A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  “Okay,” Hannah said, and put up her hand. “I will go. But I want to say good-bye to Mason, and I want to start seeing him regularly.”

  “Then get a lawyer.”

  Hannah gaped at her. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Like hell I don’t,” Holly said. “I will do anything to keep him safe. Especially from the self-centered parents who dumped him like he was nothing but a baby doll.”

  “Okay, I get it!” Hannah snapped. “You’re angry—”

  “I am beyond angry,” Holly said calmly.

  “Enough!” Hannah cried. “I can’t say I am sorry enough to suit you, that is abundantly clear. But I am not going to give him to you, Holly. We’ll work something out, I promise you, but get the idea that you are keeping him out of your head. He is my son!”

  “I’m not the same person I was, either. You can get that out of your head.”

  This had been a huge mistake. Hannah didn’t say more; she walked to the door. She paused there, looking out at the wet day. She’d thought it was impossible to feel any emptier than she had in the last year, but when she looked back at Holly and saw the pain in her sister’s eyes, the way her chest lifted with each deep breath, she felt more alone than she’d ever felt. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I am truly very sorry, Holly. Just know that I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

  “Good-bye, Hannah.”

  Hannah stepped out the door.

  Wyatt was there on the porch with Mason, who had a little watering can and was using it to water some empty pots. A black dog was lying on the porch; his tail began to thump when he saw Hannah. Hannah looked warily at Wyatt. “May I say good-bye to him?”

  He nodded.

  She could feel him watching her as she picked up Mason and held him close. “Lala,” he said.

  Hannah kissed his cheek. “Mommy loves you, Mase. Mommy loves you more than life.”

  “Down.”

  Hannah smiled sadly, kissed him once more, and put him down. Mason picked up his watering can.

  “Holly loves this kid with everything she’s got,” Wyatt said quietly. He seemed to think he was telling her something she didn’t know.

  “Obviously,” Hannah said. “But so do I. And he is my son and I will not give him up. It was nice to meet you, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt said nothing, but his gaze was steady on hers.

  Hannah turned to leave.

  “Bye-bye,” Mason said. “Bye-bye.”

  Hannah didn’t look back. If she had, she would have lost her fragile hold on her composure. And if she had stopped walking, she would have collapsed with grief and regret. She kept walking, but Hannah felt strangely confident that it would be one of the last times she ever walked away from her son.

  Chapter Twenty

  Over the next several days, Holly felt like she was shrinking. Fear filled her up and squeezed the life from her, squeezing a little more out of her each day.

  In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, she dreaded every ring of her phone, every knock on her door. The anxiety of waiting for the proverbial other shoe to fall made her heartsick. Holly loved Mason more than anything or anyone. She’d had him almost five months, and sometimes she marveled at how quickly she’d gone from complete despair to having him inserted in her life without her permission, to despair that she might lose him.

  Oh, but despair she did. It almost felt as if she were waiting for an executioner to come and lop off her head; it could be no less painful than losing him.

  Two calls from Hannah pushed her fear into full-blown anxiety. Not that Holly could bring herself to answer the phone. She could hardly bring herself to listen to the message, but then again, she couldn’t bear not hearing it, so she snatched it up and played it back both times.

  The first message was very simple and cordial, like Hannah. “Hello, Holly. I hope your day is going well. I called to check on you and Mason. Will you please call me when you get this message? Thank you.”

  “Like a robot,” Holly muttered, and erased the message.

  The second time Hannah called, she did not sound quite as cordial. It was New Year’s Eve morning. Holly was at Wyatt’s house with Mason while Wyatt and Jesse worked. She and Wyatt had made plans for the evening; fireworks for the kids, and after they went to bed, Wyatt had a bottle of champagne chilling for the two of them. “We’re going to celebrate,” Wyatt said. “Where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

  Holly didn’t feel much like celebrating, but she smiled and nodded all the same when Wyatt suggested it. He’d tried very hard all week to buoy her spirits. She’d tried just as hard to be buoyed … but it wasn’t working. There was a sea change coming; she could feel it in her bones and was completely distracted by it.

