“Not that I’m aware of,” Cooper said. “But hey, you never know.”
Beaujelais laughed, a soft, wheezing sound. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. You never do know. But I shouldn’t be laughin’, I should be offerin’ you my condolences. Awful accident. Real tragedy.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could fax me a copy of the Taylors’ will,” Cooper said.
“What’s that?” Beaujelais said. “Fax? No, sir, no faxes sent or received outta this office. No, sir, no can do.”
“Then, please, will you read it to me?” Cooper said.
“Why sure,” the old man said. “We’ll have a readin’ when you and the missus come down for the funeral.”
Cooper closed his eyes. “Mr. Beaujelais,” he said. “I’m taking care of making the funeral arrangements. But I can’t do that until I know where and even
if
the Taylors wanted to be buried. I’d also like it if you could give me the names and phone numbers of Carla’s relatives, her parents, whatever . . .”
“You’re it, son,” Beaujelais said. “Carla’s mama rolled into this town about twenty-five years ago, with lil’ Carla in tow. Fine lookin’ woman, yes sir. But she never talked about where they came from, and no one ever came lookin’ for ’em. She’s over at Holly Hills Home.”
“Carla’s mother is still alive?” Cooper asked. “But you said—”
“Alive in a manner of speakin’,” Beaujelais said. “She’s completely vacated the upstairs rooms, bats in the belfry, short nearly the entire deck of cards, if you know what I mean. Alzheimer’s, I believe. Don’t make no difference telling her about Carla’s death. She don’t know Carla from the Easter Bunny. Damned shame. At any rate, your wife and the two li’l ones are the sole beneficiaries of the will.”
Cooper felt the room tilt. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “The two little
whats
?”
“Chill’n, of course,” the lawyer said, his tone implying that all Northerners were damn fools.
“Chill’n,” Cooper repeated.
Children.
Oh, God! “The children are alive?”
“Jumpin’ Jerusalem,” Beaujelais said. “You didn’t know that?”
“No! My God. I was told they were in the car—”
“They were stayin’ at a neighbor’s house while Brad and Carla went to Memphis for the weekend,” Beaujelais said.
The kids were alive! They were
alive—
“As of this afternoon,” the lawyer continued, “they’ll be placed in foster care. That’s where they’ll be until you and the missus can come pick ’em up.”
Cooper was floored. “Pick them up?”
“You and your wife have been named the legal guardians in the will,” Beaujelais explained. “As the only competent living relatives, the court will have no problem appointing you—”
“Wait a minute,” Cooper said. His mind was working overtime. Brad and Carla’s kids
hadn’t
been in the car at the time of the wreck. That was
great
news. But as great as that news was, there was no way he and Josie could take two children, there was just simply no way. God, these kids had just lost their parents. They would be needing a massive amount of emotional support and attention. They’d need more, much more than Cooper and Josie could give them. “There’s got to be someone more suitable down there in Tennessee who can become the guardians for these kids.”
“Oh dear,” Beaujelais said. “You don’t want ’em.”
“I didn’t say that,” Cooper objected. “It’s just that . . . these kids don’t know us, Mr. Beaujolais. It’s true that Josie’s their aunt, but sending them to live with us would be little better than shipping them off to stay with strangers. There must be
someone
else. Someone they know. A cousin,
someone
. . .”
Cooper calmed himself. He made himself relax his shoulders and sit back in Josie’s chair.
“There are
no
other relatives, Mr. McBride,” Beaujelais said, a touch coldly. “But if you are not in a position, either financially or otherwise, to take these youngsters, I can notify an adoption agency.”
“Friends,” Cooper said. “Brad and Carla must’ve had some close friends . . .”
“Not that I know of,” the lawyer said. “They kept pretty much to themselves.”
Cooper wouldn’t allow himself to get frustrated. That wouldn’t help at all. If these kids were going to be forced to live with strangers, God help them, those strangers ought to be people who had the time and space for them. People who
wanted
to adopt and care for children. “Lucy’s what? Three now?” he asked.
“Four,” Beaujelais said. “Ben, he’s, let’s see, a li’l over nine months.”
Cooper made a few notes on his pad.
“Guess you weren’t close,” the old man said.
“No, we weren’t,” Cooper said. “I only met Brad and Carla once, and that was five years ago, at my wedding.”
“Like I said,” Beaujelais said, “if you’re not financially able to care for these chill’n—”
“It’s not the money,” Cooper interrupted. “It’s the
time.
Josie works twelve, fourteen hours a day. There’s no day care center in the world that would agree to take a kid for that long. And there’s no kid in the world who deserves to be passed off that way.”
“So, be a liberated man,” Beaujelais cackled.
