car and winnin’ smile, you were like a nice, ripe peach, just ready to drop off the tree. And you did drop. You dropped good and hard. But that was not—”
“Mama—”
“Pardon me. I believe that I was still speaking.”
“Fine. Speak. Finish.”
“What I’m saying is—and you are listening, aren’t you?”
Joleen gritted her teeth. “I am, Mama. I am listening.”
Camilla’s eyebrows had a skeptical lift—but she did continue. “What I’m saying is that what happened with Bobby Atwood was not it—was not love. And Dekker and Stacey, well, that was certainly something, but it wasn’t it, either. Not the real, true, deep lifelong passion I am talking about. Not what I had with your daddy. Not what DeDe has with Wayne.”
“Mama. Some people never find that kind of love.”
“We are not talking about some people. We are talking about you. And Dekker. My first baby. And my best friend’s little boy.”
“Well, maybe you have to stop thinking of us that way—as your baby and Lorraine’s little boy. We are grown people now. We have a right to make our own decisions about life. And about who we will love.”
“I never said that you didn’t. I just don’t like this.” Camilla looked into her cup again—and then sharply up to snare her daughter’s gaze. “Something else is goin’ on here. I know it. I can feel it.”
Joleen kept her face composed—and told some more lies. “Nothing is going on, Mama. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, you do. You know. There is something.…” Camilla pushed her cup to the side and leaned across the table. “Is it…those Atwood people? You went off alone with them, didn’t you, before they left the wedding Saturday? I saw you go inside with them.”
Joleen opened her mouth to let out more lies. And then shut it. Camilla would have to hear the truth about the Atwoods sooner or later.
“Yes,” Joleen said. “They wanted to talk to me.”
“About…?”
Sam was too quiet. Joleen stood.
“What is it now?” muttered her mother. But Camilla had had three children of her own. She nodded. “Go on. Check—and then get right back in here.”
Joleen went through the dining room. She found her little boy sitting on the hooked rug near the big window at the front of the house, playing with the wooden blocks one of the uncles had given him for his first birthday six months before.
Sam looked up. “How,” he said, beaming proudly at the crooked stacks of blocks in front of him.
“Yes,” said Joleen, her chest suddenly tight. “A very fine house.” She would do anything—anything, including telling her dear mama a thousand rotten lies—to keep her boy safe, to be there whenever he needed her. To get to see his face now and then when he smiled like he was smiling now.…
She took in a deep breath to loosen those bands of emotion that had squeezed around her heart. Then she asked slowly, pronouncing each word with care, “Come in the kitchen? With Grandma and me?”
He shook his head and loosed a string of nonsense syllables.
“You mean, you want to stay here?”
“Pway.”
She wanted to scoop him up hard against her heart, to hug him until he squirmed to get down. But no. He was content, sitting on her mama’s rug, playing with his house of blocks. Why ruin that?
“Okay. Be good.”
“I goo.”
Her steps dragging, Joleen returned to the breakfast nook. She slid back into her chair. “He’s fine.”
“All right. What did the Atwoods want to talk with you about?”
Joleen took a fortifying sip of her coffee. And then she told her mother everything that had transpired in her father’s study before the Atwoods took their leave.
When she had finished, Camilla picked up her coffee cup, started to sip, realized it was empty and set it back down—hard. “Oh sweetheart, the nerve of those people.”
“I hear you, Mama.”
“I did not like that Robert Atwood. Right from the first I saw that he would be trouble. Thinks he’s a cut above, doesn’t he? That he’s better than the rest of us. And the woman, Antonia? Well, I’m willin’ to admit I felt sorry for her. Scared of her own shadow, and wearing mauve, of all colors. Much too cool for her. Just faded her right out to nothin’ at all. She needs a bright, warm palette, to bring out that peach tone in her—”
“Mama.”
“Oh, well, all right. I’m rambling and I know it. It’s just, what else can I say, but how dare they?”
“I asked myself that same question.”
Camilla folded those beautiful hands on the tabletop. “I think I am starting to understand it all now. You and Dekker have been scheming. You’ve decided that the two of you getting married is somehow going to help you keep the Atwoods from stealin’ our Sam.”
Joleen gulped. “No, Mama. Of course not. You asked me what happened with them, and I told you. It’s got nothin’ to do with Dekker and me.”
“Oh, sweetheart. You are such a bad liar. You shouldn’t even try it.”
Joleen only wanted to get out of there. “I am marrying Dekker, Mama. That is all there is to it.”
“But you don’t love him—not the way you need to love the man you bind your life with.”
Joleen stood. “I am saying this once more. I want you to listen. I do love Dekker. And Dekker loves me. We are getting married as soon as possible, and we are going to be happy. You just wait and see.”
“But you don’t—”
“Mama. Enough. You have said your piece, and I have heard it. This decision, though, is mine to make.”
Camilla was shaking her head, her mouth all pursed up, brow furrowed. At that moment she looked her age—and more. She said, very softly and with heavy regret, “I know I was never the mother I should have been.”
Joleen glared down at her. “You are my mother. If I was startin’ all over, and God gave me a chance to choose, you are the one I would pick in an instant.”
“Oh, baby…”
“Do not start in cryin’ on me, Mama. I just don’t have the time or the patience for that right now.”
“I only…I wanted so much more for you.”
“Well, this is about what I want. And I want to marry Dekker. I want to make
