Healed Under the Mistletoe

by Amalie Berlin

  Noelle had been the talker of the two of them. Belle had always participated, but never been so animated and entertaining as her sister. Probably a reason why she needed to keep up with the talking.

  “They’ve been kind and supportive, even if Wolfe is Lyons’s brother. Angel’s keeping an eye on my apartment while I’m here. My job is held, at least for now. I don’t know how long they’ll extend my leave without pay, and I don’t even know if I want to return to Sutcliffe. I don’t think working beside him would be good for me. But I like New York. Nanna was right, it is magical, at least at Christmas. I don’t know about the rest of the year.”

  She looked at the roses again. Wolfe and Angel would’ve sent a card. Or did florists just not put cards on flowers to be sent to a cemetery? Did florists even deliver to cemeteries?

  “Lord, I have no idea about any of this.” Her voice lowered, carried on a sigh. “I should’ve been here. Mourned for you. Celebrated your life. Something. Not run away.”

  Once the flowers were arranged, she sat and crossed her legs, and just breathed in silence and felt the early morning sun on her face.

  “According to the book I read on the plane about grief, it’s okay to sit and say nothing. That way I can hear anything you want to say. Right?”

  No response. Not that she’d expected to hear anything. It was a silly woo-woo book, but she’d not found any inspirational, comforting, science-based books on grieving loss. And she’d looked.

  It wasn’t long before she heard the sound of feet on grass coming from behind her and waited until they were obviously coming closer to her to look.

  The sun lit his face, and all the strength seemed to seep out of her body as recognition hit.

  Lyons.

  Lyons was here. He’d brought the roses.

  The realization didn’t bring comfort or any lifting of her spirit. It felt like another weight added to already stooped shoulders. She couldn’t take care of him today. She needed to take care of herself.

  What was he even doing there?

  She picked herself up from the ground and faced him. He stopped some distance away, close enough for her to talk and look him in the eyes but letting her stay alone inside a bubble around her sister’s grave.

  In the sunshine, golden undertones appeared in his dark, thick hair, but he looked paler. She’d never seen him in the sunshine; it had been overcast or snowy every day in New York. Probably a trick of the light.

  Even if he had decided that he was too hard on her before, the extreme amount of mistrust he had was too much to deal with. Too much to think he looked older because of the way things had ended between them. In truth, standing on her sister’s grave, fighting an internal tremor she felt in her chest was the only thing that kept her upright. She was too tired for this, and the only thing she could be thankful for in that moment was that she hadn’t yet started crying today. It was still early.

  “Why are you here?” she asked directly, not smiling or greeting, or doing anything her normal, welcoming self would do.

  “I told you I’d come here with you,” he said softly, his eyes searching her face, brows tilted as if seeing her hurt him.

  “That was before you decided you hated me.”

  “I didn’t decide that,” he answered. “I decided, wrongly, that you had done something awful, exploded and said something more wrong. Unforgivable.”

  At least he realized that.

  She didn’t have the strength for this. Not today. The best thing she could do, the only way she could stop the tears burning her eyes, was send him away. If she said anything in response, she’d just prolong the conversation she wasn’t up for right now.

  “Thank you for the flowers. I don’t...” And her control snapped, and a broken sob tore her words in two.

  He reached for her, and instinctively she stepped back, until her heels hit the granite. “Can’t you see I can’t do this?”

  He looked pained, guilty, then resigned. She closed her eyes and turned to brace her hands on the top of the tombstone. She couldn’t miss the way it mirrored the last time they’d been together, and how much it had hurt when he’d refused her touch.

  Whether he was going to go, whether he was going to force his presence on her, she didn’t know. She couldn’t guess, but she wouldn’t watch. And she wouldn’t let his presence force her to leave.

  She folded back to the ground and braced her head on her knees, trying to at least soften the sound of her tears if she couldn’t stop them falling.

  When she calmed down enough to look, he was gone. He’d listened for once.

  “I’m not skipping ahead,” she said to her sister, getting her cell again to resume reading, hoping the action calmed her.

  “We got through November of last year yesterday.

  “That’s a year before he enters the picture.

  “I’m not skipping ahead. He can wait.”

  * * *

  The next day, when she arrived at Noelle’s grave, she parked in the place suggested by the direction Lyons had walked in from the day before.

  There was a nice car parked there, empty. Looking over the flat land, she could see a man sitting on a bench some distance away, but, even at a distance too great to see his features, she could tell it was Lyons.

  She’d not been welcoming, but he’d come back.

  As she approached Noelle’s grave the man became clearer as well, confirming what her heart had told her. He wasn’t close enough to encroach on her or carry on a conversation, but he was there.

  He nodded, for some reason, but acknowledging it seemed too much like encouragement for him to approach, so she dropped her chin to the grave. That was when she noticed items waiting. He hadn’t brought more flowers today, but a folded-up wool blanket waited for her, along with a little care package—an insulated coffee mug and a wax bag with a pastry inside.

  Breakfast, because she came in the morning.

