My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (38 page)

“Hulda!” Aunt Mary called from the door. “Good. You’re awake. Come on downstairs, hon. Everyone’s waiting.”

“Okay … I … Everyone?”

Turns out I just
thought
I’d met all of Ethan’s family.

Clint and Mary had a younger sister who had a set of identical twin girls a year behind Emily in school. They stared at me in stereo. It felt like something from a horror movie as they tilted their heads in unison and asked, “Do we know you?”

“Nope. Sorry. One of those faces,” I said, and moved on through the crowd.

Clint’s older brother had three daughters, two of whom were already married, one of whom had a baby boy of her own. The names and faces all ran together. The kitchen was a blur of smiles and hugs and plates full of eggs and biscuits and gravy. So much gravy. I started to shake.

“Hulda, why don’t you tell us about your family?”

I heard the question, but I didn’t know who’d asked it.

“How was your flight, Hulda?” someone else asked.

“What do you like to do?”

“How do you like Oklahoma?”

“Have you ever been on a ranch?”

The questions swirled around me so fast that I was almost dizzy.

Aunt Mary’s hand was on my arm. “Honey, have you called home? Does your momma know you made it?”

“My mom is…” I started but couldn’t finish. “I … I need to go to the bathroom,” I blurted and ran for the tiny room and locked the door.

There was a narrow window, and before I even had time to think, I pushed open the glass and threw a leg over the edge. I was halfway down when I heard a deep voice say, “Good morning.”

The voice made me freeze. I dangled from the window. My feet didn’t touch the ground, but I didn’t have the upper body strength to pull myself back up again, so I just hung there, listening to Ethan laugh until I finally gave up and asked, “How far is it?”

Two hands gripped my waist.

“Drop,” Ethan said, and I did.

“Well, thank you.” I tried to sound as cool as possible as I pushed my hair out of my eyes. It had snowed overnight, and I shivered without a coat, but Ethan was in his boots and jeans, a heavy jacket, and very worn gloves.

He looked at me, eyes mocking. “Does your room not have a door? It wasn’t nice of Aunt Mary to put you in a room without a door.…”

“I…”

“You thought you’d run away this morning,” he said. “Better than running away last night at least, I’ll give you that. But if I know Aunt Mary, there’s gravy inside. A person should never run away from Aunt Mary’s gravy.”

I’m not allowed to eat gravy,
I wanted to say, but instead I asked, “How far is it to the nearest town?”

“Define
town
?”

I glared at him. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to have English as a second language.”

“Bethlehem is three miles that way.” He pointed to the east.

“Bethlehem?” I practically rolled my eyes. “At Christmas. Perfect.”

“It’s not much of a town, though. Just a post office and a Baptist church. If you mean town with a grocery store and a school, you’ll have to go forty miles that way.” This time he pointed due north. “If you need a movie theater, Walmart, or hospital, well, then that is sixty miles that way.” This time he pointed to the south. “And, as you saw last night, the nearest airport is in Oklahoma City, which is literally
hours
away, so tell me,
Not Hulda,
what kind of town exactly are you needing?”

I walked away from him, toward the fence. Sunlight bounced off the smooth white hills, and I squinted against the glare. I needed a cab. A hotel. A different life.

I would have given anything for a different life.

“Real Hulda texted me, by the way,” Ethan yelled after me. “She made it to New York.”

I spun on him. “Did she…” I trailed off as I realized I couldn’t exactly ask
Did she see anyone waiting for me? Did they find her? Do they know where I am?
So I didn’t say anything at all.

But something shifted in Ethan’s eyes. Like the wind, he was growing colder. His heart was freezing over, and this wasn’t the adventure it had been the night before. Now, in the light of morning, Ethan was worried, and I couldn’t blame him.

“Who are you?” He covered the distance between us in three long strides. “What are you doing here? Who are you running from?”

“No one. Nothing.” The cold metal of the fence pressed through my shirt as I stepped back.

“Then tell me why I shouldn’t march in there right now and have my parents call the police or the FBI or whoever you’re supposed to call when there’s a stray teenage girl who needs to be taken back to her parents.”

