by Susan Wiggs
He halfway believed it would be her as he swung the door open with a big smile on his face.
“Surprise!” his parents said in unison.
Oh, boy. “Barb. Larry. What are you doing here?” he asked.
“We wanted to see you. And it’s been so long since we’ve visited Avalon. I’d forgotten how Christmasy this place is.” She was beautiful as ever, his mother, with her hair in a stylish cut, wearing an expensive-looking dress coat and leather boots that matched her narrow belt. Yet when she looked up at him, he was tempted to believe the tears pooling in her eyes and the slight trembling of her mouth. His father, looking younger than a guy in his fifties, offered a hearty hug and then a handshake.
“Your mother’s right, son,” he declared. “Too damn long.”
“Impulse decision,” Barb added. “We’ve come to spend Christmas with you.”
Nonononono. “Uh…yeah. About that—”
“Don’t worry, we won’t be any trouble at all.” His parents blustered inside, bringing a gust of cold air with them. “We’re staying at the Inn at Willow Lake—adorable place, do you know it? Maureen set it all up for us.”
“Maureen? How do you know Maureen? What’s she got to do with this?”
“She came by and introduced herself. She had a library meeting in Seaview, and took the time to call and introduce herself. We think she’s wonderful, Eddie, so sincere and full of ideas.”
Eddie tried to be as false as they were. He tried to say, “Thanks for coming” or “I’m glad you’re here.” But when he opened his mouth, the words that came out were, “Calling you—the invitation—that was all Maureen Davenport’s idea? I had no idea what she was planning.”
His mother gave his arm a squeeze. “I’ll remember to thank her again after the performance Christmas Eve,” she said. “She seems like a wonderful girl.”
“Everybody thinks so,” Eddie said, wondering what the hell she could have been thinking.
“Did you know she was one of the original Christmas Belles?” asked Barb.
“What?”
She handed him a cellophane-wrapped CD. “We brought this for you. Her name’s right there on the list of singers—Maureen Davenport. Isn’t it wonderful that she was in the group that did such a beautiful rendition of your signature song?”
“That’s not my—good God. That is not my signature song. I don’t have a signature song, but if I did, that wouldn’t be it.”
“Well. No need to get huffy,” his mother said. “Anyway, back to Maureen. As I was saying, we think she’s wonderful. The three of us put our heads together right then and there, and arranged the whole thing. As a surprise for you. Are you surprised?”
He forced his mouth into a smile. “You bet. Totally surprised.”
“It’s wonderful to be back in Avalon after all these years,” his mother said. She aimed a fond look at his father. “Do you remember the first time we came here, Larry? We were just kids, and our families came to spend time at Camp Kioga.”
Larry’s eyes glowed as he looked at her. “How could I forget? Back in the day, it was a camp for whole families to get away from the city heat in summer. Your grandma and grandpa Haven performed at camps all over the area, but Camp Kioga was their favorite.” His expression warmed as he gazed at his wife. “Ours, too.”
His parents were each other’s best friend. Married at eighteen, they’d practically raised each other. It was kind of incredible that they were still together, but in spite of their lives, which seemed to change completely every decade with out fail, there was a steadfastness about them. Sure, they’d been clueless about the real world, both of them having come of age in the murky chaos of show business. They hadn’t always made the best choices, particularly when it came to their son. But there was never any question that they loved each other.
“We’re so pleased you changed your mind about Christmas,” his mother said. “And that Maureen. I can’t praise her enough. What a lovely young lady.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, “she’s lovely, all right.”
He was seething as he drove to the church for rehearsal, but in the press of activities, he had no chance to confront her. Two days before the performance, a zillion things went wrong—sick kids, a snowstorm, and the pièce de résistance, the discovery that all the costumes had been destroyed in storage—sprayed with a toxic chemical or insecticide—and were now unwearable. Maureen looked like she was on the verge of a meltdown. After a completely lame run-through, most everyone had cleared out for the night.
Eddie spotted her in the sanctuary, sitting and staring at the half-completed stage set. She looked up at him, and for a moment he wanted to forget what she’d done. Or better yet, he wanted to pretend it didn’t hurt. She was so damned… nice. Sincere. But she’d shown a new side of herself, a side he couldn’t trust. His anger must have been apparent, because she immediately shifted away from him, a question in her eyes.
“You brought my parents here.” He leaned his hip on a seat back and glared down at her.
“I invited them,” she clarified. “They came on their own.”
“They came because of you,” he snapped.
“No,” she told him quietly. “Because of you.”
“Jesus, Maureen, I told you the way it was for me. There’s a reason I don’t spend Christmas with my folks. I thought you’d figured that out.”
“Families should be together at Christmas,” she said, her expression turning mutinous, reminding him of the uptight, judgmental woman he’d locked horns with at the beginning of the season.
“Every family can’t be as perfect as yours for the holidays,” he said.
“Perfect?” She looked incredulous. “Is that what you think of my family?”
Pretty much, he thought, picturing Hannah and Maureen’s dad, the siblings, nieces and nephews. “You had no right to interfere.”
