When Love Comes Home

Paige turned to Grady. “I tried to prepare myself,” she said, and he heard the trembling uncertainty in her voice. “Knowing intellectually how difficult it might be and going through it are two different things, I guess.”

He wanted to tell her that time would heal all wounds, that the worst was past her, anything to make it better. But what did he know? As she’d pointed out earlier, he had no experience as a parent and no hope of it. She likely would not appreciate words from him, anyway, so he just hoisted the bags and muttered, “I’ll carry these in for you.”

“No,” she said, taking them from him, “you’ve done enough. Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.”

He shook his head, shocked by the urge to hug her. Instead he asked, “You going to be okay?”

She smiled tremulously. “Oh, yes. My son is home. He isn’t happy about it, but I knew he might not be, and I really have tried to prepare myself to deal with it.”

“I don’t know how anyone could prepare themselves for this.”

“I’ve been seeing a Christian psychologist for the past two years.”

“Didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Oh, yes. Why wouldn’t there be?”

He shrugged. “Just never thought about it.”

“I wanted someone who shares my beliefs. My pastor recommended her.”

“Ah. Makes sense, I guess.”

“Dr. Evangeline’s been very helpful,” she said. “I’m really not surprised by Vaughn’s behavior.”

Just disappointed. Heartsick. Weary. She didn’t have to say it. Grady saw it in the droop of her slender shoulders, the tilt of her head, the dullness of her beautiful eyes.

Grady looked to the house, escaping the weight of her emotions by wondering what might be going on in there. “I guess.”

Her gaze followed his, and she whispered, “I can’t help wondering what Nolan’s told him about me, though. I mean, how did he explain taking him away from me?”

Grady hadn’t thought of that. “Well,” he said slowly, “any number of ways, I guess.”

“And none of them good,” she muttered, adding wistfully, “He was barely eight when they disappeared, just a little boy. He wouldn’t know what to believe or what not to.” She looked to the house again. “Now he’s almost a teenager, and I have to accept that there’s no making up for lost time. He has to learn how to have a mom again.”

It occurred to Grady that he and Vaughn had something in common: they’d both been denied their moms at very young ages. Suddenly Grady thought of the last time he’d seen his own mother.

No one could have guessed that day as she’d dropped him off at school that she would never make it back home. To his shame, he’d shrugged away the kiss that she’d pressed to his cheek as he’d gotten out of the car, and he hadn’t looked back or waved a farewell even though he’d known that she would watch him all the way through the door of the building.

He’d never seen her again. When his dad had shown up at the school later that morning with his brother sobbing at his side, Grady had known that something awful had happened, but he’d never expected to hear that his mom was gone forever. He hadn’t believed it. Sometimes he still didn’t believe it.

Grady didn’t tell any of that to Paige. He had never told it to anyone. It was just something that he lived with. Suddenly Vaughn didn’t seem like such a brat. No doubt the kid was terribly confused right now. Remembering what that was like, Grady hoped that the boy would soon come to see how lucky he was to get his mom back.

Clearing his throat, he said that Dan would probably be calling her in the next couple of days. She thanked him again, and then there was nothing left to do but get back into the car and head home alone.

He should have been relieved, and on one level he was. It had been a long, trying day. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that he was abandoning Paige.

His last sight of her was in his car’s left side mirror. Bathed in the rosy glow of his taillights, she stood there alone with a bag grasped in each hand, a small woman with a big job before her.

If he’d been a praying man, Grady would have said a prayer especially for her. As it was, he fixed his gaze forward and drove home, even more troubled than the last time he’d done so.

Chapter Four

Paige listened to the door slam and dropped down onto the sofa, sighing inwardly.

Nothing she’d done or said in the past month had made her son the least bit happy. He’d hated his room on sight. Too “babyish.”

She’d rearranged everything and bought new linens and window treatments, keeping her regret buried as she’d put away the boy he’d been, all the things she’d treasured to remind herself that he was real and belonged in this place. He hadn’t seemed particularly pleased once the changes had been made, but given how often he retreated to his room in a huff, he must have felt more comfortable with his personal surroundings than before.

Today’s huff had to do with his impending return to school. Or perhaps it was the gifts he’d received yesterday for Christmas. Or the “do nothing” environment of Nobb. It was all tied up together somehow.

