Coming Home for Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

Keith stepped on the gas harder, going faster. Trying to outrun his thoughts before they could catch up to him and make him turn around again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maizie hadn’t intended to stop at the house on Normandie. She was just driving by to see if the flyers in the clear container beneath the for sale sign on the front lawn needed to be replenished. But when she saw Kenzie’s car parked in the driveway, she pulled her own up to the curb just past the mailbox and got out.

  The front door was locked, so she used her passkey, knocking as she slowly opened the door. She didn’t want to walk in on something she shouldn’t.

  “Kenzie, are you in here?” she called out.

  In response, a rather tired-looking Kenzie came out into the living room from the kitchen. “Right here, Mrs. Sommers.”

  There was a sadness about Kenzie that she immediately noticed. It went far beyond the smile the young woman was attempting to maintain. Maizie’s first impulse was to ask her what was wrong, but she refrained. Kenzie would tell her if she wanted her to know.

  Walking into the house, Maizie said, “I haven’t seen Keith around for a few days now. Would you know where he is?”

  She’d held two more open house events for this property. At the moment, all her other properties had gone into escrow or the owners had decided to hold off any further dealings until after the holidays, so she was concentrating the preponderance of her sale efforts on this house.

  There’d been some foot traffic, but that had consisted mainly of people who were just curious, or were looking for new decorating ideas, or made a habit out of frequenting open houses, poking around the rooms to see how other people lived.

  She hadn’t seen Keith either of those days, but today, apparently Kenzie had come by to set up the last of the estate sales before having the rest of the furniture removed and given to charity. Quite honestly, Maizie had stopped when she saw her car because she was curious about how the two were getting along.

  “He’s home,” Kenzie replied, doing her best to sound upbeat and friendly. She had a sinking feeling she was failing.

  Maizie glanced over the younger woman’s shoulder toward the rest of the house. Since Keith obviously wasn’t here, she made the only logical assumption. “He’s at your home?”

  “No, his home,” Kenzie replied stoically. “In San Francisco.”

  “Oh.” Maizie searched her face, finding the answer before she asked. “When is he coming back?”

  “I have no idea,” Kenzie replied. She was doing her best not to let her voice crack, but it was getting harder and harder not to break down. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.” Ever maternal, Maizie slipped her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. “How do you feel?” she asked, concerned since, after all, she had been the driving force behind bringing the two together.

  Could she have been this wrong about them?

  Kenzie wanted to say “Fine.” She really did. In lieu of that, she would have said, “Okay.” But the word that wound up coming out of her mouth was “Lousy.”

  “Oh, honey.” Maizie’s voice was filled with sympathy as she gave her another heartfelt squeeze. She did a quick review in her mind of all the instances she’d seen the two together. “Maybe he just needs a little time to wrap things up. I saw the way that man looked at you. A man doesn’t look at a woman that way if he isn’t really involved with her.”

  But Kenzie shook her head. No more delusions. She was determined to see clearly now, to see their relationship the way it was.

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Mrs. Sommers. But I think you’re wrong.”

  Stepping away from the older woman’s comforting embrace, Kenzie snatched up her purse. The heck with the rest of the sale. She had to leave before she started crying. She absolutely refused to break down in front of anyone, even if that person was the most sympathetic person she had ever met besides her own mother.

  She didn’t want sympathy, Kenzie thought as she left the house. She wanted not to care. Most of all, she wanted not to ache so much.

  * * *

  Keith went into his firm’s main office the morning after he arrived back. He went in early, stayed late and for the most part picked up his life just where he had left off.

  Except that it didn’t quite feel like his life. It felt more like a shell—a hollow, ill-fitting shell without depth, without dimensions.

  Without substance.

  He told himself that was because he’d had an unnatural break in his routine. Having his dormant emotions shaken up the way he had was a lot to deal with, and it would take a little time for things to get back to normal.

  His normal.

  Time. That was all he needed. Time.

  Keith kept doggedly at it for two more days, trying to recapture the rhythm he felt he’d lost by going back to Bedford.

  After the third day of almost nonstop work, he finally remembered to unpack. The suitcase had been standing by the front door all this time as if to remind him that he could just as easily take it to his car as up the stairs.

  His car, he sternly told himself, was not an option. The only reason the suitcase would find its way to the car was if he were going to the airport—which he wasn’t.

  He took the suitcase upstairs.

  Once there, he brought it to his bedroom and laid it on his bed. Snapping the locks open, he forced himself to concentrate on the mechanics of unpacking rather than allowing his mind to stray to a place more than four hundred miles away.

  Being with Kenzie had been great, but it was over, he silently reminded himself. His time with her had just been a commercial in the program of his life, and he had to remember that.

  Remember that he had worked—

  Keith stopped dead, staring into his suitcase. Specifically, staring at what was right on top of his shirts.

  Where had those come from?

  He hadn’t packed them, hadn’t even touched them.