“You
stay home and take care of the li’l ones.”
“Thanks a lot,” Cooper said.
“Not much you could do if you didn’t have the money to take the kids,” the lawyer said. “But the way I see it, lack of time’s not a problem. Just rearrange your schedule.”
“Right,” Cooper said, shaking his head. “Look, do me a favor and check into this adoption agency thing. Do we get to have a say about who adopts the kids? I mean, can we check the prospective parents out?”
“I’ll find that out for you,” the lawyer said. “And I’ll call Billy-Bob Jameson over at the funeral home and fill him in on the Taylor’s interment wishes.”
“Thank you,” Cooper said, hanging up the phone.
His shoulders were tight again, and he rolled them, trying to loosen himself up. God, he could just picture how disrupted their life would be by a four-year-old kid and a nine-month-old infant.
He and Josie wouldn’t be able to stay overnight at the office, so they’d have to add the commute
and
the time it took to drop the kids off and pick them up from day care onto an already too long day.
Having the kids would make their lives impossible. And that wasn’t even figuring in the lack of privacy, the amount of energy and attention young children needed, and all the things Cooper knew he couldn’t even begin to imagine, never having been around young children.
God, but what was he doing, thinking only about how
their
lives would be altered. Lucy’s and Ben’s lives had already been tragically changed.
They
deserved a little consideration here.
But no matter how Cooper looked at it, he couldn’t see how bringing those kids here to New York to live was going to help any of them. No matter how he looked at it, he simply couldn’t see how he and Josie could give Ben and Lucy the amount of time and love they were going to need.
No, there had to be another solution. There
had
to be. It just called for some creative thinking. And he and Josie were the king and queen of creative thinking, that was for sure.
This was going to be a piece of cake.
Cooper stood up and went to give Josie the good news. Ben and Lucy were alive.
SIX
J
OSIE’S STOMACH
was in a knot as the 727 started its final descent into Nashville. There was so much to be sick about, she wasn’t quite sure which was making her feel the worst—the plane ride or the fact that she was unwillingly returning to her home state after more than ten years away.
She’d had enough of small town living and small town poverty to last a lifetime. It was true that Nashville was a city, but geographically it was much too close to the town she’d grown up in. As long as she was within a few hours drive of that little one-stop-sign town in the mountains, she’d be susceptible to its pull. A small town was like quicksand, Josie’s mother used to tell her. It was always waiting to pull you down, drag you under.
Josie’s mother had been married at seventeen, pregnant with Brad. Josie had come along a few years later, and from the time she was old enough to understand, her mother had urged her to get out, to break free, to escape the endless cycle of small town life. Don’t make the mistakes I did, Josie’s mother had repeatedly told her. Give yourself a chance to live your own life before you give everything up and have a family.
Get far away from here, her mother had urged her. Go to college, be self-reliant. After all, you’re the only one you can really count on. And when that small town boy promises you a house with a little picket fence and all the babies you could ever want, don’t be fooled. Babies may be sweet, but they’ll weigh you down. And that picket fence is nothing but the bars of a jail, painted a pretty color. Run fast and don’t look back.
Josie had taken her mother’s advice to heart. And when she’d left Tennessee, she’d sworn she’d never come back. ’Course, she hadn’t taken into account the possibility that she’d need to return to bury her brother and his wife.
Lord, both her fear of flying and her discomfort at having to return to her former home seemed stupid, petty, and laughably small in comparison to the dreadful fact that Brad and Carla were dead.
Dead. As in gone, good-bye, the end. No second chances, no second tries. No do-overs. Not this time.
Brad had wanted Josie and Cooper to come visit. He’d called every so often with invitations. But both Josie’s work schedule and her reluctance to return to Tennessee kept her from making any plans with him.
God, she hadn’t even laid eyes on her niece and nephew. Josie hadn’t even
talked
to Brad since before the new baby was born, more than nine months ago. She’d gotten the news about Brad’s son on her answering machine, and had left a message of congratulations on
his
machine. She had sent a gift—something baby-blue that one of her secretaries had picked out.
Lord, her stomach burned. The pain was white hot and sharp and relentless as hell. Staunchly, she ignored it, the same way she ignored the fact that the huge jet was screaming toward that ridiculously tiny airstrip on the ground.
Cooper reached over and took her hand. He didn’t smile at her, but his eyes were calm and confident. Josie held his gaze as if it were a lifeline. With Cooper by her side, she knew she was going to get through this. Somehow they’d pack up her brother’s things, make arrangements to sell his little farmhouse, see his two small children placed in a loving home—
Josie felt her eyes fill with tears, the way they did every time she thought about Ben and Lucy. Ben was tiny, only nine months old. As he grew up, he would never really remember his mother and father. If he missed them, he’d never he able to verbalize it. But Lucy . . .
