“I love it there,” she said. “But—” She broke off. Where to start?
Penny gestured Lily into the car and went around to the driver’s side. “Get in. We’ll talk.”
Once they were heading toward the airport, Penny glanced over at her. “I spoke with Carson.”
“Oh...” Lily said the word on a sigh. “How is he? How are the girls?”
“Everyone’s managing. Missing you.”
Lily frowned. “Did he say that?”
“Not in so many words, but I know him. I read between the lines.”
Lily tried to process the tsunami of emotions inside her. Sadness, happiness, longing. And love. For her father. For Penny. And maybe, for Carson and his girls.
At the airport, Penny pulled into a parking space and turned off the car. “I’d be tickled to have you come live on the ranch, or in Esperanza Springs,” she said. “I’d like to get to know you better as an adult. Seems to me you’ve grown into a very special person.”
That warmed Lily’s heart. “I do love it there,” she said, propping her elbows on her knees, looking out the icy window. “But I don’t want to make Carson’s life difficult. His girls...they were getting attached to me, and I to them. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Those girls need a whole lot of mother figures. I’m one of them. What’s wrong with you playing that role, too?”
“You don’t understand. I...I really hurt Carson. I knew his wife, see. And there were things I didn’t tell him about her death.”
“Huh.”
A plane was taking off, lifting into the air with the elegance of a giant silver bird. Behind them, a family pulled luggage from a car’s trunk, then headed toward the terminal, each pulling a suitcase.
“Is there any chance,” Penny asked, “that you’re carrying baggage that’s not yours to carry?”
Lily tilted her head to one side, considering.
“Blame you’re taking on for something that isn’t your fault? Like you did with your parents?”
Was she doing that?
What if she weren’t to blame for Pam’s death, despite what Pam had said? Lily had done the best she could, given that the investigators had asked her direct questions. And she hadn’t just been tattling; Pam’s drug use while on duty had put a lot of people at risk.
Maybe she’d been right to say the truth. Even if what Pam had done with the results was purely horrible.
Lily had been wrong to keep information from Carson. A mistake, for sure, maybe even a self-protective sin. It wasn’t likely that he’d forgive her.
But was it possible? As they walked into the airport, she thought about Carson, the girls and the town of Esperanza Springs. The ranch and Long John.
She did want it, all of it, if she were honest with herself. She wanted the closeness that she’d started to feel with Carson. She wanted to be near him and help him and care for him, and be cared for in return. Wanted to make a family with him and his girls.
It wasn’t likely to work out, no—but it wasn’t impossible. Maybe at some point in the future, they could reconnect.
Did she have the emotional strength to go back there again, to talk with him, apologize for the secrets, talk through what had happened to Pam? To try again, knowing she might fail, was actually likely to fail?
But something about today, the reconciliation with her father, the help Penny had offered so freely, had strengthened her. Or maybe just reminded her of the strength she already had. She turned to her aunt. “I have to tie up some loose ends at school and in Phoenix,” she said. “But if you have space on the ranch, in a month or so, I’d like to come stay for a little while,” she said. “I’ll work to earn my keep.”
Chapter Fifteen
Carson did not want to go back up to Redemption Ranch. His whole heart rebelled against it.
But he had to break the ice, jump in the water, get back on the horse. Whatever cliché you wanted to use, he had to do it. Somehow. It had been almost six weeks since Lily had left. His life and the girls’ lives were back to normal. And for him, normal included serving as chaplain at the ranch.
Finn had let him know they were expecting more veterans soon, so Carson had to get used to going up there. He had to harden himself to being in the place where he’d fallen in love and lost his dream.
Those six weeks had been busy for him, because he had realized all the things he needed to work out. On the practical side, he had talked to army officials about Pam’s discharge status and gotten a fuller picture of what had happened on the last day of her life, as well as the weeks leading up to it.
The information he’d received had been distressing, but in a way, not a surprise. He had known about most of Pam’s issues. They had just gotten worse during her last weeks, when she’d stopped taking her medication and everything had gone wrong.
Carson had his own guilt to deal with. He knew why she’d gone off her meds: because she was pregnant. He wished he had considered that and talked to her about it, but he had been caught up in the joy of expecting another baby and the concern about her serving in the military while pregnant, and he hadn’t stopped to think about the mental health issues involved.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Fortunately, he had good friends in Finn and Jack. And he had taken their advice and consulted someone who could help: not a therapist, but an older pastor who had lots of experience with similar issues. According to all of these men, his mistake was a mistake, not a sign that he was hopelessly and fatally flawed. According to them, the responsibility for taking the meds, or talking to a physician about how to go off them, ultimately rested on Pam.
Still, he’d struggled to understand, had wrestled with the issue in prayer. But the verse that kept coming to him was about seeing through a glass darkly now. Clarity might never come until he himself joined his Father in heaven, saw Him face-to-face and also saw the whole truth of life.
“Daddy, Daddy, we’re almost there!”
