It wasn’t the silence or the sun’s rays he noticed first, however. Facing the Christmas tree, Branch had a clear view out the window it stood in front of, a large bay window that jutted out in front of the house and showed off the entire front yard between its elongated panes.
It allowed an unobstructed view of the driveway, too, which was why he was struggling to comprehend why there were a bunch of vehicles parked behind his rental SUV and Grandpa Duke’s Bronco. He recognized Jason Forrester’s Dodge truck a split second later, only compounding his confusion.
He got to the door just as a loud knock reverberated through the quiet house. Even before he opened it, Branch heard the muffled sound of voices. Their words were obscured, but the hum of anticipation and excitement penetrated the steel door with ease.
‘Jay?’ But it wasn’t just Jason. His friend was there, all right, but he was squashed between a group of older adults. It took Branch longer than it should have to recognize Jason’s parents and grandmother, accompanied by another elderly woman he didn’t know.
‘Happy Christmas Eve, man!’ his friend exclaimed, his smile glowing as brightly as the midday sun. ‘We’re here for the party.’
Ashamed, Branch’s head hung slightly. He didn’t know what to say to that. ‘I … It’s not supposed to be until later tonight.’
‘We know.’ Jason’s mother, Bettina Forrester, radiated so much enthusiasm that she was shaking from it. ‘So, we’d better get started.’
‘When Jay told us you were holding a dinner for the town, like Addie used to, we thought you might want some help with the preparations,’ his father, Roderick, explained, holding up a few canvas shopping bags. They all had similar ones clutched between their fingers, except for Bettina, who was holding a covered pan of some sort.
‘You’re here … to help?’ Branch stared at them, bewildered.
‘Well, who in tarnation do you think helped Addie all those years?’ Branch had only met Jason’s grandmother, Mary-Jean, a handful of times, but he remembered her outspoken demeanor. For such a little lady, she sure was a force to be reckoned with. He remembered thinking, even when he was a teenager, that she was pretty cool for her age. ‘Addie certainly wouldn’t want you to be doing this alone, either.’
The old woman’s statement rendered him speechless, and he managed to keep just enough of his wits about him to have the manners to step sideways and motion the group of people inside.
As they shuffled inside out of the cold, Branch stood there, hearing the agonizing words he had just spoken aloud to his grandmother float continuously through his mind.
I can’t do this without you, Grandma Addie. I can’t do this alone.
But his plea was quickly followed by the sentiment Jason’s grandmother had just offered him, and as he played it over and over on an endless loop, Branch swore the voice who said it began to sound less and less like Mary-Jean and more and more like his own grandmother.
That was when he felt it, the warmth in his palm. Branch glanced down and opened his clenched hand. In it, a tiny glass teddy bear sat, nestling a crimson red cardinal in its paws.
His own little messenger from heaven.
Chapter 23
Kait
Kait thought she was an emotional wreck before. Heaven knew she had more than enough reasons to be one throughout the years. Even during the times where she seemed cool as a cucumber on the outside, she had a tendency toward being a chronic worrier. Looking after everything, and everyone, was her way of dealing with her worries. As long as she was the one in charge, she knew there was no one else who would care more or do more than she would to make things right. Organization was key, as well as routine. Which was why Kait had welcomed the almost mundane life she had built in Port Landon – same job, same daily schedule, same four walls she hid behind so that nothing bad would ever befall her and her family again.
And it had worked for over a decade, until Zach showed up on her doorstep and brought the something bad inside her home. She couldn’t hide from emotional upheaval when she was the one to invite it inside and offer up its messenger a piping hot cup of coffee.
The moment she opened that door and saw the look in his eyes, she knew things were about to change forever. The truth was coming, bringing with it a new brand of turmoil she had never experienced before.
Still, there was a sense of relief, albeit fleeting, that accompanied the reality that things were about to change, and once they did, life was never going to be the same again. Kait had hid from that kind of change for so long, ducking her head in the sand and letting unanswered questions and intuition go by the wayside. It had been easier at the time to focus on other people, to do things and keep herself treading water instead of facing the reasons she wasn’t propelling herself forward.
As Zach’s words tumbled from his mouth, picked up speed, and hit her with the force of a hurricane, phrases like ‘I lied to you …’ and ‘I made you think …’ piercing her heart and making her chest sting violently, she realized that, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t solely blame him for what had happened.
Because Kait had lied to herself, too. She let herself believe his lies despite her gut feeling that it couldn’t be true. It was her own debilitating fear of the truth that led her down this path, and she had no one – not Zach, Branch, Janna, or anyone – to blame for it but herself.
Still, to sit at her kitchen table, the cup of coffee in front of her long since cold, listening to him relay how he argued with Branch on the night of the accident, how he watched Branch struggle to get Holly to his truck in her intoxicated state, how he used Branch’s good deed to glean supposed evidence that finally proved Branch wasn’t good enough for her …
Whatever was left of Kait’s heart was shattered completely. It was all a lie. The pictures he had taken back then, and the real estate contract he had shown her now. Branch hadn’t signed anything to sell his grandparents’ house. He hadn’t even seen the papers.
His confusion when she had confronted him had been very, very real.
