A Holiday to Remember (5 page)

Chris came last, putting a hand on the door to allow her to go in ahead of him. “Quite a show of power, there. Why are they so afraid of you?”

“Don’t I look scary?” She huffed a laugh as she pulled off her green wool cap, and her ponytail came loose with it. Mahogany curls fell over her shoulders and across her eyes. Pushing the hair off her face, she frowned. “Maybe I do right now. But they’re not afraid of
me.
Hawkridge is their last chance and they know it. They either graduate or go to jail.”

Chris fisted his hands against the urge to help smooth her messy, shining hair. “I guess that’s not a hard choice.”

“More so for some than others.” Still combing her fingers through the tangles, she marched toward the storeroom doorway. “Come on, girls. You don’t want this to take all day.”

Chris stayed in the hallway for the next twenty minutes, leaning against the wall and listening to the proceedings without interrupting. Jayne delivered her lecture in a crisp voice unlike the soft drawl he’d heard so far. She talked about responsibility, self-discipline and respect for others and self, following up with expectations, goals and consequences. By the end, Chris was examining his own conscience—a rare event.

Since first recognizing Jayne Thomas as Juliet Radcliffe, down in Ridgeville, he’d been obsessed with finding out why she’d disappeared, leaving him all these years to think she was dead. He hadn’t cared if he scared her, showing up unannounced at the school. And he’d bullied her, or tried to—she was hard to intimidate. Chris had wanted the truth and was prepared to do whatever might be required.

Did he have the truth yet? Nothing he’d done or said so far had convinced Jayne to admit her story about growing up with her grandmother in a town across the mountains was just that—fiction. He could almost believe she didn’t remember anything at all about Ridgeville, or about him.

So which option was worse? That she didn’t remember their time together? That she didn’t want to acknowledge a relationship with him? Or that she’d died on that long ago Christmas Eve?

Chris was beginning to think he’d hurt less if he could go on believing Juliet was dead. The old pain was almost comfortable, compared to the idea that Juliet didn’t want him in her life. And how in the world could she simply forget their time together? Their love?

She hadn’t forgotten; she’d put a whole set of childhood
memories in place of the ones they’d made together. Her family’s house fire, for example. Where had that idea come from? Why make that choice? Why fabricate a childhood at all?

Inside the library, Jayne issued instructions for a quiet morning—books, puzzles, solitary card games. After lunch, they’d all go out to the snow bowl, as she’d promised, if—
if,
she repeated—peace reigned through lunch.

Chris straightened up from the wall, having modified his own plan for the remainder of his time at Hawkridge. Maybe Juliet didn’t want him in her life. If so, she was going to have to explain why. Maybe she didn’t remember him and Ridgeville. Maybe she’d forgotten everything between them. If so, he wanted to know what had happened to her memory. Either way, there was a mystery here begging for an explanation. As a journalist committed to probing for the truth, Chris could never let a mystery go unsolved.

And if Jayne Thomas turned out to be just who she claimed?

Well, then Juliet would be dead. And he’d live with the guilt, as he had been for the last twelve years.

But he would coax a real smile onto Jayne Thomas’s full lips before he moved on.

A
FTER MODERATING
a discussion among the girls on anger management techniques, Jayne decreed a quiet time for individual activities during the ninety minutes before lunch. Reading, solo work on puzzles and games, even napping were acceptable activities. Communication of any kind was not. They needed the peace as much as she did.

Chris Hammond had vanished when she looked for him out in the hallway, which was just as well. She didn’t want to interact with him, didn’t want to be reminded of that kiss by the doors last night, or those moments this morning when he
held her against him, his arms firm around her, his body like a tree trunk against which she could take shelter from the storm. She’d felt safe and cared for, guarded by his strength.

Worst of all, his embrace, his body, had felt as familiar as her own. He smelled like…like
home.
And his taste—that blend of coffee with something deep and dark and intoxicating—hadn’t surprised her at all.

He felt, smelled, tasted familiar.
Damn it.

“Ms. Thomas?”

Jayne looked up from her mug of coffee and the book she’d pretended to read. “Yes, Taryn?”

