“As if.” Davis drained the scotch in his glass and poured himself another tumbler full. He took a long drink, smacked his lips, and drank again.

Pokey reached over and took the glass out of his hand. “Listen to me, Davis. We’re serious. Jax was prepared to pay the family thirty million for Quixie. You own a quarter interest. Pete and I want to buy you out. We’ll pay you seven and a half million cash. You take the money, go do whatever you want to do. Buy that house on Figure Eight Island, take a job with Jax Snax, or whatever. Or just sit back and count your money. But you walk away from the company. And you drop your challenge to Dad’s trust agreement.”

Davis got up and walked over to one of the gleaming ebonized kitchen cupboards. He got himself another tumbler, grabbed the Dewar’s bottle, and poured himself another dose. He leaned up against the black granite countertop. “What if I don’t take your offer? What if I decide to stay around and fight?”

“You’ll lose,” Pokey said, her chin jutting out. “And in the process, you will have antagonized everybody in this town. You will have trashed Daddy’s good name, and you will have estranged yourself from your entire family. Including Mama.”

“Mama…” he started to say.

“Mama is feeling hurt and betrayed right now, finding out about Sophie the way she did. Although I’m not really certain she didn’t suspect all along that she wasn’t Mason’s child. She’ll get over it, eventually. And when she does, she will not want that piece of news broadcast all over some lawsuit and the Bayless family name dragged through the mud. And you had better believe she would never, ever, forgive you for the way you betrayed Mason by sleeping by Celia.”

Davis jiggled the ice in his glass and smirked. “All of y’all are gonna have to get over this thing you have against Celia.”

“And why is that?” Pokey asked.

He chewed on the ice for a moment before answering. “What would you say if I told you we’re together now?”

“You and Celia? Is this a rhetorical question, or is this your ass-backward way of telling me the two of you are an item?”

He shrugged. “It was probably inevitable. We both tried to pretend we weren’t attracted to each other, but hell, it is what it is.”

Pokey shuddered. “What it is is grotesque, Davis. The two of you together? It’s a bad reality show on a third-rate cable channel. But the sad thing is, the two of you deserve each other. I just hope Mason doesn’t find out when the two of you hooked up.”

“You just said you’d never tell Mason,” Davis pointed out.

“I wouldn’t. But if Mama were to find out…” Pokey shrugged. “You know what Passcoe’s like. It’s a small town.”

“It’s a shithole,” Davis muttered into his scotch. “A two-horse, two-traffic-light shithole.”

“All the more reason you should take the money and run,” Pokey suggested. “Delta’s ready when you are.”

“Maybe I will,” Davis said. “Tell Pete to give me a call in the morning, if he’s serious.”

“No need to talk to Pete,” Pokey said. “I handle all our family finances. I’ll have our lawyer draw up an agreement, and I’ll send it over to you in the morning.”

52

The kitchen table was set with placemats and blue and white checked napkins and blue glass water goblets. A perky bouquet of daisies in a red bowl sat in the center of the table, and tall white taper candles burned from blue glass candleholders.

Mason stood at the stove, long-handled fork poised over a cast-iron skillet full of frying chicken, while Annajane sat at a high stool at the counter, preparing the salad.

Sophie came clomping into the kitchen and her eyes widened. She was wearing a pink ballet tutu over her purple pajamas and pink cowboy boots. “Are we having a party?” She climbed up on the stool beside Annajane’s and plunked down a picture book, some paper, and a box of crayons.

“Yep,” Mason said. “It’s a Friday-night party. And you’re invited.”

“Who else?” Sophie asked, noticing that the table was set for three.

“Just us,” Mason said. “It’s a very exclusive gathering. We used to have Friday-night parties a lot when I was your age, Soph. It was the only time my daddy ever cooked. And he only knew how to cook one thing, so we always had fried chicken.”

“I don’t like fried chicken,” Sophie said, her eyes sparkling behind the thick glasses. “I love it!”

“Me, too,” Annajane said. “How about we start the party with a cocktail?”

“For me?” Sophie looked puzzled.

“It’s a kiddie cocktail,” Annajane explained. She took a plastic highball tumbler from the cupboard. She poured in a couple inches of Quixie, added a splash of ginger ale, then topped it with a maraschino cherry before presenting it to the child. “Ta-da!”

“Mmm,” Sophie took a delicate sip. “Am I allowed to have Quixie?”

“In very small amounts,” Mason said. “For very special occasions. Like tonight.”

Annajane reached over and picked up the well-loved picture book. By her own estimation she had read The Runaway Bunny to Sophie at least a couple hundred times. The edges of the board book were dog-eared, and the cover bore a couple of purple crayon doodles, but nothing had ever diminished Sophie’s love for her favorite book.

Sophie picked up her crayons now and began to draw on the sheaf of printer paper she’d borrowed from Mason’s office.

“Whatcha drawing?” Annajane asked, looking over.

“I’m ill-luss-stra-ting,” Sophie said proudly, drawing out the word. “Miss Ramona lets us make new illustrations for books in school. This is my homework. I’m illustrating The Runaway Bunny.”

The child’s pink glasses slipped down her nose as she bent over her picture, painstakingly drawing a very small bunny. She glanced over at Annajane. “In school, Miss Ramona reads the stories to us while we draw.”

“Then allow me,” Annajane said, putting her paring knife down, pushing away the salad bowl and the wooden cutting board, and picking up the book.

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away,” Annajane read. “So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’”

Mason flipped the pieces of chicken over in the pan and covered it loosely with the lid. He stepped behind Annajane and, looking over her shoulder, read, “‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’”

Sophie poked out the tip of her tongue as she concentrated on drawing the rabbit’s ears. “I would never run away from my mama, if I was the little bunny,” she commented, filling in the middle of the rabbit’s orange ears with a brown crayon.

“Even if it was just a game, like hide-and-seek, like we play sometimes?” Mason asked.

“No,” Sophie said solemnly. “If I had a mama, I would never, ever run away.”

Annajane glanced over at Mason, who looked stricken. “Sophie,” he said gently. “Remember, you do actually have a mama. I told you that, remember?”

Sophie continued coloring, using a gray crayon to draw a lumpy version of the rabbit’s body. “My real mama’s name is Kristy. She lives in Florida now, and she loved me a lot, but she couldn’t take care of me, so she asked my daddy to take care of me.” Her voice was singsongy, but matter-of-fact.

“You’re killin’ me here,” Mason muttered. “You know, Sophie, when you came here to live with me, I decided I would be your daddy and your mama for a while. Then I asked Letha if she would come and help take care of you while I’m working. And your aunt Pokey helped out, too, and also Annajane. So you’re a lucky girl, because you have lots of people to love and help take care of you, instead of just one mama.”

Sophie looked up at him thoughtfully. “The runaway bunny only needed one mama. The kids in school all have one mama. Except Lucy. She has two mamas. And Clayton and Denning and Petey all have one mama—Aunt Pokey. That’s all I need, too.”