The Doctor's Christmas

by Marta Perry

  “Don’t dance around it. Tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

  “All right!” She caught a breath. “It’s not what you think. Nella isn’t a bad mother.”

  “No? She’s not here with her kids. What kind of mother does that make her?”

  “She needed some time, that’s all.” She shook her head. “Maybe if you stopped shouting at me, I could explain things so you’d understand.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw, but he nodded. “Fine. Explain.”

  Please, Lord. Give me the words.

  “You already know the worst of it. Nella’s husband abused her. We tried to help her, but she couldn’t seem to break away. When he died, you’d expect her to feel free, but…”

  She stopped, shaking her head. She tried to put herself in Nella’s mind so she could understand. “I guess after living nine years with a man who dictated her every move, she couldn’t think for herself any longer.”

  “You were trying to help her.” There might have been a flicker of understanding in his eyes.

  “I was trying to help her,” she agreed. “We’d gotten her a job at the café, and Pastor Jim was counseling her. I thought she’d started to turn the corner. Then—”

  “She left. Deserted her children.” The implacable look was back.

  “No, not deserted.” She wouldn’t believe that. “She left the kids at the clinic early one morning, with a note saying she needed to get her head together, but she’d be back for them. She’s coming back.”

  He was shaking his head even while she spoke, the air between them sizzling with his disbelief. His disappointment in her. “She’s gone, Maggie. She’s left you holding the bag, and she’s gone.”

  “She’ll be back.” Why couldn’t he see what she was so sure of? “Look, you don’t know Nella. She loves those children. She’s called and written every few days. She’ll come back.”

  “Wake up.” Impatience laced his words. “Even if you’re right about the woman, this isn’t your responsibility. You shouldn’t be taking care of them. Social services is equipped to do that. You’re not.”

  Her temper flared. “I’m doing a good job with those children.”

  “That’s not the point. Let the professionals handle the situation.”

  “That’s what you’d do back in your city hospital, I suppose.” She turned away, unable to keep looking at him through her hurt and disappointment. “Pick up the phone and turn them over to a stranger.”

  “If I didn’t, I’d be breaking the law. Like you’re doing right now.”

  She swung back to face him. “I’m not. I’m helping innocent children.”

  “You’re breaking the law,” he said implacably. “No matter how you rationalize it. And you’re putting the clinic in jeopardy with your actions.”

  She wanted to deny that, but she couldn’t. If the truth came out, it would give the county bureaucrats just the ammunition they needed to close the clinic. She’d known that all along, but she’d believed the children were worth the risk. She still did.

  “Look, I’m sorry about deceiving you. But we—”

  “We?” The single word cracked like a whip. “How many people know about this?”

  She could only stare at him. “Why, everyone. Everyone in Button Gap. Except you, of course.”

  “Everyone?” Grant looked as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. Then his hand shot out to grab hers. “Think, Maggie. That means someone will tell. Someone probably already has told, or that social worker wouldn’t have been asking questions.”

  “No one in town would do such a thing. Button Gap takes care of its own.”

  “Someone will talk.” He let her go, rubbing his forehead as if the sight of her gave him a headache. “They’ll close the clinic on my watch.”

  “Is that the only thing that’s important to you? Your precious partnership?”

  His mouth tightened. “The only chance is to come clean, right now.” He gestured toward the phone. “You call, or I will.”

  “No!”

  He wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t take her word for it. Not unless she told him.

  “Maggie—”

  “No.” She took a breath, tried to speak around the lump in her throat. “You don’t see what’s at stake. I do. I know what will happen to those children if they get caught up in the system before Nella returns.”

  “What are you talking about? How do you know?”

  She couldn’t. She had to.

  “I know because I was like them. I know what I’m talking about because I was one of those kids.”

  “You were—”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “My father abused my mother, abused me, until social services took me away. You’d say Mrs. Hadley was right. You’d say she did what was best for me.”

  He was processing the knowledge, coping with it, his eyes pained and serious. “She probably thought she did.”

  “Maybe so.” She looked back into the darkness, trying not to flinch. “I just know that my life turned from one nightmare into another. It took me years to climb out. I won’t let those children go through what I did. Not for you, not for anyone.”

  Chapter Nine

  Grant tried to absorb what Maggie was saying, but his heart hurt so much for her that it was hard to think straight. Maggie. All the pieces of her elusive personality started falling into place like so many toppling dominos.

  He should have realized the truth before this—would have, if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his own concerns. He’d known she’d been sent to stay with Aunt Elly when she was just a child. He’d seen her fierce protectiveness toward the weak. Even her brief comments about her father were explained by this one significant fact.

  He had to say something. “Maggie, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  Some of the tension in her face eased slightly, as if she’d been prepared for a blow that she now knew wasn’t coming.

  “You couldn’t have known. People here do, but no one would tell an outsider, any more than they’d tell Mrs. Hadley about the Bascoms.”

