Christmas Homecoming

by Sherry Lewis

  Molly was ready to jump out of her skin, but she tried hard to remain patient. “What decision?”

  After several moments Louise stood and walked to the window, sighing softly as she stared out at the yard. “We were just kids. I hope you can remember that. Your parents had only been married a couple of years, and things weren’t going so well. They were young and foolish and selfish—as we all were, I guess.”

  She trailed one finger along the windowsill, then studied it as if she’d never seen it before. “During that time, your parents weren’t happy together. Your mother…” She flicked an uneasy glance at Molly. “Ruby was disillusioned and miserable. Marriage to Frank wasn’t what she thought it was going to be. Frank spent too much time indulging himself, playing pool with friends and doing all those things young men who aren’t ready to be married do.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it,” Molly said. “That doesn’t sound like Dad at all.”

  “The man you knew wasn’t that man. He changed when your mother became pregnant. It was so dramatic, it was like someone had flipped a switch.” Louise smiled sadly. “If we’d had any idea becoming a father would have affected him that way, we’d have done things differently. We just never expected the marriage to last, and then, when Ruby realized that it could, there never seemed to be a good time to clear the air.” She ran a hand along her collarbone and turned back to face Molly fully. “We didn’t know, Molly. We didn’t think—that’s what it boils down to. And by the time we realized what a difference it made in Frank, by the time we realized how much he’d changed…well, it was too late. Or so we thought.”

  Cold dread filled Molly, but she couldn’t let herself back down now. Voices from the past drifted in and out of her mind as wispy pieces of memory began to surface. So much anger, so much heartache, and all because of her. That was what she remembered most. She was the one they’d argued over. She was the one who’d killed their marriage.

  She met Louise’s gaze helplessly. “It was about me.”

  “No, dear. Not you. It wasn’t your fault. Your mother and I… It was her secret, but I encouraged her. I told her it would be okay. I honestly believed it would be. How were we to know that Frank would turn into such a devoted father? He was so sweet with you, so utterly besotted, neither Ruby nor I had the heart to tell him that he wasn’t really your father.”

  The ice turned to fire, and Molly closed her eyes to block out the pain. But the sudden, clear images of her father’s face, hurt and angry, wouldn’t go away. And the sounds of her mother’s tearful pleas for forgiveness grew louder and louder.

  A sob caught in her throat and hot tears spilled onto her cheeks even before she realized she was crying. She’d felt so responsible for the arguments that the accident must have been too much to bear. No wonder she’d locked the truth away for so long.

  “I thought I’d killed her.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” Louise crossed to sit beside Molly and took both her hands lovingly. “I haven’t been trying to protect Ruby, sweetheart. She’s beyond needing that from me, but you’re her daughter, and I couldn’t hurt you.” She blinked several times and sighed wearily. “Finding out the truth devastated Frank. There were only a few of us who knew about Ruby. Phyllis Graham, and me. Even…the other man never knew. But Frank was certain the story would come out if he stayed here, and he was terrified of losing you. He couldn’t have borne that.”

  Molly almost asked who the other man was, but something stopped her. She didn’t want to know. Not right now. Maybe later. She knew where to find the answers when she needed them. “So that’s why Dad wanted to divorce Mom.”

  “He claimed he did, but it was just his hurt talking. He said it so much, though, she finally did something about it. But I don’t think Frank would have let the divorce go through. He was hurt and angry, but he also had a heart of gold, and I think eventually they would have worked things out.” She patted Molly’s hand. “That’s what I always tell myself, anyway.”

  Another wave of memories washed over Molly, and she closed her eyes. Sadness nearly overwhelmed her. She’d come to Serenity to discover the truth, and now she had. But she hadn’t expected to lose her identity—and her heart—in the bargain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MOLLY HELD her breath as her stepmother dangled a pair of jade earrings from her fingers, turning them this way and that to catch the light from the small Christmas tree she’d thrown up at the last minute. Christmas was just a week away, but Molly’s heart wasn’t in it.

