by Olivia Miles
Grace smiled at her niece, thinking of how it would feel to have her own little girl like Sophie one day. She glanced at Jane, feeling happy for her despite her own dull sadness.
Jane had gotten it right. She’d followed the path of least resistance. The path Grace herself could have taken. And didn’t.
Grace inhaled sharply. “She’s so grown up. She’s like… a real kid!” She pursed her lips at the derisive snort that came from Anna’s end of the table.
“Nice to see that you’re awake over there,” Grace observed, and immediately regretted her words when she heard the sharpness of her tone.
Anna’s turquoise blue eyes narrowed ever so briefly. “Nice that you finally deigned to honor us with your presence after all these years,” she said. “I’m sure Dad would have appreciated it when he was still alive.”
“Anna!” Jane cried out, but Anna simply shrugged, slid another pointed glance at Grace, and returned to her food.
Grace sat back in her chair, waiting for her pulse to steady. Her chest heaved with each breath, and she didn’t dare meet her mother’s eyes. A deadly hush had fallen over the room, one that seemed capable of lingering long beyond the dinner. One that threatened to ruin the evening and hover in the background until she finally went back to New York.
Anna had spoken the words that everyone had been thinking, including Grace. She had hoped she would be met with happiness and warmth, that her time away from this town, this house, them, would be understood. She also wanted to do something positive for her family by coming home for Christmas, something that went beyond solidarity or a promise to Jane. Perhaps she had overestimated how much she meant to them.
She swallowed the ache that scratched at her throat and stared at her plate.
“Dinner is delicious,” Jane announced, her words falling on silence. Lowering her voice, she urged, “Eat a few more vegetables, honey.”
Grace glanced up to see Sophie making a face. “Oh, no thank you, sweetheart,” she said. “I really don’t like them.”
Despite the weight in the room, Grace heard herself chuckle in surprise. “Did she just call you sweetheart?”
Jane nodded, grinning. “She doesn’t understand how to use terms of endearment yet.” She smiled proudly down at her daughter, sliding her hand down the length of Sophie’s ash brown locks—the same color as her own. “It’s even funnier when she does it with Adam,” she said. A shadow briefly passed over her face, and she reached for her water glass.
Grace frowned. “Adam couldn’t join us this evening?” She felt rude for not asking about him earlier, but the mood among the women didn’t lend itself to thinking of much outside the confines of these four walls.
Well, with the exception of Luke.
Grace took a long sip of her wine as her pulse quickened. She could still see him standing in that biting cold, the wind blowing his hair over his forehead, his blue eyes piercing and sharp. She gritted her teeth against the hold he still had on her.
Jane glanced nervously around the table. “Oh, Adam had to work late. Client dinner or something.”
She fiddled with her napkin and Grace nodded, seeing nothing wrong in Adam working late, but wondering why Jane seemed to think otherwise. Derek worked late most nights at his investment banking firm, and she hadn’t thought twice about it in all their time together. She suspected there was more going on than Jane was letting on. She made a mental note to ask her mother about it later.
Her mother. Grace sighed at the sight of her, now staring dreamily out the window. Her plate was untouched, her wineglass the same. There would be no asking her mother anything, it seemed. Kathleen was the one who needed holding up right now.
“The tree looks really pretty, Mom,” Grace fibbed and was granted a thin smile in return.
“It’s not as nice as the tree at our house!” Sophie announced.
Grace felt inexplicably relieved to turn her attention back to her niece. It seemed she was the only one in the house who wasn’t hiding something, or stewing in silent emotion. “Oh no?”
Sophie shook her adamantly. “Nope. Grandma’s tree is all droopy and there aren’t enough ornaments! Santa’s not going to be impressed,” she added.
“I didn’t see a point in climbing into the attic to fetch the boxes this year,” Kathleen replied, and Grace glanced at Jane, whose eyes flashed in desperation.
“So, Grace,” Jane said, clearing her throat. “You didn’t tell us who gave you a ride home tonight. A real Christmas hero, I take it, swooping in to save the day.” She forced a cheerful smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes.
Something like that. Grace stared at her plate, feeling the hot blush stain her cheeks. “It was Luke,” she muttered, not daring to meet her family’s eyes. She was convinced that even her mother had perked up at this tidbit.
“Luke Hastings?” Jane drawled.
Grace straightened her shoulders and leaned back against her chair with a lift of her chin. She had broken her own rule by saying his name aloud. It felt oddly exhilarating. “None other.” She managed a thin smile and shifted the broccoli spears from one side of her plate to the other.
A heavy silence covered the room like a warm winter blanket. “Is Luke your husband?” Sophie finally interjected, and the table erupted into laughter for the first time that evening, even if it was laced with wariness, a guarded and abrasive edge to mask the nervous undercurrent.
“No,” Grace said simply. She tried to ignore the tightness in her chest at the suggestion. Luke had been a husband once. Just not hers.
Sophie wrinkled her nose. “Well then, where’s your husband?”
Grace faltered, shifting her eyes to Jane for support and seeing only amusement roll through her expression. “I don’t have a husband.”
“You don’t?” Sophie cried. “Aunt Anna doesn’t have a husband. Now Grandma doesn’t have one either.”
