by Jillian Hart
Jonah kept pace with her. “What does your family do for Christmas?”
“When my mom was alive, she would make dinner on Christmas Eve for everyone. A formal occasion. We’re talking the best china and silver, candlelight and our best clothes. We’ve tried to keep the tradition since. I’m not the same quality of cook, but my sisters-in-law and I do all right. After dessert, we head over to our church and attend services. Christmas Day is more relaxed with a traditional turkey dinner. How about your family?”
“We are way less formal.” Jonah’s baritone warmed as he spoke of his loved ones. “With my dad being a minister, my folks are as busy as can be this time of year. But ever since I was a little guy, we set aside time after the Christmas Eve service to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and eat fudge.”
“One of my favorites.”
“The movie or the fudge?”
“Both.” She liked how he chuckled warmly and how his voice was her favorite sound. The entire world was better when she was at his side. She adored everything about him and as she breathed in the fresh crisp air and felt the kiss of winter on her face, she realized she didn’t just adore him. She loved him.
“Hey, Mom! Come see!” Mia was a house ahead, pointing at one of the front windows. “It’s a nativity scene. I love it.”
“Coming, kid.” Debra tried to focus, tried to act as if nothing monumental had changed, but when Jonah tucked her hand in his much bigger one, it was impossible. As they walked side by side, it felt as if they belonged together. The empty, dark places in her heart filled with pure sweet love as promising as those twinkle lights. Glowing like hope, like wonder, on this cold winter’s night.
Mia led the way up the front steps to the inn. Jonah heard her call out, as if from very far away although she was only a few yards ahead. “I’m freezing! I’m gonna go in!” Debra answered, but her words didn’t register. Her loveliness did.
He couldn’t remember a better afternoon. He couldn’t have had better company. For the first time since he’d come home from Iraq, he felt at ease. Not even worship and prayer had been able to touch him like this.
Mostly, he realized, because he wouldn’t let it.
On the top step, Debra turned to him, her complexion rosy from the cold and, he hoped, from happiness. “You’ve given us such a wonderful day, I think I should return the favor.”
“I like that idea.” He definitely loved the idea of seeing more of her. “What did you have in mind?”
“I have no idea. Maybe I’ll just surprise you.”
“Sounds good.” Jonah cleared the emotion from his throat, but it stuck stubbornly as ice to his boots. “I’ve got a busy week meeting the needs of a very demanding client.”
“Mia.” She tilted a little to the left to glance through the windows flanking the front door to keep her daughter in her sight. “She is pretty excited about the new bedroom set.”
“She seems pretty excited about everything.”
“Where she gets the energy, I’ll never know.” Debra glimmered from happiness, her inner beauty striking him anew.
Jonah cleared his throat and stared hard at the toes of his boots. Today had been nothing more than borrowed time. He knew that. What he couldn’t do was to start to believe he had a chance with her. No matter what he felt, she was nothing more than an undreamed dream.
He knew one thing for certain. He was glad just to be with her. “I know you haven’t got a lot of time left and you’re busy, but drop by the carpentry shop anytime. You will make my day.”
“I notice how you didn’t mention Mia.”
“Hey, now, I didn’t do that on purpose. I meant you, meaning you or both of you. I’m good either way.”
She studied him, her gaze thoughtful. “Not a lot of men would say that about a woman with a teenaged daughter. Wait, I can’t believe I said it like that. I’ve been actually avoiding that word.”
“Teenager?”
“That’s the one. It terrifies me, and not for the reasons you think.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I can see you pretty clearly. You’re terrified because she’s growing up and she’ll be an adult soon. She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“You do understand me. Maybe it’s because she’s my only baby, but I want to treasure these years with her. I look ahead and I start counting the milestones. Mia’s coming out. Getting her driver’s license. Preparing her valedictorian speech from Stanton. Packing her off to Harvard.” Her eyes silvered with emotional tears. “I don’t have anyone else to focus all of my love on, I guess is the real problem. And I have to let go of her, send her off to school, just when I want to hold on a little more tightly to this time left with her.”
