For A Father's Love

by JoAnn A. Grote

  Ellen settled onto a backless stool beside the counter. “Is someone going to tell me why that Christmas tree looks like it belongs to Scrooge?”

  Mandy shifted Bonnie to her other hip. “In a minute. We mustn’t keep Jason. He hasn’t seen his grandfather yet.”

  Mandy cringed inwardly at the look Ellen shot her. She could tell Ellen wasn’t fooled by her polite dismissal of Jason.

  “Of course,” Ellen said smoothly. “Do give Seth our love, J. P. Tell him we’ll bring the girls around to see him as soon as the hospital allows.”

  “I’ll do that.” He opened the door, then looked back, his gaze shifting between Mandy and Bonnie. “I’ll talk to you later, Mandy.”

  She nodded. The tone beneath his simple statement raised havoc inside her. Would he demand a more complete explanation of why she’d leased this barn? Would he want her to give it up? Wait until he heard she lived above the shop.

  Ellen pulled a biscuit from the bag. “All right, tell all.”

  Mandy set Bonnie down and knelt to pick up the crushed ornaments. “There’s nothing to tell. Jason arrived at the farmhouse expecting to find Grandma Tillie. When he didn’t, he stopped here, looking for her or some news about Grandpa Seth.”

  “That’s all you two talked about? Grandpa Seth? After all these years? There were no sparks? No arguments? No kisses?”

  “Kisses?” Beth was suddenly all eyes and ears.

  “No kisses,” Mandy told Ellen and Beth firmly. “Beth, will you and Bonnie help me pick up these nosegays? Watch out for broken pieces from the dolls’ heads.”

  The girls joined her.

  “You’re avoiding me, Mandy Wells,” Ellen charged.

  “There’s nothing to tell. Besides, I thought you’d given up on men.”

  “For me, not for you.”

  Mandy looked pointedly at the old schoolhouse clock on the wall above the counter. “You’ll be late for work if you don’t leave this minute, and I’ve got to feed the girls and get this mess cleaned up before I open for business.”

  Ellen slid off the stool. “All right, but you can’t avoid me forever. I’ll be back for your story at five-thirty. If the girls are too much trouble, make them take a nap—or pretend to take a nap.”

  “Mo–o–om,” the girls chorused in indignation.

  “Bye.” Ellen headed toward the back door.

  I won’t be urging naps on the girls today, Mandy thought. Watching them, cleaning up the mess, and waiting on customers should keep her mind off Jason. Sunny October Saturdays always brought lots of people to the mountains and customers to the Christmas store.

  She should be an expert at keeping her mind off Jason by now. It had taken years to get over him. No, that’s not accurate. It’s taken years to get used to the pain of living without him in my life. Still, she knew they couldn’t make a marriage work, not as long as he insisted on living his father’s dream instead of his own.

  “Aunt Mandy.” Bonnie tugged at the sleeve of Mandy’s sweater. “Aren’t you goin’ to help us clean up?”

  “Of course, Precious. I was just thinking about all we must do today.”

  “Looked like you were daydreaming.” Beth glanced up from the floor with a crushed nosegay in her hand. “Mom says daydreaming is a waste of time.”

  Mandy didn’t agree, but she didn’t believe in going against her sister’s parenting. Besides, this time, maybe Ellen was right. Instead of daydreaming, she should be praying for Jason.

  She knew what was ahead for him. She’d seen Grandpa Seth only an hour ago when she’d dropped off Grandma Tillie. A monitor and IVs were attached to the dear, rugged, usually blustery old man lying in the hospital bed. Her heart ached, wishing she could spare Jason the shock of seeing his grandfather that way.

  But all she could do was pray for Jason—and hurt with him for what he was going through.

  Three

  Jason headed up the hill toward the car, his shiny black wing tips crunching through fallen leaves on the gravel drive. The sharp scent of dying leaves and earthy scent of loam in the nearby woodlands filled his senses. Songs of birds greeting the morning were a sharp contrast to the traffic sounds that usually surrounded him this time of day.

