A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  For the space of a few hours, anyway, Santa had come back to the homestead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Christmas morning dawned gray and cold and wet. The rain had started sometime in the night, and Milo had seen fit to crawl onto the end of Holly’s bed and make himself comfortable. Downstairs, Santa had brought a standing easel with washable markers and a child’s table and chairs. One would think that the items would be easy for Santa’s helpers to assemble, but that was not the case. They required an Allen wrench of a size Wyatt did not have in his truck box of a thousand tools, and he had to make do with a knife.

  Holly and Wyatt drank spiked eggnog while they worked—a Holly specialty, she said, giggling—and laughed uncontrollably when they realized they’d assembled the easel upside down. When they finally had the gifts arranged, they fell on the old couch in front of the fire that Wyatt had built and stared into the flames.

  “What was the best Christmas gift you ever received?” Holly asked Wyatt.

  This night. “Bike,” he said. “Banana seat. Ape-hanger handlebars.”

  She laughed. “I know those ape hangers must have been important.”

  “You have no idea. What was your favorite gift?”

  “Guitar. It was red, and it had blue strings, and I loved that thing.”

  Holly stood up and gathered up their cups and the detritus of putting together Santa’s gifts and carried them to the kitchen trash. When she returned, she said, “I’m exhausted. Can we go to bed now?”

  Wyatt stood up, too, and swept her up into his arms. “Girl, anytime you want to go to bed, you need only point the way.” Holly laughed and pleaded with him to put her down, but he wouldn’t do it. He carried her upstairs to her bedroom and lay down beside her. As did Milo, who never understood when to make himself scarce.

  They had to wake Mason that morning. Predictably, he was more entranced with the paper and packaging than his gifts. He liked hiding beneath the mounds of wrapping paper and then springing up, laughing with delight when Wyatt pretended to be surprised each time.

  Wyatt missed Gracie. Macy had sent him a video of Gracie opening the gift Wyatt had given her—a big box of Legos—and it made him miss her even more.

  Holly made fresh apple turnovers that were the best Wyatt had ever tasted. When he’d stuffed himself full of them, she fetched a box from beneath the tree. “I have something for you.”

  “You shouldn’t have, but as long as you did, let me have it,” Wyatt said with a wink, and held out his hand.

  Holly grinned and stepped over paper and toys to sit cross-legged beside him. He tousled her deliciously unkempt hair, then ripped into the wrapping paper like a pro. He was a firm believer in getting things done.

  In the box was a black leather belt. Wyatt was very happy. It had been so long since anyone had given him a gift that he didn’t care if it was a box of chocolates. He lifted it out of the box and examined it.

  “It’s hand-tooled leather,” Holly said. “And the silver belt buckle is handmade too. Ossana and I found it in Fredericksburg.”

  “That is one cool belt,” Wyatt said. “Thank you.” He slipped his hand around Holly’s nape and pulled her forward to kiss her. She tasted like apples and cinnamon.

  “Car,” Mason said, holding out the truck Wyatt had given him.

  “Son, that is no car. That is a two-ton truck with a Hemi engine,” Wyatt corrected him, and wound the belt around his hand and put it back in the box.

  “Wait!” Holly cried. “There’s more in there.”

  Wyatt peered into the box and spotted the white envelope. “What’s this, a pink slip?” he asked.

  “Right,” Holly said, and wrapped her hands around her mug of coffee.

  Wyatt opened the envelope. Inside was a music score. He was puzzled by it until he began to read the lyrics:

  Short on words cuz he’d been hurt.

  She thought he was a little curt.

  She didn’t care cuz she’d been there.

  She knew that kind of pain,

  How hard it was to love again.

  He didn’t say he loved her but she saw it in his smile.

  She asked how long he’d been alone, he said it’s been awhile.

  She didn’t care cuz she’d been there.

  She knew that kind of pain,

  How hard it is to love again.

  She knew the kind of man he was,

  He was her lover and her friend.

  He was her light at winter’s end.

  She knew the kind of man he was,

  He was her lover and her friend.

