'Tis The Season: Under the Christmas TreeMidnight ConfessionsBackward Glance

by Robyn Carr

  “Just stop,” Leigh had said.

  And Jess had replied, “No.”

  Since Leigh knew there was no one in the universe better than John, she let her mother’s interference go. But she didn’t dare encourage her. Jess already talked about John more than Leigh did. Leigh was in complete agreement, but she didn’t want to scare him away. And they had decided not to rush for one reason only—it was ridiculous to get married after being together for a little under two months. She wasn’t entirely sure why it was ridiculous, but it certainly seemed that way.

  The boys weren’t very good ball players yet, but they sure loved it when John gave them any attention. They had begun climbing all over him whenever they saw him. When his truck pulled up, they ran to him. It took a very stern mother to see to it that he was left alone long enough to get a little work done during the day.

  Spring was at its lushest, and Leigh had been home for two months plus a few days. The gazebo was half constructed, the flagstone garden paths coming along nicely, and the barbecue pit would support a few burgers and steaks in another week. Because the lot was huge and abundant with brush, trees and plants, it didn’t really appear to be under construction. When the mess was cleared away, it would be stunning. Leigh was so glad to be here; she felt such a sense of renewal. She believed in her future in a way she never had before.

  Each moment with John seemed to improve on the one before it. The interest he showed in the boys, seemingly both entertained and fascinated by them, was something she had only dared dream of. Since she hadn’t really expected it to go even half so well, she was very pleased with herself.

  Leigh remembered when a book had held her interest more than John did. It had frustrated him terribly, back when he didn’t understand how she had learned to escape her feelings—and the feelings she had around John were enormous. Now, with her renewed sensitivity to what she felt, the book that could draw her attention away from John for a minute had not yet been written.

  He had been so good about re-creating their friendship on her terms. He had taken the boys to sign up for T-ball, gone with them all to get ice cream, and just last Saturday they had attended a movie. Jess invited him to lunch and dinner nearly every day and wasn’t fooling him at all.

  “Your mother is making me very nervous with this setup. She isn’t fooling anyone,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied.

  I’m not as dumb about relationships as I claimed, Leigh thought. Years ago she had known she wanted this: a lover, a friend, partner, children. It was one of the critical impulses that had caused her to separate from Max, because he had made it clear that this could never happen with him.

  Then there was something else, something frequently covered in paperback novels. Romance. On at least one and sometimes two nights each week Leigh would steal an evening to be alone with John. And while he didn’t push her or try to make love to her again, their kissing sessions were simply magnificent, spattered with dialogue, tense with desire, lush with emotion...and they couldn’t help themselves. What a lovely thing to not be able to help. She wanted him so badly she ached.

  She had made a deal with herself—to be fair, she was going to be sure he knew about his sons before they resumed that part of their relationship. A stronger woman would have kept that deal. She had failed that once, at his house, but she was determined not to fail again. But as much as she longed for honesty between them, as much as she longed to make love to him again, she was still a bit terrified of telling him. She was afraid he would be angry that she hadn’t done it sooner. Soon, she thought. Maybe tonight.

  She watched as Mitch overthrew Ty with the ball, and John clapped and whooped; they were pretty small to throw so well. He turned to look at Leigh and made the thumbs-up sign; she waved and smiled.

  She ached for him, but the last time they had become lovers before they became friends...before they came to terms with what they wanted. It had turned out that they had wanted different things, opposite things. This time she was trying to put first things first, to begin at the beginning and not at the end. This time they were talking, at least. Finding areas of agreement.

  “I thought,” John had said, “that I actually liked you before I loved you. But knowing that for sure is as important to me as it is to you.” He had something that Leigh had never had herself—and hadn’t given him credit for the last time around. Wisdom.

  Things were good. They were getting reacquainted; they were friendly. They were being sensible, postponing their marriage for a few months, even if they had been unsuccessful in postponing their sexual relationship. They were so hot for each other that they had to watch even kissing, because within seconds they were panting, squirming, nearly dying of longing. Her cheeks grew pink when she thought about him. She wasn’t sure she could just sit there on the deck watching him without getting all hot and bothered.

  So much for wisdom.

  She loved watching him. Whether he was bending his back over bricklaying or playing with the kids, his lithe strength was so appealing.

  He stopped playing ball suddenly and straightened his spine. The ball that Ty had thrown his way hit him in the knee, and he didn’t move.

  “Hey, John!” she heard Ty call.

  John looked at Leigh, astonishment written all over his face. He turned back to the boys and said something she couldn’t hear, and then the boys began to toss the ball back and forth without him while he turned and slowly walked toward the deck. His brow was furrowed, but his mouth was slightly open. He finally stood before her and simply looked at her for a moment.

  “John?”

  “Five pounds...each?”

  “What?”

  “The kids...they were five pounds each. They were early.”

  “Yes. Well, actually, Ty was four-four...and Mitch was—”

  “How early?”

