One Week In December (25 page)

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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: One Week In December
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“Becca? What are you trying to say?”
She laughed a bit and waved her hand dismissively. “Nothing. I'm—I'm just thinking out loud.”
He eyed her carefully, not at all sure he believed her but sensing it would be stupid—at least, pointless—to push the issue. “Okay,” he said.
Becca looked back to Alex's wall of inspiration.
“ ‘My life,'” she read, “ ‘cannot have been other than what it was, and what it is, and what it is becoming. Such is Fate.' Where did that one come from?” she asked. “I don't see an attribution.”
Alex shrugged. “I guess I was lazy when I copied it out.”
“A belief in Fate lets you off the hook for having screwed up.” Becca believed that, or she thought she did. “You can't be responsible for an action because you were fated to take that action. You had no choice. It was all in the cards. It seems to me that believing in Fate is the coward's way of living.”
“But that's if you're positing Fate as a force outside your self,” Alex said. “If your self—your mind and heart and soul—is your ‘fate,' then you are, indeed, responsible for your actions and choices. Right?”
Becca nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is right. But at the same time, if you are your own Fate, then you still wouldn't be exhibiting free will because you're not making choices. You're acting as you have to act because you're you.”
Alex grimaced. “It's not easy stuff to wrap your head around, that's for sure. But it does make for good thinking.”
Alex suddenly turned back to the worktable and began to sketch something with a stub of a pencil on a piece of torn brown paper. Inspiration, Becca wondered? Or maybe it was something as mundane as a shopping list. Left to her own devices for the moment, Becca continued to think about their conversation.
Whatever it was—Fate, her own nature—that had directed or caused her to have unprotected sex at sixteen, she had done it. And she wondered now why had she—why did anyone—run to her ruin? Becca, for example, had known the risks of having sex without birth control. She hadn't been stupid when it came to accumulating facts. But when it came to judgment, to putting that store of facts to good use in daily life, well, there she had been lacking.
Since then, since the birth of her daughter, she had been perfecting her judgment. She had become proud of her rational self . . . and yet, only now, during this bitter cold week in December, was she coming to see that in wanting to tell Rain the truth in the way she had, she had been executing very poor judgment.
Why the slip in rationality, she wondered, and why such a massive one at that?
Becca looked hard at her parents' neighbor. “You've insinuated yourself into our lives, haven't you?” she said abruptly.
Alex put down his pencil and turned to her. “Have I?” he asked, with a grin. “I assure you I had no intention of insinuating. I find the word and the action it describes a bit too snakelike for me. A bit too reminiscent of Uriah Heep.”
So he read Dickens, did he? “So,” she asked, “what word would you prefer to use?”
“Let me think.” Alex looked to the beamed ceiling as if inspiration was to be found there. “How about ‘barge'?” he said finally. “I barged into their lives. It's so much more direct and honest. When someone barges in, you can easily see him coming.”
“And you can run away. Or hide. Or both.”
Alex looked at her closely. “But you didn't do either, did you? Run away or hide.”
“No, I didn't,” she admitted. “Which is not to say that I didn't try.”
“How hard did you try?”
Becca gave this question some thought. “I guess not very,” she finally said. “When I set my mind to a task, I usually succeed.” She paused as a stray thought pushed its way to her tongue. “By the way,” she said, “and I don't know why I just remembered this now, but Rain told me that you like her long nails.”
Alex blushed; Becca could see it through the scruff of his unshaved cheeks. “Oh,” he said. Did his voice sound a bit squeaky? “It's just that I think it's kind of, I don't know, exotic. Different. I spend a lot of time with artists, and long nails just get in the way of clay and paint and wires and tools.”
“You should hear them on a keyboard!” Becca laughed. “Anyway, I think Rain might like to wear her nails long because of me. I'm her—I'm her favorite aunt.”
“She's a good kid. And it's pretty clear she adores you.” Alex came to join Becca by the inspiration board. “Really, Becca,” he said, “your hands are—well, they're beautiful. Even covered in heavy winter gloves.”
Becca had the ridiculous urge to hide her hands behind her back. Instead, she just said, “Thanks.” And then Alex took one of her gloved hands in his.