‘Kait, I’m so sorry,’ Zach insisted, leaning forward in an attempt to see her eyes, shielded behind the curtain of hair that had fallen over her face as she hung her head and began to cry freely. ‘I am, I mean that.’
‘Why?’ She choked on the word, her head snapping up. ‘Why confess all this now? I don’t understand.’ She didn’t understand any of it, how he could have done it in the first place, how things had all gone so horribly wrong.
‘Branch,’ he replied simply.
She stared at him through puffy eyes, bewildered.
Chagrined, Zach’s throat moved. ‘I … I think I might have been wrong about him.’ Pain marred his features, and Kait knew how much it had to hurt to admit that aloud.
He wasn’t the only one sitting at that table who had been wrong about Branch Sterling.
‘We’ve lost all this time,’ she whispered, shaking her head at the unsurmountable sadness of it all.
‘I know.’ Zach’s voice was only a ghost of the confident baritone he had so often possessed.
Kait stared at him, unable to see him clearly through her blurry eyes. Even if she could, she wasn’t sure she would recognize the man sitting across from her. The man who was supposed to be her friend, who claimed to love her. Who admitted he’d been wrong about Branch. She needed to focus on that right now.
Silence ensued, and Kait let it drag out between them. She needed to give Zach every opportunity to fully understand what had been lost, what he had truly done to all three of them. Not just say it, but feel it, realize it, and be as completely horrified and devastated by it as she was.
‘Go get dressed, Kait.’
Her gaze narrowed, the silence so deafening that she wasn’t sure if she truly heard him say the words or imagined them. ‘Excuse me?’
The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘I know you, so I’ll bet my next commission that you’ve got a pretty holiday outfit picked out for this evening. It is Christmas Eve, after all.’
Her stomach clenched at his note of familiarity. He was correct, there was a little red cap-sleeved dress upstairs hanging on the front of her closet door, a find she had unearthed on a clearance rack months ago and stowed away in case she ever had a special occasion to wear it.
The idea of Christmas Eve with Branch had been enough for her to finally pull the tags off.
Kait had managed to stay surprisingly calm throughout Zach’s entire heartbreaking confession. Anger swelled inside her, now, blazing and fueled by fury. He had a lot of audacity. ‘If you think for one second that I—’
‘I’m not suggesting you spend Christmas Eve with me,’ he interjected, hands raised in surrender. ‘I’m suggesting you go get all dolled up like you’d planned, so I can drive you to Addie’s house. From what I hear, there’s a dinner party going on over there, and you’re invited.’
‘Now you want me to spend time with Branch?’ she seethed. ‘After I’ve hurt him so much, for the second time?’
‘What I want is for you to be happy.’ His shoulders sagged, defeated. ‘I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s not me who’s going to be able to give you that, so I want to give you the next best thing – a chance to fix things with the man who will.’
She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You want to take me to Branch.’
‘I want you to be happy,’ he said again. Boldly, he reached out and cupped her hand in his, squeezing encouragingly. ‘It’s been a long time coming. Too long. And I know I’ve played a huge part in that. So, let me help the only way I can.’
Every fiber of her being vibrated with the need to scream at him that she wasn’t some kind of plaything to just be handed off to another person, that he had a lot of gall thinking she wasn’t furious enough to want to lash out at him and make him see that his decisions had stolen a decade from her that she would never get back. But there was a voice reverberating inside her head that was louder than those caustic thoughts, and stronger than her will to despise the man in front of her who was supposed to be her friend.
Let me love you, Branch had said to her only days before. He pleaded with her, and now Zach sat here, begging her to let him help her find her happiness.
All Kait wanted to really do was confess that she knew where to find her happiness, and that she yearned to let her guard down, let herself have everything she ever wanted. It took only seconds for her to realize that meant a life with Branch.
She stood. ‘Give me half an hour.’
If it was possible to have déjà vu on top of déjà vu, Kait was pretty sure that was what she was suffering from by the time Zach stopped his BMW in front of Grandma Addie’s house.
The time she spent changing into her dress and fighting with hair products and makeup to make herself feel readily prepared was eerie enough; a constant battle of nerves and guilt rising up and warring inside her as she did her best to stamp it down. The nervous buzzing that hummed in her veins felt an awful lot like the fluttering anticipation she had felt years before as a teenage girl, primping her hair and reapplying lip gloss before heading out to meet up with Branch. Many times, they spent their evenings watching movies at his grandparents’ house, drinking Grandma Addie’s sweet tea, and listening to his grandma hum a melodic tune from the kitchen. Kait couldn’t recall the titles of those movies, or what they were about, but she remembered the stolen glances, the innocent way his fingers traced along her palm; the whispers under their breath, words meant only for each other.
The idea of preparing to meet up with him now, at that same house, was dizzying.
Add in the line of cars on both sides of Crescent Street and the full driveway in front of Addie’s house, and Kait was having a full-blown case of the past crashing into the present. As a child, she recalled the abundance of vehicles on this street every Christmas Eve. So many folks made it a priority to at least stop in at the big Victorian house, all decked out in twinkling lights and decorations like a real-life gingerbread house, that one of the memories that went along with the annual event was the inability to find a parking spot if you didn’t arrive early enough. By the looks of it, half of Port Landon had come out for the dinner.
