I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Lori Wilde

  “I thought it was bad luck to knit your boyfriend a sweater.”

  “You’re not my boyfriend,” she said. “I’m going home tonight, remember.”

  “You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

  “Now you’ll have a tacky sweater for next year’s party.”

  He took the red knitted sweater from the box, unfolded it, and held it up to his chest. The design on the front was of a Christmas tree farm in the snow. One lone tree in the foreground was decorated with lights.

  “No,” he said. “This sweater is too pretty for that. I’m going to wear it to open and close my first Christmas season as the owner.”

  “You like it?”

  His gaze met hers. “No one has ever knitted me a sweater before.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” she said, thrilled with the way he ran his hand reverentially over the design.

  “Here,” he said, and handed her the end of a piece of long twine. “This is for you.”

  “Hmm.” She took the twine, followed it, and discovered it ran underneath the couch cushion. Gabi lifted the cushion, found a package wrapped in silver foil paper.

  Casey glanced up from the game she was playing on the cell phone Joe had gotten her for Christmas. “This looks like fun.”

  “Would you like to open the package for me?” Gabi asked.

  “Sure.” Casey came over to sit beside her. She opened up the package.

  Inside, Gabi found a calendar created by a company that specialized in taking customers’ photographs and using them to personalize items.

  Gabi flipped the pages, saw snapshots capturing her time in Twilight—January: she was climbing the steps of the yurt. February: feeding the chickens. March: line dancing at Froggy’s. April: singing karaoke with Joe. May: decorating the tree in Sweetheart Park. June: in the grocery store. July: sleeping the morning after she and Joe first made love, a smile on her face. July: she and Casey ice skating. August: a selfie of the three of them at the Christmas party. September: Gabi serving Casey the first lasagna she ever made. October: she and Casey making kismet cookies. November: a shot of the snow globes they’d made lined up on her kitchen table. December: she and Joe kissing underneath a sprig of mistletoe.

  “Now you’ll have Christmas twelve months out of the year,” Joe said.

  “How did you get all these pictures?” she asked.

  “Of the ones I didn’t take, Emma mostly, although there are a few other shutterbugs in town. Aunt Belinda took the one of you in the park and Fruit of the Vine has a camera that snaps shots of the singers.”

  “It took a lot of work to gather this up.”

  “So did knitting a sweater.”

  “It was fun.”

  “Ditto.”

  “You went all-out.”

  “I had another present custom made for you,” he said. “But it didn’t come in in time.”

  “That’s okay.” She held the calendar of photos to her chest. “This is gift enough. I love it.”

  “I’ll mail it to you when it comes in,” he said.

  “That’ll be a nice surprise.” Already, her heart was aching at the idea of opening up his present in LA far away from him and Casey and Twilight.

  “Come on,” Joe said as if sensing her darkening mood. “What say I cook us waffles for breakfast?”

  Her flight back to LA left at eight P.M. around the same time that Katie was arriving home. Katie had picked Christmas Day for them to swap back because travel was much easier on that day and she wanted to make sure she was home for Christmas.

  She and Joe had spent the remainder of the day with Casey, doing whatever she wanted to do. They’d played games, ate more Christmas cookies, taken a walk around the farm before Gabi had been forced to go back to the yurt and pack.

  Joe had tried to get her to change her departure date, but the longer she drew this out, the harder leaving was going to be. Plus they had to go to the airport anyway to pick up Katie and it was a three-hour drive round trip.

  The ride to the airport was mostly silent. There wasn’t much left to say.

  “Did you remember to pack your snow globe?” Joe asked.

  Gabi patted her carry-on bag. Derrick’s snow globe was her most prized possession. “Got it here.”

  They entered the grounds of DFW airport, stopped at the ticket booth.

  “If you’re ever in Texas,” Joe said, “and you don’t give me a call, I’ll be ticked.”

  “Texas is a big state. You can’t hold me to that if I happened to be in, say, El Paso.”

  “Don’t care. If you’re anywhere in the Lone Star state, you call me and I’ll be there to see you.”

  “I can see that going over big with your future wife if I were to pop in for Christmas ten years from now.”

  “Gabi,” Joe said, his voice deadly serious. “If I ever take a wife, I’ll make it clear how important you are to me.”

  “Oh, Joe.” His words nicked her heart. She thought he’d understood why she couldn’t just fling herself wholeheartedly into this relationship. Apparently not. “You’re making this so hard.”

  “You’re making it hard by refusing to believe what we have is real.”

  “I do believe it’s real, but I won’t really know for sure until I give myself some breathing room.”

  “I’ll be holding my breath while you’re doing all that breathing, praying some other guy doesn’t snatch you away from me.”

  “You’re killing me here.”

  He pressed his lips into a straight line. “Don’t you think you’re doing the same thing to me?”

  She puffed out her cheeks. “This is much more difficult than I thought it would be. You shouldn’t have brought me to the airport.”

  “We’re here,” he said, pulling up to the curb outside the terminal.

  “So we are.” She let out a sigh that she meant to be little, but it came out with devastating force.