  She kept imagining what Beau’s house must look like decorated for the holidays. She kept picturing the fun at WinterFest and fantasizing about being there with Beau, Brianne and Nicky. This surprise visit from Cassandra helped distract her a little, and she’d be forever grateful.

  Cassandra’s eyes glittered with appreciation and she smiled as she lowered the earrings to the coffee table. “Oh, Molly, these are wonderful. I truly think these are my favorites.” She glanced at the length of black velvet across the table, where Molly had displayed her most recent creations. “The setting looks almost like lace.”

  Even though she knew she was still a long way from matching her mother’s skill, Molly flushed with pride. She tilted her head to one side and pretended to consider. With Cassandra’s rich auburn hair and emerald eyes, the earrings were flattering—as she’d known they would be when she made them.

  She picked up a small, red-velvet box, the trademark of Ruby Lane Creations, and put the jade earrings inside. “Take them,” she said, holding out the box to her stepmother. “As a Christmas present.”

  Cassandra’s eyes widened, then narrowed speculatively. “That’s a lovely gift, Molly. But they’re exquisite, and I feel a little selfish.”

  “Why? You’re family. I made them for you.” Molly refrained from stating the obvious, but the words echoed in the space between them. You’re the only family I have. Besides, she hadn’t been able to face shopping this year and was having enough trouble acknowledging the holiday at all.

  Instead, she’d given up returning to graphic design and had thrown herself into turning Ruby Lane into a viable business. The reaction she’d had so far gave her hope that she’d be able to support herself in time. She’d used hard work, and lots of it, to keep thoughts about Christmas at bay.

  The small tree in the window of her St. Louis apartment was her only concession to the holidays. She hadn’t had the heart to decorate, to dust off her collection of Christmas CDs or to mail out holiday cards. Next year, she’d promised herself a hundred times. Next year, when her heart wasn’t still so sore, when the pain of losing so much wasn’t quite as raw.

  She realized that Cassandra was watching her, so she forced a smile and held out the box again. “I want you to have them, Cassandra. Please take them.”

  Cassandra took the box, but Molly could see that she still wasn’t convinced. She leaned forward to kiss Molly’s cheek, and then cupped her face with one hand. “Oh, sweetheart, I wish there was something I could do to help you get through this.”

  “I’m fine,” Molly insisted. She couldn’t allow herself to be anything else. She stood and began straightening the books on her shelf as if there was nothing more important in the world.

  “Maybe you should go back to Serenity, Molly. I’m pretty sure that’s where your heart is. Besides, there are just too many unresolved issues there for you.”

  Molly shot a look at her stepmother over her shoulder. “Let’s not talk about Serenity tonight, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s nearly Christmas, and because that’s a closed chapter in my life.”

  “Is it?” Cassandra stood and moved toward her. “Molly, honey, it can’t be a closed chapter in your life. Not while you’re still so angry with your dad. Not while you’re still in love with Beau.”

  Molly pulled away sharply. “Don’t, Cassandra. Please.”

  But her stepmother was relentless. “I know you’re
angry with me, but I have to say this. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to live with myself.” She stepped in front of Molly and held her so she couldn’t get away. “I know you think this is none of my business, but we are family. How we got this way doesn’t matter, just like it doesn’t matter how you and Frank became family. He was your father. He will always be your father.”

  Molly’s heart twisted painfully. “He didn’t tell me. And don’t say he died too soon, because he had fifteen years to tell me the truth.”

  “He made a mistake. A big mistake, but still just a mistake. And it was because he loved you so much. Surely you know that.”

  Molly nodded. She would never deny it, no matter how much his deception hurt.

  “I know you’d be happier if he’d never done anything wrong, but he was just a man, sweetheart. Just a man. No better and no worse than anyone else. And certainly not perfect.”