  He was her light at winter’s end.

  Wyatt stared at the paper.

  “It’s a song,” Holly said. “I wrote it for you.”

  “I see that.” He swallowed. He was moved by it in a way he’d never felt before.

  “Oh my God,” Holly said. “I’ve offended you. I am so sorry, Wyatt. I thought it would be—”

  “Holly,” he said, catching her hand. He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “This is the best gift I’ve ever received. Ever. Thank you.”

  “You haven’t even heard it.”

  “I want to hear it,” he said.

  She smiled and untangled her hand from his and stood up. “You will not appreciate the full effect of this song, of course, because I will be singing it. But wait till you hear Quincy sing it. Come here, Mase,” she said, and hauled Mason up from the paper and handed him to Wyatt. “I won’t be needing your help on the piano,” she said, and kissed the top of his head as she took the music from Wyatt.

  She sat down at the piano, glanced over her shoulder at him, then began to play. It was a beautiful melody, a slower tempo than the music he’d heard her create with Quincy. It sounded more like something Carole King would sing, not the country-western style she’d been writing. Whatever one called it, Wyatt was moved. He could feel something grow inside him as she sang. Something with very deep roots.

  When she’d finished, Holly twisted around on her stool. “Well? Do you like it? I know it’s a little slow,” she said, “but I can change the tempo—”

  Wyatt stood up and, carrying Mason, walked to the piano. He kneeled next to her and cupped her face. Mason grabbed the lapel of her robe. “That is the most beautiful song I ever heard,” he said. “It’s a hit, Holly. That song is a hit.”

  “I don’t know about that …”

  “I do. Thank you.” He kissed her tenderly. “I have something for you, too,” he said, and handed her Mason so he could fetch the gift.

  Holly let Mason slide off her lap. Her box was small, but she opened it eagerly. Wyatt had given her a Tiffany charm bracelet. He’d noticed she was always wearing bracelets, and he’d found this one with a little diamond-studded guitar hanging from it.

  “It’s gorgeous!” she cried with delight, and fastened it onto her wrist. She held her arm out, shaking it, making the charm dance for Mason. “Thank you, Wyatt. I adore it. I can’t wait to show Ossana.”

  “That’s not all,” Wyatt said, and from the pocket of his lounge pants he pulled out his own envelope. He’d come up with the idea because of Jesse, of all people. “You have to get her something that really matters to her, bro,” Jesse had offered one afternoon—without being asked, naturally.

  “Thanks, Jesse. I will remind you that I have dated many women and have even been married. This ain’t my first rodeo,” Wyatt had calmly informed him. “Can you please get back to work?”

  “I know,” Jesse had said, although instead of working, he’d propped his arm on the top of the post digger. “But you are in sad shape, Wyatt. You could use a reminder of how this works. Sexy lingerie is nice for you, but she’s gonna need something that means something to her. You know, something she wouldn’t get for herself.”

  Wyatt had rolled his eyes. “Thanks again for sharing yet another chapter from Jesse Wheeler’s Dating Tips. Come on, we’ve got holes to dig.”

  But Jesse was right. Wyatt
was out of practice, and he hadn’t really thought about this gift until Jesse had opened his big mouth.

  “Wyatt!” Holly said, laughing as she held up the envelope. “You wrote a song for me!”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  Holly opened the envelope. Inside was a plane ticket to Nashville.

  “It’s open-ended,” Wyatt said as she pulled it out and stared at it. “You can go anytime.” Part of him found it quite difficult to say that out loud. He’d bought the ticket, but he didn’t want Holly to go to Nashville. He wanted her to stay right here, in this run-down old farmhouse, with him and Milo and Mason and Grace.

  But the bigger, better part of him knew that if she didn’t go, she’d never know what she could achieve. Holly had been right when she’d told him that she wasn’t a go-getter. She needed prodding. She needed someone who believed in her to help her take that step.

  Holly seemed stunned by the ticket. She kept turning it over, as if she would find some magic words written on the back, some prediction of the future.

