Oklahoma Starshine Read online

  Joey’s gaze was on her, but she didn’t meet it.

  “What’s important is being a good person. Right?”

  Tilda looked at her, frowning, her lips pressed into a pink rosebud. “But, Mommy, can’t good people have giant Christmas trees?”

  “Or live in castles or great big houses?” Joey added.

  Emily looked at him, caught in her own bad behavior. Using her child to scold him for his values. That was wrong. She deserved it. “Of course they can,” she said. No choice, she wasn’t going to lie to her baby.

  Joey had a white paper bag in his free hand, and he held it up. “I got takeout from Sunny’s. There’s coffee in the truck. Cocoa for you, Peanut.” He poked her nose like she’d poked his, and she giggled.

  And his face, my God, it split in a grin as big as all outdoors. He was beautiful when he smiled. “We um...we’ll need the car seat, she’s still—”

  “I’ve got one already.” He carried Tilda toward his truck, parked diagonally in one of the painted spaces that lined Main Street on both sides of the park. He opened the door. It hadn’t been locked. As he tucked Tilda into a flowery pink car seat and began pulling out and examining straps and buckles, he said, “I borrowed this one from my sister Maya. It was Dahlia’s. But I’m gonna get a much better one. We’ll find one that matches the truck.”

  “Trucks aren’t ideal, though,” Emily said, her nerves as jittery as they always were when anyone else was closer to her child than she was. Doctor’s appointments drove her to the brink of insanity. She was going to have to get used to them, though. “Kids are safer in the back seat—”

  “Because of air bags,” he said. “I researched it last night. There’s no center airbag in this truck.”

  “She could go through the windshield,” she whispered behind him, quietly enough that Tilda wouldn’t hear and get scared.

  “Not if I can figure these straps out,” he said, glancing at Tilda, not back at Em. “It’s like a spider’s web.”

  Emily started to reach around him. “I can—”

  He moved to block her hand’s path. “I’ve got this,” he said, pulling the straps in front of Tilda’s shoulders, gently moving her arms through them. They were adjusted pretty close to perfectly already, so he snapped them into place and nodded in satisfaction. Then he moved out of the way so Emily could get in. She climbed up and wondered why he didn’t install a rope ladder on the running boards. He was walking around the front of the truck, and she quickly bent to tug on each of the car seat’s buckles, making sure they were secure.

  He’d seen her though. Too bad. He got in and started the engine.

  “Where are we going?” Emily asked. She’d texted him last night to set up this early-morning meeting and discuss his stupid court order. And to tell him why she’d brought Matilda here.

  “Kara’s place,” he said. “She offered to keep an eye on Tilda so we can talk.” He kept his eyes on the road, not looking her way at all.

  She sat there, fuming and stunned right to her toes.

  He glanced sideways, just a quick look. “What?” he asked.

  It took her a couple of tries to form words. She forced herself not to shout them. “I’m not in the habit of leaving my little girl with people I don’t know,” she said.

  He opened his mouth, closed it again, looked sideways at her, then down at Tilda, and quickly back to the road again. “Maybe you can decide when we get there.” He turned onto a side road that looped up a hill and back around in the direction they’d come from. Neat homes lined it, with plenty of distance in between. And they pulled over in front of the neatest one of all. A two story farmhouse with fresh white paint, and a pretty door with an oval stained glass window from top to bottom. Then he opened his door and got out, reaching back to unfasten Tilda’s buckles.

  “Joey, you can’t just—”

  “We’re here. We might as well go in and say hello.” He looked around Matilda at her. “That’s all. I won’t go against your wishes. Okay?”

  It irked him to say that. She could see it. God, he was going to be a problem. She had not expected him to act like he had rights to Tilda.

  But he did. He did have rights. And it was making her crazy.

  She unbuckled and got out, jumping to the ground, a distance of about three stories. A female voice called, “Come around back!” and Joey headed over the paved driveway around the house to the rear.

