Quilted by Christmas (9781426796142)

by Bailey, Jodie

  9

  So, what are you thinking?” Rachel’s voice had the tone only her voice could have. Cute and cheerleader without being the least bit cloying, even at twenty-nine. The girl had never known a bad day.

  Taryn shut the cabinet door and sighed, feeling like a lifetime of bad days. This had to stop. Maybe it was all of the cloudy weather and the unseasonable amount of snow flurries. Seasonal affective disorder, maybe. It couldn’t possibly be Jemma in the hospital and Justin peeking into her life, bringing up all of the things she’d managed to, if not forget, at least shove aside. “I’m thinking tuna and,” she peeked into her fridge, “yogurt. Likely mixed together.”

  “You just dropped two notches below disgusting.”

  “I know. But I forgot to go to the grocery store this weekend, what with everything going on, so I’m pretty much down to the basics.” The days had fallen into a routine. Work. Visit Jemma. Come home, grade papers, and sew Rachel’s quilt. Food was pretty low on the priority list.

  “It’s Wednesday. Rita’s serving pork chops at the grill in town. She doesn’t close ’til eight. Get your coat, walk two blocks, and have some real food. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten a decent meal since Saturday.”

  True, but Taryn wouldn’t give her cousin the satisfaction of saying so.

  “Speaking of which,” the phone rustled as though Rachel shifted, “how is Jemma today? I meant to get over there this afternoon, but I wound up with an emergency session.”

  “She’s ruling the roost. Got the nurses hopping to her bidding and thinking it’s a privilege to do so.”

  Rachel laughed. “I think Jemma is going to be just fine.”

  It was infectious. “Yeah. When I left, she had talked them into bringing her an extra dessert and tea in her little bedside pitcher instead of water.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hey, listen.” Rachel paused as a microwave beeped across the line. “Ethan and I are chilling out tonight. Mark’s on duty at the fire station in Dalton, and Mom and Dad are at church. Ethan refused to nap at preschool today, and I wasn’t about to foist him on whoever had the nursery tonight. We’re feasting on leftover squash, corn, and pot roast. Come over, and we’ll watch a movie after he goes to bed.” There was a crash and a squeal. “Which will be soon.”

  It sounded so tempting. Time with Rachel, not sitting in her own quiet house with too much time in her head, but there was a ton of quilt work to do. “Can’t. I skipped church tonight to sew, and I can’t give up the time.”

  “Sew? Did I hear you right? Since when did you take up sewing?”

  Taryn winced. She needed more sleep if she was going to keep the filter on her mouth tight. How should she answer? “Jemma had a quilt special ordered. She needed help getting it done in time.” True enough.

  “Gotcha. Need a hand?”

  Definitely not. If Jemma found out Rachel had laid one second of work into her own quilt . . . “I’m good.” She wasn’t, but she couldn’t say so. At the rate things were going, it would take four hands to get this thing done in time.

  Someone rapped at her front door. “Who in the world?”

  “What?” Rachel spoke louder over another Ethan squeal in the background.

  “Stay with me a second. I’ve got someone knocking.”

  “Probably Marnie wanting to know how Jemma is.”

  “Nope. She was at the hospital when I left.” Taryn reached for the corner of the curtain in the den and peeked out.

  Justin’s truck sat behind her small SUV in the driveway.

  Something wiggled in her stomach. Hunger. It had to be hunger. “It’s Justin.”

  “Treat him nice, Tar.” Rachel hung up before Taryn could ask what she meant.

  Justin knocked again. “I can see you peeking out the curtain. You can’t pretend you’re not home.”

  Taryn jerked the door open so fast, Justin took a step back. She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms, aiming for a nonchalance she was pretty sure she couldn’t hit. “Stalker much?”

  “Am I coming across like one?” For the first time since Friday night, he looked less than confident. “Seriously?”

  “Depends on why you’re here.”

  “I brought pizza.” He reached over to the rocking chair by the door and produced a thin box. “Ham and pineapple.”

  He remembered. “Keep talking.”

