The Secret Christmas Child

by Lee Tobin McClain

  “Don’t talk, then. Listen.” She drew in a breath. She couldn’t tell him about his cousin. When Brock had died only hours after assaulting her, she’d made the decision not to disturb his family’s memory of him. She wasn’t crazy about Brock’s parents, but they’d been devastated about the loss of their only son. She’d prayed about it, and talked to her counselor about it and decided not to add to their trauma.

  Now, after a year and a half, no one would believe her, least of all Reese.

  Brock had been a popular athlete; she was a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks. He’d warned her not to tell anyone, asserting that they wouldn’t believe she hadn’t consented, right before getting drunkenly into the car that he’d driven to his death.

  She didn’t respect Brock’s opinion about much, but she knew he was right about that.

  Now, to Reese, she’d say what she could of the truth. “I could tell you were counting the months,” she said, “and from your reaction, I’d guess you’re thinking Izzy was conceived when we were seeing each other. But she was six weeks premature.”

  He looked skeptical. “Convenient excuse.”

  Anger fired inside her, a hot ball in her chest. “Actually, it wasn’t convenient at all. She almost died, and I did, too, from preeclampsia.” What she didn’t say was that she’d wanted to die.

  Most of that was about the assault and carrying Brock’s baby. Lots of hormones washing around in her system. Being isolated as a pregnant girl, then a young mother in a college town full of partying teenagers.

  And the fact that you’d dumped me by email didn’t help.

  She’d thought they had a great relationship. When she’d pulled herself back together after the assault, all she’d wanted was to talk to Reese, cry on his shoulder even if by phone. But she hadn’t been able to reach him for several weeks.

  She’d thought he was busy with soldier stuff, but in mid-August, she’d gotten the stiff, cold email from him: I don’t want to be involved with you anymore. Please stop contacting me.

  In the year and a half since then, she’d gained some perspective. Wartime did things to people, not the least of which was throwing soldiers together in intense, emotional situations. He’d probably met someone else, or realized he wanted to, and hadn’t known how to tell her.

  She’d gotten over it, or mostly. Been too busy to think about it. Moved on. Could he do the same?

  His eyebrows came together as he studied her, and she could see the debate inside him of whether to believe her about Izzy’s being premature.

  When he didn’t speak, just kept looking at her, she spread her hands and shrugged. “Look, it’s nothing to do with you and I’m not going to dig up medical records to prove she was premature. I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t... That nothing happened when we were dating.”

  “So it happened when you went back to college... Sorry.” He held up a hand, shook his head. “Never mind. Not my business.”

  She hesitated. “Right.” And then she felt like a liar. She meant he was right that it wasn’t his business, but of course, Izzy hadn’t been conceived back at college, but right here in Bethlehem Springs. He’d think she was agreeing with him that she’d been conceived at college.

  But did it matter, when she wasn’t ever going to tell him the full circumstances of what had happened?

  “Is her father...involved?”

  She swallowed. “No.”

  Sweat dripped down between her shoulder blades despite the cold day. Her stomach churned. Talking about Izzy’s father with Reese felt surreal. She didn’t know if she could handle much more of it. She should never have taken this job.

  In fact, she felt like running away, and she even turned toward the door. But looking out, she caught a glimpse of her brother’s endearing cowlick, saw him laughing with a couple of other boys.

  Doing this program was going to be good for Jacob. And working this close to Nana’s house would be good for both Nana and Izzy.

  Gabby’s own sensitive feelings didn’t figure into the equation, couldn’t. She stiffened her spine and turned back to Reese. “Are we all right here? Can we work together without you acting hostile toward me?”

  “Of course,” he said. His eyes held something like compassion. “I’m sorry I reacted in such an immature way, Gabby. I seemed to sort of plunge back into the way I felt when I found out... Well. After I was overseas. I’m more mature now, I hope, and I’ll try to act it.”

  Curious wording. What had he found out when he’d been overseas? His brief note hadn’t indicated any reason for ending things, but she’d figured he’d lost the feelings he’d had for her in their younger days.

  He couldn’t have found out Brock had assaulted her. No one had known about that.

  Water under the bridge.

  She’d always held a faint hope, in the back of her mind, that he would think about her fondly, want to reconnect. Now, she knew he’d been dealing with rehab. And she, of course, had been learning to be a mother.

  They’d both been through a lot. Now he was offering to let the past go. “Thank you,” she said.

  “We’d better get back to the boys.” He leaned to the side to scan the open barn area where they were working.

  “Do you mind if I call Nana first? She was coughing a lot this morning and I want to see if she needs to visit a doctor.”

  “No problem. I’ll handle them.” He started to head out, then turned back. “Is your grandmother well enough to take care of a baby?”

  Gabby bit her lip. “I worry about that myself, but whenever she’s with Izzy, she seems to perk up. She loves babies, and helping me with Izzy makes her feel useful.”

  “We all need to feel useful.” He seemed about to say more, but instead, he swung around and walked out into the main room of the barn.