  Emily followed, then stood there blinking. There was a beautiful wooden fence with a gate fit for a fairytale, surrounding a playground from a child’s fantasy. A huge sandbox, a climbing gym, several twisty slides, none of them scary high, a swing set, and a half dozen pedal cars were inside that fence. Matilda loved pedal cars. There was a foot-deep bed of rubber mulch under anything a kid could fall from, and neatly trimmed grass everywhere else. A concrete path twisted around the outermost edge like a miniature racetrack, presumably for the pedal cars. There were six toddlers playing happily, a reddish mixed-breed dog dancing around the kids, and a boy who could’ve been a teen idol, apparently helping to wrangle them.

  “Morning, Joey!” Kara said, coming to the gate and opening it to let them in. “Morning Emily.”

  “M-morning.”

  Kara was already crouching down to Tilda’s eye level. “Good morning, Tilda. Would you like to come and play?”

  “Yeah!” Tilda looked up at her mother. “Can I?”

  “Sure you can, honey.”

  And she ran right inside, going up to another little girl and striking up a conversation.

  “She’ll be fine here if you want to leave her for a little bit,” Kara said. “We’ll be outside for an hour. Oh, by the way, that’s Max. Sophie and Darryl’s boy.”

  “Sophie…as in the town doctor?” Em asked.

  Kara nodded. “The one and only. Max is a fantastic young man. He’s almost as great with kids as Joey is. He works for me part time.”

  Joey looked at Emily. She felt put on the spot, but she also felt like an overprotective idiot. The kids in Kara’s yard were clean and happy and perfectly safe. The dog was clearly no threat. It seemed almost to be watching over the children. Kara obviously ran a daycare out of her home, and by all appearances, it was a good one.

  “We can just walk out to the ball field and back,” Joey said, pointing beyond the back yard. In the distance, she could see a sports field and realized the school was only up the street another house or two.

  She glanced again at the play yard, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “Great.” Joey ran back to the truck, reached in, and returned with a giant paper bag from Sunny’s. “I brought enough donuts to share,” he said. “Tilda hasn’t had breakfast yet. There’s cocoa in the truck. Wait.”

  Kara took the bag in two fingers and grimaced. “Yeah, um how about I start her off with a homemade oatmeal raisin bar and some juice? We can save the sugar for later.” She looked at Emily and winked. “Men. Am I right?”

  Emily’s spine relaxed a little bit. “Thanks for keeping her.” Tilda was already deeply involved with three other children in an apparent sandbox road construction project.

  “Tilda? Mamma and Joey are going to walk out there and back,” she said, pointing toward the ball field. Tilda glanced up at her, looked where she was pointing, then went right back to pushing sand with a toy bulldozer. “You’ll be able to see us the whole time. Okay?”

  Nothing.

  “Tilda?”

  “What?”

  “Will you be okay?”

  Tilda grinned. “Anything’s popsicle when you’re a kid!”

  Almost automatically, she looked at Joey. He was grinning as much as she was. Their eyes met, and there was this moment of absolute unity. This moment of two proud parents beaming over the cute and clever thing their little girl had just said.

  It felt good.

  But it only lasted for a second, and then it faded, and they were enemies again.

  #

  Joey walked slowly pas
t the play yard into the deep grass-and-wildflower strewn meadow between Kara’s place and the well-mown school property. “She’s safe with Kara,” he said. It was a little insulting the way Emily couldn’t stop looking back. “I wouldn’t have left her there if she wasn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, you might feel secure, but I just met the woman yesterday.”

  “The woman is my sister.”

  “Stepsister.”

  “Sister.” He didn’t remember her being this ornery. And her overprotectiveness! By God it was lucky he’d found out about Tilda when he had. Her mother would turn her into a nervous wreck. She’d grow up afraid of her own shadow if it was left up to Em.

  They walked a few more steps. She said, “If you’d told me she ran a day care I wouldn’t have been so—”

  “Mean?”

