The Barefoot Believers Page 23

“No.” Jo took a deep breath then went from not looking at anything in particular to focusing on her mother’s expectant gaze. “No, I do not want to sell the house. No, I do not want to go back.”

  “Not go back? I didn’t know that was on the table.” Dodie sliced through a freshly made tuna sandwich from corner to corner then set it, on a plate, in front of Kate. The whole while she never took her worried gaze from Jo. “But you have a full, exciting life in Atlanta. You have your work and your…all those business deals you’ve told me about. And, uh, didn’t your boss—”

  “Listen to yourself, Mom.” Jo paced the length of the kitchen then pivoted. “My work. My deals. My boss. That’s hardly a whole life, is it? Coming here made me realize that.”

  Kate reached out to touch the photograph with two fingers then looked up at Jo. “Meeting Travis Brandt had nothing to do with that?”

  “Travis?” Mom’s eyes lit up. “A man? You met a man?”

  “A minister, Mom,” Jo emphasized.

  “Travis Brandt, Mom.” Kate waited a moment to allow that to sink in.

  Dodie looked at her daughters, the photo, the offer, then at Kate again. She shook her head.

  “He’s a sports guy? On TV? Really cute. All-American type. Dated supermodels. I know you saw his picture in magazines.”

  “Not the magazines in your office, Scat-Kat, those things had to be at least five years old.”

  “Don’t be so quick to look down your nose at my outdated magazines, that’s probably about the time this guy’s picture was everywhere.”

  “What happened to him? Not some sort of scandal, I hope.”

  “No. I get the feeling a scandal you would have remembered.” Kate lifted her leg to rest her foot on the chair across from her. “He just walked away from it all. The girls, the money, the fame.”

  Dodie shook her head.

  “That doesn’t matter, anyway. That’s not who he is anymore.” Jo held up her hand.

  She got it now. In this instant, almost two grand worth of shoes lined up before her and the meaninglessness of her life spelled out by her mother moments earlier, she got it.

  Standing here, hearing people talk about who Travis had been as though he had no more dimension than the photographs they had seen him in, she got it.

  Looking at the picture of her father and herself and her sister and seeing in his eyes that he had not chosen their baby sister and rejected her but that he had chosen himself, he had chosen an unfilled life and to cause pain to those he should have protected, she got it.

  Thinking of all the possibilities still open to her, knowing the man Travis had become, Jo got it. Got how he could walk away from the emptiness of money, fame and, yes, even adoring supermodels just to end up flipping flapjacks in the fellowship hall. “What matters is that he is a good guy.”

  “And you like him, this good guy?” Mom asked.

  “Yes. But that’s not the reason I don’t want to go back to that life in Atlanta.”

  Kate scoffed.

  “Okay, it’s not the whole reason.”

  “But if you don’t go back, won’t that nice Mike Powers be angry with you?” Dodie wrung her hands.

  “In the first place Paul Powers is not nice. And furthermore I no longer feel the need to impress him at all costs.”

  “But you were doing so well,” Mom said softly.

  “Don’t you see? My work is not enough anymore.” She thought of the chapel, of the needs she could help meet there. She thought of bringing together women throughout the community to form a worship-and-action team that would meet on the beach. With their bare feet in the sand and their hands ready to serve the Lord. “Mom, I am feeling a pull to do God’s work.”

  “What does that mean?” Kate sat up straighter than before. Her intense features echoed the expression of their father in the photograph before them. “How could you possibly know for sure what to do? People spend their whole lives trying to do good, to do the right thing when faced with life’s monumental questions, Jo. How can you be here in Santa Sofia a matter of days and presume you know what you should do with the rest of your life like that?”

  Kate the perfect didn’t understand? A wave of forgiveness washed through Jo. Forgiveness for her sister, her father and even her mother. All of them had been seeking, she realized. Trying to find the right path. They had no idea what they wanted or how to find it.

  They had not intended to make her feel unwanted, but how could they not? They, like far too many people in the world, felt unwanted themselves.