  Wyatt cleared his throat and added, “I called in a favor from a client. He’s got a condo in Nashville he uses on occasion, but he’s willing to give it up for a few months until you get your feet on the ground. And once your mother’s will is probated, I’ll buy this property so you’ll have something to live on until your music starts to earn you the kind of living I think it will.”

  When Holly looked up at him, her eyes were glistening. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  “You need to go. You can’t waste your talent, Holly.”

  “All my life I have been hearing how I need to give it up and get a real job. You are the first person who has encouraged me to go and do it.”

  “Because I truly believe in you.” He didn’t understand how anyone could hear her music and not believe in her. It had to happen … with or without him.

  “What about you?” she asked as Mason crawled under the coffee table, pulling wrapping paper with him.

  Wyatt chuckled. “I’ll be hoping for an invitation.”

  “I love you,” Holly said suddenly, and stood up from the piano, clutching the plane ticket. “Do you know that? I love you. I can’t imagine being in Nashville without you and Mason and Grace.”

  There were, obviously, some complications with that, but Wyatt wasn’t going to spoil the moment by pointing it out.

  “I love you, Wyatt Clark, and I think you love me too.”

  He didn’t say that he did, but he didn’t deny it, either. There was a wall there, one that he realized he was too afraid to scale just yet. But as he gazed at Holly this Christmas morning, he couldn’t imagine being without her, either.

  When Holly put Mason down for his nap, she shooed an unhappy Milo out onto the porch, and took Wyatt by the hand, and led him up to her room, where she proceeded to push him down on the bed and crawl on top of him. “You know what I hope?” she asked as she raked her fingers down his bare chest. “I hope that this never ends, that we are always like this.”

  Oh God, he hoped the same thing. This was what Wyatt had always wanted—a house like this, babies sleeping in their cribs, ornery cows bellowing for their hay, dogs sniffing around the porch. He wanted apple turnovers on Christmas morning and cranky old windmills and a woman who looked and tasted and smelled like Holly. He wanted to come home to her after a hard day’s work, and he wanted to lie with her in bed when it was raining outside and make love just like this. He wanted all that, and if she happened to be the hottest songwriter in Nashville, well, that was okay too.

  The steady rhythm of rain sounded on the roof and the patio as Wyatt and Holly lost themselves in each other’s arms. But the rain faded from his conscience as he covered her body with his and moved inside of her, filling her up with all that he wanted and hoped and dreamed.

  And then he lay beside her, breathing hard, his body warm and moist, his heart beating with gratitude. “It hasn’t been easy for me,” he whispered into her hair.

  Holly didn’t speak but turned on her side so that she was facing him.

  “What you wrote in that song is true. I am afraid to love again. I’m afraid of that kind of pain again.”

  She kissed his throat.

  “I may find it hard to say, Holly, but the truth is lying in this bed between us. I love you.”

  She smiled. “I know,” she whispered, and kissed him before pressing her cheek to his shoulder.

  “Well, you don’t have to be so smug,” he said, and brushed the hair from her face as she giggled. He wrapped her in his arms, pulling her close. “All right. Be smug. I don’t care.” But he was grinning up at the ceiling.

  They napped in each other’s embrace. Wyatt was having a dream about Troy’s saddle being broken, and a crack in the leather so wide that he could feel cold air. It took him a moment to realize the air was cool because Holly was up. She was pulling on her jeans.

  “Where are you going?” he asked sleepily. “Come back here.”

  “Someone’s here,” she said as she hastily pulled her hair back into a ponytail while she stuffed her feet into her Uggs.

  Wyatt sat up, propping himself up on his elbows. “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I have to get Mason.”

  She hurried out of the room. Wyatt jumped up and pulled on his jeans as he looked out the window. All he could see was the top of a black car.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were moments like this in which Hannah felt as if she were standing high above the earth on a wire, and the smallest gust could push her off into a pool of pills and alcohol.

