Their Christmas Carol (Big Sky Hathaways Book 2)

by Jessica Gilmore

  Vika Olsen stilled, her eyes fixed on Linnea. “At Crooked Corner? Why not here?”

  Linnea concentrated on her coffee cup, disconcerted by the sharp interest in her mother’s gaze. “No real reason, I think the Hathaways were thrilled to have an opportunity to try out some Swedish recipes—which means you will get lussekatter after all, and made a lot more authentically than I could manage!”

  “Will Nat be there?” Betsy asked, her words just about distinguishable, despite the amount of cinnamon roll in her mouth. “And Biscuit?”

  “Nat, yes, Biscuit probably not. It’ll be too much excitement for him, but we can take him for a walk this weekend. He’s been cleared for a real walk, which is exciting isn’t it?”

  Linnea managed to keep the conversation away from Nat or Crooked Corner for the rest of breakfast, but her mother cornered her in the kitchen while the girls were getting ready for school. “You and Nat seem very close.”

  Linnea knew her mother had wanted the kind of daughter who confided in her, to be friends as well as parent and child, but she had never found it easy to open up, her need to make her mother proud always her priority, never wanting to admit to weakness or mistakes. She’d been working hard since Elsie’s birth to change that, but it wasn’t easy to overcome the habits of a lifetime.

  Busying herself with rinsing the plates, she searched for the right words. “He’s been such an enormous help with the concert, both he and Lacey have. I was beginning to think I’d taken on too much. I don’t think I could have pulled it all together on my own.”

  Vika was still watching her carefully. “It’s good for you to be making friends with people your own age. Nat Hathaway was in your year at school, wasn’t he?”

  “He only came to Marietta High for senior year. His sister, Lacey, was a junior that year. I knew her a little, she was the committee and yearbook type too. I like her fiancé too, Zac. I don’t know if you’ll meet him this evening, he spends part of the week in San Francisco.”

  But her mother wasn’t fooled by her diversion. “He was always charming, Nat. I got the impression back then that you liked him.”

  “Mom, everyone liked Nat. He even flirted with the teachers. It’s the way he’s made.” She continued rinsing the plates even though they had been completely clean for nearly a minute.

  Taking the plates out of Linnea’s hand, Vika set them down on the draining board and turned Linnea to face her. “Linnea. It’s nearly three years since Logan died. I know you have a lot on your plate. I know the girls need you. But you don’t have to close yourself off. You still have to live your life.”

  “I know. And I am, Mom, truly. But Nat isn’t going to stay in town for long. It would be foolish of me to lose my heart to him.”

  “We don’t always get to decide these things,” her mother said. “Are you dating him?”

  “We’re seeing each other,” Linnea admitted. “Casually. Over the festive season.”

  “And you’re okay with the casual part?”

  Linnea bit her lip. Was she? She’d been telling herself she was. After all it was casual or nothing at all. “Nat isn’t the settling type. I knew that long before we started. I knew that ten years ago. And, actually, that makes him a safe person to start dating again with. I’m a little rusty after all.” She wasn’t being completely honest, not with her mother, not with herself. But she wasn’t quite ready to think about how lonely she would be when Nat packed his bags and hit the road once again.

  Her mother picked up a photo off the memo board. It was an old one, a solemn-eyed toddler, her hair pulled back into two long bunches. “It feels like no time since you were this small. Are you sure this is what you want, Linnea? Living in Marietta, back here with your father and me? Running the orchard? We love you, Linnea. I know it’s been a lot to bear at times, an only child and we weren’t the youngest of parents. I know you felt a lot of pressure but, believe me, all we wanted, all we want is your happiness.”

  Tears prickled Linnea’s eyes, her heart so full she could barely speak. “I think we both know that I am solely responsible for any pressure. I just wanted to make you proud…”

  “You do, darling. You always have.”

  “I want to be here.” Linnea reassured her mother. “I can’t wait to show Dad my plans for the orchard, to watch it evolve and grow, to see my daughters grow up here.”

