Chapter 16
“Do you remember that movie we saw last summer, about the kids who fought off the bad guys?” Colby asked his daughter.
Grace nodded immediately. “I remember. They won!”
“Yes, they did, in the end. But it took a long time, remember?”
She nodded again. Then she looked around at the adults in the room, as if she were trying to figure out what that movie had to do with any of them being here, or with anything else.
“Remember why they nearly lost?”
“Because that little snitch Mitch couldn’t keep his mouth shut,” she said, sounding disgusted.
“You told me you never would have spilled the beans no matter what.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Grace exclaimed.
“You ready to prove that, Gracie?” he asked softly.
Her brow furrowed as she stared up at him. She was very good at reading him, and he knew she’d realized he was dead—and maybe deadly—serious. “What? What’s happening, Daddy?”
Colby took a deep breath. “We’re going to fight, baby.”
“Fight?” She looked puzzled. “Fight what—” She broke off and her blue eyes, so like his own, widened. “Mother?”
He nodded. “And her whole family, if we have to. Just like those bad guys in the movie.”
He saw eagerness bubbling up in the child’s expression. He also saw the moment when she tried to tamp it down. She glanced over at the Foxworths. “But…who are they?”
“They’re friends,” he said. “They’re Cutter’s people.”
“Oh.”
Grace relaxed a little, as if that was all she’d needed to hear. As if in her book, anybody who owned a dog like Cutter had to be all right. He wasn’t sure she was wrong.
Then she shifted her gaze to the woman sitting close beside her. “You, too, Ali? Like Daddy said in his note, you’re helping us? Really?”
“As much as I can,” she said.
“I knew you were good. Cutter said so.” Grace looked thoughtful. “That’s why you’re letting me come to your house?”
“I’d want to do that anyway,” Ali assured her. “But yes. If you ever need a place to go in a hurry, you can come to me. And if I’m not there, we’ll figure out a way you can get inside.”
“I can do that,” Liam said, almost lazily. “We’ll rig up a handprint lock. I’ll show you how it works.”
Grace studied the young Texan for a long moment. “You’re with them, aren’t you?” she said, pointing at Quinn and Hayley. “You don’t really work with my daddy.”
Liam looked surprised, but he was smiling. “Well, now, aren’t you as bright as a new penny,” he drawled.
“You’re talking funny again,” Grace pronounced, and Liam laughed.
“And you’re bein’ smart again,” he retorted.
Grace giggled.
At that sound Colby felt such a rush of feeling, of gratitude, of thanks, and so many other tangled emotions that he couldn’t get a word out past the knot in his throat.
“You really can keep this secret?” Ali asked, leaning down to look Grace in the eye. “Because that’s very, very important.”
As if she sensed the truth of this, Grace sat up straight. She gently put Ziggy on the floor, then looked directly into Ali’s eyes. “I can,” she said firmly.
“Your mother’s pretty sneaky,” Colby warned. “She’ll get you talking about something else and try to make you slip up.”
“I know. She does that all the time. I’ve heard her. It’s how she gets secrets out of people.”
Ali gave a wondering shake of her head. “Are you sure you’re only seven?”
Grace grinned suddenly. “I’m a smart seven.”
“That you are,” Colby said fervently.
The first day after their meeting at Foxworth, Ali put up a blue piece of the construction paper she sometimes used for mock-ups in the window. Within ten minutes Grace was racing across the yard. She and Hayley met her at the back door, where Cutter was already waiting.
Since it was a Saturday and they hadn’t seen Liz leave, she was careful to ask the child, “You talked to your mother?”
Grace made a sour face. “Yes. She said I could come.”
“Okay, Grace,” Hayley said. “Now we need to call your mother.”
That startled the child. “Why?”
“Not because we don’t believe you, we do. We know you wouldn’t lie to us. But you know how your mother wants everyone to obey her?”
“Daddy calls it bowing down to her.”
Ali couldn’t help smiling. “And I’d agree. But she needs that. I think…” She hesitated, but telling herself the child had more than proven herself smart enough to understand, she went on. “I think she likes it when people are a little afraid of her.”
