Some Enchanted Season

by Marilyn Pappano

  She wondered if Maggie minded not having children. They’d never gotten close enough for a question like that. She suspected, though, that the answer was yes. Call it instinct or women’s intuition, but she would bet Maggie McKinney could understand the emptiness in her life.

  She would also bet that Ross McKinney couldn’t.

  “You sent the flowers,” Maggie said. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Just a little welcome back. What can I help you with today?”

  Maggie looked around, her gaze skimming over the flower shop that filled half the space and the gardening supplies that occupied the rest. “I want to plant some bulbs.”

  “They’re down here.” Melissa led the way, stopping near the end of the first aisle. “I’m afraid I don’t have a very big selection. It’s near the end of the planting season, so I haven’t reordered.” Truth was, she hadn’t sold a bulb in weeks. She just hadn’t gotten around to taking the leftovers off the shelves.

  “Is it too late?” Maggie asked as she picked up a fat, rounded bulb.

  “It’s not the optimal time for planting,” Melissa said. “But we’ve had a fairly mild fall, and the ground’s not frozen. They may not do as well as the bulbs planted a few months ago, but you should get some lovely blooms out of them. I’ll leave you to make your choices and get back to work. If you need anything, yell.” On impulse, she gave Maggie’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It really is good to see you again.”

  Ross watched her walk away, then he looked back at Maggie. “I wonder how many people you met while you were here.”

  “So do I,” she said ruefully.

  She didn’t waste time picking through the boxes with color photos stapled to the front. She simply picked up one box, emptied all the others into it, then wandered along the aisles, adding a box of fertilizer, a pair of gloves, a few hand tools. She paused for a moment, then looked at him. “I want to decorate the house for Christmas.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I mean me. Not some designer you hire.”

  Her scowl brought him more than a little discomfort. Christmas decorating at their house in Buffalo had been, at his insistence, a carefully planned process. They’d had a top-quality silk tree, with no bare spots, crooked limbs, or other natural imperfections allowed. The decorations Maggie had collected over the years had been relegated to the attic, replaced by perfectly matched sets of white ornaments and silver ribbons. There’d been no creche, no candles, no colored lights twinkling. No garlands, bows, or fragrances. The minimalist effect had been cool, elegant.

  And awful.

  Their old decorations had been the first boxes Maggie shipped to Bethlehem when the house was nearing completion, and she’d used them all. Ornaments had covered every inch of the twelve-foot-tall fir. Her collection of angels had spread their wings across the mantel. A dozen Father Christmases had taken up residence on the antique library table against the wall. Music boxes, each playing a different carol, were scattered through the house. There were creches in every room. A wreath as wide as the front door. White lights outlining the house, woven through the shrubbery and over the bare branches of the trees in the yard, and colored ones by the hundreds inside. The entire house had been an explosion of color, scent, and sound, and Maggie had loved it.

  “You’re perfectly welcome to decorate however you want,” he said as they started toward the cash register near the door. “You’ll have to see if you can top last year.”

  “But I don’t remember last year.”

  He smiled faintly. “Then it’ll be a challenge, won’t it?”

  He was about to call Melissa Thomas from the back, when he realized there was a clerk on her knees behind the counter, unpacking a box filled with baskets and red velvet bows. In the fluorescent light her brown hair seemed to gleam with silver, but as soon as she looked up, he saw that it had merely been an illusion. “I’ll be right with you, Maggie, Mr. McKinney.”

  The name tag on her sweatshirt identified her as Noelle. He watched Maggie read it, watched the frustration—or was it becoming resignation?—of not remembering edge into her expression.

  “Doing some planting, are we?” Noelle flashed a brilliant smile as she got to her feet. “I like a person who plants late in the season.”

  “Why is that?” Maggie asked.

  “It tells me two important things—that you’re optimistic, looking ahead to spring’s reward for today’s hard work, and that you have faith.”

  “Faith?”

