I smiled, in spite of the sudden pressure I was feeling to say something equally as beautiful to him. I would never find the words. Looking into those beautiful brown eyes, I couldn’t believe that I’d ever had a shred of doubt about him or his intentions.
This man standing in front of me … he wasn’t the same Lucas Reibeck I’d come to know in the beginning. He’d changed so much with time, evolved into this stable, secure person that he needed to become—the rock I needed in my most fragile moments. I knew I owed him the same effort. I couldn’t lean on him forever, though I knew he would expect me to. I couldn’t. One day, he’d need me to lean on, too, and I knew that. I, too, had to find the confidence in our relationship, in who we were and what we’d built, enough to grow into the best possible version of myself. Luke’s assurance in us was the glimmer of hope I needed moving forward.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand again. “Let’s go get the tree.”
Charlie was still strung across the couch and sleeping when we crept down the stairs and out the front door. Obviously Luke’s request for help hadn’t been an honest one, because he hadn’t needed my help after all. He unloaded and carried the tree in all on his own. I took it upon myself to unload the backseat, and I followed behind him with the two boxes of ornaments, lights, and decorations he’d brought along.
We tried, to the best of our ability, to maintain the silence as we brought the tree and decorations through the front door, hopeful not to wake Charlie from his deep and much-needed slumber. Matt heard what little commotion we’d made during the transition and started down the stairs to investigate the noise. He traipsed down the steps and stopped halfway, watching as Luke secured the live tree in the corner of the living room. In that moment, Matt only stared at us, seeming as though he was more annoyed with us than anything else. But then his scowl stretched slowly into a grin, and he took the rest of the stairs down to the first floor.
“You guys need help?” he whispered, and Charlie stirred on the couch at the sound of his voice.
“Sure,” I said, nodding at a nearby box. “You get the lights—”
“And I’ll head out and get the presents from the trunk,” Luke said, passing between us and heading for the front door.
The three of us did our best to work quietly around my uncle, but twenty minutes after we’d started working, Charlie’s eyes snapped open. He’d nearly rolled off the couch when he spotted the large tree in the corner. Matt had just started stringing the lights along the bottom branches, and my uncle jumped up from the sofa and insisted on helping him ‘do it correctly.’ To Charlie’s chagrin, I wouldn’t let him touch the lights. I put him in charge of putting the hooks on all of the ornaments—a simple and stress-free job, or so I’d thought, but he concentrated as hard on hooking the flashy Christmas bulbs as Luke did wrapping the gifts in the foyer. We all promised to focus our attention on our own assigned jobs so as not to steal any peeks at the gifts Luke worked so diligently to wrap. Even Matt had taken his job seriously. I’d never seen a person string lights so slowly and meticulously.
There were a lot of grim thoughts in the Little household in that moment. Charlie was burdened with the fear of his declining health. Matt was struggling with the reminders of a relationship gone sour, and I was bogged down with so much stress that I couldn’t see beyond the next minute. And then there was Luke…sitting only one room away, bringing us Christmas, doing everything he could to keep any of us from focusing on any of that negativity.
And even though we’d been brought together by our fears and sadness, I couldn’t find myself to be bothered by that. It didn’t much matter what the reason was. The three men I loved the most in the world were all under one roof, happily doing their part to bring some Christmas magic into our lives.
I couldn’t have asked for more.
Chapter Four
“And here I thought Bruno had the worst singing voice I’d ever heard,” Matt said, glaring. I ducked as he moved around me, stringing another layer of lights on the Christmas tree. I dipped just far enough for him to swing the lights above my head, and then I stood tall again and straightened some of the branches. “Honestly! What’s his deal? Is he tone deaf or something?”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Charlie said, digging through a box of ornaments at my feet.
“Stop it,” I said, pointing at the both of them. “He’s trying to focus.”
