“Her family’s from Pittsburgh,” Gregory said thoughtfully. “Maybe she went back there.” He frowned, looking more than ever like his father, hard faced, intent, a hunter closing in on his prey. Patrice’s heart gave another painful little jump.
“There’s nobody left for her there. Maybe she went back to Key West,” Patrice said hurriedly. Katie had been brave enough to run away, to make a new life for herself and Kyle. She looked from her husband to his father once again. Katie was right. It was time Andrew’s dictatorship came to an end. Patrice had done a lot of thinking during the long sunny afternoon. She’d asked herself some hard questions. One of them, particularly, demanded total honesty: Was this the way she wanted her child to grow up? The baby she’d finally conceived after so many barren years. The baby Greg didn’t know about yet.
“Too close,” Greg mumbled. “But we’ll check it out. I’ll get some detectives on it first thing in the morning.”
“Why don’t you just let her go?” Patrice stood so quickly her chair went skidding backward across the parquet floor.
“Because she’s stolen my grandson, you fool woman,” Andrew growled. “She can stay gone till hell freezes over for all I care but I want my grandson back.”
Patrice felt cold fear curl around her heart. “What do you mean by that?”
“Dad’s right, Pat,” Greg said, standing also. “I’m not sure Katie’s the best person to have custody of Kyle. She’s so young. No education to speak of and now pulling a harebrained stunt like this.”
“You’d take Kyle away from her if you found her?” Surely this wasn’t happening. Greg, the man she loved, couldn’t be so callous, so cruel.
“Katie’s not being rational. It might be the best thing to do,” he said, watching her closely. “Pat, don’t look at me like that.” He sounded amazed and hurt. “I’m only thinking of my nephew’s interests. We have a responsibility to see that Michael’s son receives the best life he can have.”
“The best life he can have is being with his mother.” It was funny how quickly your heart could break. She’d felt it snap, just like that. There wasn’t any pain yet. That would come later.
“Are you sure? We’d love him and take care of him just as if he were ours. And we can bring him up to be comfortable with his inheritance. Can Katie do that?”
“Kyle isn’t ours.” She wanted to give Greg one last chance. “He’s Katie’s. How could you even consider something like that?”
“It’s not such a bad idea,” Andrew interjected. He rubbed his hand over his chin. “The girl’s wild. Always was, always will be. She’s got a criminal record, too. Not a fit mother. We could use that if we have to.”
“She was caught shoplifting food from a grocery store when she was still a teenager. Barely eighteen. She was starving. Surely you wouldn’t use that against her.” Patrice couldn’t believe her ears. Things like this didn’t happen in this day and age.
“Pat’s right. I don’t think it’s necessary to bring that up.” Greg was still watching her but she could no longer meet his eyes. What he said was too little, too late.
“All right, we’ll forget that scenario for now,” Andrew said placatingly, but his eyes were fierce. “I’ll use it later if I have to. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to get my grandson back.” He turned to Greg. “You’re dead right about one thing, though. You and Patrice would be better off caring for the boy. A judge might balk about turning the little fellow over to an old man like me—” he chuckled “—an old man with a reputation like mine. But you two are the perfect parents—”
“No,” Patrice said, the word exploding from her lips. “I won’t be a party to taking Katie’s baby away from her. I refuse.” She turned and hurried down the length of the long, polished table. Theo stepped aside with a nod.
“Patrice, wait.” Gregory sounded miserable, torn, but Patrice never slowed down.
“Let her go,” she heard Andrew command as she left the room. “She’ll come to her senses soon enough.”
Patrice put her hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing out loud. She’d come to her senses, all right. She was leaving this house, too. Tonight. Just as Katie had.
Chapter 1
“Jacob, you haven’t touched your dessert. What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?” Hazel Owens Gentry addressed her nephew in the same sweet-as-dandelion-wine tone of voice she’d used to reprimand him since he was a little boy. “It’s the last piece of mincemeat pie. I saved it just for you.”
“I’m feeling great, Aunt H, really,” he hastened to assure her. Faded blue eyes regarded him from a face as brown and wrinkled as a berry. His aunt Hazel was an earth mother. She wasn’t completely happy unless she had someone to care for. “But I’m stuffed.” He smiled for her benefit. “I can’t eat another bite.”
“It’s the soup,” Hazel fretted. “Too much pepper? Too much celery?”
“The soup’s great, Aunt Hazel. You make the best leftover turkey soup in Tennessee.” He stretched the smile into a grin. “It’s great.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the meal, sister.” Almeda, the eldest of his five Owens aunts, interrupted her sibling’s lament. “A fitting end for a noble bird.” She picked up her spoon. “Now stop fishing for compliments and sit down and eat yours before it gets cold. If the boy doesn’t want his pie he doesn’t have to eat it.”
Jacob was thirty-four years old but Almeda had called him “the boy” when he was twenty-two and when he was twelve—the year he and his father had come to Holly Ridge, the family home near tiny Owenburg, Tennessee, at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to live. He suspected she had called his late father, the only Owens brother, the same thing when he was young, as well.
“I’ll eat the pie.” His middle aunt, Janet, added her two cents’ worth. “Mincemeat’s my favorite. And I’d hate to see it go to waste.”
“It won’t go to waste.” Faye giggled and nudged her twin, Lois.
“It’ll just go to your waist,” his youngest—by six minutes—aunt responded with a giggle of her own.
“Girls.” Almeda waved her gnarled, beringed hand in their general direction. “Enough. Eat. The food’s getting cold.”
Faye and Lois were sixty-nine years old and Almeda still referred to them as girls. That’s why Jacob knew he’d always be “the boy.” He handed the pie to his aunt Janet and bent his head to finish his soup, hiding his amusement at the good-natured bickering going on around him.
He owed his sanity, if not his life, to this marvelous eccentric quintet of old ladies. Returning to Owenburg, to his aunts and to his roots three years before, after his wife and baby son were killed, had pulled him through the worst period of his life. For months after the freak accident that had destroyed his family and his happiness, he’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die. But the aunts wouldn’t allow that. They’d descended on his little house in Knoxville near the University of Tennessee campus where he
