One Imperfect Christmas

by Myra Johnson

  The Saturn rolled to a stop in the driveway. Natalie shut off the engine and started up the walk. As she debated whether to ring the doorbell or let herself in with the key she'd soon have to relinquish, the front door jerked open.

  Daniel stood before her, looking breathless and worried. “Have you seen Lissa?”

  The force of his question knocked her backward a step. “I'm supposed to pick her up, remember?”

  He spun around on bare feet, muscles tense and rippling beneath a thin white T-shirt. Natalie chased after him as he shouted Lissa's name—through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and den, past stacks of packing boxes, and into the master bedroom, the king-size bed neatly made and clearly unused.

  They raced upstairs to Lissa's room and through the adjoining bath to the guestroom, which was strewn with Daniel's discarded shoes, shirts, and jeans.

  Natalie stood in the doorway and blinked. Half her mind still grappled with the idea that Lissa appeared to be missing. The other half took poignant pleasure in the thought that her husband couldn't bring himself to sleep alone in the bed they'd shared for fifteen years—the bed where their daughter was conceived. Their daughter.

  Suddenly, her world coalesced into sharp focus. “Daniel. Stop running around like an idiot and tell me what's going on.”

  Panting, he sank onto the rumpled sheets at the foot of the bed. “When she didn't come down to breakfast, I thought she was sleeping in like usual, but … ” He gave his head a frustrated shake.

  Natalie swiveled and pressed her spine against the doorframe. She clawed stiff fingers through the hair at her temples and tried to imagine things from Lissa's perspective. Poor kid! Selling the house must have screamed the end of her parents' marriage.

  Remorse shredded Natalie's heart. She never meant for her mistakes to bleed into her daughter's life. She should have been a better mother. She should have paid more attention.

  She clamped her teeth together and inhaled through her nose. “Let's think this through. Did she take anything from her room? Did you look for a note?”

  He shot her a look of awed surprise, as if she'd just solved the riddle of the Sphinx. “You know her stuff better than I do. You check her room, and I'll look around for a note.”

  A quick perusal of Lissa's closet and bathroom revealed missing clothes and toiletries. Plus, Lissa's favorite pink duffel bag wasn't hanging on its usual hook in the closet.

  “Found it!” Daniel's voice echoed up the staircase. He met her in the entryway with a crumpled piece of paper. “She stuck it on the fridge under the Pete's Pizza magnet. I should have seen it. Would have if I'd—”

  Natalie yanked the note out of his hand. Lissa's rounded, girlish script seemed all wrong for the angry, desperate words she'd penned:

  Don't look for me. I never want to see either one of you again!

  Daniel paced the kitchen. Three days and countless phone calls later, Lissa still hadn't been found. Not even her best friend Jody offered a clue—if she could be trusted not to be in on the scheme.

  Dear Lord, help! He ought to be out there looking for his daughter, not downing stale coffee and waiting for the phone to ring. But his friend in the county sheriff's department had told him he needed to stay home in case Lissa showed up.

  The only upside to the insanity was that Natalie had moved back in. Okay, she hadn't exactly moved in. But she had stayed at the house with him—albeit in separate rooms—while they waited and prayed for word about their daughter.

  He poured the last of his cold coffee down the drain and joined Natalie at the kitchen table, where her fingers flew across her laptop keyboard. Dressed in cutoffs and a faded T-shirt, her hair drooping across one eye in a tangled mess, she looked as stressed and anxious as he felt. Yet she kept right on working, working, working.

  He banged the table with his fist. “How can you even think about work at a time like this?”

  A long, slow sigh whispered between her lips. She leaned back and extended her legs. “If I stop, I'll lose my mind. And anyway, I'm not exactly working.”

  She swiveled the laptop in his direction. A missing children's website filled the screen.

  Daniel's breath snagged. “You don't think—”

  The ringing phone sliced through his words. He leapt up to grab the receiver.

  “Daniel, it's Bram,” Natalie's father said. “You can stop worrying. Lissa's okay. She's here.”

  “Thank God!” Daniel crumpled over the tile countertop.

