Winter Wonderland: An O'Malley Christmas story (The O'Malleys Book 2)

by Michelle McLoughney

  Tess knew that if she was honest with herself, her mother’s death had everything to do with her love of Christmas. She couldn’t remember that last Christmas they had spent together as a proper family, but knew without a shadow of a doubt that her mammy and the family had been happy. If she didn’t know it, she saw the evidence every time she walked into the family home on Pear Tree farm. There it was, pride of place above the old stone fireplace, a huge photograph of that last Christmas. Her mammy and daddy sitting on the couch and Tess and the boys draped in various poses around them both. Tess looked at her own smiling face in the photograph and willed herself to remember, but she was too small and so much life had gone by since then. Twenty years of memories had clouded the ten short formative years they had as a family before her mammy had died. A massive asthma attack on December 27th had ended it all. The family picture was all that was left of that time, all those years before. Her dad hadn’t forgotten though. He still signed her name on every present and every card sent, as if leaving her off it would be somehow admitting that she was gone, an unknowable slight against the woman he had never sought to replace. Sometimes when she went into the house she could smell her mother’s perfume. Chanel no5. Her father left it beside her mother’s pillow and sprayed it every now and then to remind him of her scent. Her brothers had moved on, as children are bound to do, each one of them finding their place in the world moving away for college and then work.

  And that’s why Tess loved Christmas, because for two weeks of the year they all came home. And she could play mammy of the house. Apron on, Tess would hold the turkey on its platter and turn around looking from one face to the other. Pure appreciation and love glowed on each face in front of her. And just like that, in that one moment in time, Tess knew her place. She was useful again. She was needed and this was where she wanted to stay, basking in the sunny glow of warmth. Family. She had wanted one of her own for so long. A house of her own, a husband and children, three cats and two fluffy dogs, all of them laughing and running through the rooms. Oh she knew it was the antithesis of what a woman in 2014 should want. She should want it all, a career, a life, a dream and maybe a family when she was done. But no matter how many times her friends lectured her on the need to carve a place in the world for herself, Tess was a home bird through and through. And what in God’s name was wrong with it? Were her dreams and wants so banal that they didn’t deserve credit? What the hell was wrong with just wanting to settle down and be a mom? It’s a full time job, you know! Her friends just sniggered at her and raised their eyes to heaven, saying, oh my God Tess, I couldn’t do it! I’d be bored out of my mind. Tess just shrugged her shoulders, she knew what she wanted, what her heart wanted.

  Not that it was going to plan in any shape or form, of course. She had a chance once. With Cal. Tess squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her tongue inside her top lip rubbing it along her gum. Reliable, family orientated, dependable Cal. Yeah right! Four years she had wasted. Four feckin years they had been everything to each other. She had known after the first six months that he was the one. He even loved Christmas as much as she did. They had sat together every December first and spray painted acorns gold and silver to display on the windowsills. Last Christmas Eve they had made love before walking hand and hand to the big Christmas tree in the village with the rest of the town folk. Gazing lovingly at his big frame, she was blissfully happy as they sung carols until the clock struck midnight and Christmas day arrived in Kilvarna. She remembered the cold winter air mixing with the warmth of his breath as they had stood under the tree; he had turned to her and smiled softly saying.

  “Marry me Tess.”

  “Yes,” she had squealed, oh yes. A month later he had come into their flat, well his flat, in an excited flurry and slammed two tickets on their kitchen table.

  “What are these?” She had asked bemused. And he had taken her hands in his, in that so Cal way of his, and announced.

  “I want us to travel. I sold the flat last month. I didn’t want to tell you till the money was in the bank. And this morning it was there when I checked. We can do everything we always talked about. Two years Tess, two years of non-stop travel. We fly out to south America next Sunday morning.”

  “What? You sold the flat? Two years! But next Sunday is…!”

  Cal looked at her with confusion etched on his face. “Next Sunday is what?”

  She laughed nervously. “It’s just…it’s just…so soon. I thought we could get married and maybe settle down for a while. And then travel, maybe we could start with something less. I dunno, less…”

  “Less?”

  “Long-term.”

  Cal pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down slowly looking at her with a mixture of sadness and regret. And right then, just like that. She knew. He was going without her. “Tess, we talked about this at great length. I thought we wanted the same things?”

  “We do Cal, I do. It’s just…Maybe not two years, I mean what would my dad do without me? And the boys too?” Cal had jumped up suddenly furious at her lack of excitement.

  “Oh stop it Tess! These are grown men we are talking about for heaven’s sake! What are you afraid of? Being happy? Not being needed? You. Are. Not. Their. Mother. Your mother is dead Tess. Dead!”

  Tess had stared at him open mouthed and stood up holding a shaking hand on the table to steady herself. She pulled the ring from her left hand and set it down gently in front of them. He looked at it, took it and put it into his pocket shaking his head.

