Fifteen Years (25 page)

“Daddy—”

“No, Patrice.” Sometimes Thomas turned into a mind reader. “Don’t tell me that everything is fine, because I know better. Some
of it I can deduce, but I’m not God, so I don’t have all the answers. You’re going to have to enlighten me.”

What did he mean by some of it he could deduce? She hadn’t done anything to give away the dirty little secret, and she doubted that Josiah had either. When Thomas began speaking again, he cleared up her question.

“When we were celebrating Josiah’s return on Sunday, all was well. God had brought us all together and allowed us to enjoy a family meal sitting at this same table. We were happy.
All of us
were happy. Everything was wonderful up until the time that me and Joanne went to bed, and I know everything was fine until as late as yesterday morning. JT was excited about taking us all out to lunch and disappointed when we had to hand him that rain check because of the meeting at the church.”

Patrice uncrossed her legs once more. With every sentence, he was connecting another missing piece of the puzzle, and she knew that even if she didn’t say a word, Thomas would eventually figure it out. She wanted to interrupt him with some magical words that would break, or at least slow his progression, but nothing came to mind.

“So as I see it,” Thomas continued, “something had to have happened between that time and today. When me and your mama told you that Pastor Loather needed us at the church, you said that you would still have lunch with JT so the two of you could catch up on old times. Therefore, I think it is safe for me to assume that when y’all met for lunch, something was said or done that didn’t set well with one or both of you.”

He paused and cocked his head to the side. “Do I have to continue playing Columbo here, or are you gonna help me out? JT has been away from us for fifteen years, Patrice. We only have a few days with him before he heads back to his life in North Carolina.
And once he’s gone, although I pray to God that we will all stay in touch, there’s no telling when we’ll see him again. I don’t want to spend these precious days in a strained environment.”

Patrice connected her eyes with his. Her father never begged for anything, but the look in his eyes was pleading with her to open up to him.

“This is the first time that your mother and I have had all our kids together in years, sweetheart. First you went off to college and ultimately got married; then by the time you came to your senses and returned, JT was gone with his mother. I know we had a slew of other children to pass through our home over the years, and don’t get me wrong… we genuinely cared for them all. But it’s no secret that you, Sam, and JT were the ones that we truly loved. You were the ones that we saw as
our
kids. When we chose not to have biological children, you were the ones that God sent into our lives to make us the parents that He intended for us to be.”

That was the moment that Patrice’s tears spilled. Hearing Thomas speak so passionately about their family bond just made it all the more painful. Danielle had almost convinced her that no violations had been made and no sins had been committed. But if they were indeed the children that God had blessed Thomas and Joanne with, then they were also siblings in the truest sense. Maybe not by blood, but in God’s eyes they were. And God’s eyes had to supersede biological guidelines.

“Come with me,” she heard Thomas say.

Then his strong arm pulled her from her seat, and although tears made her vision hazy, she could tell that he was leading her through the living room and out the front door. She knew his logic. Thomas didn’t want to chance that Arielle or Sam, who had been in his room drawing since dinner, would walk into the dining room area and see her weeping. He probably didn’t want Joanne to see it
either. Once they were out on the porch, he led Patrice even farther, assisting her down the steps and out into the yard. When they were safely hidden on the side the house, Thomas took her in his arms and held her until her tears ceased.

“This is worse than I thought, isn’t it?” There was an uncommon edge of fear in his voice.

Reluctantly, Patrice pulled away from the security of his embrace. The sun had begun to set, but there was still enough light for her to see her father’s face. “I slapped him.” When she whispered the words, she felt Thomas’s body stiffen. “I slapped him, and now he’s avoiding me.”

“Slapped him? Why? What happened?”

As difficult as saying “I slapped him” had been, it had been the easy part. Patrice bit her tongue as hard as she could stand it. Although it was nearly seventy-five degrees outside, she folded her arms across her body as if she were cold and turned away. She couldn’t look at Thomas when she said, “He kissed me.”

A total eclipse of silence enveloped them, and the skies seemed to suddenly darken. The little sunlight that had lingered just seconds ago was now gone. Patrice’s breath entrapped itself in the cavities of her chest as though it didn’t want to be released. Maybe her breath was disgusted with her too. Maybe it wanted her to die.