The girl stood beside her chair, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “I’m hungry. When is lunch?”

A glance at her watch showed that her ninety minutes of calm had almost ended. “As soon as we get it ready.” Once on her feet, she looked around the library at the girls in their various locations. “Let’s set up a sandwich bar,” she announced, “and everyone can make their own sub, exactly the way they want it.”

Harmony reigned during the preparations, since no one wanted to spend the afternoon in isolation. Monique volunteered to slice tomatoes and even onions, at Haley’s request, while Selena spooned ice into cups for soft drinks. In less than fifteen minutes, the kitchen counter was transformed into a delicatessen offering a wide selection of sandwich options.

“Line up alphabetically by last name,” Jayne told the girls. “Lunch is served!”

She rethought her instructions when she realized that alphabetical order put Haley Farrish at the head of the line with Taryn Gage right behind her. But the girls assembled their lunches side by side without incident.

Just to remind Jayne not to relax her guard, Yolanda began to complain. “Why am I always last?”

Jayne stepped in behind her. “Now you’re not last. I am.”

Yolanda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but I still have to eat stuff that’s been picked over and everybody else has put their dirty fingers on.”

“That’s why we have spoons,” Sarah pointed out. “And why we wash our hands before we eat.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Yolanda said. “Talk all you want. I know what I see.”

Taryn turned around to glare at the older girl. “Why don’t you just—”

“What?” Yolanda stepped closer to the seventh grader. “What do you want me to do?”

When Taryn caught sight of Jayne’s warning look and the firm shake of her head, she settled for a superior sneer. “Never mind.”

Lunch passed quietly after that, lacking conflict but also lacking the laughter that usually enlivened time with the girls. Lacking, as well, the challenge of dealing with Chris Hammond.

“Where’d Mr. Hammond go?” Haley looked around the kitchen, as if he were hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered. “Doesn’t he want lunch?”

“I don’t know,” Jayne was forced to reply. “He came inside with us.”

“I saw him through the window a few minutes ago,” Selena volunteered. “He was walking down the driveway.”

Jayne fought to keep her face blank. Without comment, she returned to her sandwich.

Had he decided to leave? Without telling her or…or anyone? No one with intelligence would try to walk all the way to Ridgeville in three feet of snow. And expecting to find a ride on the road was a ridiculous idea. The plows wouldn’t reach this area for several days.

Of course, she didn’t really know him, so she couldn’t
decide what he might choose to do. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as she’d thought.

As the girls cleaned up the kitchen, Jayne finished her coffee and tried to talk herself out of the unreasonable dismay she felt at Chris Hammond’s departure. He complicated her life, distracting her from the students for whom she was responsible. His absurd obsession with her “false” identity made him unpredictable and unreliable. She should be glad he’d left—that meant he’d decided to believe the truth and stop pestering her.

She
was
glad he’d left. Her single-handed custody of these seven girls could now proceed without interference.

With their chores done, they had gathered around her in an attitude of expectation. “Can we go to the snow bowl now, Ms. Thomas? Can we?”

“Yes. Get dressed and we’ll hike up there.”

With the situation restored to normal, all of them prepared to go back outside. Bundled up once more, they headed down the hallway toward the side exit as a group, the students chattering and giggling, Jayne pulling on her gloves and tugging her hat down over her ears.

Just as Yolanda reached for the door handle, the panel swung away from her, pulled outward by an unseen hand. Several of the girls squealed in shock or fright. Jayne jumped, and her heart started racing.

Chris Hammond stood just outside the door, holding his hat in one hand. Powdered with snow from shoulders to toes, his hair wet and tousled, he looked as if he’d fought through an avalanche to reach them. Excitement snapped and crackled in his blue eyes.

He winked at Yolanda, now staring at him with her mouth open, nodded at Jayne, and then grinned at the entire group.

“Who’s up for an afternoon snowball fight?”

“I hate snow.” Jayne muttered the words to herself over and over that afternoon as she watched from the lip of the round, shallow valley, which the blizzard had coated with white icing. On one slope, four or five girls whirled down the walls of the bowl on blue disks. Snow people in various stages of construction stood sentry along the edges.

