Welcome to Serenity

by Sherryl Woods

  Maddie chuckled. “Tom doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who let’s his mama decide whom he can and can’t date.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Jeanette said grimly. “Until he canceled a lunch he’d practically begged me to agree to.”

  “Call him,” Helen advised. “Ask him out.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jeanette said. “It’s for the best.”

  “Then tell us why you’re so miserable,” Dana Sue said.

  Jeanette hesitated, then said, “It’s the new house. The paperwork for the loan is overwhelming. I feel as if I’m locking myself into something without having any idea if it’s going to work out.”

  “Sort of like marriage,” Maddie commented. “Life doesn’t come with guarantees, sweetie, not when it comes to relationships or houses. All you can do is make an informed decision.”

  Jeanette leaned forward, facing them intently. “Don’t you see? That’s just it. I didn’t make an informed decision. I walked into that garden and decided I had to have it. The house itself was almost secondary. Putting in that offer was pure impulse. I never do anything on impulse.”

  “Then you’re way past due to cut loose,” Maddie told her. “Look, we all know the house. We were in and out of it as kids. Not one of us thinks you made a mistake. If you can’t trust your own instincts, then trust ours. That house is perfect for you.”

  “You just want a sign that I’m not going to bail on the spa,” Jeanette countered. “You may not be entirely trustworthy when it comes to this.”

  “Hey,” Helen said, clearly offended. “When have we ever not been straight with you, even when it wasn’t in our own best interests?”

  Jeanette winced. “Sorry. There I go again. I just blurt out whatever comes to mind these days. You guys are wonderful, the best friends I could possibly hope for. Really.”

  “Okay, then,” Helen said. “Let’s cut to the chase. My recommendation is that you call Tom and see him as soon as possible. Have sex. It will improve your mood, to say nothing of giving you this amazing glow.”

  Jeanette chuckled despite her sour mood. “Sex as therapy? You spread that around, it will cut into business here. Right now, women rely on us to provide their skin with a youthful, dewy glow. If they find out they can achieve the same effect with sex, who knows when they’ll come back again.”

  Helen laughed. “Okay, then, we keep that just among us. My recommendation to you stands. And now I have to go home to my husband. All this talk about sex has given me ideas.”

  “Me, too,” Dana Sue said, standing up. “Maybe I’ll try to catch Ronnie in the supply room at the store. Leaving the door unlocked adds an element of risk that’s a real turn-on.”

  Maddie sighed. “Cal and I have to make an appointment to have sex these days. There are way too many kids underfoot.” She blushed. “We’ve been sneaking off to the Serenity Inn in the afternoon.”

  Helen, Dana Sue and Jeanette stared at her, then Helen’s expression turned thoughtful.

  “I wonder how Erik could feel about that,” she said. She glanced at Dana Sue. “He has, what, maybe an hour between the end of the lunch rush and the start of dinner prep at the restaurant?”

  Dana Sue nodded, clearly amused.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “That ought to liven up tomorrow afternoon.”

  Maddie winced. “We’ll have to work out a schedule. Cal will freak if we start running into everyone we know in the parking lot at the inn!”

  “Just so you don’t run into Tom and start giving him ideas,” Jeanette said. “He already has plenty of ideas of his own. Or he did.”

  “Call him,” Helen repeated.

  “Before tomorrow,” Maddie added. “And apologize to Emily Blanton.”

  Jeanette nodded without speaking. It was probably best if the rest of them didn’t know exactly what she was agreeing to do. Talking to Emily Blanton she could handle. Talking to Tom was out of the question. Besides, she’d see him first thing in the morning for the outing to pick out the town Christmas tree. Then maybe she could figure out what was going on with him without putting her heart on the line.

  * * *

  Tom was going just a little bit crazy wondering whether Jeanette had even noticed his absence. He’d decided to give Ronnie’s advice a try for one week. That week was up yesterday.

  Now he was pacing in the parking lot outside of Town Hall waiting for the arrival of the rest of the committee members. Howard had shown up a few minutes earlier with a brand-new minivan with dealer tags still on it for the trip to the tree farm. He’d had the windows rolled down and a Christmas CD blasting away. Tom had shuddered at the thought of being cooped up with all that holiday cheer for several hours.

  “Climb on in,” Howard said jovially. “You can ride up front with me. Make sure the CD player has music going. I brought along a dozen Christmas discs. Those should hold us. And there are a couple of Thermoses of hot chocolate and some cups. Help yourself.”

  Tom held up the cup of coffee he’d gotten earlier at Wharton’s. “I’m not much for hot chocolate. I have coffee.”

  Howard looked disappointed, but he didn’t push. When he spotted Mary Vaughn turning into the parking lot, he beamed. “One more accounted for. Hopefully Ronnie and Jeanette will be here soon and we can get on the road. I’m really looking forward to this.”

  Tom spotted Jeanette strolling in their direction, her feet dragging. She clearly wasn’t looking forward to the outing any more than he was. Ronnie caught up with her and said something that made her laugh. Jealousy shot through Tom with a force that stunned him. For the space of one tiny second, he wondered if Ronnie had had an ulterior motive for warning him off, then dismissed the idea as insane. Ronnie was madly in love with his wife. It was plain to anyone who saw them together.

