An Amish Christmas (5 page)

She brought her musings to an abrupt end by reminding herself that, given James’s problems, this was hardly the time to be shaking things up. Anything having to do with her was going to have to wait. The color-coded calendar would remain.

At three o’clock, Meg went upstairs to change, trading the yoga stretch clothes she wore to clean and cook for black pants, black ballet flats, and a cream silk blouse. Quickly, she pinned up her hair and applied makeup.

It was already three-thirty when she came downstairs. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen James since she asked him to take care of the wine selection for dinner. That had to be nearly two hours ago, she thought, frowning. She hadn’t expected any help from him on this dinner—although he hadn’t insisted, his attitude had made it clear that he didn’t want her to do it this year—but she figured he would handle this one small piece. By now he should have brought into the kitchen whatever wine he wanted her to serve.

No doubt he was in his study. She paused outside the door, listening. “James?”

There was no answer. She opened the door. “Are you in here?”

Her husband was seated at his desk with his arms and head down, like a child taking a nap in school. Papers surrounded him. He made no movement at the sound of her entrance.

“James, are you okay?”

Still nothing. Fear rose in Meg.

“
James!
Talk to me!” She started toward him, thinking she could grab the phone on the desk to call 911.

He raised his head.

“Oh, you nearly gave me—” Meg stopped short.

His face was red and wet with tears, and his expression was wild-eyed. Meg noticed a glass and a nearly empty bottle of Scotch on the desk beside him.

“It’s all over.” His voice was low but harsh.

“What’s all over? Why are you getting drunk in here? You’re not even dressed yet. We’re having people—”

His voice rose. “Forget that. It’s all gone, Meg. Our money. Everything.”

Meg stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

His face crumpled. “I’m so sorry.”

The slightest sensation of fear sneaked up Meg’s spine. “What on earth are you talking about?”

He reached for the glass and gulped back its contents, then picked up the bottle of Scotch and refilled it. “I broke the cardinal rule. Let my emotions get the better of me. Of all people, I knew better.”

Her fear growing stronger, Meg sat down in a chair near his desk. “Please tell me what you’re saying.”

“I didn’t tell you. I
couldn’t
tell you.” He averted his eyes from hers. “I got fired.” He gave a small, bitter laugh. “Well, that’s not what they called it, but that’s what it was.”

“Fired?
You
?” Meg’s mind was jumping from one thought to the next. How terrible this was for James. What it meant for the family short term. What he should do to find another job. She caught herself up short; it would do no good to panic. “Okay, let’s wait a minute. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll be okay.”

He only looked at her.

She frowned. “I can’t believe they’d fire someone right before the holidays! When exactly did this happen?”

Another gulp from his glass. “August.”

“
August?
” Meg sat up straighter in the chair. “You’ve been out of work since August, and you didn’t tell me?”

He ran a hand across his forehead tiredly. “I thought I could find another job before I had to tell you. I thought I could fix things.”

Questions were piling up in her mind. “But … what have you been doing every day when you tell us you’re at the office?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Going out, walking, hanging out at Starbucks.”

“You’ve been pretending to go to the office.” Meg was stunned, replaying in her mind’s eye the months of his dressing for work, taking his briefcase, acting as if everything were the same as always.

“I didn’t want the kids to know. Or you. It was humiliating.”

Slowly, anger began to crowd Meg’s fear. “You didn’t tell your wife you were fired because you were
embarrassed?
Are you crazy? I could have helped. I could have done a million things.” She was struck by another thought. “And instead of listening to your yelling about the bills, I could have put a halt to all spending. That’s what needed to be done.” She sank back in her chair. “This is unbelievable, James. In a million years, I never would have expected—”

His expression was pained. “Yeah, well, it was stupid, but you don’t know what it feels like to get thrown out of a big job like that, do you?”

She was stunned by the jibe, but she let it pass. Her voice softened. “No, you’re right. I don’t. I’m just a bit horrified that you would put on such a charade. And that you didn’t feel you could trust me enough to tell me.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, we have plenty of savings, and you’ll get another job eventually.”

He gave her a nasty smile, one she had never seen on him before. “But that wasn’t the bad news.”

She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear what else he might say.

“In September I had a great opportunity to invest in a real estate deal. I jumped at it. It was a beautiful deal.”

He stopped. Meg swallowed, waiting.

“A few weeks into it, one of the other big investors dropped out. The deal couldn’t go forward, and I saw an opportunity to double my returns. I’d make enough so that I could retire, never even have to get another job. I took it. All in.”

Meg’s stomach clenched. “And …?”

“The guy who put together the deal turned out to be a crook. He stole everything and disappeared.”

There was a long silence in the room.

“How much did we lose?” Meg whispered.

“Everything.”

Meg barely got the words out. “What’s ‘everything’?”

Anger at her slowness flashed in his eyes. “Everything means
everything
! All the money we had in the world. Whatever we had as collateral.”

“You don’t mean the house?” She silently begged him to answer no.

“Of course! The house, the savings, our investments.”

“No, you didn’t,” Meg breathed. “You couldn’t have.”

Rage and pain flashed across his face as he smacked his hand on the desk. “I could, and I did. I was desperate, and that affected my judgment. That’s what did it. McDowall knew I’d been let go, and he played on that, too.”

“Is that who took our money? Are they going to find him?”

“They did, but it’s not going to help us any. About an hour ago, I talked to another guy who was also an investor. They found McDowall last night in a hotel in Los Angeles. He shot himself. No money anywhere. Nobody knows what happened.”

Meg’s hand rose to her throat. “Maybe …”

He grimaced. “We’re never going to see that money again. Like I said, it’s over.”