  Natalie gripped his arm. “Who is it? Did they find her?”

  He nodded fiercely. “Hang on, Bram, I'm putting you on speaker.”

  “Dad?” Natalie looked at the phone and then at Daniel.

  “I found her in the hayloft. She's been here all along, sneaking into the house at night to raid the refrigerator and clean up in the guest bathroom.” Bram Morgan gave a tired chuckle. “I thought something was fishy when my sandwich fixin's started disappearing.”

  A gasping sob tore through Natalie. She fell against Daniel's chest. “Thank God, thank God!”

  He wrapped one arm around her, relishing the pressure of her body against his. He drank in the smell of her skin, the warmth of her breath whispering across the hollow of his throat. Just to hold her like this: the memory of the long months apart dissipated like dew under the hot summer sun.

  Dear God, let this be the end of the bad times. Help us find our way back to each other.

  “Forget it. I'm through with both of you.” Lissa flounced across Granddad's living room and plopped on the sofa. No way was she giving in and going home—wherever that was anymore—until her parents came to their senses and got back together.

  Her dad braced his hands on his hips and gave her that look, the one he always used to imply she was being childish.

  Talk about childish! Mom and Dad ought to look in the mirror once in a while. When they first tore through Granddad's kitchen door—Mom squeezing Dad's hand like she'd never let go—Lissa felt sure her little scheme had worked. Faced with the fear of losing their precious only child, they'd seen the error of their foolish ways, forged a new bond, reunited for eternity.

  Not.

  Five seconds after making sure Lissa was all right, they were firing verbal grenades at each other. Mom blamed Dad for not paying closer attention. Dad blamed Mom for spending too much time at the office.

  Dad gave a snort. “You can't stay here, Lissa. School starts in less than a month. You can't expect your granddad to keep up with a teenager when he already has plenty of … other stuff to deal with.”

  “Your dad's right.” Mom sank onto the other end of the sofa. She leaned forward, her hands clasped like she was praying. “Please come home with me. I've got a room all ready for you at my apartment. With your dad moving to Putnam, you need to be close to school.”

  “Maybe I'll quit school. Maybe—”

  “Lissa!” Mom and Dad burst out in unison. Great, the one thing they had to agree on.

  Okay, dropping out was a dumb idea. And if running away didn't scare some sense into them, she'd have to think of something else fast. Something had to snap her parents out of this craziness. She laced her arms across her chest and shifted her gaze from one to the other. Which one was the weakest link?

  Mom. Definitely Mom. She'd been a total basket case ever since Grandma got sick.

  Sky, Granddad's lumbering old Great Dane, padded over and rested his slobbery chin on Lissa's knee. She stroked his head while she came up with a new plan.

  “Okay, here's the deal.” Heaving a dramatic sigh, Lissa tossed her parents a withering look. “You're both being dorks about this whole separation thing, and now you've sold our house right out from under me.”

  She sniffled for effect and wiped at an imaginary tear, which really wasn't so imaginary if she thought about it. “Mom, you spend so much time at your office that I hardly ever see you.”

  “But if you lived with me—”

  “Sorry, Dad's earned way m
ore brownie points than you. At least he's usually around when I need him.”

  Her father straightened and crossed his arms, slanting Lissa's mother an I-told-you-so smirk. Mom just rolled her eyes.

  “So if you won't let me stay with Granddad, then I've decided.” She skewered her mother with a cold, hard stare, praying her words would hit their mark. “I'm moving to Putnam with Dad.”

  5

  Seated on her secondhand apartment sofa, Natalie hugged her knees and watched the late-August sun climb into the morning sky. The effect lost some of its beauty as seen along the corrugated roofline of the sheltered parking area. Though she should have been dressed and on her way out the door by now, she still lingered in her gray sleep shirt, elephant-print bottoms, and bare feet. Despite the sunny morning, a dreary cloud hung over her—a lethargy of body and spirit—all because she happened to see a bright yellow school bus rumble past the apartment complex entrance, a painful reminder that Lissa started school today in Putnam.