And at the center stood Chris Hammond, defending himself against snowballs thrown from all directions. He had hiked across campus, he’d explained, as far as the school gymnasium, where he’d pulled out the sleds and snowshoes stored in the equipment room.

The building was locked, he’d said in answer to Jayne’s query, but he’d had the foresight to take with him the ring of keys hanging in the maintenance office in the manor. As she stared at him, appalled, he’d reassured her that he’d left the building as secure as he found it. Then he gave her that heart-stopping grin.

Now he constituted the center of battle. Girls joined the fight at different times, stayed for a while and then drifted off to some other game, only to return later and renew their attack. His dramatic reactions to hits, misses and his own missiles—lobbed rather than thrown, Jayne was certain—
kept everyone laughing. He had made their afternoon at The Nest a special event.

She wanted to laugh, to be entertained. But her feet were cold inside her fleece-lined boots, and she was sure her nose was red. Her hands were warm enough, thanks to thick sheepskin gloves and the wool coat pockets she’d tucked them into. But she was tired of standing and watching. As for joining in…not an option.

Though she willed the time to pass more quickly, the sun clung stubbornly to the tops of the trees and the glare reflecting off the snow seared her eyes. She squeezed her lids together, letting darkness soothe the aching tissues.

Even with her eyes closed, she saw snow. In her mind’s eye, the night sky hung over her and the wind lashed her face when branches didn’t. Black tree trunks barred her way on every side. She stumbled….

Opening her eyes, Jayne shook her head. What was
that?
A scene from a movie? Or another winter, when she’d taken a walk at night in the snow…something she couldn’t remember ever having done?

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find the smallest scrap of a memory like the vision she’d just witnessed. As often happened when she tried to recall the past, she came up against a solid blank wall. No faces, no places, no events reached her from the other side. She couldn’t climb over the wall, dig under or go around.

Tears blurred her vision, and she reluctantly dragged her hands out of her pockets so she could wipe her eyes. As her sight cleared, she saw a lone figure climbing the slope in her direction.

“I lost,” Chris announced as he joined her on the rim. “Beaten by a bunch of girls. Good thing no one’s here as a witness.”

“Ahem. No one?”

Still grinning, he raised his eyebrows. “Would you rat out an old friend?”

“Two days doesn’t make us old friends.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot—we didn’t know each other before.” He clicked his tongue. The grin had vanished. “It’s hard to ignore these pictures in my mind, though. I see you naked, asleep on a blanket in the grass just after we’ve made love. Pretty unforgettable.”

Fear exploded in Jayne’s stomach and roiled into her chest. She closed her fingers into fists. “I don’t doubt you had that experience. I’m sure you remember someone. I,” she said carefully, holding his gaze, “am not she.”

“Another denial. With perfect grammar, no less.” Chris noticed the sudden flush on the headmistress’s cheeks, the speedup of her puffs of breath in the frigid air. “Then what are you so afraid of?”

Instead of answering, she stomped to the edge of the ridge. The whistle she gave was a repeat of this morning’s—loud, long and piercing, bringing the whole world, including the girls, to a complete stop.

“Time to go,” she shouted, her hands cupped around her mouth. Then she raised her arms and motioned for them to come.

After the long afternoon spent playing in the cold, the lack of protest from the girls wasn’t a surprise. They had to be tired. Chris knew he was exhausted and freezing. The sun dropped suddenly behind the trees, and the temperature plunged with it.

But the level of whining on the hike back to the school shocked and irritated him.

“My toes hurt.” That was Haley’s complaint. During the fight this afternoon he’d managed to learn all their names.

Beth grumbled, “I’m hungry.” Since Jayne had, with fore
sight, insisted on bringing water and plenty of trail mix for snacks, Chris couldn’t understand how anyone could be hungry.

Even sunny Selena voiced a complaint. “These boots are too small.”

“Walk slower. I can’t keep up.” As the smallest, Taryn always seemed to be lagging behind.

“This is taking forever.” Monique had long legs and the long stride to match. “Can’t we go faster?”