Lucy was four. Lucy was old enough to feel the loss, but perhaps not old enough to understand.
Hell, Josie was thirty years old, and
she
still didn’t understand why Brad and Carla had had to die. But she understood what death meant, oh yeah, she understood
that
all too clearly. Her own mother had died when she was only eleven, and that loss still haunted her.
But a
four
-year-old . . . Could a four-year-old really understand
why
her mommy and daddy could never come back home?
“We’ve landed,” Cooper said softly into her ear.
Sure enough, Josie felt the jostling of the plane as its wheels bumped along the landing strip, and heard the scream of the engines as the jet slowed.
“You okay?” Cooper handed her a tissue and Josie wiped her eyes then blew her nose.
“I can’t stop thinking about those children, Coop,” she said.
Cooper watched her dark eyes fill with tears again.
“Brad named us legal guardians in his will,” she said. “He wanted us to take care of Ben and Lucy—”
“We are,” he interrupted gently. “We
are
taking care of them. We’re going to make sure they’re adopted by people who will love them and have time for them and—”
“That’s not what Brad wanted and you know it,” she said. She closed her eyes, but still the tears leaked out. “Lord, Brad’s dead, and I
still
don’t have time for him.”
Cooper couldn’t do anything but let her cry. He had no magical words to say that would make her feelings of guilt disappear. “There’s just no way we can take these kids, babe,” he said. “We just can’t do it. Besides, we’re strangers. Ben and Lucy don’t know us. It’ll be best for them to stay with someone they know, someone they’re familiar with.”
The seat belt light went off with a ping, but Josie didn’t make a move to stand up. “I don’t want to get off the plane,” she said. “It’s like, if I don’t get off, then I won’t have to deal with any of this.”
Cooper smiled. “If you don’t get off, you’re going to have to deal with another plane ride right away.”
“It would be worth it,” Josie said. “It would really be worth it.”
It took a little over two hours to get from Nashville to Walterboro. Cooper drove the rental car, following the directions Annie had clearly typed out. Route 40 east, then north on a secondary road, heading toward the rolling hills of Kentucky. According to his map, Walterboro was just south of the Kentucky border.
Josie was asleep as he rolled into town—if you could even call it a town. Main Street held a small general store, a row of dilapidated houses, several of which were professional buildings, a run-down bar and grill, and an ancient-looking five and dime. A weather-beaten church sat on the corner in front of a dusty park. The paint on the park benches was split and peeling, and weeds grew around a rusted swing set that no longer had any swings. On the other side of the park was a boarded-up Dairy Delight. The building was in the shape of a giant clown’s head, with the roof as its hat, and the front window its mouth. The once brightly-colored paint was faded and worn, yet the clown still grinned happily, its giant eyes staring into the sky. It stood as a silent memorial to good times gone by.
Josie was absolutely going to hate this place.
She stirred, opening her eyes as they were directly across from the giant clown head.
“Oh Lord!” she said. “What the hell is
that
?”
“Welcome to Walterboro,” Cooper said, pulling to the side of the road. “Do you want to stop and meet the lawyer, or drive out to the house first?”
“I thought Brad lived in town,” Josie said, rubbing her eyes.
Cooper was staring at the Dairy Delight with nearly morbid fascination. “According to Annie’s directions,” he said, tearing his eyes away long enough to look down at the paper, “we stay on Main Street about four more miles and take a right onto River Drive. The house is a half mile down that street.”
“You decide,” Josie said. She turned in her seat to look out of the rear window at the rest of the town. “God, is this place the pits, or what?”
Somewhere in the distance a dog began to bark.
“Aha,” Cooper said. “A life form. I was beginning to think Walterboro was deserted, like this was an episode of
The Twilight Zone
or something.”
Josie pushed her dark curls back from her face. “This
is The Twilight Zone,
” she said. She gestured to the clown. “Things like
that
couldn’t possibly be real.”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said, looking back at the clown. “There’s something about it that grabs me. I mean, it’s such a counterpoint to the architecture of the church—”
Josie laughed. It was the first time in days that Cooper had even seen her smile. “Cooper McBride, don’t you dare even
think
about designing buildings that have ears for doors.”
“Actually, I was thinking that your reception area needs an overhaul and—”
“Let’s not go out to Brad’s house today,” Josie interrupted him. “Let’s go find that motel and check in. Then I want to find out where the children are before we go to the funeral.”
Her face was still so pale, and God, she looked so tired. What she
really
needed was more sleep. Cooper had woken up several times in the night to find her awake and staring at the ceiling. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to make love. All he could do was hold her, so that’s all he did.