I looked over my shoulder at Luke as he sat in the middle of the foyer, quietly screeching the lyrics to a Christmas song as the radio played in the background. He kept his head low as he focused on wrapping each of the gifts, and he’d maintained that position for nearly a half-hour. Still, he’d only managed to finish the two presents for Derek and Zoey. He’d used up an entire roll of wrapping paper perfecting just those gifts.
Though I’d initially promised to keep my eyes to myself, I couldn’t help but watch Luke. His obsessive tendencies had gotten the best of him. He’d already unwrapped Lonnie’s present six times only to wrap it again, and he still wasn’t happy with where that had gotten him. Poor Luke didn’t seem any closer to finishing the giftwrapping than he was when he’d first started, and that was somewhere around the time he’d butchered Blue Christmas. He was taking his frustration out on the lyrics, and he was ruining some of the best holiday songs ever recorded.
“He knows we can hear him, doesn’t he?” Matt whispered, adjusting the lights. “We’re not deaf.”
“Yet,” Charlie hissed, pulling an ornament from the box. He held the large bulb in his hand and admired his reflection in the glass. “Does he have to do that?”
“Leave him alone, guys,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s here, he’s helping, and he’s not bothering anyone.”
“He’s bothering me.”
“Then that’s your problem, isn’t it?” I said, peering at Charlie.
“Are you seriously telling me that his singing doesn’t bother you?” Matt asked, already coming full-circle again. I ducked as he lifted the lights over my head once more. “It doesn’t bother you? Not even a little?”
“Fine,” I said, looking back to Luke before turning to my cousin. “He doesn’t have the best voice—”
“He sounds like a cat that’s been run over and dragged for sixteen blocks, Julie,” Matt said, finishing off the lights at the top of the tree. “Please make him stop.”
“You three know I can hear you, right?” Luke asked, looking at up at us through his thick lashes. Keeping his finger pressed down on the center of the wrapping paper, he used his other hand to pull a piece of tape from the dispenser.
“Yes,” Matt said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “And do you know that we can hear you? What’s with the singing, man? It’s Christmas. You’re bumming everyone out.”
“Leave him alone,” I said again. “Luke’s gone above and beyond here to make this Christmas special for us. You two should be thanking him, not criticizing him.”
Neither Matt nor Charlie had anything to say in response to that. They kept their heads low and continued to work, and after another ten minutes, I finally broke the silence.
“Hey Mattie,” I said, standing back to admire the fully lit tree. I knew we’d hang the ornaments next, but I preferred waiting until Luke was done wrapping all of his gifts. I really wanted the four of us to do it together as a family. And I knew that there’d be no better time than now to switch gears and give my cousin a little shove in the right direction. “While we’re waiting on Luke to finish up the gifts, what do you say to pulling out Mom’s recipe book again? Maybe we could make some of her famous snickerdoodles?”
“Go for it,” he said, reaching up to fix one of the tree branches.
“You wanna show me how?”
“It’s not that hard, Julie,” he said. “Follow the steps; it’s easy. Even you couldn’t mess it up.”
“Ha!” Luke said from his station in the foyer, and we all turned to look at him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Reibeck,” I
said, quirking my brow. I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him. “What exactly was that supposed to mean?”
He looked up from his current project and met my gaze. With a simple shrug he looked back down, pretending he hadn’t just let that unsubtle laugh slip through his lips.
“Fine,” I rolled my eyes. “If you don’t wanna help, then I’ll do it myself.”
I turned for the stairs and stomped up each one a little louder than the one before it. I wasn’t really too upset, just wanted Matt to think so. If I couldn’t get him to willingly help, I always had a shot of guilting him into it.
I reached my cousin’s bedroom and pushed open the door. Mom’s recipe book was sitting right on the corner of his dresser … right beneath a crumpled up, creased, and tattered envelope. It was a letter addressed to Matt’s university address, and it was from Kara.
I picked up the envelope and ran my finger over her perfectly scrawled shorthand. I studied every tiny detail, including the postmark date that was stamped only a few days before Matt had returned home in October… before he came home for good. I suspected that if Kara had really been the reason that Matt decided to call it quits and return to Oakland, then that envelope probably held all of the answers to my questions.