  She blinked at him. “I wasn’t being mean. I was...” She lowered her head. “Never mind. What you think of me really doesn’t have anything to do with anything. That’s not what we need to talk about.”

  “The papers,” he said. He stopped walking, swallowed his pride, turned to face her. “I’ve already been read the riot act about that.”

  “By whom?”

  “Pretty much the entire family. And Vidalia’s next in line and will probably try to bring a switch to the discussion." He sighed. “I told them about Tilda last night. That’s why Vidalia showed up in the park this morning. She already considers Tilda her newest grandbaby, and I gotta tell you, that woman loves her grandbabies.”

  She closed her eyes as if that news was unexpected or something. Didn’t she think he’d tell his family that he had a daughter, that they had a granddaughter, a niece, a cousin? Even if they hadn’t all, already known. But they had. One glance at Matilda and their family text loop had probably been using up every drop of bandwidth in town. He dragged himself back on topic. “I was angry. That was wrong, serving you with a court order without even talking to you first. I don’t blame you for being mad about that.”

  She blinked in surprise. And then, frowning at him, said, “Then you’ll drop it?”

  He lifted his head fast. “Hell, no, I’m not gonna drop it. If I do, what’s to stop you from taking Tilda and running for the hills with her? It’s clear as day you don’t want me having anything to do with her. I’m not gonna stand for it, Em. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I’m her father.”

  She stared up at him, opened her mouth, closed it again. “This isn’t the time to argue about this.”

  “Be reasonable and we won’t have to argue at all. Look, Em, I don’t want to take her away from you. She loves you, it would crush her little soul.”

  Tipping her head to one side, she said, “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to get to know her,” he said, keeping his voice calm, careful. “I want to be able to spend time with her.”

  She felt panic trying to take hold. “You have that right. I won’t deny it. It’s just...it’s hard for me.”

  “And I want her to know who I am. That I’m her daddy.”

  “No.” She blurted it so fast, he knew it had been an impulsive reaction.

  “I’m afraid that’s not negotiable, Emily. I’m her father. She has a right to know, and I have a right to tell her. You’ve stood between us long enough.”

  “I can’t even believe you have the nerve to—”

  “If you didn’t want me in her life, then why the hell did you bring her here? Why did you even tell me about her?”

  “Because she’s sick!”

  She could have punched him square in the nose and not hit him as hard as those words did.

  “She’s sick, Joey.”

  “I don’t...” He looked back toward Kara’s place. “She seems fine.”

  “I know she does.”

  “Well...what is it, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s a rare blood disorder. Her body isn’t producing enough red cells. She needs—”

  “A bone marrow transplant,” he said. His legs had turned to jelly. He looked around, spotted a wooden picnic table off in the brush where someone had either left it or dragged it, and headed for it. Sinking onto its bench, he whispered, “God, Em, tell me it’s not Sanguis Morbo?”

  “How…how did you know?”

  It was. God, it was. “My father had the same thing. She must’ve inherited it.” He blinked, looking up at her. “They said it’s always terminal, unless—”

  “Unless we can find a match,” she said. She came closer, sat down on the bench beside him.

  “That’s why you came.”

  She nodded. He couldn’t stop looking at her, and suddenly the pain he’d glimpsed behind her eyes showed itself in its full form. Emily was devastated, terrified, heartbroken, and determined. And he’d served her with papers her first day in town.

  “I thought you or someone in your family would be our best chance to find a match. You having a half sister is a bonus.”

  He nodded hard. “We’ll all get tested. Sophie can get the wheels turning on that. You should set up an appointment as soon as—”

  “I already did. We’re seeing her later this morning.”

  As he looked at her, tears welled up in her eyes. And then they welled up in his own. He turned toward her, put his arms around her and pulled her close. She was stiff, almost pulling back from him a little. But then a sob wracked her entire body and she just collapsed against him and wept. It was wet and noisy and messy. He tightened his arms around her and held her, and tried not to cry like a baby. And then he cried anyway.

