Jericho (A Redemption Novel) (24 page)

CHAPTER 26

H
e had barely had been away from Georgia for four hours, but Christian was eager to see his wife again. He had just come from Howard and Helga’s. It was different going there this time. Better. Everybody was over the initial shock of seeing him. They welcomed him. They were happy to see him. Things hadn’t changed much in his long absence. Most of the people he had grown up around were still there. They begged to see pictures of Abby and asked about his wife. They all seemed so happy for him.

They told him that he should have come back earlier, and maybe he should have, but he wasn’t sure that he could have returned before now. Georgia made the difference in his life. He came into the kitchen through the side door to see her standing at the stove.

“Hey!” Her face lit up and she left her spot to greet him with a kiss. “I missed you today.”

“It’s getting bad, isn’t it?” He brought her closer and dropped a kiss on the bridge of her nose. “I used to think those three days when you were off when I was in the hospital were bad, but now I go a few hours and it’s as though I’m craving another fix of you. I think I’m addicted.”

She blushed prettily. “I think that might have been the sweetest thing you have ever said to me.”

“Is it? Have you started to cook yet? I want to take you out to dinner tonight.”

She nodded. “I would love to go to dinner with you tonight. And dessert. I had a dream about cake last night. Chocolate cake with lots of icing. I’ve been needing something sweet all day.”

He studied her for a moment. Her face looked a little fuller, her eyes tired. She had been hungry the past few days, hungrier than usual, and it caused him to wonder if she was pregnant. She hadn’t said anything to him, but she might be.

A little hope bloomed in his chest. He wanted another child. He wanted Abby to have a sibling, to have siblings. He wanted to grow their family. He thought back to his sometimes lonely childhood and how he’d felt so lost when his parents were killed. God forbid something might happen to him and Georgia, but if it did he wanted Abby to have somebody else to turn to. “There’s a little place a couple of blocks over. We could walk there. It’s a nice night.”

A few minutes later they had grabbed Abby and were walking toward the little mom-and-pop café. “You never told me how your meeting was today. I thought about you the whole time you were gone.”

“It went well. I’m glad I took Tobias and the general with me. They really helped me explain to Cliff what ex-servicemen needed. I can’t always find the words.”

“Tobias is great with words,” Georgia said thoughtfully. “He called the other day while you were getting your oil changed and sometimes I forget he’s only nineteen.”

“He’s been through a lot. It made it him wise. Cliff offered him a job today.”

“He did!”

Christian smiled. “As a taster in the product development department. Since Tobias lost his sight, his other senses strengthened. He was eating some of the new candy the company is developing and he named all the ingredients in it. Cliff was so impressed he hired him on the spot. He starts training on Tuesday. They are going to send him to chocolate school in Montreal.”

“Chocolate school? That’s amazing! Do you think he’ll be okay going alone?”

“He’ll be fine. He’ll have help. But he really wants to be independent and I applaud that.”

She nodded. “What else did you talk about? I love hearing this.”

“The company is expanding. We’re going to need another plant in the next year. That’s two hundred new jobs. We could hire a lot of former military. Cliff helped me sketch out a basic plan for the foundation. We could help a lot of people.”

They turned a corner, leaving their quiet little neighborhood and turning onto a street populated with historic buildings and cute little shops. “I’m proud of you, Christian.”

He shook his head. “I’m just doing what I’m supposed to.” He took one hand off Abby’s stroller and grabbed Georgia’s hand. “How are you feeling? I know your sister has been updating you on your father. I know you’re too nice to tell her that you don’t want to hear it anymore.”

“But I do want to hear about him. I know it’s wrong, but I want to know how he is.”

“It’s not wrong, sweetheart. You love him. He’s your father.”

“He used to be a happy man. I was hoping that one day I might be able to see that man again.”

“I’m so sorry your daddy is a rat bastard.”

She laughed quietly. “It’s okay. If he wasn’t I wouldn’t be married to you.”