  “You’re a good mother, and a good daughter. Just make sure you make time for yourself. If dating Nat Hathaway is what you want to do then go for it. And thank you for arranging today, it’s a wonderful surprise.”

  Linnea kissed her mother’s cheek. “I have to get the girls to school,” she said. She walked to the door then turned. “Thank you, Mom, for everything. I love you, I don’t tell you that enough. I should do it more often.” After all, she knew better than anyone how precious life was, how bitter words left unsaid.

  *

  Crooked Corner always seemed at its happiest filled with people. Patty and Priscilla were natural hostesses and had gone all out, creating a feast for the Santa Lucia party. The round crown cake stood in the middle of the table bearing seven candles to match those in Elsie’s wreath, and plates heaped with saffron buns and gingerbread cookies were placed either side while meatballs bubbled away on the stove. A pungent mulled wine simmered alongside along with a lingonberry juice for the children. All Nat’s family and a fair proportion of Linnea’s extended family had come to enjoy the festivities, several girls in white dresses, red sashes and wreaths running around the rooms. The boys were supposed to dress in similar costumes, but most had refused, opting for white shirts instead.

  Somehow Nat had found himself appointed master of ceremonies. He hadn’t even protested that much, maybe Marietta was working a spell on him—or Linnea was.

  “Okay,” he said when all the children were lined up, each holding a candle, Elsie at the front, self-important in her special candle-laden wreath. “Do you all remember the song?” He’d spent half an hour teaching them the tune and they all held a copy of the words, translated into English. Linnea’s doing of course.

  All the adults crowded around on the Crooked Corner porch as the children lined up outside. “It’s freezing,” Vika Olsen said, shivering. “And they’re only in those flimsy dresses.”

  “They won’t be out for long,” Linnea reassured her. “Just up the road as far as Bramble House and back again.”

  Solemnly, Vika went from child to child, lighting the candles for the couple of older children, helping the smaller ones turn on their electrical ones and checking Elsie’s wreath was blazing out and then they were off, Elsie in the lead, the other girls behind her and the boys bringing up the rear.

  “The night goes on weighty step,” they began and their voices a little wavery as they squinted at the still unknown lyrics, working out the unfamiliar tune.

  The adults followed them down the driveway and watched as they carried walking up Bramble Lane, still singing and then turned and walked back toward Crooked Corner.

  “It certainly looks very effective,” Nat’s father said. “The tune’s Italian, I think, and of course the words would usually be in Swedish. What’s the purpose, Linnea?”

  “Like all these things it was once a pagan light festival,” Linnea said as they climbed the stairs back up to the welcome warmth of Crooked Corner. “Now it commemorates Santa Lucia who apparently used to bring food to Christians hiding in the catacombs, using a candle on her head to light the way so she could carry more in her hands. She was later martyred in some suitably gory way!”

  “What a charming story,” Ted Hathaway said seriously and Nat suppressed a grin. He knew his father of old, and that he would be filing away the story, words, and tune for later. Every song he and Nat’s mother wrote was inspired by their experiences, by the world around them and they loved a good myth or legend.

  “Oh, yes,” he agreed, coming to stand next to his father and Linnea, his hand aching to take hers. “Nothing as charming as
a good martyr story, isn’t that right, Linnea?”

  As soon as the children returned, they attacked the food, as if, Linnea remarked, they’d all been starved for a week, not fed their dinners just an hour or so earlier. The whole house was buzzing with conversation, with song, with happiness. Nat stood in a corner, watching the children running around, the adults exchanging news. It was like Marietta had been distilled down to its essence in this one house; community, family, love. And he, as ever, was an onlooker. There yet not really part of it. He slipped away. There was nothing lonelier than a crowd.

  He sat on the old porch seat, staring up at the star-strewn sky until the creak of the wood heralded someone’s arrival.

  Linnea sank onto the seat beside him. “You’ve been very elusive.”

