Aubrey missed the grammatical tell. She was too caught up in the strand of her own thought in this moment. “Then why did you do it? I don’t understand.” Aubrey never intended to have this conversation when she began the drive by thanking Kyle for helping her family with their Christmas preparations, but now that they were in the middle of it, she wanted to follow it to its conclusion.
Kyle shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me, or you won’t tell me?” Aubrey asked.
“I can’t tell you.” Kyle looked stricken.
Aubrey knew this conversation was hurting him, but she had pain that needed to be dealt with too. “It took me so long to get over that… Over you.”
“Aubrey…” Kyle began.
Aubrey wanted to finish before she lost her resolve, so she cut him off. “I mean, I felt like I hated you for years. Like I couldn’t walk around town when I came home for my summer breaks because I didn’t want to see you.”
“Aubrey…” He needed her to stop for a moment. He would keep saying her name until she did.
“What, Kyle? What is it? What can you tell me that will make that old hurt feel better?”
“I loved you more the night I broke up with you than any other night of my life. And I never got over you.”
Aubrey weighed that thought on the scales of justice in her mind. There was no doubting his sincerity, but that made it more confusing. Why had he done it if it wasn’t because he had fallen out of love with her? She decided right then she wasn’t leaving Virginia this Christmas until she had an answer to that question. “You are a mystery, Kyle Immanuel Morgan.”
“Wrapped in an enigma?” Kyle gave a small laugh. He wanted them as far as he could get from the land of tragedy.
“You’re not that interesting.” Aubrey noticed Kyle slowing down. When he put his right turn signal on, she had to ask, “where are we going?”
“It’s my first Christmas present for you.”
Aubrey caught that this was his first Christmas present. How could he have more than one? “But I haven’t gotten you anything.
“Aubrey.”
“What?”
“Neither present cost me anything at all. This first one is just something I know you’ll enjoy doing.”
Kyle pulled into a short driveway. Two cars were parked in front of a small ranch house. Anything not covered in Christmas lights had a wreath, a snowman, or some sort of Santa paraphernalia on it. Aubrey thought whoever lived here loved Christmas the way her father had. Kyle reached into the backseat of his truck. He grabbed a plate of perfectly baked sugar cookies and handed it to Aubrey. “I guess I’m a Christmas delivery boy today. You don’t mind if we drop them off, do you? It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
Whatever Kyle had planned intrigued Aubrey. She wouldn’t have waited in the truck for all the money in her year-end bonus. “You lead the way,” she said.
“That’s the Wilson family Christmas spirit I used to know.” Kyle put his hand on the door handle, ready to put the embarrassing conversation of the last few minutes behind him.
Aubrey wasn’t in the same place. “Hold on a second there, buster.”
Kyle eased back into his seat. “Yes?”
“Just because you’re surprising me with some sort of Christmas gift that doesn’t cost any money, don’t think you’ve gotten out of talking about your parole.” Aubrey looked at him with judicial sternness in her eyes.
“I wouldn’t dream of thinking that, Probate Officer Wilson.” Kyle was happy Aubrey kept it light by going with the parole metaphor they had been working on the last few minutes. They opened their doors and stepped out of Kyle’s truck together. Neither said anything until they neared the front porch.
They took the last step up to the mystery front door at the same time. Kyle moved to knock when Aubrey stopped him. “You really not going to tell me who we’re dropping in on unannounced.”
Kyle looked at her like she lost her mind. “Why would you assume we’re unannounced?”
“I’ve been with you all day. I haven’t seen you make any announcement type phone calls or texts.” Aubrey noted.
“Maybe I announced it before I met you this morning.” With that, Kyle knocked on the door. He wanted to get past her questions so she could enjoy the surprise he had orchestrated for her. The pair stood in silence for a few seconds until the door opened.
A ten-year-old girl stood before them. She had beautiful strawberry-blonde hair and wore an ugly Christmas sweater with actual blinking Christmas lights on it. She launched herself at Kyle as soon as the door was open far enough for her to see him. “Kyle!”
