Spring Fever (47 page)

“Not that I would have,” Mason said. “I hoped she’d never find out. About any of this.”

“Mama?” Davis said.

“I will not have this,” Sallie said, her voice strained. “I will
not
have you children dishonor your father’s memory this way. Do you two hear me? Do you?” Again, she didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.

Sallie fixed Norris Thomas with a withering stare. “How dare you? How dare you make these grotesque allegations about a man who is not here to defend himself? Norris, I would never have expected this of a man of your reputation.”

“This bullshit trust won’t fly,” Davis added. “We’ll hire our own lawyers and challenge it.” He thrust out his chin aggressively in Mason’s direction. “That bastard kid of yours won’t get a nickel of Dad’s money.”

Thomas opened the folder in front of him and brought out a single sheet of paper. “Davis, I can’t stop you from doing what you think is best. But you should know that your father was very specific about the trust agreement. I did try to convince him he might provide for his unborn child in other ways, but he was adamant that each of his children would have an equal share in Quixie. And I should also tell you that we’ve done DNA testing, and it absolutely proves that Glenn Bayless was Sophie’s father.”

He handed the paper across to Davis, who angrily batted it to the floor.

Thomas retrieved the paper without comment. He’d been a small-town estates and trusts lawyer for five decades. He’d witnessed more colorful dramas than this. He coughed, and his face colored slightly. “After Glenn’s death, I contacted the child’s mother, to let her know about the provisions of Glenn’s will. Unfortunately, it was the first she knew that he’d passed away.”

Pokey winced.

“The mother’s pregnancy was normal and seemed to be going smoothly,” Thomas went on, “but the baby was born somewhat prematurely.”

“Sophie was in the neonatal intensive care unit at University Hospital in Jacksonville for six weeks,” Mason said. “They really weren’t sure she would make it and, even if she did, whether or not she would have lingering developmental problems.” He reached across the table and took Annajane’s hand again.

“Norris, uh, thought that somebody in the family should be aware that this baby, our half sister, was fighting for her life in the neonatal unit,” Mason said. “It was a risk, but he confided in me. I went down to Jacksonville several times to check on her.

“She was so tiny,” he marveled. “I’d never seen a baby that small. Theoretically, I could hold her in the palm of my hand. Except I couldn’t, because they had her hooked up to all the tubes and monitors. They wouldn’t let me hold her until shortly before they released her. But the first time I did, I knew she was ours.”

He gave his weeping sister a pleading look. “She had Dad’s blue eyes. My damned high forehead, and just the barest fuzz of blond curls. Just like Pokey’s baby pictures.”

“Stop it,” Davis shouted, pounding the tabletop with his fist.

Sallie stood abruptly, pushing her chair back with such force that it went crashing to the floor. “I won’t listen to another word of this,” she said. She got to the door and looked over her shoulder at Davis.

“I’m leaving, too,” he announced. The conference room door slammed behind them.

“Pokey?” Mason asked.

She shook her head and settled back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. “I want to hear it. All of it.”

Mason got up and walked around to the chair next to hers, the one Davis had just vacated.

“Kristy, that’s Sophie’s mom, isn’t a bad person,” he said. “She was only twenty-six when she got pregnant.”

Pokey buried her head in her hands. “Oh God, Daddy,” she moaned. “A twenty-six-year-old? How could you?”

“She looks a lot older,” Mason said. “I thought she was about thirty-five when I met her. She’s divorced, and she’s smart, but she hasn’t had an easy time of it. I think she really cared about Dad. He was good to her, you know?”

“Go on,” Pokey said, sniffing. “How long do you think he was seeing her?”

“Kristy told me they’d been dating for about a year,” Mason said. “He met her at the Hertz counter at the airport in Jacksonville, and he’d call her whenever he was in Florida on business, which was pretty often that last year he was alive, because we were chasing that Maxi-Mart deal. But I was totally in the dark about her. He knew I wouldn’t put up with that crap.”

Pokey wrinkled her forehead. “Wait—back up a minute. Uncle Norris, are you sure Dad told you he’d been diagnosed with heart problems?”

“Yes, Pokey,” the lawyer said. “We had the same cardiologist. Blaine McNamara. Max Kaufman referred both of us to him. Glenn and I talked about it several times.”

