The Christmas Sisters

by Annie Jones

  Nic smiled and nodded to thank him for saying so. “You know, how I made those choices hoping...well, hoping for the exact opposite of what really happened. Hoping that you would marry me and take me away from Persuasion.”

  “And here we are, neither of us married to anyone and back in town.” He spread his hands out as if offering them both as an example. “Though that's not necessarily a permanent deal for either of us, is it?”

  “It may be for me. If I don't send Willa to that residential school, I'll have to do something different. Her present situation is not working.”

  He leaned forward, his head cocked. “And you could do that, with your business and all?”

  “I could sell my business. There are some other cleaning services around town that would love to buy me out.”

  “Then what?”

  She shrugged. “Willa likes it here. It's a safe place to grow up, and we have enough family here to lend support and work with her with the kind of love and patience you can't find anywhere else.”

  “Speaking of patience?” He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. At last he stood and in doing so blocked her path so that she couldn’t keep pacing. “You ready to talk to me about whether I'm Willa's father or not?”

  “I already told you. I don't know.” She put her hand to her forehead, but not even the coolness of her palm quieted the throbbing in her temples. “I thought I knew, and then we came back here and I saw you with her and she took to you so immediately. She never does that and...maybe that's just all wishful thinking, though. You know?”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head and rubbed his knuckles over his cheek. “No. No, I have no idea what you're driving at unless it's... Nic, you can't be trying to tell me you have no idea who Willa's father is?”

  She turned toward the bookshelf and let out a shuddering sigh.

  “There was me, of course. Then I assume you met someone else shortly after I left town?”

  “Very shortly.” She squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could, but she could still see Sam's face, the intensity of his gaze, the way his cheek twitched just before he smiled. And she could imagine the horror and disgust she would find there once she told him the truth.

  “Nic?”

  Her eyes opened. She took in a quick breath and let it all out. “It was at the party—where I was supposed to have met you that night.”

  “Okay.” No emotion. No judgment.

  “I waited and waited.” She tried to turn away from him, looked at the closed door then finally faced him again. “I kept telling myself that you had car trouble or maybe got into a fight with your father, even that you had cold feet. But I never doubted you'd show up, that you'd come for me.”

  “Well, I did have a fight with my father.” He rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “But then that was an everyday occurrence so that wasn't what kept me away. And you know how I doted on that old Chevy, restored it to perfect running order, not so much as a ping or a knock from that engine.”

  “Cold feet.” She nodded, eyes shut. Not looking at him and knowing he found this difficult as she did helped her go on. “I figured that out—but not until I'd had a few drinks.”

  “Too many drinks?” he asked.

  “For a girl who never had anything more than a sip of sherry at Thanksgiving, anything was too much.” She opened her eyes but did not look at him. “By the time the fireworks shot off to welcome in the new year, I was lit up like a rocket myself.”

  “And so you... met...someone. Or did you already know him?”

  “No, I...I still don't know him.” She bunched her hands into her sweater then turned to the window that faced in the direction of her house. “When I wasn't home by curfew, Daddy came looking for me. Tracked me down at the party about three in the morning.”

  “I was already across the state line by then,” he said softly.

  She didn't know if he'd said it as an apology or simply as a means of accounting for his whereabouts. It didn't matter either way, she supposed, and wondering about it was only going to put off the inevitable for mere moments. She cleared her throat, wound a strand of hair around her finger, and forced her focus back to her story.

  “Like I said, Daddy tracked me down and found me, wearing just my T-shirt passed out in a back bedroom with a boy whose name I did not know and never found out.”

  “I'll bet Collier Jack was just thrilled about that,” Sam dead-panned.

  Nic mustered a laugh at that, but she could not sustain the lightness of the moment. Heaviness filling her chest, she wet her lips and pressed on. “He told me he and Mama thought I'd been killed in a car wreck. Frankly, given how he found me and what happened afterward, I often wondered if he would have preferred that to the truth.”

  “Nic, don't say that. Your father loved you dearly.”

  “Yes, he did. And I repaid his love with pain and deceit.”

  “Just like I did to you.” He stepped toward her, his hand out as if to brush back her hair.

  She dodged the gesture then spun around to face him. “Have you not been listening to a word I said, Sam? I was found in a bedroom with a stranger.”

  “I heard. That hardly proves he is Willa's father.”

  “As far as my daddy was concerned, he had to be.” Nic inched closer to the window again, pressing her fingertips to the cold glass. “I couldn't let my father think that I'd been with him and with you. I couldn't let him know what a mockery I'd made of my beliefs and his.”

  “According to Claire the town gossip holds that—”

  “Don't start with me about town gossip. I endured the worst kind of it back then. Mean gossip, ugly rumors, and coming from people who had known me all my life, from friends who sang alongside me in the church choir and sat beside me in English class in high school. Worse yet, Mama and Daddy and even Collier had to suffer through it, too.”

  “And then Willa came along.”

  “And then Willa came along.” She laid her forehead against the windowpane and closed her eyes. “And some of those same people whom I longed to look to for help and support turned their vicious tongues on my sweet, helpless child. They said it was my punishment from God that she was not right.”