  “Anyone can plant daffodils in September and expect to see blossoms in the spring. But only a gardener with faith would plant in winter with the same expectation.” The woman’s look moved to Ross. “Faith is a rare gift these days. One should nurture it when one finds it.”

  He shifted uncomfortably under the directness of her gaze even as he silently agreed with her. His mother had had faith in God and in him. For a good many years, Maggie had had faith in him too, but not many others had. His father had insisted he would never amount to anything. So had Maggie’s mother. His high school teachers had believed college was out of his reach. He’d been told he should quit dreaming and accept what life held for him—a job in the same factory where his father had worked and his grandfather before him, a plain little house in a shabby neighborhood, with no bigger goals than drinking his way through the weekend games on TV.

  Now he owned the factory. He funded scholarships at the high school. He lived in a mansion, and if he ever had any desire to see a game, he wouldn’t settle for TV. He would take the corporate jet, have the best seats in the house, and celebrate with the winning team owner afterward.

  He was a success. He had measured up to his mother’s faith in him.

  But not Maggie’s.

  When Noelle rang up the last item and announced the total, Maggie looked at him. “I don’t have …” She turned her empty hands palms up.

  He pulled his wallet from his pocket and paid the woman.

  “Any tips on planting these?” Maggie asked.

  “Good soil, water, sunlight, and food. Nothing can live without proper care and nourishment. You can’t ignore them and leave them to starve in the winter cold, then expect them to do their best for you next spring.” Noelle nodded for emphasis. “Care and nourishment. Those are the keys to everything.”

  They were halfway to the car when Ross spoke. “I bet she talks to her plants.”

  Maggie smiled. “Probably. It must work for her though. She works in a nursery.” She gave the last word a subtle emphasis. Pleased that she’d remembered it this time, or mocking that she’d forgotten it the first time?

  He took the back way home, making one short detour at the McBride Inn. He stopped alongside the gravel road that led to the main entrance, giving her the full effect of the gracious old farmhouse-turned-inn. “This is where we stayed when we were in Bethlehem.”

  Her gaze took in the rambling structure, the porches, the porte cochere, the trees, the pond, the dormant fields. “I don’t remember …”

  “Do you want to go inside? I’m sure the owner would let you look around.”

  She looked a moment longer, then shook her head. “No. I don’t remember. I’d rather go home and plant.”

  With a nod, he pulled onto the road again. A few minutes later they were home. But Maggie had no interest in going in. She headed for the backyard instead, and, with bags in hand, Ross followed her.

  The yard was a nice size, fenced on three sides with board planks atop a low brick wall. The grass had been mowed short sometime before dying, and the flower beds had been cleaned out and covered with mulch. The space had a lot of potential, and Maggie probably knew just what to do to fulfill it.

  Even if she was looking a little lost right now. “I must have had plans for this yard, but I don’t remember.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter. Come up with new plans.”

  “If I can’t remember something, it doesn’t matter? Is that how it works?”

/>   He shrugged. “It works for me.”

  “That’s because you never forget anything. You still remember every detail of every deal you ever made.”

  Not every one, he acknowledged grimly. He could think of one deal in particular where he’d forgotten too much, where he’d paid too little attention, where he’d made promises and offered guarantees and failed miserably. Forever and ever, till death do us part. Death had almost succeeded last Christmas Eve. Now they were giving in to something that sounded so much less ominous but was every bit as destructive—indifference.

  How had they made this journey from passionate lovers to polite acquaintances? What had gone wrong? What could they have done differently? Who was to blame?

  He didn’t have any answers, didn’t know any truths save one. If he and Maggie could stop loving each other, then anything could happen. Nothing—no one—was safe.

  He shook off the melancholy that accompanied his thoughts. “Where are you going to plant your flowers?”

  She looked up at the sun, then around the yard before gesturing toward a distant corner. Taking the bags from him, she started in that direction and gave him a dry look when he followed. “I can do this by myself.”