  His grandparents’ two-story white frame house with its dark green shutters nestled against the mountain and rose above the black rental car. High-backed oak rocking chairs sat on the porch that ran the width of the house, inviting him to “set a spell.”

  Jason scanned the view the house had looked out upon for 130 years. The mountains rolled away, ridge after ridge of rich autumn color with lazy fog drifting between them. Orderly rows of blue spruce and Fraser firs, the best Christmas trees grown, covered most of his grandfather’s mountain. He loved those trees. Fear gnawed at him despite Mandy’s assurances. Would his grandfather ever return to this place?

  He turned his back on the tranquil scene and slid into the rental car. The mountain’s peace is an illusion, he thought as he started down the mountain road toward town.

  On top of his fear for his grandfather, he had to face his feelings for Mandy: beautiful, sweet, delightful, maddening Mandy. “Meddlin’ Mandy,” he’d teasingly called her, for her habit of involving herself in others’ lives. Why hadn’t his grandparents told him they’d leased the barn to her?

  Bonnie was the spitting image of Mandy. The same unusually dark green eyes wide with permanent wonder beneath a spray of ridiculously long lashes, the same round face with the smallest sprinkling of freckles across her nose and beneath her eyes, the same silky hair the cinnamon color of acorns that fell from the tree in his grandparents’ yard in autumn.

  Pain coiled inside him. When had Mandy married? With other women, Bonnie might have been the result of a relationship outside marriage, but not with Mandy. Mandy believed in intimacy only within marriage. He believed the same, but it had been mighty hard to keep his hands from roaming during the years they’d dated.

  He’d felt like he’d been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer when he saw Bonnie and realized Mandy was married. What did you expect—that Mandy would sit around the mountains growing old, waiting for you to return?

  Deep in his heart, that’s exactly what he’d expected, he grudgingly realized. He hadn’t admitted it to himself before, but the surety that she could no more love another man enough to marry him than Jason could another woman had lived in his heart.

  The child looked about six years old. Mandy couldn’t have waited long after they broke up to marry. The pain in his chest twisted tighter.

  She’d given her heart to someone else, and Gramps lay in a hospital bed trying to recover from a heart attack, he thought, turning into the hospital parking lot. Life couldn’t get much bleaker. The takeover negotiations would have been a picnic compared to this.

  Jason asked at the desk for his grandfather’s room. A nurse directed him to ICU. The halls seemed hushed, filled with smells of disinfectants and medicines that spoke loudly of this being a place of death and healing.

  His grandmother wasn’t in the waiting area. Another nurse, middle-aged with red hair, directed him to the room. “Even family is allowed only a few minutes with the patient every couple hours,” she warned.

  Jason stopped with his palm against the door, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips tightly together. Help me, Lord. He was accustomed to facing wealthy, powerful men, helping them win in takeovers or mergers of mind-boggling dollar amounts—or helping them lose, depending on which side of the table they were seated. He’d never experienced the cold chills and dread he did now, facing his grandfather gravely ill, facing the fear in his grandmother’s eyes, and knowing he couldn’t make things better for either of them.

  Jason took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

  Only one bed stood in the room. On it lay an old man, his white hair and trim beard blending in with the pillowcase.

  Jason shoved down the panic that swept through his chest at the sight of the tubes attached to his grandfather.
Several IVs dripped drugs into his body. A steady beep, beep brought Jason’s gaze to electrodes attached to Gramps’s chest, connecting him to the monitor that watched his heart to catch any irregular beats. At least at the moment, the monitor wasn’t off to the races or showing a flat line.

  Gramps lay with his eyes closed. Gram held one of his hands in both her own, her gaze not leaving his face. Her long, thin frame was tensed, as though she was willing her own strength to become part of her husband. Neither noticed Jason’s arrival.

  He tried to say hello. His throat might as well have been glued shut. He swallowed. “Hello, Gram.”

  She whirled in her chair, still holding her husband’s hand. Jason’s heart clenched. Wrinkles had covered her face for as many years as he could remember, but until now she hadn’t looked old and beaten. “Thank God, you made it.”