Chris set his jaw, keeping his teeth clenched against the urge to answer. Feeling Jayne’s glance, he looked over and caught her quizzical look.

“That’s how most kids behave at the end of the day. Don’t hold it against them.”

Yolanda piped up from behind him. “How much longer do we have to walk?”

Ever helpful Sarah added, “Are you sure we’re not lost?” A chorus of gasps greeted the suggestion.

Jayne stopped and turned to face them. “No, we are not lost. We’re following our own footsteps on the path out of the woods. We’ve got another ten minutes to walk before we reach the lawn.

“You all are making a bad impression on Mr. Hammond.” She looked at each of the girls directly. “He doesn’t know what to do with a bunch of brats who only have to walk back to a reasonable shelter for the night after a day of nothing but play. Think about it.”

Their last ten minutes passed in silence, though the girls seemed more thoughtful than mad.

When they finally came out of the woods, though, another chorus of gasps met the sight of the manor standing in the twilight like a snow-covered castle in a fairy tale…without a single glimmer of light anywhere.

The headmistress stopped in her tracks.

“Not exactly the homecoming you expected,” Chris muttered.

“Um, no. I’d forgotten for a moment.” She started hiking again, with more energy, and they were far enough ahead of the girls that her hesitation didn’t register with anyone but him. “Once we get inside and light the fire, we’ll all be fine.” She glanced back at the girls. “I think.”

Even with the nine of them gathered around the hearth and the fire snapping sharply, the mood remained sober. No giggling, no teasing or squabbling—there was none of the teenage noise Chris had gotten used to in the last twenty-four hours. These teenagers seemed more like children tonight, for some reason. Lonely children.

Jayne stepped inside the library door. “This morning, I took Mrs. Rosen’s stew out of the freezer to thaw. We’ll heat it up in pot on the fire, so dinner won’t take much work or time.

“In fact,” she said more gently, looking at the huddle in front of the fire, “I’ll get out the bowls and the bread so all of you can stay here and warm up.” She went back to the kitchen without meeting Chris’s eyes.

He couldn’t let the sadness continue. “Where was I?”

Taryn wrinkled her forehead as she looked at him. “Huh?”

“Chase and Juliet. I was telling you about them.”

A couple of the other girls perked up. “There’s more?” Selena asked.

“Oh, yeah. I told you the end of the story, remember? He killed her. Would you like to know why?”

“Did she screw somebody else?”

“Whoa.” Chris stared at Yolanda, the source of the question. “They’re just thirteen years old at this point.”

She shrugged. “So?”

“So they’re kids. Nobody’s screwing anybody.”

Yolanda shrugged. “They are in my neighborhood.”

“This isn’t your neighborhood,” Selena told her. Then she turned back to Chris. “Okay, so he took her to his granddad’s house. Then what happened?”

Relieved to be finished with the tricky stuff, Chris stirred the fire, arranging a bed of coals underneath the pot stand just as Jayne came in carrying her huge kettle of stew.

“What did Juliet see when she went into Chase’s grandfather’s house?”

Chris winked at Sarah in thanks for her leading question. “The inside of Charlie’s house—that’s Chase’s granddad, remember—reminded Juliet of a magic store.”

Charlie was an inventor and a science teacher. He liked to experiment, and his “projects,” as he called them, occupied the nooks and crannies, the tables and shelves and counters in every room of his rambling old cabin. Flasks of bubbling liquids hung over low fires, while beakers of bright metallic liquids and squares of colorful powders sat within reach. The house smelled like wood ash and spiced apples and rust—the apples were part of dinner that night, but who knew what else might be cooking?

For the next week, Juliet showed up at Charlie’s every day, on a bicycle she said she’d found in her grandmother’s garage. She and Chase watched Charlie experiment, played in the snow that finally fell on Christmas Eve, and sledded down the hill in back of the cabin on trash-can lids.

Being with Juliet was like having a favorite sister, Chase decided. Even if some of his thoughts weren’t brotherly at all.