They came up to the Catfish Kitchen and were seated outside. They talked over dinner about their childhoods and fathers and life’s happy times and its disappointments. Sometimes Christian lost track of what Georgia was saying because he was too caught up in staring at her.

He couldn’t have gone back, even though sometimes the itch snuck up on him. He couldn’t leave her. He would miss her too much.

“Have you ever had gelato? I saw it on TV this morning and have been dying to try it. You think we could find some of that around here?”

“Yeah, there’s a place up the street, but I thought you wanted cake.”

“I do.” She nodded her head. “We can get the cake to go. I want gelato. Right now, and I do not care that my pants are so tight the button is going to pop off and shoot you in the eye.”

He grinned at her, so glad that she had become so much more easy around him. He was starting to feel married, as though he had a partner forever. “Come on,” he said to her after he paid their bill. “We can take our cake and gelato home and eat it in front of the television.”

“They’ll pack it up for us?”

“Yup. We’ll take home a couple of pints.”

She smiled beautifully at him. “That makes me so happy to hear. I love this town. You can get anything here. You know, I never had store-bought ice cream till I was twenty-one.”

“What?”

“We used to make it at home, so there was never any reason to buy it. I was in college the first time I had it. It was soft-serve chocolate-and-vanilla twist. At the time I thought I had never seen something so amazing. The other girls I was with teased me unmercifully, but I had never seen anything like that before.”

“Were you really that sheltered, Georgia?”

She nodded. “Just me and Carolina. He thought the less we knew about the world, the better. I don’t want that to happen to Abby. I want her to know everything.”

“We’ll do right by her. I promise.” He looked down at Abby in her stroller. She was calm, softly and happily singing to herself.

“I always planned on raising her alone, but I’m glad I don’t have to. Daddies are important. She’s been so happy.”

He looked over at her. She was looking wistfully at their daughter. “I know these past few weeks have been crazy. I know I haven’t been easy to love, but I want you to be happy, too. Are you happy, Georgia?”

She wrapped her arm around his and rested her head against him as they walked. “You bought me crab cakes. I’m about to eat cake and ice cream. I’m happier than a pig in mud.”

He loved her. He had loved her almost instantly. He wondered if she knew, if he had ever told her that. Probably not. He hadn’t said those words to anybody in so many years. Not even when his parents were alive. He had gotten stupid in his teenage years, afraid to say it for fear of sounding like a little boy. If he could go back, that was one thing that he would change. He would let them know how he felt. He should let his wife know.

He opened his mouth to do so but an elderly woman stopped in front of them. She looked sort of wild-eyed as she stared at Georgia. He thought she was homeless for a moment, looking for a handout, but she was too well dressed, and instead of asking she just stared, stared at Georgia and at Abby.

The woman lunged at Georgia so quickly he could barely react. She grabbed her face in her hands and started to sob. Christian grabbed her arm.

“Don’t hurt her,” Georgia begged. “It’s my mother.”

* * *

When Georgia left her mother that evening she found Christian in Abby’s room. He was sitting with the freshly bathed little girl in the rocking chair by her window. He was reading the book
Goodnight Moon
to her.

Abby sat there, rubbing her eyes, but listening to her father’s deep voice as he told her the story. Georgia was surprised to see them like that. With Abby sitting so still and calmly. She had been such a wiggly ball of energy lately. But then again she was always good for Christian.

Georgia wanted to be annoyed by it, by the fact that Abby was a daddy’s girl, but she couldn’t, because Abby’s relationship with Christian was the exact opposite of the one she had with her father.

She sat on the floor next to the rocker and rested her head on Christian’s knee as he finished the story.

Drained
didn’t describe the way she was feeling. It was more than that. She had been so worried about her mother these past few weeks. She’d tried to deny it. She hadn’t wanted to think that anything bad could happen to her, so she’d tamped down those feelings and tried to think of other things. But Mama snuck into her mind in those quiet moments, when all her other thoughts fled. She had secretly thought that her mama just needed a break, a little time for herself. That was why she’d left Daddy. Yet she’d always suspected she would go back to him.