“But how could Mama not know Daddy was sick?” she asked, looking bewildered. “He wouldn’t have kept that a secret from her, would he? I mean, was he on some medications?”

Norris Thomas looked distinctly uncomfortable. “We discussed the prescriptions he’d been given. He was, uh, worried about potential side effects.”

“What kind of side effects?” Pokey asked. “Could that have been what killed him?”

Thomas tugged at his collar. “Well, um, I don’t know that would be something he’d want me to discuss with his daughter, Pokey.”

“He’s been dead five years now, Uncle Norris,” Pokey said flatly.

Mason chuckled. “I think Norris probably doesn’t want to tell you that Dad didn’t like the fact that his heart meds affected his sexual performance,” Mason said. “Does that about sum it up?”

“Well, uh, in a manner,” Thomas said. His face was the shade of a glass of Quixie.

Pokey turned her attention to her older brother. “You two traveled a lot together. Did he talk to you about having a heart condition?”

“No,” Mason said. “I know he had a bunch of pill bottles in his shaving kit, but we usually didn’t share a hotel room.” His face darkened. “His excuse was that he snored too much and didn’t want to keep me awake. In hindsight, I suppose the real reason was that he had company in his room some of those nights. Like Kristy.”

Pokey’s eyes softened. “Tell me how you ended up with Sophie.”

“The medical bills were pretty steep,” Mason said. “But Dad had taken care of that. He’d put Kristy on the company payroll, so she’d have insurance coverage.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “Oh God. If Davis found out about that he would blow a gasket.”

“Yeah, especially if he heard her title. Taste Ambassador.”

“Oh, no.” Pokey giggled. “Taste Ambassador. That’s just…” The giggle turned into a guffaw, and even the stern-faced Norris Thomas managed a nervous chuckle, and then Annajane joined in, and soon the conference room echoed with the Bayless family’s grief-tinged hilarity.

“Oh, God, Daddy,” Pokey said, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box in the center of the table. “Who knew you had such a delicious sense of irony?” She patted her brother’s hand. “Thanks, I needed a little comic relief to cut all this drama. Finish telling me about Kristy. What’s she like?”

“She’s not a gold digger, or your typical home wrecker,” Mason said. “I think she really thought she would be able to raise Sophie on her own. Her mom lived nearby and was going to help with the baby. But then her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was going through chemo, and Kristy was terrified and totally overwhelmed. That last time I was down in Jacksonville, I ran into her in the neonatal unit, and she just … came unhinged.”

“The doctors had been trying to explain to her about the special care Sophie would need after she was discharged from the hospital and to warn her about the possible developmental issues,” Mason said. “I walked into the nursery, where she’d been standing by the isolette, just looking down at the baby. Kristy was scared to touch her, to hold her, even though the nurses told her that’s what Sophie needed most. ‘You take her,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this.’ And she ran off.”

“Not permanently ran off, right?” Pokey asked.

“No. She called me later that night and asked if we could meet. We did, and that’s when she told me she couldn’t take Sophie home. She was living with her mom in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and it just wasn’t going to get any better. Even with the money Dad left her, Kristy was not equipped to care for a baby on her own, especially a baby as sick as Sophie had been.”

Mason shrugged. “What could I do? She had already started calling adoption agencies to try to get Sophie placed. I couldn’t let strangers take her, Pokey. She was ours. And I couldn’t tell Mama. She wouldn’t have stood for me bringing home Dad’s child by another woman. You saw her reaction today.”

Pokey leaned over and hugged Mason. “You big dope. You know I would have taken her and raised her as my own. Everybody knows how badly I’ve wanted a little girl.”

“No,” Mason said. “Anybody who saw Sophie would know she was a Bayless. There would have been questions. And we’d be right back at square one. This was the only way. I adopted Sophie and Kristy gave up all rights to her. That’s how she wanted it.”

“You could have told me the truth,” Pokey said. “I would have been shocked, yeah, but I could have handled it.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Mason said. “But if Mama ever found out you were in on it, she would have never forgiven you.”

“Well, hey-yull,” Pokey drawled. “It wouldn’t be the first time I got cross-wise with Mama.” She looked over at Annajane. “Did you know?”

“Not until Sunday night,” Annajane said. “He told me right after he proposed.”