“When you say he kissed you …” Thomas’s voice trailed, but he found it again. “What kind of kiss are we talking about?” He sounded displeased.

Flashbacks filled her brain, reminding Patrice of what had really happened. Knowing that Thomas wasn’t taking the news well intimidated her, but the crisp pictures in her head wouldn’t allow her not to recant. “I kissed him. JT was receptive, but I was the one who kissed him.” The truth demanded that more tears trail her cheeks. Even her closed eyes couldn’t stop them.

Thomas tried again, but his words were slower this time. “When you say you kissed him”—he took a breath—“what kind of kiss are we talking about?”

“Not the kind a sister should give a brother.” Patrice still couldn’t face him. If she looked at her dad, her voice would lodge in her throat and choke the life out of her.

“Tell me what happened.” Thomas sounded tense, but since her back was turned to him, Patrice didn’t have a visual to go with the audible.

She was finally breathing again, but each inhale was shallow, and each exhale was weak. Patrice felt like a suffocation victim who was living on borrowed time. “We were just talking and catching each other up on where our lives had been over the years. I started telling him about Bo and the sordid details of our marriage, and somewhere in the mix of things, we…” She stopped. He’d just have to figure out the rest. She couldn’t go on.

When she heard a soft chuckle come from behind her, Patrice turned slowly and saw her father standing with his back against the house and laughing. The sudden change in his demeanor baffled her. What was so funny? Couldn’t he see that this demon was haunting her? His earlier disappointment had stung her, but his new amusement was on the brink of making her angry.

“Maybe we’ve started some sort of family tradition.” He had to be speaking to her, but it sounded more like he was talking to himself.

Patrice started not to respond because she had no idea what to say to that. But when Thomas didn’t offer any other commentary, she said, “What tradition?”

He stood straight and jammed his hands in his pants pockets, at the same time, looking up at the quarter moon that hovered in the sky. “Did I ever tell you how me and your mother met?”

Patrice’s eyes narrowed. Surely he wasn’t about to say what she thought he was about to say. Her reply was guarded. “No, sir.”

“We were raised in the same foster care home for a couple of years.”

Patrice gasped. She’d often wondered why she’d never met either set of grandparents. She’d just assumed that Thomas and Joanne’s parents were deceased. The idea that they’d not had stable parents never occurred to her. The revelation rendered her speechless.

“Joanne was told that her mother was very young when she had her, and her family forced her to give up the child for adoption. So your mom was in foster care her whole life. She was never adopted. On the other hand, my story was a little different. My biological parents had five children, but we were all taken away because our home life was unstable and frankly, dangerous. We were severely abused as children.”

Patrice gasped again as he rolled up his sleeve to reveal his shoulder. She’d seen the marking several times over the years, but had never bothered to inquire about it. Patrice already knew what he was going to say.

“See this big scar? That comes from being burned by an iron. My dad did that when I failed to clean out the garage one Saturday. Getting burned was a regular means of punishment for me and my sisters and brothers. Matches, cigarettes, hot water, irons … whatever hot object my dad could get his hands on. One Friday evening, he turned on the gas stove and heated up the eye, then he turned off the flame and made one of my older brothers put his hand on the eye.”

Patrice placed a hand over her mouth. For starters, the visual that Thomas was painting was horrific. Secondly, this was the first time she’d heard him speak of having siblings.

“When Alton went to school that Monday and couldn’t even hold a pencil because his hand was so blistered, the teacher reported
it, and the state sent out a crew to check out our house. They inspected all three of us boys and my two sisters from head to toe just like the state folks used to periodically do with you and the other kids we kept here. The difference was that in my childhood home, they had a reason to be suspicious. All of us had questionable burn marks and welts. The welts had been left behind by the thorned switches that Mama used to beat us with. We were taken from them the same day, and I’ve never seen them since. I was the next to the youngest child. I was seven at the time.”

“Daddy.” Patrice walked up to him, linked her arm through his, and then leaned her head on his shoulder. “That’s a ghastly story. Why haven’t you ever told me this before?”

