Brad, page 5
Brad leaned toward her. “You know the guest house is available. You didn’t need to rent a place.”
She looked at him in his tie and suit and thought about how much he loved the outdoors, and how much he must hate sitting in an office all day. “Do you still live here?”
He shrugged. “I do now. My brothers and I buy apartments or townhouse communities, then refurbish them. I typically live in a unit until they sell. We closed last month, so I’ve been back home since then.”
“Your way to get your hands dirty even though you’re in a suit, huh?”
“He realized he had soft hands.” Ken chuckled. “He came to me about doing this apartment flip thing. If he can get home before midnight, it works out.”
“At least we don’t have a deadline when we start,” Brad said. “We can afford to take our time.” He looked at Valerie. “It feels good to take the suit off and pick up a hammer, especially after a day like today.”
She stared into his gray eyes. They glowed in the soft light of the chandelier. “I imagine it’s hard for you.”
Phillip said, “God has plans for us all. Doesn’t mean we have to agree with Him.”
She watched a muscle clench in Brad’s jaw and his eyes harden. “I’ve never disagreed.”
Jon chortled. “Yeah. You’ve just suffered. In silence, maybe, but some attitudes are louder than words.”
“You’re welcome to take over any time, brother,” Brad said in a steely voice. “I’d trade places in a second.”
Phillip pointed his fork at Brad. “That’s the problem, son. Need to just go with it. Let God work. You continue to resent how He positions you, you’re going to miss out on the blessings of obedience.”
If she hadn’t been sitting so close to him, she might have missed the tension that suddenly radiated off Brad and his quiet intake of breath. After a long, silent second, he nodded and placed his napkin next to his plate. Pushing his chair back, he stood. “Mama, dinner was great. Thank you.” He looked around the table. “Goodnight.”
Rosaline raised an eyebrow and looked at Phillip. “Time and place, dear?”
“Clearly.” He took a bite of fish and looked at Valerie with a pointed look and immediately changed the subject as Brad left the room. Valerie watched his retreating back. “I should have offered the guest house. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me.”
She thought of the little two-bedroom cottage on the other side of the koi pond. The Dixon family had lived there until the boys were three, while Phillip and Rosaline built the castle. Just as they moved out, she and Buddy moved in, and for the next eleven years, that little cottage had been her home. “It’s okay. My new place is closer to work. The traffic in Atlanta is so bad that I’d be leaving at six in the morning every day just to try to get in front of it.”
“That’s what the boys and I do. Best way. Then you stay past seven at night, and you’re golden.”
Jon and Ken burst out laughing. “Now you know why he’s late every night, Mama. It’s a traffic avoidance ploy.”
She chuckled. “At least there’s a reason.”
An hour later, after Ken and Jon had excused themselves, and Valerie had hugged Phillip and Rosaline goodbye, she left by the front door. As she stepped on the walkway to go to her car, she felt compelled to turn and walk around the house instead.
The early spring air had cooled slightly, and she rubbed her bare arms, wishing she hadn’t left her jacket in her car. The evening air in Savannah had always carried fragrances of Spanish moss, cigar smoke, leather, and throughout everything the faintest scent of sea salt from the Atlantic. Here in Atlanta, those smells made way for the scents of cedar and pine, cooling asphalt, and the ever-present smell of car exhaust.
The last crescent of the Georgia sun at twilight dipped further behind the familiar skyline spreading a blanket of reds and pinks over the orange and golden hues that would soon surrender to dusk and night. The spring moon hung low and pregnant, pinkish and orange in the sky.
When she entered the rose garden, though, she forgot the chill and slowly walked, letting the fragrance float up to her and take over her senses. She ran her fingertips over the open blossoms of the roses and listened to the crunch of gravel as she slowly walked.
When she reached the end of the rose garden, she noticed the shadow of a man in the gazebo. Knowing without needing confirmation that Brad sat on the bench, she stepped onto the bridge and walked across it, listening to her shoes echo on the cedar bridge. She could tell when he heard her or sensed her presence because he raised his head and stared in her direction.
“Permission to come aboard?” she called out, using the line required to enter the occupied gazebo from their childhood.
He chuckled. “Aye.”
Without hesitation, she made the short leap from the bottom of the bridge to the top step of the gazebo, jumping over the imagined alligator filled moat. It surprised her that she could still make the leap. When she landed, she felt the twinge in her hip and wondered if she’d regret that in the morning.
“Your mom saved your plate.”
“She would.” He scooted over on the bench, and she sat next to him, turning her body to face him.
After a few moments of silence, she asked, “Is everything okay here?”
Brad shrugged. “I thought so, but then my dad speaks a little bit of truth, and I storm out in the middle of dinner like a spoiled child. So, maybe not. Spent the last hour trying to analyze that.”
“I don’t think ‘spoiled child’ is the right description. You’re in the position. You’re doing your duty. Nothing like wishing you were doing something else. What other choice do you have?”