  “Mary Vaughn, why don’t you sit up front with Howard,” Tom suggested, even as he turned to assist Jeanette into the back. He gestured for Ronnie to get into the far backseat, then climbed in to sit beside Jeanette, who was regarding him warily.

  He waited until they were under way and the Christmas music was blasting again before turning to her. “How’ve you been?”

  “Okay. You?”

  “Good. It’s been a crazy week.”

  “Yes, for me, too.”

  Tom barely contained a sigh. This wasn’t going well. She didn’t show the slightest sign of having missed him. If anything, she was more distant than ever. He decided then and there to scrap Ronnie’s advice.

  He leaned over. “I missed you,” he said in a low voice.

  Color bloomed in her cheeks, but she continued to stare straight ahead.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked.

  That drew a glance. “Not especially,” she said, but the increasing stain on her cheeks suggested otherwise.

  Behind him, he heard a barely contained chuckle. He turned and glowered at Ronnie. “You said something?”

  “Not a word,” Ronnie claimed, his expression innocent. “But I was thinking the time might go faster if we sang a few carols.”

  Jeanette twisted around awkwardly, constrained by her seat belt. “Are you crazy?” she demanded in an undertone.

  “Great idea!” Howard said. “That’s just what we need to get in the mood. Mary Vaughn, darlin’, check out the cover of that CD and tell us which song is coming up next so we can be ready.”

  Tom groaned.

  “It’s ‘White Christmas,’” Mary Vaughn announced in an upbeat tone.

  “Now, we all know the words to that, I’m sure,” Howard said. When the song started, he chimed in. After a pause Mary Vaughn joined him, as did Ronnie.

  Tom and Jeanette exchanged a commiserating look.

  “Come on, you two,” Howard said, glancing at them in the rearview mirror. “Let’s hear it. I think
we’ve got the makings of a nice little choir right here in this car. Mary Vaughn tells me we’re going to revive our family tradition of going to a nursing home to sing on Christmas Day. Maybe you all would like to join us.”

  “Not if hell froze over,” Tom muttered.

  “And Serenity, too,” Jeanette added with such feeling that he laughed out loud.

  “Great idea, Howard,” Ronnie said with enthusiasm, just to spite the two of them. “And don’t forget we’re expecting all of you at Sullivan’s for Christmas dinner. Howard, are you up for playing Santa again this year?”

  “You bet,” he said. “It’s at the top of my list for the holidays, right after being Santa on the opening night of the festival.”

  Jeanette slid down in her seat. Tom reached for her hand, partly because he just plain needed to touch her and that was the only appropriate gesture and partly to show solidarity. To his relief, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she released a barely audible sigh and met his gaze. He felt his heart drop at the longing he read in her eyes.

  Maybe Ronnie’s stupid scheme had worked, after all, he decided. If it had made Jeanette miss him, even for a minute, made her question, even once, if he’d lost interest, then the solid week of torture had been worth it.

  * * *

  The Christmas-tree farm should have been Jeanette’s worst nightmare, but after the first few minutes, she drew in a deep breath of pine-scented air and suddenly recalled all the wonderful Christmases of her childhood, the ones that had been filled with cookies and candy canes, a brightly lit tree decorated with ornaments she and her brother had made and popcorn they’d strung.

  There was some chill in the air, after all, just enough to make it feel like Christmas, and every step over the carpet of pine needles released their fresh, wintry scent.

  “Are you cold?” Tom asked, walking up behind her and circling her waist with his arms.

  Jeanette allowed herself to lean back against him for just an instant before pulling away. “No, this is invigorating.” She gazed up at him. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful out here?”

  “It smells like the cleaning solution they use at Town Hall,” he said.

  “It does not. It smells exactly the way Christmas morning is supposed to smell.”

  Tom shrugged. “In my family, our trees were always artificial. They had to stay up for weeks. Live trees were too messy, to say nothing of being a fire risk.”

  She regarded him incredulously. “You never had a live tree?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I recall. The decorators insisted that artificial was much more practical.”

  “Decorators? You didn’t put the tree up yourselves?”

  “Trees,” he corrected. “We usually had half a dozen, one in each of the downstairs rooms, along with boughs of evergreens, also artificial. It took several weeks for the decorators to do their job and turn our house into some kind of holiday theme park.”

  “I can’t imagine. What about the decorations? Did you make some?”

  “I made a few in school, but they were never on our trees. I think the housekeeper might have held on to some of them, but my mother insisted that the formal trees had to have a theme. It changed every year. My sisters and I were warned not to break any of the glass ornaments or we’d have to pay for them out of our allowances.”

  “How awful,” she said. It just reconfirmed everything she’d thought about Mrs. McDonald being a difficult, demanding woman and a snob. “Didn’t you have any special family traditions?”

  “Not much beyond going to the Christmas Eve service at the church. Oh, and the round of parties that began right after Thanksgiving. My sisters and I were banished from most of those until we were older and could be counted on to be civilized in company.”