Grace met the panic in Jane’s hazel eyes. “Well, your mommy has a husband,” she said, trying to steer the conversation into more positive territory, but again a shadow fell over Jane’s face.
Sophie nodded proudly and beamed at her mother. “The best one there is. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Jane gave a tight smile. “The best one there is,” she said softly.
“Wait,” Anna said, startling Grace enough to cause her to drop her fork. “What about Derek? Unless—”
Derek. Closing her eyes at the magnitude of her step backward, Grace thought of the man she had spent eighteen months of her life with and came up flat. The only face she could see was Luke’s. That strong, chiseled jaw; the bold, roman nose with the slight bump on the profile from the time he broke it sledding. The deep blue eyes that twinkled in the sunlight and darkened to navy when he pulled her in for a kiss. The little scar on the right corner of his lip that disappeared when he smiled. Grace cleared her throat and looked directly at Anna. “We broke up.”
“I didn’t know that!” Jane interrupted. Her eyes creased with such concern that Grace felt her mouth curve into a half smile. Leave it to Jane to still care. Jane cared about everyone. It was probably why, as the youngest of the three sisters, she was the only one to have so much love in her life. A husband. A child.
Grace pressed her lips together.
She supposed she could have tried to hold on to Derek a little longer, just to get through the holidays, but she knew it was pointless. It would have only complicated things knowing the end was in sight, that she was holding on to something that wouldn’t and couldn’t last. They hadn’t even set a wedding date, and, worse, that had never worried her. She and Derek were not meant to be.
On paper, she and Derek looked like the perfect match. With his tall, lean frame and classic facial features, he fit the role he played as well as he filled a designer suit. He could light up a room with his smile, cause middle-aged women to blush with a glint of his eye. The thing that made him so irresistible—at least to Grace—was the cool, confident way he approached his life and th
e warmth and generosity he extended to those around him. What he didn’t spend from his Wall Street earnings on his lush, lavish lifestyle, he gave to charity. He served on seven boards, and hosted an annual fundraiser for the children’s hospital. He was kind to the elderly. He was good to his mother. He was good to her. He was… perfect. Almost.
He just wasn’t Luke. And he couldn’t offer any of the hundreds of wonderful things Luke could have.
Once.
With Anna and Jane gone, Kathleen sighed and set the last dish in the sink. “Well, I think I’ll turn in for the night,” she said, reaching over to flick off the kitchen light as if that was that. The room fell dark, the light from the moon traced shadows over her face.
It was only seven thirty, but Grace didn’t argue. It had been a long, tense dinner, and if her mother wanted to be by herself, Grace wasn’t going to stop her. If anything, she welcomed the chance to be alone. She’d had about enough family time for one night, and she needed time to process everything. She hadn’t dragged herself to Briar Creek without a hearty helping of trepidation, and in one evening all of her worst fears had come true. And then some.
She’d thought that at the very least she’d be comforted with an ornately decorated home, a cozy holiday film playing in the background, a row of matching stockings hanging above a crackling fire, and the usual wild-eyed look her mother reserved for this time of year. Just the thing that would force her out of her funk and bring out her Christmas spirit. Instead, she was left with only a heavier heart. Oh, and a fresh image of Luke to boot.
If she were still writing, she might find some escape. But she wasn’t writing much these days, and she hadn’t for months. With the current state of her career, she wasn’t sure she would ever write again.
Grace wrapped her hand around the old banister and retraced the familiar steps to the top landing. Her room was the second on the left, and the master bedroom door at the far end of the hall was already closed. A light filtered through the crack under the six-panel cherry door, and Grace hesitated before turning the glass knob to her room. She chuckled when the knob on the inside fell to her feet with a loud thud against the polished floorboards. Bending to pick up the heavy glass ball, she jiggled it back into place, shaking her head. In all this time, it had never been fixed. She was pleased to find it wasn’t. At least one thing in this old house was unchanged.
Crossing the room, Grace plunked one of her bags on top of the desk near the window. She turned, taking it all in.
The bedspread still covered the twin bed in a pink and white floral print. Matching curtains donned the windows, framing the window seat where she would sit and write for hours, scribbling by hand in soft leather-bound journals.
She pulled opened the closet door and, sure enough, hanging on the back of the door was Luke’s varsity jacket. The one she never could bring herself to give back.
Setting her jaw, Grace shut the closet more forcefully than she had intended, and wandered over to her bed. She climbed up onto it, amused at how high it was. It felt foreign and much too firm. She tapped the pillow. Lumpy. She laughed when she realized her toes hung off the edge, and she wiggled them, trying to remember if it had always been this way. It must have. She flicked on her bedside lamp, frowning at the pink frilly shade, recalling when she and her mother picked that out together, thinking it was the height of sophistication, and hopped off the bed.
Her bookshelf was still stacked with her favorite classics, and she grazed her finger over the spines, smiling at the familiar titles, and the memories they evoked. She’d alphabetized them all by author, and it took no time at all to find the complete Nancy Drew collection, arranged by publication date. She retrieved the first in the series, rubbing her hand over the pristine cover, and opened it to a random page, idly reading a paragraph before returning it to its proper spot.
