The Time of Her Life

by Jeanie London

  “Good idea. They don’t ever get the goodies Liz puts out during the day. Not fresh at least.” Susanna released him, leaving a cool emptiness where she’d been, and went to the vegetable basket hanging beside the baker’s rack.

  “Speaking of feeding the multitudes.” She handled a few peppers and onions and then chose one of each. A woman who knew her vegetables and understood that appearances could be deceiving. Jay liked that about her.

  “I should shop for an air mattress this weekend,” she said. “Where’s a good place to find one?”

  “Hmm. Let me think.” Jay considered the choices, liked how she’d consulted him, and wondered if he could invite himself along on her shopping trip.

  Each day they traversed new terrain in this turn their relationship had taken. Playing house, Susanna called it, and enjoying the moment.

  This moment had been going on two weeks.

  Jay had definitely enjoyed every second. Susanna was easy to play house with. As long as he didn’t get sidetracked thinking about what would happen when the clock stopped ticking and their time together ran out.

  “Got a couple of bedding warehouses that might have a good selection and decent prices. Then there’s always Walmart.”

  “Good idea. I should probably check online so I don’t wind up running around for something I don’t want. Brandon won’t mind sleeping on the couch, but he’ll be here for nearly two weeks. I want him to be comfortable.”

  She was being a good mom. A nurturer, Gerald had called her. Jay liked that about her, too.

  “Where’s this air mattress going? The office?”

  “Where else? Brooke can sleep with me.”

  She sounded so matter-of-fact Jay knew she must have been debating the decision for a while. He was getting the hang of Susanna, the more intimately he got to know her. The more uncertain she was, the more no-nonsense she got. He hadn’t realized that about her before.

  “Will your daughter keep my spot warm?”

  “I suppose.” The response was noncommittal but the mention of their sleeping arrangements sent color into her cheeks.

  For as no-nonsense as Susanna could be, she blushed so easily. Jay found all it took was a well-placed word about their relationship to get a response.

  In the darkness of her bed, where they’d done most of their getting to know each other, she’d shared a lot about her life. She’d married young and hadn’t done much actual dating before her husband. So the sum total of her experience with men wasn’t a whole lot.

  Funny, how he was the one who hadn’t left his family home, but he had a lot more experience dating than this caring woman who’d experienced so many of the things in life he wanted to.

  “So who all’s coming for Christmas?” he asked, then looked at his dogs. “Besides these two greedy beggars, I mean.”

  Butters and Gatsby were a given at every meal.

  But Jay did wonder what her kids would be like in person. He’d seen their photos in her office and in the cottage. Good-looking kids who looked way too grown up to belong to Susanna. He wondered how she’d introduce him. As her co-administrator? He supposed that worked under the circumstances.

  He didn’t like the thought of being her little secret. He also didn’t relish the idea of sacrificing two weeks when they were on a time limit.

  Of course, he’d never begrudge her a visit with her kids, not when she was so starved to be with the people she loved. And she was. He’d come to recognize the symptoms in the way she panicked whenever her cell phone wasn’t within easy reach, the way she dropped everything to take a call or respond to a text.

  Connections to her life.

  What was it about The Arbors that disconnected everyone from reality? When he and Drew were younger, they’d speculated that The Arbors resided in an atmospheric bubble that sealed them off from the real world, protected them from natural disasters and nuclear attacks and even alien invasions.

  Jay had thought those scenarios were the product of two imaginative brothers going through the science fiction phase of boyhood, but there’s been some truth, after all.

  No, Jay didn’t have any right at all to demand to be introduced to her kids as anything other than a co-administrator. Not when he had nothing more to offer than a few months of playing house.

  * * *

  SUSANNA QUICKLY DISCOVERED that decking out The Arbors for Christmas was a weeklong event that involved everyone. Tessa worked so hard decorating for Thanksgiving that unlike retail stores where Christmas displays went up for Black Friday, they were into December before the remnants of Thanksgiving vanished.

  “I don’t see the point in rushing,” Tessa told Susanna while covering the activity room windows with sheets of white paper, creating the backdrop to a winter scene that would dominate the entrance to the first-floor lockdown. “I can keep Christmas until Epiphany, which is well into the new year. That’s why I do a combo holiday theme. Then I can start taking down Christmas a little at a time while we’re still glittery for the New Year.”

  Her process made sense. No question about how labor intensive decorating could be. Every lobby of every wing got a separate winter scene. Then there were archways strung with lights, plus foil snowflakes hanging from ceiling grids every three feet on every wing of every floor. There must have been a thousand of them, all hung with painstaking care, all creating a sparkling ambience with the facility’s lighting.