What had she said? What had she done to make Matt give up everything? Why did he come home?
I looked over my shoulder to make sure my cousin hadn’t followed me up the stairs. Assured that I was still alone, I stared back down at the letter. With a few heavy breaths, I turned it over, lifted the torn flap, and pulled a folded piece of paper from inside.
But I couldn’t open it.
I couldn’t bring myself to betray his trust. Matt hadn’t told me yet, and there had to be a reason for his silence, even if it was just because he wasn’t ready. So I had to trust that he would tell me when the time was right—if the time was ever right.
I slid the letter back into the envelope and set it aside. I plucked Mom’s recipe book from the dresser, flipped the light off, and shut the door on my way out.
I thought to turn down the front staircase and pop right back into the middle of the festivities happening in the living room, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to look my cousin in the eye. I’d somehow find a way to put my foot in my mouth, or he’d take one look at me and know that I knew something. To avoid any kind of confrontation, I turned in the opposite direction and headed down the back staircase to the kitchen. I opened Mom’s book of recipes when I reached the center island.
I flipped through a few pages until I found the recipe I’d been looking for—Mom’s famous snickerdoodle cookies. I set off to the refrigerator to collect the butter and eggs, ransacked the cabinets until I found the flour, sugar, and all of the other basic ingredients. The cinnamon was the most difficult search of all. It was amazing how long it took me to collect the few essentials. You’d think I’d never set foot in my uncle’s kitchen. But I had. Just not to bake. That was Matt’s thing.
Once I had the dough mixed together, I put it in the refrigerator to chill. The recipe didn’t specify for how long, but I’d always remembered Mom saying ‘ten minutes is never long enough, and fifteen isn’t necessary. Thirteen. That’s the magic number.’ So I set Matt’s timer for thirteen minutes.
I pulled myself up on the counter and sat there, my legs dangling off the ledge. I closed my eyes and remembered the last time I’d done that, the day Luke had come by our house and presented me with a necklace. I reached up and held the key in my hand, admiring the way the cool silver felt against my warm skin.
And then I thought of what my mother would’ve said if she could’ve only been there, if she could’ve seen how much things had changed since she’d been gone.
“You okay, kid?”
My eyes snapped open to meet Luke’s stare, and he took a few steps closer to me. With a faint smile, I nodded, and he jumped up and sat next to me on the counter.
“I used to sit up on the countertop at home and watch Mom bake,” I said, and his eyes softened at the mention of my mother. I cracked a smile at the thought. “It would make her so mad. She’d swat me with a towel or a wooden spoon … whatever she had in her hand. Not hard. Just hard enough to make her point. Countertops were not made for sitting, she’d preach.” A small grin curved on Luke’s lips. “Did your mom ever do stuff like that?”
“No,” he said, nudging me with a shoulder. “She was about as domestic as you.”
“Oh, nice,” I said, half-laughing, but then my smile faded back into a frown. “I meant … did she ever do stuff that you hated, stuff that annoyed you, but… stuff you’d give anything to see her do again, as long as it meant having her back?”
“All the time,” he said, reaching over to take my hand. He squeezed it gently and caressed my fingers with his thumb. “Dad and I always played ball in the house. It wasn’t anything formal, nothing organized. He’d sit in his chair and I’d be on the couch or on the floor. The TV was almost always on. We’d just toss a ball back and forth. Every now and then we’d knock something over, and you could always bet Mom would come whipping around the corner to yell at the both of us.” His faint smile faded away just as mine had done moments earlier. “Sometimes I throw a ball across the living room for Elvis,” he said, taking a deep breath. His eyes drifted somewhere else, down, but not to the floor. “Sometimes I want nothing more than to hear her yell at me again.”