“Do you think our doggy will be like Rockette or like Shoney?” Shoney, the cocker spaniel Finn had adopted right along with Leo, when he’d married Kayla, had plenty of challenges. But they did nothing to dampen her spirit, and everyone in Esperanza Springs loved her.
“Long John said we would like her,” Carson reminded the girls. “What she’s like will be a surprise. I’m excited, too.”
And he was, as hard as that was to believe. In the midst of all his other self-realizations, he’d come to understand that the reason he didn’t want a dog had more to do with his parents and the way he was raised than with any actual dislike of having a pet. Once he’d figured that out, he had been glad for Jack and Long John to get the girls a dog.
“Remember,” he said as he pulled the truck into the gravel space in front of Long John’s cabin. “We’re just meeting this pooch. If she isn’t right for us, there will be another dog who is.”
“I hope it’s her,” Skye said, her forehead wrinkling. “If we meet her and don’t like her, she’ll feel very sad.”
“Come on, come on!” Sunny was already unbuckling her seat belt, and as soon as Carson turned off the truck, she opened the door and rushed outside. Skye wasn’t far behind her.
As they tromped up Long John’s steps, Carson’s eyes strayed toward the cabin where Lily had stayed, and immediately his mind was filled with thoughts and images of her. How they had spent Christmas Eve right here, at Long John’s. How they’d built a snowman with the girls, watched them go sledding, just over the hill.
But his girls needed him to be present now rather than reminiscing about the past, and so he shoved those thoughts aside and climbed the steps after them. Before they could even pound on the door, Long John opened it, and then the girls were inside with a fuzzball of energy like he had never seen before.
He tilted his head to the side and watched as the girls shrieked an
d rolled on the floor with the light brown fuzzball.
Fuzzballs.
He glanced over at Long John. “There are two of them.”
“You have two girls.”
“Yeah, but...”
Long John laughed. “You have to admit, it’s a good surprise. For them and for you.”
“For them, anyway.” Carson blew out a sigh. How much more work could two dogs be than one? “What kind of dogs are they, anyway? I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Jack called ’em sporgis, or some such fool thing,” Long John said. “A boy and a girl, some crazy mix of spaniel and corgi.”
The dogs were, indeed, fluffy like some breeds of spaniels he’d seen. But their bodies were long and low-slung, corgi-like.
“Aren’t they pretty, Daddy?” Skye looked up at him, her eyes glowing.
Carson was saved from having to answer by Sunny’s giggles as her dog, an exact replica of her brother, barreled into her lap and started to lick her face.
“You’d better not have any other surprises up your sleeve,” Carson warned Long John.
Long John didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed his walker to the window and looked out. “Jack DeMoise was planning to come up so he could show you some things about taking care of them,” he said. “Wonder where he is.”
Carson came over to join him at the window. He looked out at the snowy landscape, then down toward the cabins where he, the girls and Lily had spent Christmas.
Again, memories assailed him. They’d had such a good time together. That warmth and caring between them had been real.
He’d been a real jerk to get angry with Lily for what Pam had done. He knew that now.
When a figure came into view, at first, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Petite, royal blue jacket, wheat-blond hair fluffed out around a face he’d feared he’d never see again... Had he conjured Lily up out of his own imagination?
He turned to look at Long John. “Is that...” He trailed off.
The older man chuckled. “Surprise,” he said.
* * *
Lily pushed the cabin door open. She didn’t like to make Long John get up if he didn’t need to.
She had been back at the ranch just a couple of days, but aside from the pain she felt every time she looked at the cabin where Carson and the girls had stayed, the place felt wonderful, like home. She had spent time with Penny, hammering out a job description that would let her help with the dogs, do PR for the ranch and still give her time to work on her exciting new project.
What her dad had said, how he and Mom had always thought she would end up in a creative profession, had impacted her. She had finished and turned in her thesis, and the feedback she had received had been so positive that she had decided to try to turn it into a book.
She was checking messages on her phone, so she barely looked up as she walked into Long John’s cabin. “Hey, are you ready for me to take those dogs down to the kennel?”
“Not quite.” There was laughter in the old man’s voice.
“Miss Lily!” No sooner had she heard the words, the voices she’d missed so terribly, than the twins were flinging themselves on her. She sank down to her knees to properly hug the girls, inhaling their sweaty, soapy scent, listening to their excited greetings, her eyes closed.
She hardly dared look up, because if the twins were here, then... She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
There was Carson.
The sight of him rocked her like an earthquake.
What was he doing here? Why were the girls here? And most important, did he want to see her, or was this as surprising and even upsetting to him as it was to her?
She looked away, overcome with feeling, and then made herself look back up at him to discover that he was staring at her. Looking serious.
There was another knock on the door. “Come on in,” Long John called, and the door opened to Jack DeMoise.
“Everyone ready to go down to the kennel and collect the paperwork and supplies for these two pups?” Jack looked around the room and smiled. “I’m assuming our plan was a success?”
