Some Enchanted Season

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Seeing that you’re making an attempt at independence, I don’t suppose this would be a good time to mention that you left out the spices, would it?”

  Heat flooded her face. Very carefully she straightened, turned, and carried the pie back to the island. Sure enough, half hidden under the dish towel was the small ceramic bowl of the spices.

  Her first impulse, born of frustration, was to dump the pie, plate and all, into the garbage and walk out, but that would be admitting defeat, and she hadn’t gotten where she was today by accepting defeat. Without saying a word, she emptied the filling into the bowl, stirred in the spices, then refilled the crust. And as soon as the pie was in the oven, she walked out through the back door and onto the porch.

  How could she have forgotten? She had stood there just moments earlier and measured the spices so precisely, and then they’d slipped from her mind. She felt as if she had a sieve for a brain.

  On the other hand, it would have been so much more embarrassing to take the pie to dinner and find out her mistake from strangers.

  “Our first Thanksgiving.”

  She didn’t turn to look at Ross but listened to his footsteps on the concrete as he crossed to her, laying a jacket over her shoulders—one of his, she realized immediately as the scent of his cologne perfumed the chilly air. Pulling it close, she breathed deeply of the fragrance as he leaned against the wall in front of her.

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Our first Thanksgiving? Of course. We were living in that awful little apartment, and we had no money.” That was no exaggeration. They’d subsisted those first years on macaroni and cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, and mostly vegetarian meals.

  Ross took over. “We couldn’t afford a turkey, and there was no reason for dressing without turkey, so we had roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. And for dessert we had our only traditional Thanksgiving dish.”

  “Pumpkin pie.” She raised one hand to massage the ache in her forehead. “Only instead of pie filling I’d bought plain pureed pumpkin, and I forgot to add sugar, and it was awful.”

  He pulled her hand away. “It was an honest mistake. You were distracted. That was all.”

  Then or now? she wanted to ask, but it didn’t matter, because the answer was both. This time she’d been talking with him—had been defensive with him—about her cooking. That time they’d slept late, celebrating a rare day off from both school and work. She’d just started making the pie when Ross had come in to entice her back to bed. Reading directions had been impossible when he was whispering wicked words in her ears, when his hands were doing wicked things to her body. Dazed and barely able to stand, much less think, she’d finished the pie in a hurry, and they’d made it only as far as the sofa in the next room before they made love.

  Funny. She hadn’t thought about that day in years, and yet even then she remembered the heat, the longing, the need. Even then she felt the intense hunger, absent for so long, beginning to stir.

  Hot, embarrassed, flustered, she pulled her hand back and tucked it inside the jacket, curling her fingers into tight fists. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He didn’t ask for what, but merely shrugged. After a moment he did ask, “Is that really how you remember our first apartment? As an awful place?”

  “Three tiny rooms, no hot water half the time, no air-conditioning in summer and enough heat only to keep from freezing in winter?” She sat down a few feet away. “No, it wasn’t awful.”

  “It gave us a good reason to generate our own heat.”

  And they had, every chance they got.

  He looked up at the house, in a different universe from that shabby apartment, and gave an awed shake of his head. “God, we’ve come a long way.”

  “You have,” she corrected him. “After you finished college, I was just along for the ride.”

  “That’s not true, Maggie. I couldn’t have done half what I’ve done without you.”

  Her smile was faint. “Better be careful. Under the circumstances, your pet shark would warn you not to say such things. I might repeat them to the judge in an attempt to get more than I deserve.”

  “Tom’s not a shark. And you deserve damn near all of it. You can have as much as you want.”

  Her smile broadened and made her feel a few years younger. “You feel safe saying that because you know I don’t want it all, because money can’t buy the things I want. But thank you for offering.”

  He looked at her for a long time, his blue eyes solemn, a little sad. “I’m going to miss you.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, then clamped it shut and pointedly looked away.

  His gaze searched her profile, then finally, quietly, he asked, “What were you going to say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Obviously it was something. What?”

  Her exhalation sounded loud and formed a puff of vapor before disappearing. She gave him a sharp look. “Why didn’t you miss me before? When I would have done anything to get your attention? When I missed you so much I thought I would die? When it would have done some good? Why didn’t you miss me then, Ross?”

  His gaze shifted away from her to some point on the floor, and his jaw set tightly.

  “Do you know how much time I’ve spent alone—how many nights I’ve slept alone?” She heard the anguish in her voice but couldn’t make it go away. “Do you know how many times I’ve tried to talk to you only to discover you weren’t listening? How many times you’ve shut me out? How many times you looked right through me as if I had no place in your life?”

  “I imagine about the same number of times you’ve ignored me, shut me out, and turned your back on me,” he said stiffly. “I had to work long and hard in the beginning, Maggie, you know that. If I wanted to succeed, I had no choice.”

  “You worked long and hard because you wanted to. Because the business was important to you. I wasn’t.” She stood up, walked to the door, then came back to plant herself in front of him. “We were supposed to love and honor and cherish each other forever. When did it end? Why did it end?”

  “Because we wanted different things. I wanted success. Power. And you wanted …” His shrug appeared as casual as his gaze was intense. “Someone who wasn’t me.”