Even from the road, in Zach’s car, Kait swore she could hear the laughter and merriment happening inside. She was convinced the house was somehow beckoning to her, with its brightly lit Christmas tree in the front window and the fireplace with its dancing flames in view just beyond it. The smell of smoke wafted into her nostrils, and the sparkle of the candle decorations that lined both sides of the driveway seemed etched into her vision long after she looked away.
She might have been inside the car, with the windows rolled up and the heat on high, sitting beside the man who had tried to ruin her chances with Branch in a misguided attempt to prove his own love, but she had never been more certain that the sight before her was exactly how she remembered it.
And it was exactly where she needed to be.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ As soon as she whispered it, she felt silly. She didn’t have a clue why she was keeping her voice barely audible. Hopefully her sincerity made up for the lack of decibels.
‘It was the least I could do.’
They had been through so much together. So many ups and down that she couldn’t say for certain whether there were more good times than bad. Kait didn’t know what to believe when it came to him anymore. Not right now, at least. And yet, as she sat in the passenger seat of his car, her heart thumping in time with her thoughts of Branch being just beyond the front door a matter of feet away, she had to resist the urge to invite him in with her.
The holiday season must have been getting to her. Not even the acute knowledge of what Zach had done was enough to rival the fact that it was the night before Christmas. No one deserved to be alone on Christmas.
‘Wait here, okay?’
‘I’m in the middle of the road—’
‘Just wait.’ Kait scrambled from the car and slammed the door, preventing any further argument.
She hadn’t rehearsed what she was going to say to Branch, and even as she took careful steps up the snow-packed, candlelit driveway to the front door, she was at a loss for words. Her thick jacket might have withstood the chilly air of the evening, but the skirt of her dress did little to protect her legs. Still, she stood on the front step longer than necessary, staring at the oversized wreath hung on the door, with its dusting of snow and frosted winter berry accents.
Finally, she rang the doorbell. An uproar of voices sounded from inside, some cheering and a multitude of others calling out, ‘I’ll get it!’ She was surprised anybody heard the bell over the cheery Christmas carols blaring over the children’s shrieks and giggles mixed with a steady cacophony of voices and laughter from the folks milling about.
‘Merry Christmas!’ Jason Forrester opened the door, shouting out the greeting before he even looked to see who was on the other side. The crooked Santa hat on his head only added to his jubilant demeanor. ‘Kait, you’re finally here.’ His grin grew wider. ‘Let me guess, you’re not here for the bread pudding.’
Her cheeks flamed as red as the holly berries adorning the wreath. ‘I—’
‘Better late than never, Davenport,’ he chuckled. ‘Come in, I’ll go find him.’
He disappeared amongst the crowd of people before Kait could change her mind. She was still wondering how much Branch had confided in Jason when his voice infiltrated her thoughts and made them scatter like butterflies.
‘I didn’t think you were going to come.’
She turned. Branch wore no Santa hat, but there was a gleam in his eyes just the same. It wasn’t the jovial, fun-loving glint that had sparkled in Jason’s gaze only moments ago, but a glimpse of pure, unadulterated hope.
‘I didn’t think I was going to, either.’ There was no room for anything but honesty at this point.
The Port Landon residents, with cider in their cups and cookies pinched between their fingers, faded into the background. The chat
ter dulled, and the vivid colors around them dimmed, leaving Kait and Branch the only ones left in the room.
Kait, Branch, and a glimmer of hope.
She cleared her throat. ‘Zach … he told me everything.’
Words must have escaped him because he only nodded, waiting, still as stone, to find out where that left them.
‘He told me he was wrong about you,’ she continued in a shaky voice, afraid it might crack at any second. ‘I was, too. Branch, I was so cruel to you.’
‘It’s okay, Kaitie.’ He took a step forward, the emotion thick in his throat, giving his voice a husky quality. She held up her hands.
‘But it’s not!’ Shaking her head, she struggled to remain composed. ‘I wish I could change everything. I wish I could go back and believe you and trust you and listen to you. Branch, I’m so sorry.’
He caught her under the arms as she collapsed against him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and holding him against her, finding solace in the warmth of his chest.
‘Kaitie, will you listen to me now?’ Branch cooed in her ear. The softness of his tone melted her resolve like nothing else ever could.
She pulled away just enough to peer up at him through tear-rimmed eyes. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak coherently.
‘It’s okay,’ he repeated, pushing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘You’re here, and you know the truth. That’s all that matters to me. I’ll never hurt you. I swear to you, I won’t.’
‘I know.’ She choked on the words.
Branch’s hand stayed cupped around her cheek, holding her face up to his. His dark eyes searched hers frantically. ‘Are you okay?’ he whispered. ‘Now that you know what really happened that night?’
‘I will be,’ she promised. ‘But you—’
‘Then, we don’t need to talk about it now,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want or need apologies, just tell me I’m not the only one still in love like a teenager here.’
Kait choked out a chuckle. ‘You’re definitely not the only one.’
The Winter Berry House Page 22
