Baby It's Cold Outside (17 page)

He watched as Dottie sat opposite Gordy on the velvet sofa, her hands folded in her lap. She glanced at Gordy like she might be in grade school.

Gordy didn’t notice, apparently. “So, dance with her already,” he barked at Jake.

Dance. Jake glanced at Violet. She’d stood up, but peered at the floor, as if they might be thirteen. What was it about music that seemed to paralyze some people? Well, dancing he could do. He got up and extended his hand to Violet. “I’d like to ask you for this dance, but I’m worried about your ankle.”

She stilled. “My ankle is fine. But…I don’t know how.”

Out of her periphery, he saw Dottie look up at her.

“I never attended any of the dances in town.”

He took her hand. “I’m a great lead. Trust me.” He pulled her into his arms. “It’s just like walking. Step, two, three, rest…” He showed her the footwork then counted it out.

She kicked him in the shin. “Sorry.”

“Your first step is back. Really, trust me.”

She made a face. “I—I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Listen—close your eyes. Feel my hand in yours, and on your back. I’ll move you.”

She closed her eyes. “Don’t let me run into anything.”

“Please.” He counted again, more of a whisper, then moved her forward, over, then back, in a foxtrot square.

“Alex told me once that he learned to dance from his mother. His parents would have grand parties, and he’d sit on the top of the stairs, mesmerized by the food, the music, the lights. He said his favorite part was watching his parents waltz. His mother would close her eyes, and he wanted to be able to lead like his father did.” She opened her eyes, and he steeled himself against the expression that wanted to crest over him. “I think there was a latent romantic inside Alex.”

He studied her face, looking for tease, but found none. His heart hammered. “When did he tell you this?”

“In one of his letters. I can’t remember. He told me a lot about his childhood—how his brother died when he was seven, and how it destroyed him. How he made friends with the Russian housekeeper’s son and taught him to read. How the housekeeper died of TB, and he wished he could have helped her, maybe even become a doctor. He was a good man.”

A good man. Jake could hardly breathe, a vise circling his chest. “Uh…I…”

“Are you okay?”

He stumbled then, lurched forward, and she stepped back, falling. Her hand flared out, brushed a milk glass lamp, and it flew off the table, crashing to the ground.

“Oh!” Violet said.

He let her go. Stared at the curls of white glass on the floor. “Dottie, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my fault,” Violet said, bending to pick them up. “I told you I couldn’t dance.” She got up, brushing past him, stalking toward the kitchen.

Jake stood there in the middle of the room, feeling the idiot as Dottie followed her out.

He’d had his life stolen from him by the housekeeper’s son.

“Are you okay, Jake?” Gordy said from across the room. Jake glanced at the door. Shook his head.

“I—I can’t believe it. Alex stole my life.” He didn’t really expect Gordy to understand. He stepped closer, cut his voice low. “All those things Alex told Violet—they happened to me. He was the Russian housekeeper’s son. I was the one who shared my oranges, I was the one who taught him to read.”

“You were the one whose brother died.” Gordy’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yes, exactly. So, how am I supposed to tell her that everything Alex wrote to her are lies?”

“Not to mention the other lie you’re carrying around.”

“Shh!”

Gordy groaned, his hand on Arnie’s head. The boy had sunk into slumber, his lips askew on Gordy’s chest.

Jake sank down on the sofa opposite Gordy. “It’s sounds desperate, and petty. What would I say? ‘Alex is me. He took my identity.’ Right.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the sofa.

He got it. Really, he did. Alex, a poor immigrant’s son, would leap to create a new identity. Jake almost didn’t blame him for the ruse.

It almost exonerated him of his own guilt.

Almost.

* * * * *

Violet had told him she couldn’t dance. She stood at the window, her fingertips pressed against her eyes. What did he expect, Judy Garland?

Oh, she’d been a fool to think that she could pull off dainty and beautiful. And now Dottie’s beautiful lamp lay in shards on the floor.

Violet just wanted to keep running, straight out into the storm, lose herself in the whiteout.

“Violet?”

She heard the voice and didn’t turn, just opened the pantry door, searching for the broom. Finding it, she pulled it out, but Dottie put her hand on it, stopping her. She expected the librarian’s tone.

“It’s okay, it’s just a lamp.”