  That was the crux of the situation. Even through his pain for Maggie, he knew he had to be cautious. He couldn’t let his sympathy for her keep him from doing the right thing for those children.

  “Maybe so.”

  He had to admit that she knew Button Gap far better than he ever could. He realized he was standing almost on top of her and eased back a step.

  “Will you tell me about what happened to you? About why it makes you so sure you can’t bring social services into this?”

  Maggie wrapped her arms around herself in an attitude of protection, and for a moment he thought she’d refuse to answer him. Then he recognized that she was only arming herself to say the words.

  “I was ten when the county sheriff came.” Her eyes grew dark, distant, as if they were seeing that day once more. “My mother had given up trying to protect me by then. He could keep her home, but he had to send me to school, and the teacher saw the bruises.”

  His mind winced at the thought of bruises discoloring her skin, of the fear that must have lived in her eyes most of the time.

  “Mrs. Hadley took me to a shelter. She wouldn’t tell me where my mother was or what was going to happen to me. She didn’t tell me anything, just left me there.”

  “You thought you were being punished.”

  She nodded. “I was. And I thought I deserved it.”

  Of course she had. Kids always seemed to blame themselves for the miserable things adults did.

  “But you went to Aunt Elly eventually.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Aunt Elly wouldn’t give up. She kept badgering the county officials until they placed me with her.”

  “You were happy there.”

  “Happy?” She considered the question gravely. “Not for a long time. I guess I couldn’t believe that she could love and protect me. Not when my own parents didn’t.”

  He reached toward
her, and then drew his hand back. She wouldn’t welcome a touch at this moment.

  “Eventually she got through to me. I started feeling like I belonged. Everyone here knew what had happened, and they were kind.” Her lips tightened. “Then Mrs. Hadley took me away again.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows why that woman does anything? Because she could, I guess.”

  That didn’t correspond to anything he’d experienced with social workers.

  “I’m sure you’ve probably dealt with some wonderful caring people in children’s services.” Maggie seemed to be reading his thoughts. “But not here. Mrs. Hadley is that department, and she runs it like her own private kingdom. She bounced me from one home to another. Every time I started to feel safe, she’d move me again. The only thing I had to hold on to was the faith Aunt Elly had taught me.”

  If he let himself think too much about that lost child, he could never take action.

  “You had a terrible time. But sometimes taking children away from parents is the only way to keep them safe. The Bascom kids—”

  “The Bascoms have a good mother,” she shot back. “My mother lost the will to protect me, if she’d ever had it. But not Nella. She never did. She always tried to protect her children.”

  How could he put this in a way that wouldn’t hurt her? Maybe that was impossible.

  “She ran away. You have to face that.”

  “She’s just confused. Nella has a good heart. She’ll do the right thing.” Tears filled her eyes. “I can’t let her return to find her family broken up. If those children are sucked into the system, she might never get them back. Even if she did eventually, they’d be…damaged.”

  Like me. He knew that was what she thought, and it grabbed his heart and wouldn’t let go.

  This wasn’t just about Nella and her children. Maggie needed, at some very deep level, to believe that this would work out right for the Bascoms. This was for Maggie’s sake, too, to heal that damaged place inside her.

  Maybe she sensed that his conviction was weakening. She took a step toward him and put her hand on his arm.

  “Please, Grant. Give this a chance. If you don’t believe I’m right about the children, talk to them. Get to know them better before you do anything. You’ll see that they belong with Nella.”

  Her grip compelled him to respond. He shook his head, trying to think rationally, but the pain Maggie carried around had fogged his vision.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know if the system would work any better for the Bascom kids than it did for you.”

  “Then how can you say we should risk it?” The passion in her voice, in her eyes, shook him.

  We. If he didn’t call the Hadley woman back, right now, he was in this nearly as deeply as Maggie was.

  The truth was that Maggie had put him between a rock and a hard place, and any decision he made could lead to the demise of the clinic and probably his partnership, as well. He moved a step away from her, as if that would make it easier.

  It didn’t. He still felt the pressure of her need to keep the children safe.

  He sighed, knowing he couldn’t take the easy way out, not now.

  “No promises, Maggie. But I won’t say anything without thinking it over first and telling you.”

  Joy flooded her face, but before she could say anything, he shook his head.

  “This isn’t approval. I still think what you’re doing is too risky. But the clinic is already implicated, so I won’t act without thinking it through.”

  Her eyes shone. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me.” That probably came out harshly, but he couldn’t seem to help it. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  He knew one thing, though. He was letting his sympathy for those kids and his pain for Maggie drag him close to disaster.

  “Will you kids please stop stampeding through the living room?”

  Three small faces swung toward her, and Maggie saw the apprehension in them. The children were bathed and dressed for bed, and they looked like three Christmas elves in their footed red pajamas.

  “It’s okay.” She shouldn’t have snapped at them. It wasn’t the children’s fault that she still held on to the residue of that confrontation with Grant, like bitter dregs in the bottom of a cup. “I just don’t want galloping horses to knock over the Christmas tree, all right?”

