A Carol Christmas (20 page)

“There’s no need to bite my head off,” Mom snapped.

“It’s the only way I can get you to shut up,” Dad snapped back.

“You haven’t changed at all,” she informed him.

“Neither have you,” he said. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Because you called.”

“I wanted the girls to know.”

“Well, next time be more specific who you do and don’t want to know that you’re an idiot. Like anyone can’t guess without you telling them.”

My stomach began to churn faster with each flying barb. Okay, so if my parents couldn’t be together couldn’t they at least act like mature adults and quit torturing everyone around them with secondhand misery?

I turned my back and tuned them out, concentrating on the TV. There was George Bailey and company running around Bedford Falls, making small-town life look so perfect. Well, that was the movies. This was reality, a reality that included my parents fighting while my dad lay in a hospital bed. Would they be doing this even if he were lying there dying?

I left the room. Neither of them noticed. A few minutes later Keira and Aunt Chloe came out. Mom followed them. She was looking teary-eyed.

Merry Christmas
, I thought grumpily, and wished I hadn’t been so noble earlier and canceled going back to New York. I could have been on a red-eye this very night.

We met Ben halfway down the hall. He was moving like a one-man train, the Panic Express. I wondered who was minding the store. Judging by the worried look on my brother’s face, it was entirely possible that he’d run out and not even locked the door.

He looked at our dismal expressions and Mom’s watery eyes and stopped in his tracks. “Is he dead?”

“He’s been dead from the neck up for years,” Mom growled and pushed on down the hall.

Aunt Chloe hurried to catch up with her. “It’s all right, Jannie,” I heard her say as she put an arm around Mom.

Ben watched them, eyes popped open wide. Then he turned back to Keira and me. “How is he?”

That set Keira off crying again.

“Concussion and a broken arm,” I said. “He feels good enough to fight with Mom.”

“I guess he’ll be okay then,” Ben said, visibly relaxing. He gave Keira a hug, and she sniffed and wiped at her eyes.

I shook my head. “I’m not sure why she came. For a minute there, I thought…” I let the sentence die, unfinished. Better to keep my thoughts to myself than get anyone’s hopes up.

“Don’t think,” Ben advised. He gave me a playful punch in the arm and rumpled Keira’s hair, then strode on down the hall to clear out the room with a fresh breath of testosterone.

Keira turned to me. “I wonder what the bad news was.”

I shrugged, playing dumb. “Who knows?”

“I wish there was something we could do,” she fretted. Hmmm. Maybe there was.

Later I’d look back on that pivotal moment and wonder what I was thinking, but my little brain baby seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Come on, girls,” Aunt Chloe called, her head poking out from the elevator.

Keira ran down the hall and I followed, getting in after her. Even though I have to ride in them at work, I’m not fond of elevators. Standing in one of those things, squished between strangers, always makes me a little claustrophobic. There were only four of us in this one as it started for the ground floor, but Mom’s black mood filled it nearly to the point of suffocation. New music was playing, and it grated on my nerves even more than Burl Ives had done when we came in.

It took me a moment to recognize what was playing because it was an instrumental rendition. Sick, I thought as a chorus of wind instruments whistled “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

Mom was pathetically quiet on the way home. Once in the house Aunt Chloe instructed her to sit down. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. You’ll feel better.”

“Nothing’s going to make me feel better,” Mom wailed. She looked practically suicidal.

This was not my mother. I felt like a three-year-old watching the end of the world.

“He’s going to be okay,” I ventured.

“I don’t care if he’s never okay.” Mom slapped a sofa cushion for emphasis. “That stupid child can have him.”

“I don’t think they’re together anymore,” I said. “I’m betting that’s why he was driving around town like a maniac.”

Mom suddenly didn’t look so suicidal. “How do you know that?”

I really didn’t want to go into an explanation right then, not with Keira in the room, waiting for a juicy morsel of gossip about my nondate the way a baby bird waits for a worm. “I saw them together in a restaurant when I was out with James.”
Saw it first hand and close up
. “It was all over.”

Mom still wasn’t smiling yet, but at least she had gone from hysterical to morose. She leaned back against the sofa cushions and shut her eyes. “This is not turning out to be a very good Christmas.”