  As she waited for Nana to answer—which could take a while, as the woman had gotten rid of her house phone line but rarely remembered to keep her prepaid cell phone at her side—she watched Reese walk around to the groups of boys and then over to a simple wooden shelf on a work bench. One of the more solitary boys, Jericho, had drifted over to study it. As Gabby watched, Reese spoke to the boy and gestured. He seemed to be explaining something about the project. Then he used his amputated arm to hold the shelf steady while he sawed with a jigsaw.

  His sleeves were rolled up, and his muscles worked beneath his Henley shirt. He was still one of the best-built men she’d ever seen. He hadn’t gone soft at all.

  He got the shelf most of the way sawed through, and then the saw slipped, making the cut go uneven. He tensed, then straightened and went about trying to trim the excess wood off.

  Even making a simple shelf was hard for him—Reese, who’d been known for his superior, elaborate woodworking. Her heart broke a little.

  As she spoke to Nana, who couldn’t conceal her worsening cough, and as she made a doctor’s appointment for her, she thought about what she’d seen, what she’d said.

  It hadn’t gone as badly as it might have, and that was because Reese had been gentleman enough not to ask her who Izzy’s father was. She had to hope that would continue.

  For the rest of the morning, as she listened to the students’ half-baked plans and discoveries, she realized anew just what she’d taken on in agreeing to this job and in proposing the Christmas show. It was almost inconceivable that the kids could all work together to pull it off.

  Almost as inconceivable as her and Reese working together without old animosities getting in the way.

  * * *

  By the end of the day, Reese felt as tired as he had after a hard training exercise in the military.

  The boys were working on their final chores, walking the dogs and getting them fresh water and food. Gabby had gone to make a quick check on her grandmother, who wasn’t feeling well, but promised to come back to help with clean
up and planning for tomorrow.

  Reese supervised the boys while, internally, he yelled at himself.

  He’d acted like a sulky kid, like the very boys he was trying to help. He’d shown enough attitude that it was visible to Gabby.

  Come to find out, she hadn’t cheated on him after all. Or so she said.

  Mostly, he believed her. She’d always been an honest person, and she’d looked straight into his eyes as she told him Izzy had been conceived after she’d gone to college.

  She hadn’t cheated; she’d broken a promise to wait, but that wasn’t as awful of an offense. Lots of people found they couldn’t handle a long-distance relationship.

  Gabby had seemed like the type to keep her promises, but it had turned out differently. He’d left town on June 30, and Brock had posted a picture of him and Gabby together two days later. She hadn’t been the person he’d thought she was.

  He hadn’t brought that up, because he hadn’t trusted himself to handle a discussion about it. He knew his limits.

  “Hey, Mr. Reese!” Two of the younger boys came running up to him, dogs leaping at their sides. “We thought of an idea!”

  He had to smile at their enthusiasm. “Yeah? What is it?”

  “What if we had the baby Jesus come into the stable in a spaceship?”

  “Yeah, and Mary and Joseph could be dressed up like Transformers!”

  Reese tried to keep the dismay he felt inside from showing on his face. It was the best idea he’d heard from the boys all day, and it was awful. Why had they ever pinned their funding to a Christmas show?

  “Hmm,” he said. “I’m going to have to think about that one.”

  “He’s thinking about it!” they yelled as they took off for the milling crowd of boys and dogs.

  Reese sighed, then stood and walked closer to the boys. “Okay, everyone,” he called, “let’s all work together to get these pups back to their kennels. It’s almost time to pack up and go home.”

  As the boys worked to get the dogs settled for the evening, the door opened. Gabby was back, and... He swallowed. She was carrying her child in a carrier on her chest, the baby facing out. She shut the door behind her and then leaned closer to the baby, murmuring as she loosened her little coat and hat.

  Memories he’d long shoved aside rushed back into his mind. He and Gabby had talked about kids, how they both wanted them, how they wanted to raise them better than they’d been raised themselves. They hadn’t exactly discussed getting married and raising kids together—they’d both known they were too young for a plan like that—but it had been in the back of his mind, and he’d thought it was in hers, too.

  Instead, she’d gone on to become a mother without him. As it turned out, she hadn’t been too young at all.

  Telling himself to man up wouldn’t work. He strode over to her. “Everything’s done,” he said without looking closely at the baby. “You didn’t need to come back.”

  “Are you upset because I brought her?” Her question was quiet but somehow forceful.

  He opened his mouth to deny it, then closed it again and looked off to the side. “I’m working on it, okay? Just...give me a little time.”

  “Reese.”

  “Yeah?” He looked back at her.

  Her eyes were wide and clear, studying him. “Time as in, until tomorrow? Or time as in, I should forget about working here anymore?”

  He didn’t want her working here, not really, but he didn’t want her to leave, either. “I’ll be fine tomorrow,” he heard himself promise. “I need you if we’re going to pull together a show. Be thinking of ideas how to make it work, because unless you love the idea of Jesus arriving by spaceship, we have a ways to go.”

  “Jesus arriving by...” She giggled, her face breaking into a smile that dazzled him. Maybe even more than when he was a high school kid. “Will do,” she said with a comical little salute. Then she kissed the top of the baby’s head—devastating Reese all over again—turned and walked out of the barn.