  The barely suppressed panic in her voice sent terror spiraling through him. Did she mean thank God he’d made it before Gramps died?

  “You came.” Gramps’s voice was stronger than Jason expected, still a deep friendly growl. But the old man’s smile was weak, and his pale blue eyes shrouded in pain—or fright.

  Jason smiled, trying to ignore the fear inside. “Where else would I be, Gramps?”

  “S’pose Tillie here went and called you. Made it sound like I was halfway to the other side.”

  Gram’s backbone straightened beneath her dark green sweat suit. “Course I called him. And you were more than halfway to the other side, Seth Kramer. If it weren’t for Mandy helping me get you here, and for our prayers and Doctor Monroe—” She choked up.

  Mandy had helped save his grandfather’s life, Jason realized. Gratitude and guilt fought for supremacy. He should have been the one there for Gramps. Jason struggled to focus. Time for self-pity later. He shook his head, still smiling. “Womenfolk. Take credit for everything.”

  Gramps chuckled weakly. The chuckle turned into a cough, and pain creased his face.

  Jason leaned forward. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Have a little pain in my chest, but Doc says that’s not unusual.”

  Jason glanced at the monitor. It bleeped away, steady as a metronome. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  The red-haired nurse entered. “You need to let the patient rest now.” She held the door open while Gram kissed Gramps’s cheek.

  Jason slipped an arm around her shoulders. They felt as bony as always, but unlike normal, they trembled. He squeezed her reassuringly, then patted his grandfather’s hand. “See you later.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jason.”

  Gramps became a blur through Jason’s sudden unshed tears. “Me too. I love you, Gramps.”

  Jason’s thoughts raced as he and Gram stepped into the hall. He wanted to ask so many questions: What was Gramps’s prognosis? Had he had any more attacks? Had the attack been mild or massive? Had the doctor performed any tests? Was the doctor still considering surgery or angioplasty?

  He didn’t know whether he dared ask Gram any of the questions racing through his mind. In spite of her tender heart, she’d always faced life’s troubles with the sturdiness of a mountain. Now she seemed about to collapse. She paced the hall, her arms clutched tightly over her chest. Was she trying to keep from screaming with the pain and fear?

  At least Mandy had been there for Gram and Gramps until he arrived. Warmth flooded his chest in bittersweet gratitude. If Mandy had married him and moved to New York like he’d wanted her to do, she wouldn’t have been there yesterday afternoon.

  When Dr. Monroe—a middle-aged man with pepper-and-salt hair and a calm, competent manner custom-made for reassuring patients and kin—came by, Jason questioned him with a thoroughness learned from tenaciously tracking down every pertinent fact in his business dealings. After fifteen minutes, Jason felt convinced of his grandfather’s relative safety for the moment, and the doctor moved on.

  Gram said, “They won’t let us see Seth again for almost an hour. He needs his rest, they say. I think he needs the people he loves more, but the doctor and nurses are firm about the rule.”

  “They want him to recover too, Gram, and they’ve a lot more experience with heart attacks than we do. Let’s go to the cafeteria. You probably haven’t eaten yet today.”

  Gram insisted she wasn’t hungry, but Jason plied her with cinnamon rolls and decaffeinated coffee. Not the best nutrition, but good for calming the nerves, and they needed that.

  “If you stopped by the farm, I guess you saw the Christmas barn.” Gram looked down at her coffee cup, appearing a tad ashamed.

  “Yes, and Mandy.” Jason felt a sliver of satisfaction at her discomfort.

  “You talked to her?”

  “For a few minutes.”

  She sighed. “S’pose we should have told you ’bout Mandy’s store months ago.”

  “Would have been nice.” He kept his voice even. This was no time for the full-scale bawling out he’d like to give her and Gramps.

  She stirred her cold coffee. “We kept waiting for the right time. We convinced ourselves to wait until you came home for a visit. Then this happened.” One bony shoulder lifted the sweatshirt in a shrug as if to say, “and you know the rest.”

