by Sandra Hill
That apology covered a whole lot of sins. He hoped.
But then, none of that mattered because three men walked into the restaurant, causing a stir. Everyone in the place turned or craned their necks. It was almost as if a bomb of silence hit the place, causing a momentary lull. No clatter of silverware. No shouting of orders. No hum of conversation.
The three men, who stood in the dining area, scanning the crowd, did not wear uniforms. Nor did they sport military haircuts. But it was as clear as the skies on an Outer Banks summer that these were lean, mean fighting machines of Uncle Sam. Maybe special forces. Probably Navy SEALs, he concluded when one of them spotted Wendy and waved, calling out, “Hey, Flip.”
She smiled as if she was about to be rescued by Uncle Sam’s finest.
Rescued from what?
Me?
That is just great!
The background Christmas music changed from “Jingle Bell Rock” to “Deck the Halls.”
He would like to deck something.
He had no idea what the “flip” reference was, but assumed these must be some of her houseguests. A Hispanic man with a ponytail, a baby-faced stud with the body of an extreme athlete, and an Italian- or Greek-looking guy who probably posed for statues on the side.
Shiiit!
Wendy met them halfway, giving each a warm hug of greeting. He couldn’t help but overhear their conversation from several feet away, even though the diners and wait staff resumed their business, only half eavesdropping.
“Hey, guys! I wasn’t expecting you today,” Wendy said.
“Drove all night. Geek is a maniac on the highway,” the Hispanic one told her.
“How would you know, Jam?” Baby Face/Geek countered. Jam? The guy’s name is jelly? And the other one is a geek? “You slept the whole way from Jersey. Your snores sounded like a foghorn when we crossed on those ferries.”
“Those ferries! Man, they get old fast,” contributed the Italian/Greek military god. “Is that linguine with clam sauce I see that lady eating over there? Or how about the smell of that pasta sauce? I’m starving.” He sniffed the air which was redolent of seafood and garlic and rich red sauce.
“You better not order Italian, if you’re going to eat here,” Wendy advised. “We’re having lasagna for dinner. By the way, how did you know I was here?”
“Stopped by your house. Met the senior squad. They were doing the Watusi. Man!” Baby Face/Geek winked at Wendy.
For some reason, that wink really irritated Ethan.
“Yeah, we know about the lasagna,” the Italian/Greek put in. “Elmer Fudd made me give his sauce a taste to see if it had enough Parmesan. Guess he figured that my being Italian made me an expert. It was gooood!”
That settled it, as far as this guy’s nationality. Italian. And what was that about Elmer Fudd? Oh, he must mean that little bald guy who recently moved into the house.
“Babe,” the Hispanic jam dude said to Wendy, “those churches out there on the square are seriously amazing. I can’t wait to explore.”
Ethan was even more irritated at the endearment and wondered why a Navy SEAL would be so interested in churches.
“Forget the holier-than-thou crap, Father Mendozo. I can’t wait to get in some winter surfing,” Baby Face/Geek said.
“You’ll freeze your balls off, idiot,” the Italian said.
“Yeah.” Baby Face smiled as if that were a good thing.
Ethan found himself studying the three men, wondering which, if any of them, was Wendy’s lover. Considering the way times had changed—the way Wendy had changed—maybe they all were. There was a thought to pierce his heart.
Just then the two churches and the town hall clock did their bell thing, tolling once, twice, in succession, each a different tone thanks to the Bell Forge craftsmen.
The three men stopped talking and listened. Then, as one, they said, “Cool!”
On that note, Ethan left.
Wendy never even noticed.
Fatherly advice . . .
Wendy watched with a heavy heart as Ethan walked away.
This has to stop.
Now!
I’ve come too far to let a man . . . any man . . . that man . . . turn my life upside down . . . again.
She settled the guys in at the restaurant and told them she would meet them back at the house. Before she left, JAM squeezed her arm and asked in a soft voice, “Is he the one?”
“The one what?” she replied, walking toward the door, not bothering to wait for his answer. Behind her, she heard him say to the other two, “Yeah, he’s the one.”
