When Love Comes Home

“Father, we have so much to be thankful for today. I cannot thank You enough for bringing my son back to me. You have heard my prayers, and I know that You will continue to do so. Give each of us wisdom now, Lord, as we work to make of our lives what You would have them be, and bless the Jones brothers for all that they have done on our behalf. Amen.”

As she spoke softly, Grady looked around the room self-consciously, while Vaughn sprawled in his chair, glaring at him. Grady noted with some surprise that several other diners had also bowed their heads.

The meal crept by with Paige pretending not to notice that Vaughn wasn’t eating. She did try to deflect his glower from time to time, without much success. Grady fumed, uncertain just what the boy’s problem was. The crazy kid seemed to blame him, Grady, for his father’s problems!

Didn’t he understand how lucky he was to be back with his mom? At his age Grady would have done anything, anything, just to share one more meal with his mother. In Grady’s opinion, Vaughn Ellis should be on his knees, kissing his mother’s feet instead of worrying about his self-centered father, and it was all Grady could do not to tell him so.

As soon as the meal was finished and Grady paid the check—determined that this was one part of the trip that wouldn’t find it’s way onto Paige’s bill—Vaughn demanded to see his father. Paige turned troubled, pleading eyes to Grady, and he found himself almost sorry that he hadn’t had the foresight to arrange any such thing. Almost.

He shook his head. “Can’t be done, not on this short notice and a holiday.”

“I’m sorry, Vaughn,” she told the boy sincerely, an arm draped lightly about his shoulders. “You can call him later.”

Grady shook his head at that, at a complete loss. Didn’t she know what Nolan would do if she gave him just half a chance? He’d already absconded with her son once. Did she think he wouldn’t do it again? Grady decided that he was going to have a long talk with his brother about this once he got home. Maybe Dan could make her see reason. What it would take to reach the boy, Grady couldn’t even imagine, but he was glad that he wasn’t in Paige’s shoes. This, he thought morosely, should have been such a happy day, not tense and silent and barely civil.

The ride to the airport was gloomy at best. Sitting in the backseat with her son, who seemed determined to ignore her, Paige didn’t even try to make conversation. They had to visit a shop in the airport in order to purchase a second bag and get the boy’s clothes safely stowed for the trip, but when Paige began to repack his things, Vaughn elbowed her aside, grumbling that he would do it.

She backed away, her arms locked about her middle as if she was trying to hold herself together. Grady found himself at her side, his voice pitched low.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now.”

She flashed a wan smile at him. “I expected it to be difficult,” she said softly, “but I thought my son would at least be glad to see me.”

“Well, sure he is,” Grady insisted, though they both knew better.

Her eyes gleamed with liquid brilliance, brimming with a kind of bittersweet pain that made Grady want to howl. “I don’t know him anymore,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t even know my own son.”

“You’ll get to know him,” Grady rumbled, squeezing her fingers quickly. “It’ll be okay,” he told her, wishing for an eloquence he’d only ever found inside a courtroom.

Her smile grew a little wider. “You’re a good man, Grady Jones.”

His heart thumped inside his chest. Vaughn rose from his task then, sparing Grady from having to find a reply. He pointed toward the ticket counter, muttering that they had to get the boy checked in for the flight, and walked off in that direction. Only later, when the flight clerk was ready to receive the boy’s luggage, did it dawn on Grady that he’d left Paige and the kid to manage the bags.

He was still mentally kicking himself for that a half hour later when they arrived at the departure gate, having passed through security. The place was surprisingly crowded, and Grady frowned. Weren’t these people supposed to be home eating turkey? He concentrated on finding seats for them in the waiting area, then parked himself against the nearby wall.

Paige had bought Vaughn a couple of magazines in which he’d shown interest at the store, but the brat shook his head mutely when she offered them to him. Deflated, Paige shot a resigned look to Grady, and it was all he could do not to shake the kid. Grady tried not to watch the careful way in which she approached the boy, as if he were a wounded animal, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off them, and every time her son rebuffed her, his temper spiked a little higher.

By the time they were finally able to board the flight, Grady was gnashing his teeth. What was wrong with the kid? Didn’t he see how unfairly he was treating his mother? She hadn’t created this situation; his father had.

Only after they changed planes in Atlanta did Paige again try to communicate with her son. She asked gentle question after gentle question and received in reply only shrugs and sharp glances from the corners of his eyes. When she began to talk about her plans for Christmas, explaining what she and Matthias had discussed, Vaughn finally deigned to speak.

“Who’s Matthias?” he demanded, screwing up his face.

Paige smiled. “Didn’t I say? Matthias Porter is our boarder.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, he rents a room in our house.”

“So we’re poor?” Vaughn surmised caustically.

“No, we’re not poor. We’re not rich but certainly not poor.”

“Then how come you’re renting out rooms?”