She’d kept Christmas low-key, realizing that it might not be the celebration for him that it was for her. Recalling the dreary Christmases she’d spent without him, she tried not to dwell on the fact that this one hadn’t quite lived up to her expectations. He’d spent most of the day bemoaning the fact that he was missing out on a hunting trip his father had promised him.

Before noon on this first day after Christmas he’d declared the video games she’d bought him “boooring,” the radio-controlled car “junk,” the clothes “lame.” Then he’d complained that he didn’t have anyone to do anything with.

Realizing that she was not yet someone to him, she’d made the mistake of suggesting that they invite over a few of the kids from church. He’d rolled his eyes, already having made known his feelings about church, which according to his dad was for “weaklings and nut jobs.”

She wondered if Nolan had always thought that, even during the years that he’d attended with her, starting when they were dating in high school. After Vaughn’s birth Nolan’s church attendance had grown increasingly sporadic, until it finally ceased. Once that had happened, the divorce had quickly followed, but Vaughn didn’t need to know that.

Or did he? She wasn’t sure, and since she wasn’t certain, she kept her mouth shut. Everything she believed told her that it was wrong to point out Nolan’s faults to his son. Yet, she wanted him to understand the importance and value of regular worship. Reminding herself that if she was confused, then he must be even more so, she held on to her patience. And her convictions.

Because Vaughn had nixed inviting over any of the youth from church, she had wondered aloud if he might want to call some particular friend from school. He’d laughed aloud at her idea of contacting one of the boys from his class, declaring that those who didn’t attend the local church were even “dumber” and “hickier” than those who did. In fact, the whole school was “stupid,” he’d declared, and he wasn’t going back after the first of the year. Paige had quietly but firmly refuted that, which had sent him slamming into his room.

Their counselor, Dr. Evangeline, had strongly recommended public school for Vaughn. Paige’s first impulse had been to hold him out until the start of the new semester, giving them a chance to get to know one another again, but Dr. Evangeline had insisted that Vaughn needed the socialization, needed to find replacements for the buddies he’d left behind in South Carolina. When the doctor had pointed out that because of state attendance standards, keeping him home those three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations could cause him to be left behind a year, Paige had been convinced.

She constantly fought the impulse to hold him close and never let go again, so it had been difficult to take him down on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving and enroll him in the Nobb Middle School, which was part of the large, wealthy Bentonville district. He’d hated it from day one.

He hated Dr. Evangeline, too, a fact he’d made known during their first joint session with her. It hadn’t been pretty. Since then he’d repeatedly said that a “guy” would do better, understand more, “actually listen, maybe.”

Paige worried that Vaughn had a problem with women in general, starting with her. He not only disdained the psychologist to the point of rudeness, he disliked his female teachers—though the lone male in the group hardly fared any better—complained that the husband of the couple who taught his mixed Sunday school class deferred too often to his wife, and made sure that Paige knew how far short she fell of the Nolan ideal in parenting, running a household and everything else.

In short Vaughn hated everything and everyone in Arkansas, including her. Maybe most especially her. Those sentiments had grown darker and more vocal over time, especially since Dr. Evangeline had suggested that Vaughn should not be allowed contact with his father at least until he settled into his mother’s household again. That, more than anything else, had enraged Vaughn.

Now Paige no longer knew what the right thing to do was. She only knew that her son resented not being allowed to call his father and that it was just one item on a very lengthy list.

Matthias limped into the living room, his cane thumping pronouncedly on the hardwood floor with every step. The weather had turned sunny and mild, but his arthritis had not noticeably improved. That had nothing to do with the frown on his weathered face, though.

“It ain’t my habit to give advice unasked,” he announced, “but I’m makin’ an exception here and now.”

Resignation weighing heavily on her, Paige crossed her legs, denim whispering against denim. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“It’s time to tie a knot in that boy’s tail.”

“And how would you suggest I do that, Matthias? Take a belt to him?” They both knew that was out of the question.

“Stop letting him walk all over you. Ever since he’s been here you’ve bent over backwards trying to please, but the world just ain’t ordered to his liking. We know who he’s got to thank for that, even if he don’t. Maybe it’s time he was told.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s wise to run down his father to him. That’s Nolan’s game, and it’s bound to backfire. It’s bad enough that Vaughn’s life has been turned completely upside down without me trying to turn him against his dad.”