The Twins' Family Christmas

by Lee Tobin McClain

  “Look at my doll!” Sunny thrust it into Lily’s arms. “Come on, help me change her clothes. I got three outfits for her, in the box. Skye’s doll only has two, but one of them is a fancy ball gown, so it costed more.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Lily said, running her fingers over the doll’s furry snow jacket. “Look, her eyes are the same color as yours. And they open and close.”

  “And her hair’s pretty. I’m going to try to keep it pretty, cuz my other doll’s hair is a mess. I washed it with soap, and I wasn’t supposed to.”

  As Sunny prattled on, Lily slipped out of her coat and helped the little girl change her doll’s clothes while covertly observing Carson. He was talking seriously to Skye, and she could catch a few of the quiet words. “Careful” and “no leaving without me” and “I was worried.”

  No yelling, hitting, even scolding. Just a caring, concerned parent.

  Pam had been wrong about her husband. How had she been so wrong?

  Soon Skye wiggled off her father’s lap and came over to join them. Lily glanced back and saw Carson head for the kitchen area. So she looked at Skye’s doll and helped with her wardrobe change as well, and pretty soon they were involved in a game of pretend.

  “I want a dog!” Sunny made her doll say, poking at the other doll with a stiff, outstretched arm.

  “No!” Skye batted the doll’s hand away with her own doll. “You can’t have one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t help your daddy enough, and he’s busy, busy, busy.” The words were spoken by Skye in an adult inflection that made Lily smile a little.

  “I’ll help more,” Sunny’s doll said. “I’ll clean the floor and take out the garbage and cook—”

  “You’re not allowed to cook,” Skye’s doll said, pointing her plastic arm at Sunny. “You’re too little.”

  “You’re too little!” Sunny’s doll cried.

  Lily put a finger to her lips. “Quiet dolls get more attention,” she said, having no idea where it came from. “And any-age doll can pretend cook, right?”

  Both girls frowned thoughtfully. “Then,” Skye said, “can we pretend get a dog?”

  Oh, boy. Lily didn’t want to say the wrong thing again, but both pairs of eyes looked at her expectantly. Amazing how little kids thought adults knew everything.

  “Your dolls might be able to get a pretend dog,” she said carefully, “as long as you know it’s not real. And as long as you don’t use it to torture your daddy.”

  “What’s torture?” Skye asked, just as Carson came over from the kitchen area.

  Lily looked up at him, afraid she’d really said something wrong, but he just lifted an eyebrow.

  “I was exaggerating,” she said to the girls. “I only meant that you shouldn’t use your pretend dog to bother your father and beg for a real one all the time.” She leaned forward and beckoned the little girls closer and whispered, “Bugging him probably won’t work at all, but if he sees you play nicely with your pretend dog and do your chores, maybe he’ll change his mind.”

  “Yay!” Both twins jumped up and danced around. “We’re getting a dog, we’re getting a dog.”

  “No, I didn’t mean—” Lily looked desperately at Carson, whose forehead was wrinkled, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Girls, that—what you’re doing right now—that’s bugging him and torturing him.” She blew out a breath and looked at Carson. “I’m just digging myself in deeper and deeper. I’d better leave while you’re still speaking to me.”

  He chuckled ruefully. “You may as well stay. I have way too much cheesy scrambled eggs for the three of us. And toast, and fruit.”

  The smells coming out of the kitchen made Lily’s stomach growl audibly. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, giving her a half smile. “Just, please, let’s change the subject from dogs, okay?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. I think something I said yesterday was what gave them the impression that they were getting a dog. I’m really sorry. I said ‘dogs are a gift’ and...”

  “And they heard what they want to hear. Welcome to six-year-olds.” He clapped his hands. “Girls, I want you to wash your hands and then come to the table. You can show Miss Lily where to wash her hands, too. We all need a little breakfast before we decide what to do with the rest of our day.”