  “It’s over now.”

  Gabi gulped. She knew he was talking about more than the ride to the airport. They got out of his pickup. He took her suitcases from the bed of the truck. She reached for them.

  He held on tight. “I can carry them for you as far as the security checkin.”

  “Katie’s flight doesn’t touch down for another half hour, be comfortable and wait for her here.”

  “I’m going in with you,” he said stubbornly.

  She thought about arguing, but she wanted this last good-bye. It was incredible how much this man had come to mean to her in such a short amount of time. Even if she couldn’t trust the feelings, she was experiencing them. Big-time. And there was no running away from that.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “If you don’t mind.”

  “For you, Trouble, I don’t mind anything.”

  Her heart beat triple time, created a strange fluttery thrill in her veins at his use of the nickname he’d given her.

  He lifted up her suitcases. “Lead on.”

  Once they were in the building standing outside the security checkpoint, he set her suitcases down and pulled her into a hug. He smelled so good, so real and manly. He smelled like the kind of Christmas home she’d never known and she wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and not ever let go.

  “It’s crazy,” she said, “that this happened so fast.”

  “Crazy,” he echoed. “But there you go.”

  “It’s for the best,” she said. “You know it is. You’ve got your life here. The farm and Casey to look after and I’ve got …” What did she have? “Issues I need to deal with. It’s simply bad timing.”

  “The worst,” he said ruefully.

  “Well …” She hitched in a breath, held on to it for a good long time. “I guess this is good-bye.”

  “You take care of yourself, Gabi.” His voice was low and heavy.

  “You too, Joe.”

  He touched her hand.

  She lingered.

  “Miss, are you in line?” asked a TSA worker. “If you’re not,
can you step aside?”

  “I’m in line,” she said, and showed the woman her ticket.

  When she looked up, Joe was disappearing through the exit door.

  Joe stood outside the terminal, watching Gabi through the glass as she stepped in line at the security checkpoint. He’d had to leave before he threw her over his shoulder and hauled her out of there, drove her back to Twilight, took her to bed, and made love to her until she came to her senses.

  This was right. He knew it. He had no fears. Why did she?

  You must have some fear, why didn’t you tell her you loved her?

  Yeah. There it was. He was afraid she wouldn’t be able to say it back.

  His gaze traced over her. He loved the graceful way she moved, the way her mouth tipped up at the corners when she was pleased. He loved how she blushed so easily at things he said or did. He loved the way she’d tilt her head in his direction when she was listening to him.

  Face it. Gabi Preston had changed him in ways he could not have imagined.

  But she was leaving.

  Leaving him with an empty space in his chest that only she could fill. He hated it. Losing her.

  His life had changed so rapidly in such a short amount of time. He was anchored now, truly anchored for the first time in his life. He was committed to the farm. Committed to Casey. Committed to his family and community. Committed to supporting Tatum’s sobriety for Casey’s sake.

  For years he’d bounced from one corner of the country to another, one job to another, one relationship to another, always restless and easily bored. Always searching for something outside him to calm his relentless thoughts. Ironic that for the first time in his life he was ready and willing for a serious relationship, but the woman he wanted to build a life with had other plans.

  Only one thing was missing from his future. But it was a big thing.

  Gabi.

  Without her, the puzzle of his life would never be complete. How was it that he’d let her walk out of his life?

  He had to let her go because she needed to unfurl her wings and fly. He’d already had his journey away from home. It was her turn and he couldn’t go with her.

  CHAPTER 28

  At Christmas, all roads lead home.

  —Marjorie Holmes

  When her plane touched down at LAX, Gabi texted her parents that she was on the way home. They met in her condo, and her mother’s Maserati pulled into the parking lot just as she did. Felicity was driving.

  Gabi got out of the car, took several slow, deep breaths to lessen the tension pulsing through her. She rested her carry-on bag on the hood of her BMW. Her parents approached, looking as strained as she felt. Odd, they were usually so invincible. The Dynamic Duo as some prosecuting attorneys in LA County called them. Gabi knew she could never be like them. Did not want to be like them.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Her parents looked at each other. Mom said, “We enjoyed meeting your friend.”

  “Katie.” Dad supplied the name.

  “She seems quite—”

  “Common?” Gabi asked, using one of her mother’s favorite words to describe people.

  “I was going to say interesting,” her mother said. “Did you know she’s been to Peru?”

  “I did not.”

  “You wouldn’t think it to look at her,” Mom mused.

  No word about law school. Yet. That was a start.

  “We were worried about you,” her father said in a much softer voice than usual.

  “He was worried.” Her mother pointed a finger at her father. “I was pissed that you took off without telling us … until I talked to Katie and she explained about your swap.”

  “I did something like that once,” her father said.

  “Swapped houses?” Gabi asked, a little confused.

  “Dropped out,” he said.

  “Your father lived on a commune in the seventies,” her mother supplied. “Left law school just like you did.”

  “Really?” Gabi studied her father, in his thousand-dollar suit. “A hippie, huh?”

  “Thankfully,” Felicity said, “he came to his senses.”