  “Then why would you even consider moving back here, Nic?”

  “I told you, my aunts and my home are here and...” You are here. She almost let it tumble out, but in her moment's hesitancy she held back, thought it over, and then could not do it. “There are a lot of factors at work here. I can't say for sure I will stay, but I have to consider it as a real possibility. Being back here, talking to Bert and my sisters, seeing my home through eyes that thought they had come to say good-bye to it forever, it's changed my outlook.”

  “I hope that's not the only thing that has changed.” He came to her, standing close enough that the fabric of his shirt brushed the sleeve of her sweater. “I hope that in that multitude of reasons to think about staying in Persuasion that I count, at least a little.”

  “At least.” Whispering the echo of his own words was the only concession she could make at present even as his nearness made her knees weak. “But the main focus, the person I have to keep uppermost in my decision, is Willa.”

  “I understand that.” He raised his hand as if to caress her shoulder but at the last minute ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Ever since I found out that she had this, this, this thing, this...” She hated saying it. She had always pretended it did not bother her, that she had not simply accepted the truth but had embraced it fearlessly. But that was hope and false bravado. She swallowed hard and made herself do it. “Static encephalopathy. That’s the diagnosis. A brain injury that is not going to get better short of a miracle. We prayed for a miracle. We still do.”

  “You didn't even have to tell me that. I knew. Offered a few of those fervent prayers myself since meeting her.”

  “Sam, that means so much to me.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “Hope it
doesn't hurt your feelings if I remind you I didn't do it to impress you.”

  “Doesn't hurt my feelings one bit.” She managed a smile back, a weak one.

  “I care about Willa, about what happens to her. I don't think you should beat yourself up that you do, too.”

  “I'm not beating myself up, Sam. I'm looking at myself, my actions, honestly. Far too long ago I stopped concentrating on Willa day to day, moment by moment, and began to fixate on her future. To how she would get along in that great big, scary world out there.” She shook her head. The weight of it all settled down on her shoulders and she leaned against the window frame for support. “My sisters have been telling me I'm too hard on her. I don't give her the breaks I'd give a normal eight-year-old. My aunts say that I haven't rooted her deeply enough in the family.”

  “That's easily taken care of.”

  “Not if I put her in a residential program.”

  He held his hands out to concede her point.

  “I thought it was best for her. It comes so highly recommended and it works wonders for some children. Now I just don't know any more if Willa is that kind of child, the kind that will thrive and flourish there. She will receive the training there that she needs to survive in life, but at what personal cost?”

  “You mean selling your family's home, walking away from a lifetime of loving traditions, sending her to live away from you?”

  Hearing it out in the open gripped at her like a hand around her throat. She blinked and through a wash of tears, she strained to see out the window. She tried to make out the gables, the huge magnolia, the fence post, something of her house. “Am I putting too high a value on protecting her and not enough on her having a remarkable life?”

  “A remarkable life.” Sam said it so quietly it resonated with the ring of an epiphany. “I can see that for her, Nic. I truly can.”

  She sighed and wiped the dampness from beneath her lashes. “These past few days I've seen how best laid plans and good intentions don't always produce the desired results. I've seen how family connections can become fragile and how friendships can grow strong. I realize that I've been wrong.”

  Pride and excitement welled up in Sam's chest at the conclusion she had come to, but he didn't let himself get carried away with it just yet. “And you think you can accomplish that by moving back?”

  She turned to face him at last. “There are enough good folks around that I believe I can find the kind of support I lacked back then.”

  “Really?” The old, uneven floor creaked as he moved even closer behind her. “And there's one other thing she will have here that she won't find anywhere else in the world.”

  “What's that?” She looked at him over her shoulder.

  He took a breath and lowered his head so that when he spoke it was with his cheek against her temple. “A man who realistically and biologically probably is her father.”

  Her back went rigid and she turned around, her shoulders straight. “Sam, I—”

  He put his finger to her lips. He fixed his gaze on hers and did not waver. He laid his hand on her shoulder, waited for her to react.

  She did not withdraw.

  He pulled her into his arms, his heart full of celebration. “Maybe Claire's idea isn't so off-the-wall after all.”

  “Marriage?” She asked with her mouth pressed against his shirt.

  She did not relax in his embrace as he had hoped. “Sam, are you talking about us getting married?”

  “I never told you this before because, well, you weren't exactly receptive to me, to say the least. But now knowing about Willa...”

  “We don't know anything more about Willa than we did before. Not for certain.”

  “I know how I feel about her. I know I would be a good father to her, even if, by some wild chance, she is not mine.”

  She searched his face, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

  She was weakening, or rather, warming to the idea. He could sense it. “The thing I haven't told you is one of the reasons I came back here. Not the only reason, but one of the reasons I came back here was for you.”

  She shook her head.

  He didn't blame her for not understanding, what with his less than suave attempt at babbling out the truth to her. “I came back to find you again, Nic.”

  “Finding me again and marrying me are too entirely different things, Sam.”

  “Obviously.” He laughed. “But that's not an answer.”

  “Are you...are you seriously proposing?”

  “Maybe not proposing, more trying to see where you stand on the matter.”

