Sweet Christmas Kisses (99 page)

“I’m…I’m so sorry, Jim. I….” Her voice trailed off. There was nothing to say. For the first time, she realized that Jim’s childhood had been such a deeply painful reality, he’d been unable to speak to anyone about it. Even her. No wonder there were times he’d seemed so far away, so drawn into himself.

“Let’s finish up here, Cee, so we can leave this town behind and get on with our lives.”

Cecilia knew from experience that he wouldn’t have anything else to say, at least for a while. Sick at heart, she opened another box and picked through the contents, finding old books, including what looked like Jim’s high school textbooks. She also found copies of his high school report cards—all excelling—and a couple of academic award certificates. Quietly, she slipped them into the pocket of her jacket to share with her children later. He might not want to share anything about his mother, and she could certainly understand why, but she was determined that Ryan and Yvonne would know something about their father’s growing up years.

At the bottom of the box, Cecilia found a heavy binder. She flipped it open to discover page after page of partitioned plastic folders holding old coins.

She lifted the heavy thing and held it out to Jim. “These are the coins Cam was talking about. I wonder if we’ll find any more of these binders.”

“No telling. We’ve got a lot more to do before we find out.” He turned away from her, picking up the last box he’d gone through and carrying it outside. When he didn’t immediately return, Cecilia glanced out to see him standing by the dumpster, staring across what once must have been a lush field of hay, now dried and dotted with prickly pear cactus and weeds. He stood like that for several minutes before he returned to the house.

 Cecilia looked at him. She was tired of weighing every word before she said it, tired of waiting for its impact on him. “Tell me about Gus,” she said.

“No, Cee, I don’t want….”

“I’m the co-executor of the will of a man I’ve never met, Jim. The least you can do is tell me a little about him.”

When it looked like he was still going to refuse, she stuck out her chin defiantly. He held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Gus owned this place, ran a few cattle, but he was also the head of maintenance for the Lucky Break School District. When my mother was…sober, he used to hire her to help with custodial work. We lived in a crummy apartment in town, but we lost that when I was twelve. Rather than see us dumped out on the street, Gus let us live in that little house of his down by the road—the one that’s all caved in now. I was fourteen when she died. He got custody of me and I moved in with him.” Jim looked away, then turned back to meet Cecilia’s eyes directly. “He gave me the best life I’d ever had,” he said.

Thinking of the excellent high school report cards and awards she’d found, Cecilia nodded. “He made it possible for you to succeed.”

“He did.”

“But you never came back here after you graduated from high school?”

“Gus told me not to,” Jim said. “He told me it would be best to forget where I was from. To look to the future, make something of myself. No matter that I excelled in school, was part of a winning football team, had earned a scholarship—I would always be Irene’s son. He wanted me to escape that.”

“But then he made sure you had to come back. I wonder why,” Cecilia mused.

He shrugged, opening another box and sorting through it quickly. When he found only broken and outdated household items, he carried the box out to the dumpster.

Cecilia knew she wouldn’t get any more out of him right now, so she dropped the subject, elated that she’d learned as much as she had—about Gus, but even more about Jim.

She turned to the next box in the stack, jerking the flaps open to see that it was full of trophies. She began pulling them out, one by one, and discovered that they all had Jim’s name on them. Academic awards and football and baseball trophies had all been placed together neatly. Some of them were wrapped in paper, which she pulled off and set aside. There were other items at the bottom of the carton, but she was interested only in the trophies. She lined them up on the mantle and stood back to look at them. They once had brought Jim pride, and certainly Gus was proud of them or he wouldn’t have kept them.

“What are you doing?” Jim’s tone was aggressive.

She turned to him, hands on hips, her tone matching his. “Seeing a side of my husband I never knew existed.”

Jim pushed past her and grabbed for the trophies. “Well, I guess there’s a lot of things about me you never knew.”

“And whose fault is that?”

He didn’t answer. When he had all the awards in his arms, he turned around to place them back in the box, but Cecilia picked it up, trying to keep it out of his reach.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she said. “You’re not going to throw those away. Those are for the kids to see.”