The office of Travis Beaujelais, Esq., hadn’t been redecorated in at least fifty years. Large-slatted blinds covered the windows, one of which was opened a crack to let in fresh air. Heavy wooden file cabinets from the Paleolithic Era lined one wall, and a huge oak desk sat in the middle of the worn hardwood floor. A painting of President Roosevelt hung above the desk—probably an effective means of determining exactly when the office was first set up.
“The chill’n have been placed in temporary foster care,” the elderly lawyer said. He had a wild shock of thick white hair that contrasted with his leathery, tanned face. He had to be pushing eighty, but his brown eyes were shrewd and alert. Cooper had the sense that not much got past this guy. Beaujelais was a big man, too. In his younger days, he had probably been even taller than Cooper. But time had given him a stoop. Despite that, he was an impressive-looking man. He leaned back in his leather chair, studying the two of them.
Josie was perched on the edge of her own seat, looking strung as tight as a piano string. Cooper felt Beaujelais’ eyes linger on his ponytail and on his earring.
“The social worker has recommended that the li’l ones not attend the funeral,” Beaujelais continued. “It’s to be a closed casket ceremony, and she feels that might be even more frightenin’ to li’l Lucy.”
“How are the children doing?” Josie asked.
“As well as to be expected,” Beaujelais drawled. “Considerin’ nobody wants ’em.”
Josie’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t see
you
volunteering, sir,” she said defensively.
He chuckled. “No, ma’am,” he said. “You sure don’t.”
Cooper shifted in his seat. “What about the possibilities of getting them adopted?” he asked. “What did you find out?”
The lawyer searched his messy desk top for a file. “Here we go,” he said, finding and opening it. He took a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and slipped them onto his nose. “You
can
have a say in choosing the adoptive parents,” he said, reading his notes. He looked at Cooper and Josie over the tops of his glasses. “But once the chill’n are adopted, you and the missus must give up all rights to visitation, et cetera.”
“But I’m their aunt,” Josie protested. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Once the chill’n are adopted,” Beaujelais pointed out, “they’ll have new aunts and uncles.”
Josie met Cooper’s eyes. She didn’t like this. He could tell from the set of her mouth and the tenseness in her shoulders.
“I’d also like to mention that the adoption agency has had some trouble placing groups of chill’n,” Beaujelais said. “It would be far easier findin’ adoptive parents for each child individually.”
“No.” Josie shook her head. “They have to stay together.”
“Will you call the agency and have them start looking?” Cooper asked, trying to quell the flicker of worry that had started at Beaujelais’ words. What if it turned out to be difficult to find adoptive parents for these children? What if . . . “As long as we have the right to turn people down, we may as well get the proceedings started.”
The lawyer nodded, making a note on the papers in the file. “I’ll call this afternoon,” he said.
“Will you also make arrangements to sell the house?” Josie asked. “And put the proceeds into a trust fund for Ben and Lucy?”
Beaujelais made another note on a legal pad. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“When can we see the children?” Josie said.
He looked at his pocket watch. “It may be too late after the funeral,” he said. “But I’ll set it up for you to visit them tomorrow, if you like.”
Josie lay in bed, listening to Cooper talk on the phone. He’d started calling his New York City friends the minute they’d gotten back to their motel room after the funeral that evening. His briefcase was out in front of him on the tiny table that sat by the window, and he made notes on a piece of paper.
He was still wearing his suit pants, but he’d taken off his jacket and tie as he’d first started to dial the phone. His white dress shirt came off during phone call number two, and he pulled his hair out of its tight ponytail during the third call he’d made.
Now she watched as he went through his spiel again for what was probably the twelfth time. Cooper quickly summed up the tragedy of Brad and Carla’s death, and the problem he and Josie had regarding the children.
“We can’t take care of ’em,” he said honestly. “We’re looking for someone who would be willing to adopt them
and
still let Josie keep her status as the kids’ aunt.” He was quiet for a minute, listening. “Four and nine months,” he said. He laughed. “Yeah, thanks,
amigo.
Let me know if you think of anyone, okay? Leave a message on my machine—I’ll be calling in regularly.”
Cooper hung up the phone and rubbed his hands across his face.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” Josie asked quietly. “You’re worried we’re not going to find anyone to take them.”
Cooper sighed. He had never been to a funeral so sparsely attended in his entire life. Ten people had attended. Ten, including Josie and himself and Travis Beaujelais. Four of the other seven were older men from Brad’s office. Two of the remaining three looked like mutants from another planet, and another, a youngish woman, had turned out to be a good friend of Carla’s. Unfortunately, she already had seven children of her own. At Cooper’s suggestion she take on Lucy and Ben, she simply laughed.