Reuniting His Family. Jean C. Gordon

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      While he waited for his son to answer, Rhys followed one of her curls along the curve of her cheek. He curled his lip against the bitter tang in his mouth. What had gotten into him, besides having been incarcerated with 2,500 men for the past five years? He was here for Dylan and Owen, to make them a family again. Not to be distracted by and wonder about Renee Delacroix.

      Dylan wrapped his arms around his foster mother’s leg. “I want to go home with Mrs. Hill.”

      Home. With a woman Dylan had only known for a matter of months. This wasn’t the dream that had kept him going since Gwen’s death, while he was waiting for his appeal and release.

      “I want to go with you, Dad.” Owen’s voice pulled him from the dark place he was headed.

      “You still can,” Ms. Delacroix said. “I can come and drive you back to the Hills’ house afterward.”

      “Would that be all right with you, Dad?”

      “More than all right.” He’d take whatever he could get when it came to spending time with his sons.

      Rhys nodded to Ms. Delacroix. “I know it’s part of your job, but thanks for going out of your way.” He scuffed the toe of his work boot on the floor. The drive from Elizabethtown, where the Social Services’ office was located, to Paradox Lake and back would take her more than an hour. “I mean, having to take Owen home afterward and coming back here.”

      “It’s no problem.” A true smile spread across her face, the first the all-business lady had given him. “I live near Paradox Lake. You can wait here with Mrs. Hill while I go back to my office and wrap things up so we can go.”

      “Sure.” He’d been waiting five years to be with his boys. What were a few more minutes?

      * * *

      “Go ahead and sit.” Renee’s hand accidentally brushed Rhys Maddox’s biceps as she motioned toward a couch and chairs near the table. The rock-hard resistance unsettled her. She rushed out into the hall. Let him think I’m hurrying to get back for the visitation, not to get away from him.

      Maybe she was too much of a newbie at this work but everything about Rhys Maddox unsettled her—from his record and conviction, to his tall, dark, imposing stature, to his icy-blue eyes that had thawed only when he spoke to Owen and Dylan. Especially his eyes. They weren’t just cold. They were devoid of light.

      Renee crossed her arms to counteract a shiver. She was authorized to oversee supervised visits and knew how overloaded the Maddox family’s caseworker was. It wasn’t as if she was to decide whether or not to place his children with him. But she hated taking on responsibilities she wasn’t sure she was qualified to handle, making decisions like the ones she’d had to make in Haiti because the mission had been so understaffed. A week from Monday—the start of her new job as a Building Bridges’ facilitator for the Christian Action Coalition—couldn’t come soon enough. There she’d be working primarily with kids in child care and after-school programs, helping them adjust to changed family situations—divorce, death of a parent, a parent marrying or remarrying.

      Renee checked with the caseworker to see if she wanted to handle the visit herself. It was Rhys Maddox’s first visit. And receiving the “no” answer she’d expected, Renee headed to her office. She scanned her desk to make sure anything that should be secured in the file cabinets was tucked away and walked back to the visitation room.

      Renee heard the rumble of Rhys’s voice as she approached the doorway, but couldn’t make out his words.

      “Ready?” she asked as she stepped inside. Her cheery greeting bounced off the tense silence in the room. Owen sat next to his father, tapping his foot on the floor as if he couldn’t wait to go. Dylan had curled up on Suzi’s lap in a chair, his face buried in his foster mother’s shoulder. Their father was soldier-straight on the couch, his hands clamped on his thighs.

      “I asked him how his reading was coming. Gwen...” Rhys paused to swallow. “My wife had told me how excited Dylan was about starting to recognize words, that it looked like he was going to be a reader like she was. She read everything.”

      “Yeah,” Owen piped up. “Dylan’s really good at reading. I had some trouble with it at my old school, but Mrs. Bradshaw helped me last year.”

      Rhys’s gaze flickered between his sons. He pinched his lower lip and released it as if he was going to say something. But he didn’t.

      Renee filed a mental reminder to note in the records that, with his father gone, Owen may have adopted a protective, man-of-the-family stance with his mother and brother that he was extending to his father now. Rhys’s stony expression implied that could cause conflict between Rhys and Owen. Both her earlier interview with Rhys and talking with him today had given her the distinct impression that he was a man who would protect his own, who wouldn’t welcome outside assistance, maybe not even from his eldest son.

      “Are you sure you don’t want to go for ice cream?” Suzi lifted Dylan and placed him on the floor between her legs. “I’ll come.”

      The little boy shook his head. Suzi gave her and Rhys a look that said I tried.

      “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mrs. Hill. ’Bye, Dylan,” Renee said.

      “’Bye, son.”

      Rhys’s tone had no inflection, as if he were afraid the boy would detect any emotion as he spoke. Emotion that had far too much of an impact on Renee. Despite her training and all her work with disrupted families in Haiti, she still had a hard time comprehending a child wanting to shut out a parent or parent shutting out a child, even if there was a good reason. Her frame of reference always came back to her big, boisterous, loving family.

      Dylan took Suzi’s hand. “’Bye,” he said, not looking at either her or Rhys.

      Rhys cleared his throat. “Owen says there’s a stand on the lake that serves soft ice cream. He’d like to go there.”

      “I know the one. My family and I go there all the time.”

      Rhys rose and Owen hopped off the couch.

      “Do you have kids, Ms. Delacroix?” Owen asked as she led them from the room toward the back door.

      “No, but I have two brothers—one’s my twin—and three sisters, three nieces, a nephew and another niece or nephew on the way.”

      “Wow! I have only Dylan...and my dad. But Mrs. Hill’s mother told me she would be my grandmother ’cause I don’t have any grandmas or any grandpas.”

      Rhys locked his jaw and pushed the door so it swung open hard, almost banging against the brick wall of the building. He held himself back until they were out and almost down the sidewalk before exiting.

      “My dad doesn’t have any parents. He had parents, but he doesn’t know them. He had foster parents like the Hills. Lots of them.”

      Renee nodded. That information had been in Rhys’s records.

      “My mom’s parents don’t like us.”

      Rhys caught up with them.

      “But we don’t care about that, do we, Dad?”

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