sister. Bella. Bella Jo.
Dixon could barely believe it, but evidently it was true. At forty-four, Jackie had given birth to her second child. His sister. In addition, Jackie was in ill health, but dying? He had much more difficulty believing that than everything else. He set it aside for the moment.
He hadn’t known Harry Griffin at all, but apparently Jackie had been happily married to the man, who turned out to have been a few years her junior. Dixon recalled the times his mother had urged him to get to know his stepfather, and now he regretted that he hadn’t found a way to do that, but he simply hadn’t seen any reason to do it. Until now. Now that it was too late.
Unsure what to say, think or do, Dixon found himself in prayer for the third time since he’d arrived home that evening. The only words his whirling mind could come up with were, Lord, help. I could really use some help.
One thing about being Jackie Jo Crane Lyons Griffin’s son, though, was that a fellow learned to stand up and take life like a man early on. It was either that or cower in shame. Dixon didn’t cower any better than his mother did, so after a few minutes he got up, squared his shoulders and walked back into the kitchen.
His mother still sat at the table, cradling Bella Jo in her arms. Jackie pulled the nipple of a bottle from the baby’s cupid’s-bow mouth and tilted Bella up onto her shoulder. She’d barely landed the first pat before the baby belched like a twelve-year-old boy trying to impress his buddies.
“Always the lady,” Jackie quipped, lowering Bella to her lap. “Just like your mother. Poor thing.”
Dixon couldn’t help a sudden fascination with the infant and went to look over his mother’s shoulder. “Can’t believe I have a sister.”
“I don’t know why not,” Jackie said brightly, holding up the baby for him to view. “She looks just like you.”
Dixon narrowed his eyes at the plump-faced infant. “No, she doesn’t.”
“She does,” Jackie insisted. “Except for the dark hair, she looks just like your baby pictures.”
“And your baby pictures look just like your mother’s baby pictures,” Fawn put in from the sink, which was full of suds.
“I have a dishwasher, you know,” he pointed out, aware that he sounded surly but unable to help himself.
She shot back with, “It’s full.”
Surprised, he lifted an eyebrow. It took him days to fill up the dishwasher. Looking back to his mother, he asked, “Is that true? Are my baby pictures that much like yours?”
“Why do you think your father tried to name you after me?”
Now that was a surprise. “Dad wanted to name me Jack?”
She nodded. “We settled on my mother’s maiden name and his middle name. I think he did it partly to curry favor with her. If I’d been a boy, she’d have named me Dixon. So, Greg decided you would be my mom’s Dixon. Didn’t matter. She still hated him.”
“Hate is a strong word,” Dixon muttered, but it wasn’t far off the mark. His grandmother had been the driving force keeping him from his father. She’d always said it was to protect him, but Dixon could never figure out what she’d been trying to protect him from. Greg was a solid citizen, never missed a child support payment, attended church regularly, kept his nose clean and ran a successful business. Yes, he’d gotten her daughter pregnant too young, but he’d married her and tried to be a good parent, which was more than could be said for his mother.
Jackie lifted Bella onto the edge of the table, holding her there in a sitting position. “Would you put her into her carrier, son? She’ll need a dry diaper soon. Then she’ll go down for several hours.”
“I haven’t handled many babies,” Dixon hedged, wiping his palms on his jeans.
“Just pick her up under her arms and lay her in the carrier,” Jackie said with a chuckle. “She holds her head up well now.”
Dixon wiped his hands once more then placed them just above his mother’s. He lifted gently and was shocked by how little the baby weighed. “She’s light as a feather!”
“Duh. She’s a baby.”
“What does she weigh?” he asked, gingerly laying the infant in her padded carrier seat.
“A little over fourteen pounds.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, she only weighed five pounds when she was born.”
“Was she early?”
“About three weeks.”
“But she’s healthy,” Fawn said.
“Perfectly healthy,” Jackie confirmed, smiling.
Bella kicked a foot, and Jackie pretended to gobble her toes, which made the baby smile, her eyebrows dancing.
“She’ll be laughing before long,” Fawn predicted.
“Remember when I used to do that with you?” Jackie asked Dixon. “You used to howl with laughter.”
“I remember you called me your mistake,” Dixon blurted, quite without meaning to.
Jackie’s face registered shock, and she twisted around in her chair. “I did no such thing.”
“You did,” he insisted quietly. “Well, as good as.”
“I don’t know what you heard,” Jackie insisted, “but I never would have said that.”
He told her then exactly what he remembered, and she shook her head sadly. “Son, son. You weren’t the mistake. Yes, I got pregnant and married too young, and it was much more difficult than I thought it was going to be, just as my parents predicted, but that wasn’t the mistake. My real mistake was divorcing your father.”
“But...you hated Dad as much as Grandma did!”
“No. No, no.” Jackie shook her head, smiling sadly. “I was heartbroken when Greg came home married to Lucinda. Frankly, Dix, until Harry, I never thought I’d love again.”
“I...I don’t understand any of this.”
She sighed. “Pride and pain make us do foolish things, Dix. I have no pride left, and Harry took care of the pain. He was a good Christian man. He forgave all my mistakes, loved me in spite of them and made me happy, even though I didn’t have you with me.” She looked at Bella, smiling. “We never expected to have a child of our own. He thought he couldn’t. Imagine our joy last Christmas when the doctors told us we were expecting.”
“I confess I’m surprised,” Dixon said, looking at his now drowsy-eyed baby sister. “I wouldn’t have thought you even wanted more children.”
Jackie looked up, obviously surprised. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s not like you were around a lot,” Dixon pointed out. He didn’t say that some folks