The night before she was scheduled to leave for New York, Charlie fed the two kids ham and carrots from his own garden sweetened with honey from his beehive,
along with apples from the trees in his backyard. Then he showed them a few tricks—how coiled electric wire could become a magnet, how purple iodine crystals, dropped into a colorless liquid, disappeared, and how two clear liquids, when combined, produced a beautiful yellow powder. Chase exhibited his granddad’s collection of crystals and geodes. For once, Juliet wasn’t bored. She’d never had so much fun.

Then Charlie said, “I reckon you’d better get home, young lady. It’s dark and nobody knows where you are.”

“They probably haven’t noticed I’m gone.” Juliet sighed. “They were having a party this afternoon. Everybody’s drunk by now.”

Drunk or not, Juliet’s family had called the police when they found her gone after sunset. When Charlie stopped his 1952 Chevy at the end of a long, winding driveway, red and blue lights flashed in front of the chalet-style mansion Juliet claimed was her grandmother’s home.

“You’re in a pile of trouble, young lady.”

“So what’s new?” She leaned forward from the backseat. “I’ll walk from here so you don’t get involved.”

“I don’t think so—” Charlie began, but Juliet was out of the car before he could turn around. Chase opened his own door, ready to go after her, but she vanished before he got both feet on the ground.

“She went into the trees on the right,” Charlie said. “You’ll never find her.”

Chase dropped back into the Chevy. “Will she be all right?”

“I hope so.” His granddad shifted gears and backed out onto the road. “She’s an awful cute little gal.”
Chris stayed quiet for a minute, and the girls gradually realized that he’d finished.

“Wait,” Selena said, sitting up. “You can’t stop there. What happened to Juliet?”

“How does Chase see her again?”

“Did her folks let her see him?”

Chris looked at Jayne and found her as absorbed as the girls, absentmindedly stirring the pot while she listened to him with her chin propped on one hand.

“I thought you all might want some supper. Looks to me like Ms. Thomas has your stew ready to eat,” he said.

She blinked hard and sat up straight. “Exactly. We’re ready for dinner.”

Yolanda stopped in front of him on her way to the kitchen. “But you’ll tell more later tonight?” Her gaze was fierce, but anxious, too.

Chris nodded. “I can do that.”

O
NCE THE GIRLS WERE READY
for bed, Chris picked up the story where he’d left off.

Chase tried not to mope during the rest of his vacation with Charlie, but he couldn’t think of anything fun to do by himself. He hung around town, hoping maybe Juliet had stayed longer and would show up again to steal a candy bar. He rode his bike out to the expensive new housing development where he and Charlie had dropped her off that night, and looked at the chalet in the daylight. When he coasted farther down the driveway, he saw that a tall iron gate blocked the drive, with a fence stretching into the trees on either side. There were dogs behind the fence, German shepherds who made a lot of noise. Maybe Juliet
knew them and could get past them, but Chase had the feeling he’d regret climbing over.

So he celebrated the New Year with Charlie until he had to get on a plane in Asheville and fly back to Philly. Then there was school—long, gray, boring days of school, which were only better compared to the…

Chris hesitated over his word choice. He should back off a little on the intensity. “—compared to the war of words he walked into every night at home.”

As he looked at the girls, he saw Beth nodding her head. “I know how that goes,” she said softly.

“You and me both,” Yolanda agreed.

“Chase didn’t forget Juliet, but the days passed and he went with the flow, especially once baseball season started. Guys,” he said with an apologetic shrug, “like sports.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Monique sniffed. “So then what?”

“So then the school year ended. Chase’s mother was spending the summer in Europe and his dad would be working in Egypt, so they sent Chase to live with Charlie for the entire summer vacation.”

Nothing could have suited Chase better. He loved the mountains, liked helping Charlie around the yard and in the garden, and enjoyed watching him work on his experiments. The stress of the months at home fell away—he gained weight, slept through the nights and woke up looking forward to his day.

There were times Charlie got so wrapped up in a project he forgot he had a grandson, and so Chase started exploring the mountains around the cabin, most of which formed parts of several different national parks. As long as
he returned for dinner, Charlie didn’t bother about where he might have spent the day.