Her parents had been together since her mother was seventeen years old. Fiona Williams was one of those proud Southern women who always stood by their man. Sometimes that broke Georgia’s heart.

Christian stood up and placed Abby in her crib, kissing her good-night, whispering, “I love you,”
as he did. It was something he did absently. Something he always whispered. They were words he never said aloud. Words he never said to Georgia, even though she knew he did.

He left Abby and scooped Georgia off the floor, taking her to the rocking chair and holding her like he held their daughter. Only his hand wandered up the back of her shirt and his lips rested against her forehead. “How is she?”

“Sleeping. She hasn’t said very much. She hasn’t told me where she’s been.”

“Is she okay? She seems...” He trailed off. Georgia knew why. He was trying to save her feelings. He didn’t want to mention how broken her mother looked.

But it was true. Her mother looked broken. She had heard about her husband’s heart attack.

He’s been here in Charleston. All this time. I should have been with him.

“She’s not okay. At least she’s not the way I remember her. My mama used to be so beautiful. Now she looks so...”

“Guilty.” He kissed her forehead. “She looks so guilty. I know the look. I’ve seen it in my own eyes a time or two. But she came here for you. She came to ask forgiveness.”

“They’ve all come back to ask for forgiveness. I want to forgive. I want to forget, but I can’t seem to, either. It seems to be drying up.”

“It’s not. You’re just overwhelmed. It’s all too much for you right now.” He buried his fingers in her hair at the base of her neck and began to massage. “What can I do, Georgia? You want me to send her home and whisk you away, banning all contact from anyone with the last name Williams?”

“That doesn’t include Carolina. Her married name is Hammond. Don’t forget about banning contact with her, too.”

He smiled down at her. “Hammonds, too, but you don’t mean that. If you did, I would do that for you in a minute. You want your family back. It might not be right now, but you’ll want them around. I want to take you away from here soon. I want to take you to where I grew up. It’s time for me to go back. Would you like to come with me?”

She nodded and lifted her head to kiss him. “I would love that, but right now I want you to take me to bed.”

CHAPTER 27

“M
ama?” Abby asked Christian the next morning as he dressed her in a tiny yellow-and-white dress.

“She’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast. She’s making French toast. Your grandmother is here. I don’t think your mama can sleep very well now.”

“Her mama can’t sleep very well now, either.”

Christian turned to see Georgia’s mother, Fiona, standing in the doorway. The only way he could describe her was diminutive. She was tiny. Less than five feet tall, with tiny hands and delicate bone structure.

She looked much better than she had last night. The nearly crazed expression in her eyes had gone. She simply looked like an elderly woman at the moment. But he knew Georgia’s mother was not old. It was just that some of the life had been sucked out of her.

“Georgia is downstairs if you need her.” He turned back to his daughter, running his big fingers through her little ringlets. “There,” he said after a moment. “You look beautiful now.”

Abby clapped as she did every morning when he finished dressing her.

“You’re the only one who ever claps for me.” He lifted her up, holding her close to him. “That’s why I’m crazy about you, kid.”

Abby leaned in and kissed him with her sweet spitty baby kiss and his heart lurched, as always.

“She loves you.”

Fiona’s voice had taken him by surprise. He thought she had gone. “I’m her father,” he said simply.

“Yes,” Fiona said softly. “Yes, you are. She looks like him, though.”

He was sick of hearing that. Sick of hearing that his daughter looked like his wife’s rapist, even if it was true. “I don’t care. I wish you Williamses would stop saying that. She is not a part of him. She is mine and Georgia’s and I don’t want him spoken of in this house again.”

“I understand that. I even agree with it, but I think there are things you should know about him, about us.”

“I know everything. Georgia keeps no secrets from me.”

“You know her side.”

“Her side is the only side that matters,” he snapped.

“I know you are angry with us. With me. And you should be, but just listen for a moment.” She sucked in a wobbly breath. “Robert was a good boy. There are some people you can tell are phony and no good, but he wasn’t one of them. Maybe he had us fooled, maybe he changed, but I would like to believe that when we first met him there was some goodness in him. His parents were harsh with him, with everybody, really, but they treated him as though he was a servant and not a son.”

