They stood that way for a long time, until the sound of someone out in the hallway pulled them apart. “Come on, let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“Wherever you want to take this.”
“My place.” It wasn’t a question.
“Your place,” he repeated as he took her by the hand and led her out to school parking lot, where they kissed again for a long time before he followed her home.
Chapter Ten
Jim slept at Brenda’s house five out of the next seven days, and now he felt as if he was walking on air. All these years, he’d mourned his wife and thought that love would never happen again. And here he was, discovering that even a guy his age wasn’t too old for love.
It was a little past five thirty in the morning a week later when Jim left Brenda’s house, dashing to his Jeep in the predawn cold.
Cold was not really a good enough word to describe the freezing temperatures that had settled in over the weekend. The tips of Jim’s fingers were almost numb by the time he fired up the Jeep and started the heat. He still hadn’t found his gloves.
The heated seats kicked in, warming his butt as he drove back to town and the house on Redbud Street that he shared with Dylan. He’d made this drive five times since last Monday, but today he’d overslept. Brenda’s bed had been warm, and the weather outside was frightful for coastal South Carolina, which rarely saw temperatures in the teens.
So it had been particularly hard to wake up this morning. And Brenda hadn’t been in any hurry to kick him out. She’d even offered to cook him breakfast. But he’d declined because he was worried about Dylan.
In a role reversal, he found himself sneaking around like a teenager, trying to keep his suddenly intimate relationship a secret from his thirty-year-old son. But the inevitable confrontation was waiting for him this morning.
“Where have you been?” Dylan demanded as Jim came through the door to the mudroom.
Dylan was standing in the middle of the kitchen, his hair wet from the shower and a look of disapproval on his face.
Busted.
“Uh…well…” The words dried up in Jim’s mouth. This was damned awkward, wasn’t it?
“Never mind. I know where you’ve been.” Dylan paced to the coffeemaker and began to savagely scoop grounds into the brew basket.
“Um, look—” Jim began.
“Have you lost your mind?” Dylan turned and threw the coffee scoop across the room. “People are going to gossip about you. You know that, don’t you? I mean…really?”
Of course they were going to gossip. But Jim didn’t care. Why did Dylan?
The question nagged. Jim had a hard time accepting that his son was that concerned about public opinion. No, something else was bugging him. What the hell?
Jim straightened his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I should have told you I wouldn’t be home until early in the morning. I didn’t mean for you to worry.”
“I wasn’t worried.” Dylan stalked across the room to pick up the scoop he’d just thrown.
“Okay, I get it. Brenda isn’t the woman you’d choose for me. But here’s the thing: It’s not your choice. I care about her. A lot. I’m…” He let the words fade out because he wasn’t quite ready to tell Dylan that he’d fallen in love. Especially since he hadn’t told Brenda that yet.
It was on his to-do list. But he was in no rush. Saying the l-word would probably scare the crap out of her.
“I can’t believe you,” Dylan said, stalking off through the door to the garage without turning on the coffee maker. A moment later, the garage door opened, and Dylan headed out on his motorcycle.
Well, that hadn’t gone well, had it?
Jim sucked back a few choice cusswords before starting the coffeemaker and then heading into his bedroom, where he turned on the television and tuned into the local news. He took three steps toward the bathroom when the weather report froze him.
“The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for Georgetown County,” the local weatherman said.
Jim turned back toward the TV as the local weather expanded right into the news hour. The weatherman was standing beside a map of the East Coast, which showed an ominous weather front with a big L located just off the coastline. The animation showed the classic track of a nor’easter—the kind of storm that could flood the island, but which might do something much more unexpected this time.
“We’ve got lots of cold air in place,” the weatherman said. “Last night the citrus growers in Florida experienced the lowest temperatures since 1989—the year of the Christmas Blizzard.”
The news anchor asked, “Are we expecting a storm of that magnitude?”
And the weatherman replied in a somewhat gleeful tone of voice that confirmed him as a Yankee, “All the models suggest that this could be a repeat of that storm. People should take precautions now, because in 1989, coastal portions of Georgetown County got fourteen inches of snow. We could see totals that big with this storm. The Weather Service is predicting that snow will start sometime around three this afternoon and continue through the night. Here’s a map showing the expected snowfall totals.”
They flashed a map, and Jonquil Island looked as if it sat in the middle of a multicolored bull’s-eye.
An urgency coursed through Jim. Fourteen inches of snow was serious business anywhere, but in Syracuse, New York, where Jim had grown up, they got more than a hundred inches of snow every winter. Folks up there knew how to deal with fourteen inches of snow because snowstorms like that happened multiple times a year. But down here, a dusting was enough to scare people half to death.
Even worse, the community had no resources or budget for snow removal, and snow wouldn’t stop people from getting sick. Worse yet, idiots would go out in it and hurt themselves trying to shovel it or drive in it or walk down a slippery street.
And then he remembered Brenda’s father.
Damn. They might even get themselves killed.