JAM caught up with her outside the restaurant and said, “I’m not really hungry. Mind if I walk with you?”
She shook her head.
At first, they just walked in silence. Here and there, people would recognize her and shout out.
“Hey, Wendy! Merry Christmas! Glad to see you home.”
That was Mr. Baxter from the hardware store. Lordy, what was he doing with that hairstyle?
“Merry Christmas, Wendy! Are you coming to the bell concert?” Mrs. Jeffers, the church bell choir director at St. Andrew’s, asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Wendy said, remembering how she’d played in the handbell choir from a very young age. It was a rite of passage for all children in Bell Cove. How proud she’d been at her very first recital when she’d successfully completed her first public tremolo, the gentle swaying of a bell, being careful to rest the bell on her shoulder when not playing. How proud her parents had been, sitting in the front row. Mother in her red coat, Daddy in his favorite tweed jacket and Christmas bow tie.
Francine Henderson waved from the front display window of her beauty shop, Styles & Smiles. Wendy had known Francine all her life, although she was a few years younger. At first, Wendy was puzzled by the odd orangish tint to the skin of two older women with gray-blue “helmet” hairstyles who walked out, announced by the distinctive tinkle of the doorbell—every home and business in Bell Cove had its own unique doorbell sound—but then she noticed the poster taped to the glass door which read, “Spray Tans, Reduced Price Today.”
She and JAM exchanged glances and smiled.
All the streetlights were shaped like bells, as she’d told everyone back at the Wet and Wild on that fateful night. They hung from highly polished brass poles, tied with red ribbons. In the gazebo in the center of the square, a perfectly shaped Fraser Fir with fairy lights would draw carolers at nighttime. A donation from Rutledge Tree Farm? Probably. At least it wasn’t one of those Charlie Brown lookalikes, though who was she to judge?
JAM watched everything with interest, and people watched him . . . a stranger to this small town. And an interesting one, at that. He wore a lined windbreaker with the U.S. Navy logo on the back over faded jeans and flat-heeled boots. Black hair was pulled off his Hispanic-featured face.
“Let’s go in,” he suggested when they came to Our Lady by the Sea Catholic Church.
She hesitated, not having attended church much in recent years. “Sure,” she said, and was glad she’d agreed once they entered.
It was a beautiful church, especially at Christmastime with dozens of poinsettias adorning the steps leading up to the altar and sprays of evergreens attached to the ends of all the pews. Two large Christmas trees stood at either side of the communion rail, behind which was a large Nativity scene with painted statues of Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men, and shepherds, minus the Christ child which would be placed in the manger at Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. Up above, in the loft, the choir was practicing for the upcoming services, a clear-toned, poignant version of “Silent Night.” Candles burned on side altars honoring various saints, filling the air with a heavy scent of cloves and a foreign essence, as only church incenses seemed to do. What were the spices that the Wise Men had carried? Frankincense and myrrh. Could it be a combination of those? Probably not.
Wendy sat on a bench at the back, watching as JAM walked up to the rail, knelt, made the sign of the cr
oss, and bowed his head. What a strange contradiction he was! A former priest—or at least a seminarian at one time—who was a fierce, focused warrior when in battle. She wondered—but would never ask unless he volunteered, for fear it would sound judgmental—how he came to join the special forces, after being in such a seemingly pacifist place.
When a young priest came out of the sacristy, he paused and stared at JAM for a moment, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit. Then he approached JAM, who stood, and they conversed quietly for a few moments, after which they shook hands, and the priest blessed him by making a cross in the air in front of JAM’s face.
“I love churches,” JAM said as they walked out. “The look of them, the smell of them, the feel of them. Big, small, all denominations. No matter the architecture. But especially the old ones with stained glass windows and wood that reeks of ancient mysteries. Whether a person believes in God or not, they can’t deny the peace of a church, the sense of welcome and open arms.” He glanced at her to see if she shared his opinion, not at all embarrassed by his long discourse which had been a little bit preachy. That’s how JAM was, open and honest, always.
