The Marriage Agenda. Allison Leigh

the big window at the front of the house, playing with the wooden blocks one of the uncles had given him for his first birthday six months before.

      Sam looked up. “How,” he said, beaming proudly at the crooked stacks of blocks in front of him.

      “Yes,” said Joleen, her chest suddenly tight. “A very fine house.” She would do anything—anything, including telling her dear mama a thousand rotten lies—to keep her boy safe, to be there whenever he needed her. To get to see his face now and then when he smiled like he was smiling now.…

      She took in a deep breath to loosen those bands of emotion that had squeezed around her heart. Then she asked slowly, pronouncing each word with care, “Come in the kitchen? With Grandma and me?”

      He shook his head and loosed a string of nonsense syllables.

      “You mean, you want to stay here?”

      “Pway.”

      She wanted to scoop him up hard against her heart, to hug him until he squirmed to get down. But no. He was content, sitting on her mama’s rug, playing with his house of blocks. Why ruin that?

      “Okay. Be good.”

      “I goo.”

      Her steps dragging, Joleen returned to the breakfast nook. She slid back into her chair. “He’s fine.”

      “All right. What did the Atwoods want to talk with you about?”

      Joleen took a fortifying sip of her coffee. And then she told her mother everything that had transpired in her father’s study before the Atwoods took their leave.

      When she had finished, Camilla picked up her coffee cup, started to sip, realized it was empty and set it back down—hard. “Oh sweetheart, the nerve of those people.”

      “I hear you, Mama.”

      “I did not like that Robert Atwood. Right from the first I saw that he would be trouble. Thinks he’s a cut above, doesn’t he? That he’s better than the rest of us. And the woman, Antonia? Well, I’m willin’ to admit I felt sorry for her. Scared of her own shadow, and wearing mauve, of all colors. Much too cool for her. Just faded her right out to nothin’ at all. She needs a bright, warm palette, to bring out that peach tone in her—”

      “Mama.”

      “Oh, well, all right. I’m rambling and I know it. It’s just, what else can I say, but how dare they?”

      “I asked myself that same question.”

      Camilla folded those beautiful hands on the tabletop. “I think I am starting to understand it all now. You and Dekker have been scheming. You’ve decided that the two of you getting married is somehow going to help you keep the Atwoods from stealin’ our Sam.”

      Joleen gulped. “No, Mama. Of course not. You asked me what happened with them, and I told you. It’s got nothin’ to do with Dekker and me.”

      “Oh, sweetheart. You are such a bad liar. You shouldn’t even try it.”

      Joleen only wanted to get out of there. “I am marrying Dekker, Mama. That is all there is to it.”

      “But you don’t love him—not the way you need to love the man you bind your life with.”

      Joleen stood. “I am saying this once more. I want you to listen. I do love Dekker. And Dekker loves me. We are getting married as soon as possible, and we are going to be happy. You just wait and see.”

      “But you don’t—”

      “Mama. Enough. You have said your piece, and I have heard it. This decision, though, is mine to make.”

      Camilla was shaking her head, her mouth all pursed up, brow furrowed. At that moment she looked her age—and more. She said, very softly and with heavy regret, “I know I was never the mother I should have been.”

      Joleen glared down at her. “You are my mother. If I was startin’ all over, and God gave me a chance to choose, you are the one I would pick in an instant.”

      “Oh, baby…”

      “Do not start in cryin’ on me, Mama. I just don’t have the time or the patience for that right now.”

      “I only…I wanted so much more for you.”

      “Well, this is about what I want. And I want to marry Dekker. I want to make a life with him.” It surprised her, how firm she sounded. How secure in her choice.

      On the counter, the coffeemaker made a gurgling sound, and somewhere outside, a leaf blower started up.

      Camilla’s tears spilled over, they trailed down her soft cheeks. “Well, I have told you my feelings on this.”

      Joleen held her ground. “And I have said what I will do.”

      There was a box of tissues, ready and waiting, in the center of the table. Her mother yanked one out. “I love you, baby.”

      “And I love you, Mama.”

      “And no mistake—” Camilla had to pause, to blow her nose. Then she started again. “No mistake is so big that love can’t find a way to make it right in the end.”

      Chapter 7

      Joleen fitted in her blood test later that day. The lab said she would have her results by Thursday. That night she and Dekker decided they would marry on Friday afternoon at the Oklahoma County Courthouse.

      Joleen called DeDe in Mississippi.

      “Oh, I cannot stand it,” DeDe wailed when Joleen shared the news. “You are my sister and Dekker is the only brother I have ever known and if you two are getting married on Friday, Wayne and I are comin’ home right now.”

      Dekker got on the line with her and managed to calm her down. He told her they would miss her, but on no account would he allow her to cut her honeymoon short. He finally got her to promise to stay in Mississippi for another week as planned.

      Camilla, Niki and Sam would attend the short ceremony. As for the rest of the family, Joleen told them that she loved them all dearly, but she and Dekker could only have so many guests at the courthouse.

      “Well then, do not have it at the courthouse, hon,” argued Aunt LeeAnne.

      Joleen explained that she wasn’t quite up for planning another big wedding so soon after the one she’d put together for her sister. She said that she and Dekker just wanted to get the formalities over with and start living their lives side by side.

      They all said they understood. But they didn’t. Joleen could see it in their eyes.

      “We have to do something,” Aunt LeeAnne insisted. “Just a little family get-together when you come home from the courthouse. At least we can have that.”

      So it was agreed. After the civil ceremony, the cousins and uncles and aunts would be waiting at Camilla’s. They would have chips and dips and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. They’d bring a few wedding gifts and they’d offer their heartfelt congratulations.

      At the courthouse both Niki and Camilla cried a lot. Camilla had no reservations about explaining to Joleen why she was crying.

      “Because another of my babies is saying ‘I do.’ Because I know there is more goin’ on here than I have been told about. Because, well, I do feel that I have been cheated of giving you the kind of wedding DeDe had, a real family wedding, which you know I believe every woman deserves…and because I wish my best friend could be here on this day of all days—but I know, if Lorraine were back with us again, she’d just be headin’ off to jail. And that plain breaks my heart.”

      By then the whole family had learned the truth about Dekker’s real identity.

      And they hadn’t found out quite the way Joleen and Dekker had intended.