“That remains to be seen.” Long John made his way across the room toward Jack. “Come on, girls,” he said. “Let’s take the dogs down and start gathering up their things. That way, we can give your daddy and Miss Lily a few minutes alone.”
Only then did the girls let go of Lily. Sunny ran to the door, ready to go anywhere as long as her new dog went with her. But Skye stood still, looking from Lily to her father. “Are you guys going to fight?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Lily said softly. “But we do have a few things to talk about.”
She wanted to tell Carson how sorry she was. Wanted to hear what he was thinking, although from the serious expression still on his face, she didn’t have much hope that he was feeling positive toward her.
There was a moment of flurry and chaos as Long John, Jack, the twins and the two strange-looking dogs headed out the door. And then it closed, and there was silence.
Feeling awkward, Lily got to her feet and walked over to the kitchen area, leaning her back against the counter. She didn’t look directly at Carson. If she did, he would see her feelings in her eyes, and she didn’t want the humiliation of that. Not when he didn’t feel the same.
Besides, she needed to lean on something, because the very sight of him made her weak in the legs, like she might fall over. She still felt everything she had felt for him before. In fact, when you added in the realizations she’d had and the thinking she’d done in the past month, she felt even more.
“Lily.” Carson cleared his throat. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here today, but I was hoping to see you. I have a lot to say and an apology to make.”
“About what?” She tried, unsuccessfully, to sound casual.
“I was judgmental before. I didn’t understand anything.”
Lily sucked in a breath.
He came to stand across from her, just an arm’s length away, and his closeness squeezed at her heart. She’d been getting stronger, she knew that, but being in the same room with Carson was undoing her.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Pam,” he said. “And a lot of talking to other people about her.”
“You have?” Her voice came out husky, and she cleared her throat.
“I talked to her parents.”
She cocked her head to one side. “You did? Don’t they live overseas?” And if she recalled correctly, they hadn’t been good to Pam.
He nodded. “I was able to track them down in the South of France. I found out something that shifted what I’d been thinking. It might shift your view, too.”
“Okay.” She squeezed her hands into fists.
“There’s no easy way to say this.” He sighed, then met Lily’s eyes. “She’d attempted to take her own life twice before, once as a teenager and once in her early twenties.”
“What?” Lily stared at him.
He nodded. “I didn’t know. She’d never mentioned it, and neither did they, the couple of times I saw them.” He tilted his head, watching her. “It wasn’t about anything you did, Lily, no matter what she said, what the note said. I realize now that she lied a lot, and I think she lied about what was motivating her.”
Lily let out her breath, her shoulders sagging.
“There were mental health issues all along, and imbalances that were at least partly chemical. Her medications were crucial,” he went on, “but she had that rebellious streak. Her parents said they’d thrown up their hands about getting her to take her meds. And she concealed her need for them from her CO and her military doctors.”
“Wow.” Instinctively, she responded to the pain in Carson’s voice. “That must be so hard to deal with.”
“I didn’t know how bad things could get inside her head. She was goo
d at covering up, but I wish she hadn’t felt she had to.”
“I think...it wasn’t under her control. Not entirely, anyway.” Lily thought of her beautiful, wild friend. “If only I could have brought her closer to the Lord, maybe...”
He nodded. “I have the exact same regret. But, Lily, she was saved. She believed.”
“And she’s free now, free and happy.” Lily’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish she could have lived. For the girls to know.”
“I’ll make sure to keep talking about her as they grow,” he said firmly. “All the good things about her, and there were a lot of them.”
“There were.” Lily’s voice caught, and she grabbed a paper towel to blot her eyes. “There were.”
They were both silent for a long moment. Lily was thinking of her friend, of her laughter and her beauty and her charm. What a terrible loss.
From the way Carson blinked and swallowed, she could tell he was having similar thoughts.
Finally, he walked over to the cupboard, pulled out two glasses and filled them with water. He handed one to her, and they both drank deeply.
“I’ll always feel some guilt,” he said. “But one thing her death has made me realize is that life is short. Too short to waste it on petty misunderstandings.” He drained his glass and put it in the sink. “I’m sorry to have blamed you for what she did. It wasn’t your fault, and I’m sorry I acted as though it was.”
She walked toward him then. Reached out and grasped his hands. “I hope that means you can forgive me. And that we can be...friends, maybe.”
“Lily.” He drew in a breath, audibly. “I hope we can be more than friends.”
“More?” The word came out in a squeak.
He didn’t smile, didn’t laugh at her. Instead, he squeezed her hands just a little, and Lily felt it, the warmth of it, wash through her whole body. “I know we haven’t had much time together, but I also know how I feel. You are the woman for me, Lily. I know that without a doubt. And I would very much like to explore a relationship with you. I’ll wait, and we can take it slowly, because I know you’re not there yet, but—”
The Twins' Family Christmas Page 17