  And Tessa made sure there was a display for every religion of the residents’ demographic. Beautiful Nativity scenes showcased the Holy Family, as well as a collection of stars of Bethlehem, ranging from artistic cut glass to strobe lights. A festival of lights celebrated Hanukkah. Kinara centerpieces decorated the dining room tables for Kwanzaa. Wreaths, garland, holly and mistletoe abounded wherever one turned.

  Then there were the trees.

  Every corner and cubby had one. Each decorated with an individual theme. Chester with his toolbox and ladder seemed to be everywhere Susanna turned. And she did her part to share in the excitement, recruiting her own team of decorating assistants to help with the trees on the ALF floors.

  “What a marvelous idea,” Tessa told Susanna. “I never thought to involve the residents, but there’s no reason not to. Not up on the ALF, anyway.”

  “They always helped decorate in New York,” Susanna explained. “Kicked off the excitement. Dining would provide coffee and cookies and we’d make a party of it.”

  Of course, that had been in the ALF and the massive twelve-hundred unit independent living facility, where residents didn’t require too much supervision. Susanna kept that part to herself. Everyone around The Arbors knew the ins and outs of protecting their charges. That was the job and they were well trained.

  Tessa also liked the party idea, and it wasn’t long before Liz showed up with Christmas-flavored coffee and baked goods.

  The only person noticeably absent from the decorating was Jay. Somehow whenever anything needed to be hung, draped or wrapped, the man was nowhere to be found. Then one day he vanished completely.

  Susanna asked Tessa if Jay was typically missing in action while they were outside in the cold, stringing the lights around a life-size crèche that Tessa said had been handcrafted by Jay’s father, specifically to decorate the facility entrance.

  “Do not even talk to me about Mr. C.” Tessa waved a dismissive hand. “He is on my list of people to kill. Number one, in fact.”

  Her response didn’t invite q
uestions, but Susanna would have asked Jay if she could have tracked him down. No one seemed to have seen him, and when she text-messaged him, she received no response. She tried him on the radio, and all she got was a cryptic message, telling her he was in the middle of something and would get back to her soon.

  Soon didn’t happen by any reasonable person’s definition of the word. But the day wore on without him, keeping her busy with the nonstop pace of a shift change, three types of therapy and two transfers. Transfer literally meant a resident transferring from the bed to a chair and from the chair to a walker and using the walker to visit the bathroom without assistance. There were a series of progressive behavioral tests, but this final test made the determination if the resident could be released from the first-floor nursing center and returned to the ALF. As a result, it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster for the residents.

  One passed. One didn’t.

  “Yet,” she said, explaining to Mr. Minahan why he couldn’t rejoin his wife of sixty-five years in their third-floor apartment. “We can try again in another few days when you’re feeling stronger after a few more therapy sessions. In the meantime, you’re still free to go upstairs and spend the day visiting—”

  “I’m not an infant, young lady,” Mr. Minahan, normally an easygoing man, informed her in a dull roar. “I pay a fortune to live in this establishment. I’ll decide where I can and can’t spend the night without your help, thank you very much.”

  The exchange degenerated from there, despite Susanna’s best efforts to assuage his disappointment. Mr. Minahan did finally settle down, but only when his wife and the occupational therapist took him upstairs for his daily visit.

  Jay must have heard about the incident because when he finally showed up, he insisted they leave even though they normally waited until the place settled down after dinner.

  “You don’t have anything left to do that can’t wait until tomorrow, do you?”

  He was being strange. Susanna couldn’t put her finger on why, but said, “No, we can leave if you want.”

  His smile flashed wide then he was unplugging her laptop and hurrying her to pack her belongings.

  Susanna didn’t bother asking, just shrugged on her coat. Then he led her through the back employee door and to his golf cart parked at the maintenance and engineering building.

  To her surprise, though, Jay steered away from the family path by the lake and onto the hard road.

  “Okay, you’re flipping me out.” She couldn’t keep silent any longer. “What’s going on?”

  He slanted a laughing glance her way, green eyes sparkling. “Trust me.”

  He might be spiking her curiosity right now, but Susanna did indeed trust him. Whatever he had going on was exciting him in a way she’d never seen before. Flashing a smile as the chill wind bit her cheeks, she said, “I do.”

  The hard road veered to the right, and when he wheeled off the road toward the cottage, she saw instantly why he’d insisted they’d leave the facility early.

  She would have missed his surprise once darkness fell.

  “Oh, is this what you were doing today?” She breathed the words on the edge of a breath.

  “It is.” The golf cart ground to a stop, and Jay turned to her, propping his arm over the seat to watch her reaction.

  The front of the cottage had been touched by Christmas. Wreathes with bright red bows perched in the center of each window and on the door. Lush evergreen garland twined around the column and swagged along the eaves and down the banister. Mistletoe hung from the arch leading up the steps.