  She disregarded his teasing remark with narrowed eyes and the staunch set of her jaw. “I don't stand...no, I won't stand for this nonsense. And I certainly won't stand still for it, either.”

  In a flurry of head tossing and pushing away from him, she pivoted and started for the door. He wanted to call out to her but to say what?

  There was nothing to say, really. Not to Nic, not now. He watched her go, his heart aching and his thoughts racing. He may have just lost his best opportunity to win Nic, but he had not lost everything. He had his church, his faith, and in his heart, he now had a daughter.

  All was not as he'd expected, but that did not diminish the joy he felt in his new role as Willa's father or discourage him in any way.

  “In God's time.” He repeated Willa's advice via Big Hyde as he watched Nic practically sprint across the road toward her home. “In God's time, not my own.”

  Nineteen

  Nic's boot heels slammed onto the concrete steps outside the church. The jarring beat rivaled the pulse pounding in her temples. She gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and forged on through the parking lot. At the end of the entryway she glanced right, then left, then right again. But she hadn't really checked for traffic before she darted across the street.

  Not that there was any traffic. She had not actually put herself at risk, but the fact that she had pushed herself so carelessly onward made her stumble to a stop on the other side of the road. Slipping behind a tree, she leaned back until the rough bark snagged her hair and rasped against her sweater. She drew the crisp winter air deep into her lungs and held it.

  Sam wanted to marry her. No, wanted might be too strong a word. He felt obligated—by his morals, his congregation's pending mandate, and the embellished memory of the girl she had once been. The girl he had loved.

  She bit her lip. Love? Had he actually said that? She exhaled slowly and laid her head back. No. If he had told her he loved her, she would not have run. She would not have leaped with joy into his arms and accepted his proposal, either.

  “What proposal?” She pushed away from the tree and stole a peek at the church across the way.

  ... not proposing, more trying to see where you stand on the matter. “ Sam's far from ardent angle on the matter rattled her nerves more than ever. She had come so close to trusting him completely. She had gone into his office ready to lay bare her whole story, to try to face the situation concerning Willa with reasoned compassion, hoping for a new understanding between them, and what had happened?

  Good question, she thought as she tried to fit the pieces together. What did happen?

  Sam Moss mentioned marriage. Well, whoop-de-do, not like he hadn't done that before and left her to regret he ever opened his sweet-talking, ever-lying mouth. But that was the old Sam—or rather, the young Sam—not the man she knew now. This man cared about Willa and wanted to be a father to her whether she was his biological child or not. He saw possibilities for her little girl that Nic wanted most of all, that Willa would have a full, loving and remarkable life.

  This man, this Sam whom she had loved so long ago, and probably still did if she could ever let her defenses down long enough to admit it, had come back to find her. After all these years, it seemed that in some way he had never forgotten his promise to come for her.

  Nic hugged her arms tight around her body and shut her eyes. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She
pressed her lips tightly together. He had come back for her, but it was too late. Too much water under the bridge. Too many heartaches time had not erased.

  Pulling her shoulders up, she shook back her hair. She would not waste her time dwelling on this. She had plans to make for whether she and Willa would stay on in Persuasion and plans for Christmas, which loomed larger than life now only a few days away. She would not get bogged down in some impossible emotional quagmire. She would be strong. She would be in control. And most of all she would not let anybody else drag her down or divert her from her new priorities.

  “Nic, I'm so glad you're back.” Collier had Nic by the elbow and began dragging her toward the living room before the back door could swing shut. “We've had a small disaster here.”

  “Not Willa!”

  “No, Willa is fine.” She urged Nic into the padded rocker by the Christmas tree. “Scott and Jessica walked her over to Dewi's to get a treat and a loaf of bread and lunch meat for dinner.”

  “Bread and lunch meat for dinner?” Nic rocked back and forth. Petie having a small disaster was one thing, but her family resorting to sandwiches for dinner during the holidays was something else altogether. “You're not serious, are you? Why didn't you have them pick up a roasting hen or something to make a nice soup?”

  “You can criticize my cooking later; right now we have a real problem on our hands.”

  “You don't cook lunch meat sandwiches.” Nic refused to play along in her sister's mini-drama. She'd had quite an eventful day of her own already and did not need the added strain. “Best I can do is criticize your menu choices, but not your cooking.”

  “Forget the menu for one minute, would you? The menu hardly matters because in case you've forgotten, tonight's the night The Duets and the odd assortment of cousins are coming over.”

  “Oh, no.” Nic had forgotten. “The Duets I can handle, but the odd assortment… I am not sure I’m up to that. And you’re giving them sandwiches?”

  “Everyone is bringing something to eat. Since when have you known anyone in this family ever to show up at a family gathering without fried chicken, a three-bean salad, and a chocolate sheet cake?” Collier pointed to the end of the room and the extra table, the one that their parents had borrowed from the church for one day—twenty years ago. “I'm already set up for as much food as even our family can carry in. And I'm well-prepared for the fact that Aunt Lula's lime Jell-O wreath with maraschino cherry accents cannot occupy the same table as Aunt Nan's wreath of pistachio pudding with red hots and real holly leaves on top.”