by Annie Jones
“That I will do.” Mitch nodded at Jax, then faced Shelby, and his expression softened. “I won’t let you down, Shelby.”
“I believe you, Mitch.” She smiled as she came down the stairs past Mitch, then past Jax, who lingered behind for just a moment.
“I believe you, too.” Again Jax played the buddy card, putting his arm about Mitch’s shoulder and giving a shake. Then he leaned in close and spoke low in a tone that sounded anything but friendly. “I also believe I wouldn’t want to be you if you do anything that hurts Shelby or Amanda and keeps them from getting this resolved.”
* * *
“What did you ever see in a mess like that Mitch?” Miss Delta didn’t even let Shelby finish recounting the story of their exchange with her ex-boyfriend before she started shaking her head and tsk-tsking.
Shelby had insisted on coming straight home to Miss Delta’s after that. She had missed Amanda and hadn’t wanted Miss Delta to feel taken advantage of by being asked to watch her for any longer. Jax had intended to drop Shelby off and circle back to watch the house for a while, thinking this mysterious Courtney and the red Mustang might show up again once she felt the coast was clear.
However, just dropping someone off was not an option in Sunnyside. Miss Delta and the baby had been waiting on the porch for their return, and the minute he’d pulled into the drive, she had rushed up and had started asking questions. Then the offer of pie and coffee. And before he knew what hit him, Jax was seated in the bright, welcoming kitchen with a fork in his hand and the whole story on his lips.
“Mitch?” Shelby acted almost offended by the suggestion of her bad taste in men. Though the twinkle in her eye when she looked at him gave her away. “Weren’t you listening? Jax was the one making the veiled threat.”
“Veil? Me?” It was his turn to overplay the outrage. “I never once wore one of those in my life.”
Miss Delta let out a peal of laughter.
Shelby smiled and shook her head, murmuring something to the baby in her arms about Jax’s silliness. The room went quiet for a moment before Shelby seemed compelled to add, “Go ahead. Make a joke out of it all, but I’m telling you, Mitch was not lying.”
“No argument from me.” He took a bite of pie.
“Really?” Shelby jerked her head up from fussing over Amanda.
“Sure. Especially if you were listening.” Jax lifted his coffee cup and peered into the dark, rich liquid swishing against the delicate white china. “He practically told us he would warn this so-called car thief we were on her trail.”
“He’s not a cop, Jax. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do.”
“That I will do.” Jax poked the air with his fork, as if underlining every word for emphasis. “That’s how he put it when I told him all he had to do was get us some more information.”
Jax couldn’t help feeling he was losing ground to a guy who had broken her heart over and over already. People who cared for Shelby didn’t care for Mitch—and he had probably played a hand in the theft, or at least protected the person who had stolen a chunk of her life savings. It should have aggravated him, or at least annoyed him. Instead he found himself grinning at her and thinking, That’s my Shelby.
His Shelby? No, Shelby was her own woman. And if he could just get her to the point where she didn’t bring this Mitch character back into her life and where she had done all she could for Amanda, Jax could move on with a clear conscience. A heavy heart, but a clear conscience.
“Hey, since I’m here, why don’t we go through those photo albums?” He set the fork down on the empty plate and wiped a paper napkin across his mouth.
“After this day?” She stroked the baby’s head. “Jax, I just don’t think I’m up to it.”
“Not to worry, sweetie. I spied that box marked Books and Photos in your stuff stacked in the hallway.” Miss Delta gave a wave of her hand that made it clear that the petite powerhouse didn’t mind doing a task one bit and wouldn’t be deterred from it. “I’ll bring it down to the kitchen, where the light is good, and we can all help you out.”
“Miss Delta, you don’t have to—”
In a flash of blond hair and bargain-store baubles, Miss Delta was gone.
“Why are you resisting this?” Jax picked up his plate and Shelby’s and took them to the sink. “Don’t you want to find Amanda’s mom?”
“Yes. I do. Of course I do.”
Even with his back to her and the rush of water pouring from the faucet into the sink as he rinsed the dishes, he could practically hear her squirming in her chair. When he shut the water off, he twisted his head to catch sight of her over his shoulder. “But?”
“But...” Shelby ran the back of her hand over Amanda’s cheek, then along the baby’s arm. She touched the tiny ballet slippers Jax had insisted on buying after Shelby’s card had been turned down. “Maybe Amanda’s birth mother doesn’t want to be found.”
He shook the dishwater off his hands, then dried them on a towel hanging from the handle of the stove. “Okay. Interesting thought. Want to tell me more?”
Not only did Shelby seem to want to tell him more, but suddenly it was as if she couldn’t help herself. She got up from the table so quickly that the legs of her chair screeched over the old floor.
“What if by seeking her out, I break the trust she placed in me by leaving Amanda on my doorstep?” With Amanda in her arms, she came close to Jax, her eyes filled with concern. “What if her circumstances are such that she needs no one to know about the baby, and then I show up and ruin everything? We don’t know, Jax, and if...if...”
“And if you never find Amanda’s mom, you never have to give her back?” He asked it with a heart full of concern, and not an ounce of accusation.
