Christmas Awakening

by Ann Voss Peterson

  Brandon should have known Marie wouldn’t let him get away with ducking the subject. He used to like that about her. Her directness. Her doggedness. Now he wasn’t so sure. “He said you were asking a lot of questions about Charlotte. Questions he thought I could do a better job of answering.”

  “Or a better job of avoiding?”

  She was right. The last thing he wanted to do was stand here in the rain and talk about Charlotte. Especially with her.

  “You rushed over here to get me to back off, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want to talk about Charlotte.”

  “No.”

  Her lips tightened. She clutched the top of her coat, pulling it protectively around her throat. “What do you expect me to do? Lie? I don’t want to relive Charlotte’s death, especially not with you.” He gripped the head of his cane until his fingers ached. His wedding band dug into his flesh. Having Marie around had been a struggle from the first moment. Between his old feelings for her coming to life and his need to keep from hurting her again, he’d tied himself in knots. But he really couldn’t stomach dredging up his past with Charlotte. His failure. His guilt. Scars so much deeper than the ones on his face and leg. “Why are you asking about Charlotte? What could you possibly need to know?”

  “I think she was murdered.”

  He took a step backward, his heel hitting the base of the porch railing. He’d been ready for her to say a lot of things, but not that. “Why on earth would you think she was murdered?”

  She rolled her lower lip inward and grasped it in her teeth. “Something Sophie Caldwell said.”

  “What?”

  “She said my father discovered something right before he died. Something he told her was dangerous.”

  “Why do you think whatever it was he found has anything to do with Charlotte’s death?”

  She searched his eyes, her gaze moving back and forth as if she wasn’t finding what she was looking for. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you? I mean, two fatal accidents at Drake House in a six month time period?”

  “I already told you I agree your father’s death seems suspicious.”

  “Then an accident and a murder.”

  “Coincidences can happen.”

  She stiffened and shook her head. “You’re not listening.”

  “No, you’re not listening, Marie. I know Charlotte wasn’t murdered. I know why she died. I was there, remember?”

  She released her coat and balled her fists at her sides, her chest rising and falling with shaky breaths. “No, I don’t remember. You haven’t told me anything about Charlotte’s death. Neither did Chief Hammer. Neither did my father or Lexie. Everyone seems to be trying to protect me. Well, I don’t need protection. And I don’t want it. I want the truth. I want some answers.”

  “Charlotte wasn’t murdered.”

  She held up a hand as if shielding herself from his words. “I have reason to believe she was. Not just what Sophie said, but reasons I don’t want to talk about. And I have reason to believe my father was murdered after he found out who killed her. Probably by the same person.”

  He drew in a breath to speak.

  Marie gestured again with her hand. Her fingers were trembling. “I don’t want to hear your pronouncements. If you can’t enlighten me, stay out of my way.”

  God, he hated to see her so upset. And he had no one to blame but himself. He had been avoiding the subject of Charlotte since her death. It was the reason he avoided venturing out into public wherever possible. It was the reason he canceled the Christmas Ball. It was the reason he discouraged the few servants he tolerated around him from even mentioning her name. He even tried to prevent himself from thinking about her, although he failed regularly at that. And since Marie had come back to Drake House…

  He waved an arm, directing Josef to swing the car around to this side of the street. Brandon knew that he’d made a royal mess of everything, and that he needed to set things straight. To come clean. At least with Marie. The rest of the damage he’d done could never be repaired. “Marie? Get in the car and I’ll tell you everything.”

  As Josef pulled to the curb, Brandon stepped off the porch. Drizzle misted the car’s windows and felt cool on his cheeks. He opened the back door and gestured Marie inside.

  She held his eyes for a second, as if deciding whether he was sincere about his promise. Then she slid into the seat. He followed, settling in beside her. For a moment all he could think about was kissing her, actually going through with it this time and pressing his lips to hers. Tasting her mouth. Feeling her body yield to his, soft and accepting.

  He nodded for Josef to drive and focused straight ahead. As they drove through town, he watched the windshield wipers sweep the glass periodically and searched for words that would make this easier.

  Nothing would make it easier.

  Finally he just spoke. “Charlotte lost control of her car. As she was leaving Drake House, she veered off the drive just before the gate and hit the rock wall. Her car caught fire. I heard the impact. I saw the fire. I tried to pull her out, but she was trapped in the wreckage. She died right in front of me. I heard her last screams.” He kept his voice flat, unemotional, but his stomach seized involuntarily at the memory. Charlotte’s screams were always in his nightmares. Always lurking in the back of his mind.

  Marie shook her head. “A woman doesn’t just race her car into a stone wall. A car doesn’t just burst into flame.”

  “I was there. It did.”

  “Did you see her before it happened?”

  The tension in his stomach turned to nausea. And he’d thought this couldn’t get worse.

  “You said you’d explain. You said you’d tell me everything.”

  He blew air through tight lips. “Yes, I did.”

  “So?”

  “Yes, I saw her.”

  “Was she upset about anything? How did she seem? Chief Hammer said she was drinking.”

