The Night Before Christmas (5 page)

Daisy started to interject something here, but Caroline rushed on. “And to that end, I made a phone call myself this morning. I called Judge Hilliard.” Peter Hilliard was a former Duluth Superior Court judge who, since retiring to Butternut ten years ago, had never missed a breakfast at Pearl's. Caroline had asked him, weeks ago, if he'd officiate at their wedding at the White Pines, and he'd been happy to oblige. “I told him about canceling the reception,” Caroline said now, “and I asked him if we could do it privately, and do you know what he suggested? He said why didn't we come over to their house the day after tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, at around five o'clock in the evening? He said that his wife, Mary Beth, can be the second witness to our marriage, along with Daisy, and that we'll leave early enough for them to have their Christmas Eve dinner and for us to come back here and have ours. It'll have to be something simple, but it'll still be nice. Maybe I'll make a roast.” She reached for her “wedding pad” on the table, and then she caught herself and shook her head a little sadly.

“I guess I won't be needing this anymore,” Caroline said, picking up the pad and carrying it over to the garbage can. She dropped it in, and brushed her hands together, as if glad to be done with it. But the expression in her face was wistful. “Now, if you'll excuse me,” she said, “it's about time I got dressed and started calling the guests,” and she left Daisy and Jack alone in the kitchen, staring helplessly after her.

 

Chapter Six

T
H
E
N
E
X
T
D
A
Y
,
the day that was
supposed
to have been Jack and Caroline's wedding, Walker Ford was sitting in his office at the Butternut Boatyard. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, his work boots propped on his desk, staring at the incoming call on his cell phone's display. It was his brother, Reid, and this was the third time he'd called today. The last two times, though, Walker had let it go to voice mail. Now he sighed, resignedly, and punched Talk.

“What?” he said, by way of a greeting.

“Well, hello to you, too,” Reid said. “I'm glad I caught you in such a good mood.”

“I'm not in a bad mood,” Walker said, though his voice sounded a little churlish, even to him. “I just know why you're calling me, Reid.”

“Why am I calling you?”

“To tell me you're not coming for Christmas.”

The silence on the other end of the line confirmed this, but then Reid said, a little defensively, “And why is that a problem, Walk? I mean, lately we can't even have a telephone conversation with each other without getting in an argument. Why would you think us seeing each other in person, over the holidays no less, was a good idea?”

“Because . . . because you're my brother,” Walker said simply. And, for once, Reid was silent. He had no ready reply for this. He was, of course, Walker's brother, but at one time, he'd been so much
more
than Walker's brother, and they both knew it. When they were growing up, against the backdrop of their parents' disastrous marriage, Reid had been not just an older brother to Walker, but a protector, a mentor, a sounding board, a coach, a tutor, and last and most important, a best friend. For a long time, they'd been as close as two brothers could be, particularly during the early years of building their boatyard business together, a business that now totaled more than a dozen boatyards in three midwestern states.

But sometime after Walker had met Allie and married her, and adopted her son, Wyatt, they'd begun to drift apart. Walker's life had changed—­once an inveterate workaholic and commitment-­phobe, he was going out on “date nights” with his wife, coaching Wyatt's youth basketball team, and curling up on the couch with the two of them for family movie nights—­and Reid's life, well, Reid's life had not changed. Reid's life had stayed
exactly
the same. Work and women, in that order, and the work part of the equation was brutal. It was not unusual for Reid to work, by choice, up to sixteen hours a day. And the women part of the equation? Well, Walker couldn't really say. Reid never dated anyone he met long enough to actually introduce her to his brother and his sister in-­law.

“Look,” Reid said now, his voice uncharacteristically gentle, “you know, first and foremost, that you're my brother. You'll always come first in my life. But this whole holiday thing, it's not for me.
Any
day,
any
time,
any
place you want me to grab a cup of coffee with you, or a beer, or a steak, I'll be there, you know that. Hell, I'll even go fishing with you,” and Walker almost smiled, because that was saying
a lot
. Despite their shared love of boats, Reid had never shared Walker's love of fishing. The point of being out on the water, Reid had always argued, was to go fast. Reid loved going fast, on land and water, and on land, anyway, he had the speeding tickets to prove it.

