Lance pulled up his browser and did a search for Janelle. According to property records, she owned a small condo in one of Denver’s less expensive neighborhoods. If she’d been stealing money from them, why didn’t she live in a nicer neighborhood?
Her pictures on social media all indicated a modest lifestyle. Though she hadn’t updated anything over the past few days, probably out of shame of having lost her job, Lance found it hard to believe that she would have stolen all that money and not used it.
As he looked at the numbers once more, it was easy to understand why Chad would have thought she’d stolen the money. He could even see why it would have been an easy assumption and why Chad wouldn’t necessarily have had time to look more deeply at the truth. Chad always liked results, whereas Lance was content with playing more of a long game. It’s why they’d made such a good team.
When he finally stretched and closed his laptop, Erin came into the kitchen to make dinner.
“You don’t have to quit on my account,” she said. “The boys were begging me to play campout, like we did last winter when the power went out, so we’re going to roast hot dogs and marshmallows in the fireplace.”
She hesitated slightly then added, “You’re welcome to join us if you like, but don’t feel obligated. There’s plenty of other things you can heat up in the fridge.”
He knew she was trying to be accommodating and he realized all the times she’d done the same for him when they’d been married. Actually, it had been more than that. Yes, she’d often nagged him about working too much, but there were also the countless times when he’d been working in his study and she’d come in with a plate for him and a quick squeeze. He’d enjoyed the feeling that he was completely and deeply loved by her.
Until now, he couldn’t think of a time when he’d ever taken care of her like that.
When he didn’t answer, she walked over to the fridge and pulled out the hot dogs. Then she turned and looked at him. “There’s some of that pasta left over from last night, or there’s stuff to make sandwiches. Do you want me to fix something for you?”
How had he let her go? She was injured and he was supposed to be taking care of her, but here she was, trying to take care of him.
He could still remember her tears as she’d explained why she’d needed to leave him. She’d needed more than just a roof over her head and all the bills paid. She’d needed someone to care about her and grieve with her, not blame her. Someone to share her life with.
Sharing a life was more than just coexisting in the same space, which was one of the things she’d tried to tell him. But he’d closed himself off, not wanting to share those deeper pieces for fear she’d find him lacking.
He watched as Erin closed the refrigerator, put the hot dogs into a bowl and then bustled around the kitchen, gathering the other items she’d need for her time with the boys.
“Well,” she said, “you know where we are if you want to join us.”
As she turned to leave, he said, “Wait.”
She stopped and looked at him. “Are you okay? I know you sometimes get deeply lost in thought when you’re working, but you seem different.”
He was different. The time apart, this time together, and being faced with losing everything else in his life was playing tricks with his mind.
“I’d like to join you. Just give me a moment to put my stuff away and I’ll be right there.”
The softening in her expression made him glad he’d stopped her. She gave him a smile, like she was happy he’d agreed to join them. As she walked into the other room, her step was a little lighter, as it had been back when things were good between them.
He missed that about her. He missed a lot of things about her. Even though he was still upset with her for all the bad things that had come between them, he wondered if maybe there was something he could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. And the tiny voice of the little boy afraid to be called a loser wondered if maybe there was the slightest chance she might give things between them another try.
Chapter Six
The boys had fallen asleep in front of the fire and Erin hated to move them. She also hated the idea of leaving the spot where she and Lance had been sitting all evening. It was like the weirdness in the car, and then later in the kitchen, had never happened. In fact, it was almost like their divorce had never happened. Being with Lance could be so completely comfortable at times.
The soft sound of Christmas carols played in the background and even though Lance had always told her he didn’t enjoy them much, she’d noticed him humming along to some of the tunes. “Silent Night” came on and Erin looked over at Lance, who wore a wistful expression on his face. She started singing along and he turned and smiled at her.
“I’ve always loved the sound of your voice,” he said.
“Well maybe we’ll cross another item off my list and do some Christmas caroling.”
She almost wished she hadn’t said anything. The smile left his face and he shrugged. “If by Christmas caroling, you mean walking through a neighborhood and singing songs? No. It’s too much for you so soon after your injury and I don’t want you to have any setbacks.”
The compassion on his face was evident and it was hard not to remember the caring man she’d married.
“I was just thinking we could sit around here and sing songs. But if you wanted to, we could join my Bible study group when they go to the nursing home for carols with the residents tomorrow.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she chided herself for making such a ridiculous offer. The last thing Lance would do was join in on a church activity.
He smiled. “Do you often do things at the nursing home?”
“About once a month. Each group in our church takes a turn so we have someone going there every week. A lot of them are old-timers whose families have moved away or who don’t have any to speak of. They don’t want to leave the area where they grew up, so we try to be a family to them.”
