A Christmas to Remember (14 page)

“Coward? How do you figure?”

“You have to be brave to go on with your life,” she said. “When people abandon you, you just have to suck it up and go on.”

He pressed his lips together. “Yeah.”

And they stared at one another for the longest moment. She wanted to run to him and tell him she didn’t mean it. She wanted him to say the same thing back.

But neither happened. Instead he said, “All right, we’ll call Jenny tomorrow morning, and I’ll take you and the baby into town.” He cocked his head. “Listen, it’s stopped raining. According to the forecast, the temperature tomorrow is going to be in the forties with sunshine. The ice will be gone by mid-morning.”

“Thank you.” She handed the phone back to him, knowing that the time for saying the right things had come and gone. The moment had passed them both by.

He nodded then glanced at the baby. “I’ll sleep upstairs, You’re welcome to the couch. Merry Christmas.”

* * *

Idiot. He was a stupid, dumb idiot. He should never have kissed Maryanne. He shouldn’t have moved that fast. But for an instant, that kiss had been a freaking miracle.

But maybe Maryanne wasn’t looking for miracles—at least not that kind. Because he sure as hell had frightened her. And when she’d pushed him away, it had brushed up against those old wounds. So he’d done what he always did whenever Julia pushed him away. He lashed out and said the most hurtful thing he could have said. He’d made her face her own homelessness. He’d made her face her own desperation.

As if he wasn’t desperate himself.

As if he didn’t want to give her a safe place to stay.

He’d done all that damage when he’d just wanted to let her know how her appearance had changed everything.

If not for Maryanne and Joshua, he’d have spent the night alone, trying to numb his pain with a bottle of wine. If not for them, he would never have figured out the ham and potatoes. If not for them, he would have put the toy in the charity box this morning and some kid would have gotten a reindeer for Valentine’s Day. If not for them, he’d have been so caught up in his own misery he wouldn’t have seen the truth.

She called him a coward. And she was right. He had been afraid of sucking it up and moving on with his life. Afraid that somehow by moving on, Christopher would be forgotten.

But he’d been wrong.

* * *

Maryanne didn’t go to sleep. She sat watching the coals in the fireplace burn down to ashes. Joshua slept on like an angel.

Her heart was full of so many conflicting emotions right at the moment. Daniel had called her bluff, hadn’t he?

He’d handed her that fancy phone and made her look right into herself and realize how stupid her actions had been. Why on earth would Cousin Jennifer want anything to do with her? They were kin, but that didn’t mean a thing.

And she wasn’t going to mistake a kiss for something permanent or even real. She’d kissed him because he was exactly like the guy she’d been dreaming of all her life. And he’d kissed her out of charity. Or maybe because he was lonely and missed his wife and child.

He didn’t care for her. They were practically strangers, no matter how much she might feel connected to him. He may have grown up on a farm and had a wonderful childhood, but he was still a complete unknown. He was a lawyer, for heaven’s sake, a man from an entirely different world.

She thought about that for a long time. She thought about his big silver car and his tasseled loafers. He had a home. He had a steady job. He had a big heart. And he was good with Joshua.

Maybe he wasn’t a complete unknown. Maryanne already knew that he was a good person. A steady person. A pillar of society.

He’d made Joshua laugh.

He’d also made her see the truth. She was never going to escape the sad facts of her life. She’d screwed up. She’d been working hard and making progress and then she’d gotten pregnant.

She knew what the do-gooders said about her. She was bad. Her mistakes were a sign of her wickedness. She didn’t even get approval for deciding to have Joshua instead of throwing him away. Instead, the do-gooders started in on their harangue about how she could never give Joshua what he needed. About how, for the good of the child, she should give him away. And she’d stubbornly insisted that she could give him love the way no one else on earth could.

And yet, tonight, she’d learned otherwise.

Daniel Jessup had looked down at her child with such a tender expression on his face. He could give Joshua the childhood that Maryanne had wanted so badly that she’d made it up in her fantasies.