  “Forgive me Tess. That was unkind. You will never be truly happy Tessie, because you want something no one can give you. You want the Brady bunch, the Waltons and little house on the fucking prairie all mixed together.”

  Tess stood back as he walked passed her and out the door. He’d be back. They had put four years into their relationship and Cal wouldn’t just walk away like that. She locked herself into her workroom and worked on little pieces of jewellery all weekend, anxiously waiting for the turn of the key in her flat door. All the next week she waited for him to call. It turned out Cal could just walk away. Tess logged onto her Facebook account the following Monday morning and found frantic messages from her friends. She checked notification after notification. Cal was in Peru! Cal was in fucking Peru! Was she with him? No! I’m bloody not! Cal was working his way down to Chile. Feckin Chile? She had stared at the screen and wondered if it was some kind of sick joke.

  He rang her after the first month. A month of nothing, a month of listening to sad God-awful music on a loop. A month of crying and second-guessing herself and their relationship. Was she really that easy to walk away from? Obviously she was! Cal hadn’t even asked her to reconsider. When he rang he was all talk of a family he had met in Brazil. Especially Martha, the eldest daughter, an artist she noted bitterly before reprimanding herself. It was good that he was making friends, wasn’t it? When Tess had asked about their relationship he had paused for so long she thought they had been cut off. She heard a young woman speaking to him in the background, and he had called something back to her in Portuguese. When the hell did he learn Portuguese? He told her they would talk soon. The hours turned into days, turned into weeks and Tess finally began to accept that he wasn’t going to call again.

  She checked her Facebook page every now and then and stuck her tongue out at Cal and Martha trekking through the Andes, Cal and Martha in Rio at the carnival. Cal and Martha swimming in an underwater cave pool in Tunisia. Cal and feckin Martha. Martha and feckin Cal. She growled at the image of Cal feeding Martha ice cream in Italy. In the end she had logged on one day and wasn’t too surprised to find that Cal had deleted her from Facebook. And that was the end of that.

  Eventually after six months Cal had sent her an email telling her how sorry he was but it was over. As if she didn’t already know. And by then she wasn’t even sad about it, she was so far over it all she could think was, what a dipshit! He described in detail how he had fallen passionately, truly, madly and deeply in love wi
th…what’s her name again? Oh yeah MARTHA!!!!!! Her brothers Ciaran and Tom had found her reading the email bawling her eyes out and staged an intervention. Tom sent a strongly worded email back to Cal accompanied by a picture of a cow taking a massive shite in a field, the perfect combination of eloquence and immaturity. How perfectly Tom-like. Tess had of course spent yet another few months in a state of absolute gut wrenching vodka aided depression, while she attempted to understand exactly where the hell she had gone wrong. Eventually she had to pull herself together and admit that Cal just wasn’t the one. Not her one anyway.

  So that was Cal and Jax off the list. Admittedly she wasn’t as cut up over Jax. He definitely wasn’t the one, and in a way that had made him more appealing. He was fun and light-hearted and even though her brothers had taken the piss out of his posh Dublin accent she hadn’t cared.

  Tess wandered around her flat until she found herself at the kettle and made a steaming mug of coco. Taking the mug over to the large sitting room window of her second story apartment she sat on the large window seat curling her legs underneath her. Placing the cup precariously on the ledge, she pulled on her fluffy Christmas elf socks that Tom had bought her last Christmas. Gazing out her window, she watched families as they walked up and down the main street below doing some late night Christmas shopping. Blowing a ring of air on the window, Tess traced a heart with her fingertip and sat back closing her eyes and letting the sadness of the day wash over her. She picked up her remote and clicked on her CD player, she listened and nodded in agreement as Neil Young sang about how Only Love Can Break Your Heart.

  Burke Nason stood on the side of Main Street looking up into the window of the two-storey apartment. He cocked his head slightly to the side and tried to tear his eyes away from the girl at the window. Tess. Illuminated only by soft candlelight, he found that he couldn’t look away from her. There was a sadness surrounding her that drew him in like a moth to a flame. Watching as she rested her head against the window frame, he saw her eyes as they followed the crowds across the street. He had seen that look before, so many times. Every time he looked in the mirror, his eyes had the same dull melancholy within them. She was so beautiful too he mused, that’s probably it, probably why he couldn’t look away.

  Standing in the doorframe of the little gift shop, he had the perfect vantage point and felt a bit guilty for watching her while she remained unaware of his presence. He shouldn’t be spying on her; he had only intended to pass by to she if she was home safe. Liar, liar pants on fire. Oh Jesus shut up! Soft caramel coloured long hair framed her pretty heart-shaped face. He smiled when he saw her blow softly on the window and trace a heart shape on the window. He wondered what it would feel like to be held tightly in her arms at night. It felt like forever since he had felt the softness of a woman in his arms. Oh he had offers; sure, at work he had women who had shown their interest in subtle and not so subtle ways. But he hadn’t wanted just any woman, he wanted Tess O’Malley. He wanted her so badly it physically hurt. Burke closed his eyes momentarily and his thoughts invariably floated back to Sinead. Lovely Sinead. He smiled to himself when he remembered her, always smiling, always happy, his Sinead. Well, happy until the last year they had spent together. Even though his medical training had allowed him to glimpse into all walks of life he had never imagined that someone like Sinead would become a drug addict.