  “But Christmas should be magical, especially for kids,” she protested, feeling bad for him. She understood his bah-humbug attitude a whole lot better now. Hers came from having a tragedy rip away a tradition she’d loved. And Tom, he’d never even known how joyous the holidays could be. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Tom shrugged off her sympathy. “It was just the way we did things. I never knew anything different.”

  “But I can see why the holidays don’t matter much to you,” she told him.

  “What about you? Were your holidays always idyllic?”

  She hesitated before answering, then, almost overcome with nostalgia, she said quietly, “They were when I was little.”

  Tom picked up on her phrasing at once. “What happened to change that?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. If she said the words, the enjoyment she’d been feeling amidst all these beautiful trees would be lost.

  “Jeanette, what happened?” Tom pressed.

  She sighed and began slowly, “I had an older brother—Benjamin. He was the best.” She closed her eyes and pictured him, standing tall and proud in his football uniform, an adoring girl on each arm. The words flowed more quickly. “He’d won an athletic scholarship to the University of South Carolina. My parents were so proud of him. Neither of them had been able to go to college. My dad’s a farmer. He works the same farm today that his father and grandfather did before him. He wanted more for Ben.”

  Tom just nodded and waited without interrupting.

  Tears welled up and slid down her cheeks. “It was Christmas Eve,” she said, lost in the memory that had changed her life. “I was fifteen and Ben had just turned eighteen. We’d all gone to church, but Ben had driven his own car. He’d picked up his girlfriend on the way to the midnight service. When they left after the service, he said he’d see us at home...” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed hard against the flood of memories of that awful night.

  Tom touched her cheek, his eyes soft with compassion. “What happened?”

  “He never made it,” she said. She paused for breath and it was a moment before she could go on. “After he dropped off his girlfriend, his car hit a patch of black ice. The police said he was probably going too fast. The car spun out of control and slammed into a tree. They said he died instantly.”

  “Oh my God, Jeanette, I am so sorry,” Tom said, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I can’t imagine what that must have done to all of you.”

  “We never celebrated Christmas again,” she told him, regrets washing through her anew. “When I wanted to get out the decorations the next year, my mother fell apart. My dad put them back in the attic. I never tried again.”

  “No wonder you hate the holidays,” he said. “You have such terrible memories associated with the season.”

  “Ironically, I don’t hate the holidays because I’m sad,” she said, trying to explain. “Not exactly, anyway. I hate them because of the way Ben’s death changed my parents. They’d been warm and generous and outgoing. My dad had high expectations for my brother, but he doted on me. After that, though, it was as if I didn’t even exist. I might as well have died right along with Ben, because nothing I did seemed to make any difference to them.” She met Tom’s gaze. “You have no idea how lonely and isolated that can make you feel, not mattering to the people you’re supposed to matter to.”

  “My parents always involved themselves too much in my life. I felt smothered. They laid out all these expectations that had nothing to do with what I wanted. It wasn’t enough that I excelled at school, I had to excel at the classes my father thought I ought to be taking. I had to spend time with girls my mother thought were appropriate. I went along with it until I graduated from law school, but then I did things my own way. That’s when the real battles started.”

  He shook his head. “So, no, I don’t know how it feels to be ignored, but it must have hurt terribly.”

  “It still does.”

  Shock spread across his face. “You haven’t made peace? It’s been how many years now?”


  “Almost twenty, and nothing’s changed. I called home a few weeks ago and my mother hardly recognized my voice. When I asked to speak to my father, she gave me an excuse about him being outside. She didn’t offer to have him call me back. I don’t even know if she told him I called. That’s the way it happens every time I reach out to them, but I keep trying, anyway. I keep hoping that someday they’ll remember that they have another child, one who’s still living, who still needs them.”

  She shivered. Tom took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. She didn’t even try to tell him that nothing could ward off a chill that originated deep inside. Instead, she let his warmth seep into her, breathed in the citrus scent of his aftershave. It wasn’t enough to take away the memories, but it was comforting just the same.

  * * *

  Tom wanted to seek out Jeanette’s parents and knock some sense into them. Even in their grief, they should have seen how much she needed them.

  As flawed as his relationship with his own parents might be, at least they had contact. Even when they were at odds, he knew they loved him. And even when he was most annoyed with them, as he had been with his mother over her attitude toward Jeanette, he couldn’t imagine cutting her out of his life permanently.

  How could Jeanette’s parents live with themselves, abandoning her as they had? Because he had no answers, he settled for keeping a close eye on her the rest of the day, trying to let her know with a gesture or a touch that there was someone who cared about her, who valued her.

  He thought he understood her a whole lot better now. He got why she was so touchy at any suggestion that she might not be first with him, why he might not make her a priority in his life. He had no idea, though, how to change the impression he’d given her. He would leave here someday. That was his plan and he’d determinedly adhered to his plan from the day he’d made it. Falling in love hadn’t been on the plan, not for a few years, anyway. He’d envisioned finding a wife after he’d reached his goal of running a large city. That’s when he’d make time for more than work, though how he intended to carve out enough time wasn’t something he’d figured out.