  “I hope so. I’m under orders from Dr. Allen to not do anything until you’ve proven that you can’t.”

  “I meant you could go inside.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m perfectly capable—”

  “I’m sure you are. Humor me, Maggie. Before long you’ll be able to do whatever you want. But we’re not there yet.”

  With a haughty sniff she turned her back on him and faced the corner of the yard instead. Reaching into one bag, she pulled out a handful of bulbs and threw them across the grass with more force, he thought, than was necessary. One bounced off the brick wall and landed upright a few inches away. The rest scattered around.

  “Is this some gardening ritual I’m not familiar with?”

  “You’re not familiar with any gardening rituals besides the one where you take out your checkbook to pay the grounds staff.” She tossed the rest of the bulbs three or four at a time until the entire corner of the yard was littered with them.

  “So what are you doing?”

  After handing the bags to him, she pulled on the cotton gloves, then took a trowel from another bag. “Naturalizing. In the wild, daffodils don’t grow in neat beds. They’re scattered all over.”

  “I didn’t know daffodils grew in the wild. Don’t they interfere with mowing the grass?”

  “By the time you have to mow, the bulbs are through for the year.” She fell silent as she carefully knelt and began digging. Underneath the dead grass was rich, dark soil.

  Back in the early years of their marriage, they’d shared the yardwork. He had mowed and she’d tended the flowers. Mowing their tiny yards had always been quick and easy, and afterward he’d stretched out in a lawn chair with a cold beer, sometimes talking to her, sometimes simply watching her.

  The more successful he’d become, the more expensive their houses, the bigger their lawns, and the more willing he’d been to pay someone else to do the work. Maybe that was where things had started going wrong—when he’d stopped indulging in the simple pleasure of watching her garden.

  She planted in the same methodic manner she’d made coffee—digging the hole exactly the right depth, sprinkling in just the right amount of fertilizer, positioning the bulb just so, tamping the dirt back in around it. When she finished, the yard looked as if it had been attacked by a crazed mole. Dark patches of dirt dotted the grass, showing exactly where to imagine sunny flowers next spring. She would be there to see them.

  He wouldn’t.

  When Maggie started to rise, he moved forward, taking both her hands, pulling her to her feet. She was unsteady for a moment, then she tugged free and took a few careful steps. “I forget sometimes that I’m not good as new.”

  “That’ll come.”

  “When? In two months? Nope, I’ll be going back for more surgery sometime around then. Two months after that? Four? Eight?”

  “What surgery? When?”

  “To remove the plates in my left leg. Probably in February.”

  “I didn’t realize they would be removed.” Some emotion must have shown in his face—dismay?—because she shrugged.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to stick around through it. I’ll pay some sweet, motherly nurse a fortune to come in here and pamper me.” She readied a garden hose as she spoke. “I’d move if I were you.”

  He did as she suggested, and she directed the water over the newly planted bulbs. He wondered why the news of her impending surgery had caught him off guard. Maybe because he’d seen too much of her in a hospital bed. Because she looked so small and vulnerable there. Because she already bore enough scars from that damnable accident.

  “The surgery is something of an accomplishment.”

  He looked at her, but her attention was on the ground. “In what way?”

  “It means that the bones have healed completely. That they’re strong enough to support me without the plates and screws. It’s the last procedure I have to undergo, and then this whole thing will really, truly be behind me.”

  He had to admire her outlook. If he’d been through half of what she’d undergone in the past eleven months, he would be desperate to avoid any future contact with the medical establishment. But then, he might not have been strong enough to endure her ordeal.

  “I don’t mind staying until after the surgery.”

  “Oh? Then what caused that look of revulsion?”

  “I think the idea of having pieces of metal screwed directly into your bones would cause any reasonable person a moment of revulsion—to say nothing of going back a year or so later and unscrewing them.”