  A wife, his wife for that matter. Educated and respectable, a well-known and much loved pharmacist, Sinead had the world at her feet. Until the accident that is, who would have thought a simple fender bender would forever alter all their lives. Sinead had been lucky though, and escaped with only a minor back injury and a niggling case of whiplash. He had treated her himself for heaven sake, and when she had finished the first dose of painkillers, he had assumed that was that. She had healed quickly and easily physically, but her access to pain medication meant that Sinead had continued to medicate herself in secret. He blamed himself, it was that simple, and sure who else’s fault was it? He had been busy, too busy in that first year after his appointment as senior surgical resident.

  Being a doctor in the ER he was constantly working all the hours under the sun. They saw each other less than they should have; he hadn’t even seen the signs until after the incident. I should have noticed. I should have seen! The progressive dependency, the fuzziness, the despondency. Until, it was too late. Sinead had slowly fallen into the clutches of addiction, and when she had overdosed he had been more shocked than anyone. Oh he had acted then, off into rehab with her, fix her up and get her back to normal. For a while the old Sinead had returned. Spirited and alive with laughter and life, but somehow more guarded. But sure things change you, don’t they? It was to be expected. From then on he watched for the signs, worked less, well a bit less, everything returned to normal. Or so he had thought.

  On that July morning the ER was relatively quiet, it should have been a sign, maybe, some kind of ominous sign of what was to come. When the stretcher approached he caught a glimpse of long black hair and something stilted inside him. Something punched its way into his chest and caught his pumping heart and squeezed it so tight he could barely breathe. Sinead. Sinead gone. Already gone. The ambulance crew had worked on her all the way in the road but she was already gone. His training had taken over then, he had ushered them into a cubicle and continued CPR feeling two of her ribs crack beneath his fingers as he frantically pushed on her chest until they had dragged him off her. He remembered the faces of his colleagues who stood around silenced by the shock of the circumstance.

  “Daddy.”

  “Daddy?”

  Burke felt the tug on his hand and looked down into the face of the little black haired mini Sinead that stood fidgeting at his side.

  “Sorry, Lilly.” He bent down and gave her a hug. So sorry Lilly.

  “What are you looking at daddy? Are you looking for Tess?” she laughed pulling off his hat. He laughed back at her and nuzzled his nose off hers.

  Lilly scrunched up her nose and looked up at the window where the beautiful Tess had sat. It was an empty space now except for the flicker of candlelight. Burke felt a twinge of loss for the absence of her form. Idiot. He turned his attention back to Lilly and bent down on his knees to be at eye level with her.

  “ No. I’m looking at the sky to see if I can see Santa Claus making his way across the sky. Only twenty-four more days left till he is here, I thought he might be practising. You know getting the reindeers all warmed up.” Lilly raised her eyebrows and giggled.

  “I think you are fibbing daddy. Were you looking for mummy? In the sky?”

  Burke felt his heart and soul sadden for his little girl. Their little girl. So wanted by both of them. Burke and Sinead were both only children, and had agreed early in their relationship that they would love a big family. Sinead had been so close to her own parents, she had wanted to replicate the joy and love she had felt as a child. Burke rarely saw Sinead’s parents anymore. It was as if both he and Lilly were a constant reminder of what they had lost. His own parents had been older and had died years before he had even met Sinead. He was all the love Lilly really had, apart from a few close friends and their kindly neighbour Mrs Jones. Lilly was his world and he was hers too. He would do anything it took to make his little girl feel like she mattered, because she did, she mattered so much.

  “Mummy is up there helping Santa too, Lil. Your mummy loved Christmas. It was her favourite time of year, that and your birthday were her two most special days.” Lilly nodded and smiled at him, she threw her arms around his neck and he kissed her cheek, grateful for the contact and the warmth. Sometimes he forgot what it was to be held by another. To be loved by another so selflessly, and then he looked at Lilly and all was right with the world again. She missed her mummy, or having a mummy. Lilly had been only one when Sinead had passed on. Too young to remember her mummy’s smile, her mummy’s laugh, her mummy’s love.

  Burke put Lilly back down by his side gently, fixing her coat an
d hat and they walked off hand in hand towards the car park. He glanced once more at the window where his dream girl had sat. When did she become that? He wondered if she was okay. He wondered if she ever thought of him the way he thought of her. I’d never be that lucky.

  Tess poured the rest of her coco down the sink and saw the red flashing light on her answerphone indicating a message. She sighed and pressed it. Jax’s voice came through in a frightened, panicked whisper.