A Carol for Christmas (4 page)

Before he could place the key in the lock, the door opened.

“You’re home!” Carol exclaimed, taking his hand and pulling him inside.

“Sorry I’m late again. Dad wanted to go over sales fig- ures after the store closed.”

“Johnny, I’ve got so much to tell you.”

He slipped off his coat. Snowflakes dusted the collar and shoulders. He draped it over the back of a folding chair so it could dry outside the closet.

“Your mom came over this afternoon.”

“Did she?” He drew his wife into his embrace and kissed her. “Mmm. It’s good to be home,” he whispered when their lips parted.

“It’s good to have you home. I thought you’d never get here.”

“I’m looking forward to a day off.” “Me too.”

He loosened his hold on her. “The store was nuts all day long. As bad as yesterday. Maybe worse. People pushing and shoving to get to the sale items first. Bah, humbug.”

Carol kissed his cheek. “Did you eat supper?” “Never had time.”

“Then come on. I’ll heat up something while I tell you what your mom had to say.”

Jonathan followed her into the kitchen. “Did she bring more leftovers from Thanksgiving?”

“No, silly. We have plenty. She came about the benefit.

Remember, I told you about the fund-raiser last night.”

Whatever Carol said to him yesterday was lost in a weary fog. He couldn’t remember a thing about a benefit or what it had to do with Carol or his mom. Rather than admit it, he smiled. “Tell me again.”

“It’s so exciting. You’ll never believe it.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the Tupperware container that held the leftover turkey. Bread, mayonnaise, mustard, and lettuce completed the fixings for his late-night sandwich. “Travis Thompson needs three singers, and your mom asked me to be one of them.”

Travis Thompson . . . Travis Thompson . . . Three singers . . .

What’s Carol talking about?

“When Ruth told me about the benefit, I thought I’d be lucky just to get to meet him.” She brought the plate to the counter and set it in front of Jonathan. “And now I’ve been asked to sing. Can you believe it? I know singing backup isn’t any big to-do, but still . . .” She let the sentence drift into silence and chased it with a dreamy sigh.

Carol looked happier than she had in weeks. He didn’t want to spoil the moment by admitting he was clueless. He didn’t want to confess he hadn’t paid attention to what she said to him last night. So he smiled, nodded, and lifted the sandwich with both hands.

“I wish I had a guitar,” she added. “I walked by a music store today, and they had a beautiful one on display in the window. If I had a guitar, I could practice more.”

Jonathan swallowed hard, guilt twisting his gut. “Maybe next year we can replace it.”

“Johnny, I know we can’t afford anything like the brand-new one I saw today, but I thought . . . I wonder if we could afford something from a pawn shop.”

As he put the sandwich back on the plate, he thought of the bald tires on his car plus the payment due on the bank loan for Carol’s Buick. And the rent was due on the first. “Our budget’s stretched as it is, babe. We’d better wait until spring. I should get a raise by then.” The words tasted like failure on his tongue. He’d destroyed her guitar and he couldn’t fix it or replace it. What kind of husband was he?

“Okay,” Carol replied softly before turning away.

But not before Jonathan saw the disappointment — and disillusionment — in her eyes.

I

n the kitchen connected to the church’s fellow- ship hall, Carol filled the second of the two large

coffeemakers with water before scooping grounds into the brewing basket.

“So, when are you going to make Ruth a grandmother?” Elizabeth Gray asked as she sliced a tray of brownies into tiny squares.

Carol had grown to hate the various versions of that question. “We’re not ready yet.”

“I’m sorry. I bet you get asked that way too often. We did.” Elizabeth glanced sideways at Carol, her left hand resting on her watermelon-sized belly. “That first year we were married, Greg’s folks and mine constantly pestered us about grandchildren. Now look at us.” She laughed. “Our third child in under four years.”

Carol pressed the button on the coffeemaker to start it brewing, then turned toward the other woman. “We want kids. Just not this soon.”

After setting the knife in the stainless steel sink, Eliza- beth licked chocolate frosting from her fingertips. “When I was in high school, I wanted to become an attorney. I married one instead. Strange, how our lives go off in such different directions from what we planned.”

Carol nodded. “That’s true. When I was in high school, I wanted to go to Nashville and sing. That was my heart’s desire from the time I first learned to play the guitar.”

“Really? Wow. I didn’t know that about you.” Carol shrugged. “I don’t talk about it much.”

“Why didn’t you go?” Elizabeth awkwardly lowered herself onto a kitchen stool.

“To Nashville?” “Yes.”

“My parents were dead set on all three of their kids going to college. Neither one of them had that opportunity because of the Depression and then the war. My mom’s from Colorado and still has family there, so she wanted me to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder. That way, I wouldn’t be too far from family if I needed them.” She shook her head, remembering how hard it had been for her mother to let her oldest child and only daughter leave home for the first time. “I didn’t really care where I went to school as long as they had a college of music. If I had to delay Nashville, I at least wanted to study music.”

“And then you met Jonathan Burke.”

She nodded, a smile curving her lips. “Yes.”

“Love has a way of changing our plans, doesn’t it?” Elizabeth stroked her belly again.

“Yes,” she answered softly.
But is that a good thing?
She

frowned at the thought.
Should I have abandoned my dreams so easily?

