For A Father's Love

by JoAnn A. Grote

  Jason was opening the oak box containing the chess pieces when Bonnie leaned against his thigh. “Will you play with me and Beth, J. P.?”

  “I’d love to play with you after Gramps and I finish our chess game.”

  Gramps’s chair squeaked as he stood up. He waved one hand in dismissal. “Go ahead and play with the girls. We can play chess later. Besides, I haven’t taken my Thanksgiving Day nap yet.”

  Jason glanced at him sharply. “Feeling okay?” He kept his voice light with an effort.

  “Fine. Something about a Thanksgiving meal makes me want to sleep like a baby. I’ll just take a snooze in my recliner.”

  I’m overly cautious, Jason told himself, closing the box. He smiled at Bonnie. “So what are we playing?”

  “House.” Bonnie’s grin was bright with anticipation.

  Great. I gave up chess for this? Jason thought as he stood up. “I’ve never played house.”

  “It’s easy.” Bonnie closed her little fingers about his hand and led him to the rose-print sofa.

  That flowered material always seemed so unlike Gram with her tough spirit, Jason thought. Of course, he better than most knew her heart combined that strength with gentleness and compassion. Like Mandy’s heart. He’d never before recognized that similarity between the women, but he knew instantly the truth of it.

  Dolls, doll clothing, toy dishes and baby bottles, some of Gram’s old shoes and hats, and other paraphernalia Jason couldn’t readily identify covered the couch. “It takes this much stuff to play house?”

  “Yes.” Bonnie nodded emphatically. “It’s lots of fun. You’ll like it.”

  Beth carefully wrapped a pink blanket around a doll which was almost too large for her arms. “Daddy didn’t like to play house.”

  Beth’s expressionless voice and face didn’t fool Jason. He knew her words came from a distressed heart.

  “Too bad your dad missed out on the fun.”

  Beth’s gaze met his, and he knew he’d said the right thing. He winked at her. She grinned in surprised delight and ducked her head, giving her attention back to her baby doll.

  Jason sat down cross-legged on the floor, more determined than ever to be a good sport about this change in his plans.

  Bonnie handed him a doll with curly blond hair and blue eyes that closed. It wore a short white T-shirt and a diaper. “This one can be your baby ’cause it’s a boy.”

  “Thanks.” He held it by the neck with his left hand and pretended to critically study the rubber face. “What’s its name?”

  “Ted.” A look of disgust lodged on Bonnie’s face. “You can’t hold him like that. He’s a baby. Hold him like this.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled while Bonnie tried to adjust his arms.

  He heard a muffled laugh and looked up to catch Mandy watching from the dining room doorway, hand over her mouth, her green eyes dancing with laughter.

  “Good for you, Bonnie,” Mandy encouraged after removing her hand from her grin. “It’s important for a man to learn how to hold a baby.”

  “Hold it like this, J. P.” Beth cradled her own baby doll in her arms.

  He copied her, laying the doll on its back in his arms. The doll let out a “Waaaaa!” as though in protest. Jason straightened his shoulders, sure he’d mastered the simple task. “How’s that?”

  Bonnie propped her little fists on her almost nonexistent hips. “Haven’t you ever held a baby before?”

  “Not for a long time. Last time I held a baby was. . .let’s see.” He frowned, trying to remember. “Beth, you were the last baby I held.”

  “I was?” Pleasure lit her blue eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “As I recall,” Mandy interrupted, laughter underscoring her voice, “Beth was the first and last and only baby you held.”

  Beth’s smile grew. “I was?”

  “I think so.” Jason forced the words around his heart, which had taken up residence in his throat. How could Mandy remember such a minute detail from his life? Of course, he remembered everything about the time they’d spent together in love—at least, that’s the way it felt.

  He’d told himself all these years that she hadn’t truly loved him. But would she remember so many things if she hadn’t loved him as much as he loved her? The picture leaped into his mind of her tear-filled eyes at the sight of the ornament they’d picked out together for Gram and Gramps. Had he been wrong all this time? Could it be Mandy’s love had been deep and true, in spite of the fact she’d turned down his marriage proposal?