It felt like an important moment. It felt like a moment in which she might just be kissed.
And oh, how she wanted him to kiss her! It had been so very long since a man had touched her, and even then she hadn't responded with equal passion. But this was different. Becca knew that she would respond to Alex's heat easily and immediately.
But it wasn't so simple.
She was bothered by the fact of the secret she was keeping from Alex—by the secret she had vowed to keep from the world. And if you thought you were falling in love with someone, didn't you owe that person total honesty? Didn't you have a responsibility to be who you really were and not the character you pretended to be in the larger world?
She liked Alex. She respected him. She might even be coming to love him. What would he think of her if he knew the truth about what she had done sixteen years earlier? Would he willingly join the family conspiracy or would he reject Becca—and the Rowans—with disgust? Besides, how could she ask it of anyone, that he become part of a lie? It was the same old problem that she'd had since a boy in her freshman year of college had asked her out. But now . . .
Maybe, she thought, it would be better for her to remain alone and aloof. Better—and safer—for everyone. All this rushed through her head in the matter of a moment.
“I've got to go,” she said then, pulling her hand from his and walking rapidly to the door of the barn. “Um, thanks for the talk. It was—fun.”
Alex wouldn't have chosen the word “fun” to describe their conversation, but he wasn't about to argue. “Sure,” he said, masking his keen disappointment. “Anytime. And be sure to get something hot to drink when you get home. You're turning blue.”
And then Becca was gone and Alex was left alone with his board of quotes and images, his collection of cast-iron toys, and his stack of paperback spy novels. He felt more than a little frustrated. He'd been dying to kiss Becca Rowan. And he'd give anything to know what was really going on in her head!
45
Becca was sitting in the living room, an unopened book about birds native to New England on her lap. Rain was stretched out on the couch under a woolly plaid blanket. The twins were seated on the floor by the tree, poking through boxes and boxes of glass ornaments, silver tinsel, and gold garland.
The Christmas tree, a large, long-needled Scotch pine that Steve had cut down and hauled into the house with the help of Alex, stood naked still. Decorating the tree was usually a family affair, with the requisite amount of arguing about the amount of tinsel that should be used, but this year nobody seemed interested in the ritual. Not even Nora, who always had taken an almost childlike pleasure in the event, insisting she be the one to hang the three remaining ornaments she had gotten from her mother when she'd died—three delicate glass birds with wings of some shiny white material that stuck out from either side of the birds like slim, shimmering brushes.
Becca glanced over at Rain. Rain had taken a prescription pill for relief of the migraine and was feeling much better, but was not into doing anything more strenuous than flipping through another of her glossy fashion magazines. She seemed to have brought an endless supply of mindless “reading” materials and Becca couldn't help but wonder if she was doing enough real reading. If she were Rain's mother—
The thought and the way it had shaped itself called her up short. But there was no time for further contemplation as David came in from the dining room.
Malcolm held up a box of ornaments. “Isn't anybody going to help?” he asked his father.
“Why don't you guys decorate the tree all by yourselves this year?” David suggested. “I'll help with the high parts. And be careful with the glass ornaments, especially Great-Grandma's birds. They're old and very fragile.”
“And if they break we could get cut from them, right?”
“Yes, Malcolm, you could.
If
you break them, which you're not going to do, right?”
Becca looked up at her brother. His mouth was set and his posture revealed how tense, how full of anxiety she thought he must be feeling. Yes, there was a dark pall over the Rowan house, and Becca was terribly unhappy at having been the cause. What had she done? What havoc had she wreaked? And why had she not guessed just how bad she would feel for being the cause of so much misery? Her ignorance about her own emotions appalled her. Being the cause of such unhappiness was very close to assuming a larger importance inside her than her desire to “claim” her daughter.
“I'll help with the tree,” she said suddenly.
Michael shrugged and Malcolm said, “Okay.” The boys seemed unenthused, but why should they feel otherwise? She'd never made much of an effort with them. They had been little more to her than afterthoughts, really. What sort of message do you send to a child by almost always calling him by his brother's name?
David eyed her dubiously. “You don't have to help,” he said.
Becca knew that what he meant was “I don't want you to help if you're going to use my children to curry favor with me.” “I want to, David,” she said steadily. She put the book she hadn't been reading on a side table and got up to join them.