Tears filled her eyes.
Jax went to her, putting one hand on her shoulder and one on Amanda’s head. He waited until she met his gaze. “Shelby, you know that’s not how this is going to go, right?”
“No, I don’t know anything right now, Jax,” she whispered, laying her cheek against his shoulder.
“This from the girl who stood right there telling me that when Mitch was smooth, he was lying. You heard him smooth talk his way around, knowing too much about your missing debit card, and you still wanted to believe the best of him?” He stroked her hair back from her face, kissed the top of her head and laughed softly. “How can you not believe the best of this situation?”
“With God all things are possible.” She raised her head. She swiped away a tear and sniffled. “You reminded me of that when I said I wanted to change my third rule of living.”
“Maybe I should have told you to change that third rule from ‘Never trust a cowboy’ to ‘Quit trusting Mitch Warner.’” He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger, paused to soak in the warmth and beauty of her eyes, then leaned in to plant a kiss on the baby’s head before he moved to the table to finish his coffee. “You’re Amanda’s foster parent until the state makes other arrangements. Unless you find the mother and she resigns her parental rights to the state or agrees to a private adoption.”
“Is that what you want, honey?” Miss Delta appeared in the doorway with a cardboard box in her hands. “Are you honestly thinking of adopting Amanda?”
Shelby’s cell phone kept her from answering. “Well, will you look at that? It’s the guy who you said I should give up on.” She pressed the talk button. “Hey, Mitch. What’s up?”
“What does he want?” Jax took the box from Miss Delta and set it down on the table with a thud.
“He texted Courtney after we left, and he just heard back,” Shelby whispered.
“He has her cell number? That would have been nice to know. Sheriff Denby might be able to—”
“Shhh.” Shelby put her finger to her lips, even as she scrunched her whole face up to concentra
te on the voice on the other end.
Miss Delta rushed in to take the baby and give Shelby the freedom to stick her finger in her ear and cut out the sound around her.
“Say that again, Mitch.” She gasped. “That’s what she said? The blackest hair she’d ever seen? Oh, Mitch, I know who that is. Thank you. Goodbye.”
“You know who Amanda’s mother is?” Miss Delta dropped into a kitchen chair, baby and all.
“We’re looking for someone who knows me, who is old enough to have had a baby, who doesn’t live in town or have anyone in town who would have known she had a baby, and has the blackest hair you’ve ever seen. Yeah, I know.” Shelby tore open the box on the table and pulled a bright blue photo album free.
Jax moved in to look over her shoulder. Miss Delta hopped up and did the same, Amanda and all.
The pages flipped back and forth before she suddenly put her finger down just below a young girl’s face. “It’s Amanda.”
“It is Amanda. She looks just like her!” Miss Delta’s earrings went swinging as she shifted from looking at the photo to looking at the baby.
“If Amanda wasn’t bald and chubby and a baby.” Jax squinted at the photo, but he just couldn’t see it.
“No. The name on the blanket. I think it wasn’t meant to tell me what to call the baby. It was telling me who left her. Amanda Holden. Everyone called her Mandie.” Shelby took off out of the room, calling out over the sound of her footsteps, “Amanda lived with her grandmother from summer through Christmas the year her parents split.”
Jax slid the photo out from the plastic covering and checked the back for any more information. When he saw nothing, his attention drifted to another photo, this one of a fresh-faced Shelby standing by her dad and a painted sign with two hearts on it and the words The Lockhart Ranch.
Miss Delta stole a peek at it. “Look at how young Harmon looks. Shelby fell in love with that place the second she saw it.”
“Loved it? I didn’t think she ever lived there.”
“Maybe I misspoke. She loved the promise of the place. After her mama died, Harmon sort of came unmoored in life, and I think she believed that ranch would give him, and her, the thing they had lost. A home.”
“The promise of a home,” Jax echoed. He brushed his finger over the image, feeling privileged for the glimpse into what made Shelby who she was.
“See?” Shelby came into the kitchen, holding up her backpack and the embroidered blanket they had found Amanda in. “I taught Amanda how to do embroidery just like this.”
“You were wondering if she wanted you to find her or not.” Jax smiled. He had noticed the similarities in stitching style that first night. He couldn’t help wondering if the girl Shelby had taught had ever considered that it wouldn’t be obvious to Shelby. “I think you have your answer.”
Shelby took the baby they had been calling Amanda into her arms and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
Jax slid the photo of young Shelby hoping for a real home back into the album, then looked at the woman standing before him, hoping to become a real mom. “Now you have to decide what to do about it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jax left her to let it all sink in, reminding her that as an acting deputy, he had a duty to report what he had learned. He couldn’t promise what that would bring. His actions might bring a swift conclusion. Or the report might get lost in the shuffle of bureaucracy and prolong things indefinitely. Identifying Amanda’s birth mother would, by his estimation and personal experience with having been a ward of the state of Texas, wrest control of Amanda’s situation from Shelby in favor of the state system. Even if she was allowed to keep Amanda, it would be as a foster caregiver, not as an adoptive mom.
That was worst case, of course, but still.
