Life After Wife (Three Magic Words Trilogy, #3)(20)

“Hey now, don’t be attacking me. I just spoke my mind, and besides, Elijah is a good, solid name right out of the Bible. It was my great-grandfather’s name.”

“Yeah, well, so is Mephibosheth, and I don’t like it either. Gwen is Fancy’s mother’s name, and Emma was Theron’s grandmother.”

“But I’ll bet you Glory didn’t come from anywhere in the family. Are they going to dress her in stars and stripes?” Elijah purposely provoked her. The madder she got, the more she’d hate living with him.

Sophie cooled down enough to know she was being baited. “Of course. She’s going to have blue eyes and blonde hair like Fancy. Don’t you think she’ll be so cute next Fourth of July, all dressed up in a little outfit with red and white stripes? You’ve got to hold her. She’ll wrap a big, old fellow like you around her finger in no time flat.”

“I doubt it. I don’t like kids. They grow up to be eighteen or nineteen years old and think they know everything. I’ve had to train too many kids already,” he said.

“Is that what you did in the military? Train irresponsible kids?”

“I did lots of things. That was just one of my many jobs,” he said.

“And you really don’t like kids?”

“I really don’t.”

“Ever thought about having some of your own, or do you have a few floating around out there with your strange blue eyes?” she asked.

He bristled. “My eyes are not strange. They’re not so different from Fancy’s, and you don’t think hers are strange. I think you just made a sly, little racial slur.”

“And I think you are full of cow patties. I asked if you have any children. Are you going to answer the question?” she asked.

“The answer is no, and I’m not having any, either,” he said coldly.

“Want to hear a funny story? That’s the same thing Theron Warren said less than a year ago, and now he has two kids.”

Elijah pondered on that for a while, trying to figure out how Theron got a child that was already three years old in less than a year. Surely there was an adoption, but he couldn’t let it alone. Worrying with it for a few minutes like a hound dog with a big soup bone, he finally asked, “How’d that happen?”

“He was married a few years back to Tina’s mother, Maria. She divorced him but didn’t tell him she was pregnant,” Sophie explained.

Both of Elijah’s eyebrows shot up.

“Turns out that Maria had the maternal instincts of a rock when the baby was born. She left Tina with her sister about ninety percent of the time. Three years later, she met a rich guy from California and decided to marry him, only he didn’t want children.”

Sophie headed toward the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Elijah’s curiosity got the better of his will power to not ask questions and not care. “Go on.”

“One night out of the clear blue sky—actually it wasn’t clear blue because it was freezing drizzle and putting a layer of ice on everything in sight—she calls up Theron and says to meet her in Decatur to get the child, or she’ll leave her in the airport bathroom.”

“Holy crap, Sophie! A rock does have more maternal instincts than that for sure,” Elijah muttered.

Sophie slathered two sides of wheat bread with mayonnaise and stacked three pieces of ham on one side, cheese and lettuce and tomatoes on the other. She slapped it together and put it on a paper plate with some chips and got a cold Pepsi from the fridge.

“So he went and got her?” Elijah asked.

“He and Fancy were past the point where they wanted to murder each other by that time in their relationship. You’ll have to ask him all about that part later. Anyway he called Fancy and asked her to go with him,” Sophie said and then took a big bite of the sandwich.

Elijah wondered if he was losing his ability to read people. Why would Theron need someone to go with him? His first impression of the man was that, although he was short, he was a stand-up kind of guy and didn’t need a woman to hide behind.

Sophie swallowed and took a long drink from the can. “I bet you are wondering why he asked Fancy to go with him when they could barely tolerate each other, aren’t you?”

“It’s your story. I’m just listenin’,” Elijah said in a flat tone.

Sophie took another bite. He could wait for the rest. His face, set like flint or stone or some other organism that did not breathe or move, said he could care less what she was prattling about. But his eyes told a different story. He must have gotten those from his Uncle Jesse’s side of the family, because they were definitely interested and wanted to know everything.

She chewed slowly and had a potato chip before she continued. “Well, Fancy had been helping him in the Sunday school class that he taught for preschoolers, and he knew she’d be good with a little girl who might be terrified that her mother had abandoned her.”

Elijah didn’t say a word, but he didn’t shut his eyes and snore or turn his vision back to the television, either.

“That’s why he asked her to go with him, and it’s a good thing he did because a few months later Maria showed up and tried to take Tina back with her. It was all a power play for money. She wanted him to pay her to sign over the rights to his daughter, and he refused. But Fancy had been there when it all went down, so Theron had a witness.”