Their Yuletide Promise

by Stacy Connelly

  “Gosh, no. April’s fine.”

  “You know him, Mama?” one of the twins asked. Cole realized it was Violet. Jay had told all the guys in their unit about his little girls, and told countless stories. This one was definitely Violet.

  Since April seemed to be having trouble speaking, too, Cole glanced down at the little girl who’d asked the question. Violet Avery’s curly brown hair was held away from her cherubic face with a plastic tiara, her eyes golden brown, like her mother’s. The child was staring at him now.

  Before the silence became any more uncomfortable, he told her, “I’m a friend of your dad’s.”

  He tried swallowing. Failing that, he managed to take a deep breath, for more than a year had passed and he still found himself speaking of Jay in the present tense.

  “Our daddy’s dead,” the other little girl said in a voice softer than her sister’s. Despite the pink feather boa she wore, Gracie Avery looked so much like her father Cole couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “He’s in heaven, with the angels,” she added reverently, her face heart-shaped, her hair blond and her gray eyes serious.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You believe in heaven?” Violet cut in. “’Cuz Maddie next door is seven and says there’s no such thing.”

  Almost five now, both girls waited with rapt attention for Cole’s reply. Hoping his smile appeared more natural than it felt, he nodded at them before once again training his gaze on their mother. At almost thirty, she was a stunner wrapped in a wholesome girl-next-door persona. It was those eyes, that smile, that trim, curvy body.

  “I do,” he said. “Believe, I mean, in heaven. I’ve seen a lot of, er, things—” He’d almost told a four-year-old he’d seen hell up close. “There must be a heaven, I mean. I think there is.”

  He clamped his mouth shut. For goodness’ sake, he co-owned a successful business, had a Purple Heart, an invitation to ride in more parades than he could shake a stick at and an inbox full of propositions from women he hadn’t even met. Since when did he have trouble conversing in complete sentences?

  “He’s a friend of Daddy’s,” Violet said loudly. “Let ’im in, Mama.”

  “Yes, Mama, you should let him in.”

  Violet’s bossiness and Grace’s practically were both wasted. April Avery was already opening the door.

  * * *

  April happened to breathe in as Cole Cavanaugh walked through the door she held. His scent wasn’t pronounced, carrying only a faint trace of spruce and peppermint. Jay had smelled like spring, like brisk breezes and sprouts of green grass peeking through the last patch of snow. Which had nothing to do with anything. She needed to gather her wits, stop sniffing strangers and say something intelligent.

  Nothing came to mind.

  She continued to stare up at her visitor, trying to wrap her mind around a simple, stark fact: the tall rugged man now standing in her living room had been on the battlefield with her husband the day he died. Calling upon her good manners, she drew the twins closer and said, “These are my daughters, Gracie and Violet. Girls, this is Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  “Cole,” he said abruptly. And then, as if he hadn’t intended to be so forceful, his eyes went from April’s to each of the girls’. “Not even my father answered to Mr. Cavanaugh. If it’s all right with the three of you, I prefer to be called Cole.”

  She noticed he didn’t smile.

  Bits and pieces of descriptions Jay had mentioned in his video calls, emails and letters filtered across April’s mind. One night early into his tour of duty he’d told her not to worry too much because there was a guy in his unit named Cole Cavanaugh who had his back.

  “C.C. has listening down to an art form,” Jay had said, his handsome face slightly blurry on the computer screen. “Picture Clint Eastwood’s piercing stare in those old Dirty Harry movies my dad loves to this day. When he wants to, C.C. can duplicate the raspy voice. But he’s a dreamer at heart. At first he took a lot of ribbing from the guys in our unit over it, but the second time a dream he had helped us avoid a deadly ambush, the ribbing turned into some serious respect.”

  A dreamer herself, April had been intrigued. She’d slept better that night knowing that Cole Cavanaugh was with her husband on the other side of the world.

  “Cole, and not C.C.?” she asked the former soldier standing before her today.

  The shrug of his broad shoulders was surprisingly sheepish for someone made of sharp angles, corded muscles and a gaze that missed nothing. “Jay is the only person who ever got away with calling me C.C.”

  With a small smile, she said, “You may call him Cole if you’d like, girls.”

  Violet clapped her hands as she turned to her sister. “Think we should, Gracie?”

  Slightly taller than her twin, Grace remained quiet for so long April wasn’t sure she was going to grant Cole’s wish. Finally the imp nodded and it was settled.

  Violet shook her head dramatically. “It took you long enough.” With that, the two began asking Cole Cavanaugh questions about what was better, princesses or fairies, purple or pink, butterflies or fireflies, and so on.

  These two, April thought on an indulgent smile. She never knew what one or the other was going to say. Cole was doing his best to answer the deluge of questions diplomatically. It gave April an opportunity to study him.

  His hair was as dark as fresh-ground coffee. Given the chance to grow a little longer, it would probably be wavy. His eyes were a medium brown, the bones in his face sharply sculpted, forehead, brows, jaw and chin. Judging by the slight hollowness in his cheeks and the loose fit of his clothes, he’d dropped some weight recently. It made her wonder how long he’d been out of the army, for he’d gone back into battle after—

  Everything inside April went utterly still, as if moving so much as a fraction of an inch might cleave the fragile scab on the wound she’d sustained from losing Jay. Cole Cavanaugh had fought beside Jay, had lived beside him, had nearly died beside him. He’d saved Jay’s life time and again.