“Hey, it’s almost supper time. We all know how happy Sheriff Denby would be to get a call asking him to come to the office so I can file a report about something Mitch Warner claimed to have been told,” he had concluded. “Why don’t I go pick up some things for dinner, we invite Harmon over and you think about it all?”
In other words, she needed to come to terms with the situation and decide how she would handle it—soon.
Gathering up the photo album with Mandie Holden’s picture in it, she retreated to the sanctuary of her rented room and cuddled up in a large old rocking chair with baby Amanda in her arms. She hummed a lullaby, but the child did not seem one bit sleepy.
So, rocking gently, she pulled out the photo of Mandie.
“You know who this is?” She showed the old photo to the baby. “We think that’s your mama. Your birth mama. Yes, we do.”
Baby Amanda clapped her hands over the picture, then tried to chew on one corner.
“Well, Miss Delta does. She says you look just like Mandie.” Shelby wriggled the photo free and studied the image of a young girl with long black hair, big brown eyes and olive skin. “Jax says he doesn’t see it at all. I don’t know. I mean, if it’s not her, it would be such a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
She set the picture aside and then realized a second photo had been taken from inside the album and lay loose in the pages. She slipped it out and found herself staring into the face of her father and her younger self.
“And these people here?” She twisted her wrist around to put the photo in Amanda’s sight but out of her reach. “These are the people who already love you like you are their very own flesh and blood. At least, these are two of the people who already love you like...” The words snagged in her throat. “You want to know who else loves you? Miss Delta, that’s who. And Doc and Sheriff Andy and...Jackson Stroud.”
She tucked the photo back in the album, shut it and sighed. “He may not admit it, but I can tell that man is just crazy about you, kiddo, and when he goes away, you won’t ever even remember he was here.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. It all seemed so very much to carry by herself. A baby. A desperate mother who put her highest trust in Shelby. A guy she had trusted, and who had broken his word countless times, would still stick around, while the one man she trusted and who had never let her down would be leaving. How did she make sense of it all?
Shelby thought of her three rules for her new life and bowed her head. Holding the baby she had come to love close to her heart, she prayed for the wisdom to know what was right and the strength to do it, to do what was best for Amanda, no matter what.
She must have drifted off to sleep after that, because the next thing she knew, the doorbell rang downstairs and it had started to get dark outside. She got up and changed the baby’s diaper and put her in a sweet pink outfit, then straightened herself up and took the back stairs into the kitchen, where she found Miss Delta and Jax unloading grocery sacks.
“There she is,” Harmon called with his arms spread wide. “There’s my girl!”
“I’m not falling for that again, Dad.” Shelby lifted the baby away from her dad and, without meaning to, placed the child right in Jax’s waiting hands.
The tall man with the penetrating eyes took the child like he’d been doing it forever, and met her gaze. “So, did you come to any conclusions while I was gone?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. Clinging to the baby’s tiny hand, she followed along behind Jax until he stopped, and the three of them became their own little quiet island in the big, bright kitchen. “I want somebody to tell me what to do.”
“I thought you didn’t want people doing that.” Shelby’s dad kicked his booted foot up to rest on his knee and tilted his chair up on two legs.
Miss Delta’s mouth set in a firm line. She narrowed one eye and crossed her arms, but instead of getting after Harmon about sitting at her kitchen table properly, the woman aimed her discerning gaze at Shelby.
Jax lifted Amanda onto his shoulder, and even the baby seemed to home in on Shelby.
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“I didn’t want people thinking they knew what I was feeling, or volunteering me to do what they thought I should do,” she corrected. “And then expecting me to do it and feel happy about it.”
Harmon dropped the feet of his chair to the floor with a clunk.
Miss Delta tipped her head to the left, then to the right, sending her dangly earrings swaying.
Jax held Amanda before him, a perplexed look on his face. “Did you understand that, sweet thing? Because I have no idea what your foster mom just said.”
Hearing Jax call her Amanda’s mom touched Shelby in ways she had no idea howto defend against. That was what it had all come down to, hadn’t it? She was conflicted about finding Mandie because only one of them could be Amanda’s mom. “Just tell me what to do, Jax.”
“I can’t, Shelby Grace. Nobody can, or at least nobody should.” He leaned back against the counter to touch her face lightly. “You are the one who has to live with the consequences, so you have to make this decision. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” To keep Amanda. To help Mandie. To know that Mitch and her father and Miss Delta were all going to be the people they truly seemed to want to be, to have the lives that God wanted them to have. She wanted Jackson Stroud to stay in Sunnyside. She wanted...a home. But none of those things were certainties. In fact, some of them were most likely never going to happen.
She shook her head. “I don’t know that what I want even matters, Jax.”
“It matters because until you know what you want, you aren’t going to do what you need to do to make it happen.” He stroked her cheek. “And all of us who love you won’t be able to resist rushing in and trying to do what we think is best for you.”
Shelby could feel her father’s and Miss Delta’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t get Jax’s words out of her mind. All of us who love you. For one fleeting moment, she thought that maybe at least some of the things she wanted could be hers. “Jax, I—”