  “Almost two months. A little over six weeks.”

  He winced visibly. He shook his head, then seemed to try to refocus on her eyes. “They’re mine,” he said.

  She felt that old snap of panic in her gut. There it was at last. A little later she was going to be glad this part was over. This wasn’t the way she had planned it. She nodded rather lamely.

  “Were you going to tell me? Ever?”

  She swallowed once and looked over her shoulder to make sure her mother and the brigade couldn’t hear. “That’s the main reason I wanted to come back...even though I thought you were married... I knew I had to tell you that they—”

  “Damn!”

  “John,” she said pleadingly, “I didn’t know you didn’t know. Until we met at the Steak House and you couldn’t understand why Max felt betrayed... All these years I thought when you heard about them you would instantly know it was you.”

  “Know? Know and not even care? How could you have thought that?”

  “You were adamant! You didn’t want a commitment or children. Later, when I came back, you seemed so oblivious to it all. Even when you knew about them, the impact seemed lost on you.”

  The look of pain that crossed his features was unmistakable. “You thought I was too stupid to figure it out.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, I just didn’t understand. I mean, sometimes I understood. When I came back here pregnant as a cow and found you were married, I understood that you never knew I was pregnant.”

  “You didn’t tell me!”

  “I know...I know...I didn’t want to tell you until my divorce was final because, frankly, I didn’t think the divorce was going to precede the birth. I had made such a mess of things. Even though I hadn’t been with my husband in over a year, I was still legally married and pregnant. My divorce did come through before they were born, and then I was too late. And—”

  “Come on, come on... That was then. What about now?”

  “W
ell, after thinking about it, I realized that you probably didn’t know all the details of childbirth, of how twins usually come a little early, of—”

  “But you didn’t hurry to explain, did you?”

  “Hey, John!” Mitch yelled.

  “Practice, I said!” he shouted back, an angry tone in his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me right away? Right away!”

  “I don’t know. I was afraid to. And I thought this was better.”

  “What?”

  “Well... ” she tried, her voice shaking. Hadn’t she made a lot of sense to herself before, when she was figuring this out? “Since you didn’t seem to realize they were your children, I thought I’d let you choose them. I tried a couple of times, then chickened out. But I thought we seemed to be headed in the same direction this time, wanting the same things and all. And I thought you might be a little upset at first, but I really thought you’d be happy to find out they’re—”

  “Good God,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t you know there’s a huge difference between accepting them because they’re part of the deal and wanting them because... And you’re going to do a study on ethics. Leigh, it isn’t ethical to keep information like that a secret.”

  “I know, sort of. But that’s what makes ethics confusing and complex. Being dishonest is unethical, unless it’s the lesser evil. Like, is it more ethical not to name the father of my sons than to name someone who would hurt them?”

  “Why would I hurt them?” he asked, aghast. “Haven’t I been pretty good with them? Good to them? Without even knowing—”

  “But I needed to know you again. What if you didn’t want them?” she said, her voice so low he had to strain to hear. “What if you didn’t want me? Or me with them?”

  He only pursed his lips tighter. “Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth? Why didn’t you leave me a message that you were about to give birth? If not that, why didn’t you write, call, something—to let me know I was a father?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you. You said you didn’t want to be a father. I left because you said that wasn’t in your game plan. You said, ‘Go. We’re just from two different worlds.’”

  “Leigh,” he said as patiently as he could, “men always say stuff like that. It doesn’t mean that much. A guy says something like that, and then his wife gets pregnant and you’d think he invented pregnancy.”

  “I don’t know anything about guys and what they say and what they mean.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Leigh, Leigh, stop. Listen to me. What you did to me is really unfair. No matter what happened between us, they were mine. No matter what my marital status was or yours, for that matter—you should have told me I had children. This could have worked out all different. I missed all this time with them because you decided it was better this way. Leigh, I know I hurt your feelings when I said ‘Go,’ but I didn’t take your kids away from you! Is there anything else you should tell me? Anything that you either assume I know, assume I don’t know, or...anything?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The kids are fine? Normal? No mysterious conditions or anything?”

  “Of course not. I would tell you something like that.”

  “You didn’t even tell me that—”

  “Soup!” Jess cried from the back door. “Leigh, the girls and I have ours in the kitchen. Why don’t you, John and the boys help yourselves while we go back to our game?”

  Leigh and John didn’t respond, only looked at each other. “Does she know?” he asked after a long moment.

  “Sometimes I think she does, sometimes I’m sure she doesn’t. She hounds me about getting married all the time—she decided I should marry someone like you, but I don’t know how she could know you’re their—” She shrugged. “Maybe you just seem the perfect type to be their stepfather.”

  “Stepfather,” he muttered, the set of his mouth angry. “You really did it this time. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Was it some kind of test...to see if I was good enough?”

  “Oh, John, no. Oh, please,” she said, tears coming to her eyes.

  “Sometimes you have no sense,” he said.