Her sisters had always thought she was crazy, that her books meant too much to her, that she was strange about them, refusing to lend them out to anyone, getting panicky if someone dog-eared a page or even thought about using one as a coaster. Even now, she shuddered at the possibility.
Her dad had understood. He understood a lot of things. Whenever Anna made fun of her, or her mother would frown with confusion, her father would quietly meet Grace’s eye across the room and wink. That was all it took.
Grace swallowed the lump in her throat and turned away from the bookcase. Tomorrow she’d go over to the shop. She always felt better at Main Street Books, no matter how rough the day had been.
She knew it was because of the store that she’d become a writer—before her father took over the store, she loved the crowded atmosphere, the musty smell of paper. There was no greater thrill than the discovery of a great new book, and no bigger comfort than being able to curl up with it in one of the old English armchairs dotted throughout the store, hidden by shelves of books that reached the ceiling, escaping the world for just a little bit.
Hot tears prickled the back of her eyes, and her throat felt raw and scratchy. Heaving a sigh, Grace busied herself by unpacking, carefully arranging her clothes in the chest of drawers that was now empty, and hiding the Christmas presents in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, in case Sophie came looking for them. She took a hot shower, wrapping herself in one of the big fluffy white towels her mother always stocked in the linen cabinet, deciding that when she got back to New York, she would invest in some herself. When she found her own apartment, that was. She couldn’t live on her friend Angie’s sofa forever, and she couldn’t exactly go back to the sleek, stunning apartment she had shared with Derek, even if it did have a king-sized bed that would accommodate the entire length of her, toes and all.
Enough worry for one night, she decided. When her wet hair was combed and her face was moisturized, she turned down the bed and hesitated.
Had they kept it? After all these years? Or had they known to hide it, to put it somewhere she would never have to see it again?
If the varsity jacket was any indication, then it was still here. The room was untouched, more or less, and a small part of Grace resented her mother for that. Why couldn’t she have been like half the other parents Grace knew of and turned the space into a sewing room or something?
Knowing the urge would keep her awake long into the night until she finally gave in and faced her fear, Grace climbed down onto her hands and knees, reaching her arm deep under the curtain of the dust ruffle, her hand sweeping the floor until there—there it was. Her breath caught in her chest as she tugged the box toward herself and set it on her lap.
She could feel her heart thumping as she slowly lifted the lid, immediately wishing she hadn’t when she saw the corsage Luke had given her for their senior prom—its pale pink petals were dry and withered, brown and crisp at the edges. But it was still beautiful. She lifted it gingerly out of the box and set it on the floor beside her. She pulled out a few other items, pausing to hold them in her hands, remembering the importance they once held, before setting them next to the corsage, her heart growing heavy.
Underneath a few old yearbooks she found the item she had been waiting for. A thick, leather-bound photo album. Ten years of history wrapped neatly into one little book. The proof that once upon a time he had been hers, she had been his, and she had meant something to him, possibly more than she had even known. Or maybe less than she had thought.
She paused, recalling his gruff dismissal of her tonight. Had she really been hoping for more? If so, she was an even bigger fool than she thought.
Grace closed her eyes, remembering the last time they had spoken, the day her world had slipped out from under her and everything she had counted on, hoped for, and believed in just vanished. A knot wedged in her throat and she opened her eyes, willing herself to the present moment, frantically placing the items back in the order she had found them, the delicate corsage on top.
She climbed into bed, flicked off the lamp, and snuggled under the soft flannel sheets and the heavy down comforter. Nearly f
ive years had passed since that day, and if today was any evidence, a lot had changed since then. She’d grown, moved on, and established a whole new life for herself. She’d reached her greatest career dreams, and seen them crumble down around her. She’d dated men, maybe even cared about a few. Hell, she’d been engaged. She’d had an adult relationship with Derek—a relationship built on real life and not childish pipe dreams or ideals.
Despite it all, lying here on her too-hard mattress in her prissy little-girl bedroom, Grace felt like no time had passed at all. She was the same girl who had fled Briar Creek in tears, desperate and lost, and wondering where on earth she was expected to go from here. She thought she’d found her way. Yet now she was right back where she started.
CHAPTER
6
Luke caught Mark’s eye as he pushed through the glass door of the diner, and even from a counter-length’s distance, he could see the flicker of anticipation register in his cousin’s gaze. Not bothering with pleasantries, Luke plunked himself onto a swivel stool and turned over his coffee mug.
“How long have you known?” he demanded.
Mark held his stare, nonplussed. He filled Luke’s mug within a half inch of the brim. “So you saw her, then?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Luke clenched his jaw and distractedly poured some milk into the coffee. He took a sip, not even tasting it.
“I take it things didn’t go so well,” Mark said.
“You could say that.” Luke pushed his mug to the side and spread his elbows on the Formica surface, folding his hands. He lifted his chin. “Did Molly and Kara know about it?” he asked, referring to his younger sisters. Molly was on break from grad school for the holidays, and surely she and Kara would find this bit of information newsworthy.
Mark set the coffee pot back on its burner. “Everyone knew, Luke.”