“First your tree, now the lamp.”

“There’s no electricity anyway. And the tree was dying.” Dottie smiled at her, an expression of kindness so rare it caught Violet’s breath and held her fast.

She looked away, past her, feeling a tear tickle down her cheek. From the next room, the music died. “I can’t dance.”

“No, you can’t.”

She glanced at Dottie, who wore a strange look. “I have to apologize to you, Violet. You probably don’t remember the last Christmas ball we had, but Nelson was eighteen and about to ship off to war. I was there—and you were there. Sitting in a chair, watching everyone dance. Nelson asked you to dance…and you turned him down. I thought, how can she turn my boy down when he’s going off to war?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

Dottie patted her cheek. “I forgive you for not dancing with my boy.”

“I would have, if I had known—”

“He had plenty of other girls to dance with. I just know he thought you were pretty.”

Violet didn’t know where to begin to sort out Dottie’s words. Nelson Morgan had thought her pretty. She attempted a smile, but she knew it emerged pitiful.

She looked past Dottie, to the owl clock hanging on the wall. A wind-up model, it ticked away the minutes. Darkness would be falling soon. “My mother hated the fact that I didn’t attend the town dances. She would send my brothers into town, and I’d be out there in the barn, helping my father with the tractor or the baler or some other piece of machinery. She’d storm out of the house and scold him for turning me into a boy.”

She drew in a breath, her memory on her mother, silhouetted by the fiery sunset bleeding out behind her, and on her father’s soft reply.
“Violet’s more useful to me than all my boys put together.”

Violet ran her thumb under her eye. “I guess she was right. I am a boy.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Violet, you’re not a boy. Far from it.” Dottie turned Violet around to see her reflection in the window. “I see a beautiful young lady who is trapped in this house with a man who likes her enough to ask her to dance.”

“Trapped is the operative word here.” Violet turned back around. “He’s just being kind because he’s Alex’s friend. If he knew I served in the military, that I knew the inside of my father’s Plymouth better than he did, he—”

“Why should you be ashamed of what you’re good at? Why are you trying so hard to hide your spark?”

“Because I don’t want to end up…” She looked away.

Dottie drew in a breath. “Like me. Like the widow librarian, alone at Christmas.”

Violet looked at the floor. “I’m sorry, Dottie.”

Dottie shook her head. “Nope, you’re right. But what you don’t know is that I liked my life, very much. Sure, there were a few holes…” She drew in a breath. “But I had made my choices, and because of Nelson, I was glad for them.” She tucked her hand under Violet’s chin and raised it to meet her eyes. “You did a brave thing for your country. You should be proud of that. It doesn’t make you less beautiful or less of a woman because you did what you felt was right and honorable.”

“Alex told me once that I looked beautiful with grease on my face.”

“I’m sure Alex was right. But Alex isn’t here, is he?”

Violet made a face. “I’m talking about him too much, aren’t I?”

Dottie nodded.

“It’s just that Jake is so easy to talk to. There’s something about him that makes me feel like I know him. And, it’s so strange—I actually had this crazy hope that someday Alex and I would dance together. I might have even told him that, once. And, I invited him to the Frost ball this year.” She shook her head then frowned. “You don’t think Alex told Jake about that, do you?”

“What kind of man would Alex be if he told Jake your secrets?” Dottie shook her head. “I’m sure it’s simply providence.” She took Violet’s hand, and Violet saw something in her eyes—distant, yet familiar.

A younger version of Dottie, back when the storyteller believed in happy endings. “What was it that you told me? That Christmas hadn’t given up on me? Maybe it hasn’t given up on any of us.” She squeezed Violet’s hand. “Give me that broom. And go find some candles. It’s getting dark outside.”

* * * * *

The nostalgia of the candlelit parlor had gone straight to Gordy’s head, as if some other hazy past that he hadn’t lived crept forward to lasso him, drag him back to a snowy winter night. In that past, Nelson was curled up against him, Dottie crocheting on the sofa. The fire crackled in the hearth, and outside the blizzard tremored the house.

Sometimes when Gordy sat at his house, watching Dottie’s light, he dreamed of this image—Nelson between them, a silence that felt comforting and not at all stiff.

