Promises to Keep

by Jane Green

  Stanley. She smiles to herself as she burrows down in the sheets, in the warmth, trying to remember every detail.

  They sat on the sofa last night, for hours. Kissing, and stroking each other, and murmuring.

  Steffi expected to jump into bed with him, but that didn’t happen. She still isn’t sure why, but she is glad. It was enough to be held, and kissed, and comforted.

  He left at two in the morning. He stood up and said he really ought to get going. She knew that was the point at which she could have said stay. She knew that had she said it, he would have said yes. But she needed some alone time. Needed to process everything that has happened over the last twenty-four hours, this roller coaster of emotions she has been on.

  From the devastation of thinking Callie might live for only a few weeks, to the high of thinking it may be as much as five and a half years.

  Stanley’s sweetness in showing up with flowers; his holding her all those hours, without pushing her, or trying to go further than either of them might have been comfortable doing.

  In the old days there would have been no question of her jumping into bed with him, but she feels that if she has learned nothing else through this journey with Callie, it is what it is to be an adult.

  Life is indeed short, and she must seize the moment. And yet, and yet . . . She feels she has aged ten years in the past few weeks. She feels, finally, as if Callie’s illness is forcing her to grow up, to be patient instead of impulsive, to be calm, even when her insides are raging.

  Grown-ups don’t always give in to instant gratification. They don’t jump into bed with total strangers just because it feels good.

  Perhaps she will sleep with him next time. Perhaps not. But for today it feels good to have sent him home, and to have peeled off her Victoria’s Secret underwear, all alone, in her bathroom, to have climbed into her long, white, Victorian nightgown, and collapsed into bed with no one but a large, shaggy, snoring deerhound for company.

  Better is waking up on her own. She bites the bullet and jumps out of bed, running downstairs, her teeth chattering, to the thermostat, which she moves to Heat, then to the back door, which she unlocks, shooing Fingal out, before running back upstairs and jumping under the covers again.

  This is now her morning routine. The pipes clank ominously as she reaches over for her computer, settling it on her lap while the house quickly starts to heat up. There may only be two temperatures, but at least, and thank God, it doesn’t take long to heat.

  There is an email from Mason—finally

  To: Steffi Tollemache

  From: Mason Gregory

  Re: Freezing toes

  Dear Steffi,

  The heating system in the house has long been a source of discontent. I suspect I have to replace the whole damned thing, but have been putting it off for years by building fires and putting lots of blankets on the bed. I can look into a new system, although be warned—the house will be turned upside down. Failing that, I am happy to provide one, or thirty, space heaters. (A couple should suffice, though, I would think.)

  London is . . . not quite what I expected. Rather more changes than I thought, but I shall save that for another time. It continues to be very gray and drizzly, which I did expect, and rather wonderful in many ways. I am finding myself at the theater on a far too regular basis, and am discovering that we Americans are entirely incorrect in presuming all English food is dreadful.

  It is, as they say in England, brilliant! I have eaten some of the best food I have ever eaten in my life here. But I do miss New York, and the neighborhood restaurants. And of course, Joni’s, although I hear the food’s gone downhill terribly since their star chef left . . . ;-)

  What’s fascinating is how much fresher the produce is. You would love it here. The quantities are much smaller, but everything has so much taste. There are extraordinary farmers’ markets here at the weekends, and they are huge—I think one day you will have to come over and I will give you a tour.

  Again, I am so happy you are so happy in Sleepy Hollow. It is my little corner of paradise, and I’m not sure I have ever before had a tenant who has fallen in love with it quite as much as I, and now you, have.

  Do you have any news about your sister? Your last email of three days ago said you were waiting for results. Did they come? Do they know what’s wrong with her? The waiting game is, I know, horrific. I am sending you warm hugs across the Atlantic, and much support.

  M

  Steffi takes a deep breath, and hits Reply.

  Yummy White Fish Pesto Sandwich

  Ingredients

  For the pesto

  2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed

  ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

  ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

  ⅓ cup pine nuts or walnuts

  3 medium-size garlic cloves, minced

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

  For the fish sandwich

  Zest of 1 lemon

  4 white-fish fillets (relatively thin, e.g., tilapia or cod)

  1 pack prosciutto

  4-5 bunches cherry tomatoes on the vine

  5 sun-dried tomatoes

  2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

  ½ cup black olives, pitted (not the ones in brine, the wrinkly ones)

  1 chili pepper, finely sliced

  Method

  Preheat the oven to 350°F.

  Put the basil, cheese, oil, pine nuts, garlic and salt and pepper in a blender and whiz until ground.

  Stir the lemon zest into the pesto, then sandwich the fish fillets together with the pesto sauce, ending up with 2 sandwiches.

  Wrap the fillets with the prosciutto and set aside.

  Put the cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, olives and chili pepper in a roasting pan and roast for around 25 minutes, until the tomatoes have softened and become juicy.

  Add the fish on top of the tomatoes, and put back in the oven for a further 20 to 25 minutes.