Voices drifted from the hallway into the kitchen, a moment’s warning before congregants from the eleven

o’clock worship service spilled into the fellowship hall. Elizabeth rose from the stool and carried the brownies to the counter while Carol hurried to get the cream and sugar set out by the coffee cups.

A few minutes later, a squeal that sounded something like her name caused Carol to turn toward the kitchen’s side entrance.

“Is it true?” Barbara Matthews, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the pastor, demanded. “Are you looking for singers to perform with Travis Thompson when he’s here? That’s what Mrs. Burke said. Is it true?”

Carol nodded.

“I can’t believe it.” Barbara jumped up and down, clap- ping her hands and squealing her excitement again. “I can’t
believe
it. Oh, you’ve gotta pick me, Carol. You’ve just
got
to. Travis Thompson is
sooo
cute.”

“Is he? I never noticed.” Carol forced herself not to smile.

“Are you kidding?” the girl exclaimed. “You’ve gotta be kidding. He’s drop-dead gorgeous!”

The smile crept into the corners of her mouth. “Well, maybe I noticed a little. But I happen to think Johnny is better looking.”

“That’s ’cause you
have
to think that.” Barbara rolled

her eyes. “He’s your husband.” Carol laughed. “Maybe.”

But of course that wasn’t why. She remembered as if it were yesterday the first time she saw Jonathan Burke. Almost six feet tall to her five feet one inch, he had broad

shoulders, slim hips, and long legs. Nobody looked better in Levi’s and boots than he did, then or now. Something about his thick, dark brown hair that brushed his shirt collar had made her want to run her fingers through it. And when he looked at her with those hazel eyes and smiled, she’d imme- diately thought of a younger version of the Marlboro Man.

Talk about a heartthrob!

“You
will
pick me, won’t you?” Barbara’s wheedling tone jerked Carol back to the present. “Oh, you’ve just got to. You’ve got to.”

“No promises. You’ll have to try out, like anyone else.” “I’ve gotta go call Tiffany. She’s gonna be absolutely
green.
” Barbara spun and disappeared through the doorway. Carol wondered if she’d been that silly and giddy two years ago when she was in high school. She didn’t think so.

Full of dreams, yes, but always looking for ways to make them come true, not simply wishing for pie in the sky.

“Be warned,” Elizabeth whispered. “She can’t sing a lick.”

Carol turned around, eyes wide. “She can’t?” “Nope. Like fingernails on a chalkboard.” “Oh, dear.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Q

More snow had fallen during the morning hours. Jona- than changed his clothes as soon as they arrived home from church and went outside to shovel while Carol fixed lunch. “Don’t forget to bring in the tree,” she called to him an

instant before the door closed.

The tree . . . Snow . . . Christmas . . . Presents . . . Shop- ping . . . The store . . . Long hours . . . Missing Carol.

At least he got Sundays off, and that was thanks to his mom.

“Arlen,” Ruth Burke had said to her husband a few weeks after Jonathan returned to Idaho with his bride, “you can spend twenty-four hours a day in that store if you choose. But your son is a newlywed, and he
will
have Sun- days off so he can go to church and spend time with Carol. Do you understand me?”

Jonathan grinned at the memory. His mom was a force to be reckoned with.

He glanced into the nearby window well and caught a glimpse of Carol as she moved around the kitchen. A jumble of emotions turned in his chest.

Jonathan wished he could spend more time with her. He loved Carol more than he thought possible, and noth- ing made him happier than when he could make her happy. But he felt like he’d failed her a lot lately.

He was doing his best to make sure they had a secure future, and that meant he needed to prove himself to his dad so he could advance at Burke Department Stores. Prov- ing himself to his dad meant he had to work as hard as the old man himself. Harder even.

Finished with shoveling the walk, Jonathan headed toward the Buick. He leaned the handle of the snow shovel against the side of the car, then removed his gloves so he could loosen the twine that tied the trunk down against the treetop.

Carol was right when she said it wasn’t much of a tree. But the nicer and bushier the tree, the more those Christ- mas tree lots charged. This one was within their budget and the right size for their apartment too. Now if he only had something worthwhile to go beneath it come Christmas morning.

He remembered the look on Carol’s face when she told him about that guitar at the music store. He remembered her disappointment when he said they couldn’t afford one, not even from a pawn shop.

Failure
, an ugly voice whispered in his heart.
Loser.

It was Jonathan’s fault Carol didn’t have a guitar. First, he’d destroyed the one she had, and now he didn’t have the money to replace it.

God
,
I’m making a mess of things. Help me.

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W

ord of the tryout for the benefit singers spread quickly, and it wasn’t only members of Carol’s

church who showed up for a shot at singing with Travis Thompson. There were teenagers, women who looked to be in their forties or fifties, and all ages in between. And despite Carol’s making it clear they were looking for female singers, there were a few men seated on the folding chairs in the fellowship hall as well. Perhaps they’d come to lend moral support.

I could use a bit of that myself
, Carol thought as she climbed

the steps onto the stage and walked to the microphone.

Dressed in a navy blue skirt and jacket, she’d swept her auburn hair into a prim chignon, hoping she would look older than nineteen. Nerves tumbled in her stomach. What was Ruth thinking when she asked Carol to be in charge of this?

With her right hand, she lowered the microphone so it was close to her mouth. “Hello, everyone.”

The buzz of conversations died.