  “And,” Justin passed the pizza to her and dug into his front pocket, producing a small, silver object. “A thimble.”

  “I have a thimble.” If she deliberately misunderstood him, maybe he’d let her keep the pizza and leave. It was best for them both, even though the thought of him retreating and backing his red truck out of her driveway left her heart feeling even emptier than her stomach.

  “It’s mine, McKenna. I promised to help, remember?”

  Taryn was powerless. Old habits died hard, and the old habit of hanging out with Justin, of being friends with him, took over the new truth. This friendship was probably dangerous. She stepped aside. “You’re just in time. I was about to see how peach yogurt would work in tuna salad.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Justin stomped his work boots off on the mat and stepped through the door, instantly shrinking the small living room just by stepping foot on the beige carpet. He leaned down and pulled his boots off, setting them outside on the porch. “You know, I’ve never seen the inside of this house before, even though you talked about it forever when we were kids.”

  “Well, this is it.” Taryn slid the pizza onto the end table and walked to the fireplace to flip on the gas logs. She needed distance. It felt too normal, him showing up unannounced with food. It had happened a hundred times before. He had a way of making it feel like time and circumstances had never changed, of making her want to sink into the fairy tale and pretend everything could go back to the way it used to be.

  “How’s Jemma?” Draping his work jacket over the back of the chair next to the door, Justin stepped cautiously toward the middle of the room. “I like the little bit of orange in the paint. Just enough to make it warm and not white, but not enough to make it a creamsicle.”

  “You are way too much of a girl.”

  “No.” He grinned. “It’s my job. Dad’s had me work on quite a few remodels in the past. Fixing to start one now down in Dalton, one of the old mill houses by the river. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in paint colors the past few days. Between Jemma’s roof and this remodel, I haven’t been able to get over here sooner. But I did get the patches on the roof finished today. She’ll still want a reroofing in the spring, but it’s tight ’til then.”

  “You’re finished?” This explained his mysterious absence. “And there’s another job since the roof is done? Awesome.” Her smile couldn’t be helped. “As for Jemma, she’s the same. They set the break in her arm yesterday, but they’re keeping her for a few more days. She was ornery about it today because White Christmas is on TV Saturday night, and it’s our tradition to pop popcorn, shut off the lights, and watch it together. The cable at the hospital doesn’t get the channel.”

  “It’s a bummer she’ll miss it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She told you why they’re taking all of these precautions yet?”

  “Nope, but I talked to the doctor long enough to figure out it’s definitely something with her heart condition. They were worried the anesthesia wouldn’t play nice with it.”

  “She’ll come around and tell you when she’s ready.” Justin took a step back and scooped the pizza box off the small end table. “Kitchen?”

  “This way.” Taryn headed for the short hallway leading to the back of the house, floor creaking with each step. “I’ll take you back. I think I can only offer you water to drink, though. And we can eat out here. Maybe we can catch the weather and see if they’re forecasting for Christmas yet.” Something about eating at her tiny kitchen table with him felt more intimate than it should.

  “I do
ubt it. You’ve still got two weeks.” His stockinged feet thudded lightly on the carpet behind her as she headed up the hallway. “Still holding out hope for a white one, huh?”

  “Always.” Did he have to remember everything about her? And did he have to be so nice? She popped open a cabinet door and pulled down two glasses. All it did was remind her how, unless she told the truth, he could never be hers. But if she told him the truth, he wouldn’t want to be hers, anyway.

  * * *

  “And he screamed like a little girl.” Justin leaned back in the recliner and laughed at the memory only he could see.

  Taryn bit back a laugh of her own. “Dude. You put a snake in the man’s sleeping bag. That’s the opposite of funny. It’s like, death, it’s so not funny.”

  “The snake was dead when I found it.” Justin’s laughter took over again.

  “Okay, but your battle buddy or whatever you called him didn’t know it was dead.” The last word tore on a giggle. It was so infectious, the way Justin laughed, with his head back and his brown eyes crinkled. She’d forgotten how nobody could keep a straight face around a Justin who got tickled by one of his own jokes. Just like when he was a kid. How come it’s raining today? How come? Because all of the clouds had to go potty!