“Walker, I swear,” he continued, “I'll do
anything
else with you, and your family, but I won't do the whole holiday thing. The whole tree-­trimming, carol-­singing, present-­opening thing. I'm sorry, but what can I say? Our childhood basically ruined the entire institution of Christmas for me.” And Walker, listening to him, flashed on an image of their parents screaming hysterically at each other one Christmas morning, while he and Reid looked on in dismay, and the shiny new presents spread out around them rapidly lost their appeal.

“Trust me, Walker,” Reid said, “it's better for all of you if I go and drown my sorrows elsewhere.”

“Hmmm,” Walker said, skeptically. “What's elsewhere's name?”

“What?”

“What's the name of the woman you'll be spending Christmas with?”

“Oh. Brandi. Brandi with an
i
.”

“Of course it's with an
i
.”

“No need to be snooty,” Reid objected.

“Where'd you meet her?”

“At the gym.”

Walker sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“Again with the snootiness,” Reid said. “There's nothing wrong with meeting someone at a gym. I mean, it's probably better than meeting a woman at a bar. You'd be amazed, Walker, how much you can learn about someone just from working out next to her.”

Walker didn't answer. He was still rubbing his eyes.

“Anyway, Brandi and I are leaving Christmas Eve to fly to Miami. I've booked a hotel suite with a private deck, because Brandi wants to sunbathe topless, and I want to . . . well, I want to
watch
Brandi sunbathe topless. And trust me, Walker, she is
so
worth watching.”

“And that's it? That's how you're going to celebrate Christmas?”

“Well, the room comes with a Jacuzzi, too. And a full bar.”

Walker's irritation turned, unexpectedly, to sadness. “Reid, when was the exact moment that you became a cliché?” he asked his brother. “Seriously, I'd like to know, because I think I somehow missed it.”

But Reid was done with this part of the conversation. “I'm going to ignore that last remark,” he said blithely. “But I want you to know that I sent a box of presents today, and it included a very expensive bottle of whiskey for you, which I expect you to save and drink with me. And I sent Wyatt a Minnesota Twins jersey, and I sent something for Allie and the baby, too. How are they doing, by the way, mother and soon-­to-­be child?”

“They're . . . they're doing all right,” Walker said.

“Just all right?”

“No, they're doing fine. I'm just . . . I'm just worried about them, that's all.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. There's just . . . there's just things that can go wrong now, at this stage of pregnancy,” Walker said, feeling it again. That gnawing sense of dread that had been visiting him, lately, every once in a while.

“What are you talking about? I saw Allie last month,” Reid said. “She looked amazing. And she said the baby was kicking up a storm. They both seemed fine. Better than fine.”

“As far as we know, they are both fine. It's what we
don't
know, what we
can't
know
,
that's worrying me. I mean, there's all this stuff that can happen in the third trimester, Reid. Things I'd never even heard of before. And it happens all the time. In perfectly normal pregnancies. Preeclampsia, for one thing,” he said, hating the very sound of the word.

“What's that?”

“It's something that can lead to seizures, and kidney failure, and . . .” He stopped. It was too terrible to say out loud.

“And what?” Reid prompted.

He sighed, rubbed his eyes again, and lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. “And, very rarely, it can lead to death. Of the mother and baby.”

“Walker, I think
very rarely
are the key words there. Besides, it's the twenty-­first century, and we're living in a developed country. There's a test for something like that, isn't there? For preeclampsia? And when it does happen, there must be a treatment for it, too.”

“But, Reid, that's not the only thing that can go wrong. There's also something called—­”

“Okay,
stop,
” Reid commanded. “Just . . . stop. This sounds crazy. Walk, this isn't like you. Where are you even getting all this information?”

“Off the Internet,” Walker admitted. “When I can't sleep at night, I . . .” His voice trailed off.

“When you can't sleep, you go online and find things that are guaranteed to scare the
h
ell
out of you, is that it, Walk? Jesus, I hope you're not sharing any of this with Allie.”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, there's that, anyway. But in the meantime, isn't there something more relaxing you can research on the Internet? Like when the next global pandemic will take place? Or how soon terrorists will be able to make a nuclear bomb?”

Walker didn't answer.

