When Love Comes Home

“He can be glad it ain’t up to me,” Matthias mumbled, heading back into the kitchen where she had a pot of stew bubbling on the stove and corn bread baking in a cast-iron skillet. “I’d show him upside down.”

Paige closed her eyes and fought the bleakness of despair with the only tool she had. Lord, help me do what’s best for my boy, she prayed silently. Show me what needs to be done and give me the strength and patience to do it. Help him understand how much I love him, how much You love him, and thank You for bringing him home to me.

She could only trust that one day Vaughn would be thankful, as well.

“Happy New Year.”

“Hmm?” Grady turned away from the window, a cup of coffee in hand to find his brother standing in their father’s kitchen, grinning.

“What’d you and the old man do last night, party until the wee hours?”

Grady snorted. “Hardly. I might have been the youngest one here, but I went to bed as soon as the ball dropped in New York.”

“Party pooper,” Howard groused, coming into his kitchen with one arm draped around his daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “Look what Katie brought us.”

She slipped free of Howard and carried the enameled pot with its glass lid in sight of Grady before placing it on the range.

“Spaghetti?” Grady noted, surprised.

Katie turned her dentist-perfect smile on him. “You’re not superstitious, are you, Grady?” Katie asked.

“Black-eyed peas are just more traditional.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Never could stand them.”

Grady shrugged, wondering if Paige Ellis would serve black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. He immediately regretted the thought. She should have been out of his head long ago. But at odd moments like this, she suddenly sprang to mind. He couldn’t imagine why.

After the long debriefing he’d had with his brother on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Grady had refrained from asking Dan if he’d heard from her. Other than being pestered more than once by Janet to submit his billing report and expenses from the trip to South Carolina, the case had not been mentioned again except in passing. Grady couldn’t help wondering what the last six weeks had been like for Paige, though.

Had the boy come around? Was he walking the woods that surrounded her old house with that dog at his heels, pretending at some childish fantasy? Did he gaze at his mother with worshipful eyes now and grimace halfheartedly at the way she babied him? Had he made friends with Matthias?

“Where on earth are you?” his father’s voice asked.

Grady realized with a jolt that the conversation had carried on around him. He shook his head, gulped his coffee and said that he needed a good rest in his own bed tonight. He couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d started sleeping over at his dad’s on New Year’s Eve, anyway. Except, of course, that he never had anywhere else to go, and Howard always claimed to need help with the party he routinely gave. He’d started doing that about the time Grady had gotten divorced.

They were a matched pair, Grady and his father, despite the thirty years between them, both big and square-built with deep, rumbling voices and hands and feet the size of platters. Both alone.

“Do you know what your problem is?” Howard asked, and Grady just barely managed not to roll his eyes.

“Here it comes,” he groaned.

He didn’t really resent his father’s lectures. His father’s concern for him was a good thing. They had never discussed those difficult early years after his mother’s death when the distance between them had seemed to stretch into infinity. But it was after his divorce, that he’d discovered how firmly his father was in his corner.

“Your problem,” Harold said, ignoring Grady’s irreverence, “is that you spend too much time alone.”

“And you don’t?”

“That’s different.”

“I’ve been alone four years, Dad. How about you? More like thirty-four, isn’t it?”

“Thirty-three. But I’ve had my family. When are you going to start one, Grady?”

“As soon as some woman throws a rope around him and drags him back to the altar,” Katie said drolly.

“That’s pretty much what the last one did,” Dan noted.

“I blame her for this,” Howard announced gruffly.

“You blame Robin for everything,” Grady pointed out. “It’s not her fault that I’m no good with women.”

“She certainly didn’t help things,” Howard grumbled.

“Listen,” Dan said in an obvious effort to change the subject, “we’re throwing a football party in a few weeks. I want you both to put it on your calendars.”

Howard shook his head. “Don’t count on me, son. I’ve already got plans.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at Grady. “Well, can I count on you, then?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Dan sent a significant look at his wife, who smiled and said, “I have a couple friends coming who I’d like to introduce you to.”

Single, female friends, no doubt. Grady turned back to the window that looked out over the deserted golf course, hiding his grimace.

His family loved him. They tried to be supportive, and he tried to be appreciative, but he was getting real tired of being everybody’s favorite charity case.

It was time he got a life.

He wondered if Paige Ellis was as much of a sports fan as she’d claimed.

“He did not! You take that back!”

Paige heard the angst in her son’s voice even before she recognized the anger and resentment. She’d run out to find a grocery store open on New Year’s Day and grab cans of the black-eyed peas Vaughn had insisted they were supposed to eat for dinner. Vaughn and Matthias were arguing when she returned to the house. Dropping the bag with the cans on the end of the counter just inside the kitchen door, she glared at the pair of them, Matthias in particular.

“What’s going on?”

Vaughn’s face set in mutinous lines, while Matthias’s eyes clouded. “I was just pointing out a few facts of life to this youngun,” the old man grumbled.

“My dad did not kidnap me!” Vaughn declared heatedly.

Paige sent Matthias a quelling glance. “I don’t see anything to be gained by discussing this subject.” She turned to the counter and began removing the cans from the bag, saying brightly, “I got the peas. They may not be the brand you like, but I was lucky to find any at all. I didn’t realize how many people abide by that old custom.”

“I’ll tell you what’s to be gained,” Matthias said doggedly. “The truth. Any other woman would’ve put that man away for what he’d done.”

“Matthias, stop it,” Paige ordered, whirling around, but it was already too late. Vaughn was already screaming at her.

“It’s all your fault, anyway! He wouldn’t have had to take me if you hadn’t kept us apart!”