“I could say the same thing for you and your husband. I know you worked your daughters like dogs.”

“They had chores, but they were never not loved.”

“That’s not what Georgia thinks. She thinks your husband doesn’t love her. He can’t. He couldn’t have, because he let that man get away with what he did to her. He threw her out, he called her a liar. She saved his life, right in this very room, and he wouldn’t look at her afterward. He turned his head away from the only person who lifted a finger to save him.”

“I can’t explain the actions of my husband. There is no explanation.”

“Then maybe you can explain yourself. You let him throw her away. You let her struggle. You let her bring this child into the world alone. What kind of mother are you? How can you look at yourself in the mirror knowing what she went through?”

“I can’t!” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t. I can’t even look at her without feeling ashamed. That’s why I’m here with you and not with her. But you don’t know what it was like living there with Abraham Williams. You don’t know what it’s like to see the love of your life turn into an unfeeling stone of a man who was so depressed sometimes he couldn’t get out of bed. Abel was his boy. His pride. They were close, and when he died so did most of my husband.”

She drew a deep breath, and continued, “So did the church and the town. Oakdale is a dying place. It has been going ever since my son left this earth, but when Robert came to town he made my husband feel something. You think I would resent the fact that he couldn’t find it in him to bond with his other children instead of a stranger, but when somebody you love is in such a deep, dark place like that you’ll do anything to pull them out. So I let it be when Robert started coming over for dinner and sitting in Abel’s place. I let it be when Abraham started helping Robert pay for school, because it made him feel good. I let it be when I noticed Robert’s eyes starting to follow Georgia around, because I thought they might get married one day and make my husband happy. And I let it be when Abraham threw Georgia out because I knew that once he chose Robert over her that there was nothing left for her with us. I could have begged him to let her stay. I could have threatened to go with her, but in the end I knew that it would harm Georgia more than any good it would do.”

“What kind of bullshit thinking is that?”

“She was the strongest of all my children. And the smartest. If anybody could get out, if anybody could make something of themselves, it was her. I could have gone to the police, but what do you say to the chief when the victim’s own father calls her a liar? When the father is the pastor who has more power than the mayor. Georgia needed to go. It killed me to let her go, but I had to. She’s so much more than she would have been if she stayed.”

“So why are you here now, Mama?” Georgia came up behind her mother.

“I needed to see for myself that you were happy. Your sister said you were, but I needed to see you.” She took Georgia’s face in her hands. “You are happy. I can tell. I can tell just by the way you look at your husband. You’re very much in love with him.”

“I am.”

“Then I’m not sorry for letting you go. I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more. I’m sorry I was such a horrible mother to you all after Abel died, but I’m not sorry I let you go. You deserved a better life than what we had planned out for you. You deserved better than us.”

“Okay, Mama.” She looked at her mother for a long moment. “Breakfast is ready. I made about a pound of bacon. It’s maple glazed and just about the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Wait a minute,” Christian said, bewildered. “After all of that, that’s all you have to say?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I guess not. What took you so long to come see me? You left Daddy weeks ago.”

“I was scared to face you. Scared you wouldn’t be happy.”

“You weren’t scared I would hate you?”

“No. I don’t think you can hate, but if you did I would have deserved it and accepted it.”

“Okay.” She nodded and looked at Christian. “I just didn’t want to hear another apology. I wanted to hear a why. I’m tired of being angry. I just want to move on. We’ve got this new baby coming and I don’t want him or Abby growing up with us stuck in the past.”

“What?” He took a step toward her but then stopped. His mind was reeling.

“I’m having your baby, Captain.” She closed the distance between them and set her lips on his. “Thank you for giving him to me and thank you for not batting a lash while I have been eating like a pig this past week.” She took Abby from him and kissed her curls. “Don’t you look gorgeous this morning? Come on, baby. Let’s get some food in you.”