Reuniting His Family

Pastor Connor tapped his finger on the desk. “Let me clear things up. You must have missed the email I sent last night, Rhys.”

“I didn’t see it.” Rhys dropped his gaze to the desktop. He’d said enough about the health insurance and rent. He didn’t want to add that generally he checked his email only when he had free Wi-Fi so he didn’t use the limited data he had with his cell phone plan.

“Renee is the facilitator for our meeting and the other elementary school meetings in the county,” Pastor Connor continued. “Originally, the director was going to do the Bridges kick-off meetings this week because he wasn’t sure when he was going to have Renee on board and up to speed. But he was able to get her into the monthly training session at the national Building Bridges program in Atlanta this week when there was a last-minute cancellation.”

Rhys caught Renee’s side glance and the tilt of one corner of her mouth. He sank into the hard wooden chair as best he could. She’d picked up that he’d thought she was the Association Director. He’d known she couldn’t be. His logic filter had sent out alarms that the rest of his brain and his mouth had ignored. For whatever reason, Renee’s presence drained him of what intelligence he had. His blood heated with embarrassment, fueled by the hint of understanding he’d seen—or wanted to see—in her brief smile.

“I just got back this morning,” Renee said. “Hazardtown Community is my home church. I wanted to be here to get the program going.”

She certainly seemed excited, strikingly more so than he’d seen at any of their CPS meetings.

Rhys studied her while her gaze was on Pastor Connor. Her jeans, long-sleeved red T-shirt that brought out the pink in her cheeks and her dark hair falling down her back in a simple ponytail formed a picture of a more approachable Renee. Someone who lacked the icy veneer that the crisp, business-casual pants and drab shirts she’d worn at CPS had given her. Was this the real Renee? He shook the question from his mind. What did Renee Delacroix’s “true” identity matter to him?

“Is there a problem, Rhys?” Pastor Connor asked.

He must have shaken his head. “No.”

“Okay, then. We need to get things going. The kids will be here in fifteen minutes. Here’s the list of who we expect today.” He handed them each a sheet. “Five are here already in the child-care program and the other three, including your boys, Rhys, will be dropped off.”

Rhys read the list of six boys and two girls for the names of any friends of Owen’s or Dylan’s. He didn’t see any he knew. Not that he’d expected to. The friends he’d met—his boss’s son, Alex, and Renee’s nephew—or those Owen had mentioned, came from intact families. His chest tightened. That was the kind of family he’d wanted for his sons, the kind he and Gwen had had before he’d messed up.

“I have a short agenda for today’s meeting,” Renee said. She pulled a copy for each of the men from a leather bag on the floor between her and Rhys. “I thought I’d leave things open so we can get to know each other.”

Rhys laughed as he read the short bullet points. Introductions. A game. Food. “Hey, it sounds good. Playing and eating. I can handle this.”

Renee smiled with what looked to him like relief, but he dismissed the thought. She’d never seek his approval.

“I don’t have anything else,” Pastor Connor said. “Do either of you?”

Renee shook her head.

Rhys had in the ballpark of one hundred questions, but none to be answered here.

“Let’s close in prayer, then.”

Rhys folded his hands in his lap before he caught the motion of Pastor Connor reaching across the desk to them. He took Connor’s hand and reached for Renee’s, wishing he’d wiped his against his jeans first. Joining hands in prayer took some getting used to. The Bible study group he’d participated in with Pastor Connor at Dannemora hadn’t been as demonstrative as his church congregation’s. He bowed his head and blocked out the soft grip of Renee’s hand on his, along with memories of what it felt like to hold a woman’s hand not in prayer.

“And bless Renee and Rhys in Your service. Amen,” Pastor Connor said in closing.

“Amen,” he and Renee said, dropping hands.

Renee rose. “We’re meeting in my first-and-second-grade Sunday school room. Upstairs.”

Rhys stopped halfway between sitting and standing. “You’re Dylan’s Sunday school teacher?”

“I will be when classes resume in a couple of weeks.” She paused by the door while he straightened. “We can go right up. I already put the box of materials for the meeting and the snacks in the room.”

“I could have carried them for you.” Rhys hated how his voice had the same overeagerness he often heard in Owen’s.

“No problem.”

Rhys walked beside her in silence down the hall to the stairs, his mind swimming with potential problems. He cleared his throat. “Out of curiosity, did you know that I’d volunteered to work here with the kids?” He forced himself to breathe in and out evenly while he waited for her answer.

“I knew before I came today.”

She must not have known, then, when they’d talked on Saturday.

“I think it’ll be great for the kids,” Renee said.

But not for her, at least according to what he remembered about body language from the one psychology course he’d taken. She held her leather bag like a shield between them.

“You don’t have any problem with us, uh, working together, do you?”

“No.” She opened the first door at the top of the stairs and led him inside. “Why should I?”

Right, why should you?

* * *

Renee tucked the doorstop under the door as she waited for his answer—if he was going to answer at all. She understood how he might have seen her as an adversary in her position at CPS. But he didn’t need to carry it over to the Bridges program. They were both here for the kids.

“Hi, Miss Renee.” A little girl with long blond braids skipped past her into the room. “Mrs. Hill let me walk upstairs by myself, since this is my Sunday school room.”

“Hi, Emma. You’re right on time to help us set up.” Now that Emma was in the room, Renee let her question to Rhys drop, even though she would have liked to hear his answer. Any insight into the man would help them work together better, which could benefit both them and the kids.

The little girl looked at Rhys. “Who’s he?”

“He’s my helper, Mr. Ma—”

Rhys frowned, and Renee remembered him asking her to use his first name at the home visit she’d supervised at the Hills’ house.

“Mr. Rhys.” She corrected herself.

“Hi, Emma,” he said.

His face broke into a welcoming smile that charmed Emma. It also calmed some of the apprehension Renee had had about Rhys working with her and the children, while filling her with a wistful emptiness. Okay, the rational professional in her said. So he never smiles that way at you. Why should he?