  After they’d stuffed themselves on breakfast food—including cinnamon rolls left over from their earlier meal—Carson cleared his throat to get the girls’ attention. “Let’s everyone say one thing they’d like to do on Christmas,” he suggested, and Lily nodded approval of his parenting skills. In her own family, no such open communication had happened; the adults had done what they wanted—usually involving drinking—and Lily had taken refuge in drawing and books and, one year, the camera Aunt Penny had sent her in the mail. That wonderful gift had impacted her career decisions both in the military and after.

  “I want to go sledding!” Skye cried.

  “I want to build a snowman,” Sunny said.

  They all looked expectantly at Lily. “Ummmmm... I want to go take pictures of the dogs in the barn, for my school project.”

  “No more dogs,” Carson groaned.

  “I’m sorry!”

  Lily clapped her hands to her mouth as the girls chanted, “The dogs, the dogs!”

  She’d done it again. She was causing more trouble in this family.

  And this was just superficial stuff compared to what she’d done to Pam, the girls’ mother, Carson’s beloved wife. “Hey, listen, I’d better go,” she said, and stood. “Thank you for the breakfast.”

  “Don’t go, Miss Lily!” Skye said.

  She high-fived each of the girls. “I’ve got a hike to take, and you’ve got a snowman to build!” She gave Carson a quick wave, grabbed her coat and headed outside.

  She needed to escape before she made more trouble for Carson. And before he roped her into talking about Pam again.

  Chapter Five

  “Wait!” Carson stood and followed Lily, stopping at the cabin door.

  Still on the porch, she turned. She looked over her shoulder, biting her lip, her blue coat bright against a background of diamond-crusted snow.

  “I didn’t mean you should leave. Visiting the dogs isn’t a bad idea.” He couldn’t believe he was saying that.

  But he didn’t want Lily to go, and when he examined his reasons, he wasn’t entirely sure what they were.

  One of them, he reminded himself firmly, was finding out more about Pam’s death. Because Carson needed to move on. As the girls got older, he was realizing just how much they needed a mother’s touch; witness their clingy behavior toward Lily. Their concerns and issues were getting more complicated, too. He needed a partner in parenting.

  The undeniable tug he felt toward Lily reminded him he might need a partner’s love and companionship for himself, too.

  “I want to go visit Long John and see how his Christmas is going,” Carson said, directing the comment to both Lily and the girls, who were now pressing against his sides. “And then we’ll do a little sledding and snowman-building, and then we’ll see.” He reached out toward Lily, an automatic welcoming gesture.

  At least, he thought that was all it was.

  She looked at his hand and then at him, and a flush rose to her cheeks.

  What did that mean?

  “We’d be honored if you’d stay and spend more time with us,” he said.

  The girls pushed their way past him and out the door, tugging at Lily with their surely very sticky hands. “Stay! Play with us today!”

  Yes. They needed for Carson to find them a mother figure, and soon. They were attaching themselves to Lily way too much, too soon, and he shouldn’t be encouraging it.

  After he’d found out what he wanted to know—and tried to o
ffer her some counseling and support, as he’d promised Penny he would—he’d create some natural distance.

  And then this Christmastime at the ranch would be over, and they’d go their separate ways.

  He shook that thought away as Lily looked searchingly at him. “If you’re sure, I’ll visit with you for a little while,” she said, her voice hesitating. Obviously, she was uncertain of her welcome.

  Or was she hiding something? What did she know about Pam?

  Thoughts of his wife’s flirtatious behavior with other men crowded in, even as he tried to push them away. Had Pam been headed for an assignation with a lover when she’d blundered into enemy fire? Did Lily know something about it, and was she just too kind to tell him?

  “Come on, girls—coats and boots and hats and mittens before we can play in the snow,” he said, and the flurry of getting them and himself ready, of pulling saucer sleds out of the truck and finding a suitably safe hill for sledding, helped to clear his thoughts.

