Chapter 23
With Ivy’s help for the past couple of days, the antique shop was looking less like a jumbled mess and taking on the shape of a real store.
Willa Rose had been in dozens and dozens of antique places all over the state of Texas with her mother.
She wanted her place to look like the ones that were all shiny and arranged by rooms.
“You would be proud of this, Mama,” she whispered as she took one more look around the store.
“After the holidays, I’ll have a sign made to go above the porch roof: Vada’s Antiques.
” She imagined the fancy scroll on the upcoming project as she turned out the lights and locked the door.
She intended to go straight home, take a long hot bath in the claw-foot tub, and read a chapter in the romance book she had started before she moved to Spanish Fort.
She was locking the door when her phone rang. She fished it out of her back pocket and answered without even looking at the caller ID.
“Can you meet me at the Montague County Courthouse in an hour?” Erica asked. “I know it’s short notice, but my lawyer had to move heaven and earth to get this arranged. If we don’t do this today, then it will have to wait two weeks, and the baby will stay in care of foster parents until then.”
“This is really happening?” Willa Rose was filled with mixed emotions that brought on tears. She hated that Erica was still the self-centered person she had been. But in the same moment, Willa Rose was about to be a mother. Still, she wouldn’t believe it until she held a baby in her arms.
“It definitely is,” Erica snapped.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Are you sure about this? You know how attached I can get. Please be sure so my heart doesn’t get broken.” She looked at the time—one o’clock. She barely had time to rush home and change from sweatpants into something presentable for court.
“I’m positive. Have you told Hank?” Erica asked.
“No, I have not. I was sure you would change your mind, and I can’t believe that you got all this arranged in such a brief time, anyway.” Willa Rose raced out to her vehicle and slid behind the wheel.
“It’s all in who you know, and my lawyer has lots of connections,” Erica said. “Can you be here in an hour? From the map I looked at, it’s only a thirty-minute drive.”
“I’ll be there.” She braked in front of her house and jogged to the porch. “Do you have the baby with you?”
“It’s in a separate car.”
“Why aren’t you saying ‘him’ or ‘her’ instead of ‘it’? That sounds so cold.” Willa Rose rushed into the house, leaving a string of clothing behind her, and hurriedly dressed in the outfit she had worn to the Paradise for Sunday dinner.
“I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl. I don’t want to know.”
“Did you pick out names?” Willa Rose asked on her way back through the living room and outside again. “Surely you put something on the birth certificate.”
“Since it’s close to Christmas, I told them to put Nicholas on the certificate if it is a boy. Holly if it was a girl. You can change it in a year when we come for the legal adoption stuff. And my lawyer says you will have home visits, and you will work with a caseworker during the year,” she said.
“Why did you even have the baby if you didn’t want it?”
“Mama wanted a grandchild, and it doesn’t look like you are ever going to find anyone to help you out in that area.
And I wanted a little piece of me left behind when I die even if I don’t want to be the one to raise it,” she answered.
“But just to be totally transparent, I had my tubes tied, so this is the only mistake I will make. See you at the courthouse and, Willa Rose, my lawyer had to move heaven and earth to get this done legally, so if you bail on me, I will turn the kid over to the courts for adoption.”
If Erica really does this, Yasmin was wrong about me having five sons.
“Now that’s a crazy thought right now,” she muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I’ll meet you there,” Willa Rose answered.
“I’ll be waiting,” Erica said and ended the call.
Yeah, right! Willa Rose thought. This is just another of your scare tactics or promises that you will break. When I get there, you will laugh at me and say you changed your mind and can’t bear to give up the only child you will ever have.
She checked the time when she got into her SUV and headed out of town.
Erica had no conscience when it came to keeping promises.
In the past she had promised their mother that she would come for a holiday, or even for a few hours as she was passing through the area, and then she wouldn’t show up—without a word of explanation.
Sometimes for several days or even weeks.
She figured she would show up at the courthouse in time for another call saying that Erica had changed her mind.
That’s why she hadn’t gotten all excited about having a child, or even worrying about the consequences of accepting the enormous responsibility of raising a child as a single mother.