  Letters covered the entire width and breadth of his suitcase. The moment he opened it, they began cascading out. They were the letters Kenzie had found, written by his mother. He picked one up.

  The same letters he had told Kenzie to throw out.

  “Kenzie, what are you trying to do to me? I said I didn’t want to read them!” he shouted at the woman who was four hundred miles away.

  Scooping up the letters into his arms, Keith threw them into the wastepaper basket in his bathroom.

  As if in rebellion, the letters overwhelmed the container, and the basket just fell over on its side. The letters covered the basket rather than winding up inside it.

  He cursed at the pile—and the woman who had snuck the letters into his suitcase—and stormed away.

  When had she put those letters in there? Keith silently demanded, mystified. It had to have been just before he left the house. He’d had the suitcase open just prior to that, while he was packing, and his cell phone had rung. He’d turned away to talk. It must have happened then. If she’d snuck them into his suitcase sometime before, he would have seen the letters while he was packing.

  The next question that occurred to him in giant neon letters was, why would she do this to him? Why would she actually pack up his old memories so that he’d be forced to confront them when he opened the suitcase?

  Had she done it because he had chosen to leave her? Was forcing the letters to his attention her way of punishing him for going?

  Despite what he would have labeled as evidence if this were a court of law, Keith couldn’t bring himself to believe Kenzie would have done it for such a hurtful reason.

  The Kenzie he knew didn’t punish people, didn’t seek revenge, no matter what.

  The Kenzie you knew? How well does anyone know anyone? You were together
a total of seven days. Not exactly a lifetime, is it—unless you’re a fruit fly, he mocked himself.

  Keith sat on the edge of his bed, staring angrily into his bathroom at the letters that were lying all over the wastebasket and the floor.

  It was a dirty trick. Leaving Bedford—and Kenzie—was obviously the right thing to do.

  This proved it.

  * * *

  She wasn’t going to answer the knock on the door. She’d already begged off from attending the New Year’s Eve party her brother was having, giving what she deemed was an Academy Award–worthy performance. She called in her regrets, sniffling and coughing as she pretended to be coming down with the flu.

  She repeated her performance two more times—once for her pregnant sister, whom she had assured didn’t want to be near someone coming down with the flu, and once for her mother, who had been alerted about her planned no-show by the others.

  Her mother had been a harder sell. Andrea offered to forgo the party and ring in the new year with her and a hot bowl of homemade chicken soup. Since her mother made the world’s best chicken soup, it had been a hard offer for her to refuse, given how she truly felt. The chicken soup would have been comforting.

  But ultimately Kenzie managed to convince her mother that she was just too wiped out for any company. Besides, if her mother skipped the party “to hold my hot, sweaty hand, I’ll never forgive myself.” After a considerable amount of rhetoric had gone back and forth, Andrea relented and promised to have a good time for both of them.

  “But I’ll be by in the morning to check in on you,” her mother added.

  “Come at your own risk,” Kenzie had told her, then sneezed. “I’ll be here.”

  “Risk. Right.” Andrea laughed. “Like I didn’t nurse all five of you kids through coughs, colds, the flu and heaven only knows what all else. Get into bed, Kenzie, and get your rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Kenzie dutifully replied.

  She hated lying like this, but she just couldn’t take a room full of noisy family right now, all trying to cheer her up. Her sisters would probably offer to make a voodoo doll resembling Keith. She wasn’t up to that, either.

  She didn’t want revenge. She just wanted him.

  “And Happy New Year,” her mother said before hanging up.

  “Happy New Year,” Kenzie echoed, disheartened. The last thing the new year would be was happy, Kenzie had thought as she put her cell phone away.

  An hour later, she’d felt no different. But her mother obviously did, because that had to be her at the door, determined to feed her and try to raise her mood.

  Kenzie was down to her last nerve, and she was in no mood to go on with her pretense.

  So she decided to wait her mother out, ignoring the knocking that had only grown louder, in hopes that the woman would assume she was asleep, give up and go home. She had left only one fifteen-watt bulb on, so it certainly looked as if she’d gone to bed.

  The fourth round of knocking told her that her mother wasn’t giving up.

  With a sigh, Kenzie got into character and shuffled to the door.

  “There was no reason for you to come,” Kenzie said in between coughs as she unlocked the door and opened it just a crack. She was still hoping to convince her mother to turn around and go home.

  “We’ve got a slight difference of opinion on that,” Keith told her just before he opened the door farther and walked in.

  Stunned, Kenzie had let go of the door and stepped back, staring at Keith and wondering if she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and this was just a dream she was having.

  “That was a lousy thing to do,” Keith told her as he turned to face her.

  Her mind scrambled.

  The letters. He was talking about the letters.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I thought you’d wind up regretting not reading them.”

  “Them?” he repeated as he looked at Kenzie, confused.