  Jo marveled that somehow it had come to her. Through Travis. Through her own anxiety. Through service.

  “It means that I feel that I can’t serve two masters. I can’t serve my own need to be the biggest and brightest and best in pursuit of money and recognition to assuage my own hurts and make me feel loved and serve the Lord and love others with all my heart.” Jo held up her hand to keep them from jumping in. “Some people can. But not me. It meant too much for me to try to bring the focus onto myself. I didn’t put my clients first, I put my numbers first, my deals, my place in the company.”

  Dodie set a second sandwich down. Through it all she had kept right on doing the mom thing, putting her kids’ needs first. Even the ones she did not understand. “I want to support you, sweetie. But…you’re giving up being a Realtor?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not the job that’s the issue, Mom. I can do or be anything but whatever I do, I have to get my priorities straight or none of it matters. I do not want to go back to my life the way it was in Atlanta.”

  “Jo, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Dodie looked to Kate as if Kate were the final determining factor in whether or not this news would be true or not.

  “Why? Mom!” Jo made her mother look at her and when she did, she reached out and put her hand on her mother’s soft upper arm to anchor her attention. “You’re the one who wanted to start life over here in Santa Sofia herself. You’re the one always saying ‘If you’re heading in the right direction, you have no reason to look back,’ aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, for the first time I am heading in the right direction, Mom. I thought you’d be happy.” For an instant the old insecurities arose. She wanted her mother to be pleased with her. To approve. But did she want it badly enough to waver on her new commitment? She thought of the chapel and the shoes and then of Travis and the talk they had had this morning. She took up Moxie’s offer and held it out. “But even if you don’t understand my decision, I’m sticking with it. If we’re taking a vote, mine is not to sell the cottage.”

  Dodie slid the paper from Jo’s hand. “Kate?”

  “If Jo stays here, I guess she can take care of you. I’m not going to do it.” The words had hardly left her lips when Kate gasped, put her hand over her mouth and sat there, blinking in complete shock at her own bluntness.

  “I never expected you would, my little Scat-Kat-Katie.” Mom laughed.

  Sure. Jo announced a turnaround in her life plans and Mom gives her grief. Kate does it and Mom…

  Jo narrowed her eyes at her sister, the way she had when they were kids and Kate had gotten all the attention. What she saw made her breath catch in the back of her throat. Where there had been pain in her sister’s face before, Jo now saw hurt there instead.

  There was a difference, Jo understood, and her heart went out to her sister for it.

  Mom gave Jo grief, sure, but Mom also gave Kate grief. It just came in another form.

  Jo looked at her mother, who had stuck out her lip in a half-teasing pout but whose eyes shone with concern and maybe a little fear as she looked from Kate to Jo and back again. Yeah, their mom gave them grief but they gave it right back to her again.

  Jo spread out her arms, her hands making a slashing motion. “This stops now.”

  “What?”

  “This…This…This whole cycle.” Jo took the paper and snatched up the old photo. “This whole way we have of jabb
ing at one another, then retreating and pretending it never happened, or we didn’t mean it, or somehow the other person is to blame for taking it wrong.”

  “We never—”

  “Mom, we always,” Kate corrected.

  “And now that we know this, or rather, that we have acknowledged it, we cannot go back.” Jo took a deep breath and exhaled. It felt good.

  “I don’t—” Dodie wrung her hands.

  “Sit down, Mom.” Jo pulled out a chair.

  “And take off those shoes,” Kate demanded.

  Dodie obeyed.

  The chunky shoes banged against the old floor as she kicked them off.

  Jo followed suit, even though tossing off her flip-flops did not have the same impact. What did she care? She wasn’t going to rely on shoes to make her statements anymore, anyway. “Mom. We cannot go back. We are finally headed in the right direction. We’ve been honest.”

  “O-okay,” Mom agreed. She didn’t look as if she wanted to agree but there it was.

  “I don’t want to sell the house,” Jo went on. “Kate does. Kate doesn’t want to take care of you and…neither do I.”