Maybe the do-gooders were right. She wasn’t ready to be anyone’s mother. She could play Santa tonight. She could give a truly amazing gift. And maybe by letting go, she could get her life back in the right place. Maybe she’d come full circle and had to leave her baby behind to truly find herself.

She sat there for hours, mulling these things over until they became utterly clear in her head. And then she went into the kitchen and found some paper and wrote a long letter.

And later, she bundled up in her hand-me-down jacket and walked out into the crystal night. She realized right then that she didn’t exactly know where she was going or how she would get there.

It was icy on the driveway. But she discovered she could walk in the grass along the roadside. The ice crunched beneath her feet. She got to Ridge Road where she had intended to turn left and head back toward Route 78 and her abandoned car.

But something stopped her.

She stood at that crossroads, her heart breaking. She wondered for a moment if Mom had felt like this on the day she’d left Maryanne with Grandma and Grandpa. The day she said she’d be gone for a while.

Had Mom wanted to give her the gift of a better childhood? Or had Mom just been selfish? And why had Mom come back? Why had Grandma been so angry? Maryanne would never really know. She’d only been six, and all she had cared about on that Christmas, so long ago, was her baby doll.

Maryanne’s throat closed up, and tears stung her eyes. She felt like howling out her pain the same way she had on the day she’d left her doll at Grandma’s house.

There was no way to understand why or how things had turned out the way they had. She just needed to be brave and move on. And stand on her own two feet. Because that was the only way she would ever make any progress.

But where to now?

She should have turned left, toward the state road, but instead she turned right and headed up a long rise.

She walked along the icy road for about fifteen minutes before she saw the barn and the crumbling chimney where once a farmhouse had stood. There was no point in trying to be stealthy as she walked up the drive to the barn. There weren’t any cows here anymore to miraculously talk on Christmas Eve. Besides, it wasn’t Christmas Eve anymore. It was Christmas day.

She remembered this barn, even though it was falling down now. Its doors stood open like a warm invitation.

She walked inside and found the stalls still piled up with hay. A black cat emerged from the darkness and meowed a welcome. For a barn cat, she was surprisingly friendly. She sidled up to Maryanne and rubbed her head against her ankles and then walked back into the darkness.

Maryanne followed the cat into a stall, where she sat down, drew her knees up and cried like the day she’d left this place, twenty years before.

* * *

Daniel startled awake from out of a dream. Something wasn’t right. He lay there a moment trying to get his bearings, and then he realized Joshua was crying.

Hard.

He slid from the bed, stepped into his jeans, and hurried downstairs. It was not quite dawn. The house was dark.

He turned on the lamp beside the couch and discovered Joshua howling in his bureau drawer. His little face was red with fury, and his hands were balled up.

“Maryanne?” Daniel called, and got no answer.

He picked up the baby, who continued to cry as Daniel put him up on his shoulder. “Maryanne?” Daniel called a little louder as he walked into the kitchen and switched on the light.

He saw the note on the table. He picked it up. His chest constricted, and his heart started racing. He’d driven her away just like he’d driven Julia away.

He knew his words had cut deeply last night, but he never thought she would leave. He’d made the same damn mistake.

How could she have abandoned both of them?

He felt like howling in harmony with the baby.

Instead, he rocked the baby a little bit back and forth and then looked that little face right in the eye. “We aren’t going to let her go,” he said. “So don’t cry. I won’t let her leave either one of us, you hear?”

The baby stopped crying. He didn’t smile or anything, but he gave a couple of hiccups and looked at Daniel like he understood. He was a most remarkable baby, wasn’t he?

“Okay, kid, you and I are going to have to go look for her. She couldn’t have gotten too far.” He went back into the living room and put the baby back in the drawer for a moment.

He stepped out onto the porch to take a look. Maybe she left tracks in the ice.

He found them, along the side of the driveway. If only he could use his car, he’d catch up with her fast. But the ice was thick on the road. And it would be madness to drive with an unsecured baby in the front seat. He was going to have to follow her tracks on foot.

He turned back toward the house. The eastern sky was turning from black to midnight blue, and there, hanging on the horizon, was the morning star.

It wasn’t any kind of amazing or miraculous celestial display, just Venus rising in the east. But it shone so brightly that it pulled him out of his panic.