“Okay, look. Here's my advice to you. Stay away from your computer, especially in the middle of the night. Or if you can't stay away from it, use it to go to one of those fly-­fishing websites you order all your lures from. Because too much information, in this case, is not a good thing.” And when Walker still said nothing, Reid added, quietly, “Besides, we both know what this is about.”

Walker tensed. “Do not bring that up, Reid. I mean it.”
Do not bring up Caitlin's miscarriage.

“All right, I won't,” Reid said. “Just remember, there's a ninety-­nine point nine percent chance that everything's going to be okay. And I know that without having to do any Internet research.”

“Yeah, okay,” Walker said, without any real conviction. But at that moment, he caught site of Allie standing in the open doorway to his office. She smiled, tentatively, and held up a tin of Christmas cookies.

“Allie,” he said, with a mixture of both surprise and disapproval. She'd promised him she'd stay at home today and take it easy.

“Reid, I gotta go,” he said, taking his feet off the desk and standing up. “I'll talk to you soon.”

“Sure, and remember what I said.”

“Right,” Walker said, ending the call and starting to clear papers off the other chair in his office. But Allie waved him back down and came and sat on the edge of his desk instead.

“How's Reid?” Allie asked.

“Fine,” Walker said, in a clipped tone.

“He's not coming, is he? But we already knew that, didn't we?”

“I guess we did. The thought of him spending Christmas with Brandi, though, is so depressing.”

“Brandy, as in a bottle of it?”

“No,
Brandi
as in a
woman
named Brandi. Brandi with an
i
.”

“Well, that sounds like Reid. The
brandy
and the
Brandi,
” she added, trying to get Walker to smile. But when he wouldn't smile, she said, “I know how much you wanted him to come. But he's not comfortable in family settings. He may
never
be comfortable in family settings.”

“I know. You're right,” he said, with a sigh. “It still doesn't stop me from trying every year, though, does it?”

“No, it doesn't. But only because you're such a good brother.” And then, brightening, she said, “I brought you something.” She held out the cookie tin, but when he took it, distractedly, she frowned and said, “This isn't just about Reid. You're mad at me, too.”

“I'm not
mad
at you. I just thought you were staying at home today.”

“I was. But I took Wyatt over to play with Jade, and then Jax and I started talking about Caroline, and about the wedding that didn't happen today.”

“How's she doing?”

“Okay. I talked to her this morning, and she was her usual stoic self. Honestly, though, I think she's much more disappointed than she's willing to admit. She keeps saying that the marriage is what's important, not the wedding, but Jax and I think that's because she put her heart into the White Pines wedding, and now she can't imagine it being anything else. But Jax and I can imagine something else, and we have an idea. I mean, we're going to have to run it by Jack and Daisy first. But it could work. It could
really
work. You don't mind if we don't have our Christmas Eve dinner at home, do you?”

“No. Not if you and Wyatt and I are together,” he said.

“Good.” She smiled at him and then popped open the lid of the cookie tin and selected a cookie from it. “Look,” she said, holding it out to him. “Jenna decorated this one especially for us.” Walker looked at the cookie. It was shaped like a snowflake, and it had at least a half inch of pale blue frosting on it, and it was sprinkled with an almost insane number of tiny silver balls.

Walker looked at it doubtfully. “Is it edible?”

“Of course it's edible,” Allie said, taking a bite. “It's delicious.” She handed it back to Walker and he took a bite, too. But he couldn't really taste it. He was still upset about Allie driving today. He handed the cookie back to her.

Allie sighed. “All right, what is this about?”

“It's about you gallivanting around town today, when we both agreed—­”

“
Gallivanting?
Walker, I stopped by a friend's house. I hardly think that qualifies as ‘gallivanting.' ”

He shrugged, noncommittally.

“Walker, for the one-­hundredth time, I'm pregnant. I'm not an invalid.”

“I didn't say you were an invalid.”

“But you'd prefer I stay at home?”

“Not forever. Just until the baby's born. I mean, I know you think I'm being overly protective, but the roads can be slippery this time of year, and the sidewalks can be too.”

Allie didn't say anything. Instead, she popped the rest of the Christmas cookie into his mouth, and then she slid off the desk and sat down on his lap. It wasn't as easy as it had been eight and a half months ago, but she still fit, and when she snuggled closer to him and he put his arms around her, it felt as right as it ever had.