Gordy’s leg had long ago fallen asleep where Arnie braced his head on it. The boy had finally stopped shivering, and now a fine line of sweat glistened on his brow. They’d shut off the doors to the rest of the house, and the room had cooked to a toasty warm. He’d have to stay awake and tend the fire. Now, Jake sat near it, poking the blaze.

Poor guy had too many lies piling up against him to sit still, frustration playing over his face.

If he’d been Jake, Gordy would have found a soft mound of hay in the barn to wait out the storm.

Arnie shuddered in his sleep, as if he might be dreaming.

“He had a rough day,” Dottie said, looking up from her crocheting.

“I still can’t believe he found the barn in that storm.”

“His mother must be frantic.”

He ran his hand over the boy’s hair. “I heard him mumbling in his sleep. I think he said something about Flash Gordon.”

Dottie shook her head, gave a chuckle.

“You’re thinking about
Jack Armstrong, All American Boy
, aren’t you?”

She met his eyes, an enigmatic look on her face.
Yes, Dottie, I knew him too.
Finally, she nodded. “Nelson would sing the theme song when he did his chores.”

“Didn’t he send away for wings?”

“Oh, those were from Captain Hawks Sky Patrol. For three box tops from Post Bran Flakes, he could earn gold wings. He dog-eared the pilot’s manual.”

“Didn’t he get a model airplane kit too?”

“Yes. Thirteen more box tops for the balsa wood model kit of a Pan American Airways China Clipper. It’s all he ate for an entire summer—bran flakes.”

“He had quite the imagination. I’d find him over at my house, hiding out from bandits or German soldiers or some other villains.”

“It was those shows—
The FBI in Peace and War, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Fibber McGee and Molly
—they put adventure into his head.”

He gave her a look. “Dottie. Hardly.
You
put adventure into his head. You filled his life with stories—not just from books, but the ones you told him about his grandfather. And even your travels. And, he was the son of the woman who couldn’t wait to leave Frost and see the world.”

She stilled, drew in a breath. “Are you saying his desire to go to war is my fault?”

Oh no, he hadn’t meant it as an insult, or even to tear open old wounds. He kept his voice calm despite the panic that wanted to choke him. “No, of course not.”

“I’m not the one who taught him how to shoot, or let him listen to those bloodthirsty Joe Lewis fights—”

“Dottie, please, that’s not what I meant.”

Her jaw tightened, and she looked away from him, back to her crocheting. She might stab herself if she didn’t slow down.

Gordy watched the fire flickering, the silence turning to fingers that clawed into his chest and squeezed. Jake glanced at him from the corner of his eyes.

Certainly Dottie would have to forgive him sometime, right?

On his lap, Arnie sighed then rolled over. Probably Gordy should restock the woodbin for the night.

He glanced at Dottie again. She wouldn’t look at him.

“I just meant that it takes a hero to raise one,” he finally said. Then he got up, setting Arnie on the sofa. “C’mon, Jake. We need to fetch more wood.”

Jake followed him out to the back room. Without the heat from the house, ice filmed the inside of the windows, snow seeping under the sill of the door. The little room shook with the fury of the wind.

They’d used most of the stack he’d hauled in this morning, and they wouldn’t survive on what remained.

“Bundle up,” he said, tossing Jake a muffler. Jake wound it around his head, grabbed an old hat from the shelf. Gordy recognized it as Nelson’s wool work hat but didn’t say anything.

Pulling on a pair of gloves and his boots, he glanced at Jake. “Stay right behind me.”

“I’m not a child.”

Gordy held up a hand, as if in surrender. “I don’t want to blow away either. Besides, it’s dark out there.”

Although, when he wrenched open the door, the force of the wind nearly careened him back into Jake. “There are exactly twenty-four steps to the barn!” he hollered as he pulled up his collar and dove out into the blizzard.

The night soaked into his eyes, the snow burning them, the wind stealing his breath. He fought for each step, calculating the distance. Why hadn’t he run a guide wire to her house from the barn? He should have. Now, with the wrong steps, they could veer wide of the barn, end up in a field, frozen stiff.

The wind chapped his skin, piled snow into his collar. Gordy couldn’t tell if it was still snowing or just blowing. At any rate, the wrath of the wind stirred up the drifts, like waves against the house, the barn. They might have to dig their way out in the morning.