  It didn’t help matters at all that she knew there were pills stashed in her mother’s bathroom, hidden away for emergencies. With the gravity of this moment weighing down on her, she was having trouble keeping those pills from her mind.

  She was shaky, unsteady on her feet and in her head. If it weren’t for Mason, she wouldn’t be driving out here, especially in the rain. But that huge black sinkhole Mason had left in her had burned hard this morning. She’d awakened in the transitional house, her pillow wet from the tears of missing her son, and she’d decided today was the day.

  “Why haven’t you gone to see him?” That was the first thing Loren had asked her when she’d come back to Austin.

  Loren had been surprisingly forgiving when she’d called him from Palm Springs and confessed her drug and alcohol use and her part in their failed marriage. She’d expected threats and sneers, but Loren had offered her understanding and a willingness to help. They’d talked like they hadn’t talked in years, about their marriage, about when things had started to fall apart. Loren even seemed to feel guilty that he hadn’t been more aware of her problems. “I could have helped you,” he’d said. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I could have helped you.”

  Hannah had been overwhelmed by his selflessness … until she came back to Austin and realized he was hoping for reconciliation. That would never happen, but Hannah didn’t mind letting him believe it was a possibility. She would let Loren think whatever he needed to think until she had Mason back. Then she’d file for divorce.

  Mason … her heart, her soul. She ached with missing him.

  Loren told her the baby was good. “He seems happy,” he said to her. “I never thought I’d say this, but Holly seems to have stepped up.”

  Hannah had never had any doubt of that, but then, she knew Holly better than anyone. When they were girls, Holly had loved baby dolls. She’d had three or four, with beds for all of them lined up on one wall of the nursery. She’d had clothes and diapers and bottles. Moreover, she was forever catching lizards and horned toads, which she had kept in boxes—she called them houses—in the barn until Dad made her let them go. And there had been an endless parade of feral cats Holly was always trying to adopt.

  No, Hannah never had any doubt about Holly. The only doubts she’d ever had were in herself.

  “Why haven’t you been to see him?” Rob Tucker had asked her that, t
oo, when she’d come back to Austin. Rob had met her plane, although Hannah had told him it wasn’t necessary. “Are you kidding? I’m not letting you come back with no one to meet you,” he’d said gruffly, and there he’d been, standing in the baggage claim area, smiling as she came down the escalator, flowers in hand. He’d been wearing khakis and a polo shirt, his sunglasses on top of his head, and Hannah had thought it was kind of odd that she’d never seen him in anything other than a suit, and yet they’d become so close over the last four months.

  He’d smiled and held out his arms to her. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  She should have known that Rob was a recovering alcoholic, and that that was the reason he’d been able to detect her abuse. She’d found out during the many phone conversations they’d had while she’d been in Florida. “Been sober seventeen years,” he’d proudly reaffirmed over dinner the night she returned to Texas. Hannah would be eternally grateful to him for not firing her and, moreover, for helping her get treatment. He was her only friend now, her mentor, the one person who called to check on her every day. He’d arranged for her stay in the tony transitional house in Westlake, where professional counselors and support staff helped people like Hannah—on reentering a world in which they used to do drugs all day just to cope—to remain sober and learn new coping mechanisms.

  “When will you go and see your son?” he’d asked her two days ago.

  “The time has to be right,” she’d said, and felt the flush of shame spread up her neck and into her cheeks. She could hardly speak of Mason without feeling the incredible burden of her guilt and despair.

  But Rob had reached across the dinner table and taken her hand. “The pain is never going to go away. Nor is the guilt or the fear. It’ll all just get bigger and bigger until you confront it. I know what I’m telling you, Hannah. My daughter was four.”

  She knew he was right—he was so right—but Hannah was so fearful. She used to think God couldn’t keep her from her son, but she’d learned that fear was a pretty powerful force. She’d worried that Mason would be forever damaged because she had abandoned him, but Dr. Bonifield assured her that children Mason’s age could overcome quite a lot as long as he’d had a stable environment and someone to love him in her absence. “It’s the children who don’t have that who have trouble attaching later in life,” she’d explained.