* * *
At seven thirty on Monday morning, Brenda stood in her front room, drinking a cup of coffee and staring out at the angry winter ocean pounding along the sand. She didn’t need a weatherman to know that a storm was coming. The northeast winds were driving the surf up the beach and whipping the waves into foam. She should probably close the hurricane shutters before she headed off to work. She shivered. It was freezing out there.
She was just pulling on her parka when her phone rang. It was Momma.
“Have you seen the weather report?” Momma said when Brenda connected the call.
“You know I don’t have a TV out here.”
“Well, you should turn on the radio then. They’re saying we could have another blizzard, you know, like the last one.”
“The last one” was understood as the Blizzard of 1989. Over the decades, South Carolina had seen occasional snowstorms that left trace amounts of the white stuff. But the big storm would forever be the one that took Daddy away from them.
“Oh,” Brenda said before the words dried up in her mouth.
“Honey, you need to put up the storm shutters and pack a bag. You’re staying in town with me tonight. They say the snow will start this afternoon, and we could get inches of it. I’ll bet Louella closes A Stitch in Time early today.”
“Oh,” Brenda said again.
“Honey, are you okay?” Momma knew her fears.
“Yeah. I was just going out to put up the shutters. The ocean looks angry today. I’ll be over after work.”
“If it starts snowing early, you leave your car in town and walk home, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am. But what about you? Do you have supplies? Do I need to stop at the market?”
“Honey, the store is sold out of anything worth having. We’ll have to make do with what’s in the freezer.” Living alone all these years, Momma had become a champion at freezing leftovers. They wouldn’t starve, assuming they didn’t lose power and the ability to run the oven and microwave.
“If we get a foot of snow and it stays cold like it’s been, the whole show might have to be canceled or postponed.”
Brenda stared out at the pounding surf. It would take days to clear a foot of snow. They’d have to wait for the sun to come out and melt it all, and if it got below freezing, then they’d have to deal with black ice. A deep sense of regret or guilt or sorrow—she couldn’t quite name the emotion—settled into her head, making her feel heavy and useless.
Momma was right. They might have to cancel. And she would err on the side of safety every time. She didn’t want anyone else getting hurt trying to make it to a performance she was directing.
“You might be right,” Brenda said, the heaviness weighing down her shoulders.
“And then you’ll be free of this obligation.”
Brenda swallowed back a retort. She probably deserved that soft-spoken comment after the way she’d refused Jim at the beginning. But it wasn’t her wish to have a foot of snow fall on the woefully unprepared town. And after agreeing to direct the chorale, she didn’t want the performance canceled either. Jim had somehow infected her with his Christmas spirit—or something. But she wasn’t ready to tell Momma that.
“I’m going to get the storm shutters up. I need to go,” she said instead. “I’ll see you after work.”
Brenda pushed the guilt and regret to the back of her mind and got busy boarding up the windows and packing a bag with enough clothes to last a week. When she had the bag stored in the back of her car, she stopped and gave Jim a call, which went straight to voice mail.
She left a message telling him she would send out an email canceling tonight’s rehearsal and asking him his opinion about canceling or postponing Saturday’s event.
The snow hadn’t started by the time she reached work, but the sky had gone the color of gray flannel, and the temperatures continued to hover in the low twenties. It was too cold for rain.
“Looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas,” Louella said as Brenda settled into work.
“White Christmases are highly overrated,” Brenda grumped, remembering the snow that lay on the ground the day of Daddy’s funeral. It had been just a few days after Christmas and five days after the blizzard.
Louella shook her head. “As grinchy as ever, I see,” she said.
Brenda didn’t argue. She had a good reason to see the negative side of the storm bearing down on them, but she was certainly in the minority. A stream of customers came through the front doors that morning, all of them kind of excited about the snow. There was a lot of talk about watching their kids and grandkids building snowmen for the first time ever.
Brenda eventually escaped into the back room and called Jim again. And for the second time, she was shuffled off to his voice mail. She wanted to talk to him, not just about the Christmas Gala but about the snow. About her fears. About…
Hell, she just needed to hear his voice. The arrival of this storm was like some cosmic sign in her life. She pushed the unreasonable fear to the back of her head and taught her midmorning knitting class.
The first flakes of snow started falling around two in the afternoon, and they immediately stuck to the ground and the road. Louella shut the store at 2:30 p.m. and told Brenda to go home and be safe.
But instead of going up to Momma’s house, Brenda decided to walk down Harbor Drive to the clinic. It was crazy of course. Jim was probably busier than a one-armed paperhanger. But she needed to see him, just to reassure herself.
Or something.
She hadn’t quite reached the clinic’s doors when the snow began to fall in earnest, blown sideways by a persistent wind. The icy motes stung her nose and cheeks and made her eyes water.
She was cold by the time she reached the clinic, but before she could step inside out of the wind, Jim came barreling through the front doors, his hands jammed in the pockets of his coat because he’d lost his gloves.
“Brenda,” he said, gingerly coming to a stop. The sidewalks were already starting to get slippery. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to your mother’s.”