  Except that day, fourteen months ago, when Jay saved his.

  Gracie and Violet had been just over three and a half then—too young to understand what was happening. And yet they’d sensed that something tragic had occurred. Climbing onto the sofa, they’d sat pressed tight together, wide-eyed and silent as the house began to fill with people.

  April couldn’t allow her mind to travel to that bleak day, couldn’t relive the waiting and praying, the cloying dread; she couldn’t let her memory dwell upon the blur of minutes, hours and days that had followed the incomprehensible words that had changed her world forever.

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was in the present once again on this Tuesday afternoon in early August. She heard Gracie ask Cole if he would like to watch her new princess movie with her. At the same time Violet invited him to a tea party instead.

  Poor Cole looked to April for help.

  “Girls,” she said. “Mr. Cavan—Cole isn’t here to watch a movie or have a tea party today.”

  His warrior’s face showed his relief. She offered him a smile, for her daughters could be overwhelming. She seemed to remember Jay mentioning that Cole didn’t have any family to speak of. He probably wasn’t accustomed to the antics of young children.

  “Why is he here, then?” Gracie asked in her straightforward way.

  April glanced at Cole, thinking, Out of the mouths of babes. Why was he here?

  His apparent loss for words brought a wave of apprehension to the pit of her stomach. She’d heard from two of the other guys in Jay’s old unit, and had learned that Cole Cavanaugh had been injured in the same battle that claimed Jay’s life. She suspected that had something to do with the reason Cole was here.

  “Gracie, let’s put in your new princess movie, and Violet, get your teacups and saucers. You may watch your movie while you both
enjoy a spot of pretend magical tea.”

  The two turned to one another, their eyes meeting in silent twin-speak. “We don’t wanna,” they said in unison.

  Oh, dear. Enticing them to give the adults a little privacy would require some serious finesse. In the end, they couldn’t resist the alternative April offered them: an ice cream treat while they painted a picture for Cole so he would remember them when he left.

  And so, with her children busily painting with watercolors in the shade on the patio, April led Cole back inside. Once her eyes had readjusted to the dim light in her kitchen, she found herself staring up at him. He was taller than Jay, and she was certain she’d never seen anyone who could hold so still.

  All of a sudden, he shifted his weight from one hip to the other, as if to relieve pain. It reminded her that Jay wasn’t the only one injured by this horrible war. Not that she ever truly forgot. “You were there with him, at the end?” she whispered.

  His throat convulsed, but he nodded.

  Gathering her wits about her, she said, “Would you like something to drink? Water? Iced tea? A pop?”

  “Do you happen to have ginger ale?”

  That had been Jay’s favorite soft drink, too, one of many preferences the two men had shared. She shook her head.

  “Water’s good.”

  She took two bottles from the refrigerator and handed him one of them. Cole opened the cap and took a drink.

  Noticing him shifting his weight from one hip to the other again, she said, “Would you like to sit down?”

  He glanced around the kitchen, through the screen door into the backyard, then back at April. “I’ve been driving for hours. It feels good to move around. Your house is exactly the way Jay described it,” he said, his brown eyes softening as he looked into hers. “Would you mind showing me the rest?”

  It was an odd request, but what about learning to live without Jay these past fourteen months had been normal? “Jay talked about our house?” she asked.

  “When he got especially homesick he used to talk about his life here,” Cole said. “He told me about this kitchen and how he put that nick in the floor, and the bathroom with its 1950s pink tile, and he said Gracie and Violet communicated without saying a word. If I hadn’t just witnessed it with my own two eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “They know him from his pictures and the stories they hear,” April said quietly. “But they barely remember him anymore.” She hadn’t meant to say that, and imagined Cole could tell that from her wide-eyed expression. Perhaps because he didn’t spout any of the trite platitudes people often felt they needed to say at times like this, April heard herself ask, “Did he suffer?”

  Something flickered through his eyes, but his gaze didn’t falter, and neither did his voice as he said, “The bullet severed a main artery. If he was in pain, he didn’t show it.”

  * * *

  Cole didn’t have to close his eyes to see the blood, his and Jay’s, seeping into the dirt underneath them. A bullet had pierced Cole’s right side. The pain had been searing, but it was a scratch compared to Jay’s injury. He’d tried desperately to quell the flow of Jay’s blood. Told him to stay with him, that help was on the way. But Cole had known it was no use. Jay had known it, too. His voice fading to a rasp, Jay had whispered, “Tell April I—”

  Fourteen months later, Cole said, “He was indescribably calm. You were his final thought.”

  Blinking back tears, she whispered, “The jerk.”

  Cole did a double take, for that was the last thing he’d expected.

  “He said he’d come back,” she said, going to the door and peering out. “He promised.”