  Eventually, his chest still heaving, he tried to pull it together. He straightened his body, looked at her face. Strands of her hair stuck to her tearstained cheeks.

  “Rip it up,” he said.

  She blinked her eyes dry, searching his. “What—”

  “The judge’s order. Just tear it up. I’m sorry I did that to you. I didn’t know.”

  Sniffling twice, she nodded. “You were angry.”

  “My anger doesn’t mean crap right now.” He got to his feet, straightened up his spine. “We’re not gonna lose her, I’ll tell you that much. It’s good you brought her here. She’s in the right place. Miracles happen in this place. It’s…special.”

  “Miracles.” She pressed her lips tight, spat the word. "I don't believe in miracles. Not anymore. I lost whatever faith I had in a pediatrician’s office a few weeks ago when they told me….”

  “We’re not gonna lose our little girl,” Joey said, and he said it as firmly and confidently as he could. “I promise you that. You can believe it. If it costs every dime my family has, we’re gonna save her.”

  She stared at him, wide eyed, maybe surprised. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. But he thought he saw relief in her eyes. “The rest of this, visitation, all of that, it can wait. Let’s get through this, first. We can fight over her later.”

  “So...truce, then?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Truce.”

  She gave a staccato nod, pulled a pack of tissues from her pocket, wiped off her face. “How are we gonna hide our faces from her? She’ll know we were crying.”

  “She’s got her mamma’s intellect, that’s for sure.”

  She reached up to dab the moisture from his cheeks. “And her daddy’s eyes.”

  She stared into them just for a minute, then looked away and started walking back. “Our appointment with Dr. Sophie’s at ten,” she said.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “You...you’re coming, too?”

  He nodded. “She has two parents now, Em. You’re not carrying this whole burden alone, not anymore.”

  Chapter Five

  “I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna hold it together, to be honest,” Joe told his brothers a short while later.

  He had dropped Emily and Tilda Lou back at Emily’s van. She wanted to wash the play yard dirt off Tilda before her appointment with Sophie. And since they had another hour before that, he’d headed back to the Long Branch.
His home.

  He was a father and he lived in room above a saloon. Somehow it seemed completely ridiculous.

  “But you will hold it together,” Jason said, his voice an octave deeper since Joey had broken the news, his eyes as heavy as the weight of it.

  “Yeah, you will,” Rob agreed. “You don’t really have a choice.”

  Joey nodded, knowing his brothers were right.

  Jason and Rob had been there when Joey had returned, double checking the liquor order, they said. But he knew they were just eager to hear what he and Emily had talked about. They’d been with him last night when he’d got her text asking to meet. And so he’d told them, and even though they had yet to set eyes on Matilda Louise, the news had broken their big, strong hearts.

  Sighing, he said, “I’ve got to hold onto hope, though. One of us will be a match. Or Dad or Selene.”

  “That’s right,” Rob said, nodding hard. “We thought we were gonna lose Dad, too, and look how that worked out.”

  “Vidalia says this town is a place with an abundance of miracles,” Jason said. “I’ve never believed in that kind of thing, but it’s hard to argue with the evidence.”

  Joey nodded. “I didn’t believe in that kind of thing either, until we came here that Christmas we thought would be Dad’s last. There’s something about this Big Falls.”

  “Damn straight.” Rob was looking at the gold band on his ring finger when he said it.

  “What are you gonna do, Joe?” Jason asked.

  “Figure out how to be a dad,” he said.

  “I meant the custody—”

  “It can wait. Matilda’s health takes priority over everything else. Not only that, but I need to spend every minute I can with her, in case…”

  “We’ve got your back. We’ll pitch in to run the place.” Rob clapped him on the shoulder and went on. “And so will the rest of the family.”

  Jason nodded in solemn agreement.

  He looked at his watch, then drained his root beer, which he figured was better than the real thing right before his kid’s doctor’s appointment. “I gotta go. Thanks guys.”

  They rose when he did, and Rob said, “What about the rest of the family? When are you gonna tell them?”