Meg sat paralyzed, trying to force her mind to make sense of what she had just heard. No, it wasn’t possible. Things like this didn’t happen to people like them.

The ongoing flood of emotions seemed to have exhausted
James. He spoke quietly. “We have to leave the house. Our cars go back because they’re leased. I own the Mustang, so that stays with us. The kids can finish out the semester, since the school bill was paid long ago, but they’re done there next month. The big things are obvious.” He paused. “You need to understand that all we have is what’s left in our checking account, which is about nineteen hundred dollars. And whatever you have in your wallet. I have a hundred and fifty bucks in mine.”

He closed his eyes and slowly swung his desk chair around so that his back was to her.

Meg struggled to understand. They had nowhere to go and money that would last only a few weeks. They were homeless. Destitute. All because James had decided he could cover up getting fired. He had chosen to take every cent they had without even discussing it with her, then handed it over to a crook. No, she corrected herself, he had gone out of his way to
double
his investment.

She thought about the children. If they had no place to live, how would they go to school, private or otherwise? Forget about their having to say good-bye to everything they had ever known in life—their friends, the community in which they lived, their everyday activities. They would lose the very foundation of their lives, which was that they were safe and secure in the world, protected by their parents.

Meg stood, speaking through clenched teeth. “I could kill you right now, James. You’ve destroyed us. All by yourself. You were too smart, too important, to talk to me about anything you did. You never considered what that could do to your family. If you wanted to play roulette with your own life, that’s one
thing. But what about the children and me? You thought so little of us, you sacrificed us without a second thought.”

James turned his chair to face her. Tears spilled from his eyes as she spoke. “I know,” he whispered. “You’re right. I don’t know what to do to make it up to you.”

“I can’t imagine that you’ll
ever
make this up to us!” She began to tremble, rage and terror threatening to overtake her. “We have
nothing
! James,
how could you
?”

They stared at each other, fury and confusion on her face, misery on his.

The doorbell rang.

“It’s the Dobsons.” They heard Sam’s shout as he raced down the stairs. “I’ll get it.”

It was four o’clock. Their guests were starting to arrive.

Bleary-eyed from exhaustion, Meg clasped a mug of steaming coffee with both hands as she made her way around the backyard. It was barely seven o’clock. Now, before the children got up and she had to face whatever this day might bring, she had some time to be alone in the garden. She reached out to touch the cyclamen’s heart-shaped leaves, satisfied to see signs of its emerging white flowers. Looking over the remnants of her hydrangea and foxglove blooms, she recalled her small triumphs and disappointments with them over the seasons. Her crocuses would be in full bloom by Christmas, but she wouldn’t be there to see them. Maybe it’s silly, she thought, but I’ll miss this more than the house itself.

She sat down on one of the Adirondack chairs. No need to worry about painting them now.

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving meal was probably the hardest thing she ever had to endure. She could barely believe she had
gotten through it. Smiling, making small talk, cooking, serving. All the while seeing her husband seated at the head of the table, downing Scotch after Scotch. His exaggerated cheerfulness, obviously fueled by the alcohol, made her wince. Worst of all was watching the children, all three in notably good moods at the same time, a remarkable occurrence. The things she was going to have to tell them—actually uttering the words “We’ve lost everything, and we have no idea what’s to come”—were unimaginable. Meg set her coffee cup on the ground and tightened her robe against the chilly morning air.

After the meal, when everyone had finally left, Meg had the children help clear the table, then, to their apparent shock, dismissed them from further kitchen duty. She needed to be by herself, to let the corners of her mouth release her frozen smile, to fall silent. For the next two hours, she cleaned furiously, her mind blank as she gave herself over to the physical task. She loaded the dishwasher carelessly, dishes banging as she dropped them haphazardly into the slots. Hand-washing the crystal glasses, she squeezed a wineglass so hard the stem snapped, but she ignored the bleeding from her thumb, and after a while it stopped.

Later, when she could find nothing else to clean, she dragged herself upstairs, emotionally and physically drained. James was nowhere to be seen, which was fine with her.

“I’m going to sleep. G’night, kids,” she called out from her bedroom doorway.

“Mom?” Sam’s voice floated down the hall. It was unusual for her to go to bed without coming into their rooms to say good night.

“Go to bed, Sam,” she replied, firmly shutting the door. She hated ignoring her son, but she couldn’t face the children. Not tonight.

She peeled off her clothes, dropping them on the bathroom floor before grabbing a nightgown from the hook on the back of the door. What difference did it make what she did with the clothes now? she thought. All her compulsive housekeeping and keeping on top of things had only brought her to this point. Nowhere.

Sliding under the comforter, Meg was so exhausted that she knew, thankfully, she would find the oblivion of sleep quickly. She was wrong. Over and over, she replayed the conversation with James and his actions over the past months. Everything about their life since August was now recast in a completely new light.

It was not a light that reflected flatteringly on her husband. Despite her offering him a hundred openings, he had chosen to keep what was, in terms of a marriage, a monstrous secret. He had lied to her again and again through his silences, his pretense of going to work, his clandestine gambling of all they had.

This couldn’t be her husband, her James, the man who had brought her a cup of coffee every morning since the day they married. Who always filled the house with peonies, her favorite flower, on her birthdays. Who, for years, had designated alone time with each child one Sunday a month to go to a museum or a ball game or wherever his son or daughter might want. He was a straight arrow and honest to a fault. Meg would have bet her life—the lives of her children—that he couldn’t have done
such a thing. Knowing she would have lost such a bet made her blood run cold.