“Merry Christmas, Rachel!” Kyle returned the hug and handed over the sugar cookies.
“My favorite. Did you make them?”
“You know I did.” Kyle turned to Aubrey as a means toward introducing her. “Rachel, this is my friend, Aubrey.”
Rachel’s face lit up. It was clear that any friend of Kyle’s would also be a friend of hers. “It’s nice to meet you, Aubrey.”
“Nice to meet you too, Rachel. Your hair is so beautiful.” Aubrey meant what she said, and it definitely made Rachel’s day to hear it.
“Thank you.” Rachel ran into the interior of the house calling for her mom and dad.
Kyle looked at Aubrey. “Should we invite ourselves in?”
“Considering I don’t even know whose house this is, I’m going to say… after you.”
Kyle stepped into the house followed by Aubrey. He shut the door behind them. They stamped the last remnants of snow from their feet onto the rug in front of the door. Jenna, mother to Rachel, and former best friend of Aubrey’s from high school, rounded the corner eight months pregnant and wearing a Christmas sweater that matched Rachel’s. She erupted in disbelief when she saw Aubrey.
“Shut the front door. Is that The Aubrey Wilson I see standing on my Christmas Welcome mat?” Jenna’s voice overflowed with pleasure at seeing her old friend.
Aubrey was as amazed, and as pleased. She ran to Jenna. “It’s been so long.” The women shared a heart-warming hug that drug on for several seconds as they examined how the years changed them since they last saw each other.
Jenna turned to Kyle. “When you called and said you had a surprise for Eric and me this morning, we didn’t think you’d be pulling a rabbit this size out of your hat.”
“Speaking of Eric, where is he?” Kyle wondered.
“In the back, putting the finishing touches on the addition.” Jenna directed an explanation at Aubrey since she was the only one in the room who didn’t know. “The baby’s not due for another month, but Eric has been getting up at four o’clock every morning this week to make sure he has the addition complete by the morning of the 25th. He says it’s his Christmas present to the entire family.”
“That’s so sweet.” Aubrey was genuinely happy for her old friend.
“It is sweet. I keep telling him he’s going to be up at four o’clock in the morning soon enough, and he should get his sleep now while he can, but he won’t listen to me.” Jenna let it show in her face this was mock complaint. Her husband proved her right for marrying him with his determination to finish the addition by Christmas. “Rachel, be a dear and run and tell your father we’ve got company.” Rachel took off toward the back of the house. “Can I put some coffee on for you two? You must be freezing.”
Somehow coffee turned into coffee and two pieces of homemade lemon pie which had been baked that morning. Aubrey was never a fan of lemon pies before, but something in Jenna’s recipe clicked with her palate. She forced herself not to ask for thirds. Between her mom’s breakfast for a small army, and Jenna’s delectable lemon pie, Aubrey allowed the food alone would be reason enough to move back to Timberville.
The thought appeared from nowhere, and then disappeared. However, its presence disquieted her. How in the world had she, even for a microsecond associated with a fantastic lemon pie, caught herself thinking
about leaving New York to come back to Virginia? Everything she worked so relentlessly toward the last five years was in New York City. Conversely, everything she worked so relentlessly to escape these past twelve years was in Virginia. How had her New York desires, which she wanted with all her heart a week ago, gotten mixed up so quickly?
She didn’t get anytime to think about it because Jenna put her to work on the cleanup from the coffee and pie. Kyle and Rachel left the kitchen to help Eric with the final touches on securing trim to the wall in the addition. Jenna stood at the sink washing coffee cups and dessert plates by hand, while Aubrey used a dish towel to dry them. Aubrey used the hunt and peck method to find the right spot for most of the dishes. This disrupted the flow of conversation between her and Jenna as little as possible.