  It wasn't fair. Natalie should be the one exulting in the smells of Lissa's new backpack, pencils, and notebook paper. Natalie—not Daniel—should be the one driving her daughter to school, helping with her homework, listening to the endless gossip about her friends and which boy she had a crush on this year and how mean her new English teacher was.

  Okay, if she were perfectly honest, she also missed tripping over Daniel's musty briefcase and sweaty sneakers, shoving his endless clippings from the sports pages to the other end of the table, teasing him out of a funk when his team lost a game. She missed all of it.

  Across the room, stuffed into a lower cube of her modular entertainment center, she glimpsed the hodgepodge of materials she'd collected on strokes. She wondered why she kept it, why she'd bothered ordering it at all. Half the treatment recommendations were geared toward patients with far more control and cognition than Mom displayed. The other half were so depressing in their descriptions of life after a massive stroke that Natalie couldn't bear to finish them.

  A tremor worked its way up her body and culminated in a stifled sob. She felt as if she'd landed on a barren beach at the foot of a rocky cliff, with no way up and no way around. And behind her an angry sea closed in fast. If she didn't find an escape route soon, she would surely drown. She needed help, and it was high time she admitted it.

  Uncoiling her legs, she pushed up from the sofa and reached for the phone on the breakfast bar. Her fingers felt heavy and numb as she pressed the number for Fawn Ridge Fellowship. The secretary answered and immediately put Natalie through to Pastor Mayer.

  “Natalie, how are you? Everything okay with this week's newsletter?”

  “That isn't why I'm calling, Pastor.” Her voice sounded distant, hoarse, not like her own at all. “I … I need … ”

  Pastor Mayer must have recognized the desperation darkening her tone. “How can I help? Do you want to come in and—”

  “No, no, I can't.” Until her mother's stroke, she'd prided herself on her optimism, confidence, and self-control. How could she now slice open her heart and reveal its ugliness to someone she'd known for most of her life? “If you could just give me the name of someone. Preferably someone who doesn't know me or my family.”

  “I see. Yes, give me a moment.” A few seconds later he offered the name and number of a Christian counselor. “Dr. Julia Sirpless practices from her home office in Fielding. Is that too far away for you?”

  “It's only an hour's drive. Sounds perfect.”

  If anything in her life could be called perfect. Before she could talk herself out of it, she phoned Dr. Sirpless and made an appointment for the following Monday. Thankfully, the doctor took evening appointments, which would save Natalie the difficulty of explaining absences from the office.

  The first few visits went well, with Natalie mostly providing a detached overview of the events that brought her to this point. The petite and professional Dr. Sirpless had definitely mastered the art of smiling and nodding in all the right places. And Natalie had to admit, merely talking through her mother's stroke and some of the arguments with Daniel that led to their separation provided the safety valve she needed to keep from losing it completely.

  On her last visit before the Thanksgiving holiday, as the session drew to a close, Dr. Sirpless capped her pen and said, “Tell me how you feel about the progress we've made.”

  “Good, I think.” Natalie glanced around the room, her gaze flitting across an autumn-hued silk flower arrangement on the coffee table, a pine-cone wreath over the mantel. A glass-domed clock on the corner of the doctor's desk ticked off the minutes as the time neared nine o'clock.

  “Just … good?”

  “It's helping to talk objectively about things, but … ” A whisper echoed in a distant part of her brain, a voice telling her they hadn't yet plumbed the depths of her issues. She lifted her gaze to meet the doctor's. “You think I'm holding back, don't you?”

  “I think there are parts of your pain you aren't ready to explore yet. In time, you will be.” Dr. Sirpless rose, her signal their time was up. “Try to enjoy the holiday with your family. We'll take this up again next week.”

  Enjoy the holiday? She'd tried and failed miserably.

  Natalie shoved away from the computer screen and rubbed her tired, dry eyes. Silence cloaked the print shop. A brisk November breeze whisked dead leaves across the sidewalk outside her window. Across the square, an elderly couple she recognized from church strolled into the Hillman House Café, one of the few businesses open on Thanksgiving Day, mainly for the folks who had no one with whom to spend the holiday.