“It’s not even Christmas yet,” I said to her. “Things will get better.”

Mom smiled on me. I saw gratitude and approval in her eyes and knew I’d done the right thing in staying. By the time I got back to New York I might be a failure, but here in Christmas Present I was a success.

Aunt Chloe returned with Mom’s tea, and Keira went to the kitchen to forage for food. Me, I slipped away to my bedroom to make an important call.

Chapter Fifteen

“Dad?” I spoke into the phone receiver in hushed tones, like some movie spy reporting in to her contact.

“Hi, Princess.” His voice had that muffled slur of a patient on drugs. “Thanks for coming to see me.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay. Is Ben still there with you?” “He had to get back to the store.”

That was too bad. If Ben had still been with Dad, he could have seconded my invitation. I’d have had a partner in crime and Mom’s wrath would be lessened by half. Oh, well.

“Looks like I kind of screwed up your Christmas visit,” Dad was saying.

I wondered which he was referring to, our disastrous double nondate or his car accident. “I’m just glad you’re all right,” I said. What if Dad’s accident had been fatal? What if he’d been crippled for life? I found myself suddenly thankful for the small inconveniences I’d experienced during my homecoming. I’d take those over the alternative any day.

“Brittany left me.” Dad sounded like a broken man. “For James,” he added. “I’m sorry, Princess.”

Here my dad’s heart was breaking and he was feeling sorry for me. What a hero. “Don’t be,” I said. “It was only our first date. Anyway, I got a free meal out of the deal,” I added, trying to inject some humor into the conversation.

Dad just grunted. “And here I thought that James fella might be an okay guy.”

“He probably is,” I said, giving James the benefit of the doubt.

Dad sighed. “I wish I’d picked a different restaurant.”

Like that would have made Brittany forever faithful. “If she was going to . . . ” I caught myself in time, snipping off the words “dump you” from the end of the sentence. “If you and Brittany were going to break up, it was probably better to have it happen sooner than later.”

“Better for who?” Dad retorted bitterly.

This conversation wasn’t quite going like I’d planned. “Dad, how about coming over to the house for Christmas Day? You can get a free turkey dinner and we’ll all sign your cast.”

“Is this your mother’s idea?” he asked.

“We all want you to come,” I answered evasively. My heart was hammering as if the little drummer boy was banging on it. This would either work out wonderfully, with Mom and Dad turning sentimental and us all having a great time or it would blow nuclear.

Don’t go there
, I told myself. Deep down, my parents still loved each other. I was sure of it. And someone had to help them see that. Ben was busy with his band, and Keira was preoccupied with houses. That left me.

“I don’t know,” Dad said.

“You don’t want you to be by yourself on Christmas Day,” I urged.

“I’ll see how I feel.”

I couldn’t blame him for hedging. He was probably still trying to recover from Mom’s visit to the hospital. Still, I hoped he’d come.

“What time are you eating?” he asked suddenly.

I felt as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. “I think the usual time. Two.”

“I’ll try to be there.”

“Try hard, Dad,” I said. “I haven’t given you your present yet.” I’d gotten both him and Ben New York Mets hats, which I knew they’d love.

“Just seeing you has been a present.”

Good old Dad. He sure knew how to make a daughter feel special. “Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”

We said our good-byes and I hung up, confident in the decisions I’d made that day. That shows how much I knew. Boy, where’s the Ghost of Christmas Future when you need him?

I was in the kitchen, heating water for a cup of instant cocoa, when the doorbell rang. Mom was in the tub, recovering from her visit to Dad with some bubble therapy, and Keira had gone off to get her nails done, so it looked like I was on door patrol.

I opened the door and there stood Gabe Knightly. He was wearing jeans and a suede jacket with an imitation lambskin collar. Mr. J. Crew. The man could have been a model. Really.

Model or not, I wished he’d stop coming over like this. It was just one more thing to stress me out.

He smiled at me and started to come in.

“Keira’s gone,” I said.

“I didn’t come to see Keira. I came to take you out for a latte.”

“I was just making cocoa,” I said.

The microwave beeped, and I went to the kitchen. Of course, he followed me.