“Lying to Annajane was the worst of it,” Mason said. “Letting her think I went out and got some chick knocked up even before our divorce was final. And her having to put up with all the gossip and crap going around town, everybody assuming we split up because of Sophie.”

“You did what was best for Sophie,” Annajane said. “That’s what matters.”

“Man, oh, man,” Pokey said. She gazed down at her belly, then pantomimed a telephone call. “You hear that, baby mine? We just found out your cousin is really your aunt. And that my niece is actually my sister. Or half sister. Crazy, huh?”

Norris Thomas looked pointedly at the clock on the conference room wall. “Well, I guess our family conference can probably be concluded, since half the family has decamped.”

“Sorry about the histrionics,” Mason said. “And I guess we can expect that the issue is not closed as far as my mother and brother are concerned. Should we be worried?”

Thomas was putting papers back in the file folder. “I don’t think so. Glenn was very thorough with these kinds of things. He had me research the issues, and we reviewed every sentence of the trust agreement backwards and forwards.”

“Davis won’t care,” Pokey predicted. “He just wants his money out of the company, and he’ll do anything to get it. You watch, he probably left here and went right across the courthouse square to hire himself another lawyer.” A new thought occurred to her. “Uncle Norris, could he get Dad’s trust thingy overturned, on some kind of incompetency thing? It’s ridiculous to even think about, but I wouldn’t put it past Davis.”

“Glenn Bayless, incompetent? Absurd,” Thomas said. He stood up and touched Pokey’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you how incompetent he was. When we drew up the agreement, and the documents setting up the financial arrangements for Sophie’s mother, he hired a videographer to record the meeting. At the time, I thought he was being overly cautious, but now, I suppose he was anticipating what your mother’s reaction would be when she learned of the child’s existence.”

“Daddy might have had a wandering eye, but his mind never wandered,” Pokey said. “Nobody was sharper. Lucky for Sophie. And us.”

49

“I’m hungry,” Pokey announced. “Let’s get lunch.”

“It’s not even eleven o’clock,” Mason protested.

“You can have coffee or something, but I am pregnant and starving, and I need to eat. Annajane?”

“Lunch sounds fine,” Annajane said. “Where shall we go?”

Pokey looked around the courthouse square, past the gazebo and the confederate memorial statue. “The Country Cupboard,” she decided.

They easily found a booth near the back of the room and placed their orders. After the waitress brought their drinks, Pokey put both elbows on the table and gazed across at her brother. “I’ve still got a lot of questions,” she said.

Mason sipped his coffee. “I swear, I did not know anything about how the trust was set up. Norris never said a word to me, and I certainly had no clue Dad would leave Sophie part of the company.”

She waved away his disclaimers. “I saw your face when Uncle Norris spilled the beans. You were as surprised as all of us.”

“Not as surprised as your mother,” Annajane said. “It’s too bad it had to come out the way it did. She looked so hurt.”

“Hurt?” Pokey said with a hoot. “Sallie wasn’t hurt. She was red-hot furious. I haven’t seen her that mad since the day I told her I was pregnant and dropping out of Carolina.”

“She’ll either get over it, or she won’t,” Mason said. “I can’t be worrying about her hurt feelings. I’ve got a daughter to raise and a company to run.” He nodded at Annajane. “And a wedding to plan.”

“Yay!” Pokey said, clapping her hands. “When’s it gonna be?”

“Soon.” Mason said.

“After Memorial Day,” Annajane said, at the same time.

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“I can tell y’all have spent a lot of time discussing this,” Pokey said. “Do I get to be the maid of honor again?”

“Of course,” Annajane said. “But I don’t think we’re gonna have anything elaborate. Just family.”

“Half of our family isn’t currently happy with you two,” Pokey pointed out. “So that ought to make for a real intimate affair.” She looked at Annajane. “Have you told your mama?”

“Yes,” Annajane said. “She told me I’m crazy as a bedbug. She’s still furious that I broke it off with Shane. So I guess we can cross her off the guest list, too.”

“More cake for me,” Pokey said. “What did Sophie say?”

“Yippeee!” Mason said, in a girlish, high-pitched squeal. “She can’t understand why Annajane won’t move in right now. And I happen to agree with her.”