  “Jo!” Kate and Dodie spoke in unison.

  “But I will. As much as you need me to,” Jo went on. “And the best place to do that is right here in Santa Sofia. In this cottage on Dream Away Bay Court.”

  “I never asked you girls to take care of me,” Mom protested.

  “Yes, you did, Mom.” Kate said it first, carrying on what Jo had started with them dealing honestly with one another at last. “When you sold your condo, making yourself literally homeless. Then when you showed up at my office—an appointment you made—to announce your wild idea about coming down here. What do you call that?”

  “A plan. I called that a plan.”

  “As I recall, that plan involved friends?” Kate prodded.

  “They made other plans,” Dodie confessed.

  “Oh, Mom.” Jo came over and put her arms around her mother.

  Kate put her hand on Dodie’s.

  “Guess it wasn’t a very good plan, huh?” Dodie sighed, laughed a little, then picked up the old photo and looked at it, really looked at it, at last. “I can’t believe you found this after all these years. I thought it was lost for good.”

  “I put it in my treasure chest,” Kate said.

  “Hiding it or saving it?” Jo asked.

  Kate opened her mouth then shut it again, not giving an answer.

  Dodie turned a hopeful gaze to her oldest daughter. “And the other one?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “What other one?” Jo asked.

  “Mom took this one and didn’t get all of the new truck in it, so Dad took a second photo with Mom and Christina in it.” Kate put her hand on her mother’s arm. “It wasn’t in the box, though, Mom. I don’t know what happened to it.”

  “I do.” Moxie Weatherby stood in the back doorway, her eyes red and wide, and a picture frame clutched high against her chest. “It’s been hanging in Billy J’s Bait Shack Buffet for more than twenty years. Not that you could find it in the junk.”

  “Billy J had a picture of our mom and sister?” Jo tried to make sense of it.

  “No.” Moxie turned the frame around to show them all as she choked back a sob and managed to say, “The picture he had was of me and…and my mom.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “My birth father told my adoptive parents that you were an aunt and had no interest in finding me. He didn’t give a name or where this supposed aunt lived. We had no idea.” Moxie spoke to Dodie, despite the fact that Dodie could not seem to hear her words.

  The older woman sat in the kitchen, stunned, staring at the photos and shaking her head. “It can’t be. It just can’t be.”

  “Wait.” Jo put her hand to her forehead. “You were here in Santa Sofia all this time?”

  “My birth father left me with the Weatherbys when I was five. He gave them the right to adopt me and I assume that’s what happened. I have always used their name, I never knew my whole name before that. I think my birth father may have used aliases.”

  The other women all exchanged anxious and then knowing glances that all but confirmed they believed Moxie’s suspicion.

  Moxie pulled her shoulders up protectively but it did not shield her from her doubts and anxieties. What if she’d gotten it all wrong? What if she had it right but the Cromwells didn’t care? “I just know that this is the only remnant I’ve ever had of my life before the Weatherbys. It fits. It’s the companion to your photograph.”

  All of them stared at the two pictures now.

  “Isn’t it?” Moxie barely managed to whisper.

  Kate touched the faded old photo in the frame.

  Jo gaped at her in what could have been awe or maybe she was appalled at Moxie’s nerve at making this assumption. Moxie couldn’t tell.

  Dodie looked up at last.

  “Isn’t it?” Moxie asked again, pleaded really, for some answer. “Isn’t it me in that picture? Doesn’t that mean—”

  “Christina?” Dodie raised her trembling hand. “Is that really you?”

  “Molly Christina,” she murmured in what sounded as though her voice had had to travel from a long ways away. “They used to call me Molly Christina.”

  Tears streamed down Dodie’s round yet wrinkled cheeks, blurring the brilliance of the green of her eyes.

  “Yes. I can see where that would have come from.” Dodie dragged in a deep breath. “Molly was your grandmother Cromwell’s name.”

  “It’s true then?” Jo asked.

  “It’s true,” Kate confirmed.

  Then the room fell silent.