“That sounds like something you’d be involved in,” Lance said. “I always loved how you work so hard to make everyone part of your family. That was the hardest thing for me after our divorce. Even though it was just you and your sisters, I always wished I’d had a family like yours. I felt loved, included and accepted. I wish...” He turned away and stared into the fire.
Erin wanted to ask him what he wished, but she recognized that look on his face and knew he wasn’t going to tell her.
“Family is what you make it,” she said. “When Leah packed us up and moved us out of the Colonel’s house, she told us that we didn’t need our father or the constant parade of women he said would be our new mothers to make us a family. We would be our own family and we would be a family to anyone who needed it. So create your own family. Yes, as sisters, we kind of already were. But over the years, whenever someone needed a family, we always stepped in to do that for them.”
Knowing how much Lance missed her family, could she find a way for them to be family to him? Or would it be too weird, given their past? She didn’t even know how her sisters were going to react to having Lance back in her life again. She hadn’t had to tell them yet, since they’d both opted for cruises in different parts of the world. It was too expensive to call home and check in all the time, and they’d agreed not to do so unless it was an emergency.
“You used to even invite Chad over for holidays,” Lance said. “You hardly knew me that first year in college, when you invited me to Thanksgiving.”
They’d been barely acquaintances but they’d spent time together at Thanksgiving. Getting to know one another as a result had been the beginning of their falling in love.
“You had nowhere else to go,” she said.
He gave her another smile that melted her heart. “And that is what I have always loved about you.”
The warmth radiating from him made it seem al
most impossible that they’d ever split up. For the first time in a long time, they were talking about the past without it being ugly. Sitting here with him, it almost felt like the way things were before everything had gone bad between them.
Her leg was falling asleep and she knew she shouldn’t stay in this position much longer.
When she started to get up, the movement was awkward and, with her arm in the cast, she couldn’t pull herself up the way she wanted to.
“Let me help you,” Lance said. As he’d done multiple times over the past week, Lance pulled her up. Only this time, she lost her balance and fell into him. Maybe it was wrong to linger, but she couldn’t help thinking that he still smelled the same way and his arms felt so comforting.
“Do you think I was too hasty in divorcing you?”
The question slipped out before she had the chance to take it back. She’d thought it many times over the past week. But she’d never said anything. Didn’t want to get his hopes up or to lead him on. Or worse, end up back in a bad situation.
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling her close to him. “Some days I miss you and wonder how you could have left me. But other days I think about how much you hurt me and I’m glad it’s over.”
He led her to the couch in the library. “I keep thinking about what you said about what a marriage needs.”
He hesitated, as though he was afraid to talk to her. As he always did when the subject of their relationship came up.
She took his hand. “It’s okay. Even if you think I won’t like what you have to say, I still want to hear it. You always act like you think I’m going to reject you.”
At his dejected look, she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. Worse, she realized that in leaving him, that’s exactly what she’d done.
“I’m sorry. You were afraid that if you opened up to me, I’d leave you. You opened up to me about how you blamed me for Lily’s death. And then I left.”
Once again he didn’t respond, but his long sigh told her that was exactly how he’d seen it.
“I wouldn’t have left if you’d been willing to move beyond the blame,” she said. “Blame is a natural part of the grieving process, but you never wanted to work through it with me. Instead of talking about how much you missed her, or how you missed what we had, the only feelings you ever discussed were the ones of being angry with me for letting Lily die.”
Maybe she had been wrong in giving up so easily. But there’d been only so much “it’s your fault” that she could take without losing her mind.
“I don’t know how to open up about my feelings,” Lance finally said. “You’ve always made it sound so easy, but you’ve always been close to your sisters. Anything I ever had to say was used against me, either by Junior or my father. Only losers had feelings.”
She’d heard his brother call him Loser Lance before, and she’d heard his father laugh. But Lance had always rolled his eyes and acted like he was laughing it off, too. She hadn’t realized how deeply those words hurt him.
Suddenly a lot of things about Lance made sense.
She gave his hand a squeeze. “Only insecure men who don’t know how to deal with their own emotions would call someone a loser for having feelings. That’s probably a great discussion to have with your counselor.”
Lance smiled weakly. “She had me make a list of all the ways in which I was a winner. But it seems like no matter what I do, I keep hearing my father in the back of my head, telling me what losers did or didn’t do.”
Even though he’d made his feelings about his faith clear, she couldn’t help telling him, “God doesn’t think you’re a loser. And He would never call you one. Maybe you have the wrong picture of what a father is supposed to look like in your head.”
“Only losers believe in an invisible God,” Lance muttered. “And when Lily died, I wondered if maybe I was being punished for being a loser.”
Erin couldn’t help herself. She put her arms around him and gave him a warm hug. “You were not being punished. And you aren’t a loser,” she said, holding him close to her.
