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?”
From the fire in his father’s eyes, the man might care. She knew Gwen Maddox had been estranged from her parents. Renee’s brother-in-law, Connor Donnelly, pastor at the Hazardtown Community Church, had called Gwen’s parents to inform them of her death and funeral, and they’d practically hung up on him. When he’d said the boys were being placed in temporary foster care, their grandmother had started to say something but their grandfather had cut her off, telling Connor, “Foster care was good enough for their father. It’s good enough for them.”
“I’ve got you and Dylan.” Rhys wrapped his arm around his son and squeezed his shoulder. “What more could I want?”
“Mom.”
Rhys sucked in a breath. “Your mother.”
Owen looked over the parking lot. “Which car is yours, Dad?”
“I have a pickup. For work.”
At their earlier interview, he’d said he was looking for construction or electrical work but hadn’t found anything. Had Rhys heard something since then? He hadn’t said anything today.
“Mrs. Hill’s husband has a F-350 pickup with a supercab so Dylan’s booster seat fits and we can ride with Mr. Hill in the back seat. And he has a tow truck. That’s what he does, tows cars and fixes them.”
Owen’s words made Rhys wince. “Sounds like a man I should get to know.”
“Yeah, you’d like Mr. Hill,” Owen said. “Maybe you can be friends.”
Renee followed Rhys’s gaze across the parking lot to a compact pickup with faded red paint and a missing hubcap, and understood the meaning of his comment.
“Ms. Delacroix, Mrs. Hill said I had to ride with you, but couldn’t I go with my dad? I can show him where we’re going, or you can drive first and we’ll follow.”
“No, son,” Rhys answered for her. “We have to follow the rules, so we can all live together again. I’ll follow Ms. Delacroix.”
His words shouted control, which she read as another indication he’d do whatever he had to do to have his boys. Again, she was thankful she’d be done with her internship with Social Services soon, and that this would be the extent of her getting between him and his sons. It might be a flashback to her experience in Haiti, but Rhys Maddox struck her as a complex man—a man whom, despite the draw of his obvious love and devotion to his sons, she might not want to get on the wrong side of.
* * *
The truck didn’t start with his first two turns of the key and he could see Ms.