  Boys.

  “Aw, once he got over the fright, he laughed too. What wasn’t so funny was the team leader catching us and making us do extra duty the next day. But it was worth it. And two days later,” he sat up and reached for the quilt row he’d set to the side when he started his story, “there was a dead scorpion in my bunk.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah.” His voice trailed off as he went back to pushing needle through fabric, sans the thimble he’d decided two hours ago was just not worth the effort, or the humiliation when Taryn had threatened to take his picture.

  Taryn stitched three or four stitches and stopped, watching Justin work. He looked almost comical, his work-hardened muscles hunched over a quilt square, but here he sat, two hours in at almost ten at night, helping her.

  No. Helping Jemma. He was here because he was helping Jemma. This had nothing to do with Taryn.

  “What?” He kept urging needle through fabric, never looking up.

  “Huh?”

  “I can feel you looking at me. What’s up?” He snapped a thread, then reached for the spool on the floor beside his chair without looking at her.

  “You miss it, don’t you?”

  He threaded the needle and sewed a handful of stitches, his eyebrows drawn together, before he finally stopped and looked up. “Yeah. I do. Parts of it.”

  “Like?”

  “Brotherhood. Having a cause to fight for. Excitement.” He shrugged. “Jumping out of airplanes for fun and paycheck.”

  “So why leave? You could have stayed in. There’s nothing here in North Carolina for you, right?” Taryn bit the tip of her tongue. It sounded like she was fishing with her question, and maybe some part of her was. She slapped it partway into hiding in the back corner of her brain.

  Justin eyed her, his face unreadable. “You don’t know?”

  Why was it suddenly hard to swallow? She reached for the abandoned and cold cup of coffee beside her and swigged bitter chill. “Know what?”

  “My dad.” Gone were the laughter and the teasing.

  Taryn’s heart jolted. “What’s wrong with your dad?” If something had happened to Justin’s father . . . She was sure she couldn’t take any more bad news, not with Jemma being all mysterious from her hospital bed.

  “He found out earlier this year he has Parkinson’s.”

  “Justin, no.” Taryn’s hands fell to her lap, the needle pricking her palm. She jerked it away and inspected for blood. Not Justin’s dad. In her memory, he was so tall, so strong, like Justin. Always in motion, always helping, hauling around construction material like three men lived inside him. And always, always smiling. “You’re just like your dad.” It seemed odd to think of it now, but seeing Justin more mature made the connection to present and past clearer than ever.

  “I hope so.” It was said with more conviction than she’d ever heard out of him. It should be. His dad was everything hers wasn’t. For the first time, she saw what else she’d lost when she’d lost Justin. His family. “What happened?”

  “He started getting dizzy spells. Falling. Didn’t take much to figure it out.” Justin dragged his fingers heavily along his jaw. “He’s early on, but he’s getting tremors enough so he can’t work like he used to. And if I hadn’t come back,” he shrugged, “well, he’d have had to shut down Callahan Construction.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I always planned to come back home. Someday. Believe it or not, there are things for me here other than Dad and the business. It’s just I didn’t think it would be so soon. I sort of thought I had more time. But at the same time, I was always worried time would run out on me.” He shook his head and sat back in the chair, focused on the flickering gas flames in the fireplace. “But yeah, I miss the army. Sometimes. It’s just not something I talk about a lot. I’ve only been out a couple of months. It’ll probably get easier.”

  “I guess.” Taryn needed a break. Needed to walk out of the room, to process the thought of Justin’s strong dad being felled by such an ugly disease. Needed for him not to see the tears trying to crowd up on her. This wasn’t her pain, it was his, and he didn’t need to be comforting her. She snatched her mug and stood, scattering thread and quilt pieces to the floor and sliding the couch back a good two inches with the force. “Coffee?”

  Justin glanced into his mug. “I’m good. But I’ll take some water.” He moved to stand.