  “Have I? Not on purpose.” His grin came easily, but she didn’t respond, looking at him with searching eyes.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “As long as you’re not planning to cancel on me tomorrow night then yes.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Nat wasn’t sure what this melancholy was. He was just glimpsing a world that he wasn’t a part of. What he didn’t understand was why it bothered him so much. It never had before.

  “I’m not planning anything except being wined and dined. You set the bar high last week, Nat. I’m looking forward to seeing how you will top it. I just wanted to thank you for helping organize this. I need to get the girls home, they have school tomorrow.” She leaned in and kissed him, a brief, soft caress which made his blood heat and his body yearn for more. But before he could pull her down, ask her to stay a little longer, she was gone and he was alone with his thoughts once again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Linnea’s departure was just the start and within twenty minutes the last of the guests took their leave.

  Nat kissed his great-aunts and turned to his parents. “I’m off too,” he said.

  “It’s still early.” His mother pointed out. “Why don’t you come along to our house for a bit? Your father has some tunes he wants to run past you. Besides”—she brushed a piece of his hair away from his eyes—“we’ve barely seen you. I don’t think you’ve been to the house since Thanksgiving and we’re only down the road.”

  He hadn’t. It wasn’t exactly deliberate, it just didn’t feel natural. Either Nat spent all his time with his parents or they were on opposite sides of the country, sometimes the world. Being able to just pop in for a coffee and a chat with them was an alien concept to him.

  Their house was a lot smaller than both Crooked Corner and the Summer House, built many decades later, but although more modest in size it had beautiful views over the Marietta river. As Nat had predicted, the whole of the front of the house was covered with Christmas lights, strands of multicolored bulbs wound through many of the trees.

  His parents had still been unpacking at Thanksgiving so it was a shock when Nat walked in and saw a finished house, photos of Lacey and him everywhere. Baby photos, the two of them as children posing in front of landmarks all over the world. Pictures of him onstage. Amidst the photos were what seemed like a thousand souvenirs; masks from Venice, dolls from Russia, glass animals from Prague, a decorated boomerang hung next to a silk Japanese fan. And that was just in the wide hallway. Nat turned slowly, trying to take it all in. “Where on earth have you been storing all this stuff?”

  “Back at the ranch,” his father said. “Your grandfather kept it for us. I must admit, I didn’t realize we had accumulated quite so much.”

  The large sitting room was more of the same; brightly-colored throws from India covered the couch, wooden animals carved in Africa marched along the mantelpiece and more photos lined the walls. A huge Christmas tree dominated the corner. “All those years you told me that we didn’t need things to weigh us down, just music in our hearts and some way of playing it and all along you were secret pack rats?” Nat said, accepting the beer his mother gave him.

  “We only bought one thing from everywhere we visited as a memento. I guess we visited a lot of places,” his mother said. “Every ornament on the tree we picked up while traveling. I can remember buying each one.”

  “It’s like living amongst our memories,” his father said. “It’s actually very inspiring. I’ve written more in the last three weeks than in the last three years.”

  Nat sat down on the overstuffed couch, removing several embroidered cushions in order to make space and stared at his father in disbelief. “You always said that being on the move, no ties, no possessions, was the best way to free up inspiration.” He didn’t want to sound accusatory, but he couldn’t help it. The whole house felt like a rebuttal of his childhood, the values he had held dear.

  “But these aren’t possessions, they are reminders of the past, of the world outside this town.” His father sounded surprised. “Hold on, let me get my guitar. I’ll show you.”

  Nat took a long drink of his beer as his father left the room, then set the bottle down and looked over at his mother. “Is this what you wanted all the time?” he asked. She looked so domesticated, curled up on the love seat, one hand on Biscuit’s head. “A home, to be settled?

  “No. No, I never wanted to settle, I wanted a different way of life, Nat.” In many ways, his mother was exactly the same as she had always been, in her long, flowing dress. Still tall and slim, her blonde hair long and poker straight. It was the surroundings which changed her. “I wanted you and Lacey to be citizens of the world, to grow up not wanting the latest sneakers or gadgets, but experiences. I wanted to make music free from the demands of a timetable and a school day, not to be tied down by domesticity. It’s so often the woman who ends up compromising, you know. But we’re getting older, your father and I. We’ll still travel, still tour, but it’s time we had a home to come back to.”

