by LJ Evans
Reese peeked at the baby. “She’s gorgeous, Edie,” she said.
I nodded. It was all I could do. Agree. She was.
The music morphed into a line dancing song, and Reese pulled Dalton with her onto the dance floor. Soon, most of my cousins were there, laughing and slapping and following the steps. They were so damn beautiful. Golden. Bright. Shining stars.
It was hard to look at and also hard to look away from.
Love poured from them while I ached for mine so badly I thought I’d bleed out on the floor. Only the baby was holding me here. Keeping me in place. Tethering me to the earth.
Garrett
CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU
“It's almost midnight where you lay your head
But I'm calling numbers, buying plane tickets in bed.”
Performed by OneRepublic
Written by Kutzle / Tedder
We were walking back to the dock on the Isle of McCarron when a phone rang. My stomach tightened in hope before I realized it was Mitchell’s. It couldn’t have been mine, not only because, somewhere between leaving the manor house this morning and arriving at the distillery on the island, I’d lost it, but because I had no one calling me.
The bitter truth ripped through me. My secretary would get me a new phone, and have it synced up with all my data restored, before Edie even realized I’d lost it. After all, she hadn’t answered one of my calls or texts since I’d left the States. Not even the one on Christmas.
It had torn my soul in half.
After that, I’d stopped calling.
My wounded pride joined my wounded heart. Both broken and battered.
Mitchell’s eyes widened, and then he handed the phone to me. “It’s your wife.”
My heart flipped. I took the phone. “Edie?”
She said something, but it was garbled, the signal poor in our location. The storm above us added to the difficulties of our modern age. “Say it again. I can barely hear you.”
“The baby is coming,” she said, and the world around me disappeared. My stomach fell. My heart stalled. I froze.
“What? It isn’t due for another week,” I finally responded.
A tortured moan ripped through the air waves. Edie. Fuck!
“Eds? Edie?!” I called.
Eventually, it was my mother-in-law’s voice that came back. “Are you still in Scotland?” she asked.
Was I? I looked around. Yes, fuck, I was even farther away. It was going to take me hours to get back to the manor. Even longer to get to an airport. I started jogging down the dock toward the boat we’d taken from the mainland. Mitchell was on my heels. I climbed aboard.
“I’m coming, Wynn. Tell her I’m coming.” But the signal had dropped completely, and I was unsure if she’d even heard me.
I hollered commands at the captain, and he took off.
By the time I walked into my office at the distillery, I’d already tried every single airline, public and private. No one was flying to Tennessee. An unexpected, once-in-a-hundred-years storm had taken over much of the U.S. from Missouri all the way to the Atlantic, blanketing the States with downpours and blizzards. Whiteout conditions. I could fly into New York, no problem, but that wouldn’t get me anywhere close to where I needed to be. Not in enough time.
The truth hit me like a barrel falling off a truck. I was missing the birth of my child. I wasn’t there for Edie at the most important time in our marriage. I’d failed her. I’d failed us.
Margery was on the phone at my desk. She’d been trying to pull any and all strings she could to get me to Tennessee. It had surprised me, the effort she was putting out to try to get me back to Edie when my being in the U.S. with her was what my grandmother hated most.
I sank down into the chair, head in my hands.
“I fucked up,” I told her.
She didn’t even object to my language. “We’ll figure it out, Garrett.”
Her voice was almost tender, not full of the professionalism I normally heard from her. I looked up, pain radiating from me.
“Isn’t this what you want?” I asked.
“What?” she asked, genuine surprise reflecting on her face.
“After this, Edie will never take me back. It’s what you want, right?”
She sank into the other wingback next to me. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“She’s the reason I’m in the States. If there’s no Edie and me, there’s no reason for me to be there.”
She put a hand to her heart. “Do you truly think I’m that heartless?”
I didn’t reply as memories invaded me. My grandmother pulling me into her arms while I cried, watching my mother disappear in a taxi down the lane. The hurt and anguish of knowing she wasn’t coming back for me anytime soon had been replaced with arms hugging me to her, almost desperately.
Memories of her sitting in the chair next to my bed, reading a story I knew she’d read a thousand times but loved to hear her read anyway. Memories of the pride in her voice when I handed her my report card full of A’s.
She wasn’t heartless. I’d chosen to remember her that way so I’d have a villain in my story that wasn’t me. Someone who was causing the problems in my marriage when, really, I was the issue. My divided love and loyalties. My inability to keep the promise I’d made to Edie about working in the U.S.
“No,” I said. “You’re not.”
“Is this what Edie thinks also? That I don’t want you two together?” she asked, sadness taking over.
I couldn’t look at her.
“Oh, Garrett. I’m so sorry. She’s the best thing that has ever come into your life,” she said softly.
She was right. Edie was. She’d stopped my carousing. She’d stopped my never-ending wandering. She’d put me together, filling up the voids my grandmother hadn’t been able to fill, regardless of the love and attention she’d given me. It hadn’t been enough because it wasn’t my mom. Edie had pushed those holes to the side and taken up residence in my heart.