He stood there staring while it flickered in the early morning dark. He’d never stopped to think about how beautiful Venus looked on clear, crisp winter mornings like this.

The world was a beautiful place.

Miracles happened here every day.

And just like that, he knew where he’d find Maryanne. All he had to do was follow a bright light in the sky.

He hurried inside, bundled up the baby, and managed to figure out the baby carrier Maryanne had left for him. And then he made his way in her icy footsteps down the hill to Ridge Road.

When he turned right and walked on, the morning star was in front of him.

And when he got to the Carpenters’ place, it almost seemed that the star was right above the barn. And the door was open. A black cat wandered out into the yard and practically smiled at him. And even though she only said “meow,” it was almost as if he heard the words, “What took you so long,” inside his head.

* * *

The cat had abandoned her, too. For a long while, it had curled up beside Maryanne where she had collapsed after sobbing her heart out. Its defection put a punctuation mark on the state of her life.

She would never get over giving up Joshua. She wasn’t entirely sure she was ever going to get over leaving Daniel. And that surprised the crap out of her.

She told herself that Daniel was a stranger, but the more she insisted on that, the more she knew it wasn’t true. Somehow, she had connected with him through the miles that separated this place and Montgomery. She had been there in spirit as he’d grown up. He was the boy she’d invented. Only he was real.

And her heart insisted that this was true, even though her mind knew it couldn’t be possible.

“I’m sorry.”

Was she imagining his voice now? She pushed up from the hay.

No, Daniel was standing right there, wearing his cashmere coat and a baby carrier. He’d lost his loafers, though. Those boots on his feet looked like authentic farm boy attire. And the baby carrier didn’t look out of place, either. A rush of relief spread through her, warming up her chilly hands and face and feet.

“You’re sorry for what?” she said, brushing away the last few tears of her crying jag.

“For making you feel bad last night. I only did that because you pushed me away, and I’m so tired of being pushed away. Julia abandoned me when I needed her most. And I don’t exactly understand why, but now I need
you
.”

“You need me?”

“I want you, too. I mean, I want you in my life, Maryanne. I can’t explain it but I know it’s something that’s meant to be. I almost feel like maybe I’ve been waiting for you. Only this morning I knew I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to come find you.”

“But I’m a screw-up,” she said. “I don’t have a college degree. I got myself pregnant. And now I’m homeless and broke. So you’re a fool to want me in your life. And if you think I’m just going to take charity from some guy, you’re crazy. My mother did that all the time, and it never made her happy. I want to make it on my own.”

“I understand. I’m not giving charity. And I realize that you’re going to need time to get back on your feet and figure things out. And I’m happy to wait. But I’m not letting you give Joshua away. And I’m not letting you run away from me, either.”

She stood up. “You don’t want Joshua?”

He blew out a breath. It formed a big cloud of steam. “I know we just met, but certainly you’ve figured out that I want a family. I’ve always wanted one. But I’m not about to take your baby. I want so much more than a baby. It’s a package deal, Maryanne.”

“But I’m not ready. And—”

“Look, first of all, encouraging women to give up their kids is not what I do. So my behavior last night was truly reprehensible. When I kissed you, it felt like something I’d been waiting for all of my life. You, not the baby. I want to get to know
you
. I want to help
you.
And not just because it’s what I do.”

“What you do?”

“I told you I was an attorney. That’s true. I used to be a corporate attorney back when I was married to Julia. But ever since Christopher, I… well, I just decided that I needed to do something more important. Julia didn’t understand. She used to call me a do-gooder.”

Maryanne’s stomach double-clutched. He didn’t seem to be the judgmental type. How could he be a do-gooder?

“So, what, you just go around doing good deeds or something?”

He laughed at her sarcasm. “No, not exactly. I gave up a very lucrative law practice to become a children’s advocate. I work hard to keep families together. And I want to help you. All you need is some daycare and a job to get back on your feet. There are loads of people right here in Last Chance who can help with that. Jenny is one of them. She’s a good church woman, and she’s starting a business. I’ll bet she needs help at the new B&B.