She could see the glow of his eyes in the moonlight. “I’m a twenty-nine-year-old man with a decent education and a lot of really specialized training. My choices are limitless. It isn’t obligation that has me running Dixon Contracting. It’s love. I love my family, and I love the company.” He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the floor. “The question should be, what do I want to do about it?”
“Fair enough.” She put her arm along the back of the bench and leaned toward him. “What do you want to do about it, Brad?”
His laugh echoed out in the night. “I want to be happy in my position and not have spent the last four years longing to be somewhere else.” He turned his head to look at her again. “But I can’t go back. Going forward, I want to feel content in my job, knowing it’s important and exactly what I need to do right now.”
With a slow nod, she said, “That sounds doable. Target set, sights fixed. Now, execute.” Her hip aching, she slowly got to her feet, needing to stretch it out. “I loved it here. I hated moving from you guys.”
She tried very surreptitiously to rub her hip. “Uncle Buddy told me about six months after we moved that I’d wasted most of my high school freshman year feeling sorry for myself. He asked me if I planned to spend the next three years making both of us miserable, or if I wanted to decide to be happy and content and go with the flow of life.”
Brad grunted then said, “You never struck me as a Pollyanna. Your personality is much more down to earth.”
“My personality?” She walked the perimeter of the gazebo, running her finger over the back of the bench, remembering so many memories she hadn’t thought of in more than a decade. “A lot of times, our attitude about our current position has everything to do with a choice we make and little to do with our circumstances or personality.” She made her way back to him and put a knee on the bench, shifting her body to stretch her hip, trying to make the motion look natural. “I may not be able to alter my personality, but I can always adjust my attitude.”
Brad smiled at her, and she could see his teeth in the night. “Why do I feel like I’ve just been schooled?”
“Probably because I just schooled you.” She leaned closer to him. “You must have forgotten how very wise I can be.”
For several seconds, Brad stared at her. She could almost feel the heat from his face and her eyes glanced over his lips. Finally, he said, “Actually, I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you.” He carefully stood and extended his elbow. “How about I walk you to your car?”
Only when Brad couldn’t see Valerie’s taillights anymore did he go back into the house. Instead of heading to the staircase, he strolled into his father’s study. As expected, his mother sat on the small sofa next to his father’s desk, crocheting, while his father worked through the stack of papers that sat in the briefcase he had open on his desk.
He cleared his throat. Both his parents looked up at him. His father raised an eyebrow. “It was a hard day and I brought it to the table with me. My mistake. I apologize for leaving dinner.”
After several seconds, Phillip nodded. “Apology accepted.”
Rosaline set her crocheting down and slipped off her glasses as she looked up at him. “It was good to have Valerie at the table again.”
He smiled. “I agree. Glad you had all your little chicks in the same roost tonight.”
“It made my mama heart happy.” She put her glasses back on and picked her crochet hook back up. “I saved your plate. Make sure you eat before bed.”
Brad bent to kiss her cheek. “I will. Goodnight.”
They both bid him goodnight as he left the room. He made his way to the kitchen and pulled his plate out of the refrigerator. While it heated up in the microwave, he took his phone out of his pocket but didn’t turn it on. Instead, he plugged it in and intentionally left it sitting on the kitchen counter before taking his plate up to his room.
After setting the plate on his desk, he pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, untucking it from his pants so it hung loose. He pulled a bottle of water from his mini-fridge and sat at his desk. While he ate his reheated dinner, he thought about what Valerie had said, appreciating the wisdom of her words and the simple way she shared them.
As he searched his heart, he realized that he truly served as the only remaining barrier blocking his contentment with his current position. He really should find joy in the evening work as he refurbished a building instead of resenting his brothers for the work they did every day during daylight hours. He really should have put his whole heart and mind into his job instead of withholding this little part that just clung to resentment like he had clung to the short straw when he pulled it.
He pushed his half-eaten plate away and closed his eyes, taking a deep cleansing breath and letting it out. He honestly felt like he needed to repent. As he chuckled out loud, the thought became more focused.
“I’m sorry, God,” he said audibly. “I should have looked at the opportunity you gave me as a blessing and taken into responsible stewardship. I’ll go forward with a clean heart, with ready willingness, and with gratitude.”
The simple two-sentence prayer ended with a burden releasing itself from his heart. He took his water bottle and walked over to the window, opening the sliding door and stepping out onto the small, semi-circular balcony. He sat in the comfortable lounge chair and took a sip of water while he stared at the gazebo in the moonlight.
Often, he’d start to think about Valerie and childhood, but he pushed the memories back, keeping them distant and vague. Tonight, though, they crowded his mind and he closed his eyes, remembering summers in the pool, fishing from the dock, exploring the hidden passageways his father had built into the plans of the house. He vividly remembered the last time he saw her before Tyrone—the day she had graduated from college.
He’d wanted to tell her how he felt then and there, about the love he’d carried inside for so many years. However, he didn’t feel like she would take him seriously.