“It was tough, I won’t lie. Eric and I met at JMU. We must have gotten pregnant with Rachel a week after I got the grades from my freshman year there, but you and I were still talking off and on then, so you know most of that part.” Jenna gave Aubrey a look that let her know she was about to deliver the understatement of the year. Something Aubrey wouldn’t have any firsthand knowledge of at all. “Of course, Rachel made college a teensy bit harder.”
Aubrey was a horrible friend. She abandoned Timberville after that last summer before college, but it must have seemed to Jenna like Aubrey abandoned her. This realization stripped her of anything meaningful to say. It left her with a paltry and rather see-through, “I bet.”
“But I wouldn’t trade Rachel for the world.” Jenna looked at Aubrey trying to remember something. “What was it your dad used to say was the meaning of life?
“Life is always a gift when you share it with someone you love.” Aubrey knew it by heart. It had been her favorite saying of his.
“That was it, you should put that on a bumper sticker, or maybe a t-shirt. I bet you’d sell a million of them.” Jenna saw Aubrey couldn’t find a home for the first of the dessert plates that had just exited the soapy water of the sink. She pointed to the set of cabinets on her extreme left. “Top shelf.”
“Got it.” Aubrey found the correct spot for the plate.
“It sure is a regular trip seeing you with Kyle again.” Jenna smiled at the pleasantness of the thought of seeing them together.
“Oh, we’re not together.” Aubrey couldn’t resist the correction. Was she being a bit compulsive with this? Also, why did everyone in town kept saying they were back together? Was this a regional conspiracy?
Of course, and just like with Dolly at the Christmas tree farm, Jenna saw through to Aubrey’s true feelings. She also saw Aubrey wasn’t at the place where she was comfortable acknowledging those feelings. Perhaps she needed a nudge in the right direction. “I know that, darling. But I still like seeing you two together. Reminds me of the glory days.”
Aubrey laughed. “It’s only been twelve years. Can we really call it the glory days?”
Jenna took her turn laughing, “when you’re eight months pregnant with your second child, most people tend to cut you some slack with your word choices.” Jenna handed the last Christmas saucer to Aubrey. “That one’s in the same cabinet as the plates, but on the middle shelf, instead of the top.” She hung her rubber gloves on the back of the sink to dry. “Whew, all the excitement from seeing you today has plumb tired me out.”
“Maybe it’s our bodies trying to knock us out so they can process all the sugar in that delicious lemon pie you fed us.” Aubrey draped her dish towel over the front of the sink and took a seat at the kitchen table with Jenna.
“Don’t let me forget to give you the recipe before you leave,” Jenna instructed.
“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that one. There is no chance I will forget.” Aubrey’s sentence construction shocked her. It had taken her a full year after she went to college to remove the imprecise, countrified, language from her speech. To hear it coming back out after such a short period of immersion terrified her. Her hometown was having an outsized effect on her during this visit. She wondered if it was because it was the first Christmas without her father. Or, was it that… and something else too?
Jenna interrupted the silence which descended after the talk of lemon pies with a question. “You know why Kyle came here tonight, don’t you?”
“I’m guessing you don’t think it was to deliver a batch of homemade Christmas sugar cookies.” Aubrey suggested.
Jenna shook her head no, “that was the excuse, not the reason.”
Aubrey tried to come up with an alternate explanation. She failed. “I’m at a loss.”
“He’s here to help Eric with the addition for the baby.”
“You all have contracted with him?” There it was again! ‘You all’! Why did she use the countrified ‘you all’ when ‘you’ would have been more precise? Aubrey made a mental note to be hostile to herself the next time she slipped up.
“Oh no, honey. There’s no contract. Kyle helps us because he knows we need the help and we can’t afford to hire him.”
“Sounds like Kyle.” Aubrey agreed.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Jenna studied Aubrey for several moments.
Aubrey began to be uncomfortable beneath the weight of Jenna’s continuous stare. “What?”
“So, here’s the thing I can’t figure out. I mean, I really am confused by this.” The look on Jenna’s face confirmed her sincere confusion.
