by Susan Meier
“You led a double life?”
“She led a double life.”
He laid his arm across the back of the couch. “And you?”
“I was the class clown.”
“Ah.”
She smiled slightly. “Probably the reason I identify with Clara Bell.”
He laughed.
“I left home the day I graduated high school. Didn’t go to my graduation ceremony.”
His eyebrows rose.
“I pretended, just as we always did. I got dressed. Kissed my mom.” Tears sprang up. “Joked a bit with my dad, accepted the money gift my sister gave me.” She swiped away a tear that fell. “Then when we arrived at the high school, I got out of the car and headed for the entrance to the gym that the graduates were to take. But I didn’t go in. I hid behind a corner and watched Missy and my parents walk to the main entrance. Once they were in the building, I ran back home, grabbed the suitcase I’d already packed and stole my dad’s car.”
He sat up. “What?”
She laughed a bit. “I didn’t have a car and I had to get away.”
“You’re a felon?”
She laughed again. “Yeah. I guess. But I was also mad. I left the way I did so that they’d be in the audience, waiting for me to step up and take my diploma but I wouldn’t be there. I wanted them to be publicly embarrassed that I was gone. And they were. Missy said our dad about blew a gasket. I drove to California and got a job so I could support myself through college.”
“And you made it and your sister has forgiven you. I saw her face the other night. She clearly loves you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you the worse part.”
“There’s a part worse than your dad beating you?”
“My mom died the week after I graduated.” The tears rose again. This time she let them fall. “I had no idea. I wanted so badly to be free that I didn’t even try to get in touch with anyone to let them know I’d arrived safely. I hated them. I hated my dad for beating me and my mom for letting him and I wanted no part of them. Then two years ago, after Missy and Wyatt got married, she finally found me and told me that she loved me, that she wanted me in her life. I was thrilled because I’d grown past all the hate I had for her, but then she told me Mom had died.”
The one attempt she’d made to save herself had backfired. It brought more pain and guilt than her father’s fists ever had.
“She died without me. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say I was sorry because for all my big talk about her never trying to rescue me, I never tried to save her, either. Missy did. When she graduated from high school she went to the city and got a job as a secretary. She rented an apartment and let me stay there almost every weekend through high school so I’d be out of danger. She tried to get Mom to go, too, but—” She stopped, sobs erupted from her. She couldn’t catch her breath. Didn’t want to catch her breath. She wanted to be sad. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to find her dad and slap his face for being who he was. For keeping her from her mom. But in the end she was the one who had gone. Stolen a car. Broken her mother’s heart.
The next thing she knew Clark’s arms were around her. “I’m so sorry.”
Sobs rattled out of her. “I could have called Missy at her office and let her know where I was. But I’d stolen a car. Stolen it. I was afraid that if I called, Dad would somehow figure out where I was and he’d send the police after me.”
“You were desperate.”
“I was selfish. I wanted out. I got out. I got on with my life as if I didn’t have a care in the world and never knew my mom was dead until two years ago.”
His arms tightened around her. “Shhh. That was a long time ago. And you were a kid. A desperate kid. My God. Your dad beat you.”
Her only answer was a shuddering sob. He hugged her tighter. For the first time in her life she felt the warmth of true protection. He held her the entire time she cried. Cried for her mom. Cried for her sister. Cried for herself. For the little girl who had just wanted one normal Christmas.
“Do you know we never had a Christmas tree survive past Christmas Eve? My dad would always come home drunk and knock it down. He’d call us selfish for wanting gifts. Sometimes he’d find the things my mother had bought us and burn them in front of us.”
Clark’s breath hissed out. “He was an ass.”
Her tears began to subside. “He was a bully.”
“Exactly.”
She pushed back, out of Clark’s arms, but he caught her shoulders and studied her face. “I’m not letting you go until I know you’re okay.”
“I’m never going to be okay.”
“Don’t be silly.”
She shook her head, stepping away from him. “That’s actually my point. I don’t know what a good relationship looks like. I dated beach bums and losers because that’s where I felt I belonged. My example of a mother is someone who fears her husband. The longest commitment I ever made was to the school where I taught, and even they got rid of me.” She swallowed and looked up into his solemn amber eyes. “I don’t know how to be what you need.”
“Stop that.” He reached for her but she ducked away from him.
“You and your family are wonderful. And you deserve much, much better than me. What happened out there while we were decorating, the part where I flirted?”
He nodded.
“Forget it. Forget anything you think you might have felt. You deserve much, much better.”
She slipped out of the den and Clark stared at the door long after she closed it.
It was funny. He was thinking exactly the same thing, except in the opposite.
She deserved better than him—better than a family with a little boy who’d been overprotected, a little girl so shy she didn’t speak and a father who wasn’t even sure he was really a father because the wife he adored had betrayed him.