  * * *

  An hour later, Reese was hauling supplies from his truck to the barn when Corbin Beck drove up and parked beside Reese’s truck. Reese and the animal science professor had become friends through working together on some repairs at the church. Now Corbin was doing a research study on some of the dogs at Rescue Haven.

  “Need a hand?” Corbin asked. “Or... Oh, man, I’m sorry. Wrong thing to say.”

  Puzzled, Reese looked up, saw that his friend’s face had gone red and realized the problem. He smacked Corbin’s arm with his prosthesis, lightly. “Don’t worry about it. People say that kind of thing all the time. I say it myself.”

  “I wasn’t thinking.” Corbin shook his head. “Typical for me. Social skills of a gnat.”

  “No sweat. I knew what you meant.” Reese couldn’t get offended about all the references to hands in common conversation, or he’d be mad all the time. “And yes, I could use a hand with moving this stuff.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Corbin took the other end of a case of dog food and they hauled it, then another, into the storage area of the barn, chatting mildly about the low temperatures expected for tomorrow and how to manage the dogs in the weather.

  “Our boys will be here, cold or not, for the most part,” Reese said. “Their parents don’t get off work for cold, so they still need places for their kids to go. We’ll keep them warm and active here.”

  “Some of the dogs might benefit from boots to protect their paw pads, and the short-haired guys could use coats. Don’t leave them out too long, either.”

  Reese sighed. “Cabin fever. Just what we need.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Corbin said. “Kids are a mystery to me.”

  “I’m no expert. I’m usually winging it to some degree.”

  It was nearly dark by the time they got everything into the barn and stacked in the supply room. The air was cold enough to bite his face, but Reese felt warm from the exertion. “Thanks,” he said. “Couldn’t have gotten this done so fast without you.”

  “No problem,” Corbin said as he knelt in front of one of the pens, tablet computer in hand. “Did I hear right that you have a new helper?”

  “How’d you hear that?”

  “It’s a small town.” Corbin opened the pen, and Moose, an ancient rottweiler mix, offered a tail wag. “Hey, buddy, how’s the leg?”

  Reese sat stewing while Corbin examined the dog and typed notes into his computer. Corbin’s research had to do with nutritional biology across species, so he was feeding some of the dogs a special food and measuring the effect on the growth of their fatty tumors. “What else did you hear?” Reese asked, noticing the truculence in his voice but unable to govern it.

  “Heard she has a baby.” Corbin glanced at him and then ducked his head and moved along to the next pen. “Speculation is, it’s yours.”

  “What?” Reese stared at Corbin. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Wouldn’t kid about something like that.”

  Reese’s mind spun. Since he’d heard Izzy crying at Nana’s house, he’d been thinking almost nonstop about the fact that Gabby had a baby, but it had never occurred to him that people might suspect it was his.

  “I guess, with her working for you, and with your history together, it was kind of a natural leap.” Corbin glanced up from his tablet. “I take it there’s no truth to the rumor.”

  “None.” Reese was putting it all together in his own mind. Unless people knew that Izzy had been premature, which wasn’t at all obvious when you looked at her, the math would work out for her being conceived while Reese and Gabby were dating.

  It was the conclusion he’d jumped to himself.

  What other people didn’t know was that he and Gabby hadn’t been intimate. In this day and age, their abstinence would be unexpected.

  Corbin glanced
at him again, eyebrows raised.

  “We never...” He stopped, then tried again. “We agreed not to...”

  “I get it,” Corbin said. “I’m impressed. Can’t have been easy.”

  “Izzy was born prematurely,” Reese went on, working it out in his own mind as he spoke. “Gabby told me that, and I believe her.”

  Corbin nodded. He was stroking one of the older, more fearful dogs, Bundi, gently on the chest. “Hey, Bundi, girl,” he whispered, using the correct pronunciation, Boon-dee.

  Corbin was meticulous. And usually right.

  “I guess Gabby changed after a couple years of college,” Reese said, feeling bleak.

  “It can happen.” Corbin scratched under the dog’s chin, and she rolled onto her back in response. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I’m upset. But I know I shouldn’t be. Like you said, it happens. Happens to a lot of people.”

  “You’re allowed to be mad,” Corbin said with a little smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “We’re all sinners in need of grace. She got together with someone right after you guys separated. You’re mad about it. It’s a fallen world and we’re fallen people.”

  It was the most he’d heard quiet Corbin say all at once, and maybe for that reason, Reese took it seriously.

  The man was right. Gabby had made a mistake. Reese had gotten mad about it. Both of those things were natural, people being what they were, and that meant they could get past them.

  Important, because they needed to work together to make sure some troubled boys and high-risk dogs had a place where they could get the help they needed.

  Chapter Five

  The next day, a Tuesday, Gabby, the boys and Biff, the giant black dog Jacob was training, climbed out of the van in front of Cleo’s Crafts and Café. Reese pulled into a parking space—town was crowded with Christmas shoppers, apparently—while Gabby reminded the boys about good behavior. They’d called ahead to clear the visit with Cleo, but still...ten big teen and preteen boys in a craft shop was a lot.