“No. They don’t need to know about…any of this.” He made a grab for the box, but she pulled it out of his reach. The items at the bottom of the carton slid to one side.

“Yes, they do. It’s bad enough that I’ve been married to a stranger for ten years. I will not allow you to be a stranger to our kids.” She glanced into the box. “And  I haven’t finished going through this box.” She pulled out a scratched and dented metal container that had once been green, but now had only a little paint left on it.

“The ammunition box,” Jim said, reaching for it. He flipped it open and pulled out a handful of papers.

“Is that…?”

“What we’ve been looking for? Yes. I’ll have to go over these papers with Lucas Ramsey at the bank, but this is it.” He looked up. “Good. Now we can get out of this town. Put this place up for sale. Never come back.”

Cecilia gestured toward the still-full bedrooms and kitchen. “But there’s much more to—”

“I’ll hire someone to finish cleaning the place out.” Tucking the box and binder under his arm, he strode toward the door. “I should have done that in the first place.  Let’s go.”

“No.”

He swung back to face her. “Come on, Cee. It’s after five. I’m tired and hungry and you must be, too. Doreen has had the kids all day and—”

“No.” Calmly, not even sure why she was so determined about this, Cecilia folded her arms and lifted her chin. “I’ve been married to you for ten years. I accepted that you didn’t have any family and you didn’t want to talk about your childhood. I knew it must have been bad, but you can’t tell me it was
all
bad.”

“You don’t know anything about it, Cee.”

“And whose fault is that? Jim, Gus loved you and was proud of you. You can’t doubt that.” She searched his face, the stubborn set of his jaw, the hard lips and narrowed eyes. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept all your trophies and awards. Our kids need to know
something
about you. Your past, your accomplishments.”

“No. That part of my life is dead and gone.”

Angered by his stubbornness, Cecilia stabbed a finger at him. “You’re wrong. You’ve kept this secret since you left here and what good has it done you? What good has it done
us?
Kept a wall between us, that’s all. Secrets like this are what caused our marriage to fail, Jim!”

“It takes two to make a marriage and two to make it fail.” His voice was as furious as hers. “I’m not taking the sole blame for what’s happened to us. You’re telling me you don’t have any secrets?”

She stared at him, stricken. The moment she had feared for so long had finally come. “You’re right. I do,” she whispered.

He looked at her scornfully. “Gambling with the household money? Unpaid parking tickets?”

“No. I—”

“Look, I’m glad you and Stephanie had a happy childhood, parents who doted on you. Really, I am. But that’s just it, Cecilia—how could you ever understand
my
childhood? I kept my background secret because I
knew
you couldn’t understand. You’ve never seen anything like what I lived with. You never did anything you
had
to keep secret.”

“I got pregnant on purpose,” she blurted.

Jim looked startled. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Ryan.” Cecilia had to stop and swallow down the sick feeling rising in her. So many years untold, this secret. So much guilt. So much fear. “You were leaving for South Korea. I didn’t know when you’d be back or if I’d see you again. I…I was crazy in love with you and I couldn’t stand the idea of losing you.”

She saw his expression turn to dismay. “You told me you were taking birth control.”

“No. I said I
had
birth control, but I didn’t use it one night when….”

“When you knew you could get pregnant if you really wanted to.”

Cecilia nodded. “I’m sorry, Jim. I was a sheltered, spoiled twenty-one year old, thinking only about what I wanted. It was dishonest. I don’t regret having Ryan, but I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I just felt like….It was in the past. I couldn’t change it.”

“Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you all day,” Jim said. “There’s no point in bringing up the past.” He headed for the door. “I’m going back to the Muleshoe. You can come if you want to.”

Silently, Cecilia followed him, climbing into the car and waiting while he locked the house up and slid behind the wheel. She could feel waves of fury emanating from him as he drove the short distance, but neither of them spoke.

When he parked in front of the Van Peter’s house, Cecilia scrambled out of the car and hurried up the steps, eager to get to a room where she could have some privacy, catch her breath, deal with what she had blurted out after keeping it secret for so long. Fumbling for the knob, she opened the front door—and stepped into a Christmas wonderland.