I kept watching him, knowing that the way he felt wasn’t just difficult, but it was normal for our unfortunate kind—the ones of us who’d lost someone special. It was hard, sitting there and talking about death, but it seemed like Christmas always brought the memories flooding back. I hated that Luke had to endure those same struggles, but selfishly, I almost felt comforted knowing that I didn’t have to go through it alone.
“I think about it a lot now,” I said, bringing his gaze back to me. His eyes locked on mine for a few quiet seconds, and then I squeezed his hand. “I think about how angry it makes me that Charlie skips out on his appointments, eats greasy hot wings, or refuses to even climb the stairs. But I know that if I ever lost him … I’d give anything to have him doing all those things all over again. Just like Mom and Dad. And he makes it so hard for me to be mad at him.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I get that.”
“I can’t lose him, Luke. I just … I can’t. I need him, and if he …” I bit my lip and shook my head. “If he dies …” He nodded a couple times and let a breath slip through his parted lips. “Please tell me that I’m worrying myself for nothing,” I said, and a tear finally broke loose. “If you can just tell me that I’m in my head, if you can just say that everything will be okay, then maybe I can stop driving myself crazy.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t do that, Jules,” he said, squeezing my fingers even tighter. “I think he’s doing great. I think he’s got a lot of work ahead of him, but I don’t know. We never really know anything. We only have the moment that we’re in. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us. That’s just how it is.” I looked down as another tear slid down my cheek. “I can’t sugarcoat it for you, kid. You could lose any one of us as quickly as you lost your parents.”
“You’re not making me feel better.”
“I’m not trying to,” he said. “I’m just hoping to convey to you that you have to embrace what you have, give every moment the time and attention it deserves, and make sure that you don’t leave anything unsaid or undone. You can’t fear death, yours or anyone else’s.”
Just then, the buzzer went off, and the thirteen minutes had passed far too quickly. Luke let go of my hand and reached around me to stop the timer.
“Tell the people you love that you love them. Make sure they know,” he said, looking back to me as if the monotonous beeps hadn’t interrupted him. “At the end of the day, that’s all you can really do.”
He jumped down from the counter and turned back, offering me a hand. He helped me back down to the floor, and I planted my feet fi
rmly on the tile beneath me.
“I love you, Julie,” he said, brushing a hair from my eyes. I rested my head against his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of my head, wrapped his arms around me, and held me close. “What do you say we go wrap some more presents?”
“I have to finish the cookies.”
“I’ll finish them,” Matt said from the doorway, and I pulled my body away from Luke to stare at my cousin.
“What?”
“Dad’s already started on the tree. You guys go work on the gifts,” he said, walking over to the refrigerator to get the dough. I hadn’t even told him it was there; somehow he’d just known. “I need to do this.”
Looking from the oven to Matt, from Matt to Luke, and then back over to my cousin, I nodded.
“Knock yourself out,” I said, reaching over to the counter to slide the cookbook over to him. Still watching the way he moved around the kitchen, I could see that Matt was doing his best to come around to the idea of baking again. He was pushing himself over the hurdle, trying to get back to the way things used to be.
Leaving him to roll the dough into dozens of little circles, Luke and I returned to the living room. As Matt had promised, Charlie had already started hanging the ornaments. As he moved around the tree, trying to find the perfect spot for a tiny red bulb, the faintest grin settled on his lips.
“He’s happy,” I whispered to Luke. I started toward the tree, ready to tell Charlie to move slowly and to take it easy.
“Hey,” he said, pulling me back gently. He draped his arm around my shoulder and pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “Give him a little space, Jules. He needs that.”
“But—”
“You can’t hover over him forever,” he said. “Stand back and let him work this out for himself. Space. Time. That’s all he wants. He’ll come around.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, watching Charlie move around the tree. I felt my chest swell with hope. If Charlie could smile for the first time in a month, and if Matt could actually get over his heartache long enough to work anywhere near an oven, I was convinced that there was nothing they couldn’t do.
A Little Beyond Hope Page 3
