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“But if they think I won’t press, they might not put better safeguards in place,” Josie explained. “If I back off now, they skate free and maybe they improve, maybe they don’t. But if they’re scared of being called out—”
“Which they should be!” declared Cissy.
Josie hugged her mother’s arm. “Then maybe we can make some good out of all this. My schedule is packed full for tomorrow. Come Monday, I’ll face the music.”
“Do you want me there, darling?” Cissy leaned her head against Josie’s. “I’ll happily stand by your side.”
“Great.” Josie angled a doubtful look her way. “Then you’ll cry and I’ll cry and we’ll have a total mess on our hands.” She hugged her mother but shook her head. “I’m doing this one alone. Face-to-face, the way I should have done when Addie came strolling out of that car.”
“You didn’t know where you stood or what kind of man Jacob was back then,” Drew reminded her as he took the baby from his wife. “Now we know. Now we move forward.”
“Thank you.” Josie stood. She’d staved off tears because she’d shed far too many of them the past few weeks.
She wasn’t a crier in general, but seeing Addie, getting to know Jacob and realizing what she could have gained if things had been different…
But things weren’t different, and that was the truth of the matter. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate all the love and the support and the legal stuff you’ve done for me.”
“We’ve got your back, Josie.” Drew kissed his baby Elizabeth’s forehead as he paced the floor, hoping to ease her belly discomfort. “Always.”
“I know that now.” She raised her shoulders and sighed. “And I should have known back then. So…” She moved toward the door and raised a hand. “I’ll let you guys know how things go on Monday, all right?”
“Yes. Are you coming to church with us in the morning?” her mother asked. Her mother and two aunts on the Morgan side of the family attended the same church service every week, without fail. Josie caught church when she could, where she could, but for this week, she thought it might be real nice to sit in the pew with her mother. “Yes. I’ll come straight from work, and head straight back. See you then.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t go right back to the carriage house apartment she was renting from her aunt and uncle. She walked toward the beach instead, letting her thoughts take hold.
No matter what happened on Monday, she would tell Jacob the truth, the whole truth.
And then she’d walk away, at least as far as she could with a major responsibility under the Eastern Shore roof.
His time in Grace Haven was drawing to a close. She could stay out of his way, and out of Addie’s life, for those last few days. She’d hate it, but she’d do it because it was the right thing to do.
* * *
“Addie has fallen in love with this place,” Bob Weatherly noted on Saturday night.
“She reminds me of that on a regular basis,” Jacob replied. “What she doesn’t know is that I’ve gotten two firm offers, one in Austin and one outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. And they’re both companies where I can hang my hat for the duration.”
“Which is how long?”
“However long it takes to raise a little girl on my own,” Jacob said softly. “I want her to feel like she’s part of a community. A school, a church, a neighborhood. The chance to play soccer or baseball or any of the things kids do when they’re being raised in a normal American setting. Carrington is offering me a whole lot of money to stay on for the Outer Banks proposal, but then we’d be done in eighteen months and moving again. I want more for her than that.”
“She hasn’t suffered from your work,” his father noted. “She’s about the best-adjusted kid I’ve ever met.”
“Exactly why I need to do this now,” Jacob acknowledged, “to help her stay that way. It was okay to bounce around for preschools, but now she needs something more solid and stable.”
“Have you considered Florida?” his mother asked while Addie finished decorating a fairly complicated coloring page for a six-year-old in the cool breeze of the lakeside porch.