So though he didn’t agree with her assessment that he deserved better, he would stay away from her. She deserved to find a man who didn’t come with a houseful of problems. A man who wasn’t even sure he could trust again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALTHEA LET AN entire week go by, waiting for Clark to resume decorating with his kids. Though the house wasn’t quite as quiet and the kids were perkier, she knew they needed another burst of special attention. Thursday passed, then Friday with no offer from Clark to decorate again.
She came into the kitchen on Saturday morning a bit after nine, made a cup of coffee and sauntered to the center island where Clark and the kids sat having breakfast. The French doors displayed big white flakes of snow as they fell on the mountain. Another storm had arrived.
She set her mug of coffee on the island, across from Clark. “We have some evergreen garland and some ornaments we want to hang today.”
From behind the screen of his laptop, Clark said, “That’s nice.”
She pushed his screen closed. “You’re helping.”
Jack laughed. Teagan grinned.
One of his eyebrows rose. “I am.”
“Christmas is about family.”
“I’m still three bids behind.”
“So drop out of submitting on one of the projects and spend today with your kids.”
He wanted to scowl. She could see it in his eyes. But she also knew he realized she was right. What they’d done the night they’d hung the lights was a good beginning. But he’d fallen down on the job.
“Jack, I pulled all the Christmas decorations from the attic. They’re in the hallway by the attic door. If you and Teagan could start carting them down that would be great.”
Jack took one final bite of cereal and headed for the door. “Come on, Chai Tea.”
Bear in hand, she followed him. Clara Bell trotted after her.
“Exactly how much decorat
ing are we going to do?”
She held back a smile. “I have terrific plans.”
“I don’t want to put up the tree until Christmas Eve.”
“I’ll give you that. But that still leaves garland on the stairway and around the doors of all the downstairs rooms. You have a fireplace.” She began ticking off items on her fingers. “Which will need stockings.”
He sighed. “There are stockings in the boxes.”
“I know. I found them. I also saw red replacement shades for the lamps.” The good mood she’d had while helping them string lights returned. But this time it was tempered with intelligence. She wasn’t in any way, shape or form fit to be a mom. She also wasn’t whole or healthy enough to have a relationship with a great guy like Clark. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy Christmas. “I found red and green placemats in a thin box marked End Tables so I’m guessing they go on the end tables in your living room. Then I thought the kids and I could take whatever is left over next week and decorate the den.”
He shook his head. “What is it about women and decorating?”
“I don’t know about other women, but I’ve never had the chance to decorate a whole house before.”
“Oh.”
Damn it. She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her. But she had sort of led them down this path again. She lifted her chin. “Okay. So I’ve never had a real family Christmas. But I’m here with a family now, so I’m not going to apologize for enjoying it.”
“Good. Then I won’t apologize for letting you decorate.” He rose from the center island. “That is, after I help hang the garland.”
“Yes!” She fist-pumped once, grabbed her coffee and followed him out of the kitchen. Jack and Teagan scurried down the stairs. Teagan held a little box marked manger and Jack carried a bigger box marked Assorted Ornaments.
“Did you get the box marked garland?” Althea asked as she and Clark paused by the steps.
“It’s in there.” Jack finished as he walked down the stairway and angled his head in the direction of the living room. “We carried all the boxes in there.”
Clark found the container with the garland. He pulled out a long strand of fake evergreen.
Althea raced over and peered at it. “It doesn’t look too bad.”
Clark turned it over in his hands. “How’s it supposed to look?”
“Real. I’m surprised your wife didn’t buy real evergreen.”
He turned it over in his hands again. “Looks real enough to me.” He caught Althea’s gaze. “Must have looked real enough to her.”
“Must have.” She walked over to the box marked Nativity Scene. “You and Jack hang that. Teagan and I will set this up.”
As she and Teagan removed donkeys and sheep, shepherds and wise men from the box, she heard Jack say, “Why would you think Mom would buy real evergreen?”
Clark said, “She liked nice things.”
“Oh.”
“Pretty things,” Clark expanded.
Althea’s soul swelled. He was doing what he needed to do, telling his son about his mom, and it was coming more naturally now. “You remember how everything in the house had to be perfect?”
Jack laughed. “Yeah. I remember.”
“And you couldn’t run inside.”
“I still can’t run inside.”
“Well, she was more of a stickler about it than I am.”
Althea made a face and Teagan grinned at her. She turned to Clark and Jack. “What was her favorite color?”
Teagan’s head whipped around and she gazed at her dad with rapt curiosity. Color was something Teagan understood.
“Pink.” He paused. “No. She liked to wear pink but she really loved gray because it went with everything.”
Althea laughed. “That’s a detailed answer.”
“Don’t forget,” Clark said as he pulled a string of garland between his fingers, straightening it out, testing its strength, “We build for a living. I remember her nixing colors in architectural drawings and replacing them with gray.”
“Interesting.”