  The safest hill they found sloped down from Long John’s cabin, so Lily and Carson stood at the top and watched the girls race each other on their plastic sleds, squealing. Long John came out on his little back deck and waved, but declined their invitation to come down.

  “I’m taking it easy today,” he said. Code for his Parkinson’s acting up, Carson suspected.

  “Are you sure?” Lily smiled at the older man. “It’s a beautiful day. We can come up and help you.”

  “No, thanks. I’m just going to stay inside and watch my birds.” Long John gestured toward the seed-and-peanut-butter pinecones he’d hung all around the porch. Nuthatches and warblers darted and flew around them.

  Long John waved and went inside. A moment later he appeared in his chair by the window, where he could watch his birds and the girls, too.

  “He’s good at making a life for himself,” Lily said thoughtfully. “We could all learn something from him.”

  “That’s true.” They walked over a few feet to where there was a big rock to perch on. A couple of ponderosa pines loomed behind them, and Lily looked up. “They’re so beautiful,” she said. “I love the green against the blue sky and the snow.”

  A bit of nature lore emerged from somewhere in the back of his brain. “Smell the trunk of the tree,” he urged her.

  “Smell it?”

  He nodded, and gamely she walked up to the trunk and sniffed. Her face lit up. “Butterscotch?”

  “Or vanilla. It’s the only tree that smells like cookies.”

  “That’s so cool!” Her cheeks were pink and just for a minute she looked carefree and delighted.

  Carson couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  She flushed and looked away. Then she frowned up at Carson. “Hey, I’m sorry I contributed to that mess with the dogs. I shouldn’t have even mentioned dogs to the girls. I hated to see them so upset.”

  “They’ve rebounded quickly.” Carson gestured toward the twins as they reached the top of the little slope, tugging their plastic sleds, and then plopped down together to slide down the hill again. “Don’t blame yourself. I feel bad about not getting them the present they really wanted, but the truth is, I’m hard-pressed to manage our home life already. Taking care of a puppy is beyond me.”

  “You seem like you’re doing a great job.”

  “Thank you.” He hesitated as a natural way into a difficult conversation came to him. “Did Pam say anything to you about how I was as a father?”

  Lily looked at him quickly and then looked away. “Not really,” she said, her voice uneasy.

  “How well did you and Pam know each other?” he pressed. “From what she said, you were pretty close.” In fact, he’d gotten a completely different impression of Lily from Pam than how she was now. Pam had made it sound like she was a drinker and partier, wilder even than Pam herself.

  The woman beside him didn’t match that description at all. Could she have changed that much? Or had Pam been wrong?

  “Miss Lily! Come sledding!”

  “Okay!” Lily slogged through the snow toward them without a glance back at Carson, which left him wondering: What would have been her answer to his question?

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Lily sat wrapped in a snug fleece blanket in a comfortable chair in her cabin, trying to read a Christmas book.

  The picture on the cover, a snow-covered Victorian home all decorated for Christmas, matched the sweet story, and normally she’d have been swept away. But her eyes kept drifting to the window and the scene outside.

  Carson and the twins were building a snowman, laughing and shouting. They’d gotten one giant ball on top of the other to form the snowman’s body and now were rolling a smaller ball for the head.

  She watched Carson kneel to help the girls pat more snow into place. He was a good man, a good dad. When he’d asked her how well she and Pam had known each other, what Pam had said about him, she hadn’t wanted to tell him. Still didn’t.

  It was hard to understand why Pam had misled her so badly. Why had Pam wanted her to think she had an abusive husband? Was it possible that Carson used to be that way? After all, Lily herself had done a 180-degree turnaround in the past few years. Maybe Carson had, too.

  But watching his gentleness with his girls, noticing the way he interacted with Long John and his parishioners, it was simply impossible to imagine that he’d ever been the bully of Pam’s vivid stories.