  “She was.”

  “Why?”

  For a one word question, that one was about as complicated as a question could get. “She just did. She collected fine wine. I still have the wine cellar to prove it.”

  “So she always drank?”

  “She liked her wine.”

  “Chief Hammer said there was a vodka bottle.”

  “Yes. The police found it in the car. He told me that after the accident.”

  “Did Charlotte drink a lot?”

  He couldn’t stand this. “I don’t think this has anything to do with anything. Sure, she was drunk. Sure, she shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.”

  “Then why was she? Josef could have driven her, couldn’t he? Was he working for you then?”

  “She could have had him drive her. Back then we used him more as a handyman than a driver. We usually drove ourselves.” He looked down at his leg. Those days were over. Now he was lucky to be able to walk, albeit with a cane. His doctor doubted his reflexes would ever be sharp enough again to drive safely.

  Marie shook her head. “Charlotte didn’t strike me as the type of woman who would—”

  “We had a fight, all right? She was upset with me. That’s why she was drinking. That’s why she got behind the wheel. That’s why she crashed.”

  The click of the turn signal and the swoosh of the wipers were the only sounds as they approached the long, winding drive. The gray stone wall stretched along the highway, opening only for the classic white pillar entrance of Drake House and the ostentatious redbrick and cast iron of his uncle’s neighboring estate, The Manor at Drake Acres. Josef slowed the car to make the turn.

  Brandon stared straight out the window. He didn’t want to witness Marie’s reaction to his confession. Getting the words out had been hard enough. Nor could he bear to look out the side window and see the stone wall as they passed.

  The wall that still held a shadow of fire.

  “It’s not your fault, Brandon.” Her voice sounded calm, soothing, for
giving.

  He shook his head. He couldn’t let himself listen. It was enough to undo him. “You still don’t understand. It is my fault. It’s all my fault. Charlotte was a good wife. She was kind and beautiful and so damn smart. She was any man’s dream. And what did I do to repay her?” He lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He couldn’t explain. Not to Marie. Never to Marie.

  “You had an affair?”

  “No!”

  “What, then? What did you fight about?”

  He promised he’d tell her everything. He promised he’d be honest with her. But how could he be honest about this?

  “What did you fight about, Brandon? What was so bad?”

  He clutched the head of his cane in both hands. Avoiding the platinum gleam of the ring around his finger, he raised his eyes to meet hers.

  Most men probably wouldn’t find Marie as beautiful as Charlotte. But most men were fools. To him, one look into Marie’s eyes was more addictive than any drug. It had always been that way. Ever since the summer when he’d come home with his MBA from Harvard and found her all grown up. And try as he might, he hadn’t been able to change his response. He couldn’t change his response to her even now. “Charlotte and I fought about you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Me?” The word caught in Marie’s throat, almost choking her. She couldn’t have heard Brandon right. How could they have fought about her? At the time of Charlotte’s death, she hadn’t seen either of them for ten years. “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re strong, resilient. After that summer, you moved on.”

  “After that summer?” Marie’s stomach tightened into a knot. There was no question what summer he meant. The summer she’d given him everything she was, and he’d tossed it away. “You make it seem as if moving on was my choice. As if I had a choice at all. After that summer, you got married.”

  The car’s tires popped over loose gravel. Drake House loomed at the end of the winding drive, bright white columns glowing in the dreary weather, gray slate roof glistening with rain. The crunch of the tires slowed. The car stopped in front of the main entrance.

  “You were so young, just out of high school. I already had my MBA. I was ready to settle down in Jenkins Cove and run the Drake Foundation. I couldn’t tie you down when you hadn’t even had a chance to see the world.”

  “That’s what my father told you.”

  “And he was right. You deserved the chance to live your own life. To see the world beyond Jenkins Cove. To discover who you wanted to be.” He lifted his hand. For a moment, he let it hover in the air, as if he wanted to touch her, before returning it to his cane. “It wasn’t just that. I had already promised Charlotte. She was a good woman. My age. Already accomplished. Ready to settle down. I thought she was the perfect wife for me. I had no misgivings about marrying her. Not until…that summer with you. That summer made me rethink everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I felt. I didn’t know what to trust—feelings that had swept me up in one summer or plans that were years in the making.”

  So he went with the plans.

  Marie stared at the grand house. She didn’t want to hear this. Any of it. She’d tried so hard to overcome her feelings for Brandon. She’d tried so hard to forget him and stand on her own. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You asked.”

  “I asked about Charlotte’s death. Not about you and me.”

  “But it’s all linked. It’s all tangled into one giant mess.”

  She focused on Brandon. “How?”

  He tore his eyes from hers. “Josef?”

  The chauffeur glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, sir?”

  “We would like some privacy. Just turn off the engine and leave the car here.”

  “Very good, sir.” The chauffeur switched off the engine and left the keys dangling in the ignition. He climbed from the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him, the sound followed by an abrupt and deep silence.