  Taryn waved him down. “You keep sewing. You’re faster than me. I’ll be back in a minute.” She bolted for the kitchen like someone was chasing her. Popping a cup into her single-serve coffee maker, she hit the button, leaning against the counter as the machine whirred and heated. Here was Justin, more mature, more confident, more everything good . . . and she hadn’t changed at all. She’d been so all about herself since he stepped foot back into her life. She had no idea he was hurting just as much as she was. She was the same selfish, self-centered, needy teenager as when he last laid eyes on her.

  So why was he hanging around?

  To help Jemma, she reminded herself. And nothing more. Taryn filled a glass with water, grabbed her coffee mug, and headed back for the den, resolved to be better.

  Justin hardly glanced up when she set his glass on the table next to him. “Thanks.”

  “Yep.” Settling back on the couch, Taryn drew her knees up to her chest, blowing on her coffee. “Was it hard, the army? Deployment?”

  Justin let the quilt drop into his lap and reached for his water. “Do you know I’ve missed almost every single Christmas at home for the past eleven years?” He took a sip, watching her over the rim of his glass.

  Taryn hesitated, then nodded. She knew. Well. Every year, something in her looked for him, half hoped he’d pull up in the driveway just to say hi and see how she was doing. It never happened. Until this year, and now she didn’t know what to do with it.

  “It was always something. Training. Deployment. Stationed too far away. For a few years, it was by choice.” He shrugged and set the glass aside. “Feels weird, being here. Weird, but right.” He looked at her again. “I’m doing the right thing.”

  “You are.” His dad needed him. Justin wasn’t the type of guy to turn his back.

  His smile edged with a sadness Taryn couldn’t quite puzzle out. “You know the guy I was talking about with the snake and the scorpion?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We were stationed together again this last deployment. I was in Alpha Company and he was in Bravo. We were on BPs about seven miles apart in Kandahar.”

  “BP?”

  “Battle position. Like an outpost. We used to get rocket-propelled grenade fire just about every day.” Justin set the recliner rocking slightly. “His mess tent took a direct hit. In July. He w
as gone before the smoke even cleared. Him and three other guys waiting for chow with him.”

  Taryn inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry.”

  “Right after, Dad found out he had Parkinson’s, and it all got me thinking.” He took another sip of water, set the glass down, and picked it up again. “Well, just leave it at—it got me thinking. Probably too much.” He drained the glass, then got up and headed for the kitchen, not looking at her as he passed. “Need anything?”

  “No.” She watched him retreat, probably for the first time in his life. All she could do was sit there, wait, and wonder how to respond, how to be there for him right now while he needed her.

  He came back a different person. “You haven’t decorated your house yet?”

  “When?” If Justin wanted to change the subject, it was his prerogative. “Decorating usually doesn’t get done until Christmas break anyway. There’s one more week before I’m free.”

  “Still, no tree? No manger scene? Not like you, McKenna.”

  No, it wasn’t, but with just her to enjoy it, the decorations seemed to get put up later every year. Some years, it was more trouble than it was worth, even though she liked coming home to a holiday-inspired house. “I’ll get to it.”

  “Maybe I’ll bug you until you do it.” As Justin dropped back into the recliner, he laced his fingers and straightened his arms in front of him. “Okay, ready for another set? I’ll race you. See who can get five squares sewn in fastest.” He reached for his stack as the house phone rang.

  Taryn snagged the portable from the back of the couch, grateful for a few seconds in which to process his mood swing. “Hello?”

  “Taryn? This is Audrey Reynolds at Dalton Community Hospital.”

  Taryn’s whole body grew colder.

  “We need you to come in.”

  10

  Why is it so cold in here? Taryn wrapped her arms around her middle and doubled over in the fake leather chair, head between her knees. The muted brown of the CICU waiting room’s carpeted floor did absolutely nothing to settle her stomach. Instead, it made everything worse. The pizza she’d scarfed with Justin wasn’t sitting well, even though it should have digested hours ago. It threatened to reappear at any moment. “Why’d they call me here just to make me wait?” Justin had ushered her through the hospital doors half an hour ago, and they’d been directed to the CICU waiting room, where dim lighting in the windowless room did nothing to soothe her mind.