  Maybe she should tell him the truth. Was it worse to mislead someone, or to knowingly hurt them?

  This morning, the opportunity to ride a sleigh down the hill with the girls had come as a welcome interruption. When Carson had approached her again, she’d pleaded cold and work and gone inside.

  But it bothered her. She and Pam had started out so close. Notorious for being the most party-happy females on the base, they’d spent a lot of time together in all sorts of conditions.

  Which made the way things had ended even worse.

  And if there had been a sense of betrayal between Lily and Pam, how much worse would Pam’s final actions feel to Carson, her husband?

  Lily should have found a better way to handle the whole situation. Should have sat down in a friendly way with Carson and told him, “Look, here’s what Pam said, here’s what happened.”

  Lily couldn’t figure out a way to do that without hurting Carson in the process. And a selfish part of her didn’t want to admit her own role, to destroy forever the warm way he’d looked at her.

  A knock on the door, followed by a high, piping “Miss Lily!” pulled her out of her low thoughts.

  She hurried over and opened the door, and the sight of Sunny and Skye made her smile. “Hi, girls! How’s the snowman coming along?”

  “He’s getting real big!” Skye said, pointing.

  “But we need help,” Sunny added. “Do you have a carrot for his nose?”

  She looked over their heads to where Carson was shoveling, but he didn’t glance their way. Did he know the girls were here? Had he encouraged them to come?

  “I do have a carrot,” she said slowly. “Come on inside and I’ll get it for you.”

  They came inside but stayed on the mat by the door. “Your cabin is a lot like ours,” Skye said. “And you like to read, too, just like Daddy!”

  “Does your dad read to you?” she asked as she pulled a couple of carrots from her refrigerator.

  “Uh-huh. Right now, he’s reading us a Christmas book called The Story of Holly and Ivy, about a little girl who doesn’t have a family.”

  “It’s sad,” Skye said, “but Daddy promised us it will have a happy ending. Will you come out and help us finish our snowman?”

  Lily made a pretense of washing the carrots while she pondered. She wasn’t exactly enjoying her solitary time in the cabin, and she’d been watching the progress of the snowman with interest.
It was beautiful and sunny out, and she’d love to get a little more fresh air.

  And company, she realized. Seeing Carson and his girls made her aware of the family she didn’t have.

  But she didn’t need to get any more involved with them. Didn’t need to hear any more of Carson’s questions, nor struggle more to conceal the truth.

  She turned toward the girls, and the sight of the two eager faces swayed her resolve to stay inside. “Here you go,” she said.

  “Won’t you come?”

  Inspiration hit. “I’ll bring my camera,” she said, “and take some of the family photos I’m supposed to do. We’ll do some today and some tomorrow. That way, we’ll have different lights and clothes.”

  And she’d have a barrier between herself and Carson. The camera could be a friend that way, giving her something to do and allowing the right amount of distance from people.

  She pulled on her coat and mittens and boots and followed the girls outside, inhaling the fresh, cold air. Notes of pine and spruce added to the holiday feeling, and sun sparkled off the snow.

  You couldn’t doubt the existence of God when you saw His amazing handiwork.

  She picked up Skye and let her poke the carrot in for the nose, noticing that she had a tiny mole on her cheek. Then she lifted up Sunny to put in the chocolate-cookie eyes Carson had brought out. This close, she could see that Sunny had a tiny scar in her hairline.

  So they weren’t identical, and Lily felt satisfied knowing that she could tell them apart, even if they were sleeping.

  Although, why would that be of interest to her? It wasn’t as if she were going to be involved with this family after the holidays.

  “So they talked you into coming out again?” Carson’s deep, friendly voice behind her danced along her nerve endings.

  She held up her camera like a shield. “I thought I’d get some of the family photos done today,” she said, “if that’s okay with you.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed up for the occasion,” he said. “I ought to at least comb their hair. And mine,” he added, forking fingers through his already mussed hair.