  Moxie had no idea what she had expected but it wasn’t this. Silence. Awkward, aching silence.

  The tightness in her chest pressed inward, closing, clamping. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. The greatest mystery of her life had been revealed and she had no idea what to do about it.

  Kate got up from her chair, her eyes searching, her whole body rigid as if she were restraining herself from actually bolting out of the room.

  Jo leaned forward, one hand on her mother’s arm, the other on one of the shoe boxes.

  Moxie took a step backward. “This is all so much to process, for all of us. Maybe I should—”

  “Christina. My Christina. My baby.” In the time it took for Dodie to say the words, she had Moxie wrapped in her arms. She said the name again and again as she kissed Moxie’s hair, her cheeks, even her fingers. At last she stepped back, took Moxie’s face in her hands, put her gaze in direct line with her newfound daughter’s and said, “I have been looking for you for your entire life.”

  “You have?”

  “There hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t cried for you, prayed for you, hoped for you. I always loved you, Christina. Always.”

  She’d always loved her. Always. All those years when Moxie had felt unsure and unlovable, someone had been out there praying for her, loving her. Moxie gasped and tears flowed freely from her eyes. “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.” Dodie hugged her close again. “Why do you think I kept this cottage? Why do you think we came down here every summer and sent our distant cousins the McGreggors here every winter?”

  “The McGreggors were your relation?” That was probably where Billy J had gotten the idea that the lady in the photograph was a relative but not her mother. “I…I don’t see what that has to do with looking for me.”

  “Because I knew at some point your father would bring you here. Between jobs, between relationships, he’d have to have a place to stay at some point and since he knew we only came down here once a year…” Dodie let Moxie fill in the blank.

  “But didn’t you look for me? Really look for me?” Moxie had been right here for most of her life. Though with homeschooling, and her fierce independent streak, not to mention that the Cromwells hadn’t come here in person for sixteen years, it might not have been as simple as i
t seemed.

  “I looked every year, though I have to admit, honey, I might have looked straight at you a time or two and never realized it. I was looking for a child who looked like Jo or Kate, and you look…”

  “Like you, Mom,” Jo observed. “Right down to your feet.”

  Every one of them looked down.

  Jo wriggled her chubby toes.

  Dodie did the same.

  Moxie felt compelled to wiggle hers, though no one could see through her shoes.

  Dodie looked up first and began smoothing back Moxie’s hair as she went on, “When I didn’t have any luck finding you in Santa Sofia, I used the revenue from the cottage to fund going places to search for you during the summer.”

  “That’s what you did on all those vacations by yourself?” Kate appeared absolutely incredulous.

  “Going places?” Moxie tried to imagine what she meant. “Like?”

  “Like places I knew your father had contacts or where he had talked of going. Mobile. Savannah. St. Louis. Nashville. You want evidence of all the places I went, it’s all in the rock garden.”

  Moxie lifted her head as though she could see through the walls to the odd assortment of ornaments. “You sent those souvenirs?”

  “I knew I’d find you one day and I wanted there to be a record to show you that I never gave up, Christina, um, Molly?”

  “Moxie. I like Moxie.”

  Dodie stroked her cheek. “I like it, too.”

  “What? She is our sister all of two minutes and you approve of her picking out her own nickname. Kate has like a thousand nicknames but no one ever gave me—”

  They all looked at Jo. She pressed her lips shut.

  That only lasted a few seconds before she broke into laughter.

  Jo opened her arms and threw them around Moxie. “I can’t believe this. I really can’t.”

  Moxie hugged her sister back.

  Her sister. It felt so weird and so wonderful to say it, even just in her head.

  When they pulled apart, Dodie slapped her hands together. “Sit, baby, we have so much to talk about. You want me to make you a sandwich?”

  “A…sandwich?” In context of the monumental discovery they’d just made, it seemed far too small a response. And just exactly the right response. They were family. This was her family. These were her sisters and this, her mom. Why wouldn’t they want to sit down and eat together? “I think a sandwich would be great.”