How Sweet It is
Page 23
She took it with girlish excitement, happy to forget what was coming in the days ahead, if only for a moment. “Can I open it now, since you won’t be here tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She ripped off the paper. It was a pocket watch. “Oh, Tay, it’s beautiful.”
“It doesn’t work,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to. I have a fix-it guy. He takes care of everything.”
“It’s set to eleven o’clock.” He pulled her closer.
“And why is that?” she murmured.
He pressed his thigh between her legs and it felt heavenly. “Because tomorrow, I’m going to leave you and Paige alone so you guys can deal with Ethan. And then, the next day, you’re going to come to my place, and we’ll make love.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. But—”
“Always a but.”
“But then, I have to go.”
She pulled away from him. “That’s the crappiest gift ever. I’m taking it back for a refund.”
“It’s not. It’s a promise that I’ll come back,” he said. He pulled her back to him and pressed into her. She closed her eyes. This man knew exactly how to move even with all his clothes on. “And until I do, time will stop.”
She let her head fall onto his chest. “But it won’t really, Tay. Time doesn’t stop.”
He held her close. “It’ll feel that way for me.”
She pulled him closer. She let herself get lost in the sensation of him. “I got you something, too.” Her eyes fluttered open.
He waited.
“Are you going to give it to me?”
“No. It’s not Christmas yet. And since you refuse to be here on Christmas, you have to come back and get it the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“Yep. I’m really scared you’re going to take off tonight,” she said. “It’s a really, really good present. So don’t you dare leave.” She was trying to joke, to not let the tears out.
They stood together like teenagers. Or, rather, like the teenager that Lizzie had never gotten a chance to be. Tomorrow, Ethan would come. The next day, Tay would leave. It didn’t seem like a good trade.
“God, tomorrow is going to be hard,” Lizzie said finally. Her toes were starting to go numb in the cold.
“Tomorrow will be fine,” Tay assured her. “And if it’s not, call me. I’ll come by and beat Ethan to a pulp.”
“It’s not about Ethan anymore, dummy. It’s about you.” She was trying not to cry, but it wasn’t going so well. “You should be here on Christmas, not him.”
He lifted her mouth to his and kissed her. “Good night, Elizabeth Carpenter. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow. Is 5:00 A.M. too early? Maybe four-thirty?”
“Good night, Tay Giovanni. Merry Christmas.”
Something was scratching at the window.
They turned. It was White. “Look, she doesn’t want you to be alone on Christmas. Take her with you, Tay.”
“I’ll take Dune, too. So you don’t have to worry about him.”
“No way. If you take them both, I’m afraid you won’t come back. I’m holding Dune hostage along with your Christmas present.” She opened the door and White slid out. She scooped her up and handed her to Tay. “Merry Christmas.”
“Not the present I was hoping for,” he said.
“Careful, she bites,” Lizzie reminded him. “Take good care of him tonight and tomorrow, White.”
“I’ll see you the day after Christmas,” he said. “And I’m returning the cat.”
CHAPTER
42
When the first rays of light woke her the next morning, the clock said 8:34. Lizzie had heard Paige up most of the night, pacing the house, but still, she hadn’t expected they’d sleep so late. She crept into Paige’s room. She was sound asleep.
Lizzie went downstairs and looked out the window.
The thirteen inches of snow that had come down over the past weeks had hardened into an icy crust. A soft flurry was dusting down gently on top of it. A picture-perfect tableau for a happy Christmas story.
Paige got up an hour later looking as if she’d been sleeping for years. After much grumbling, she agreed to open one present. She picked a small one, from Annie and Tommy. It was a pair of super-advanced ski gloves.
“Things don’t have to be perfect for him, you know,” Lizzie said when Paige had snatched up the wrapping paper, balled it up as small as possible, and walked it to the kitchen trash.
“Look who’s talking,” Paige said, and she flicked on the TV. “You’re the one who spent the last three months fixing up the entire house.”