  She was making a stew for Wyatt; the recipe was one she’d found in a drawer in her mother’s kitchen, written on a yellowed index card in ink that had faded. She could hardly make out some of the instructions and was trying to read the last step when her cell phone’s cheerful little song startled her.

  Holly threw a dish towel over her shoulder and grabbed the phone. When she saw the number, she dropped the cell phone as if it had stung her, and turned away, letting it ring. The moment it stopped ringing, she picked it up again. Holly debated whether to listen to the message, but it had the allure of a car wreck—she didn’t want to listen, but she couldn’t stop herself. She punched in her pass code.

  “Holly, it’s me. You can’t avoid me. I want to see Mason and I will drive out there again if I have to, so you might as well pick up the phone and call me back and arrange a time like a sane, rational adult.”

  Holly clicked her phone shut and tossed it across the kitchen table. It hit Wyatt’s computer and spun off, falling to the ground.

  “Mine,” Mason said, and picked it up.

  Holly was prying it from Mason’s hand when Wyatt and Jesse walked in.

  “Whoa, cowboy, what’s wrong?” Jesse asked cheerfully, and squatted down, poking a bawling Mason in the chest.

  “He had my phone,” Holly said.

  “Who wants a phone when you’ve got a truck this cool lying around?” Jesse asked, and distracted Mason with the truck while Holly freed her phone.

  She shoved the phone into her pocket and walked back into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Wyatt said.

  Holly avoided his gaze. “Hi,” she said, and began to stir the stew.

  “We just stopped in to get some coffee. You know where the pot is, Jesse.”

  Jesse picked up a coffee tumbler and poured a cup. “What about you, Happy Jack?” he asked Wyatt.

  “No, thanks.”

  Jesse doctored his coffee—lots of cream and even more sugar—screwed the lid on his tumbler, and smiled at Holly. “Happy New Year, Hollyhocks,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen.

  Wyatt put his coffee tumbler in the sink. “Everything okay?” he asked Holly.

  “Great,” she lied. “I’m not sure I have all the spices I need.”

  He eyed her skeptically. “I’ll see you later?”

  “Yep.”

  When Wyatt left, she picked up the place and had Mason nap. Then she sat at the kitchen table, her emotions churning. She didn’t know what to do. She tried to think of how she could meet Hannah halfway. A bargain, some agreement to share him. Joint custody. Something. It made sense to her—they’d both been a mother to him. Why couldn’t they be a blended family? It was the only thing that was fair to Mason, wasn’t it?

  Later that afternoon she was still sitting there, watching Mason move his cars around the living room, when Wyatt came in. “Hi,” she said as he walked into the kitchen. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “You don’t look any better this afternoon than you did this morning. What’s going on?”

  Holly shook her head. “Another message from Hannah. Only, this time she is demanding to see Mason.”

  He did not seem fazed by that. In fact, he shrugged. “I think you s
hould let her.”

  Holly stared at him. “You do?” She thought she should, too, but wanted Wyatt to be on her side, to have her back on this.

  He squatted down beside her, put his hand on her knee. “I think you’re being unreasonable.”

  “Great,” Holly said, and looked away.

  “Baby, listen to me. She’s in no position to take him. You’re going to talk to Jillian in a couple of days, and she’ll make sure Hannah can’t drive out here to claim him like some forgotten piece of property. But I don’t think you should refuse to let her see him. It won’t hurt, and it won’t make Mason love you any less.”

  Holly caught a painful breath in her throat.

  “And in the meantime, you’re making yourself sick stressing over something you don’t need to stress about.”

  “You don’t understand,” she argued, and moved her knee from under his hand and stood up. “You don’t know what it feels like to believe you might lose the most precious thing in the world to you.”

  Wyatt slowly rose up to his full height. “I don’t?”