“Is that what you think?” I didn’t mean to shout, but I couldn’t help it. My nerves had been fraying for days. Weeks. Years. And right then I felt them starting to snap. “Well, you’re wrong, Mr. I’ve-Got-a-Whole-House-Full-of-People-Who-Love-Me. My parents are not looking for me. There is absolutely no one who loves me who is worried about me at this moment. On that you have my word.”

“Okay.” Ethan took off his hat and ran his hand through his wavy brown hair. “Tell me your name at least. Please. Just tell me your name.”

Even that question wasn’t as simple as it should be.

“Lydia,” I said after a moment. “You can call me Lydia.”

“Okay. Hi, Lydia.”

“Hi.” I smiled. “So what happens now?”

“Now I’ve got to go feed.”

I looked back at the house full of strangers and questions and gravy. Then I looked at the wide-open sky and the really cute boy. “Want some company?”

*   *   *

The tires of the old, beat-up truck rattled in and out of the deep ruts in the ground. Ethan pushed the clutch and shifted gears, and I thought that it was maybe the single sexiest thing I’d ever seen. He was so confident, so at home and at ease. This was his domain, the cab of this old truck with its big bale of hay and long line of black, hairy cows trailing behind us. They would have followed him to the ends of the earth, I could tell.

But Ethan and I stayed quiet in the cab of the truck that, even with the heater blowing at full blast, was still cold. I could see my breath. I put my hands between my knees. Ethan pulled off his gloves and handed them to me.

Finally, the silence must have been too much because he flipped on the radio and, instantly, music filled the cab. It was supposed to be “O Holy Night” but there were too many backup singers and the tempo was too fast. It made me want to be sick.

“Sorry about the station,” he said. “Emily or the twins must have been in here. They love that teenybopper stuff.”

He turned off the radio and I pulled on his gloves. They were still warm inside. “That’s okay.”

“Do you like music?” he asked.

“I used to. When I was a kid.”

“And now that you’re so old you’re over it?” he asked with a grin.

“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that. How long have you lived here?” Suddenly, I was desperate to change the conversation.

“Well, I’m seventeen now, so … seventeen years.”

“Has your family always lived here?”

“I’m generation number five,” he said, but the words sounded strange—not like Ethan had roots tying him to that place. It was more like he had chains.

“It’s nice that you have a big family. That you all get to live together and work together.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Why did you go to Iceland?”

I don’t know where the question came from, but I could also tell that it was the right question—that somehow the answer mattered.

Ethan shifted gears again and started over a ridge. The ranch spread out before us, white and clean and stretching for miles. It was the kind of place most people only see in movies and out of airplane windows.

“I was born here. I’m going to live here and work here for the rest of my life. And, someday—if I’m lucky, a long, long time from now—I’m going to die here. And … well, I guess I just wanted one little part of my life to be
not here.
And Iceland seemed about as
not here
as a place could possibly be.”

I looked around at the rolling hills, the distant dots of cattle. “Here doesn’t seem that bad to me.”

“Yeah.” Ethan shifted gears again. He didn’t face me. “What about you? Where is your home? Or is that secret, too?”

“No secret,” I told him. “I don’t have a home.”

*   *   *

“Hey, honey,” Aunt Mary said when I finally returned to the house. She was kneeling on the living room rug while Emily stood on an ottoman with her arms outstretched, dressed like an angel. “We missed you at breakfast.”

“I’m sorry I left without telling you. I—”

“You had to choose between running off with a handsome cowboy you haven’t seen in months or staying in a house full of rowdy strangers…”

“And gravy,” I told her. “I also ran away from the gravy. Which might have been a mistake.”

“Then tomorrow I’ll teach you how to make it. Would you like that, Hulda?” She looked as if she expected me to protest. Or maybe confess. I was officially paranoid.

“I’d probably burn down your house.”

“It takes a lot more than you to turn this place to ash.”

“Aunt Mary, are you done yet?” Emily shifted from foot to foot.

“Stop fidgeting,” Aunt Mary commanded, then pulled a straight pin from the puffy band on her wrist and studied Emily’s too-long costume.

“I’m tired,” Emily complained, but Aunt Mary just cut her eyes up at her.