  He could see Gracie and Violet through the screen. They talked nonstop at a round glass-topped table, and although he couldn’t quite make out their words, he could see they were busily painting a picture for him. Gracie was dipping her brush into pastels while Violet painted her sky a bright vivid blue.

  “You’d like to see the rest of the house, you said?” April asked after she’d taken a moment to regain her composure.

  He nodded. And if she’d thought it was an odd request, which it probably was, she didn’t say it out loud.

  “As you can see, this is the kitchen,” she said, gesturing with one hand.

  She moved on briskly. Perhaps she preferred to keep moving, too.

  “You saw the living room and foyer when you arrived, but here it is again. The fireplace is a godsend in the winter. And here’s the hall.” She pointed at an open door directly ahead of them. “The only bathroom.”

  She turned to the right, and Cole followed her into a small pink bedroom containing two beds with matching comforters, the floor strewn with dolls and books and magic wands and costumes with frothy skirts.

  “Jay built these beds with his own two hands,” she said. “He sanded the wood until it was so smooth there wasn’t a single sliver that could pierce the girls’ tender skin. We painted them together a few weeks before he was scheduled to leave. Gosh, we couldn’t wait to show the twins their new bunk beds. After a week of their arguing and fighting over who got to sleep on the top bunk, Jay took the beds apart and arranged them side by side. A wise man.”

  Perhaps the most beautiful smile Cole had ever witnessed softened April’s pink lips. She bustled past him, but stopped short of the doorway of the last room on this floor. From behind her Cole could see two dressers, a bedside table and a large bed with pillows on only one side.

  “This was our room,” she said. She took a few steps away then glanced back at him. “One month to the day after he died, I dragged our mattress outside and put a match to it along with the Seven Steps of Grief pamphlet some kind soul with the best of intentions gave me.”

  “You burned your bed?” Cole asked.

  She shrugged. “Jay promised he’d come back. Promised. The flames were high and I’d never seen so much black smoke. I cried so hard I thought I was going to have a stroke. My sister says I was lucky the neighbors didn’t call the fire department. She thinks I’ve gotten stuck in the anger stage of grief.”

  What was he supposed to say to that? Cole wondered. Her gaze locked with his, and she clamped her hand over her mouth. Lowering it, she said, “You must think I’m certifiable. I’m not. I loved Jay with my whole heart. I still do.”

  He believed her. “He felt the same way about you. And the twins. A change came over him when he talked about the three of you. I could see it, hear it. We all could.”

  “He talked about us? What did he tell you?” she asked, intrigued.

  “Oh. Everyday things. He wasn’t like some of the guys. Jay wouldn’t give any intimate details, no matter how much the guys badgered him. He told us about the day he met you, how he proposed, how you both danced in the rain on your wedding day. He recalled the first time he held the girls, how you both knew this was the house you wanted to live in forever.”

  There was such wistfulness in her smile. And Cole wondered if it would be too forward to ask her to show him the upstairs. Because Jay had told him about the space, and how it was unfinished, and how he’d planned to turn it into a master sanctuary as soon as he came home.

  Cole could picture the before and after Jay had described. For months now he’d had an idea in the back of his mind. He’d never planned to act on it, but now that he was here, he wondered what she would say if he brought it up. First he had to take a look at it.

  “What about the upstairs?” he asked. “Jay talked about it a lot, about the plans the two of you had for it. I’m a builder, and I’d sure like to see it.”

  Surprise widened her golden brown eyes. She stuck her hands on her hips, the action drawing his gaze to her narrow waist covered by the thin fabric of her summer dress. Not quite five-five in her flat sandals, she was pretty but she was no weakling.

  She peeked at the girls again then led the way ba
ck to the living room and up the open staircase on the far wall. They went through a door at the top and emerged into an empty, stiflingly hot, wide-open space.

  Typical of Cape Cod-style houses, the roof sloped to shoulder-high walls on two sides. The overhead rafters were exposed, the floor covered in dusty rough-sawn oak. Light spilled through windows on either end, as well as through two larger windows in the dormers on the front of the house. Stained batted insulation was falling down in places.

  A blank canvas, Jay had called it. Cole didn’t have to close his eyes to envision his best friend’s plans for this space.

  “Jay wasn’t exaggerating,” he said. “It has a great deal of potential.”

  “You’ve seen enough?” she asked.

  He nodded, and she preceded him through the door, the hem of her dress brushing his jeans-clad knee as she passed. Steeling himself against her feminine softness, he leaned heavily on the railing as he descended the stairs, reaching the bottom just as April disappeared into the kitchen to check on Violet and Gracie again.

  “Time can drag when you’re holed up in a bunker in the middle of the desert,” he said, following. “The boredom is almost unbearable. Jay passed a lot of that time talking about room sizes, custom closets and a luxurious bathroom with a walk-in shower for two. Just about every guy in our unit weighed in on claw-foot bathtubs versus the jetted kind.”

  He took the CAD drawing from his back pocket, unfolded it and handed it to April. “Is this the way you remember your plans? Yours and Jay’s?”

  The drawing shook slightly in her hands, but she kept her eyes cast downward.

  “Tell me if I got any of the details wrong,” Cole said, although he was pretty sure he hadn’t missed anything.