  She winced. “I’m sorry. Come on, Wyatt, I don’t want to argue with you. Honestly, I don’t want to do anything but get in my car with Mason and drive to Mexico or Canada—any place she can’t find me.”

  Wyatt gave her a sympathetic smile and said, “It’s going to be okay, Holly.”

  For once, she didn’t believe him. And his assurances weren’t helping.

  Neither did the envelope that arrived at the homestead that week.

  It so happened that Jillian Hunter was still on vacation, not expected back until the following Monday. Holly didn’t hear from Hannah after the message on New Year’s Eve, but she expected her sister to come rolling up in that black BMW in some designer suit and demand her son.

  Hannah didn’t come, but the demand from a law yer did. It was a letter signed by someone named Rob Tucker. It proposed a visitation schedule “with the expectation that these visits will result in a permanent reunification of Mason with his mother.”

  Holly showed it to Wyatt, expecting him to dismiss it. But Wyatt read it and then folded it up and put it back in the envelope. “I think you need to speak with Jillian.”

  “She can’t do this, right?” Holly said. “I mean, I should have some say in it.”

  Wyatt said nothing.

  “Why are you being like that?” Holly asked, but even as the words were tumbling out of her mouth, she knew that she was wrong. She just couldn’t admit that she was. Admitting she was wrong made losing Mason real, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She was trying. God knew she was trying. “You don’t think she can do this, do you?”

  Wyatt gazed at her with a strange look of pity and impatience. “I don’t know if she can or she can’t. But you should be prepared in the event that she can.”

  “What happened to all the ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ talk? I don’t need to prepare myself for anything, and I would appreciate it you would be more supportive.”

  “I’ve tried to be—”

  “No, you’ve tried to convince me that nothing is wrong, and now you are telling me to give Mason up.”

  “Holly …,” he said in a voice full of rebuke.

  Wyatt went home that night. They needed some space.

  Holly apologized to him the next day. “I am sorry,” she said stiffly. “I know I was being ridiculous to you, but I can’t seem to help myself. I am so worried about what’s going to happen to Mason. It’s not fair to insert him into yet another life and take him from what he knows now. He’s attached to me, too, you know.”

  “I know he is,” Wyatt said. “But you have to acknowledge that even though Hannah went off the deep end, she’s made every effort to right herself.”

  “She could relapse,” Holly argued. “Something could happen and she could relapse.”

  Wyatt smiled sadly and put his arms around Holly. “I understand,” he murmured, and kissed her temple. Then the bridge of her nose. Then her mouth. They made up without words, sinking into each other, each needing reassurance and comfort.

  But something felt different to Holly. It wasn’t the same magic. She could hardly admit it to herself, but the little fantasy she’d been living in—Wyatt, Mason, Grace, and her—was unraveling before her very eyes. There was no light at the end of her winter—it felt as if her winter hadn’t even begun.

  Jillian Harper met Holly a few days later. Holly let her read the letter from Rob Turner, Esquire, and then explained everything more fully than she had on the phone.

  Jillian listened, taking notes, nodding thoughtfully. When Holly had finished, Jillian put down her pencil and pressed her fingertips together. “What exactly do you want to see happen?”

  “Well, obviously, I want to keep Mason safe—”

  “Not going to happen,” Jillian interjected matter-of-factly, and Holly’s heart dropped to her toes.

  “What do you mean? She dumped him on me. She is a drug addict. Who’s to say she won’t do it again?”

  “What she does in the future is another issue entirely. When she left him with you, did she tell you she was coming back for him?”

  Holly frowned. “Well, yes, but she didn’t say when.”

  “Was there any abuse in the home prior to that? Any signs of neglect?”