It was also why she hadn’t even mentioned the whole idea to Hank.
“This is going to be a trip for nothing,” she told herself when she made the turn at Nocona.
Willa Rose parked her car with a few minutes to spare and hurried into the courthouse. She asked the security guard which way she should go to court and then walked right past her sister who was sitting on a bench with a middle-aged man beside her.
“Willa Rose!” Erica snapped.
Willa Rose whipped around and stared at her sister. “You’ve changed your hair, and…”
“I’ve had some plastic surgery, but it’s me,” Erica said with a smile.
Willa Rose recognized the voice, if not the woman. “I can see that. What now?”
“After you sign the papers, we go inside,” Erica answered.
“I am Raymond Desmond, Erica’s attorney. First, I need to see some identification to know that you are really Willa Rose Thomas.”
Willa Rose sank down on the bench beside her sister and pulled her driver’s license from her purse. “Will this do?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Raymond answered. He opened his briefcase and drew out a stack of papers.
Good Lord! This is really happening. Erica wasn’t bluffing. For the first time since her sister asked her if she would raise the baby, Willa Rose thought this could be real, and she only had minutes to get ready.
***
Willa Rose answered the few questions directed at her, and then the judge signed off on what the lawyer presented to him.
She had come into the courthouse as a doubting sister and was leaving as a mother to a child that she had never seen and didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.
Outside on the lawn, the lawyer handed her a thick folder with copies of pages and pages of paperwork.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “Do I hug you or…”
“No!” Erica said. “Now Raymond will take me to the Dallas airport. The lady from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services will put the baby in your car. The birth certificate is in the folder, but just so you know, I gave birth nine days ago in Austin. The DHS people have had charge of it since then. Goodbye, Willa Rose.”
“Surely, you can say ‘baby’ rather than ‘it,’” Willa Rose said.
“That’s now your job,” Erica said as she got into the vehicle and slammed the door.
The car was well out of sight when a tall, thin woman with gray hair opened the back door of the SUV parked next to Willa Rose’s and removed a baby seat. “You are Willa Rose Thomas, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Willa Rose opened the back door to her SUV.
“I am Loraine and let me say that it is a good thing you are doing, stepping up to take a little guy like this and raise him. We are always so glad to see relatives become guardians,” she said as she took care of settling the seat into the vehicle.
“The folks who’ve fostered him for the past week said that he’s a good baby. ”
“Thank you,” Willa Rose said, still unsure if she was awake or dreaming.
“I’ll be in touch after the holidays to set up a schedule for home visits,” she said. “Until then, happy holidays.”
“You too,” Willa Rose murmured.
“Oh, I almost forgot to give you the diaper bag and a letter from the foster parents telling you what kind of formula he uses and other little details to make your job easier,” Lorraine said and handed the bag to Willa Rose.
Willa Rose set the bag on the passenger seat and rounded the front of the vehicle. She crawled into the back seat, unfastened all the straps holding the baby into the seat, and took him out. She touched his hair, dark like her mother’s, and unwrapped the blue blanket from around him.
“You are mine,” she whispered as she held him close to her chest. “Your name is Nicholas, but I’m going to call you Nicky, and I promise I will love you so much, even more than your grandfather, Hank, who is going to cry when he sees you.”
The baby opened his eyes wide and snuggled down deeper into her chest. Tears flowed down Willa Rose’s cheeks. She understood Tripp’s love for his mother now and believed that a woman could love a child even if she hadn’t given birth to him.
“Okay, baby boy, it’s time for you to go back into your seat. Let’s go home,” she said as she settled him back into the carrier and kissed him on the top of his head.
In one respect, the trip back to Spanish Fort took forever. On the other side of the coin, it seemed like she had just driven away from the courthouse a minute before she parked in front of the leather shop. She took Nicky out of the seat and slung the diaper bag over her shoulder.
“We are here, and from the way you are chewing on your fist, I’d say it’s about time for a bottle,” she said as she made her way to the barn.
She stepped out of the cold and into warmth and soft Christmas music filling the shop. Her father worked on one side of a workbench, and Tripp on the other. Both looked up, saw that it wasn’t a customer, and motioned her inside.