Katia's Promise

by Catherine Lanigan

  But in all wars, especially those waged in the name of love, there was time to regroup. Katia could only hope this was just that time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BLACK FRIDAY CAME and went without Katia visiting a single retail store. Saturday dragged on without a call from Austin and no answers to her texts or emails. She’d tried to be light and funny in her messages, but he was pulling his turtle act again.

  On Sunday, after church services at St. Mark’s, Katia drove Mrs. Beabots, Timmy and Annie back home while Sarah and Luke remained at the church to help organize the Christmas decoration committee.

  Mrs. Beabots promised to watch Timmy and Annie for a half hour until Sarah came back home. “I suppose we could start by decorating my Christmas tree,” Mrs. Beabots said to the children.

  “You have a tree already?” Annie asked.

  “It’s being delivered by the Indian Lake nursery. They put in a tree stand for me and put it up in the big window in the living room.”

  “How big?” Timmy asked.

  “Oh, the usual. Ten feet,” Mrs. Beabots said proudly.

  Katia’s mouth fell open. “You have a ten-foot tree every year?”

  Both children were clapping their hands and high-fiving each other.

  “It’s gonna be so cool!” Timmy said.

  “I thought that this year we would make gingerbread men and put yarn through their heads and hang them on the tree,” Mrs. Beabots said.

  “That’s sounds lovely,” Katia offered, thinking wistfully of the small tree her mother had decorated for the two of them and put in their room at the McCreary house. “And you decorate this tree by yourself? No offense, but you must need a tall ladder.”

  “Oh, good heavens, no, dear. Lester MacDougal comes over and puts all the lights and ornaments on. I’ll let the children hang the cookies and some candy canes. They’ll love that.”

  “Oh, yes!” The children said in unison.

  Katia pulled into Mrs. Beabots’s driveway. The snow had all melted, and the sun had warmed the chrysanthemum blossoms. She turned off the car and everyone climbed out.

  “So what kind of tree does Sarah have for you?” Katia asked the kids.

  Mrs. Beabots laughed. “I don’t know why they get so excited about my tree. Sarah’s tree was fourteen feet tall last year, and it was a mass of all her old ornaments, Luke’s ornaments and cookies the children made. It was a vision. She told me she had over two thousand lights on that tree.”

  “Two thousand!” Katia’s eyes grew wide.

  Mrs. Beabots led the way to the back door and they all filed inside, shucking their coats. Mrs. Beabots had put a pot roast, onions, carrots, celery and potatoes in a roaster and had started the oven before they left for church. The aroma of the cooking dinner was heavenly as they entered the warm, cozy kitchen.

  Timmy spotted a glass-domed cake plate filled with cupcakes. “Are those from Miss Maddie?”

  “Yes, they are, Timmy. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, please!”

  Annie frowned. “He’s not supposed to have treats before Sunday dinner. Me, neither.”

  Katia watched as light faded from Timmy’s face. “What if you two split the cupcake and drank a glass of milk with it? They’re small, and I don’t think your mom would be too upset about that.”

  Annie calculated the proposition for a long moment. “We’re having chicken and peas. And I’m hungry for both. So I guess a half a cupcake would be okay.”

  “Yes!” Timmy shouted. “Can we have the chocolate one?”

  “Absolutely,” Mrs. Beabots replied, taking the dome off the plate.

  “I’ll get the milk,” Katia said. She took out two plates and two small glasses from the cupboard.

  Mrs. Beabots got the children settled at the small kitchen table near the back window so they could watch for Luke’s truck.

  She turned to Katia. “I saw that mind of yours whirling a minute ago. What are you scheming?”

  “We have to get Austin’s house decorated for the Candlelight Tour next weekend. Right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “When I spoke with Daisy, she said Wednesday would be best. Austin will be at work, and she can help us. Sarah will have half a day off. Between the four of us, we can get the downstairs decorated in one afternoon. But I didn’t plan for the tree. Hanna used to have a lovely tree in the living room window.”