With one last look of suspicion, David continued on upstairs. And Rain continued to be oblivious to everything but her magazine.
Becca and the boys had been working for almost a half hour—and not one ornament had been destroyed—when the front door opened. It was James, returned from wherever it was he had driven off to earlier.
“Hey, Uncle James!” Malcolm cried. At least, Becca thought it was Malcolm. “Want to help us decorate the tree?”
James caught Becca's mildly inquiring look and attempted a smile.
“We'd love your help,” she said. “But if you've got something else you need to do—”
“No, no,” he said after a moment. “There's nothing else.”
His choice of words struck Becca's heart. The feeling that something had gone terribly wrong between Olivia and her husband, the sense that some line had been crossed, was stronger than ever.
But she wouldn't pry. James was a private man and besides, why would he want to open up to her, the person who had been wreaking havoc in the family for the past few days? There was no conversation between Becca and James as they decorated the tree other than requests for particular ornaments and a brief discussion about the judicious use of garland.
 
Dinner that evening, a collection of reheated leftovers, was a grim affair. Conversation was sporadic and dull. Becca thought that everyone, even the boys, seemed not his or her usual selves.
Olivia's eyes were swollen and red, but nobody mentioned this fact. Becca noted that her older sister hardly touched her food and said not a word. Beside her, James ate little but made small, pleasant talk with her grandmother. Whatever could be said about James, it could never be denied that he was a gentleman.
What was Alex doing for dinner? The thought startled Becca. Though she certainly didn't think he would enjoy the glum party the Rowans were making that Christmas Eve, she also didn't entirely like the thought of his being alone.
Since when had she started worrying about her parents' neighbor? Alex seemed the sort who could very well take care of himself. He had such strong opinions, such well-considered convictions. Still, that didn't mean he should be left to his own devices on a holiday. . . .
Becca took a sip of wine. She wondered what she really knew about Alex Mason. She'd had a few conversations with him, that was all, and yet . . . And yet during those few conversations she had, indeed, learned a lot about the man. She had learned that he loved his suffocating family. She had learned that he really listened when you spoke to him, and that he asked interesting, if sometimes difficult, questions. She had learned that his smile was really very nice and that his hair, though shaggy, was very nice, too. She had learned that he blushed when embarrassed.
“I'll clear the table.”
Becca was pulled back to the moment by Naomi's voice and her family rising around her. One by one they seemed to drift into the living room, where the tree now stood completely decorated.
“The tree looks very nice, boys,” Julie said, when the table had been cleared and she had joined the others in the living room.
Naomi, who'd come into the room with her, raised a critical eyebrow. “Though you might have been a little less wild with the tinsel.”
“That was Aunt Becca's idea,” Malcolm said. “I think it's cool. It looks like a rocket ship.”
Michael made a face. “It does not!”
“Boys. Don't argue.”
Julie patted her daughter's shoulder, and this time, Becca didn't flinch at the touch. “Well, whatever anyone thinks about the tinsel, thank you, Becca, for helping out.”
“I always liked to decorate the Christmas tree when I was a kid,” she said quietly. “I looked forward to it all year.”
Steve smiled at his daughter. “Seeing you stringing the garland earlier,” he said, “was like a glimpse into the past. So many memories came flooding forward.”
Becca smiled back, grateful for her father's words. Then she turned and caught Nora looking at her intently. Her grandmother was wise and knew her loved ones well. Becca was sure she'd sensed a subtle shift in the relationship between Becca and her father. Well, she was right to sense that. There had been a shift.
“Uncle James helped with the tree, too,” Malcolm was saying. “He put the angel on top. Me and Michael—”
“Michael and I,” David corrected.
“Michael and I held the ladder so he wouldn't fall down.”
James smiled. “The boys were very careful. They took good care of their old uncle.”
Before long, Steve and Julie went off to take a nap before leaving for church later that night. Separately, Olivia and then James retired upstairs, and Nora settled in the kitchen with a cup of tea. Lily and Rain remained in the living room to watch holiday specials on television with the boys.
And Becca went to her room, exhausted and yet somehow almost at peace.

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