Lizzie spent the next hour cooking pancakes, eggs, and sausage. Squeezing fresh oranges for juice. Making the coffee. She took her time, hoping there might be a third at the table.
There wasn’t.
Neither one of them ate a bite. Lizzie was starting to panic, but she knew she couldn’t show it.
“I’m going back to watch TV,” Paige insisted, pushing back her chair from the full table.
“Sit with me awhile. It’s Christmas.”
Paige crossed her arms and flung her feet onto the table. The leaf didn’t fall, and Paige seemed disappointed. “Did Tay fix everything in this stupid house?” she asked.
“Not everything,” Lizzie said. Just me. Or had she fixed him? Not yet. He still was going to leave. She glanced back out the window. Where was Ethan? Waiting for him to arrive today was going to be torture.
“You know, Mom, if you love Tay, that’s cool. ’Cause I might go with Dad.”
Lizzie took a calming breath. She kept her eyes on the falling snow outside, but she could feel Paige getting fidgety. Lizzie went to the tree and brought back a small package. “Open it.”
It was a passport.
“It came two weeks ago, but I wanted to save it for today,” Lizzie said. “Oh, and look! A present for me, too!” She pulled out an identical package and opened it. “What d’ya know? A passport for me!”
Paige’s face lit up. “Awesome. Totally awesome. I thought maybe it hadn’t come. Mom, will you come with us? Just till I get settled in Geneva?”
“No. And we’re not making any plans. Ethan hasn’t even shown up yet. I just wanted to prove to you that I could leave if I wanted to. I’m open to whatever the future brings just like you.” She said it, but she didn’t really mean it. Sure, maybe she’d go and help Paige settle in Europe if that’s how things ended up. But she wasn’t leaving Galton. Not for Ethan and not for Tay. Too much of her was here.
“You wish for what you want, and you get it,” Paige said, her voice full of triumph.
“You wish for what you want, and you might get it or you might not,” Lizzie said. Her stomach was tight, wondering what was holding up Ethan. “But what’s important is that you know what you want.”
“Whatever.”
“No, really, this is important, Paige. Sometimes, you think you want something, and you don’t really.”
“If you’re talking about Dad, just spit it out,” Paige said.
“I’m sort of talking about your dad. But I’m also talking about me. I think I wanted a lot of things for the wrong reason. And until I figured out what was standing in my way, I couldn’t understand what I really wanted.”
“You’re totally weird, Mom,” Paige said. “I know what I want and I’m going to get it. I want to be the best snowboarder in the world. And I can’t do that in this stupid town, with crappy equipment, on a second-rate mountain.”
Lizzie swallowed the insult. It hurt, but it hurt more to limit her. “Oh, Paige. I hope your father can help you. All I’m saying is that you need to be really, really careful what you wish for. Wishing for him to help you is okay. But you have to realize that you can do it on your own, too. We don’t need men to make our dreams come true.”
“I think I hear the violins,” Paige said before she went back upstairs, leaving Lizzie alone to contemplate how her
life was about to change.
By two, the passport didn’t seem like the best idea. Paige had given up pretending that she didn’t care whether Ethan showed or not, and had seated herself wrapped in a quilt in the dining room window seat, staring out over the freshly fallen snow, the passport on her lap.
Lizzie went upstairs and stared out her bedroom window. She was getting angrier and angrier with Ethan. Why had he not at least called?
By three, Paige had opened two more presents, but she might as well have been opening junk mail. She didn’t even blink at the gift certificate for the ritziest snowboarding store in town that Lizzie had spent way too much money on. It ended up on the floor with the wrapping paper where Paige tossed it before scurrying back to her seat at the window.
By five, Lizzie was in full-blown panic. As much as Paige tried to hide it, her eyes were wet with tears and she was snuffling in her blankets.
Lizzie called in reinforcements. Annie and Tommy came with Meghan. But their nervous chatter and forced merrymaking didn’t help.