  Serve warm.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Reece checks that everything is in the small suitcase. Blanket, the framed photos that Lila brought, clothes, toiletries, iPod. It is all there.

  The nurses come in and help Callie sit up, then transfer her into the wheelchair that will take her to the car. Her legs are now so weak that they have arranged for another wheelchair for home. A physical therapist will be coming to the house, and will, they say hopefully, be able to help with restoring some muscle strength.

  “Five and a half years,” Reece said to Mark half an hour earlier when he came in to tell them her first radiation therapy session would be the next day. “There are cases of people living that long. Is that possible?”

  “It’s always possible,” Mark said. “The odds are not good, but there are always those who beat the odds. Callie is young, she’s strong, and that puts her in a far better position than many.”

  “So she could have years?”

  Mark paused. “Where there is life, there is hope.”

  “I’m going to make it,” Callie said, with surprising strength in her voice. “I’m going to beat the odds.”

  Mark nodded. “A positive attitude is a wonderful thing. You’d be astonished at what a difference it can make, and Callie? Reece? We’re doing everything we can.”

  Lila stamps her feet in the cold and pretends that she’s having a great time, waiting in line for half an hour to get into Ye Olde Christmas Fayre at the Washington Homestead.

  Reece was originally taking the children, but when he discovered Callie was coming home Lila and Ed offered to take them instead. Callie could settle in and rest in peace and quiet, they said, ready for the children later that day.

  “Are you sure Santa’s in there?” Jack asks dubiously. “I thought he was in the North Pole getting ready for Christmas.”

  “He is. Except when he visits places to come and see kids,” Ed jumps in, seeing Lila’s panicked face. He laughs, knowing that Lila isn’t quite sure
what the Christmas story is.

  “But why does he have to come and see us?” Eliza asks. “Phebe tells him everything every night.”

  “What?” Now even Ed is completely lost.

  “Phebe. Our Elf on the Shelf.”

  Ed stares at Eliza in silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “I have been celebrating Christmas for approximately forty-six years, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Phebe is our house elf, and he flies back to the North Pole every night and reports on our behavior, so if we’re bad he tells Santa and we don’t get good Christmas gifts.”

  “And also,” Jack adds seriously, “we tell Phebe what we want for Christmas, and he tells Santa.”

  “You tell him?”

  “We write to him and he takes our letters to Santa.”

  Wow! Ed flashes a grin at Lila. It’s all got so . . . sophisticated.

  “Santa doesn’t need to come and see us because he already knows,” Eliza explains.

  “I think he probably just wants to come and see for himself,” Lila says. “Oh look! The line’s moving, and they’re giving out candy canes!” She breathes a sigh of relief, and squeezes Ed’s hand.

  While Lila has never actually celebrated Christmas herself, she is secretly a sucker for this time of year. She diligently lights the candles on the menorah every night, but spotting a lit menorah through a darkened window has never quite given her the thrill of spotting a beautifully lit Christmas tree.

  Perhaps because Christmas was forbidden to her when she was a child, it has held a romantic thrill for her throughout her entire life. Driving down Main Street is always so much more exciting when the trees are wrapped with sparkling white lights.

  Her own family would go out for Chinese every Christmas Eve, then sit down for bagels and nova on Christmas Day. At college, she would go home with Callie for the holiday, loving their Christmas meal, a hybrid of lunch and dinner, sitting down at the table at around four, and not getting up until long after nine.

  George always made a big deal of carving the turkey, and Lila will always remember how welcome they made her feel. She was never, as she thought she would feel, the token Jew, never made to feel she didn’t belong. She was welcomed as part of the family. Callie had her pile of gifts, Steffi had hers, and Lila had hers.

  Christmas was always a big deal in the Tollemache household, but what should happen this year? It is fast approaching, and there is no way that Callie will be able to do it. She and Steffi will just have to take over.

  Callie takes Christmas seriously. She doesn’t do just one tree; she has three. She has color themes in every room, giant wooden nutcrackers that are positioned outside the front door, delicate glittering snowflake ornaments that she hangs from the magnolia tree in the front yard.

  Her ornaments have been collected over the years, and she has a Christmas Eve party every year, when the eggnog and spiced rum flow, and the children string popcorn and dried cranberries to loop around the tree.

  Not this year. This year it will not be done, unless Lila does it with Steffi and Honor.

  Lila closes her eyes, just for a second, and puts out a hand to steady herself.

  Most of the time, Lila is fine. She carries the weight of sadness with her every minute of every day, but she manages.

  Most of the time she has to be fine, because in between thinking about Callie, and worrying about Callie, and caring for Callie, there is life. There is Ed, and Clay, and her work, and running her house, and speaking to clients, and grocery shopping, and doing all the things that have to be done every day.

  And then it will hit her. Like now. A wave of dizziness. And she will bury her face in her hands, or break into wrenching sobs out of nowhere, or suddenly find that she has been pushing her cart around the grocery store and the reason everyone has been looking at her with worried expressions is because she has a trail of tears trickling quietly down her cheeks that just won’t stop.

