“Well, it’s not okay with me, which you knew before you called him,” she told Rory Sue. “We’re celebrating the holidays right here and that’s final. Look, why don’t you plan a big party so you can catch up with all your friends as soon as you get here. You can have it at our house or the club, whichever you like. Then you all can make lots of holiday plans together. Your schedule will be so full you won’t have a minute to even think about skiing.”
“Bor-ing!” Rory Sue intoned. “The club is way too stuffy and if we have it at the house, you’ll freak over every detail.”
“I’ll stay completely out of it,” Mary Vaughn bargained. “You can plan the entire party yourself. You can make sure it’s not boring.”
“How? Will you let me bring in beer?”
“Absolutely not. You and most of your friends are underage. No drinking.”
“Then what fun will that be?”
“You don’t need alcohol to have fun,” Mary Vaughn scolded. “Come on, Rory Sue, meet me halfway here. I promise you’ll have a great time. Have I ever broken a promise to you?”
“The most important promise of all,” Rory Sue retorted without missing a beat. “You told me I’d always have a family I could count on. That hasn’t been true in years.”
The barb stung. Flushed, Mary Vaughn turned away from Ronnie’s penetrating gaze and her former father-in-law’s frown. “You can always count on me and your daddy and your granddaddy,” she said in a hushed but emphatic voice. “Just because your daddy and I aren’t married does not mean we don’t love you as much as ever.”
“If you loved me, you’d let me go skiing.”
“I have to go now, Rory Sue. And don’t you dare call your daddy and beg him to change my mind. I intend to have a talk with him today and make sure he knows exactly how I feel about this.” The truth was, she should have had that talk with Sonny after Rory Sue’s first call, but she hadn’t quite figured out what to say to him. Now she knew exactly where to start. “I mean it, Rory Sue. This is settled once and for all.”
“Fine,” Rory Sue said in a huff and cut off the call.
Seconds later, her ex-father-in-law’s phone rang. Howard answered and his face lit up. “Darlin’ girl, how are you?”
Mary Vaughn made a dash around the table and yanked the phone right out of his hand. “Don’t you involve your grandfather in this!” she snapped to Rory Sue, then handed the phone back to Howard.
“Problems?” Ronnie inquired as she went back to her seat.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she replied.
“I’m familiar with the divide-and-conquer technique. During her recovery from anorexia, my daughter Annie tried it all the time with Dana Sue and me until she figured out it was counterproductive to her real goal of getting us back together.”
“How’d you handle it?” she asked, even though she didn’t really want advice from the man who’d spurned her twice.
“Dana Sue and I compared notes. We presented a united front.”
Mary Vaughn considered that. She and Sonny hadn’t had a conversation in months. They hadn’t been united over anything. They acted, in fact, as if they barely knew each other, much less had ten years of marriage behind them and a daughter in common. If Ronnie was right and they went on like that, Rory Sue would do her best to take advantage of the situation every chance she got.
Much as she hated the idea, she really did need to talk to her ex-husband and come up with a plan. Maybe at the same time they could devise a way to make this Christmas Rory Sue’s best, so she’d be glad she’d come home to Serenity.
“Thanks for the tip,” she told Ronnie grudgingly.
Just then Howard clicked off his cell phone and scowled at her. “What are you and Rory Sue fussing about that you don’t want me to know?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“After you’d busted in and told her not to, no. She just filled me in on what’s happening at school. Now you can tell me the rest.”
“She doesn’t want to spend the holidays here,” Mary Vaughn told him. “She wants to go skiing with her roommate’s family.”
Howard looked crestfallen. “Not home for Christmas? Of course, we can’t have that. This is where she belongs.”
“For once, we’re on the same page.”
“What does Sonny say?”
“He told her it was okay with him if it was okay with me.”
Howard shook his head. “I’ll talk to him.”
“No,” Mary Vaughn protested. “I’ll handle this. Sonny and I need to present a united front, for a change.”
“You tell him it just won’t be Christmas without our little gal here. And if you need backup, you let me know.”
Though on most issues, Howard would rather eat dirt than support her on anything, Mary Vaughn wasn’t totally shocked by his backing on this. He adored Rory Sue. “I appreciate it,” she told him sincerely. “It would break my heart to have her so far away.”
“Mine, too,” he said, giving her hand a pat. “This is all going to work out, Mary Vaughn. Don’t you worry about that.”
His confidence bolstered her spirits, but not quite as much as Tom’s arrival. Even though he looked as if he’d rather be miles away from this meeting, he was the handsomest thing in a suit she’d seen in a long, long time.
She suspected he’d look even better out of it.
* * *
Tom didn’t even try to hide his disappointment over Jeanette’s absence from the committee meeting. He’d been peeking into the room for the past ten minutes, hoping to delay his entrance and the start of the meeting until she arrived. By nine-fifteen, he was forced to accept that she wasn’t coming and that the others were getting restless.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said, taking his seat. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Punctuality is a sign of respect,” Howard said, sounding very much the way Tom’s parents would have sounded