“Damn him,” Lizzie whispered to Annie in the kitchen. “Why couldn’t he have given me a phone number or something?”
“Because he’s a bastard?” Annie suggested.
“I don’t know if Paige can handle much more of this. I don’t know if I can either.”
By eight, they all sat silently in the living room, the blue light of the TV overwhelming the colored, twinkling lights of the tree. Ripped wrapping paper covered the floor. Paige lay prone on the couch, shredding every piece of paper she could get her hands on. The pile of shredded paper on the floor was growing alarmingly tall. At least Lizzie had rescued the gift certificate before Paige could shred that. Lizzie had also snatched Paige’s passport and shoved it into a kitchen drawer for safekeeping before it could be absentmindedly destroyed.
By ten, Annie and Tommy had left with a sleeping Meghan. “I’ll have Tommy hunt him down and shoot him on sight,” Annie assured Lizzie, but no one even smiled.
Tommy patted her shoulder. “Call us. We’ll come running.”
Eleven came and went.
“Maybe his plane was delayed,” Lizzie said to Paige, stroking her head. “The snow. You know. It might be worse in New York City. Or there might be a blizzard in Switzerland. Maybe his plane never took off.” The girl lay on the couch in the same position she’d been in for hours.
“He could call,” Paige pointed out.
He could go to the lowest levels of hell and die a painful death over and over and over again for all eternity.
Lizzie covered Paige with quilts. The hot chocolate she’d placed in front of her hours ago was ice cold. She wanted to punch something—or better yet, someone. How could he do this to Paige?
“He’s not coming, Mom,” Paige said finally. “I was such a stupid little kid.”
“Anything could have happened,” Lizzie assured her. “Let’s not give up on him yet.”
“Why not?”
Because I want you to keep believing that your wishes will always come true. “Come to bed.”
“I’m going to sleep here.”
“Okay.” Lizzie looked out the window one last time for the ratbastard. “I’m going upstairs to bed. Come up if you want.” Paige hadn’t climbed into Lizzie’s bed in years, but tonight it seemed like the right thing to offer.
“It’s not fair,” Paige said before Lizzie had gotten to the stairs. “Everything is perfect. The house. The tree. I even perfected my 720 flip. I made everything perfect and wished for it with all my heart and it didn’t come true.”
“Maybe everything is perfect even without him here,” Lizzie suggested. “Maybe you don’t need him to get your wish. Maybe all your hard work by yourself and your dedication is enough.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “It’s like getting ready for the Olympics, then missing your event. It’s not perfect. Not even close.”
CHAPTER
43
Was it wrong for Tay to admit that he hated Christmas? All the celebration around him made his solitude, usually silent and deep, a thing that flashed and beeped in alarm. He tried to lie low most of the day. Nothing was worse than having other people notice that you were flashing and beeping. He made it through It’s a Wonderful Life on two channels, then the Frosty the Snowman marathon, but by nighttime, he’d grown too restless to stay in.
He’d go for a drive. On Christmas night in a college town, the roads would be deserted and he could drive as slowly as he pleased without cars honking and drivers giving him the finger. White slipped out the door with him as he left, so he scooped her up. “C’mon, girl. We’ll take a midnight ride, you and me. See if we can spot Santa on his way back to the North Pole. Catch us some reindeer.”
When Tay had first come to Galton, he’d gotten into the bad habit of checking the parking lot for Candy’s BMW. She parked it on the right side of the lot by her dorm, space number 465. As things developed with Lizzie, he’d stopped checking. After all, what good did it do to see her car? In the beginning, he might have hoped to catch a glimpse of her—a hope for a connection. But now, he didn’t want connection.
Still, he checked.
It was there, but that didn’t mean she was in the dorm alone. She could have taken a cab to the tiny local airport. She could have gotten a ride somewhere with a friend. He drove past Lizzie’s diner, the one day of the year it was closed. He rode through the deserted town. He wound his way up the hill, past Lizzie’s house, but there was no new car out front. Ethan better have shown up. Maybe they’d all gone out to the movies, or a late dinner. He resisted the urge to pound on the front door, or even just sit on the porch swing. This night was between Lizzie and Paige.