  “I remember. And Austin hasn’t put up a tree since she died.”

  “That’s because he’s never here over the holidays.”

  “Is he going to be home this year?” Mrs. Beabots asked.

  After my last argument with him? Probably not. “He hasn’t said. But I’m thinking that it’s time he makes some changes. Starting with a live Christmas tree. Do you have the number for the nursery?”

  * * *

  KATIA CALLED AUSTIN’S house and got his voice mail, which she expected. She hoped he was only pouting and not so angry with her that they couldn’t get back to being friends.

  Or more.

  Don’t even go there, Katia. Don’t make trouble you can’t handle. One thing at a time. One day at a time.

  “Austin. If you don’t answer me, I’ll break into your house again. That is, assuming you haven’t changed the locks. So look. Cops or no cops, I’m coming over. I have a surprise for you.”

  The Indian Lake Nursery delivery truck pulled up to Austin’s house just as Katia turned into his driveway in her newly purchased silver Buick sedan. She supposed Austin would sneer at such an ordinary car, but it was only two years old and had low mileage. She purposefully didn’t park on the street; if Austin attempted a getaway, she wanted to block him in.

  “Hey, guys!” She waved to the driver and his helper as she withdrew several shopping bags from her car trunk. “I’ll be right with you.”

  She walked quickly to the door and pressed the bell twice. The melodious and preposterous tune played loud enough to be heard outside. “He needs to change this thing,” she muttered, rubbing her chilled hands together.

  The door swung open. Austin was wearing tan wool dress pants and a navy V-neck pullover with a white shirt underneath. Though his mouth was set, his eyes were welcoming.

  She took that as a good sign. “Hi. You got my message.”

  “Why must you insist on giving me no choice about seeing you?”

  “Did you change the locks?” she asked pointedly.

  “No.”

  “Then, you want to see me. I’m here on community business.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She hooked her thumb back over her shoulder. “They’re here to deliver your Christmas tree.”

  “I don’t want a tree.”

  “Sorry. You committed to this. I have exactly one week to get this house ready for the Candlelight Tour.” She smiled at his blank expression. “You forgot.”

  “I did. I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t forget about the tour, just that it’s coming up so fast.”

  “Right.” She waved the guy in, then she turned back to Austin. “I know where it goes. You and I have furniture to move. Let’s get to it.”

  Katia barged past Austin and headed straight to the living room. She placed her shopping bags on the floor, took off her coat and flung it over a wing chair. Then she grabbed the framed pictures off the end table that sat between two French chairs in the middle of the window.

  She looked back at Austin. “Don’t just stand there. Move these chairs to that far corner, where your mother used to put them at Christmas.”

  Austin shook his head, chuckling to himself, and easily hoisted the chair. Then he moved the brass and glass lamp and the end table.

  The space was cleared just in time for the deliverymen to bring in the tree. Austin grabbed two black garbage bags from the kitchen to protect the wood floor, and Katia positioned the stand she’d bought on top of them. The guys from the nursery cut the jute ties around the branches, fluffed out the limbs and spun the tree until the full
est side was facing the room.

  “If you have lights, we can string them for you,” the taller of the two men said.

  “I’ll put the lights on,” Austin said before Katia had a chance to reply. “Thanks anyway.” He took out his wallet and handed the men a tip. “Thanks for your help. It’s a great tree.”

  Austin walked the men to the door while Katia began digging boxes of lights out of her shopping bags.

  “What’s all this? We have lights.”

  She cocked her head. “Oh, really? And you think that after a decade plus they’ll still work? Fat chance. I bought clear lights just like your mother used to have.”

  “I like the colored ones,” he countered.

  “I thought you might. I bought ten strings of those, too.”

  “You did not,” he bantered. He peered into the bag.

  “I also got a step-touch surge protector so that the lights are easy to turn off and on.” She held up a small square box. “If that’s too much trouble for you, though, here’s a timer that will turn them on at dusk and off at ten.”