  Joey nodded solemnly. “We’ll be careful.”

  “Good enough. I’m going to finish up the dishes, and then we’ll have a story before bed.”

  “The Christmas story,” Tacey said, and ran to the bookshelf to pull out the tattered Christmas storybook that Aunt Elly had given Maggie years ago.

  “Okay. The Christmas story.”

  Maggie went back to the sink. The black cloud over her head lifted slightly with the memory of that Christmas when she’d begun to feel she belonged with Aunt Elly. She’d actually felt safe for the first time in her life.

  She dried the glass milk pitcher carefully and put it in the cabinet. The ordinary routine soothed her, and she tried to look rationally at what had happened between her and Grant that morning.

  He knew the truth now, in spite of all her efforts to prevent that. What would he do with it?

  At least he’d promised not to do anything without talking to her again. He’d keep his word. She understood him well enough to be sure of that.

  Beyond that, she tried to think past his knowing about Nella and the children. She couldn’t. She couldn’t wipe out the memory of his expression when he’d looked at her as if she were a stranger. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking or planning now.

  One fact stood out with perfect clarity in the midst of a fog of uncertainty. Whatever friendship or relationship had been building between them had been shattered to bits. She’d never put it together again.

  She gripped the edge of the sink until the pain subsided. She’d already known that a real relationship between them wasn’t possible. So she had nothing to grieve over. You couldn’t mourn something that had never been, could you?

  All she cared about now was what he did about the children. She wouldn’t let herself think of anything else. Grant meant nothing to her now but a potential threat to the children. Nothing at all.

  A knock at the door set her heart hammering against her ribs. The kids, playing noisily in the living room, hadn’t heard.

  Was she going to panic every time someone knocked on her door? Relive the nightmare of Mrs. Hadley coming to take her away?

  She steeled herself and opened the door to find Grant standing on her porch.

  Her throat tightened. He’d said he wouldn’t expose them without telling her first. Was that what brought him?

  “Grant.” She gripped the doorknob, suppressing the longing to slam the door.

  “May I come in?” When she didn’t move, his eyebrows lifted. “You invited me to get to know the kids better, remember?”

  She could breathe again. He hadn’t come to deliver an ultimatum. She stepped back.

  “Of course. Come in.”

  He stamped loose snow from his shoes onto the mat, then slid his jacket off. He’d changed from the dress shirt he wore in the office to a forest-green sweater that made his eyes look more green than blue.

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “No.” She nodded toward the living room. “They’re having a game before bedtime. Go on in.”

  She almost moved to join him, but then knew instinctively that she shouldn’t. If Grant were to be convinced that those children belonged with Nella, the kids would have to do it, and without her help. Grant already felt that she couldn’t be trusted.

  A sliver of pain pierced her at the thought. She turned back to the sink, trying to hold it at bay.

  What can’t be cured must be endured. One of Aunt Elly’s homilies drifted through her mind. True enough. Sometimes a person just didn’t have a choice.

  She dawdled over the washing u
p, listening to the noises from the other room. By the sound of things, they’d pulled Grant into playing with the battered board game she’d gotten out for them.

  They were all right. She was the one in need of emotional first aid.

  Lord, I need some help here. She tried to think how to pray. Grant knows, and somehow I’ve got to keep him on our side in all this. Please, show me how to do it. Open his heart to know what’s right.

  Grant had a grudge against God. She didn’t know how or why she knew that, but she was sure of it.

  Open his heart to You, Father. He doesn’t seem to know that he needs healing, too. Amen.

  Slowly the tension drained out of her. Much as she’d like to think she could do everything herself, she couldn’t. God was in control, and she had to believe He’d bring Grant around in His own time.

  She moved to the doorway, watching the four of them clustered around the game board. The tip of Tacey’s tongue protruded slightly as she clicked her plastic token along the path of the game.

  “Five. I won!”

  That was the loudest she’d ever heard Tacey speak. Grant’s gaze met hers, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing.

  He smiled at the little girl. “You won, all right. Good job.”

  Robby pouted. “I never win.”

  “Next time.” Tacey leaned over to pat his shoulder. “Next time you’ll probably win. You’ll see.”

  “Can we play another game?” Joey snatched up his game token.

  “Tomorrow.” Maggie handed him the box. “Let’s put it away for now. It’s time for bed.”

  Did Grant realize what he was seeing? She worried at it as the children put the game away and tidied up the other toys.

  Did he understand that children were only considerate and helpful if they had a mother who’d cared enough to instill that? The Bascom kids were a credit to Nella, who’d done a good job with them under the worst of circumstances.

  The kids scampered up the narrow wooden stairs, followed by Maggie. To Maggie’s surprise, Grant went up with her. She’d thought his interest wouldn’t extend to more than a game, but apparently he intended to help put them to bed.