  “The letters. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  He laughed shortly, his irritation coming through. “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand,” she admitted. She was too tired to try to talk her way out of anything. Two hours of crying had taken a huge toll on her brain capacity. “What’s this lousy thing I did?”

  “Like you don’t know,” he accused her. “You let me leave. You let me go four hundred miles away from you to find out that I didn’t want to be four hundred miles away from you.”

  Kenzie stared at him, trying to make sense out of what he was saying and get it to jibe with the look she saw on his face.

  “Are you happy or angry that you’re here?” she asked.

  “Can’t you tell? I’m happy,” he all but shouted at her.

  At that moment, the solid wall of tension growing inside her began to disintegrate. “Could have fooled me,” she told him.

  “Why not?” he countered. “I tried to fool me. I tried to fool myself into believing I didn’t want to be here. That being with you for seven days was enough and I didn’t need any more. Well, I do,” he told her firmly. “I need more. Lots more.”

  That persistent kernel of hope she had never been entirely successful at dissolving just popped inside her chest, spreading out to fill every single nook and cranny within her.

  This time her smile was genuine. “How much more?” she asked.

  “Does the word forever mean anything to you?” Keith asked.

  Her smile went from ear to ear. Further, if possible. “Yeah. Heaven.”

  “Funny, me, too,” Keith responded, drawing her into his arms.

  God, it felt wonderful being held in his arms like this. It was where she knew she belonged. “What did you do with the letters?”

  Keith looked into her eyes. He loved her. How could he have missed that? Or ever thought he could walk away from it when people spent their whole lives looking for what had just dropped into his lap? Was he crazy?

  No, definitely not crazy—because this time, he was staying.

  “What most people do with letters,” he told her. “I read them. And I wish she’d sent them. If she went through the trouble of writing them, why wouldn’t she have sent them?”

  “Maybe she was afraid you wouldn’t read them,” Kenzie told him.

  He really couldn’t argue with that. Because even now, he’d almost thrown them out. “Yeah, maybe,” he agreed. “I love you, Kenzie.”

  Her heart swelled almost to bursting. “I love you back.” And then, because she was desperately trying not to dissolve in happy tears, she pretended to be playful as she asked, “So, now what?”

  “You mean after I make love with you?”

  Her smile could have lit up a corner of the entire city. “Yes.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “I do it again.”

  “And then?”

  He grew serious. “I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. As long as I have you, the details don’t really matter.”

  What he was saying suddenly hit her. She looked at him, stunned. “You’re leaving your firm?”

  He nodded. “I already did.”

  She couldn’t let him do that for her. He wouldn’t be happy doing nothing. He was a man who needed goals to work toward. “Keith, you can’t do that. You won’t last a day not working.”

  “Who says I won’t be working?” he asked. Before she could say anything, he continued. “One of the things my mother and I fought about before I left home was that I wanted to go into corporate law and my mother wanted me to go into some form of legal aid. She wanted me to help people who couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer to represent them. I balked at that, saying that wasn’t a way to earn a living. But now, looking back, I think maybe she had the right idea, after all. Besides, I’ve alr
eady earned a lot of money. How much more money does a person need?”

  A minute ago, she hadn’t thought it was possible to love him more than she did—but she was wrong. “Your mother would have been very proud of you.”

  He brushed his lips against Kenzie’s, then paused for one last moment. This needed to be said. “Thank you for not throwing the letters out the way I told you to.”

  She’d known from the moment she found them that getting him to read the letters was the right thing to do. But packing them in his suitcase had been her last ditch play—her Hail Mary—to get him to reconsider and come back.

  If her attempt had wound up failing, she would have known Keith wasn’t the man she thought he was, after all.

  But he was.

  Kenzie laughed, weaving her arms around his neck. “Anytime you want someone not to do what you tell her to, I’m your woman.”

  I’m your woman.

  He liked the sound of that.

  “I’m going to hold you to that last part,” Keith said just before he stopped all dialogue between them for a very long time.

  Epilogue

  Maizie Sommers was beaming as she slipped into the fourth pew from the front and took her place beside her two best friends.

  She knew she looked like the proverbial cat who swallowed the canary, but she strongly felt she had good reason.

  “I told you I was never wrong,” she said in a low, very satisfied whisper.

  Theresa turned to glance at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “And whom are you talking to?” Cecilia asked, leaning forward to peer around Theresa and look at Maizie.

  Maizie realized she sounded as if she were talking to herself. Thinking quickly, she rectified that.

  “To both of you, of course, and I’m talking about Kenzie. About the last conversation we had just before New Year’s Eve. She told me Keith had gone back to San Francisco the day after Christmas and she didn’t think he was coming back. I told her I thought he was, and that was when Kenzie told me she thought I was wrong.”

  “And you said you never were,” Theresa guessed. She and Cecilia exchanged glances. That was Maizie all right, confident—and with good reason, really, she thought proudly.