Paige looked down, and for a moment Grady thought she’d tell the kid how much money she’d spent finding him. Instead she said, “Matthias had nowhere else to go. He’s elderly but too healthy for a nursing home and too poor to live on his own.”

“What happened to his family?”

“I don’t think he had much. His wife died, and he was left all alone,” Paige told the boy softly. “Like me.”

Vaughn looked away at that. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice like shards of glass, “but if you’ve got Matthias now, why don’t you let me go back to Dad? Or else he’ll be all alone!”

Grady saw the naked pain on her face, even after she squeezed her eyes shut, whispering, “Oh, Vaughn.”

A moment later she reached up and pressed the boy’s head down on her shoulder. He let it stay there, but he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, looking at them, Grady didn’t think he’d ever seen two more miserable people in his whole life. He’d have given his eyeteeth if he could have somehow made it better.

It had never occurred to him that Vaughn wouldn’t be eager to return to his mother, that the boy might actually prefer his father. Didn’t the kid realize that his father had literally stolen him from his mother?

Grady began to understand that finding her son had been a beginning for Paige rather than simply the end of her search. Her waiting and wondering was over, but now she had embarked on a long, new, difficult journey with her son, and that trip promised to make this one look like a romp in the park.

It was dark when the plane landed in Tulsa. Vaughn perked up a bit when he saw the Mercedes, asking his mom, “This yours?”

“No,” she answered evenly. “It belongs to Mr. Jones.”

Vaughn’s manner was almost derisive as he climbed inside, as if she had somehow proven herself a failure in his eyes by not owning the car. Grady had to bite back the impulse to point out that Vaughn’s precious dad had been picked up in a four-year-old truck with a crease in the tailgate.

As chatty as Paige had been on the drive from Arkansas, she was that silent on the long drive back from the airport in Oklahoma. In fact, if a single word was spoken during the first hour, Grady remained unaware of it. Vaughn leaned into a corner of the backseat, crossed his arms and feigned sleep, while Paige sat beside him and bowed her head. Every time Grady looked into the rearview mirror, there she sat with her head bowed, as still as a statue. He began to think that, unlike Vaughn, she really had fallen asleep. Then Grady saw her lips moving and realized that she was praying again.

She looked up at the sigh that gusted out of him, and their eyes seemed to meet in the mirror, though he doubted that she could actually see him. A small, tender smile curved the corners of her mouth before she looked away again. He couldn’t imagine that her smile was for him, but it kept him looking at her in the mirror when he should have been concentrating on his driving.

Eventually Vaughn sat up and complained that he was hungry. Considering that he hadn’t eaten his Thanksgiving dinner, Grady wasn’t surprised. At Paige’s request, Grady found an open drive-through at one of the little towns that they passed along the way to Nobb. Vaughn ordered a burger, tater tots and a drink that looked like it could fill a fifty-five-gallon drum. Grady didn’t say anything about the kid eating in his car, though it was not something Grady normally would have allowed.

Vaughn had wolfed down the food and was sucking air through his straw by the time Grady turned on to Paige’s drive. For the first time, the boy showed some interest in his surroundings. The house came into view, and for an instant Grady thought he saw something pleasant in the boy’s reflection in his rearview mirror before Vaughn sat back and remarked derisively, “Hasn’t changed a bit.”

Grady held his tongue, recalling perfectly well that the address given on Nolan’s arrest record had been that of an apartment complex in Curly, South Carolina, a small town on the outer edge of Greenville County. He heard Paige murmur that she’d had the back porch remodeled into an office, but Vaughn didn’t ask why as Grady parked the vehicle and got out.

The big black dog came down from the porch to greet them, and Grady assumed that his car was now familiar enough that the animal wouldn’t bother barking. The thing hadn’t let out a peep when Grady had arrived in the dark that morning, but no sooner did Vaughn step out of the Mercedes than the dog sat back on his haunches and lived up to his name, throwing back its head and slicing the air with yips and yowls and some sounds Grady had never before heard a living creature make.

Vaughn clapped his hands over his ears, while Paige attempted to scold the dog into silence. Light spilled out of the front door. Matthias appeared, and as before a command from him shut off the awful cacophony.

“Howler!”

Subdued now, the dog’s pink tongue lolled out of its mouth as it waited eagerly for Vaughn to pet it. Instead, he stomped toward the house, leaving his mother to retrieve the bags that Grady pulled from the trunk of the car. Matthias came down the steps toward the boy, a smile—or at least what passed for a smile—on his craggy face.

“Don’t mind old Howler,” the old man said. “He’s all alarm and no guard.”

Ignoring Vaughn’s scowl, he stuck out a hand, but the kid twisted past him and all but ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. Matthias stood for a moment, gazing toward Paige, who sighed. She seemed tired and sad. Finally, the old man turned and made his painful way up the steps and back inside.