  For a long while she stared at him. She wanted to deny his last words, but there was too much truth in them. With another heavy sigh the tension left her. “Is it that simple?” she asked wistfully. “Wanting different things destroyed all that love, all that commitment, all that passion? Were we that fragile? That weak?” Her throat grew tight with anger and emotion. “Damn it, Ross, how did this happen to us? How did we get here?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was weary, flat. It made her feel the same way. “I just don’t know.”

  Moments passed without notice as they stared at each other, sorrowful and regretful and each of them alone. After a time she sighed one final sigh. “I’d better check on the pie.” When he made no move to stop her, no move to speak, she went inside and closed the door. She left him in the cold and thought it was only fair.

  After all, he’d left her there a long time ago.

  More than any other holiday—even Christmas—Thanksgiving seemed to Ross a family holiday. Growing up an only child with no relatives nearby left him with limited experience with family. His mother had come from Alabama, where Ted McKinney was stationed during a short army stint. She’d been only seventeen when he’d sweet-talked her into bed with promises of marriage, kids, and a better life as an army wife, traveling to bases in places that sounded foreign and exotic to a south Alabama girl.

  Against her family’s wishes, she’d married him, and right away he’d begun breaking his promises. There was no army career, no exotic new homes. Instead, he’d finished his enlistment and headed back to Buffalo for a factory job that provided a paycheck-to-paycheck existence and a life no better—and in many ways worse—than the one she’d dreamed of leaving behind.

  Ther
e hadn’t been much of a family either—just Ross, and the old man had decided that was plenty. The older Ross got, the more his father had regretted that decision. He’d thought any son of his would be the spittin’ image of him, just as he was of his own father. He’d believed there could be nothing more important to Ted McKinney’s boy than sports, drinking, and scoring with the girls. He’d mocked Ross’s desire to go to college, had scorned Maura’s support of that desire, and had declared a hundred times too many that there was no way in hell such a worthless kid could possibly have come from him.

  Nothing would have made Ross happier than to find out that the old man was right, but there was no chance. Maura had been the sort of woman who never looked at another man while turning a blind eye to her husband’s endless affairs. Besides, the proof had stared them in the face every damn day—the same black hair, the same blue eyes, the same angular jaw. He hadn’t seen his father in nearly twenty years, not since his mother’s death and his own graduation from high school, but he imagined the resemblance was still there.

  So was the scorn, the bitterness, the animosity.

  So, knowing so little about families and all that meant, what was he doing spending a family holiday with a bunch of total strangers?

  Giving Maggie the support she needed to rebuild her friendships with her new neighbors, he reminded himself. That he felt uncomfortably out of his element, that he would rather be home alone, was irrelevant. This was for Maggie.

  A blond woman answered the door and greeted Maggie like an old friend. She sent the pie to the kitchen in the care of a coltish young girl, sent their coats off to the guest room with a younger girl, then made introductions as they passed through the living room. Ross shook hands with the men, endured pats on the arm from women old enough to be his mother and too young to be his wife. He wasn’t accustomed to such casual touches. Beyond brief, impersonal handshakes, he rarely made physical contact with anyone. It wasn’t, he discovered quickly, an entirely comfortable experience.

  “Welcome to our home, Maggie, Ross.” Miss Agatha rested her hand on his shoulder. “Did you meet everyone? Don’t worry—you’ll get the names straight eventually. Ross, help yourself to something to drink, then find a place to sit and talk while I steal Maggie away for a minute.”

  He wanted to protest, wanted to stay close to Maggie’s side on the pretext that she might need him. Truth was, she might protect him—might act as a buffer between him and these too-friendly people.

  But she had come to meet her neighbors and forgotten friends, not to deflect attention from him. So when Miss Agatha led her away, he let her go, then turned to survey the crowd that filled the living room and spilled over into the other rooms. He was the only stranger in the house. Everyone knew everyone else. The snatches of conversation he overheard were about mutual acquaintances, common experiences, shared memories. Even if he wanted to take part, he couldn’t.

  He made his way to the sideboard in the dining room, doing duty today as a bar. There was a large crystal bowl filled with punch, bottles of soda in a half dozen varieties, a sterling coffee urn, and boxes of juice for the kids. He poured himself a soda—one minute gone, a hundred or more left—and found a quiet place against one wall, where he waited for Maggie to return.

  He wished he were home in Buffalo. That was his city, his place, even more than Bethlehem was Maggie’s. He knew the city like the back of his hand and was known in all the places worth going to. That was where he belonged on this family holiday—in some elegant restaurant, the subdued luxury of his office, or the quiet of his house. Failing that, he should have stayed at Maggie’s house. Obviously, she didn’t need the support he’d smugly thought he was providing, and he didn’t need to feel like a leper plunked down in the middle of—

  “Hey, Ross, you like football?”

  The question startled him out of his thoughts. He turned a blank look on Alex Thomas, who’d spoken from the hallway. Most of the younger men were gathered around him.

  “Football?” he echoed, then lied. For Maggie’s sake? Or his own? “Yes. Sure.”