Sparkling garlands threaded with tiny, twinkling white lights festooned the entryway. Small tables lined the walls, each one with a nativity scene.

Cecilia froze in place as she took it all in. She felt Jim stumble to a halt behind her.

“What in the world?” he said.

“It looks like our kids have been helping decorate.” She pointed to one of the nativity sets, where Mary sported a halo of glittery pink garland. “That looks like Yvonne’s handiwork.”

The sound of Christmas carols floated from the living room. They followed the music to find Ryan, Yvonne and Doreen happily decorating an enormous artificial Christmas tree. The busy threesome looked up to see Jim and Cecilia in the doorway. Yvonne leapt to her feet and danced across the room.

“Mommy, Daddy, look what we did,” she shouted.

Cecilia bent to hug her. ”It’s beautiful. It looks like you’ve been working hard.” Catching sight of her daughter’s face, she paused, observing her with concern. Her face was red, her eyes streamed, and she was wheezing lightly.

Doreen sat back on her heels. “We’re having a ball. I decided, what the heck, let’s just go whole hog, so I got out every box of decorations I could find. I was going to have one of our men cut down a live tree, but Ryan said Yvonne might be allergic, so I got out this artificial one instead—though I don’t know that the dust on this old thing is doing her any good, either.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine once we give her some medicine,” Jim said, setting down the box of items they had unearthed in Gus’s house.

“Yes, she’ll be fine.” Cecilia shepherded her daughter out the door and headed for the stairs. “Come on, honey, we need to use your inhaler.”

****

“Look at this, Dad,” Ryan said, taking Jim’s hand to tug him across the room. “Grandma Doreen has a train set.”

“Grandma Doreen?” Jim asked, glancing across the room to his old friend.

She grinned at him. “You can never have too many grandkids.” She got to her feet. “I’m going to get dinner on the table, then I promised the kids we’d go into town and see all the Lucky Break Christmas activities they didn’t get to see last night. I think they’re going to let the kids pet the reindeer.” She hurried toward the kitchen.

“See, Dad?” Ryan reclaimed his attention. “I set the whole thing up myself and it runs great. Look.”

Dutifully, Jim watched his son start the train running around on its track, murmuring congratulations on what a good job he’d done. It gave him a minute to catch his breath. He’d been buffeted by a storm of emotions all day, experiencing again the despair and shame he’d known as a kid, when his status as the son of Irene Warwick had made him the object of bullies, scorn, and worst of all, pity. At least until Gus had come into his life. Gus never judged his mother for what she was, but he also hadn’t been willing to stand by and let her neglect Jim. Gus had been the best thing ever to happen to him.
Until Cee,
he thought, then pushed his wife’s image from his mind.

The accumulated items of Gus’s life, the boxes Jim had sorted through today, flashed through his mind. Each box he’d opened had mocked him, seeming to ask how the old man had come to such a state, why he had hoarded so much pure junk, why there had been no one to help clean it out. Why hadn’t Jim been there? Guilt weighed on his heart and twisted his stomach into knots.

But all those emotional hits paled in comparison to the bomb Cee had dropped on him. He was infuriated that she’d become pregnant on purpose and manipulated him, obviously having read his character well enough to know he would “do the right thing” and marry her.

“Dad?”

Jim looked up, realizing it wasn’t the first time Ryan had tried to get his attention. “Sorry, son. What was that?”

“Do you want to try it?” Ryan asked. His smile wavered a little, as if he could tell Jim was distracted and was taking it personally. Jim knew it wasn’t the first time his son had tried and failed to get his father’s attention in the past few weeks and months.

Well, that was going to change, starting now. He scooted closer to the track. “Absolutely.”

Gladly, Ryan passed him the controls, giving him advice on how best to make the train run. The two of them played together until Doreen called them to dinner, where Cee and Yvonne joined them. Jim looked at Yvonne closely, and saw that she seemed much better.

With the children chattering away about what they’d been doing all day, their parents were able to disguise the tension between them as tiredness, enough that Doreen looked at them with concern. “You two look all in. Do you want to skip the festivities tonight? If Yvonne is feeling better, I can take these two into town and you—”