He upped the ante. “A latte and a Christmas scone at Swenson’s Bakery.”

Carol had the best bakery in the entire county, and Mrs. Swenson’s Christmas scones were the one thing I’d actually missed during my holiday avoidance years. I wavered.

Gabe could see me wavering. “Come on,” he urged. “It will get you away from your family for a while.”

“But it won’t get me away from you.”

My verbal bullet bounced right off him. “Yeah, but you don’t really want to get away from me.”

“You’re delusional,” I said.

He took a step closer. His aftershave didn’t mix well with the chemicals in my brain.

“Okay.” Of course I only said yes because my brain was scrambled. And because I really wanted a scone from the bakery.

I got my coat, then called through Mom’s bathroom door that I was going out with Gabe.

“For lunch?”

“No. We’re just going out for scones.”

“Well, bring him back for lunch,” she called.

I was glad he was nowhere within hearing distance. “See you later,” I said, making no promises.

Outside, the air had a Christmas nip, but I wasn’t feeling it. Getting around Gabe Knightly had a way of overheating me.

The car was warm and smelled like evergreens. A soft jazz version of “We Three Kings” serenaded us as we pulled away from the curb. I felt nervous and self-conscious. The little drummer boy started banging around in my chest again, and I was suddenly roasting. I pulled off my coat. “I guess you’ll be with your family on Christmas,” I said, trying to make conversation.

“For Christmas Eve. Then we’ll go to the service.”

As I nodded politely, I flashed back to a Christmas Eve a few years ago and saw myself sitting with Gabe and his family in a candlelit church. Everything had felt so right, so perfect. I’d sat in that church pew and envisioned him and me up at the altar someday, exchanging vows. He’d squeezed my hand and smiled at me as though he’d been reading my thoughts.

I jerked myself back to the present with a stem command to quit digging up these Gabe Knightly Kodak moments.

“Your mom tells me all the Hartwells are going to be at the service this year,” Gabe said.

“We might not get Dad.”

“What, is he on strike for more candy canes?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

Gabe almost veered off the road. “What?”

“Hey, watch it. I don’t want to join him.”

“What happened?”

“He was in a car accident, broke his arm, got a concussion.”

Gabe shook his head. “Bad news. How’d it happen?”

“He took a corner too fast in his Jag.”

“I always thought your dad was a pretty good driver,” Gabe mused.

“Not when he’s mad.”

Gabe cocked an eyebrow.

I shrugged. “His girlfriend broke up with him.”

Gabe sighed. “That’s tough. I know how he feels.”

You didn’t have to be an Einstein to figure out what he was hinting at. I frowned. “I knew I should have stayed home.”

“Naw, you shouldn’t have.” He smiled at me. “You’ll be glad you came. It’ll feel like old times.”

It was already starting to. We’d hung out a lot at the bakery, eating freshly made cookies and slurping Italian sodas. That was back in the days when I thought my life would be a never-ending feast of carbs and Gabe Knightly. I was just a kid then. What did I know?

“Come on, Andie, admit it,” Gabe prodded. “You’ve missed me.”

“Just like you’ve missed me,” I said and gave him an I-don’t-care smile.

He didn’t smile back. “I have missed you. How come you never returned my calls?”

He had left messages for me in New York a couple of times, but what would have been the point in calling him back? I wasn’t planning on coming home.

I shrugged. “My life in New York is . . .”

He cut me off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Busy.”

“Well, it is.”

He pulled up in front of the bakery. It was starting to snow again—big, heavy flakes, too wet to stick but still pretty. I’d barely been in Carol and we’d already had more snow than I could remember in years. Even the weather was trying to lure me into a nostalgic numbness.

He reached over to the back seat and grabbed a bag. “Stay put,” he ordered, then got out and went around and opened the door for me, something he’d never done when we were going together.

I gathered my coat and got out, looking at him in shock. “Hey, I’m impressed. When did you become a gentleman?”

“Since I grew up. It does happen you know. People change.”

“You can usually see when people change,” I shot at him.

“You haven’t been around to see,” he fired back and pushed the door shut. “And you’ve been walking around with your eyes closed ever since you got home.”