His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (16 page)

“Sure,” Willa answered, thinking why the hell not. “Just go knock on his window…”

More pattering boots as they went over to the room Trevor shared with Marian and knocked on the window.

“Trevor! Trevor! Come out and play!” they called. Then their shoulders slumped with disappointment. “He’s not answering.”

Willa frowned. It wasn’t like her child to turn down a chance to play with the Well Girls, and he’d been complaining about her keeping him inside for weeks now.

“I’ll go get him,” she said to the girls, hoping he wasn’t lying in his bed, sick. He’d been so quiet this morning, and hadn’t even gotten all that excited when she brought out the iPad.

But Trevor wasn’t sick. He just wasn’t there. The made bed he’d been sitting on when she left him was empty, with nothing but a darkened iPad to show he’d been there at all.

“Trevor!” she called out, her heart seizing with fear as she began a frantic search of the rest of the house. “Trevor!”

“WHAT THE HELL do you mean I can’t get full custody right away?”

“You’re a lawyer, too, Sawyer.” Josh, who’d come all the way from their office in Richmond to discuss this with him in the privacy of the Greenlee Place study, threw him a sour look. “You should know how the legal system works. Everything takes time—especially custody cases.”

“Yeah, but this is a no-brainer. His mother is bat shit insane. I don’t see why we can’t just get an order—”

“Because you can’t simply take a boy from his mother, that’s why.” Josh shifted uncomfortably in the creaky French Brittany chair, which had been built over a hundred years ago by someone with no clue that a 6’4 former SEAL turned corporate lawyer would one day be sitting in it.

“Also, you’re not even on the birth certificate—”

“Because she didn’t tell me about him! I know there’s precedent for that.”

“Yes, of course there is. We’ll sue this woman into the ground. But first we need a DNA test to prove paternity. That’s another court order we’ll need to file, unless Willa Harper really is as crazy as you claim and she’s willing to volunteer it.”

Sawyer thought about all her quiet resistance. The refusal to say any more than she had to whenever a subject that didn’t involve his gimp leg came up.

“Okay, maybe not that crazy,” he grumbled, feeling stupid all over again.

Two days later, the pain of her betrayal still felt fresh. Like she’d sliced him up bad and left him in his oversized home to bleed out. How could he not have seen it in her? He thought of the way he’d just about begged her to stay the last time she was here and his ribs squeezed with humiliation.

“I want him in this house where he’ll be safe from his crazy mother,” Sawyer said, his voice barely above a growl. “He’s my son and he belongs with me. Me! Not Willa!”

“What the hell is going on here! You had a son with Willa Harper?”

Their father suddenly burst into the study, a fretful Grace behind him.

“Oh
,
I am so sorry Sawyer. We had lunch together, and I was walking him out when we heard your voices in the study. I tried to stop him from eavesdropping, but you know your father.”

“Don’t apologize for me,” The Admiral groused, glaring at Grace, and probably making her think twice about accepting another lunch date with him.

“Well, if it is not me to apologize for your terrible behavior, then who?” she demanded, glaring right back at him.

The Admiral was saved from answering by the doorbell.

“
Dios
, who could that be? I’ll get it,” Grace said, scuttling out of the room.

“Send whoever it is away,” The Admiral called after her.

Then he turned his frigid scowl on Sawyer. “Why am I just now hearing about this?” he asked, obviously struggling to keep his voice even.

“Because he’s just now finding out about it,” Josh answered, rising out of his chair.

“And because it has nothing to do with the campaign,” Sawyer added, also coming out of his chair.

His father started, as if Sawyer had just accused him of something repugnant. “Of course this has nothing to do with the campaign. This is about my having a grandson! A
grandson
. If it’s true, I should have been your first call.”

Josh looked back at Sawyer over his shoulder and they exchanged a similar stunned look. Wow, not at all how they would have expected their father to react to the news of having a half-black grandson.

A knock sounded on the door then, interrupting the shock. And Grace stuck her head into the room.

“Ah, Sawyer, I think you should come out here.”

“Tell whoever it is to go away, Grace,” The Admiral answered between clenched teeth. “We’re discussing important family business.”