  “Come on. The TV’s this way.”

  He followed them to a sunny sitting room, where the television, a big old console model, was tuned to an all-sports channel. Taking the last empty chair, he considered the men as they talked amiably around him. Though he hadn’t paid them particular attention, these people were easy to recall, maybe because instinct had told him they would most likely be important to Maggie. Or, maybe, he thought with a hint of cynicism, just because he was good with details. It was part of business.

  There was Nathan Bishop, one of Bethlehem’s finest who’d come there from the New York City police department. He lived across the street in the blue house, was married to Emilie, the blonde who’d answered the door, and was uncle to the little boy who’d visited Tuesday with Miss Agatha.

  Mitch Walker was the chief of Bethlehem’s finest and seemed well suited to the position. He gave the impression of possessing just the right mix of reliability, trustworthiness, respect for what was good and right, and compassion for the people he served. His wife, Shelley, was the very pregnant woman Maggie had looked longingly at when they’d met.

  Dean Elliott was a few years older than Ross and another refugee from elsewhere. He was single and an artist of some sort. According to Melissa Thomas, Maggie had purchased several of his pieces last year for the house.

  Ross wondered idly if Elliott was interested in getting married, then backed away from the idea. He wasn’t playing matchmaker. He wanted Maggie to be happy, but how she accomplished that was entirely up to her. He wouldn’t trust his choice for her anyway. After all, until the last couple of years, he’d thought he was her perfect mate.

  The last two men in the room were Alex and J. D. Grayson. Dr. Grayson, the psychiatrist Maggie’s Buffalo doctor had recommended. Based on his knowledge of Dr. Olivetti—in her sixties, no-nonsense, blunt spoken, caring but never coddling—Ross had expected the doctor she endorsed to be similar. But J. D. Grayson wasn’t even half the doctor’s age and looked more like a lumberjack than a respected psychiatrist. He’d roughhoused with the kids, quoted football statistics with authority, and talked about the house he was building for himself halfway up the mountain.

  But his manner was all professional when he struck up a conversation with Ross. “Are you aware that Harriet Olivetti asked me to schedule a few sessions with your wife while you’re here in Bethlehem?”

  Ross nodded. “I thought I’d call for an appointment Monday.”

  “Let Maggie do it. I’m in the phone book.” A groan from the others shifted his gaze to the TV screen for an instant before he looked back. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Any adjustment problems?”

  Ross shook his head even as he wondered why he didn’t want to talk about Maggie to this man. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t discussed her in great detail with any number of physicians and therapists over the last eleven months. They were all professionals, all charged with her care. Being young and single didn’t make Dr. Grayson any different.

  Did it?

  “What about the post-traumatic syndrome? Has she been having any problems with that?”

  “She wakes up during the night.” He deliberately didn’t mention that he’d heard her from his room across the hall. The first night he hadn’t realized what had awakened him until finally he’d recognized the sound—the slow, rhythmic creak of the rocker in front of her bedroom window. He had lain there in the dark, listening, wondering what she was thinking as she looked out into the dark night. Was she peaceful? Regretful? Sorrowful?

  He didn’t have any idea, a fact that shamed him.

  “Does she go back to sleep fairly soon?”

  “Sometimes.” Tuesday night, after twenty minutes or so, silence had settled over the house again. Last night he’d fallen asleep listening.

  Whatever the doctor had intended to ask next was lost in the commotion in the hall. A h
alf dozen kids literally fell into the room, calling out amid grunts and squeals, “Dinner’s ready! Miss Agatha says turn off the TV and come eat!”

  Alex and the doctor untangled the kids, then ushered them from the room. As he stood up, Mitch Walker commented, “You and Maggie don’t have kids, do you?”

  Ross shook his head.

  “You’re missing out on a lot of fun. Kids are wonderful. Incredible. Never a moment’s trouble.” Then he grinned. “By the way, those were my two who tripped everyone else.”

  “And two of our three who landed on top of everyone else,” Nathan Bishop added dryly. “But Mitch is right. You’re missing out on a lot.”

  “A lot of what?” Elliott asked. “Noise? Chaos? Dirty diapers?”

  A lot of responsibility. A lot of changes.

  And, Maggie was convinced, a lot of love.

  A line had formed through the dining room and into the kitchen, with mothers and children at the head. With more relief than he wanted to admit to, Ross located Maggie near the refrigerator, talking with Melissa while both women watched the children with the same sort of yearning in their eyes. He knew too well why Maggie had no babies, but he wondered about Melissa. A medical problem, he would bet, because Alex seemed the likeliest candidate for fatherhood around.

  When he joined the women, Maggie offered him a vague smile. “Where have you been?”

  “Watching the football game in the other room.”

  “You don’t like football.”

  He shrugged and changed the subject. “Are you glad you came?”

  “Yes.”

  He liked her quick, decisive answer. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine. I’ve been sitting down with my feet propped up, at Miss Corinna’s insistence. You know, I’m not an invalid.”

  “No, you’re not,” he agreed before mildly going on. “But you’re also not back up to a hundred percent. You don’t want to take it too easy, but you also don’t want to push too hard.”