  He’d even covered the caned chairs with red-and-green runners, and strung lights in the bushes, transforming her charming cottage with welcoming Christmas cheer.

  “I wanted your first Christmas in your new home to be special.”

  Oh. The breath caught in her throat, making it impossible to respond until that feeling of humility filtered through her, eased up its grip to know how much he cared.

  On what a big, big mess they were making together.

  “It’s special.” She dragged her gaze from the sight, pressed a kiss on his cheek. “And you’re special.”

  Simple words she meant from the bottom of her heart, her heart that was melting around the edges at the sight of his grimace. This man had trouble accepting compliments.

  “I only decorated outside. I didn’t want to go in without you.”

  Keeping those boundaries firmly in place. She understood. “You could have, you know.”

  “I know. But if my plan works, I won’t have to.”

  “What plan?”

  “You’ll see. Done admiring my handiwork yet?” He swept a hand toward the newly decorated cottage.

  She nodded.

  He threw the golf cart into gear so fast that she grabbed onto the frame and hung on for dear life. Wheeling around the cottage, he drove onto the path leading back to the facility. His excitement was contagious, and she was melting inside because of his thoughtfulness. They didn’t go far, and he surprised her when he slowed to make the turn into his backyard.

  “Jay, what are—”

  “Just wait.” He wheeled onto the flagstone path. “I want you to close your eyes. I’d cover them just to make sure you don’t peek, but I obviously can’t do that and drive.”

  She laughed. “Okay, no peeking.”

  Somehow sitting beside him with her eyes closed heightened her awareness of his excitement. She could practically feel his anticipation, although she couldn’t explain why. But it was there between them, had been since the first, a connection that made being with this man so easy.

  The golf cart slowed then jerked to a stop. Followed by the barking. A welcome. A furry body brushed against her and she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut and petted someone. Butters? Gatsby? She couldn’t be sure.

  “Come on, you two,” Jay said. “Calm down.”

  The golf cart rocked wildly off balance as he hopped out. His footsteps ground over the gravel before he pressed an open hand over her eyes for good measure.

  “Don’t look. Not yet. I’ll tell you when.” With his free hand, he helped her step from the golf cart then circled her around, shooing the dogs out of her way. “Chill out, guys.”

  Then he said, “Ready?” but didn’t wait for a reply before moving his hand away. “Open your eyes.”

  Susanna did, and gasped aloud.

  Jay’s decorations on her cottage had only been a preview of what he’d done to his home. The same evergreen swags and twining garland. The same wreaths with bright red bows.

  On a grand scale.

  Multicolored lights twinkled all over the formal landscaping. There was another crèche on the lawn, smaller than the one at the facility, but designed with the same attention to detail in the woodworking that would make Susanna bet money Jay’s dad had built this one, too.

  Rows of solar-powered lights in red and green lined the driveway along the oak alley leading to the hard road. Each stately oak tree had been wound with red-and-white lights so they looked like peppermint sticks standing guard on both sides.

  “Oh. My. Gosh.” There were no words to describe the sight as she turned slowly, taking in the merry sight, the dusk giving an inkling of the festive effect of all those lights.

  “I wanted our Christmas together to be perfect.”

  Their one and only Christmas.

  She brutally squelched that thought. She was grateful for this gl
orious time with this special man and wasn’t wasting one single millisecond on regrets.

  He grabbed her hand and led her up the grand stairs to his house. She was breathless with laughter as he shoved open the doors, urging her ahead of him.

  “Ladies first.”

  Then she stepped inside the grand foyer of his home to find the place transformed into a cheery Christmas celebration straight from another century.

  Pine boughs draped the banister up the curving staircase. Big gold bells hung between each baluster. Swags dripped from the archways and lights twinkled from the foliage. Angels holding trumpets greeted her from a shelf beside a coatrack, and a smiling fat Santa shouted, “Ho, ho, ho!” activated by the motion of the opening door.

  The effort to create this Christmas wonderland had been no less than enormous, and Susanna understood why he’d been MIA so much. His generosity of spirit simply stole her breath.

  “Jay, this is possibly the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me. It couldn’t be more perfect.”

  He glanced down at her, his expression melting into amusement. “This isn’t the gift. Well, only a part of it.”

  “Oh.”

  Slipping his hands over her shoulders, he nudged her around to face him. “I want you to cancel those rooms at the Hilton and have Christmas here with your family.”

  Oh. “Oh.” She stared into his face, that oh, so handsome face so eager for her to accept his gift, and she was swept away by his tenderness, so completely touched by his thoughtfulness that tears stung her eyes.

  “I wanted your first Christmas in your new home to be special.”

  Her impulse was to wrap her arms around him and not let go. She wanted to hold him close and make him feel how much his kindness meant. How much he meant.