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“What’s wrong?” Grace knew at once that her sister was in pain.
“Nothing, just a false contraction.” Faith rubbed the side of her belly. “They happen all the time.” She prepared to stand. “I’m fine now. Time for pie.”
“Stay,” Grace ordered. “You’ve done enough today. I’ll take care of it. Who wants Cool Whip?”
A few minutes later, they were each devouring a piece topped with whipped cream. Fitz commented on how good it was, but the conversation lagged. Grace could tell that, between Grayson’s hostility and the baby coming, the FBI agent wasn’t likely to call on Faith anytime soon. Grace’s poor sister was on her own and would stay that way for the foreseeable future.Welcome to my life.How Faith still believed that God worked all things for good was a mystery.
* * *
Amos drove toward Anniston, Alabama, in a daze. As the miles rolled beneath his tires, he cast sidelong glances at his son, drinking in every feature of the boy he’d lost and found. All those fervent prayers, all that suffering…and now this. God must have known all along that Simon would come back into his life.
The pale, silent child huddling on the far side of the truck’s cab was as familiar as he was alien. Amos cast about for words to say to him. Yet, they were now strangers. Love pulsed in Amos’s heart for the boy, but that didn’t mean Simon felt the same way about him. If anything, he seemed terrified.
Glimpsing a rivulet of liquid seeping out from under Simon’s leg to pool along the seam of the leather seat, Amos was startled to realize his son had wet his pants.
“Why didn’t you say you had to go?” Amos groped behind the seat for a roll of paper towels.
Simon averted his face as tears welled in his eyes.
Amos veered off the highway onto an exit ramp. Good thing Emma had sent along the bag of clothes.
As he stood outside the stall in the men’s restroom at a roadside McDonald’s, Amos acknowledged that, as a warrior, he could do almost anything, but this was brand-new territory. Infants were easy: You clothed them, fed them, crooned lullabies, and blew raspberries. Simon was a little person now, independent in some ways, helpless in others. And Amos didn’t know the first thing about six-year-olds.
As his son pushed out of the stall in dry clothing, Amos inspected him and nodded. He found a plastic sack in the garbage bin and used it to scoop up the sodden pants lying on the floor. Wouldn’t this add an interesting dimension to laundry day?
“Wash your hands,” he instructed. “You hungry?”
He had to give Simon a boost so he could reach the sink. The boy’s hands looked so small, but he soaped them up deftly and rinsed them well. Amos put him down and handed him a paper towel.
“Look here, Son. You’ve got to talk to me. I can’t read your mind to know what you need.”
To Amos’s deepening concern, Simon’s chin wobbled. He stared down at the floor.
Amos knelt right there on the bathroom floor and caught his son’s eye. “Hey, I’m scared, too.” His voice came out sounding gruff. He tried to soften it. “The last time I saw you, you were just a baby.” He prayed nobody would walk in and witness his vulnerability. “I could hold you in my arms and rock you.”
To his amazement, Simon put an arm around his neck and hugged him. The sweet gesture robbed Amos of speech. Without letting go of the boy, he picked him up and stood, turning so they faced the mirror. Their two faces stared back at them. They had the same dark hair and light silvery eyes fringed by dark lashes.
“See, we’re the same,” Amos pointed out. “You came from me. We belong together.”
Simon turned his head to regard Amos directly. “Did you sing to me?”
It was the first time Amos had ever heard him speak—in the thickest Southern drawl imaginable, with a lisp that was the consequence of two missing front teeth.
Amos couldn’t talk for the lump that lodged in his throat. He nodded, then cleared his throat. “Aye, I did.” The affirmation betrayed his own Maine dialect. “Do you remember?”
“No.”
The reply squashed the hope winging in him. “No matter. We will make new memories once I get you home to Virginia. Next time you have to pee, just tell me, okay? I won’t be upset.”
Simon nodded.
Amos put him down and led him out of the restaurant, back to the hot truck. At this rate, the ride still ahead of them was going to take a good deal longer than the twelve hours his navigation pane predicted.
* * *
By lunchtime the following day, Amos had started a mental list of things that needed to change in his life to accommodate a six-year-old. The fact that his home was a houseboat and Simon said he couldn’t swim didn’t help matters.
“Auntie said we’d be bait for ’gators if we swam in the crick.” Simon had said when they’d arrived in Virginia Beach at one o’clock in the morning. Amos had been leading him down the long, lit pier to his houseboat.