“So if that’s how you feel, what’s the deal with this school she’s going to?”
“It was my mother’s wish. And if there is one thing I never want to do, it’s to disappoint Millicent Cunningham Watson ever again, even if she’s no longer on this earth.”
“You don’t think she’d understand?”
“I’m starting to hope that she would have.” She corrected. “You dodge direct questions very nicely.”
“Glad you noticed. I was in reconnaissance, so I’m at my best observing and listening.”
“That’s very annoying, I’ll have you know.”
That cracked him up. He couldn’t help laughing, the sound echoing in the night. He could tell by the way she was smiling at him that she wasn’t annoyed, not at all. Good to know.
“On that note, I’m retreating while the going’s good. Good night, Debra.” He took a step back. “I’ll see you soon?”
“Maybe.” The twinkle in her eyes said differently.
He took one last long look at the picture she made standing in the twinkle of the Christmas lights through the windows. Snow glistened like jewels in her hair and lay like diamonds at her feet. She was what he wanted his future to be, if he had the right to one.
He was alive, when others were not, to walk down the sidewalk and he could feel the burn of icy cold on his face. He was alive to love and work and wish, and the guilt of it drew the laughter from his spirit and the love from his heart. If he could have one prayer answered on this cold winter’s night it would be to change the unchangeable, so that he would be worthy of loving her.
Debra watched Jonah drive away in the worsening storm as she closed the door. Possibilities whispered at the back of her mind, hopes that she was almost able to give voice to.
“He’s nice, isn’t he, Mom?”
Mia. Debra turned to see her daughter collapsed into the chair near the fire. “I don’t believe it, kid. You actually look worn out.”
“I’m bushed.” Mia propped her suede boots on the hearth. “Jonah liked his tree, didn’t he?”
“Absolutely. He said it was the prettiest one he’d had in years.”
“Yeah, but why hasn’t he had a tree before? I get that he goes home to his mom’s and stuff, but we have our tree even though we celebrate Christmas at Grandfather’s house.” Mia watched the fire. “Jonah seems sad a lot.”
“I noticed that, too.” Debra drew an ottoman close and slid onto it.
“I was snooping—I know I wasn’t supposed to—but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t private or anything, but I happened to notice there was a framed picture facedown on the little table in the corner, the one hidden behind the couch?”
“The couch we moved to accommodate the enormous tree?” Debra nodded. “You shouldn’t have been snooping, kiddo.”
“I said I knew that, but, well, I couldn’t help it. I mean, Jonah had a ton of other pictures on the wall framed for everyone to see. But this one—I thought maybe it had fallen over, at least, that’s what I told myself. It was a picture of a bunch of military guys—and Jonah—with guns.”
“You heard Ben say that Jonah was a marine.”
“Do you think he was in the war?”
“Yes, I do.”
Mia gave that some thought. The fire crac
kled and a distant clinking and clanging came from the direction of the kitchen. Finally, she spoke again. “Do you think he got hurt? That’s why he limps?”
“Yes.” Jonah had been amused when she’d pointed out how he was far from forthcoming about his problems. He’d been a recon marine, which was Special Forces. She didn’t know much when it came to the military, but she’d read enough to know that. “Now, let’s get upstairs. I think we have just enough time to get in a call to Aunt Lydia before it’s too late.”
Mia uncrossed her ankles and dragged herself upright. “But first, there’s one more thing.”
“Only one more? I know you, cutie, and it’s never just one more thing.”
Mia tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Okay, there’s at least two things. I really liked that Christmas-light street we walked down. I think you should quit your job and I should quit the Stanton School—”
“I see where this is going.”
“—and you could buy the bookstore and a house on that street where we could live happily ever after. You could even get married. I wouldn’t mind a baby sister, you know.”