  She was tempted to refuse the offerings, but the ground was still damp this morning and sitting on the blanket would be good for her clothes. He was trying to take care of her, but she couldn’t even bring herself to tell him he was wasting his time.

  She spread out the blanket, sat and tried to ignore him. The daisies were wilting, but the roses still looked nice. She poured more water into the vase, then fished out her phone to call up the emails from April.

  “We’ll get to him in December,” she muttered again, shutting him out and focusing on what she was there for: to get on with life. To learn how to live as half of a pair.

  * * *

  The first day he’d come to the cemetery, he’d brought roses. After she’d told him to go, he’d left. But every day he came back. Not to her—he stayed far enough away so he wasn’t pressuring her, just there, if she should want him to be there.

  The second day, he’d left a blanket with breakfast. She still didn’t want him there.

  The third day, he brought fresh flowers, breakfast and a raincoat with a card that said simply: They call for rain.

  But he wasn’t wearing a raincoat. He sat on his bench, overcast sky providing a bleak, gray backdrop behind him.

  She never caught him looking at her, and she looked often, but she knew he watched. Waited. There if she needed him.

  New Year’s Eve, he left a small bottle of champagne and a delicate gold chain looped around the neck of the bottle. A gold, spinning locket, engraved on the back with Noelle’s name and date, dangled halfway down the bottle. She got through with eighteen months of email and life summaries and began to speak about him.

  It was all right there—the person Nanna and Dad had raised her to be. The beliefs that guided her. And the guilt. She’d been hurt, rightfully, by him, and she’d lashed out. Said something to hurt him back. And she knew it wasn’t true. He was there, he’d stayed even though every sign she’d given him
had said go.

  The ball was still in her court. If he was there tomorrow, the fresh start of a new year, maybe she’d talk to him.

  * * *

  She didn’t stay up to see the new year or watch the Times Square ball drop on television. She saved the champagne and went to bed to hurry the morning along, then tossed and turned half the night.

  New Year’s Day she overslept; both the sun and temperatures were higher than normal when she arrived to find workmen installing a gorgeous white wrought-iron bench directly at the foot of Noelle’s grave.

  Lyons was still at the bench he normally occupied. He was still there.

  She’d spent half the night wondering if he would be. Now she had to pluck up the courage to go over to him.

  The usual cup of coffee waited for her, with a pastry and some fruit, but no other gifts. Either the bench was his doing, or he was done.

  She replayed the gifts she’d given him in her head, trying to think like a man.

  Coffee card.

  Book.

  Strange Scottish fudge stuff.

  Scarf set.

  She hadn’t gotten to see if he’d opened the fancy whiskey she’d purchased because she’d had no idea what to buy for the man whose house she’d never seen, and who probably had two of everything.

  As far as giving the same number of gifts as she had, if he had nothing to do with the bench, they were even. He could be at this to even out whatever balance he saw between them. To make a better ending than the one at the massive cabin in the Catskills. Or, maybe he was there to make things right.

  The workmen were unhelpful in her attempt to find out if he’d bought the bench, despite working on a national holiday, but while they were there, she wasn’t exhibitionist enough to start the daily conversation. Especially as it was all about Lyons since yesterday.

  She could sit and watch, or she could go talk to him.

  Picking up her breakfast and coffee, she walked toward the bench.

  He was instantly alert, and she’d not made it half there, and the look on his face—He didn’t even make an attempt to play it cool or aloof. He was nervous, but his eyes projected equal parts worry and hope.

  Behind him, she could see the same type of bench with a memorial marker as was being placed at Noelle’s grave. From him, for sure.

  She didn’t really have any words, nothing was coming to her, all she could do was look at him to decide what to do or say.

  At a distance, she hadn’t noticed that his usual polish was gone, but up close she could see he’d gone scruffy, like Wolfe, or like a man who was too worried about other things to deal with a razor.

  Despite everything, despite days of her making him wait, of ignoring him, he looked her in the eye, and she could see his sorrow in eyebrows that worried a line on his head, and the way the corners of his mouth actually turned down. Every one of those scruffy beard hairs was a testimony of regret.

  “Do you want me to speak first?” he asked, not telling her how this would go. Not telling her anything. Asking.

  She asked her own question instead. “You got the bench?”

  He nodded, but it was a subdued thing.

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t like you having to sit on the ground.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. “How is it?”

  “What?”

  “Giving gifts.”

  His gaze pulled from her face to her throat, and the locket from yesterday, which she wore.

  “Nerve-racking,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Feels like too little, too late.”

  She didn’t know if it was, she didn’t know how this was going to end, so she couldn’t offer any words of comfort. She sat on his bench a short distance from where he’d been sitting.

  He followed the lead and sat, not touching but closer than if she were a stranger.

  “I’ve been composing my apology in my head since before I got here, but it never works out. In my head, you point out that I was hateful and unappreciative of what I had. I pretty much haven’t been able to picture a way to make this work, to say the right thing to make you want to be mine again.”