Grace simply nodded. “I know. I see her sometimes when she’s yelling at somebody on the phone. She sounds really mad, but…she’s smiling.”
Ali felt a jab of repulsion at the twisted mentality that would take.
But it vanished in the wave of admiration that followed, for just how smart Colby’s little girl was.
The emotion was touched with a bit of sadness, however.
No child this bright and precious should have to deal with a mother like she had.
Her own had been no mother-of-the-year nominee, but she hadn’t been vicious.
Ali had to steady herself before she made that call.
“It’s Ali next door,” she said with all the bright cheer she could muster. “I wanted to double-check that Grace cleared her visit over here with you, like she promised.”
“She did,” Liz said. “But good for you for checking. Wise decision.”
Gee, thanks, Your Highness.
“Just wanted to be sure,” she said.
“If she gets to be a nuisance, send her home.”
“Cutter’s tolerance level is pretty high,” Ali said, managing a fairly credible laugh. “But I’ll make sure she’s home in a couple of hours.”
For a moment after the call she stared at her phone. A nuisance. Nice.
“It’s supposed to start raining in about an hour,” Hayley was saying to Grace. “Until then you and Cutter and Ziggy better play out here in the backyard, where you’ll be visible. Then when it does start to rain you can come inside and she shouldn’t think a thing of it.”
Ali reached into the basket that sat beside the back door. “Here,” she said, handing the girl a rubber bone.
The girl looked at the slightly gnawed-on toy. Hayley laughed and explained, “I think Cutter is trying to teach Ziggy to fetch, but he needs somebody to throw it so he can show him what to do.”
“I can do that!”
Grace looked deliriously happy. Ali wondered how much of that was simply because she didn’t have to hide it over here.
She and Hayley sat on the back porch. And after about ten minutes, she was looking at Hayley in amazement. “He really is trying to teach Ziggy how to fetch.”
“That dog,” Hayley said, “could teach just about anybody to do just about anything.”
“You’ve obviously trained him well.”
Hayley looked back at the girl and the two dogs. “Wish I could take the credit, but he came that way. At a time when I desperately needed him.” Then she looked back at Ali. “He showed up on my doorstep shortly after my mother died.”
Something in the way the other woman was looking at her told Ali what she wasn’t saying. “You know. About…my husband, I mean.”
Hayley nodded. “Foxworth does our research.”
Ali thought about that for a moment. About the idea of being “researched” by an organization the size and scope of the Foxworth Foundation. It was intimidating, and a bit scary. But that was outweighed by something else.
“You checked me out because you wanted to be sure I truly wanted to help Grace.”
“Yes,” Hayley said simply.
Ali let out a long breath. “All right.”
“You’re okay with it?”
She nodded. “Grace deserves that kind of care.”
“Yes.”
Ali gave the woman she was starting to wish really was a longtime friend a sideways look. “I assume you did the same with Colby?”
Hayley smiled. “We did. You’ll have to trust us as he did about you, he’s all he appears to be. A good guy to the bone.”
She blinked…as he did about you?
As if she’d guessed what had rattled Ali, Hayley said, “Understandably, he’s not completely confident of his own judgment about women. The reason is right over there, and by the way, she’s looked out the window toward us at least twice since we sat down here.”
Ali let out a long breath. “I’m really glad you’re here. This…undercover stuff is so not my milieu.”
“Yet you’re doing it so well,” Hayley teased, making her both smile and relax a little.
The first drops of rain hit the roof over the porch in almost the same moment that Ziggy finally seemed to grasp the concept of fetch. At least, he brought the rubber bone back to Grace, with a proud Cutter trotting behind.
“A good note to end on,” Ali called out to them as they neared. “It’s going to open up so get inside before you get soaked. I think some hot chocolate is in order.”
Grace gave a happy little whoop, and the trio trekked inside.
She had only known the child for a short time, but the change in her demeanor seemed both blatant and wonderful.
Almost as wonderful as being a part of this.