  Dad put his hand on her mother’s arm. “Can we go inside?”

  “Sure, sure,” Gabi said, and turned quickly, still a little off balance by the conversation with her parents. In the process, her elbow caught the handle of her carry-on bag and knocked it off the car hood onto the ground.

  She and her father reached for it at the same time, and their hands touched. They both paused, looked at each other. A parent and child who had gotten so far apart they didn’t know how to get back to each other.

  “I’ve got it, honey.”

  Gabi straightened and let her father pick up the bag. She led the way into her condo, turning on the lights as she went. Katie had left the place pristine, but it looked different. Small somehow.

  “You want anything to drink?” she asked her parents.

  “Got any Scotch?” her father asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “Water’s fine,” her mother said.

  She got them all a glass of water and they went to sit in the living room. Order in the court.

  No one said a word. The clock on the wall ticked loud as a time bomb.

  Finally, her father cleared his throat, scooted to the edge of the couch cushion. “Gabi, you know we love you.”

  She did know they loved her, she never doubted that, but she didn’t think they really knew her. “Yes.”

  “Do you really?” Her mother’s face went uncharacteristically soft. “Do you truly understand how much we love you?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Why?”

  “We got a call from a young man in Texas. He said his name was Joe Cheek, Katie’s brother.”

  Joe had called her parents? Oh no! “How did he get your number?”

  “From your friend Katie. I gave her my private cell number when we met her.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, stricken.

  “He said we had an amazing daughter. He also said we weren’t doing enough to make you feel loved.” Her mother’s eyes misted with tears.

  In twenty-three years, the only time she’d ever seen her mother cry was when Derrick died. Shocked, Gabi didn’t know what to say.

  “He’s right,” her father said. “We didn’t do enough to show you how much we loved you when you were growing up. We were devastated over losing Derrick and we dealt with it by throwing ourselves into our careers. And the law can eat you up if you let it. We didn’t fully realize how much we neglected you. You were such a good kid. You never gave us a moment of concern. It was easy to tell ourselves you were happy. But now we understand you were just trying to keep things peaceful for us after Derrick’s death.”

  “We should have been making things peaceful for you,” her mother said. “Not the other way around.”

  Wow. Oh wow. Gabi’s mouth dropped. She never thought she’d hear this.

  “We’ve never ever meant to hurt you.” Her mother’s hands were shaking.

  “We thought you wanted to go to law school,” her dad said. “We had no idea you were doing it just to please us.”

  “I should have said something when you were planning my law career. But I just went along. I should have spoken up.”

  “Why didn’t you?” her father asked, looking truly puzzled.

  “Because since I couldn’t save Derrick, I had to take his place.”

  Her parents stared at her with blank expressions on their faces. “Gabi,” her mother said. “We never ever blamed you for Derrick’s death.”

  “Felicity.” Her father put a hand on her mother’s arm. “Think about it from Gabi’s point of view. She was six years old. In her mind, her brother is gone because she couldn’t save him. We gave birth to her just so she could save her brother’s life. Just like Joe said when he called us. In Gabi’s mind saving her brother was her job and she failed. We should have honored her for who she was. We should have celebrated
her uniqueness. Instead, we stopped celebrating Christmas because it reminded us of Derrick’s death. To us our work was salvation, but to Gabi—”

  “Oh God,” her mother groaned, put a hand to her mouth. “We abandoned her when she needed us the most.”

  “But you were also so good and quiet. We never realized how it was for you.” Her father’s eyes shone with tears now too. “You didn’t fail us, sweetheart. We failed you one hundred percent.”

  Gabi went to her parents. Hugged first one and then the other. And then they all three hugged and cried and talked about all the stuff no one had talked about in seventeen years. Talked into the wee hours of the morning. Talked and remembered and forgave and loved each other.

  And she had Joe to thank for it.

  After her parents left, Gabi unpacked her suitcases. She was trying not to think of Joe, but he was constantly on her mind. She could still feel his body sink into hers, still smell his earthy, pine-scented fragrance, still taste his minty lips.

  Joe.

  She missed him so badly she could barely breathe. Her heart twisted like a screwdriver tightening a bolt in the middle of her chest. How long did it take for pain like this to ebb?

  Love. She loved him.

  But could she trust this feeling? Was it real? Was it love? Or just a construct of her need to be with someone?

  Those were the questions she had to answer. The same questions she’d been mulling over for the last three weeks. She’d come home to sort things out, and tonight she’d made a start with her parents. It was a strong first step.

  Gabi took a sweater from the suitcase. Beneath it she’d packed the snow globe. She reached for her most prized possession and gasped in shock.

  The snow globe was shattered.

  Broken into pieces.

  The beautiful snow globe that reminded her so much of Twilight. The last link she had to her beloved brother.

  It must have happened in the fall from the hood of her car. Gabi cried out and sank to her knees in front of the suitcase. She carefully removed the cracked pieces. Her clothes were wet where the liquid had leaked out. Wet as tears. Desperately she searched for all the pieces. Maybe she could glue it back together. Maybe it could be saved.

  Maybe …