  For all the joy this day had brought her, Natalie might as well be one of them. Daniel had taken Lissa to visit his parents. Natalie put in an appearance at Hart and Celia's, but by the time dinner ended and Dad, Hart, and the twins adjourned to the den for a TV football marathon, Natalie had endured all the family togetherness she could bear. She'd intended to go home to her apartment and console herself with another huge helping of the pecan pie Celia had foisted upon her.

  The next thing she knew, she'd turned into the empty parking lot behind the print shop. She'd work just long enough to finish the ad layout she'd worked on yesterday—an hour. Two at most. Just long enough to get through the loneliest Thanksgiving she'd ever spent.

  Her breath stuck in the upper part of her chest. Her hand crept toward the side drawer and inched it open. She slid out her business card folio and flipped to the last card on the last plastic page. One finger traced the phone number, and she lifted her desk phone receiver.

  “Dr. Sirpless? I was afraid I'd get your voice mail. It's Natalie Pearce.”

  “I saw your name on the caller ID and decided to pick up. How are you, Natalie?” Calm concern laced the woman's pleasantly husky voice.

  “Not so good. You're probably celebrating with your family, but—” The tightness in her chest intensified. “I really need to talk.”

  “Holidays are the hardest, aren't they? I was just heading home. I can meet you at my office in an hour.”

  “Thank you.” Natalie gave a shuddering sniff. “Thank you.”

  She powered down the computer, flicked off the lights, and slid her arms into her camel-hair coat. Though her hands still shook as she fumbled to insert her car key into the ignition, a tiny glimmer of relief had already nudged its way past the gloom shrouding her heart.

  Dusk had closed in by the time she parked in the driveway at Dr. Sirpless's home. She followed the narrow walkway around to the office addition behind the garage. The amber glow of a floor lamp shone through thin curtains. Natalie knocked and entered.

  Dressed in slim-fitting jeans and a holiday sweater, her auburn hair in a loose ponytail, the doctor appeared through an inner door. “I've just started water for tea. Chamomile, hibiscus, or Earl Gray?”

  “Chamomile, definitely.” Natalie smiled her thanks as she laid her coat and purse on a bench by the door. She sank into the depths of a navy velveteen overstuffed chair and inha
led the soothing aroma from a lavender-scented candle.

  Dr. Sirpless returned with two tall, white china mugs decorated with Currier and Ives winter scenes. She handed one to Natalie and settled in the matching chair to Natalie's left. “This is your first Thanksgiving since you and your husband separated. I'm sure it raised more than a few memories.”

  Natalie wrapped her fingers around the mug and let the warmth soak away the stiffness from the drive over. “I miss Daniel. I miss Lissa.” Her voice cracked. “I miss my mom.”

  “Up to now we've only talked around the guilt, the regrets.” Dr. Sirpless sipped her tea. “Tonight I'd like you to tell me more about your mother. Not your failure to help with the Christmas decorations. Not the stroke. Just the good things.”

  Natalie drew in a long, slow breath that shivered past her heart. She set the mug on a ceramic coaster and folded her hands in her lap. Staring at them, she let her mind drift through scenes from her childhood. “She's the best mother ever. Smart. Talented. Devoted to her family—”

  Dr. Sirpless gave a low chuckle and held up one hand. “You love her, that's obvious. But no mother is perfect. Is it possible you need to adjust your view of her—allow for a bit more realism?”

  Natalie squirmed. She tucked one leg under her and picked at a hangnail. Thunder rumbled in the distance … or was it only in her imagination?

  “I can take care of the horses, Mom. Go to your art show. You've been working years for this—your chance to be recognized at a major gallery.”

  “Didn't you hear the weather forecast? I won't leave you alone on the farm with a bunch of nervous animals.”

  “What are you remembering, Natalie?”

  “I'm not sure I can talk about it.” Her voice creaked like a rusty feed bucket handle.

  “Why not?”

  She tipped her head, closed her eyes, and waited for the pain to pass.