  The words, so simply stated, so unguarded, made her eyes prickle again. Different than it had been the past week, not with that deep, terrible burning that started behind her eyes, sizzled down her throat and expanded in her chest to destroy anything good or hopeful she’d had the audacity to foster there. These were hopeful, terrified tears.

  “Was I yours?” she asked, her voice frogging up with the effort it took to contain the burning in her eyes. If she looked at him, it’d be all over, she’d bawl again and that would change this conversation. He’d say things to make her stop crying, things that might not be real.

  It took him a long time to answer, but when he did, it was a single word. “Yes.”

  The rasp was his now and jerked her gaze to his face. His eyes were wet.

  “You were mine. You weren’t just with me, you were part of me.” He swallowed a few times, but got it out. “I know it like a man who’s lost a limb.”

  She reached for the locket he’d left her, which she now wore, fisting her hand around the polished gold oval.

  He watched her hand, and though he looked momentarily pleased that she’d worn it, his words seemed to register, and he added, hoarsely, “I know it like someone who’s lost the most important person in the world, because I did.”

  Her lower lip quivered, and she had to wipe her eyes again, but the words meant too much—the man who’d lashed out to belittle her sister’s existence acknowledging what she’d lost.

  “I screwed up, Belle. And I’d do anything for a do-over.” He took a breath, slow in and out, then closed his eyes and tilted his face to the sky. “I spent a year wondering what I could’ve done to prevent Eleni and myself from being shot. Imagining different scenarios, and how would this or that action have changed the outcome for both of us. But I never figured it out.”

  He opened his eyes then, not hiding anything by looking away. “A week of regret, knowing several things I could’ve done to change Christmas Eve with you, has eaten through me. Don’t say that damned awful thing. Take the time you suggested I take to gather myself. Listen and match what you said with what I knew about you. Any one of those would’ve changed things.”

  His fist sat balled on the bench between them, not touching her. Still not touching her. She set her hand down beside his and extended her pinky finger to stroke once over the back of his knuckles.

  One touch was all it took. He turned, took her coffee from her and put it on the ground, then pulled her into his lap.

  “Please forgive me,” he whispered, his hands cupping her cheeks, gaze locked to hers, lashes spiky. “I know I don’t deserve you. I know you’d be crazy to take me back, but I’ll even take a relationship based on pity credits until I can get into the black.”

  “What if I told you life with me was a death sentence?” she asked, because, no matter his feelings on it before, “You’re sitting in a cemetery where my whole family is buried.”

  “Life is a death sentence. However much time I have left, I want to spend with you.” He urged her head forward to press a lingering kiss on her forehead, then another at a wet corner of her eye, then down over her salty cheek.

  All she could do was nod and his arms came around her, pulling her so that she was cradled to his chest, his scruffy whiskers mashed into her forehead, and tears that weren’t hers falling on her cheeks. There were things she wanted to tell him but laying down ground rules seemed unnecessary. They could talk about New York later, make plans, put the promises she felt flowing from him into words.

  She had so many holes in her heart, but his arms around her helped, blocked them from leaking out the happiness and contentment that she never seemed to be able to hold on to. Maybe that was what love
was between two people who’d lost so much: a promise to continue patching up the holes life put into each other’s hearts.

  She wasn’t ready to let go, would never be ready to let go, but the realization didn’t make her feel weak. It made her feel as if she stood in sunshine after a hard, raging storm.

  They soaked in the silence for a long time before she said, “I think Christmas will be better next year.”

  She still felt the shape of the words in her mouth when he answered.

  “I know it will.”

  It was a promise she knew he’d keep.

  EPILOGUE

  BELLE SAT IN the back seat of the new sedan Lyons had purchased about eight months ago, the day he’d found out he was going to be a daddy. Noelle, their daughter, had very nearly been a Christmas baby. Instead, she’d decided to come into the world twelve days too early, and this trip to the Catskills cabin of last year’s fiasco Christmas would be her first Christmas.

  The first Christmas for all of them, if Belle thought about it. First Christmas with a happy heart and a whole, healthy family.

  “There it is,” Lyons said, pulling off the road at the same snail’s pace he’d driven there.

  She puffed, then shifted again uncomfortably in the seat. Birth hadn’t been all that long ago, she hadn’t fully recovered yet, but nothing could’ve kept her away from their Christmas all together. “I thought we’d never make it.”

  The two-hour drive from Ramapo, where they now lived and worked at Lyons’s old hospital, had somehow grown by thirty minutes, with him accounting for the newborn in the back.

  He pulled up outside the cabin, and both Wolfe and Angel came hurrying out. Well, Wolfe hurried. Angel, it seemed, had reached the waddling stage a couple of months early.

  It took only a moment for them to cover the baby carrier, pass out hugs and kisses, and the lot of them to reach the warm cabin.

  “I’ve sanitized every piece of this place,” Angel announced, hand at the small of her back, “She’s not gonna be getting anything here. And we’ve been takin’ double doses of vitamin C to make double sure we’re not sick before we get to snuggle the Christmas baby.”