  “You thought of everything,” he said appreciatively.

  “I tried to.” She smiled at him as she stood and handed him a strand of lights. “If we do this together, we should have the tree lit in less than an hour. Then we can get the boxes from the attic.”

  Austin plugged the surge protector into the wall and attached the first string of lights from the box. “Look at that, would you?”

  “What?”

  “The lights are so...well, merry. Pardon the pun. And I’d forgotten how uplifting the smell of a fresh pine tree can be. Reminds me of...”

  “When we were kids?”

  “Yeah, it does.” He looked away from her and back to his work.

  * * *

  KATIA WAS BUSY unraveling the lights and chattering away about the things she remembered from her childhood Christmases in this house. Austin was only half listening; Katia’s voice was a familiar sound that had always comforted and befriended him.

  Ever since Thanksgiving, he’d been acting like a spoiled brat. Arrogant and selfish. At the time, he didn’t care if he hurt Katia’s feelings. He rationalized that he was licking his wounds.

  But Katia had overlooked all his bad behavior. She’d called, texted and emailed him. He’d read all her messages, despite the long hours he’d spent on his cars, trying to kill the sense of betrayal he felt from his own family.

  Maybe Katia was right. Maybe he was guilty of focusing on the wrong things. A true benefactor only cared that the lives of the people receiving his gifts were elevated, illuminated or educated. In the end, it probably didn’t matter to anyone but Austin if his great-grandfather was an inventor or not. He’d started a business in Indian Lake that had employed people for generations. That was fact.

  Though Austin’s mind whirled with thoughts about his ancestors, it was the sound of Katia’s voice that broke through and brought him back to the present.

  “I like to bring the lights deeper into the tree on the big branches, so the tree is lit from within,” she was saying.

  Together, they worked their way up the tree, stringing lights and changing an ordinary spruce into something magical. Austin hadn’t decorated a Christmas tree since his mother died. In fact, he didn’t remember decorating one since the last Christmas that Katia had lived in this house.

  Katia had told him she wanted to be his friend. She was doing what a real friend would do. He knew she hadn’t needed to go to all this trouble to buy precisely the kind of Norwegian spruce his mother always loved. She’d remembered that he liked colored lights, not the designer white ones that usually graced his family tree. And she’d come here tonight, after allowing him a couple days to cool down and think about everything she’d said.

  Katia had some kind of sixth sense when it came to him. He would have been creeped out if anyone else knew him so well, but since it was Katia, Austin didn’t mind in the least. He liked the way she read his moods and always appeared to come at his problems from a new perspective. She was logical and saw things without the “family filter” he used much too often.

  Maybe Katia had been right when she’d accused him of retreating from his problems too often. He’d done that ever since Katia had left town. But that was a kid’s reaction to life’s problems. It wasn’t what adults did. Katia had proved that to him. The more he slid back into his cave, the more she showed up at the door. Or broke in.

  He was lucky to be able to count Katia as a real friend. She was good for him.

  But was he good for her? He knew she needed his business. That was obvious. She’d also needed him to forgive her. She’d told him that she wanted to move forward with her life, and she couldn’t do that without his forgiveness. Though they’d crossed that bridge, he wondered if lingering guilt caused Katia to be this attentive to him.

  And if it was just residual guilt, then the relationship they had was based on need, not want.

  “Austin, did you hear anything I just said?”

  “Sorry, I was concentrating on the lights. What?”

  “I asked if you wanted to do something different with your tree. We could string popcorn and cranberries and decorate it with candy canes and gingerbread men instead of your mother’s priceless ornaments. I bet Daisy wouldn’t mind making some cookies and putting yarn through them for us.”

  “That’s...really old-fashioned. Do people even do that anymore?”

  “Mrs. Beabots said she does a bit of that for Annie and Timmy. It got me thinking. Maybe we should make a childhood tree.” She looked up at the dainty multicolored lights. “Something for both of us,” she whispered as if she hadn’t meant for him to hear it.