“You’re not being very angelic,” Aunt Mary said. “So, Hulda, do you have everything you need?”

“Yes.”

“And are you settling in okay?”

“I guess so.”

“And you know you can come to me, right? If there’s anything you want to talk about. Anything at all.”

“Of course.” I smiled. I lied.

*   *   *

If it’s possible for real life to turn into a montage from a movie, that’s what happened next.

Every morning Ethan knocked on Aunt Mary’s door and I went to help him feed. (My job was opening the gates. According to Ethan, it was a
very important job.
)

Every afternoon I helped Aunt Mary cook and deliver food to the older people in the community who couldn’t get out in the snow. “Here,” she said the first day, handing me the keys. “I don’t drive much anymore.”

Emily and the twins tried to teach me how to two-step.

Clint grilled steaks and we had big, noisy dinners at Ethan’s house with everybody taking turns holding Ethan’s cousin’s baby.

Aunt Mary put me in charge of wrapping presents and the twins let me hold a baby pig.

And through it all, Ethan was there, teaching me how to drive a stick shift in the chore truck, teasing me when my boots got so bogged down in mud that I actually stepped out of them and had to walk back to Aunt Mary’s on bare feet.

He didn’t talk about Hulda.

He didn’t ask me where I was from or why I was running.

He didn’t look at me like I was a liar or a fraud or a cheat.

And, for a few days there, I wasn’t really Hulda and I wasn’t really me. For a few days, I was just … happy.

Because, for a few days, I had a family.

*   *   *

“You’ve got to keep stirring,” Aunt Mary told me. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and even though it was below freezing outside, Aunt Mary’s kitchen was hot. Steam collected on the windows while the brown concoction on the stove boiled and popped like something in a witch’s cauldron.

“Are you stirring?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She eyed the boiling caramel. “Stir harder.”

When the caramel began to splatter, Aunt Mary said, “Oh, hon, you’re gonna get that all over your pretty top. Go grab an apron.”

There was a hook full of aprons in the laundry room and I grabbed one that was pink and covered with white flowers. But as soon as Aunt Mary saw me, something in her eyes made me stop.

“What?” I asked, then looked down and saw the name embroidered on the pocket. Daisy. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is this your daughter’s?”

“Yes, it is. But … you wear it,” Aunt Mary said. “She’d want you to wear it.”

When I started pulling my hair up into a ponytail Aunt Mary asked, “Did anyone ever tell you your hair looks nice away from your face?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “My mom.”

“Do you miss her, sweetie? We can call her, or—”

“No,” I said too quickly. “I mean, that’s okay. The time difference, you know. It can wait.”

The back door slammed open as Emily yelled, “Aunt Mary!”

“Boots!” Aunt Mary said, but Emily was already pulling off her muddy boots and leaving them by the back door.

“Aunt Mary, do you have any potatoes?” she asked.

“Why?” Aunt Mary sounded skeptical, but Emily cut her eyes at me.

“You’ll see.”

*   *   *

“Surprise!” Emily and Susan yelled in unison when we arrived at Ethan’s house that night.

There was another sign. This one hung in the dining room, announcing
Happy
Þ
orláksmessa, Hulda!

“What is all this?” I asked.

“Well, we know it must be hard for you to be away from your family at Christmas,” Aunt Mary said. “The holidays are
always
hard without your family.”

Maybe I was imagining things, but it felt like the room changed as she said it. For a second, no one could meet anyone else’s gaze.

“So…” Mary went on, “we thought we’d bring a little of Iceland to you!”

“Oh. Yay!” I tried. Only then did I really look around the room.

There were shoes sitting in all the windows. Yes,
shoes.
Sinister looking Santas lined the center of the table, and a pile of potatoes was arranged on a serving tray like some kind of strangely festive centerpiece.

“Wow. Someone went to a lot of trouble.”

“Well, of course we did, silly. It’s Saint Thorlakur’s Day!” Ethan’s mom said. Then she grew serious. “Am I saying that correctly?”

“Yeah, Hulda,” Ethan said. “
Is
she saying that correctly?”

“Yes. Very good,” I told her, and Susan beamed. Ethan smiled like he was about to choke on the canary he’d just eaten.