“I know, but—”

Before she could finish, Trevor wiggled into the room with a, “Sorry, ma’am,” for Grace.

He was wearing glasses now, Sawyer noted, but he didn’t look at all like a scrawny nerd as he stood tall and proud, surveying every man in the room until his brownish-green eyes landed on Sawyer.

“Is it true?” the little boy demanded, his fists bunching into balls. “Are you my daddy?”

17

Please don’t be here! Please don’t be here! Please don’t be here!

Willa begged the universe to grant her this one wish as she got out of the car in front of Greenlee Place.

The universe’s answer to her pleas appeared in the form of Kate Greenlee Grant, blinking onto the porch, and bouncing from foot to foot as she said, “Oh, he’s wonderful, Willa. Just wonderful. I can’t believe I have a grandson!”

She then screwed her face up with mock severity. “Though shame on you young lady for not telling me about him.”

Okay, she did not expect these to be the first words out of Kate’s mouth upon finding out she had a half-“colored” grandson. Just went to show how much dying could change a person. Guaranteed, most people would have thought Katherine would be rolling around in her grave over this news. And chances were if she were alive, she would be. But Willa, who’d watch her Pappy go from an illiterate sharecropper to voracious crossword aficionado, knew better than most: death teaches you the lessons life doesn’t.

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” she said to Kate. “If it makes you feel any better, everyone except Marian and Thel were surprised.”

“Even your grandfather didn’t know?” Kate asked, eyes wide. So obviously fishing.

Ghosts were the worst gossips.

Instead of answering, Willa went around her to the door and pushed the doorbell.

No answer.

“Where are they?” she asked Kate.

“Grace is serving them all sandwiches in the basement,” Kate answered. “But the door’s unlocked. Just go on in. In fact, I’ll walk with you. There was a major step forward in my plan to finally bring Grace and The Admiral together the other day, you know…”

Willa turned the knob and let herself in as Kate filled her in on how she’d taken the book Marian had given Grace and placed it on a side table while The Admiral was visiting. And then knocked it off the side table just as Grace led him into the great room.

“You should have seen the argument that followed!” Kate said with a titter as they followed the loud cacophony of what sounded like heavy sword fighting down the wooden stairs. “So much passion. So much unspoken. But Sawyer—he’s got my blood in him, all right. He told The Admiral point blank that he was being silly and it was obvious he had feelings for our Grace.”

Willa could only shake her head. And now Kate was apparently full-on scheming to get the little Latino housekeeper with her widower husband? This was seriously going to be the summer of gossip as far as the ghosts were concerned.

However, all thoughts of the soap opera Kate had been curating flew from her head when she saw the scene in the finished basement.

Trevor standing with Sawyer in front of a huge flatscreen. Both frantically waving video controllers as two large Vikings went at it in a fierce sword battle.

Sawyer’s brother, Josh, who was sitting in a leather chair nearby, laughing as he yelled at Trevor to, “Shift! Shift! Shift!”

Trevor did as he was told, and his Viking suddenly turned into a massive werewolf with bristling fur.

“Push A! A! A!” shouted Josh. “Go for the throat kill!”

Trevor must have hit the right button, because the wolf lunged straight at the Viking’s throat, taking the giant man out in a spray of blood.

To Willa’s astonishment, everyone cheered except for Grace, who muttered, “I really do not understand this game.”

Kate had been wrong about Grace serving sandwiches. There might have been sandwiches involved earlier, if the empty paper plates sitting on the coffee table were any indication. But now, she and The Admiral were sitting side by side on the loveseat, his long arm strung around her plump shoulders.

Despite the video game’s gore, the scene was so sweet, it stopped Willa’s heart with its sheer perfection. They already looked like a family. With Sawyer and Trevor obviously looking the part of father and son.

But then Sawyer and his brother seemed to sense at once that she was standing there.

All three men, including The Admiral, turned to face her. Their faces a dark cloud of foreboding as the werewolf on the screen behind Sawyer walked toward the camera in slow motion, it’s gruesome muzzle covered in blood.

“Mama! Mama!” Trevor called, running up to her. “Hi! Hi! Did you see me win? And Sawyer is my daddy? Did you know that?”

Even sweet Grace was staring at her hard now. She could practically feel all their judgment as she bent down to speak with her son.