  Bonnie leaned against his shoulder, jarring Jason back into the present, her gaze imploring. “Didn’t you hold me when I was a baby?”

  Beth heaved an exaggerated sigh of exasperation. “He didn’t know you then. He just met you a few weeks ago, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Jason chuckled again at Bonnie’s disappointment. “Hey, I thought we were going to play house. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  He gave himself to the girls’ make-believe world and found himself enjoying it immensely—not the act of playing house but involving himself in the girls’ imaginations and knowing his involvement increased their enjoyment.

  The girls taught him how to change a diaper, how to hold a baby bottle, and how to test the milk for warmth—though of course the bottle didn’t contain milk.

  The girls soon tired of changing and feeding dolls, and Beth announced it was time to go shopping. He discovered this was the reason for Gram’s old hats and shoes, for one evidently couldn’t go to the store without dressing up properly. His ego protested loudly when he realized the girls’ intention, but he stilled it and accepted a faded pale blue felt hat with a feather slid jauntily into the narrow band surrounding the rounded crown.

  He did his best to act disappointed when none of Gram’s awful, old high-heeled shoes fit him. He vocally admired the patent-leather monstrosities upon which the girls tried to teeter.

  Too bad handbags aren’t dependent on foot size, he thought, even as he accepted a blue handbag with tiny handles from Bonnie.

  “It matches your hat.” She looked delighted with her choice.

  The girls weren’t ready yet. There was plastic jewelry to don which stuck to the skin like stickers.

  Jason drew the line at the pink stuff in a bottle with a golden-haired princess on the front.

  “But it’s perfume. It will make you smell good.” Bonnie sniffed the bottle as if to demonstrate.

  “It will clash with my aftershave. Where are we going shopping?”

  “In the kitchen,” Beth announced.

  Jason swallowed a groan, but carrying the purse in one hand and the doll in the other, he gamely followed behind the girls, who teetered along on the high heels. A glance at the recliner reassured him Gramps was deep into his Thanksgiving nap and couldn’t tease Jason about his outfit later.

  The women’s faces broke into wide grins when the threesome entered the kitchen. Jason caught the gurgles of strangled laughter.

  “I loved that hat and purse when they were new,” Gram told him.

  “How long ago was that?” Jason asked.

  “About 1950.” Gram put one hand behind her head and the other on her hip and gave a Mae West pose. “I thought I was hot stuff. That hat was the height of fashion.”

  The girls broke into giggles.

  Mandy grinned. “Feel like hot stuff, Jason?”

  He imitated Gram’s pose the best he could with a doll in one hand and a handbag in the other. “The hottest.”

  Mandy’s grin erupted into laughter.

  The girls’ bodies jiggled with their laughter. Bonnie wobbled on her high heels. “I–I’m going to fall,” she squeaked out between giggles. She sank to the floor, which caused her and Beth to laugh harder.

  Beth put her hand to her stomach. “My stomach hurts from laughing.”

  “Mine too,” Bonnie stuttered.

  Jason helped the still-giggling Bonnie to her feet.

  “Sm
ile.”

  Jason turned toward Mandy’s command without thinking.

  Flash. Mandy lowered her camera, grinning.

  Great, Jason thought. My moment of glory is recorded for posterity.

  The front doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get that.” Jason’s tossed the hat to the kitchen counter and dropped the purse and doll beside it. “I’ll get you for that picture too,” he whispered as he walked past Mandy.

  He strode through the living room, glad to get away from the women and playing house.

  Cold air rushed in when he opened the door. Tom Berry stood on the porch, a wool plaid jacket warming his body, his heavy brown beard warming his face. “Happy Thanksgiving, J. P.”

  “Same to you. Come on in.”

  Tom stepped inside just far enough to allow J. P. to close the door. “I brought the nativity—the outdoor one I told you about. You still have time to help me set it up?”