  “I never expected him to be perfect,” Molly protested.

  “And yet you can’t forgive him? For holding on as tightly as he could to the one person in the world he loved with all his soul? For making sure that he didn’t lose his only daughter? He’d already lost your mother. Losing you would have destroyed him.”

  “So instead, he chose to destroy me?”

  Cassandra’s eyes narrowed. “How did he do that? By loving you? Providing a home for you? Sharing holidays and special occasions with you? Really, Molly, how did he destroy you?”

  “By lying to me. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  Her stepmother’s eyes grew hard. “Shame on you. You’re Frank and Ruby Lane’s daughter, just as you’ve always been. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change unless you want it to. If that other man had been any kind of a man at all, he would have known about you and he would have fought Frank for the right to be your father.”

  She lowered her hand and turned back to the table. Her fingers lingered over the velvet box for a moment as if she couldn’t decide whether to take the earrings or leave them. “This is no different from children who are adopted. The birth parents are in their lives just long enough to get them here. Their real parents search until they find them.”

  Images of Brianne and Nicky flashed through Molly’s head, but that only made her mood worse. “It’s not the same,” she argued. “But I’m not surprised you’re taking his side. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

  “His side? Wanting you to stop hurting yourself is taking his side?” Cassandra laughed humorlessly. “It must be nice to think you’ve never made a decision that’s hurt another person.”

  “That’s not fair,” Molly shot back.

  “Isn’t it? Do you think your decision to leave Brianne and Nicky is so very different from your dad’s decision to stay with you? You did what you wanted, and you seem to feel your decision was justified.”

  Molly gasped in shock. “That’s so unfair! I didn’t do what I wanted to do. And I never meant to hurt the kids. I left because Beau didn’t want me to stay.”

  “Really?” Cassandra trailed one finger along the top of the velvet box. “I thought you said he asked you to stay.”

  “Yes, while he tried to talk himself into loving me.”

  “Are you sure that’s what he was doing?”

  “You weren’t there,” Molly said flatly. “You don’t know.”

  Cassandra forced a smile. “Well, you’re right about that. And I don’t want to argue with you. If you can’t go back, you can’t go back. I just hate to see you so unhappy. It’s been far too long since I saw you smile.”

  Molly tried to rectify that, but her lips felt stiff and cold and she knew she failed miserably.

  “Are you sure you won’t come with me to Florida? We could spend Christmas with my mother and the rest of the week having fun.”

  Molly shook her head. “Thanks, but you need to spend time with your family, and I wouldn’t be good company, anyway. Besides, I’ve already committed to spending Christmas Eve at the children’s hospital. I can’t leave them in the lurch.”

  She tried again to smile, and this time thought she was a little more successful. “I’ll be okay, Cassandra. Just give me time.”

  But Cassandra didn’t look convinced, and Molly wasn’t, either. Since she’d been back in St. Louis, she felt worse than she had when she left Serenity. She had an overwhelming longing for home, but she had no idea where that was.

  “I AM SO TIRED of watching you mope,” Gwen said as she handed Beau a wrench. He lay on his sister’s kitchen floor with his head under the sink, dodging tiny pieces of hard-water deposit and other gunk that fell from the pipe seam over his face.

  He closed his fist around the cold metal and tried to pretend she hadn’t said anything.

  But his sister wasn’t one to let a little thing like being ignored stop her. “When are you going to do something about it? That’s what I want to know.”

  Beau fought with the pipe fitting for a minute and sent another shower of dried calcium into his face. He brushed the worst of it away and leaned up just enough to see his sister’s knees. “What I want to know is why your stupid sink had to act up three days before Christmas. And while we’re at it, maybe you could explain again why your husband isn’t the one down here getting a faceful of garbage every time he moves.”

  Gwen nudged his foot with one of hers. “You’re lucky the sink didn’t wait until Christmas morning,” she said in that no-nonsense tone she used with the kids. “And what do you want Riley to do? Close the store this close to Christmas? You know what kind of grief people would give him if he did that.”