  “Not that I saw, but obviously, if she was doing drugs—”

  “Listen, Holly, I don’t disagree with your assessment of what happened or your sister’s fitness to raise her child. But what you’re wanting is a very tough legal hurdle to jump. Here is what you need to know,” Jillian said, and folded her arms on her desk, looking at Holly over the tops of her readers. “The laws in Texas favor the biological parents. Period. Hannah has not been charged with a crime, and she is not under the monitoring of Child Protective Services, and given that she is out of treatment and putting her life back on track, I don’t imagine they’d do much more than watch her for three to six months to make sure she’s not going to add to their caseload.”

  “She’s not on their caseload, but she should be. I could have called them, you know, but I didn’t—”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jillian said, and held up her hand to halt any argument Holly wanted to make before she could make it. “Again, I don’t disagree with you. I am just telling you the legal practicalities. It is very difficult to take a child from a parent, even when they aren’t working or paying for their child and are living off the state. Listen to what I am saying: Even if you turned Hannah in today, the fact of the matter is that she took the necessary steps—the same steps the state would require her to take—to get her son back. She is demonstrating that she is stable by maintaining a job—she has a job, right?—and a place for Mason to live. Is that right? So the most the state would do at this point is perhaps add on a parenting class and a twelve-step program if she’s not already in one.” Jillian sat back in her chair and picked up her pencil. “As for her husband, other than the cheating, is he into drugs that you know of?”

  Holly snorted. “Is that the standard? If he’s not an addict, he’s okay?”

  “It’s the reality, Holly,” Jillian said with a shrug. “The state has so many more children in much worse circumstances. They triage like everyone else. It is not okay to abandon your child, in Texas, but if you leave the child with a relative, and you say you’ll be back, and you maintain some sort of contact and support, well …”

  “I can’t believe this!” Holly said angrily. “Those two people abandoned their baby with me!”

  Jillian gave her a pitying look, the same sort of look Wyatt had given her a time or two. “I’m not saying you can’t fight it. What I am saying is you would end up spending a lot of money—and I’m talking tens of thousands—and you still probably wouldn’t get what you wanted in the end. The court may even agree that you are a better mother to him than your sister, but your sister has the law on her side. You have the burden of proving that she is somehow unfit—which I don’t imagine she i
s, because if drug use made you an unfit parent, half the children in Texas would be removed from their homes. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Yes,” Holly said. “You are saying that I lose. Hannah gets to go on like nothing ever happened, and I get to pick up the pieces. I understand that clearly.”

  Jillian smiled sadly. “I can’t imagine that her life is proceeding as if nothing ever happened. If you think about it, she had to make some pretty tough decisions.”

  Holly knew that, of course she knew that. Sometimes she’d thought about how hard it must have been for Hannah … but her sympathy for her sister began to disintegrate when Holly thought of Mason. She couldn’t see past her love for that little boy, and on some level Holly knew she was blinded by it.

  “My advice is that you respond to this letter with some sort of visitation agreement that favors you, as well as with a plan to transition Mason back to her so that he’s not abruptly removed from his secure environment and you. We need to impress on them that this should be as painless as possible for Mason. I can draft something and present it to her if you like.”

  Holly didn’t answer immediately; she was trying to find her breath.

  Jillian looked up from her notes. “He is a very lucky little boy that you were there for him, Holly. And you will continue to be there for him. We will make sure of that.”

  No, Holly was the lucky one in this equation. The last months with Mason had been the best of her life.

  “It’s not fair,” Jillian said. “But I’d guess you’ve been around enough to know that life is seldom fair. Shall I draft the papers for you?”

  With her gaze on Mason—her view of him blurred by the angry tears that had been burning the backs of her eyes for over two weeks now—Holly nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It was happening again. Wyatt had tried so hard to guard himself against it, to erect steel walls around his battered heart, but in spite of it, it was happening again.

  Goddammit, for two years he had avoided people and all their entanglements, because he didn’t trust them, because he couldn’t bear the thought of losing himself again. He’d moved out to this ranch in the middle of fucking nowhere, but then Holly had moved into the Fisher place, and he’d gone and fallen in love—hell, he’d even admitted it to her—and now … now he was here again, feeling a distance growing between them that he did not know how to bridge.