“I just thought—”
“No, Maureen, you didn’t think. You had this idealized vision in your head about the way you want Christmas to be, and the rest of the world is supposed to conform to that vision. Well, guess what? It doesn’t work that way.”
“It will never work if you don’t try.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate, with this program tomorrow night and the library?” he demanded. “Tell you what. Let’s just get through the show, and after that, you won’t have to deal with me anymore, or try to fix my family. Will that make you happy?”
“You don’t care about making me happy,” she stated simply. “I don’t expect you to. That’s not your job. Just like it’s not my job to fix whatever’s going on with you and your family. I simply invited them. Everyone is welcome on Christmas Eve.” She slid out of her seat, taking care not to brush against him as she passed by, and walked away with a curious dignity.
Eddie clenched his jaw to keep from calling out to her. It was better this way, he thought. Better not to take this any further than it had already gone, because it wasn’t going to end up anywhere good. He was an idiot for thinking he could have something with a woman like Maureen, a woman who was so grounded, so enmeshed in the life of her community and family. They’d never make it, the two of them. Why the hell would he want to be with someone who held up a mirror to his flaws?
He stalked to his van and jumped in, and drove home too fast, the rear tires fishtailing on the snowy road. On his door step, a parcel was waiting for him, marked Special Delivery. He took it inside and opened the box. A small envelope with a card in it indicated the gift was from Your friends at Silver Creek Productions, the company that had produced the original Christmas Caper movie and the new DVD. Apparently, it was the top-selling DVD in the country, earning him a hefty bonus. Fishing through a sea of packing foam, he pulled out a magnum of champagne, already pre-chilled from having sat on the stoop.
All of his senses leaped. He remembered champagne. Did he ever. Like drinking the stars, as Dom Perignon had termed it.
Twenty
On the day before Christmas, Daisy was ready for the train trip downstate, to spend the night at the O’Donnells’. For little Charlie’s sake, she needed to cultivate a good relationship with his paternal grandparents, and what better way to do that than to share the holidays with them? She’d told her own family farewell, getting a strange lump in her throat even though the trip with Logan and Charlie was only going to be an overnight affair. “It’s just that this particular night is special,” she said to Charlie as she double-checked the inventory of his massive diaper bag. “I’ve never been away from my family on Christmas before. It feels like kind of a big deal, if you want to know the truth.”
“Yep,” said the toddler, eliciting a smile from her.
“It’s a rite of passage, I suppose you could say. This marks a transition for me, from being a kid with a kid to being an adult on my own. Spending the holidays away from my family means I’m truly on my own, right?”
“Yep,” Charlie said again.
“And that’s not such a bad thing,” she added, folding the stroller and leaning it by the front door. Sometimes she had the strangest sensation that she was living a make-believe life, a life that was in a holding pattern until…until what?
She reminded herself of her blessings—that always helped. She was blessed by the support of her family, both material and emotional, and blessed, especially by Charlie himself. Although she had nothing to compare him to, she considered him to be an easy baby. What that meant, as far as she could tell, was a baby who ate well and slept a lot and rarely got sick.
Charlie had always been a pretty good eater, and he didn’t usually put up a fuss about sleeping. Actually, he did at night, except when it was with Daisy, snuggled up against her like a warm puppy. And that, of course, was controversial. One school of thought declared that a baby should never be allowed in his mother’s bed or he’d never learn to be independent. Another school insisted just the opposite—that a baby was designed for sleeping with his mother. The security he derived from the closeness would make him a well-adjusted person later in life. Daisy found herself subscribing to both schools, depending on her mood.
At the moment, he was using foam blocks to build some kind of structure. There was a knock at the door, and his face bloomed with a smile.
“Daddeee!” Charlie abandoned his blocks and lunged for the door.
Daisy swept the room with a glance, which was the only sweeping she would do today. As usual the house was littered with toys, schoolbooks, unopened mail, clutter. How did people with little kids keep their houses picked up? she wondered. How did they have time to do anything else?
She went and unlocked the door, having learned the hard way to keep it bolted at all times. When Charlie had first started walking a year ago, he’d let himself out in subzero temperatures. She’d turned her back for like two seconds, and off he went. Her only indication that something was amiss had been an icy gust of winter air. That was the thing about a baby. When things went wrong, they went wrong fast. There was very little room for error.
For a supposedly smart person, she’d done plenty of crazy things. And the craziest of all was walking through the door right now.
“Hey, Logan,” she said.
He entered the house on a blast of fresh, cold air. “Hey, yourself.”
“Dad. Dad. Dad.” Exhibiting pure elation, Charlie clung to Logan’s leg, looking pleadingly upward, his head lolling back like an angel gazing up at heaven.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” Logan peeled off his gloves, then picked him up. “How are you, little guy?”
“’Kay, big guy.”
Logan beamed at him, then got busy zipping him into his snowsuit.
Daisy stood back, warmed by their mutual admiration. It was hard to believe just three years before, she and Logan had been a couple of rebel teens, parking caution at the door and having careless sex one crazy weekend.
Now here they were, a family.
And that, thought Daisy, was enough. She had no reason to complain and no business wishing for something else.
Every once in a while, she felt a twinge of what-if.