  “I know, I know, but I thought—”

  “Stop it!” He looked away. Were those tears in his eyes? He shook his head again, trying to clear the fog away. “I gotta go, Leigh. Tell Jess thanks anyway, but I need a little time to think. Alone. Let me have that. Okay?”

  “Could you just remember one thing?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “It’s not their fault.”

  * * *

  Work on the yard progressed with lightning speed, but without the foreman. John remained conspicuously absent while the roof went on the gazebo and the last brick was laid in the barbecue pit.

  “Where is that young man?” Jess asked her daughter. “I haven’t seen him in almost a week.”

  “Six days,” Leigh replied morosely.

  “I hadn’t realized,” Jess, who realized each minute, lied. “And here I was getting the impression that he had taken a real interest in you and the boys. Or was it just my cooking?”

  Leigh made no response. She gazed off into space, as she had been doing quite a lot lately.

  “The boys really miss having him around,” Jess said. “The other fellas are just as nice, but don’t seem to take the personal interest in them that John did. I mean, signing them up for a T-ball team and everything. What a guy.”

  “What a guy,” Leigh said. What a jerk, she thought. No matter how mad he was at her, he shouldn’t let the boys down like this. Of course, the boys didn’t know they’d been let down yet, but surely they would notice soon.

  “Tell me what you think of this invitation, Leigh,” Jess said, handing her a calligraphic page.

  The address and a request for an R.S.V.P. appeared at the bottom.

  “Good heavens,” Leigh said. “This is pretty fancy, isn’t it? For a backyard barbecue?”

  “Well, when you spend thousands revamping the backyard, you ought to do up the party right. Don’t you think?”

  “How many people are you inviting?”

  “Everyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh. And are you having it catered, or did you get together a bunch of friends to potluck it?”

  “Oh, catered. Naturally. I’m using Berkley’s Bakery and Deli. They’re fantastic.”

  “This is going to cost a fortune.”

  “I only plan to do this once.”

  “Well,” Leigh said, handing the invitation back to her mother, “just so long as you don’t wear yourself out and get sick.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not even doing any of the work. Shouldn’t we get you a new dress for the party?”

  “A dress? You’re planning on guests wearing dresses?”

  “Mom,” a small voice said from somewhere below. She looked down to see Ty, the blond, staring up at her. “Wanna play catch some more?”

  “Where’s Mitchell?” Leigh asked.

  “Over there. Waiting for us.”

  “Okay,” she said, moving down to the backyard and holding out her hands. She didn’t do this well; another character flaw. Ty fired the first one at her and she missed it, so naturally she had to chase it. “So, Mother,” she called, glancing back to the deck where Jess stood, watching them. “It’s only three weeks till your party. You think everything will be done?”

  “It’s almost done now,” Jess said, watching as Leigh pitched the ball to Mitch, missing him by miles. Mitch complained loudly and ran after the ball. Two more bad throws followed. “I’m going to have Peg’s son, the florist, bring out a bunch of fresh flower garlands to decorate the gazebo and put arrangements on long buffet tables,” Jess said, wincing as a ball hit Leigh in the leg. Leigh made a noise
of pain and threw the ball—aiming for Ty, getting closer to Mitch—and both boys whined their unhappiness.

  “Mom,” said Ty, “throw it under. Under. Like this.” He moved his hand very patiently, trying to show her how to do it. It didn’t work. Leigh’s aim was actually worse than a four-year-old’s. She grouped them closer together. With them standing just a few feet apart, she could get the ball to the right person.

  “Mom, let’s not play,” Mitch said. “We’ll practice a while and maybe you can play later. ’Kay?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “This is for babies,” Ty said. “When’s John coming?”

  “I don’t know, guys. Pretty soon, I suppose.”

  “Did he say anything to you about being away for a while, Leigh? If I didn’t know better I’d think he was avoiding us,” Jess called.

  “I don’t know, Mother.”

  “Why don’t you call him for me? Ask him to dinner. I really think that young man has a thing for you. I know he gets a kick out of the boys. Something must have happened to—”

  “Mother! For Pete’s sake!”

  “Well, what the heck?” Jess defended herself. “He’s a nice young man. I’ve known him for years, and I can tell the two of you like each other. Maybe if you—”

  “Mother! Stop it!”

  “I am only suggesting,” Jess said, in her most patient, long suffering voice, “that I could turn this garden party into a wedding in a snap. Then I could have you and the boys settled and taken care of before I die.”

  “You know something, Mom? I thought this was humorous for a couple of weeks, but it’s quickly losing its appeal. Now, do me a favor, don’t bring up John, marriage or death—in a humorous or serious vein—again. Understand?”

  “Oh, Leigh,” Jess sighed. “You’re too young to be so old and crotchety.”

  “Sometimes I actually think you’re serious.”

  “If you’d get serious, we’d be in business.”

  “I give up!” Leigh shouted. “I can’t take this anymore!”

  “Heavens,” Jess muttered. “Testy.”