“She said it was a way for the client or buyer to see the building’s potential without being encumbered by somebody else’s taste in color.”
Jack said, “Huh,” as if pondering that. Or maybe thinking about his mom.
The conversation died as Clark left to get the stepladder and then climbed up and began attaching evergreen garland around the doorway of the living room.
They worked quietly, but companionably. Teagan arranged the figurines in the manger then took them all out and started again. Althea smiled at her, letting her work at her own pace and do her own thing.
She glanced at Jack, looking like a cross between a little boy and a teenager. Above him on the stepladder, Clark hung garland. To see them, no one would know that there had been so much turmoil in this family only two weeks before. She might not have turned them around, but she’d helped.
Something sailed through her. Something that felt like joy. Her head tilted in confusion. Joy. She was happy. She glanced at Clark. He was happy, too. Talking about his wife seemed to have taken away some of the pressure of the situation.
Just as talking about her dad, about her past, about feeling like a fake, had lifted some of her burden, too.
Not all of it. She still had to go back to Newland. She’d probably see her dad. But she didn’t fear it the way she had when she arrived at the Beaumont household.
They decorated for about two hours, hanging stockings, changing lampshades, finding the perfect spot for the eighteen-inch Santa Claus statue that said, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” when Teagan pressed on his belly. She gasped and snatched her hand back.
But Clark laughed and hoisted her onto his shoulder. “He’s just here to see if you’re naughty or nice. He won’t hurt you. I think it’s time for me to get some work done.”
Jack deflated. “But it’s Saturday. I want to do something.”
“Now.” Althea put her hand on his shoulder. The living room and foyer had been decorated. Clark had talked about Jack and Teagan’s mom. It might only be noon, but he’d done his fair share with the kids. “Your dad helped for two hours. He still has work to do. But I have an idea.”
Jack glanced up at her.
“Why don’t we bake cupcakes after lunch?”
Teagan gasped.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “You said you can’t cook.”
“That’s because I haven’t cooked in a long, long time.”
“Why not?”
“I lived alone. I had no reason to cook. But,” she said, gathering up boxes and placing them on the stairway to take back to the attic on her next trip up the stairs, “my sister and I both did a lot of cooking and baking when we were teenagers.”
Jack made a face. “Why?”
She ruffled Jack’s hair, sucked in a breath and did something else she hadn’t done in ten years. She talked normally about her dad. “My dad owns a diner.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “He does?”
“Yep, complete with old-fashioned stools and a jukebox.”
“What’s a jukebox?”
Clark said, “It’s a thing that plays records.”
“What are records?”
“Songs,” Althea corrected. She gave Clark a slight push toward the stairs and his office. “Go. You’re making things worse.”
He kissed Teagan’s cheek then handed her to Althea and jogged up the stairs.
Althea sighed with relief. “Good. Now that he’s gone I can admit I’m not a hundred percent sure I can bake good cupcakes, but we’ll get some kind of cake.”
Teagan smiled. Jack laughed and led the way into the kitchen.
After eating a sandwich, she and Jack scoured the pantry not just look
ing for ingredients for the cupcakes, but also hunting for something to decorate them. Clark hadn’t thought to buy gumdrops or sprinkles on his last shopping trip and apparently Mrs. Alwine didn’t use them.
Still, she found everything she needed for cake batter and the recipe from her teenage years simply popped into her head as if she’d been using it every day for the past ten years.
“The memory is an odd thing,” she told Jack as he helped her measure cake flour. “I haven’t made this cake in ten years, yet I can recite the recipe as if I made it yesterday.”
“My mom was like that, too.”
“Really?”
“She remembered everything.”
“Did she cook?”
He laughed. “No.”
A stirring of happiness bubbled up in her. Up to now she hadn’t cooked any more than Carol had, but right now she was baking cupcakes—
She squelched the happiness. What was she doing? Trying to be as good as or better than a dead woman? So she could have Clark? So she could be these kids’ mom? She already knew she couldn’t. Cooking and cleaning were nothing compared to the emotional things these kids would need. Things she couldn’t provide because what she knew of childhood and teen years was hiding in a closet.
Two hours later, Clark came into the kitchen. “Just getting a cup of coffee.”
“But we need sprinkles.”
Clark faced Jack. “Sprinkles?”
Teagan displayed a bare cupcake. It had been slathered with pretty white frosting, but compared to the cupcakes Missy had brought two weeks before it looked incomplete. No gumdrops. No color.
He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “I really should get back to work.”
“It is Saturday,” Althea reminded him. Though she’d sided with him when they were done decorating, it felt like time that he should be included again. “And you’ve worked two hours. It’s time for a break.”
“And you want me to spend it going to the grocery store?” He paused. “Oh, wait. I get it. You want me to go into town for dinner.”
“Actually, I was thinking about making chicken for supper.”
She swore she could see his mouth water.