  Beau knew, but it didn’t make him feel a whole lot better. He wriggled out from under the sink and stood, brushing dirt and debris from his hair. “This is going to be a bigger job than I expected. The fitting’s shot, and the U-neck doesn’t look much better. I can drive over to Hinkley’s and pick up the supplies, but you’re going to be without water for a couple hours more.”

  “Great. I didn’t want to cook dinner, anyway. So you and the kids want to join us at the Burger Shack? My treat. We’ll stop by Hinkley’s afterward.”

  He laughed and reached for the sweater he’d left over the back of a chair. “Your treat? You’d better believe we’re coming.”

  “Well, it’s the least I can do.” She waved a hand toward a basket on the counter. “Grab that, would you? I promised Lisa Simms we’d look in on Hazel tonight, and I put together a little basket of goodies for her.”

  Grabbing the basket with one hand, Beau swept the other through his hair once more. Hazel Simms had been Beau’s fifth-grade teacher, and he’d always had a soft spot in his heart for her. “I haven’t seen Hazel in a while. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s fine. Just a little lonely. This is her first Christmas without Jonathan, and it’s hard on her.” Gwen snagged her keys from a hook by the door and leaned into the family room to tell the kids to get their things and come outside to the driveway. “I forgot to ask—did you and Aaron get the lights up at the Parkers’ okay?”

  “With a lot of direction from Sheldon.” Beau closed the cupboard doors, shut off the Christmas lights in the kitchen and followed Gwen to the garage. “He may have had a heart attack two months ago, but it sure hasn’t slowed him down much.”

  “That’s good news, right?”

  He grinned and opened the door for her. “Right. Hopefully he’ll be raring to go in time for next year’s WinterFest, and maybe I’ll finally be able to step down.”

  Gwen looked at him. “Oh, puh-leeze. You don’t want to step down. Don’t even give me that load of horse manure. Why don’t you just admit that you’re like Dad and Grandpa and that you live for your committees?”

  “I don’t live for them,” Beau argued. “I enjoy them, but there’s a time and place for everything. This isn’t my time to be involved in all that stuff.”

  She shot him another look as she headed toward the door of her minivan. “Apparently this isn’t the time in your life to be happy, ei
ther, is it?”

  “Don’t go there, Gwen. I don’t want to talk about that in front of the kids.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  Because Brianne had become moody and sad since Molly left, and because Nicky asked about her every day. And because Beau himself had been fighting a horrible empty feeling for weeks. But he didn’t want to admit that to his sister. “Because it’s almost Christmas, and there’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty to talk about,” Gwen said with a laugh. “You just don’t like to hear what anybody else has to say.”

  Beau put the basket on the floor of the van and climbed inside. “You know what, Gwen? You have a way of making a man wish he was under a sink with a faceful of gunk.”

  She laughed as if he’d said something wonderful. “And you have a way of not hearing anything you don’t want to hear. Face it, Beau, you blew it.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I get that you freaked out because you realized you needed Molly in your life.” Gwen stuck the key in the ignition, but she didn’t turn it. “I get that you’re still freaked out by the idea that the great Beau Julander might need a little help now and then. But you’re right. I don’t get why you’d let a wonderful woman like Molly, a woman who was perfect for you by the way, get away because you’re too arrogant to accept a little help from time to time.”

  “Arrogant?” The word shot out of his mouth and echoed through the garage. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “No!”

  “I see.” Wearing an annoyingly superior smile, Gwen pressed the remote to open the garage door and turned the key in the ignition. When a Christmas song came to life on the stereo, she turned down the volume so she could continue railing at him. “So it’s perfectly all right for Sheldon Parker to need help, and for Hazel Simms to need help, and for me to need help from my big strong brother, but you’re above all that. Is that how it is?”