Instead, he played the brother role that Ken and Jon easily fell into and just celebrated with everyone as a group, never singling her out, never pouring his heart out to her. Finding out that she’d moved in with a man a couple months later—a married man who worked for their father—didn’t make his decision to keep his mouth shut any easier. That experience taught him never to hesitate, not with important matters.
Yet, today he’d seen her twice in one day, once professionally and once personally, and still hadn’t said anything beyond normal conversation. Both his brothers had hugged her. He had given her his elbow for a stroll to her car. How long would he have to hold out until confessing his lifetime of love for her?
He leaned his head back and looked up at the night sky. The temperature had dropped significantly since the morning. In late February, the weather tended to act a little erratic. A seventy-degree high could turn into fifty overnight.
Thinking about the ongoing local jobs, and what severe weather could mean, he mentally made a note to discuss spring weather forecasts with the team in tomorrow’s weekly project management meeting. Then he shook his head. He’d left his phone downstairs on purpose, intending not to think about work at all tonight. Instead, he looked at the gazebo again.
Then he remembered. The metal box. The cards with their hopes and dreams in them. They had made a pact to open them in fifteen years. That would mean this September. Thinking of the words he’d written, his heart skipped a beat and his throat went dry. What would Valerie say if she knew that Brad had summed up all his hopes and dreams?
Wondering if he should even remind his brothers and Valerie about the box, he finished his water and stood. Maybe he’d wait to see if even one of them remembered.
Going back inside, he slid the door shut behind him and grabbed the dinner plate to take down to the kitchen.
During drove the drive home from the Dixon castle, Valerie found herself immersed in thoughts about the family and their unique closeness. She had grown up with them, so nothing felt wrong. She had realized halfway through high school what a unique family they were and how blessed she’d been to be a part of them. She realized how much she missed them and longed to be back with them.
By the first semester of college, she’d found an entirely different world and the Dixons became an adored family “back home” whom she rarely saw and rarely gave a second’s thought. She knew it had a lot to do with the way her faith had shifted, but it also had a lot to do with the friends she made in college, her attitude about Buddy moving them, and a freedom of movement she gained living independently for the first time in her life.
Intentionally shutting down the happy thoughts about college, she pulled into the driveway of her little house and got out of her car, listening to the chirp of the horn to confirm she had, in fact, locked the doors. At the end of the driveway, she checked her empty mailbox, then walked up the path to the front door, listening intently, looking all around her, her senses heightened.
After she opened the door and turned off the alarm, she shut it behind her, making sure to lock the deadbolt and attach the security chain. Securely inside, she started turning on lights—first the little entryway, then the overhead light in the living room, the light above the small table in the dining area space, and the kitchen light. She set her purse on the table but kept her keys and phone in her hand while she walked back through the living room, checking that the sliding lock was still secure on the coat closet. She turned on the hall light and did a quick check of the bathroom, the spare bedroom, and finally her bedroom. All the closets remained bolted shut. She didn’t actually get on the floor and look under the bed, but she did check the base of the full-length mirror she’d strategically placed next to the bed and made sure she could see the reflection all the way through to the other side of the bed.
Believing herself alone in the house and sure that no one had broken in and hidden anywhere, she relaxed fully, slipping her shoes off and pulling her earrings out of her ears. She set them on the tray on top of her dresser and rolled her head on her neck.
After she slipped her clothes off, she pulled on a nightgown covered in coffee cups and Eiffel Towers, then went into the bathroom to wash her face. As she dried off, she stared at her reflection, running her finger over the scar under her jawline caused by the flying debris of the table she’d landed on. Closing her eyes, she shook her head to clear the image then left the bathroom.
She walked back down the hall and stopped to look into the empty second bedroom. Did she want to invest in a desk for here, to turn this into an office? Or did she want to make it into a spare bedroom for any guests who might stay overnight?
Right, she snorted, what guests?
Tyrone had separated her from any college friends years ago, and he was her only approved work friend. Lying in the hospital bed, broken, cut up, and bruised, no one came to visit her until Uncle Buddy arrived followed by Rosaline and Phillip Dixon. Tyrone had worked everything until she had no world left but him.
Thankfully, she’d kept Buddy away from their relationship, in the dark about everything until she just couldn’t hide it all anymore. Buddy’s personality kept him from interfering too much, though, which gave Tyrone the idea that he didn’t serve in any way as a support system for her, and that caused Tyrone to leave their relationship alone.
If she believed God would hear her, she’d thank Him. Instead, she just felt general gratitude over the way she still had a support system in place, a family in Atlanta that still loved her. Until those lonely days of healing, she had no idea how much she needed people to care about her.
Once Auntie Rose, as Valerie had called her since toddlerhood, had come to visit, the maternal love flowed from her and Valerie felt herself getting better in response. She stayed for three weeks, sitting next to her hospital bed, then sleeping on her couch and driving her to therapies and doctor visits. Valerie honestly didn’t know what she’d have done without her.
She imagined her mother would have done the same thing—provided Tyrone hadn’t managed to destroy that relationship, of course. Aunt Rose’s presence resettled her and started her healing emotionally more than anything else could have.