  “Sure. Let me grab a jacket and tell Gram where I’m going.”

  It took him longer than he anticipated. When he told Gram the plans to set up the nativity on the mountainside, the girls—always ready for a new experience—piped up. “Can we go too? Please? Please?”

  “If your mom says so, but. . .” He hesitated, lifted his eyebrows, and looked at the girls’ feet. “Not in those shoes.”

  The girls turned to Ellen. “You can go, as long as you do whatever J. P. and Tom tell you,” she said. “Don’t get in their way. And it will be dark soon, so don’t wander too far from the men.”

  “May I join you?” Mandy asked. “A walk and a little fresh air would feel good before we get started on supper.”

  Do I mind? Hardly. “Sure, the more the merrier.”

  “You always say that,” Beth told him.

  “Do I?” He shrugged. “Guess I like a crowd.”

  Mandy set a bowl in a cupboard and shut the door. “Where he lives, there’s always a big crowd, Beth. He lives in New York, one of the biggest cities in the world.”

  And lonelier than this little farm on a North Carolina mountain. Maybe I do like a crowd around, Jason thought, but not the kind of crowds I’m used to in the city. This kind of crowd—family and friends who are close to the heart.

  The truth of this thought struck him. Of course Gram and Gramps were always close to his heart. He’d tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to put Mandy from his heart over the years. But now Beth and Bonnie had slid inside his heart too.

  He hadn’t time to examine the thought in depth. He took his coat, gloves, and ASU hat from a closet and made his way back to the living room and Tom.

  “We’ve acquired some helpers,” he told Tom. “Ellen, Mandy, and the girls are coming, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Fine by me.” Tom tilted his head to one side. A puzzled frown scrunched lines between his heavy eyebrows as he studied Jason’s face.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “What are those pink things on your earlobes?”

  Jason clapped his hands to his ears. The plastic sticker earrings.

  Mandy chuckled behind him.

  Heat rushed up his neck and over his face. He peeled the earrings off. “I was playing with the girls.”

  “Ah.” A grin split Tom’s beard. “That female influence will do it every time. Plays havoc with a man’s mind.”

  That it does, Jason agreed silently, in more ways than one.

  Fifteen

  The crisp nip in the air felt good to Mandy as she climbed out of Tom’s extended-cab pickup truck on a rocky ridge overlooking a highway. Mandy recognized the road as the one which, a couple bends and half a mile farther along, ran past the Christmas barn. “Is this your land, Tom?”

  “Yep. Just barely. Another fifty feet or so over, and you’ll be back on Seth and Tillie’s land.”

  Jason rested his hands on his hips and looked around. “You chose a good site. People will have a clear view of the nativity scene from the road.”

  Few trees dotted the hillside between the road below and where they stood near the top of the ridge. The wind raced across the mountainside undeterred, tossing Mandy’s hair around her face. She tucked the strands behind her ears and turned her back against the wind.

  A newly constructed platform of pine-fragrant wood stood on the uneven ground, and on the platform rested an A-frame structure Mandy knew must be the stable for the nativity scene. Inside the A-frame stood a simple wooden manger. A rectangular bundle of hay sat on one corner of the platform.

  Jason nodded toward the platform. “Did you build this, Tom?”

  “Yep. I worked on this project in my spare time for almost a year. Figure the platform will keep the figures from getting hidden by snow, should we get any before Christmas. Another of our former classmates who’s now an electrician rigged some spotlights to light the display.”

  Tom pulled a heavy green canvas tarp off the items in the truck bed, revealing four statues: Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, and an angel.

  The statues were large and heavy. Mandy, Ellen, and the girls watched while the grunting and puffing men moved the pieces from the truck bed onto the platform.

  Mandy thought how natural it seemed that Jason was here on the mountainside helping Tom. The same way it seemed natural to see him among the Christmas trees with the schoolchildren and celebrating Thanksgiving in Grandpa Seth and Grandma Tillie’s home with herself, Ellen, and the girls.