  Marie watched him cut across the lawn to the carriage house. With each step he took away from the car, the more panicked she felt. She wanted to call the chauffeur back, ask him to stay, use him to shield her from whatever was coming. She didn’t know what Brandon was going to say, but she had the feeling that whatever it was, it would be better for her not to hear.

  “Charlotte deserved someone who loved her.”

  Marie let his words settle into her brain. She felt Brandon’s pain in them, his regret. But the shift inside her was more insidious, more dangerous. It was the shift from numbness to hope.

  And that scared her more than anything.

  She clutched the bag in her lap and held on. She had to get a grip on herself. She was no longer eighteen. She had to remember all she’d learned.

  Her father had warned her about Brandon that summer. He’d told her of Brandon’s childhood. Of the heartbreak Brandon suffered when he’d lost his mother and the tightrope he’d had to walk to please his demanding father and grandfather. Her father feared Brandon had been damaged. He feared all the trauma he’d suffered as a boy had combined to make him afraid to open himself to love. To vulnerability.

  Even with a woman as amazing as Charlotte.

  And that’s what she had to keep foremost in her mind. Her father’s warning. Her father’s fears. Not the way Brandon had looked at her that summer as if she were beautiful. Not his tenderness when they’d made love, when she’d given him her virginity. And certainly not the kiss he’d almost given her this morning, the kiss she still longed to claim.

  “That night…” Brandon’s voice cracked. He drew a deep breath. “The night Charlotte died, she asked me for one thing. Something I couldn’t give.”

  Marie wrapped her arms around her middle and held on. She needed to stay in control of her feelings, her fantasies. She didn’t want to go back to that raw, painful place. The place it had taken her years to escape.

  Brandon reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open and slipped something free. He handed Marie a small photograph.

  She tilted it toward the car’s window. Her high school graduation picture stared back at her, long hair, freckles, goofy smile and all. “My senior picture?”

  “Charlotte found it the night she died. She asked me to get rid of it. I couldn’t.”

  Marie looked up at him. She didn’t want to know…she didn’t want to ask…but she couldn’t help it. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She closed her eyes. She’d dreamed for years that someday Brandon would tell her he loved her. That he’d made a mistake. That he wanted her instead of Charlotte. Now even though he’d admitted to arguing with his wife about her picture, he still wouldn’t say those special words.

  And the worst part of it all, the part that made her feel sick inside, was that she still wanted to hear them. “That’s what you fought over? My picture?”

  “Yes.” He shook his head, the movement slow and sad. “I never should have asked Charlotte to marry me. It wasn’t fair to her. But I didn’t know that. Not until after I’d proposed. Not until that summer.”

  That summer. Their summer. Marie watched the drizzle bead up and slide down the window like tears.

  Now that he’d put his regrets out there, she had to know the rest. “Why did you go through with the wedding?”

  “I didn’t know how to break it off. There were so many reasons not to. My promise to her. Our families. And she suited me. At least I thought she should. My feelings for you were so new. So overwhelming. I’d never experienced feelings like that before. I didn’t trust them. And because I was weak and indecisive…” He pinched the bridge of his nose once more, as if he thought doing so would push back the tears. “And because I was weak and indecisive, Charlotte paid the price.”

  Marie wrapped her arms tighter. She felt cold. Colder even than the Michigan winter. Suddenly what he’d been trying to say about Charlotte’s
death dawned on her, what he’d been trying to tell her all along. “You think she committed suicide.”

  He looked past her, past Drake House. Pain etched his face. His eyes looked more flat and hopeless than the overcast sky.

  She had to go on. She had to know. For so long she’d kept a glimmer of hope alive…the wish that she and Brandon would find a way to be together. She’d tended it like a flicker of fire in the hearth, but with his confession, Brandon had doused the flame. “You think she killed herself because of you. Because you couldn’t love her the way she needed. Because of the feelings you had for me. That’s why you feel so guilty. You blame yourself for her death.”

  He looked down at his hands, knuckles white, clutching the carved head of his cane. He didn’t speak. He didn’t nod. He didn’t answer at all.

  He didn’t have to.

  MARIE STOOD in the darkened foyer of Drake House and stared up at the majestic twin staircase. For the first time she could remember, she felt truly relieved to be away from Brandon. After disabling the alarm and instructing her to lock the door behind him, he’d said something about wanting to check the boathouse. Promising to be back soon, he’d left her in the house alone.

  Understandable that he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. With his regrets. She wanted to be alone, too, but not to think. She would be just fine if she never had to think of this evening again.

  She mounted the steps. When she reached the first landing where the staircase split, each branch leading into opposite wings of the mansion, she paused. To the right, the stairs climbed into the house’s grand ballroom and outer sitting rooms. Usually this time of year, the wing would be humming with activity as servants and outside contractors like Lexie readied it for the annual Drake House Christmas Ball. It would smell of pine boughs and cinnamon and jingle with music. Instead the space felt vacant and dead. No festive decor. No bustling energy. Just a forlorn sadness that made Marie miss her childhood Christmases even more.

  But she wasn’t here to relive Christmas memories and mourn the demise of Drake House tradition.