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 Kenand 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. 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?”
Brad Dixon stood in thedriveway and watched Valerie Flynn’s taillights until he couldn’t see them anymore, then went 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.