  She swallows away the lump for she is with the children and she does not want them to see her cry. Instead she puts her arms around them and squeezes them tightly, and is surprised, and delighted, that Jack, who is so often unwilling to accept embraces of any kind from anyone other than his parents, leans in to her and squeezes her back.

  Ed sits with the children at the kiddie craft table in a room at the fair and makes Christmas tree ornaments with them, and eventually persuades Lila to join in. She professes she’d prefer to be sitting downstairs drinking peppermint-flavored hot chocolate, but as soon as she picks up the glue she is, much to the children’s delight, absorbed.

  She brushes garlands of white glue onto the felt, sprinkles glitter on top and then sticks little sequins all over her Christmas tree.

  “That looks awesome!” Eliza breathes, leaning on Lila. She immediately copies exactly what Lila has done.

  From the outside, you would think that the children were absolutely fine. That the fact that their mother has been in the hospital for the past few weeks has not made any impact on their lives.

  Yet they are both more affectionate, and more receptive to affection, than Lila has ever known. Eliza has always been affectionate with her, but today she is positively clingy. And Jack was always Mr. Touch Me Not, but today he is holding her hand, letting her hug him, sitting on her lap.

  They walk around the fair, stopping to do various crafts or play games—a Christmas beanbag toss, pin the sack on the Santa—and then they join the line to go in to see Santa.

  Both children are breathless with excitement, and Lila is gratified to see they have a real Santa. No cotton-wool beard on a young boy at this fair; this Santa is in his sixties, with round, ruddy cheeks and his own long white beard. He has twinkly eyes and a big soft belly. Even Lila gasps a little. She may not celebrate Christmas, but she knows Santa when she sees him.

  Eliza turns very shy when she reaches the front, and Santa gently coaxes her in front of him. “What’s your name, pretty girl?” he asks.

  “Eliza,” she whispers.

  “And have you been good this Christmas?”

  Eliza nods.

  “What would you like for Christmas?”

  She shrugs.

  “Come now. There must be one wonderful thing you’d like from me this Christmas.”

  “Can you make my mommy better?” She looks at him hopefully.

  Santa smiles. “I can certainly try,” he says. “I can’t promise that it always works, but I’ll get my elves working on that right away. Is there anything else for you?”

  “Yes,” Eliza says, suddenly confident. “I’d like a canopy bed for my American Girl doll, please.”

  “Done,” Santa says, and they both pose for the obligatory photograph. “Tell your mom I’m working on it and I wish her well,” he says.

  Next it is Jack’s turn. He marches up to Santa and looks him square in the eye.

  “I’m Jack,” he says. “And I have a list.”

  Lila watches as Santa laughs and Jack fishes a folded and rather crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to him.

  “Do you want to tell me as well? Can you read it to me?”

  “Yes,” Jack says and he starts to read.

  Dear Santa,

  this has mistacs sorry for Christmas cod I have Think fast and talking globe junior and Mystery rock and kids build their own robot and what a opening and calling all rock hounds and look Boing what I made and what spies want and spy shot and kids command and Robbie robot and crystal clear night vision and star wars lego please love Jack

  Santa looks surprised, and Lila cracks up with laughter.

  “Jack?” she says. “What is all that stuff ?”

  “It’s in the book at home.” Jack looks up at her seriously.

  “What book?”

  “The catalogues,” Eliza chimes in. “He goes through all the mail and steals the catalogues, then draws circles around everything he wants.”

  Santa chuckles heart
ily. “Well, if there is just one thing on that list that you really couldn’t live without, what would it be?”

  Jack thinks for a minute. “Star Wars LEGO,” he says eventually.

  “Excellent choice.” Santa nods, then leans forward to whisper in Jack’s ear, “LEGOS are my favorites too,” and Jack grins delightedly from ear to ear.

  Reece is cooking dinner when Ed and Lila arrive home with the kids.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “I had the best time!” Lila says truthfully. “The kids were amazing, and it was just . . . fun. I think they loved it. I also know what they want for Christmas, just in case you are stuck.”

  “Oh God,” Reece groans as he slices mushrooms and measures polenta into a jug. “I haven’t even thought.”

  “So don’t,” Lila says. “I’ll organize everything, and I’ll enlist others to help. I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “Neither did I.” Reece grins. “But I’m learning. So far the children are big fans of my chicken teriyaki.”

  “You make chicken teriyaki?”

  “I smother chicken breasts in soy sauce and stick them on the George Foreman. Does that count?”

  “I suppose so. I’m impressed. Anything else in your repertoire?”

  “I make a mean macaroni cheese.” He gestures to the boxes of organic mac ’n’ cheese on the counter, which are waiting to be put away in the pantry. “And I’m now, slightly ambitiously, I will admit, attempting a wild mushroom polenta for the rest of us tonight.”