“Yes, I did hear something about that. But we really should be getting home, darlin’. Everybody there is real worried about you.”

“I’d like to know how you let Trevor slip away so easily,” The Admiral said, glaring at her.

“That’s my other grandpa!” Trevor whispered. “Now I got three!”

“Okay, Trevor,” she said, standing up and taking him by the hand, before he tried to explain to the I Can’t See Ghosts Club who his other two grandfathers were. “Thank you all mightily for having Trevor over. I assure you he won’t be showing up on your doorstep unannounced again.”

“But I don’t want to go!” Trevor whined, tugging against her hand. “Uncle Josh says he’s going to teach me how to fish in the river. And my other grandma says she’s going to read me a Dr. Seuss book, Mama. Dr. Seuss!”

In Trevor’s mind, Willa knew, having a grandma who was actually willing to read him something at his grade level was huge news indeed. Marian wouldn’t even allow Dr. Seuss in the house. “I have no idea why the world is so in love with that man’s senseless drivel. Lucky you have me to curate your reading, Trevor,” she’d told her grandson on a few occasions.

But The Admiral, Sawyer, and Grant were all looking at Trevor with quizzical looks.

“Hey, buddy, what do you mean by ‘other grandma?’” Sawyer asked with a frown.

This is why she hadn’t wanted them to know him. Trevor knew better than to talk about the ghosts at school. But he thought family was safe.

But not this family. Willa’s heart constricted, watching the three men squint at Trevor like he was something other now. And not just because of the color of his pale brown skin.

Grace stood up and chimed in before Trevor could. “I think he means me. But I don’t remember talking with him about Dr. Seuss, and sweetie, I’m not your grandmother. I’m just the help.” She threw Willa a rather harsh look as she said, “But I’d understand why you’d be confused about that, poor little thing.”

“Ooh, she is truly upset with you!” Trevor’s “other grandmother” commented from her position, standing beside Willa.

“You’re more than just the help,” The Admiral told Grace, ducking his head to look down at her from their great height difference.

Kate nearly melted into a puddle beside Willa. “Oh, that’s sweet. I didn’t know he had such sweetness in him, I tell you I didn’t. Isn’t that sweet, Willa?”

Dear God.

“Seriously, honey, we need to go,” Willa said to Trevor.

“But I’m not ready. You should have given me a five minute warning.”

Geez Louise. That’s what she got for sleeping with a ghost who told her straight up that he’d one day become a lawyer. Trevor would bring up their five minute warning agreement now.

Sawyer came over then and bent down to talk to Trevor. “Hey, little buddy, listen to me. You’ve got to go now, but trust me, we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”

Behind him Josh picked up a small cup from the coffee table and tipped it toward Willa as if making a toast. “Yes, little nephew. You’ll be seeing this side of the family a whole lot more real soon. You have my word on that.”

“He’s so proud of that cup for some reason,” Kate, who’d left Mount Holyoke before so much as picking a major, observed beside Willa. “Earlier they were saying something about DNA, whatever that means.”

Willa’s stomach rolled. Oh God, they had Trevor’s DNA now. Which meant they’d easily be able to prove to a court that Trevor was Sawyer’s son.

“What’s wrong?” Trevor asked her.

“I wouldn’t suggest crying,” Kate told her matter-of-factly. “I’m afraid after putting up with my hysterics for all these years, none of the men in this family are particularly moved by tears.”

She was right. It was useless to cry in front of them. Useless to try to explain. It would all end the same way. With them taking away her son.

This time she didn’t try to reason with Trevor, just turned and started up the stairs with him. And Trevor must have finally gotten that there was something truly wrong. For once he controlled his five-year-old tongue, going quiet as a mouse as she stormed away, dragging him along.

However, even when she made it to the top of the stairs, she could still feel Sawyer’s eyes on her back. So hard and unforgiving, she now found it difficult to believe he’d ever had feelings for her. In spirit form or out.

18

He was dreaming again.

He knew because Willa was sitting on the counter, clinging to him, with both her arms and legs wrapped around his body, as he drove into her. On two whole legs. Not one and a half. No balancing act required. Just pure-grade hardcore fucking.