He shrugged, causing her head to raise and lower. “It was a lifetime ago, and I don’t like talking about it. My whole family kind of turned bitter toward each other. Crazy as it may sound, my two sisters and my oldest brother blamed Alton for breaking up the family. They said that if he hadn’t told the teacher the truth about what happened to his hand, we never would have been taken from Mom and Dad … like staying with them was a better option.” Thomas shook his head. “We all ended up in separate foster homes, and even as we grew up into adulthood, amends were never made. I was the only one who would keep in contact with Alton, and I always tried to convince him that none of what happened was his fault, but I was outnumbered by those who blamed him 100 percent. I think the guilt haunted him his whole life. He ended up being a substance abuser and eventually died. JT was five when he died.” Thomas’s eyes darted toward Patrice. “You would have been nine, I guess. Sam wouldn’t have even been born yet.”

“That’s so sad.” Patrice’s heart went out to him.

“Yes, it is.” Despite it all, Thomas managed a smile. “But I always look at the bright side … and believe it or not, there is one.
If I’d never been burned, beaten, taken from my home, separated from my siblings, and sent to foster care, I probably never would have met Joanne. We were fourteen and fifteen when we landed in the same home and we lived there until I graduated high school and went off to college. A year later after she graduated, she followed me. The rest is history.” He sported a full grin now. “And if all of that had never taken place, Joanne and I never would have been blessed to have a hand in raising you and Sam and JT.” He faced her and cupped her cheeks in his hands. “Regardless of what it looks like, Romans 8:28 is still right, sweetheart. All things work together for good to them that love God.’”

Patrice stared back at him through the dusk. “But what about this …
thing
with me and JT? Are you saying that it’s okay?”

Thomas released her face and smiled into the air. Then he looked back at her again. “If I think it was okay for me and your mom—which I do—then I can’t say that it’s not okay for you and JT.” He laughed a little. “I have to admit that as the man who played the role of father to both of you, it’s a strange pill to chew and an even stranger one to swallow. If I’d been the author of your lives, I wouldn’t have written the story quite like this. But then again, that’s probably why God is the best man for that job. He knows what’s best for us.”

Patrice didn’t know what to think. She felt a sense of great relief, but along with that, she felt mounting fear. With her parents’ blessing, she could no longer use the family thing as an excuse for not acting on her feelings for Josiah. But after what she’d done … after demeaning him with a slap to his face, she had no idea what he thought of her. Maybe it had just been a moment of weakness for him. Maybe he had never wanted a relationship with her outside of a brother-sister one. With the way she’d carried on, he might not even want that one anymore. When Thomas touched her arm,
Patrice became aware that he was still talking.

“I imagine that if I ran down the folks who sheltered me and Joanne all those years ago and asked them what they thought of us getting married, they’d have to get used to the sound of it too. But the bottom line is that you and JT are not legally related. We only adopted one child, and that was Sam. By the time we did that, you and JT were already gone. If we had adopted you, then we’d have a problem.”

“Only if you’d adopted JT too,” Patrice added.

Thomas smiled and pulled her in for another hug. “On the bright side, I can say this. If you and JT end up together for the long haul, I’ll have no reservations that both of you were blessed with a wonderful mate.”

Long haul?
Patrice grimaced into the fabric of his shirt. She liked Josiah, and she liked him a lot. She was more attracted to him than she had been to any man in her past; including Bogart. But Thomas was using the term
long haul
prematurely. She first had to find out where Josiah’s heart was.

“I can’t think of a better woman for him,” Thomas continued, “I can’t think of a better man for you, and I can’t think of a better set of parents for Arielle.”

Set of parents?
There he was again talking like it was a done deal. Regardless of her caution, Patrice couldn’t help remembering how good Josiah had been with Arielle and how crazy her daughter now was about her Uncle JT. The thought almost made her smile, but she pushed it out of her head before it had a chance to tug at the corners of her lips. She couldn’t allow herself to think that far in advance. Not now. Not before breaking the frozen wall of ice that she’d built between her and Josiah. But how was she going to do that?