She’d look at her best friend and stepsister, Sonnet, a brainiac preparing for a career in international relations, and think, What if I’d done better in school? Or she’d look at her cousins, Olivia and Jenny, now both blissfully married, and she’d think, What if I’d let myself fall in love before having a baby? She knew regrets were a slow poison, but sometimes they sneaked in, particularly with regard to her love life. Or lack thereof.
Her heart had been captured but that didn’t mean she was free to follow it. She’d given up that option in one wild weekend with Logan O’Donnell. Still, she couldn’t quite manage to shield herself from all the what-ifs that bombarded her at vulnerable moments. And at the center of every what-if question was Julian Gastineaux.
Daisy forced herself to shake off the thought which struck her, as such thoughts always seemed to do, when she was with Logan. What was up with that? She had to figure out a way to quit yearning for something out of her reach.
“All set?” asked Logan, scooping up the baby. “Let’s roll.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie.
Daisy shouldered the diaper bag, which had expanded to the size of a Winnebago. She went around making sure all the windows were locked tight. Even though she’d only be gone overnight, it felt as though she was leaving forever. Silly, she thought, swallowing another twinge of regret. Then she grabbed the folded stroller and followed Logan outside, double-locking the door behind her.
Charlie would be in heaven, she reminded herself on the way to the train station. And when he was happy, so was she. That was really what governed her choices as a mother. They drove to the station and reversed the packing-up process. Traveling with a toddler was labor intensive, to say the least. “This is how the pioneers must’ve felt, loading up to head west,” she said, brushing crumbs out of the stroller seat.
“He’s just a guy with a lot of gear,” Logan said good-naturedly. He strapped the baby in the stroller, hooked their other bags onto the back of the apparatus and pushed it toward the terminal. Daisy ducked into the ladies’ room. She stood in front of a mirror for several minutes, trying not to panic. Tonight was going to be fine, she told herself. Absolutely fine. Thanks to Charlie, the O’Donnells had warmed up to her. They’d gone from refusing to see or acknowledge the baby to sincere, gooey grandparent-hood. Logan’s sisters doted on Charlie, too. Daisy was simply going to have a different kind of Christmas this year, surrounded by a different family—one she didn’t belong to except through the most haphazard of ties. Still, this evening was going to be all right. She’d be so busy with the festivities, she wouldn’t let herself wish she could be at the Christmas pageant at Heart of the Mountains Church. She’d be going to midnight mass with the O’Donnells, a first for her. She’d feel like an anthropologist studying an exotic culture.
All right, she thought. Deep breath.
She dabbed at her face with a damp paper towel and headed up to the platform. It was harder than she had anticipated to climb the stairs to the southbound platform, away from Avalon and her family on Christmas Eve. At the head of the steps, she spotted a girl in raspberry-colored tights, trendy boots and a short plaid skirt, flirting with Logan and ogling Charlie. Yes, she was totally flirting. Although Daisy herself was out of practice, she still remembered the body language. You leaned in, tilted your head adorably, maybe even touched a finger to your lips. If there was a baby present, as there was in this case, you appealed to its cuteness, knowing it would only enhance your own charm. The flirting girl was gorgeous and made the most of it. She looked the way most girls only dreamed about—as if she’d stepped from the pages of a magazine.
Daisy felt a twinge of—okay, here it was—pure, green-hot jealousy. Although she tried telling herself not to be jealous of some girl flirting with Logan, she couldn’t deny the feeling. Maybe—rationalizing here—her discomfiture grew out of concern for C
harlie. Suppose Logan took up with someone who didn’t like kids? That would be totally unacceptable.
Oh, Daisy, she thought. Quit being a control freak.
She sauntered over to Logan. “Hey, guys,” she said. Okay, maybe she leaned a little closer to Logan than she normally would. Maybe the smile she aimed at the girl on the platform was vaguely territorial, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Have a good Christmas,” the girl said, taking a step back.
“Sure, same to you,” Logan replied, affable as ever. After the girl left, he explained, “Somebody from my poli-sci class.” Then he studied Daisy’s face. “Something wrong?”
She felt her cheeks flush. “No. Why do you ask?”
“You were giving that girl the stinkeye.”
“Is that what it looked like?”
“That’s what it was.”
“She was totally hitting on you,” Daisy said.
He seemed genuinely surprised. “Nah. It was Charlie she liked. The kid’s a babe magnet.” Apparently done with the subject, he unbuckled Charlie and freed him from the stroller. Daisy allowed it because, number one, she was trying to be less of a control freak and number two, it was a long trip to the city and the kid needed to work off his excess energy.
Logan and Charlie played their signature game on the platform, which Daisy had termed their running-around game. Basically it consisted of Charlie running in circles, giggling hysterically, with Logan in hot pursuit, making the occasional threatening growl. It had absolutely no point other than to amuse Charlie. Daisy took it as yet another sign she was doing the right thing this Christmas. Charlie, playing so joyously with his father, was having the time of his life, and that was what mattered. Since he’d had no nap so far today, he tired quickly. Within a few minutes, Logan had buckled him back into the stroller and tucked a blanket around him, and Charlie had nodded off.
“Score,” said Daisy. “Good job, Logan.”