“What?”
Jenna asked it like it was the most obvious question. “Why in God’s name don’t you finally take that boy off the market?”
For the second time in less than five minutes, Aubrey found herself shocked. She fumbled for words. “Oh, I couldn’t. I mean I’m not…”
Jenna held up a hand. Aubrey obeyed by falling silent. “He’s been waiting on you to come back for twelve years. You do realize that don’t you?”
Aubrey had zero desire to realize any such thing. In fact, her feelings were getting bent out of shape just listening to Jenna make the suggestion. All of these things Jenna was saying to her felt like a wild revision of the personal history that happened between her and Kyle… a wild, and utterly unfair, revision of that personal history. Of all the people who should know better than to say something like that to Aubrey, it should be Jenna. How many hours had she spent crying on the phone to Jenna after Kyle left her to find a ride home on prom night? She and Jenna had been best friends in high school. Jenna was the only person who knew how devastated Aubrey had been. “Waiting? What do you mean waiting? He left me, Jenna.” It was the best retort she could come up with in the heat of the moment.
“My goodness.” It was now Jenna’s chance to take a turn looking shocked.
This wasn’t the reaction Aubrey expected after her emotional outburst. “What do you mean, ‘my goodness’?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Jenna couldn’t believe Kyle still hadn’t told her.
“Know? Know what? What are you trying to tell me, Jenna?” Aubrey pleaded for a release from this mystery web Jenna spun.
“Oh no, this isn’t for me to share.”
“Jenna.” Aubrey refused to believe Jenna was willing to leave her in the dark. “You can’t do this to me.”
“Just ask him.”
“Ask him what?”
“Why he left.” Jenna said it like it was as obvious as the fact Kyle was waiting for her these past twelve years. She then laid her hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. “The answer will surprise you.”
“That’s not fair…”
Aubrey failed to pry any more information from Jenna about the twelve-year-old secret because of the reappearance of Rachel, Eric, and Kyle. Aubrey surveyed Kyle as he entered the kitchen to see if she could find the secret hiding out on his broad shoulders or underneath his long eye lashes.
“Kyle, we were just talking about you.” Jenna smiled at him to show the topics had been in his favor.
“That explains why my ears have been burning.”
“Aubrey, yo
u wouldn’t believe how much I owe Kyle for his help on the addition. Little baby Jenna would be sleeping in our room until Rachel moved out if it weren’t for this guy.” Eric used this artificial explanation to Aubrey to thank Kyle for his help.
Kyle, as was his style, denied the scope of his generosity, “you’d do the same for me if I needed you.”
“Mama, Kyle showed me how to use the level today.” Rachel’s desire to tell her mom about the new skill she learned came out in the first lull in the conversation she could find.
Kyle sent more self-confidence building compliments in Rachel’s direction. “She’s a natural at construction. I could use her a few hours a week this summer once school lets out, if you all can spare her.”
Rachel beamed. “Can I, mama? Can I? Please?”
“We’ll see if we can free up some time in between helping with the baby and taking those guitar lessons you’ve been saving up for.
“Thank you, mama!” Somehow Rachel converted the maybe into a full blown yes.
Kyle’s gaze connected with Aubrey. They both agreed without words it was time to go. Kyle decided to be the one to break the news to the Lindsley family. “Aubrey and I still have a Christmas tree to deliver.”
Aubrey followed up in support. “You’re right, Kyle. If we stay out any later mom will have us both put on the naughty list.”
Jenna popped up from the table. “Hold on one minute before you get going. I’ve got to make a copy of that recipe.” Jenna hurried into the pantry area of her kitchen.
Aubrey took advantage of the break to say her goodbyes to her new friend, Rachel. “I bet you didn’t know there was someone in this room who is really good at playing the guitar.”
“Oh yes I do. It’s you. Kyle told me while we were in the addition that you were the best guitar player in Rockingham County.”
Aubrey looked at Kyle with surprise in her eyes. “Did he now?”
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