And a stranger named Ethan.
Annie and Tommy stood on the bridge, watching the hundred-dollar bills float away into the darkness of the gorge, one by one. Meghan was just a tiny face staring out from her snow gear, nestled in a pack against Tommy’s chest, under his coat. She hadn’t been able to sleep. The excitement of the holiday, and of Ethan’s nonappearance, had kept Annie awake, too. So when Meghan started crying the third time, Annie decided that tonight was the night.
“This is the last one,” Tommy said, holding up the last bill. “Do you want the honor?”
“I do,” Annie said. She let the bill go and it floated up, then away, then it disappeared into the darkness. “I can’t believe how good that felt,” she said. “You were right, it was the right thing to do.” She thought about the rest of the money, still hidden in Lizzie’s basement. She should tell Tommy, tell him right this instant.
But he took her in his arms and said, “Annie, thank you. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Please, let’s not ever let anything so stupid as money come between us.”
So Annie kept her mouth shut, vowing to come back herself as soon as she could and put the money back exactly where she had found it.
Tay was finally starting to feel the effects of his midnight wandering. Maybe now he could sleep. He made his way home, swinging past the student parking lot one last time.
Candy’s BMW was gone.
Tay wasn’t superstitious. He didn’t believe in signs. And yet, it was hard to ignore the feeling in his gut: Something was wrong. Why would Candy leave her dorm between 11:31 and 12:10 on Christmas night? Maybe she was getting a liter of Diet Coke. A pack of smokes. Did kids still get packs of smokes?
He had no reason to worry.
And yet, he worried.
There was no one else to worry.
He drove off the empty campus and into the deserted town. All the stores were closed. So much for his Diet Coke theory. He drove around in circles, since there weren’t many roads to explore. The snow piled on the side of the road was black with soot and gray salt and Tay thought that he’d be gone before it melted.
After he’d passed the closed campus bookstore for the fifth time, he made his way back to campus, not sure why or what he would do when he got there. He sat in his truck, looking
at Candy’s empty parking space. A red Toyota on one side, a white Honda on the other. He blamed them both for letting the black BMW get away. Both had bumper stickers that read Galton Is Gorges, as if they were taunting him. The freezing air was silent around him except for the chugging of his old motor. White jumped onto his lap and looked at him as if she had something to say.
“Aren’t you supposed to talk on Christmas?” What was that old child’s tale? Did the animals talk on Christmas Eve? Christmas Day? He had grown up with so many relatives, shuttled from one to another after his parents had died, he’d heard every version of every Christmas story that was out there. He stroked the cat.
“Where’s Candy?” he asked White.
She wasn’t talking today, that’s for sure.
He wished there was someone he could call. Maybe campus security. But what would he say? A student drove her car away?
White was getting agitated, jumping from his lap to his headrest to the passenger’s seat to the dash. Rubbing up against him every chance she got. She must be picking up on his anxiety. He tried to calm her by stroking her back, but she only jumped away, annoyed. He ought to take her home. Animals always went a little nuts in small, confined spaces, even humans.
He rolled down the window to see if she wanted to go.
She didn’t.
He swung the truck back onto the road. One more lap, then he’d be tired enough to sleep.
He headed back across the campus bridge, then slammed on his brakes. Unfortunately, he was going too slowly, and the small jolt was an unsatisfying expression of his alarm.
Candy’s BMW was parked crookedly on the side of the road just past the bridge.
He drove past her car, his heart in his throat, knowing before he looked that the car would be empty.
He spun his car around. No squealing rubber, no tires spinning out, just a disappointing, slow, methodical U-turn. He forced himself to look toward the bridge. It was brightly lit in Galton red and white. Or maybe it was Christmas red and white. There was someone in the shadows, by the guardrail.