“Do you ever regret leaving the church?” That question didn’t seem quite so intrusive as her earlier wondering about the dichotomy of peacemaker/killer.
“Oh, I’ve never left the church. Just the priesthood. No. No regrets.” He paused then before asking, “How about you, Flip? Regrets? Do you wish you hadn’t come back here?”
They were walking as they talked, headed out of the town center, toward the residential area. She thought before answering. “No, I don’t regret coming home. It had to be done. Too many loose ends that I’ve ignored for years.”
He nodded, as if he understood.
“Trite as it may sound, I need closure,” she continued. “About so many things.”
Another nod, but then he asked, “Including Tall, Dark, and Broody back there?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He arched a brow.
She thought about saying nothing, but then she gave him a brief version of their history leading to their breakup and Beth Anne’s pregnancy, concluding at the end, “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in the way I left Bell Cove twelve years ago, without getting all the details. Not about what had happened. No, that had been crystal clear. But I suspect that’s the reason for Ethan’s bitterness toward me, that I didn’t give him time to work things out. Why should I have? The jerk!” She sighed deeply before summing up the situation, from her viewpoint. “Ethan and I had been a couple practically from kindergarten. We loved each other. Deeply. I know, everyone thinks their love is the best, the most unique, but ours truly was. Everyone remarked on it. But then, like I said, Ethan got a girl pregnant the summer following our high school graduation. End of story.”
JAM pretended to be playing the violin. “So, he fell in love with someone else. Happens all the time, Flip. To both men and women. That’s what country music is all about, ‘he done her wrong’ songs. Nothing new.”
“No, I’m not making myself clear, apparently. It wasn’t like that for Ethan. It was a one-night stand following a party. He didn’t love Beth Anne, at least he hadn’t back then, but he was going to marry her to give the baby a name. ‘A horrible, stupid mistake,’ he said in apology to me, but not to worry, the marriage would be a ‘technicality.’ Seriously, that’s what he’d said it would be. Marriage as a temporary solution that would be corrected in nine months, give or take.”
“Dumb schmuck!” JAM concluded.
“Yep,” she agreed, although she kind of resented JAM classifying him as such. “The shotgun wedding, without the weapon . . . the old-fashioned notion of ‘having to get married.’ I probably could have forgiven the lapse in judgment, but the marriage . . . ?” She shook her head vehemently. “Never.”
“Now that’s where I disagree, with you and my own church. Unlike the old days, priests today are told to discourage couples from marrying just because the woman is pregnant. I, on the other hand, know what it’s like to grow up illegitimate, and, when a child is involved, I vote for doing what’s best for the kid.”
Wendy wasn’t about to get involved in an argument about marriage and children. And, actually, she wasn’t sure she disagreed with JAM. “In the end, all our plans went up in smoke. We had planned to attend UNC that fall, he in a pre-veterinarian program, me in pre-med. We would be married the summer following our sophomore year and continue our studies through med schools. Eventually we’d come back to the Outer Banks to practice. Have three children . . . two girls and a boy. And live happily ever after. Instead, I ran away and never looked back, well, hardly ever. So much for all our beautiful plans!” She laughed, or tried to.
“Silly girl!” He looped an arm over her shoulder and tugged her close for a hug. “Don’t you know that the only time God laughs is when He hears us humans talk about our plans?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that nothing happens to us in this world except what God plans for us. Doesn’t mean we have no choice, but the Great Master Planner has the last word. I know, that sounded really preachy.”
She laughed because that’s just the word she thought of earlier. “Yeah, it did.”
He shrugged. “You can take the boy out of the choir, but you can’t take the choir out of the boy.”
“Are you really the guy who supposedly spent three days of your last liberty in a Tijuana motel with Salina Gonzalez, the Spanish soap star?”
“What’s your point?”
She shook her head, as if he were hopeless, and laughed. “Honestly, are you saying everything that happened with me and Ethan was meant to be?”
“I have no idea. And who am I to stick my nose into your private affairs?”
“Yeah, right. Like your nose isn’t already dripping wet!” She elbowed him to show she hadn’t been offended. “Give it to me straight.”