  Guilt swamped him—again. Her voice held no hint of reproach, but he couldn’t pretend she and Gramps weren’t aware his last visit home was last Christmas. He’d told his prickling conscience the demands of building a career justified his absence, but he knew better.

  “How is your job going?”

  He was glad for the change of subject. To try to keep their minds away from their fears, he chatted on about his work and life in New York while they walked back to the visitors’ lounge on the ICU floor.

  Finally the red-haired nurse told them they could visit Gramps for a few more minutes.

  “Heart surgery?” Gramps was asking Dr. Monroe when they entered the room. “Are you sure I need that? I mean, the heart attack didn’t kill me.”

  “The next one might. The valves at the back of your heart are blocked. Without the bypass surgery, if the next attack doesn’t take you out, the following one will. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Can’t it wait, Doc? Our busiest season is just starting.”

  Gram hurried to the bedside. “Seth Kramer, how dare you talk about business when your life is at stake.”

  “If I’m going to live, I need to support us, don’t I? With Ted gone, there isn’t another man I trust to take us through the Christmas season. If we miss this season, we don’t make any money until this time next year.”

  Ted had worked with Gramps all Jason’s life until just a few months ago when Ted had died of cancer. Eight other men worked full-time at the farm, but Gramps didn’t trust any of them the way he had Ted. Jason knew if Ted were still alive, Gramps would have followed the doctor’s advice. Without Ted. . .

  Gram’s pointed chin jutted out. “I can run things this one year.”

  “You handle the paperwork side of the business fine, Tillie. And the wreaths and roping too. Better than fine. But you don’t know diddly-squat about the rest of the business.”

  “Foolish old man.”

  “Hold it.” Dr. Monroe lifted both hands. “Arguing about business isn’t going to help your heart, Seth.”

  Jason spoke up. “Nothing to argue about anyway. I’m taking a leave of absence from the firm. I’ll run the Christmas tree farm through the busy season.”

  Gramps’s frown deepened. “You can’t do a thing like that, Boy. You’ve got your own career to think about. What would happen to that important takeover you’re working on?”

  “Others in the firm can handle it. I’ll keep in touch by phone and E-mail.”

  “You haven’t worked at the farm since your college days. Things have changed.”

  Jason saw the hope growing in the older man’s face in spite of his protests. “You can explain the changes to me. I’ll talk with the other growers. We’ll work it out together.”

 
Gramps closed his eyes. “It’s too much to ask of you.”

  “You’re not asking. I’m offering. I want to do it.”

  Gramps studied Jason’s face. Jason met his gaze evenly. He’d do anything in his power to increase his grandfather’s chances of recovery. Neal wouldn’t be happy about the leave of absence, but he’d go along with it. Jason knew his worth to the company.

  “You’re sure about this, Boy?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Welcome aboard.” Gramps lifted his hand a short way above the mattress. Jason met it with his own.

  Dr. Monroe breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief, bringing nervous laughter from them all. “Now that that’s resolved, I suggest you two let Seth rest awhile.”

  Back at the visitors’ area, Gram grasped one of Jason’s hands in both her own. “Thank you.”

  She looked more relaxed than when he’d arrived, and her shoulders no longer trembled. At least my offer to help with the farm gave her a measure of peace, Jason thought. He pulled her close in a hug and planted a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. She wasn’t a woman who ordinarily inspired protective gestures. She was almost as tall as he and slender. Rangy, Gramps affectionately described her.

  The large round clock on the wall read eleven o’clock. Only nineteen hours since he’d received the call about his grandfather’s heart attack. Nineteen hours in which his whole life had changed. Nineteen hours in which his own heart hadn’t stopped hurting, fearing, or praying.

  God willing, Gramps would come through the bypass surgery with flying colors, but how long before Jason and Gram could look at Gramps without wondering when another attack might come?

  Gram pushed herself out of his arms and went to stare out the window.

  Jason pulled his cell phone from his suit-coat pocket and punched the power button. The battery was dead. He grimaced. “I’d better call New York and tell them my plans, Gram. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”