When Love Comes Home. Arlene James

“Look, I’d love to deliver the good news, but this needs to be done in person ASAP, and Chloe has a jazz band program at three.”

      Grady knew without even looking at his watch that it was at least half past two in the afternoon now. No way could Dan get to Nobb, where Paige Ellis lived, and back to Bentonville, where his daughters went to school, by three o’clock. If he skipped out on Chloe’s performance, Dan’s wife, Katie, was liable to skin him alive. Katie wasn’t shy about demanding that Dan make his family a priority. Grady didn’t understand how his brother could be so disgustingly happy in his marriage, but he was fond enough of Dan to be glad that it was so.

      After a few more minutes of discussion, Grady sighed in resignation, gathered up the file folder and strode back to his office, grumbling under his breath. Just thinking about Paige Ellis made him feel even more hulking and plodding than usual.

      Thanks to an expensively outfitted home gym, he was in better shape than most thirty-nine-year-olds, but that didn’t keep him from feeling too big and too clumsy. Standing a bare inch past six feet in his size twelve shoes, his square, blocky frame hard packed with two hundred pounds of pure muscle, he wasn’t exactly a giant, but he’d felt huge and oafish since puberty, when he’d dwarfed the other boys. In the company of some delicate, feminine little creature like Paige Ellis, he felt like a lumbering monster.

      Entering his office, Grady turned down the lights, crossed the thick, moss-green carpet, dropped the folder onto his desk and switched on a lamp. He sat down in his oversize brown leather chair, tilted the bronze shade just so and opened the folder. He began thumbing through the notes and documents, scanning the material and jotting down notes as he went.

      His ability to read quickly and comprehend completely was his greatest asset and brought in a considerable amount of income in consulting fees. Other attorneys knew that Grady by himself could accomplish more in the way of research than a roomful of clerks. Consequently he spent a good deal of his time alone at his desk.

      Grady reached the end of the last page in the file. After making a copy of his notes for the folder, he tucked it into the file and carried the whole thing to the office of Dan’s terribly efficient personal secretary.

      Janet was none too fond of Grady. She stared at the file that he placed on her desk, then looked up at him, her pale pink frown seeming to take issue with his very existence.

      “What is this?”

      “Case file.”

      She blinked at him, her lashes too black and clumped together. “I can see that it’s a case file, but why are you giving it to me?”

      “You’re Dan’s secretary.”

      She let out a long-suffering sigh and narrowed her eyes at him, her lips compressed into a flat line.

      Janet had given up complaining that Grady didn’t have his own personal secretary, but she made her displeasure known by grudgingly performing those tasks which he did not perform for himself or push off on the young receptionist. Grady had made a halfhearted attempt to find a male secretary at one point, but without success. He’d gotten by with a part-time male law clerk from the University of Arkansas School of Law. Having no personal secretary was an inconvenience, but he had no desire to stutter and stammer his way around a strange female.

      Janet flipped open the file folder and checked the contents for herself. “Ah. The Ellis file.”

      Grady’s face heated.

      Without a word the secretary handed over the necessary warrants and writs that would be required to prove identities and custody assignments to the South Carolina authorities. She also passed Grady a map and a pair of printed sheets showing the next day’s available flights to and from South Carolina via the regional airport and Tulsa, some ninety minutes away. Then she immediately rose and carried the folder into the back room, where it would be swiftly and efficiently filed.

      Donning a camel tan cashmere coat that reached midcalf, Grady took the elevator down to the parking lot and a cold, drizzling rain, briefcase in tow. He slung the briefcase on to the seat of his Mercedes and followed it, resisting the urge to huddle inside his coat until the heater started blowing warm air.

      While navigating the forty-some miles between Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the tiny community of Nobb tucked into the foothills of the Ozarks to the northwest, Grady mulled over what he would say to Paige Ellis, much as he would have thought out an opening statement. He found the Ellis place on the edge of the village just past a pair of silos and a big, weathered barn. A dirt lane snaked upward slightly between gnarled hickories and majestic oaks, past tumbledown fencing and rusting farm implements to a small, white clapboard house.

      After parking his sedan next to a midsize, seven-year-old SUV in dire need of a good washing, Grady stepped out of the car. A scruffy, well-fed black lab got up from a rug on the porch and lumbered lazily down the steep front steps to greet Grady with a sniff.

      Dan had judged it best not to call before arriving, and Grady hadn’t questioned that decision. Paige Ellis worked from her home as a medical transcriptionist and kept regular hours, so she was apt to be available on any given weekday. Suddenly, though, Grady wondered if it was too late to warn her that he was about to descend upon her. Then the dog abruptly opened its yap and did that for him.

      The seemingly placid dog howled an alarm that could have put the entire nation on alert. The lab couldn’t have been more vociferous if Grady had shown up wearing a black mask and hauling a crate full of hissing cats.

      Feeling like a felon, Grady hotfooted it to the house, practically leapt the steps leading up to the porch and skidded to a halt in front of the door, which needed a coat of white paint. He saw no bell, but a brass knocker with a cross-shaped base had been attached to the door at eye level and engraved with the words, As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.

      Somehow Grady was not surprised to find this evidence that Paige Ellis was a believer. Dan and his family were Christians, active in their local church and given to praying about matters, as was his father, but Grady himself was something of a secret skeptic. He didn’t see any point in arguing about it, but he privately wondered if God even existed. If so, why would He let so many bad things happen, like his mother’s death and Paige Ellis’s son being abducted by her ex-husband?

      With the dog still barking to beat the band, Grady reached for the knocker, but before his hand touched the cool metal, the door yanked open. There stood an old fellow with more balding head than sooty, graying hair. Slightly stooped and dressed in a plaid shirt, khakis, suspenders and laced boots, his potbellied weight supported on one side by a battered cane, he swept Grady with faded brown eyes recessed deeply behind a hooked nose that had been broken at least once. Apparently satisfied, he looked past Grady to yell at the dog.

      “Shut up, Howler!”

      To Grady’s relief, the aptly named dog seemed to swallow his last bark, then calmly padded toward the porch.

      “Matthias Porter,” the old man said, stacking his gnarled hands atop the curved head of his cane. “Who’re you?”

      Grady had at least four inches and fifty pounds on Porter, and that cane wasn’t for show, but the way the old fellow held himself told Grady that he was a scrapper and the self-appointed protector of this place. Grady put out his hand, aware of the dog moving toward the rug on one end of the porch.

      “Grady Jones. I’m here to see—”

      “Jones,” the older man interrupted, “you’re Paige’s attorney, ain’t you?”

      Grady nodded. “Actually, my brother, Dan—”

      Porter didn’t wait to hear about Dan or anything else. Backing up, he waved Grady into the house, saying, “I don’t shake. Too painful. Arthritis in my hands. And you’re letting in cold air.”

      His ears still ringing from the dog’s howling, Grady stepped forward and found himself in a small living room. He took in at a glance the braided rag rug on the dull wood floor, the old-fashioned sofa covered in a worn quilt, the yellowed shade on the spotted