“I’ve heard something like this before. You have high hopes, don’t you, kid?”
“Yep, ’cause I believe in the power of prayer. You should, too.”
“I almost think I can.”
“Really? My work is almost done.” Mia climbed to her feet. “Hasn’t this been the most incredible trip?”
“It has been a good holiday.”
“Not only did we get a whole new family to love, but the impossible happened, Mom.” There Mia went, being a touch dramatic again, and also as sweet as pie. “You actually started liking a guy. That’s a miracle.”
Had it been that obvious? Debra unzipped her coat and hurried up the stairs after her daughter. She was so happy, she felt as if she could float up the steps like a helium balloon. Mia was right. Her life was changing. Her heart was changing, too. She’d come to Chestnut Grove expecting the worst. What she found was the best—and Jonah. Who knew where this would lead her next?
Well, God did. Why that thought reassured her, she couldn’t say, but she was glad for it as she heard Mia’s voice through the door, already chatting away to her aunt. Full of hope for the future, Debra opened the door and stepped inside.
Maybe it was the drive back home through the icy streets and the walk through the subzero temperatures from the parking lot to his front door, but reality was starting to edge in. Jonah turned the bolt and stepped through the threshold. He couldn’t stop thinking over the day and the woman he’d spent it with. The image of her with the snow falling all around her and sticking to the dark mane of her hair made him ache with disappointment too strong to stomach.
You don’t deserve her, man.
He dropped his keys and cell phone on the table behind the couch and noticed the face-up picture, in a simple black frame he’d made himself. The snapshot showed a company of force recon marines in base camp. He studied the grinning faces of his buddies in full gear. They’d been preparing for a mission. Their spirits had been high, but it had been early in the war. The gritty dust of the Iraqi desert hung in the air. After three years he could still taste it on his tongue and feel the film of it on his skin.
For one brief instant he was back in that long-ago moment. He could feel the jolly camaraderie. One thing recon marines had was the constitution to handle pressure. They’d been packing their gear and giving each other a hard time when Austin had pulled out his camera. They’d been men in their prime, well-trained and they knew it, and that confidence hung in the air like the dust. It was what he remembered most now. That optimistic, confident moment as he crowded in next to Benton, his best buddy, whom he’d failed.
His grief and guilt was so deep it was a sinkhole taking him down. There was no escape. He hung his head, lost. So lost.
He didn’t know how long he stood in the dark, but the shrill jingle of his phone brought him back. He snatched up the cordless receiver, still half in the past. “’Lo?”
“Jonah.” His mom’s voice, cheerful and loving and alive with goodness.
It made him feel all the places within his soul that weren’t. He cleared his throat, but the emotion was still there, sticking like peanut butter.
Mom chattered on, unaware. “I’ve been swamped with everything, but the Christmas Eve program is going to be inspiring this year, as always. I’ve been meaning to drop by and check on my boy.”
“I haven’t been a boy in a long time,” he told her, as he often did.
“I know, but you’re my son.” Love shone in her voice with unyielding confidence in him. “You didn’t return my calls. I’ve left two messages.”
“I know, I got ’em.” He rubbed at his forehead. A headache was building. “You need anything? I’m here to help.”
“I can always count on you.”
Jonah hung his head again, her words hitting him like a cluster bomb. His hand shook as he turned the picture of his company face down.
Mom, bless her, kept talking. “Now that we’ve got that new DVD player, I wanted to upgrade our Christmas movie because we’ve worn out our VCR tape. I can’t seem to make it to the video store, and when I ran errands and actually remembered to stop, they were out of stock. I’m enlisting you to run over to the bookshop to see if they have a copy.”
“It’s an easy mission.”
“What a relief. I’ve got more problems I need help with.” Mom didn’t sound overburdened or stressed, Jonah realized, but unusually chipper, even for her. “Especially one very upsetting one.”