  Her heart caught in a little twinge, then regained its regular beat. Sometimes it seemed the years Jason spent in New York never happened, that when their gazes met across a room or in a group of people, he’d give her the smile that meant he couldn’t wait until they were alone, and give her the wink that always made her heart want to laugh.

  Had she made a mistake all those years ago, believing he’d never be happy in the city working in finance? Maybe she’d only wanted to believe it because she wanted to stay in the mountains and wanted him to stay too.

  Mandy’s attention slipped back to the present at a question from Ellen.

  “Tom, the statues are beautiful. Did you make these?”

  “Yep.” Pleasure filled his face at Ellen’s compliment.

  “They are beautiful,” Mandy agreed. “You’ve surpassed yourself with these. I don’t know how you found time to make them and also make the pottery you sell, to say nothing of all the other aspects of running your business.”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders and looked embarrassed. “Other than work and church, there’s not much else to fill my time.”

  “You’re too modest,” Ellen said. “You do a lot to help your mother and take care of the house and lawn.”

  He shrugged again. “She’s family. Besides, neighbors and church family help out when life gets too crazy-busy.”

  Jason cut the twine binding one of the bundles of straw. Pulling a good-sized chunk from the bundle, he placed it in the manger.

  For all the world as though he meant to make the bed more comfortable for the stone child, Mandy thought. It brought a smile to her lips and heart. Most likely the hay was meant to ensure the statue of the baby could easily be seen rather than buried in the manger. Still, when Jason and Tom lowered the baby statue into the straw-filled manger, a lump appeared in her throat.

  When Jason and Tom had the sculptures in place, Tom invited Beth and Bonnie to help spread straw on the floor of the platform. The girls scrambled up with alacrity.

  Ellen leaned close to Mandy to stage-whisper, “I’ll be pulling straw out of their hair and clothes for an hour when we get home.” But Ellen’s gentle expression as she watched her daughters work with Tom and Jason revealed that she didn’t mind the thought of straw in the children’s clothes at all.

  “At least the girls seem to have forgotten for awhile that their father didn’t show up today,” Ellen continued, “between this and Jason playing house.”

  Mandy didn’t know any words to ease Ellen’s pain that she hadn’t been able to prevent her d
aughters’ father from hurting them. So Mandy simply squeezed Ellen’s arm and stood silent.

  The men teased with the girls while they worked. Seeing Jason with Beth and Bonnie brought out Mandy’s maternal instincts and the memory of the dreams she and Jason once shared of raising a family together. Those memories made her heart heavy with longing.

  Jason would make a wonderful father. She’d always known he would. It hurt deeply to think that when he became a father, she wouldn’t be the mother of his children. She’d loved him for so long. Her attempts to move on, dating other men, looking for someone else with whom to share life and build a family, had been unsuccessful.

  In a moment of clarity, she realized the Jason she’d loved all this time was the young man he’d been with the seeds within him of the man he was now. Those seeds were the faith and values he’d claimed and she’d believed in. Jason was no longer the man she’d loved before. In so many ways, he’d grown into the man she’d always believed he could be. Time, especially recently, had tested the values he’d claimed, and they’d stood true.

  She loved the way he loved his grandparents and that without hesitation he’d taken a leave of absence from his work in the city to come to their aid. Loved the way he loved children, the care he extended to Beth and Bonnie in particular.

  Jason would be a good man to share life with. Time-and-trial tested, he’d won her heart all over again without even trying. Or even saying he still wanted her heart.

  Thank You for the gift of time spent near Jason again, Lord, and for allowing me to see the fine man he’s become.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ellen’s sharp question brought Mandy from her reverie. She followed Ellen’s glance to see what caused her outburst.

  Beth was tucking her plum chenille scarf around the baby Jesus. Her face set firm with challenge, she turned toward her mother. “Baby Jesus is cold. He’s only wearing that blue stone blanket-thing that looks like a funny diaper that’s not fastened.”