“You asked for it. ‘In for a penny, in for a peso,’ as my Nonna used to say. I haven’t done any counseling for years, but if I were foolish enough to tell you what to do, there are things I would want to know first.”
“Like?”
He proceeded to shoot out one question after another:
“Did he ever try to make some other arrangement with this woman regarding the baby?”
“Are you sure the girl was pregnant at that time?”
“Did he try to find you after you left?”
“How soon did he marry?”
“Was he married in the church?”
“Did he ever get a divorce?”
To each of his questions, she replied, “I don’t know.”
In conclusion, he said, “Someone needs a little closure.”
“Jeesh! That’s what I told you to begin with. Some priestly advisor you are!”
“I’m better at giving advice as a SEAL.”
“And what advice would that be?”
“Fuck the guy’s brains out for a day or two and see what happens.”
At least she was laughing by the time they got home.
Chapter 8
Where’s there a cave when a grinch needs one? . . .
Ethan didn’t talk much on the short trip to Bell Forge. At first.
Luckily, Laura and Tony didn’t question him about his black mood.
Unluckily, all they wanted to talk about was that stupid grinch contest.
“Did you guys see the NBX Morning Show?” Laura asked from the passenger seat in his Lexus. “Our grinch contest was the highlight segment.”
Ethan hadn’t, but he’d heard about it. All morning.
—On the radio coming back from the mainland, where he’d overseen another load of bundled trees going out on a sweet reorder from the DixieMart chain.
—When he’d stopped at Gus’s Gas & Goods for a cup of coffee.
—At his local tree lot, where he’d helped his workers unload another two hundred and fifty trees from the mainland farm.
Business was booming, he
was busy, and he didn’t have time, or the interest, for all this crap. Not that anyone asked his opinion on the subject. If they did, he’d probably earn another vote.
Tony, who was in the backseat, leaning forward between the two of them on propped elbows, said, “Yeah, I saw it, Laura. You looked great in the interview, especially when you talked about the history of Bell Cove, and how it was important to maintain the town’s historic integrity, like the bell street lighting, with proceeds from this contest. Was Sam hitting on you?”
“A little, but you’re right. This is a great publicity stunt for Bell Cove.”
That’s exactly what it was—a stunt!—if you asked Ethan. Which nobody did.
“My phone’s been ringing all morning,” Laura told them excitedly. “Media wanting to schedule interviews. People asking if we’re planning any special events around the grinch crowning on Christmas Eve. We should call for an emergency council meeting ASAP to plan some activities.”
I’ll match your ASAP with my NCIH, as in No Chance in Hell! No more council meetings before Christmas!
“Right,” Tony, the love-struck suck-up, agreed. “And, if we’re going to be bringing more tourists into town . . . the kind we like, the day-trippers who spend the day, spend money, and then go home . . . all the businesses in town should offer things related to the contest. Like, I could add a new menu item. Whoville Crab Hash, for example. Or Cindy Lou Bread Pudding.”
That was all the incentive Laura needed to go off on a tear. “Maybe Monique’s Boutique could get in a special order of grinch-type clothing. And Bob’s Butcher Bin would do a bonanza in business if it advertised Christmas Roast Beast. Frank could change the sign on the sleds he’s selling at his hardware store to be grinch sleighs, or something. And I bet someone,” Laura looked pointedly at Ethan, “could whip up some grinchy mistletoe wreaths.”
I wouldn’t, but my grandmother probably would. And what is grinch mistletoe anyhow? The kind that made a person kick someone, instead of kiss them? Ethan felt like he’d fallen into some Wizard of Oz garden hole of craziness, or rather a Whoville garden hole of craziness. At least it’s taking my mind off Wendy. For the moment. Still, I wonder if she stayed to have lunch with her Navy buddies. I wonder what she thought of me. Hell, I wonder if she’s thought of me at all these past twelve years. Should I call and ask her to meet me for a drink or a cup of coffee? Not to start something . . . hell, no! Just to clear the air and all that. Be grown-up about what happened all those years ago. Maybe even—