression held a glint of pity, and he could handle just about anything right now but being pitied.
“You said there was something important we needed to discuss.” He crossed his arms and waited.
“Yes.” She sat straighter on the couch and withdrew another folder from her cavernous briefcase. A blue one this time. “There’s a snag in your petition to become Daniel’s permanent guardian. His father is indicating an interest in custody, as well.”
“Whose father?” Josh’s confusion didn’t last a full second. “You mean the jerk Melanie said knocked her and my nephew around? No way is that man ever coming near Daniel again.”
“Your sister named him the boy’s father on the birth certificate. That gives him solid legal grounds for custody. And there’s no record of any of the abuse Melanie claimed happened.”
“Melanie didn’t file charges when they were together. For some reason, she was trying to make things work with the man. I think she hoped he would eventually marry her. Then the creep abandoned them, and it didn’t matter anymore. That was five years ago. When she showed up here, my mother didn’t want a scandal on her hands and forbade Melanie from even talking about the abuse she said she’d suffered. We…we were never sure how much of her story was true and how much was her attempt to explain away the mistakes she’d made. You know how many scrapes she used to get into. How she’d try to lie her way out of problems, until my parents came along to smooth things over.”
He’d give anything for a second chance to earn Melanie’s trust. To have believed her about Daniel’s father from the start. Maybe he could have gotten her to open up about what had happened. But as usual, his mother’s idea of dealing with the problem had been to protect the family reputation. Melanie had needed love and support. Their mother had instead doled out enough money for Melanie and Daniel to live in an apartment across town—under the condition that there’d be no more talk about Melanie’s life before her return to town.
To their parents, wielding money and ignoring uncomfortable realities had been the solution to everything.
“But you believe her story now?” Barbara prompted.
“After the last few months with
Daniel, yes.” The guilt that he’d judged his sister so quickly never completely left him. That he’d taken her claims so lightly and spent so little time with her and his nephew before her death. He didn’t deserve the faith she’d placed in him by leaving him custody of her son. “We may never know exactly what happened before Melanie brought him home to Sweetbrook, but I don’t doubt for a second that my sister was telling the truth about the physical abuse.”
“And Daniel refuses to talk with you about his father?”
“He barely talks to me at all.” Josh dropped into an overstuffed chair.
“His counselor has relayed the same thing.” Barbara shook her head, making notes in her file. “And I’m afraid that without Daniel’s statement or concrete proof of your sister’s allegations, Curtis Jenkins is well within his rights to visit his son, as well as petition to end your temporary guardianship.”
“No way!” Josh was out of the chair and pacing before he processed Barbara’s stunned surprise. He was shouting at the person fighting in the trenches right alongside him. He cleared his throat. “How did the man even know about my sister’s death? She hasn’t spoken to him in years.”
“I’m afraid that’s my doing,” Barbara replied in the civil servant deadpan that often masked more emotional involvement than she cared to let on. “I’m required by law to notify all immediate family in a custody matter like this. It took Mr. Jenkins this long to step forward, only because it’s taken me months to locate the man. I finally found his parents in Shreveport and sent them a registered letter. Mr. Jenkins contacted me yesterday, and I was compelled to share with him the basics of Daniel’s case, including the details of your sister’s accident.”
“And that’s it?” Josh snapped his fingers in the air. “Just like that, the man can waltz in here and take Daniel away from me?”
“Of course not—”
“My sister wanted her son with me. Her will named me his guardian!”
A Sweetbrook Family (You, Me & the Kids) Page 6