“I can take care of it. What’s wrong?”
“My son has been seen all around town with a certain lovely young woman and he has told me nothing about it. Can you imagine such a thing?”
Uh-oh. That smile in Mom’s voice should have been a big, neon clue, but he’d missed it. Time to do damage control. “I didn’t tell you about Debra because there’s nothing newsworthy to tell.”
“You two aren’t dating?”
“What made you think we were? You were just hoping for it.” He wished he could hope for it, too. “Before you get all excited and start making plans—
“What kind of plans do you mean?”
How could the woman sound so innocent? Jonah wondered. “You know what I mean. Debra lives in another state.”
“Maryland. It’s only a few hours away. And she’s wonderful. I was just talking with Leah Cavanaugh and she loves her.”
Of course she does, Jonah thought as he crossed to the couch and dropped onto it. Who wouldn’t love Debra? He couldn’t imagine it, maybe because he was trying to keep away from using that word himself. Time for a diversionary tactic. “Hey, how’s the pageant prep coming along?”
But his mom was a sharp tack. “Nice try, big guy, but I’m not satisfied yet. My sources say you’ve been seen at the diner, at the drive-through, at the tree lot and walking down Christmas Lane with Debra and her daughter. That doesn’t sound casual to me.”
Forget diversionary tactics. His mom should run the CIA. “How do you manage to gather so much intel?”
Humor warmed her voice. “Oh, I have my sources. You know how it is. My secret informants. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yep, and on purpose, too.” Jonah leaned forward and plugged in the lights. The bulbs on the tree flashed on, reminding him of Debra and how happy he’d felt when she was here with her daughter, filling his apartment with life and laughter, decorating the tree.
He had to be realistic where Debra was concerned. “I know you keep hoping I’ll settle down.”
“Hoping? I’m praying as hard as I can. You haven’t dated since you came back from the war. There are so many nice, available young women at our church, and nothing. Not one rumor has floated back to me about one single date. And then, suddenly, this. You know how that gets my hopes up for you. I want you to be happy, Jonah. I know what you went through over there and you deserve happiness.”
&n
bsp; Happiness? That was the last thing he could be worthy of. The real killer was that he couldn’t tell his mom why. He’d never told anyone here the truth. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, where his headache was building. “I’m content enough, Mom. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Not worry about you? Why, it’s all I do. I see more than you think I do.”
His mother’s love was a given, and he could hear it now in her voice, erasing the miles between them but not the agony in his soul. He had to be clear—to his mom and to himself. “Debra and I are friends. That’s all. That’s all we can be.”
“You never know. Things have a way of changing. I hear she’s staying for Christmas Eve services. You could invite Ben and his family—all of his family—to sit with us.”
Jonah stared at the colorful flash of lights on the tree. Bright. Dark. Bright. Dark. A ball of emotion felt glued to the back of his Adam’s apple. He cleared his throat again. “Leave it alone, Mom, please.”
“You know I’m here for you. I’m eight minutes away. I can make it in six if you really want me to.”
Love, only love in those words. Agony tore through him, because he didn’t deserve it, he wasn’t worth it and, even knowing this, he ached for peace and a way to heal the impossible—all of that was hopeless. There would be no peace and no healing for him.
“No, Mom.” The words felt ripped from his throat. “Thanks. I love you for it, but no.”
“All right, I’ll stop pushing. But I’m going to send your dad over to check on you.”
“Not tonight, Mom. I’ve had a long day. I’m just tired.” He rubbed at his temples.
“Tomorrow, then. I love you no matter what, Jonah.”
More wounds to his soul. She didn’t know what she was really saying. He thought of the lives ended and families that were destroyed because of it—because of his failure—and he lost strength completely. Not even faith could comfort him or touch him.
“Good night, Mom. I’ll pick up the movie.” He heard his mom saying goodbye. He clicked off and let the phone drop from his fingers onto the couch.