  “So you don’t regret it? Spending your life on the road, no ties, no community, no home of your own?” Nat didn’t know why her answer was so important, he just knew it was.

  She didn’t answer for a long time, continuing to pull Biscuit’s long ears through her fingers while the dog made blissful crooning sounds in the back of his throat. “Professionally, no. Personally, no. As a mother? A little.”

  That he hadn’t expected. The words hit hard. “Why? We’re both fine. Look at these photos, we saw the world, how many people can say that? We have good careers, Lacey is engaged and happy…”

  “Lacey took a long time to let anyone get close and, as for you, Nat, I worry you never will.”

  “That’s not true.” But he couldn’t look at his mother as he protested.

  “No? You make friends easily, but who outside your family can you turn to? And you keep us at arm’s length most of the time. I think showing you the world was a huge gift, giving you the opportunity to play music every day a boon. But I don’t want you to end up alone, my darling, and I worry that’s where you are headed.”

  “I’m only twenty-eight.” He tried to laugh her words off, to tell himself they didn’t sting, that the truth of them hadn’t hit home.

  “Twenty-eight with no home of your own, no relationship outside your family which has ever meant anything to you. I know I spent my life traveling, but I had your father, I had you and Lacey. I was never alone.”

  “I’m twenty-eight with an album that has sold really well, a label ready to pump money into promoting my next, a world tour under my belt.” He was being defensive, but had no idea how else to react. “Look, Mom, I’m glad you and Dad are happy and I am delighted that Lacey has what she has always wanted, but that doesn’t mean that settling down is right for me, not yet.” The memory of how lonely he had been earlier that evening shivered through him.

  Lonely that was, until Linnea joined him. For those brief moments the whole evening made sense. He was part of it.

  But how could he put his trust in someone who had turned him away before? Someone who thought he was safe precisely because he wasn’t settled.

  He half expected his mother to get cross or up
set, but she just looked at him, her gaze penetrating. “Did that last album make you happy, Nat?”

  “I’m happy every time I hear my songs play on the radio,” he retorted.

  “Every time you played them? Was it like greeting an old friend? Like coming home?”

  “I thought we’d established that I have no home, no old friends.”

  He regretted the words as soon as he said them, especially as they obviously hit home, his mother closing her eyes as if in pain. “Mom. I’m a professional musician and my music sells. That makes me happy.” At least, it made him content.

  “Nat, all I want is your happiness. For you to find your own road, not to be constrained by the way we raised you. There is no shame in needing people, in needing roots. There’s no shame in love.”

  “Not all of us are lucky enough to find that kind of love.” He stared over at the photos.

  The four of them outside the Eiffel Tower, outside the Taj Mahal, outside the White House. He’d been all around the globe, but he’d never spent enough time any one place to know it intimately. Marietta was the only place that had the pull of home for him. Had it always, or was it because Linnea had shown him a brief glimpse of what being in that kind of family could be like?

  “Not everyone has a forever love.”

  “You’re a Hathaway. When a Hathaway falls in love he or she falls forever. Look at your grandparents. Look at your Aunt Patty, still in love with a man who died forty years ago. You’re like swans. You mate for life.”

  Nat had heard the family legend many times, but had never thought it affected him. What if it did? What if he had given his heart away at eighteen to someone who hadn’t wanted it? He folded his arms and gave his mother a sardonic glance. “That’s just a story.”

  “What about Linnea? You seem close.”

  “We are. We’re friends. See, I am capable of making them.” But the joke fell flat.

  “She’s a lovely girl.”

  “She’s a wonderful woman, with two wonderful children, and a lot of responsibility to juggle,” he said. “I like her, I enjoy her company, but she needs someone steadier than me. Someone who will always be there for her.” Unlike her husband, unlike Nat who might not spend his spare time rock climbing, but was no steadier for that.