  But he had.

  Suddenly, Austin realized that the tree was a symbol of new beginnings for both of them. Perhaps Katia could put all her guilt aside. He had a houseful of ghosts, and he’d lived with them forever. Maybe it was time for him to do what Katia had suggested and start asking if he wanted more for himself than to build monuments to the past.

  “We’ll call it a sugarplum tree, and it will be perfect,” Austin replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  FOR THE REST of the week, Katia held meetings with potential clients, interviewed a new sales associate that Barry had recommended and continued to decorate the McCreary mansion. She even hired a trio of trumpeters to wear Edwardian costumes and stand on Austin’s front lawn under a lamppost and play carols during the Candlelight Tour.

  She’d strung all the crystal lights she’d bought in the shrubbery around the front door. Sarah had made a garland with battery-operated lights for the elegant staircase banister, which Katia wired into place. Mrs. Beabots had proudly decorated a fresh spruce wreath with red velvet ribbon, red silk roses and gold glass balls. Katia hung it on Austin’s front door.

  By the time Sunday afternoon arrived, Katia had discarded six outfits before finally settling on a black skirt and a red cowl-neck angora sweater. She wore her hair tumbling down her back.

  Just the way Austin likes it.

  Katia studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror and wondered if there was truth to that saying about magic at the holidays.

  It only comes to those who believe.

  For the first time since she’d left Indian Lake, Katia believed in a lot of things she’d packed away along with her youth. Somehow, all those hopes and dreams seemed appropriate in this town. They seemed to come alive here, as if there was something about Indian Lake that let them come true.

  It was the holidays. Things happened at the holidays that couldn’t always be explained. Authors wrote about these things in novels. Movies were made about mystical situations that defied all reason. People were nicer and went out of their way to help others at this time of year. So there had to be some truth to it all.

  Was it too much for Katia to hope that Austin would see that she was in love with him? Would he ever get past the pain she’d caused him when they were young? Was that why
he held back from her? Was it possible that he could put all his other priorities aside long enough to reach into his heart and realize that she was the woman for him?

  Was it just make-believe that caused her to think that she’d figure out a way to convince Jack to change company policy?

  Though Katia’s head swam with misgivings and fear, there was no panic. Her heart was steady. Her breathing was normal. Katia was ready for the tour.

  * * *

  THE CANDLELIGHT TOUR was nothing that Austin had expected. He’d planned to put on his poker face, endure the night, meet total strangers whose faces he’d never remember. And when it was over, he hoped he could share a port by the fire with Katia.

  Instead, he was greeted by people he hadn’t seen since his mother died. Others, he hadn’t seen since his father’s funeral. Old employees, canes in hand, hobbled into the house, not to see decorations, but to use the opportunity to pay their respects to Austin and to thank him and his family for the years of employment they enjoyed. The men told stories of the early years when they were teenagers coming to work at the McCreary plant.

  “There are few plants in the world that do what you do, Mr. McCreary,” one rheumy-eyed ninety-year-old said as he leaned on his son’s arm. “I always took pride in that. You’re one in a million.”

  Austin was shocked at how much the older man’s words meant to him. It was all he could do to keep the rumble of emotion out of his throat. Then it hit him. Austin had lived a solitary life for so long that he hadn’t made the same kinds of social connections other people had. When he was at the plant, he was the employer. His employees didn’t consider him their friend. They didn’t meet him on the same court, like Rafe. Or Katia.

  “I’m looking forward to the museum opening,” a middle-aged woman said. “I have two sons who love antique cars. They’re counting the days. Will you still open on St. Patrick’s Day?”

  “My contractor assures me we’re on schedule,” Austin replied proudly.

  “It’s a great service to the community,” a tall, gangly man in his fifties said to Austin as he shook his hand. “Thank you for all you’re doing for us.”