“I have to get to her,” I said, the anguish filling my chest, squeezing it.
Margery nodded. “We can get close and then drive the rest of the way.”
“We?”
“I want to see my great-grandchild.”
She took my hand and squeezed it.
“Do you know anyone selling a plane?” I asked her. If I had my own crew, I could just take off.
“You want to buy a plane?”
The idea blossomed even bigger in my brain. “If we have our own jet, we can fly back and forth whenever we need to. I might be able to convince Edie that we can go see her family or I can come back here as often as we need to.”
She stared at me for a moment and then said, “If you’d done it sooner, we certainly wouldn’t be in this situation, would we?”
I had to laugh. Leave it to my grandmother to make it sound like I should have always known it. She reached for her phone, and I reached for the one on the desk. Somehow, someway, we were getting to Tennessee, come hell or high water.
♫ ♫ ♫
It was a lot easier in my head, getting on a plane and flying to the States. It was harder in reality. It had taken us most of the day on the twenty-ninth to purchase it and find a crew that was willing and able to miss New Year’s with their families to fly into a storm.
In the end, I’d had to agree to a landing in New Jersey—at least a nine-hour drive to Edie’s hometown. We’d arranged for a rental car to be dropped off for us at the private airport. I’d been sick to my stomach since losing Edie’s signal, unable to eat, barely able to drink unless it was the whiskey on the plane that had Margery frowning.
I hadn’t been able to get in contact with Edie or her family since the lost call on McCarron. In our rush to depart, Margery had left her phone on the charger. I picked up a disposable phone because my secretary was unreachable on some beach in Tahiti with her boyfriend. It had been my Christmas bonus to
her, and I cursed myself every minute of the flight from Scotland that I’d given it to her.
I cursed myself for not knowing Edie’s phone number by heart. What the fuck kind of husband didn’t know his own wife’s number? I could try to convince myself that, in our modern age of phones and computers, I hadn’t had to know it. She’d put her number in my phone the first time we’d met at the library’s charity event, and I’d never even thought about the number again.
I’d failed her in so many ways this year since finding out she was pregnant, but I made a new promise to myself and to her: I wouldn’t fail her again.
As we drove, the sky turned dark, and the snow thundered down. We were used to snow in Scotland. I’d driven in it almost since I’d first gotten my license, but this storm…the flakes were coming down so fast and so hard that I couldn’t even read the freeway signs. It was impossible to find our way.
“If we don’t stop, we’re going to find ourselves in a ditch somewhere,” Margery warned me.
“I’m not stopping until she’s in my arms again. Until I see our baby,” I growled. And this time, she didn’t object to it.
She picked up my temporary phone and tried to get online to find out about the road conditions. Eventually, we lost that signal, too. We drove in silence, the snow and the darkness surrounding us like the pain of knowing I was so close, and yet so far away, surrounded my soul. Knowing she’d already had the baby was a knife cutting through my veins. Knowing she might have even been out of the hospital already if everything had gone as planned. My heart clenched. It had to have gone as planned. They both had to be okay.
Late into the night, I had to concede that I couldn’t drive any farther, even in the four-wheel-drive vehicle we’d rented. We pulled off at the next exit and found an all-night diner to hold up in while the sky continued to throw down more snow than I’d seen in decades.
When morning came, we had to wait for the snowplows to dig out the roads. We had to wait while I dug out the rental car. It had been the longest, most miserable forty-eight hours of my life, but as the sun rose over the mountains, casting a pink shade over the pure white that surrounded us, I felt hope rise within me.
I’d see her today. I’d see her and our baby. At least I’d be able to start the new year on the right foot. With both of them at my side.
If she took me back. If she accepted my apology.
She’d told me not to come back if I left, and I’d gone anyway. I’d said things I knew weren’t true. I’d accused her of loving her family more than me. I’d accused her of getting pregnant on purpose.
I’d been angry, but if I was honest, I’d been angrier at myself than her. Frustrated by my inability to weld our two worlds together in the way I’d intended. Frustrated I’d been unable to reconcile her love and loyalty to her family with my love and loyalty to mine. I’d been certain I could. With all my supposed skill as a businessman and a leader in our industry, finding a solution to our location issues should have been a breeze.
It was as if I’d thought I could find a portal that allowed me to shuttle back and forth from Scotland to Tennessee at a moment’s notice. Why it had taken me so long to find my own real-world portal, albeit a slower one, I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I was going to fight to get her back. I would fight with every single part of me, and I wasn’t leaving without her and the baby with me. I would fight to be the person right at her side. She had family. She had friends. She didn’t need me, but I desperately needed her. I would never be whole without her.
Edie
EVERY CHRISTMAS
“Santa isn't listening, no
And I'm losing hope.”
Performed by Kelly Clarkson
Written by Eubanks / Clarkson
Looking at my bright, beautiful family made the ache in me for my own that I’d lost flood my senses even more. Tears pooled in my eyes. I had no desire for anyone to see me crying when tonight was supposed to be a celebration, so I stepped out onto the landing. I took my phone from my pocket and tried Garrett one more time.