“You got my message?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. It’s been crazy. But I’ve got an emergency. Harper Jephson has a bad respiratory infection, and with his asthma, I think he needs to be hospitalized. But the ambulance service refuses to come out here from the mainland. So I—”
“You’re going to drive to the mainland in this?”
He cocked his head, a kind smile curling the corner of his lips. “I grew up in Syracuse, New York. A foot of snow is like a flurry up there.”
“Really? Because even in Indiana it’s a lot of snow.”
“Syracuse is in the New York snowbelt. So don’t worry. I’ve got lots of experience and a four-wheel drive. And I don’t have any other choices. I have to take care of that little boy.”
She did understand. She’d made a career out of teaching kids of one age or another. But it didn’t change the way she felt about Doc going out into a raging snowstorm.
“I do understand, but…” Her voice broke.
He stepped up to her, the snow falling all around them. “I’ll be okay. I promise you.” Then he leaned in and kissed her, his lips so warm in the freezing cold. “I love you, Brenda McMillan. I don’t intend to lose you now that I’ve found you.”
The words stunned her and opened her heart and flayed her all at the same time. She loved him too, but she couldn’t say the words out loud. They froze in her throat, along with a paralyzing fear that he should never have spoken his feelings out loud because it was probably bad luck.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, then turned and sprinted down the snow-covered sidewalk, slipping once and almost falling.
Her heart lurched in her chest, and she wanted to follow after him, but she stood there stiff and unmoving as he fired up his Jeep and drove off into the storm.
Chapter Eleven
Many hours later, the old shade tree in Momma’s front yard collapsed under the weight of the snow. It fell with a kind of death rattle, more sigh than crack, and it awakened Brenda from a fitful sleep a fraction of a second before one of the tree’s large branches came down through the roof with a deafening crash that shook the house to its foundation.
In one terrifying moment, Brenda found herself caged by branches that had pierced the ceiling, missing her by mere inches. And now, like some surreal dream, snow came drifting down through the hole above her, lit up by the streetlamp outside.
It took a moment for Brenda to process what had happened. This was not a snowy nightmare. A frigid wind swept through the room she’d occupied as a child. The snow landing on her cheeks as she looked up was cold and wet and real. She shivered.
And then, like an aftershock, the fear struck. A black, nameless panic welled out of her. “Momma!” she hollered at the top of her lungs.
Silence and the whine of the wind answered her.
“Momma!” she hollered again, this time like a frightened three-year-old, as a sob erupted from her chest. “Momma!”
She struggled against the quilt and sheets. The limbs had trapped her, so she had to bend herself like a pretzel to wriggle her way through the cold, wet branches. Piles of snow had cascaded into the room, and by the time she’d gotten away from the branch, her pajamas were soaked, and her feet were almost numb from walking through the icy piles on the floor.
“Momma!” she shouted again, pulling open the door just in time to see her mother, coming down the dark hall using her cell phone’s flashlight to negotiate the darkness. Brenda reached for the hall light switch but it didn’t work. Obviously they’d lost power.
“Momma?” She raced down the hall and hugged her mother like she didn’t ever want to let her go.
“Good lord, you’r
e soaked. What happened?”
“You didn’t hear?”
Momma cocked her head. No, of course she hadn’t heard. Momma was going deaf. And evidently only the shade tree in the front yard had fallen. Momma slept way in the back of the house.
“The tree fell,” Brenda said.
Momma took a couple of steps into Brenda’s old bedroom and let out an audible gasp. “Praise the Lord. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No. Yes,” she answered the questions in reverse order as she started to shiver. Momma sprang into action then, proving that, despite the hearing loss, seventy was the new forty. Momma might have arthritis but she wasn’t feeble. Not by a long shot.
In short order the Magnolia Harbor Fire Department was summoned, dry pajamas were found, and half an hour later, Brenda sat wrapped up in two handmade quilts in front of a fire burning brightly in the living room fireplace at the Heavenly Rest rectory. She clutched a cup of hot Earl Grey tea in her hands and leaned back in the old couch while Ashley Scott got Momma settled down in Rev. St. Pierre’s guest bedroom.
Ashley would have put them up at Howland House if there had been even one room available. But there was no room at the inn because a number of year-round residents with homes along the coast had chosen to ride out the snowstorm in town.
Now if Brenda could only reach Jim, she might get some sleep. But the man had yet to respond to her text about the tree falling on Momma’s house. He had sent a text earlier in the day saying he’d made it over the bridge, but the roads were bad and it might take some time before he got back home again.
She hoped to heck that he’d booked himself into a hotel room or something and was just sound asleep. But she couldn’t help spinning one disaster after another in her mind. Visions of him being stuck all night by the side of the road, running out of gas, his cell phone battery dying, and his hands going numb because he’d lost his gloves. Or worse yet, being buried and then having some jackass plow into his car and…
“You’re going to be okay.”
A Little Country Christmas Page 36