He rested his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. “I wish I could believe that.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say that would help him see that he wasn’t a loser. But at least now she could understand his pain and anger.
Lord, please give Lance what he needs. And if there’s something I can do, please show me.
She kissed the top of his head and gave him a squeeze. “I’m sorry I never realized how much their nickname hurt you. I was your wife, and I was blind to it. I know it’s no excuse, but I think it’s because I’ve never seen you as a loser. You were always the handsomest, smartest, kindest man I’ve ever known.”
Lance opened his eyes and looked at her. “You saw me as a winner?”
“I don’t see people as winners or losers. We’re all at different stages in life, and it’s not fair to treat it like a competition. But I always thought you were very successful.”
His nod made her realize that his drive for success, his immersion into his company, was always part of his desire to shed his loser status. She’d seen it as a job, but he’d seen it as his identity.
He gave her a weird smile. “You know why I’m here?’
“To make peace with our past?”
Lance shrugged. “That’s what my counselor said I had to do. But do you know why I went to a counselor?”
“Because you finally realized you needed help?”
“Nope.” Lance pulled away and straightened. “Because Chad said that my emotional state was interfering with my ability to run the company, and that if I didn’t get help and wasn’t cleared by a counselor to return to work, he was going to force me out.”
Erin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Was that her heart beating or his? Did it matter? She’d known he was up to something when he’d first arrived, but her injury, and then his helping her, had mostly pushed those thoughts to the back burner.
But now?
She said a quick prayer for understanding then opened her eyes. “So you helping me was just your way of earning brownie points to make the counselor think we’d made peace so you could get your job back? That’s why you were working today? You finally got the okay to start work again.”
Her stomach felt tied up in knots. Like someone had punched her over and over. Even though she’d thought she’d put a respectable amount of distance between them, the blows kept coming.
This was all her fault. She was the one who’d opened up to him, asked him about their marriage and asked him to share with her.
“Mostly,” he said. “I don’t know.”
He looked like he was about to cry, but in all the years she’d known Lance, Erin had never seen him do so.
“I helped you because it was the right thing to do. And, yes, I have wondered if this is what making peace with you looked like. I’ve checked in with my counselor a couple of times, and she seemed happy that I was helping you and we were getting along.”
Erin had seen him go off to make a phone call or two during his stay, but hadn’t asked him about it since she’d figured he was entitled to his privacy.
Even though Lance had never been the kind of man to lie, she knew he was adept at hiding what he really thought or felt. She supposed he’d needed to be if his family continually referred to him as a loser.
But she’d never demeaned him in any way. So why couldn’t he have just told her the truth?
“As far as the business goes, I checked my email while I was at the café. I found out some things that bothered me, so I called Chad. We talked and he’s letting me come back in a small way. Which is what I was working on tonight.”
She believed his explanation about work, since it was the only thing that made sense in terms of his time off and his sudden need to work on a project today. But in his shari
ng of the facts, he seemed to default to not being open with her about how he was feeling.
“Why tell me now?”
Lance shrugged. Erin pulled away to twist sideways to face him.
“No, you don’t get to do that. If you’re really here to make peace with me, then you need to face all those big, scary emotions you’re so desperate to avoid. The only reason I have ever been your adversary is that you’ve closed yourself off to me. Maybe it’s time for you to open up and see what it’s like to have someone else on your team.”
For a moment he looked like he might have wanted to agree with her, but then she saw the same scared-little-boy look on his face that always appeared whenever they were talking about something real. He was afraid she would reject him, but in all of his actions, he’d set himself up for the very thing he feared.
So did she press him on the issue to see if they could finally make headway? What if she did open him up to greater intimacy, to where they finally connected on an emotional level, and he still decided his unforgiveness toward her was too much for him to move beyond?
But that was the very thing she was asking him to do. If she wanted him to take a risk to move past his fears in their relationship, shouldn’t she be willing to do the same?
“I know you’re scared,” she said. “I’m scared, too. What if you can never stop hating me over what happened to Lily? But, if you’re willing to try, then so am I. It takes two people to make a marriage work, and I felt like I was the only person willing to invest in our relationship. Maybe I was wrong for saying something now. It seemed like, with everything we’ve been through, and the changes I’ve seen in you, that maybe you were more open to the idea.”
She’d been watching his face the entire time she’d been speaking, hoping to find some sign that he was receptive. So far he just wore the same sullen expression she remembered from their time in counseling.
Obviously any sign in him that she thought she’d seen to indicate his willingness to give their relationship another shot was hers and hers alone. She’d been caught up in the fancy of spending time with Lance and the boys and thinking about what their life could have been.
His Christmas Redemption Page 8