  She shrugged carelessly. “I was unconscious when they put them in, and I’ll be unconscious when they take them out. It’s no big deal.”

  No big deal. He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a remarkable woman, Maggie.”

  That stopped her short, and then she quietly said, “Thank you. It means a lot to hear you say that.”

  The moment was broken by the squeal of brakes out front. Ross watched as a deliveryman carrying an express package and a clipboard climbed out and started up the driveway.

  “Too bad your staff isn’t a little more remarkable,” Maggie murmured. “It’s a good thing you’re not on a real vacation. They would never leave you any time to relax. I’ll be inside.” She released the trigger and cut off the flow of water, then recoiled the hose a little less neatly than before.

  The uniformed man greeted her with a nod, then double-checked his package. “I’ve got a delivery here for Ross McKinney. That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?” he said to Ross.

  He watched Maggie disappear inside, then forced his attention back to the deliveryman. “Yes. Yes, it is. Where do I sign?”

  “Afternoon, Miss Agatha. Afternoon, son.”

  Stopping where the sidewalk crossed the McKinney driveway, Agatha Winchester nodded regally and replied to the deliveryman, “Good afternoon, Fred.”

  Beside her, four-year-old Brendan Dalton mimicked both the nod and the greeting, bringing a grin from Fred as he climbed into his truck. The boy watched the truck rumble away, while Agatha turned her attention in the opposite direction.

  Standing at the end of the driveway, scanning the contents of the package just delivered, was their new neighbor, the mysterious Ross McKinney. She knew little about him—that he was a businessman, successful and very wealthy. Holly McBride, over at the inn, had already told her that he was handsome as sin—not a description that a God-fearing woman like Agatha particularly cared for, though she could certainly understand where it came from, with his black hair, sharp eyes, and forbidding scowl.

  She knew that on his few visits to Bethlehem last year, he’d stayed shut up in their suite and kept at least one phone line and
usually two tied up practically the entire stay. He’d left his lovely wife to her own entertainment and had usually taken work even to the dinner table. He’d also left Maggie all the responsibilities of remodeling this big old house and had neglected to accompany her to even one Christmas party.

  In Agatha and Corinna’s opinion, Maggie might as well have been single, for all the attention her husband paid her. She’d tried to make the best of it, but it had been obvious that she was a lonely, unhappy woman.

  And then she’d had that dreadful accident. Her husband had told the sheriff that she’d been on her way home to Buffalo, with no explanations, no excuses. While Sheriff Ingles had accepted that—after all, it was an accident—Agatha knew there must be more to the story. Home to Buffalo? On Christmas Eve? Impossible! Maggie had been looking forward to the Christmas Eve service in the square. She had been excited about celebrating the holiday in her new home and had planned an elaborate Christmas Day feast. She wouldn’t have decided to return to Buffalo that night unless something dreadful had happened.

  And it involved her husband. Agatha was sure of it.

  “Miss Agatha.” Brendan tugged her sleeve. “The truck’s gone.”

  With a sense of purpose, she gave the boy a bright smile. “Come along, Brendan. Let’s say hello to our new neighbor.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Uncle Nathan says doan talk to strangers.”

  “Don’t talk to strangers. Uncle Nathan’s exactly right. But it’s all right when you’re with me. I know everyone. Come along.” Pulling on the hand of the ragged bear they held between them, she started up the driveway. “Good afternoon, Mr. McKinney. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I’m Agatha Winchester. My sister, Corinna, and I live in the Victorian on the corner over there.”

  He blinked as if startled, then accepted the hand she offered. “Ross McKinney.”

  “And this is Brendan Dalton. He lives in the blue Victorian right over there.” She pointed directly across the street, where just a corner of the second floor of the Bishop house showed behind its neighbor. “Say hello to Mr. McKinney, Brendan.”

  The boy shifted the bear’s paw to his other hand, then extended his right hand. “Hello, Mr. McKinney.”