The mailbox was now full. I couldn’t even leave a message. So, I called his secretary again—the one on vacation and not returning calls.
“Hi, Myra, it’s just Edie again. Can you please have Garrett call me as soon as you get this? Thanks.”
The door to the event room opened, and Mayson came out with his own phone to his ear.
“Sorry, say that again?” He stopped when he saw me. “No, that’s great. Really great. Grace and Cole will be thrilled… Thanks so much, Dylan… Happy New Year.”
He hung up and smiled a huge smile at me, excitement bursting from him. “Eric Friedman is going to read the script and then come in and do a reading for us.”
Even I, lost in my book and library world, knew that Eric Friedman was the hottest new black actor on TV. Getting him to try out for a part in Mayson’s movie was huge.
“Oh, Mayson, that’s amazing,” I said and hugged him.
He looked down at my little girl, and his face broke into a huge smile again.
“She’s amazing,” he said. I nodded because she was, but tears also hit my cheeks.
“Eds…” His voice was choked as he put an arm around my shoulder again. “I wish he was here so Ty and I could throw him in the lake like we did Cayden.”
I was shaking my head. “It’s my fault. I made him choose.”
The door opened as Mayson said, “He chose poorly.”
“I think it’s time to ask yourself, what do you believe in?” Grace said. She looked gorgeous in a black cocktail dress with the same thigh-high black boots I’d seen her in at the bar the day before I’d gone into labor.
Mayson grinned at her. “You call this archaeology?”
“I always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door. I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable.” Grace’s words were suddenly full of a double meaning that went over my head, but had Mayson kissing her and pulling her to him so he could wrap his arms around her.
“Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory,” he said quietly. “Have I told you I love you today?”
She nodded, but her face was pure happiness. “Maybe a time or two, but you still have a few more before you’ve completely made up for making me live six months in hell.”
It was both amusing and slightly embarrassing to listen in on their conversation. The comradery. The way they were throwing movie quotes back and forth. At the same time, it was stapling little holes in my heart that had already shrunk in on itself. Mayson turned to me, his arms still around Grace.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and Garrett, Eds. But if this woman can take me back when I literally walked out on her after―” Grace elbowed him in the stomach. “After we’d just gotten together, I’m pretty damn sure you and Garrett can fix this. You love each other. It’s obvious when I see the two of you in the same room. And you have this adorable little creature to work it out for.”
I nodded because there wasn’t anything I could say. It wasn’t the time for sadness or tears. The door opened again. This time it was Ginny. The landing was getting a little crowded. “Sorry to interrupt. I think it’s time to cut the cake.”
I nodded, moving toward the door.
“What did Dylan have to say?” Grace asked behind me.
Cole was standing inside the door as I heard Mayson repeat what he’d told me about Eric Friedman. Cole whooped, Grace let out a hurrah, and even Ginny squealed a little. It was good news.
That was what I would concentrate on. The happy things my life was littered with. It was the only way I’d get through the loss.
I made my way to the DJ and asked him to stop the music as the song ended. The dancing and talking came to a halt. He handed me a microphone, and I looked out over the entire group gathered in front of us and smiled. Khiley asked if I wanted her to take the baby, and I shook my head.
I took a br
eath and said, “Thank you, everyone, for coming tonight. Thank you for helping us celebrate not only a brand-new year, but the people we love who are turning fifty. Daddy, Mama, Aunt Cam, and Uncle Derek.”
The applause rattled through the room, shaking the old paned windows that sloped down to the ground behind me.
“There is one thing you’ve taught me. Have taught all of us.” I lifted my chin toward my brother and cousins standing together at the edge of the dance floor. “You’ve taught us that there are no guarantees in life. That following your dreams isn’t enough, that you have to also work hard to make them a reality. You told us that when you find love...” My voice cracked, and I had to take a moment to gather my thoughts. “When you find love―”
“You damn well better hold on to it with both hands,” a deep, accented voice hollered out from the back of the room, freezing me. I hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard him come in, but he was suddenly there.
The crowd parted, and I finally saw him, coming toward me in jeans and a button-down, his face unshaven, eyes tired. And yet, he still looked heavenly. His toasted-caramel hair was so much darker than mine, but the beard on his face was my color. Reddish-blond. Barely visible as he weaved through the people.
Until he was finally standing in front of me and our baby.
“You hold on, because if you don’t, you end up thousands of miles away, realizing you’ve botched the one true thing you were meant to do in life. Love the amazing woman who’d danced into your life,” Garrett said, and I couldn’t help the sob that escaped me.
He hadn’t touched me yet. I wanted nothing more than to be wrapped up in his arms, but he was still searching my eyes, looking for an answer to a question I didn’t understand.
He looked down from me to our baby, and an wondrous look crossed his face. Happiness, joy, love. He put his large hand on her head, easily encompassing it. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead, eyes wide, as if he were trying to absorb every detail before looking up at me with that same awed expression. “She’s incredible, Edie. You’re incredible.”