A Family-Style Christmas and Yuletide Homecoming

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Ten minutes later they were driving down a country road and Sarah had no idea where they were going but only knew that she and Logan were alone again, this time in a place that held no old memories and regrets.

  He pulled off the road into a narrow lane, his truck fishtailing in the snow, his headlights stabbing the darkness ahead of them. Snow flew up, sparkling in the headlights and then they came to a stop.

  “Aha,” Sarah said, recognizing the place. “The lookout point. I love the view from this place.”

  Logan’s face glowed a faint green in the reflected light of the dashboard of his truck. The serious expression on his face made her heart beat just a little faster.

  She looked at him again, studying the planes of his face, cast into sharp relief in the half-light. His deep-set eyes glowed and she felt herself falling in love with this man all over again.

  He traced a gentle circle with his finger on the backs of her hands, then looked up at her with those deep, secretive eyes. Eyes that had haunted her dreams. Eyes that she had yearned for and hurt for. All because of a mistake.

  She wanted to tell him about Marilee, but she waited.

  A quiet, insistent voice pushed at the back of her mind as, in spite of the moment, she thought of her father. She had to say it and sooner or later they had to deal with it. Uncle Dan was right. She couldn’t ignore her father forever. In spite of all the things he had done wrong, he was still a part of her life.

  In the past few days she had learned some valuable lessons about who and what to put first in her life. Her priorities had shifted and been rearranged.

  And she realized that she wanted Logan in her life.

  But she also wanted her father.

  Logan remained quiet, so she took a chance to move into this new place in her life. With Logan.

  “I was wondering if you would come with me. To visit my dad.”

  “What about what he said to you. About Marilee?” he said, continuing to trace a circle on the back of her hand.

  “I know what he did was wrong, and he hurt me badly, but we all sin. We all make mistakes that have repercussions. Like I did thinking you were with Marilee, when you weren’t.”

  “Sarah, that wasn’t your fault...”

  “No, but in a way I was involved. You know what Alicia told me? That Marilee had snuck out to see you so she could convince you that we should be together.” Her mind slipped back to Marilee’s room and the myriad of memories she had pushed into bags and boxes. “I had misjudged her, too. Misjudged you. I’m just as sinful. Just as stubborn. Had just as much unforgiving anger. I could have phoned you, asked you, but I didn’t. I’m sure my dad was hurting, too.”

  “And now you’re making excuses for him again?” Logan’s question came out as more of a growl than a query. His anger set her back.

  “Logan, please don’t think that I’m falling back into the same patterns. I’ve changed. My dad doesn’t have power over me anymore. But I can’t change the fact that he is still my father. I know what he did to your family was wrong and I’m sure you still have a lot to deal with. But he’s not going away and he is still in my life. That’s why I want you to come with me. I want to start over. And I want to start over right. I want to face him with you at my side.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I can’t go with you.” His voice held a note of finality that Sarah sensed was futile to argue with.

  “Ever?”

  He shrugged. “Someday, maybe, but not yet.” She looked at Logan, trying to put herself in his place, trying to understand. Her father had hurt Logan’s family and even though she might think Logan should forgive her father, the only forgiveness that was hers to grant was hers to her father. Logan had to come to that place on his own.

  Now she had to make a decision. But this time, this time she was going to follow her heart, instead of expectations from her father and her family.

  “Okay. I understand,” Sarah said, her voice quiet. “He hurt your family badly and that will take some time to get over.”

  “Sarah, I need you to understand...”

  She held her hand up, forestalling him. “Logan, I do understand. And I know that what he did was wrong. So I want you to know that I’m standing beside you in this.” She took a deep breath and sent up a prayer for wisdom. “I know that my father needs me, but I sense that you need me, too. And until you’re ready to see him, I want you to know that I choose you. I choose you over my father. You are more important to me than he is right now.” She banished all the pleas that her family, her uncles and aunts and cousins with their expectations, would make. She had made up her mind.

  Logan sighed, raised her hands to his mouth and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. “Thank you.” His voice was quiet, almost reverential.

  “I know he caused a lot of pain...” She stopped there. Enough. They didn’t need to talk about Frank. And though in her heart she had hoped that she and Logan could go together, she wanted him to know that she was willing to wait.

  “I don’t think you should avoid him completely,” Logan said. He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “But I can’t come with you.”

  She shook her head. “Not until you’re ready to come with me.”

  Though it seemed they were caught in the same tensions when they dated the first time, she knew they had actually come to a different place. It would simply take time.

  She cut off the thread of despair that started to wind itself around her heart. Time. She had to give him the time he needed.

  And how long would that be?

  “Could you take me home, please?” she asked.

  They drove in silence and, when he stopped in front of the house, he turned to her. “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

  She paused, just a moment, wishing she had the right words to bridge this shadowy gap between them. “I am, too. But I am serious, Logan. You come first in my life.”

  He kissed her again, but, even as he drew away, she sensed the specter of her father still hovered between them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Logan sat back in his office chair, staring sightlessly out the window, rehashing what he and Sarah had talked about, going over and over in his head what he should have said, what he should have done, but each time he came back to this same point: he should be rejoicing. She had chosen him over her father.

  When she had spoken the words that, he was sure, came at a cost to her, he had felt a surge of happiness that had overwhelmed his practical self.

  When he had come back down, the reality of what she had done struck him. She had sacrificed, or at least put on hold, a relationship with her father.

  A light knock on the door pulled him out of his thoughts. His mother poked her head inside.

  “You ready to go?”

  Logan shook his head and sat forward, looking down at the checkbook he’d had open for the past hour but done nothing with.

  “I don’t think I’ll come to church with you this morning. I’ve got some bookkeeping to catch up on.”

  “And that’s your excuse?” Donna asked, stepping a little farther into the office.

  He just nodded.

  “Wouldn’t have anything to do with why you came roaring into the yard last night and slammed the door hard enough that you shook the house?”

  “Sorry. The wind must have caught it.”

  “A whole pile of hot air must have caught it. Did you and Sarah have a fight?”

  He shrugged her question aside. They hadn’t exactly had a fight, but it hadn’t been the romantic moment he had anticipated it would be.

  “I’m not dumb,” she continued, accurately reading his stunned expression. “You leave to get Sarah, all smiley and happy. Billy says you leave the gym after the game all smiley and happy. With Sarah. You come home all grumpy. Don’t have
to be brilliant to figure out that something went wrong.”

  Logan ran his hands through his hair and clutched the back of his neck in frustration. “She asked me to come with her to visit Frank.”

  “Well, that would be difficult. But not impossible.”

  Logan thought of another conversation he’d had with his mother in this same room when she told him the reason for Frank’s ongoing animosity. How she was tired of being angry herself.

  “Can you forgive Frank for what happened?”

  Donna leaned back against the door. “It’s hard. But what I have been struggling to do is separate the man from the actions. Frank did not kill your father. Frank made a bad judgment call that had long-lasting repercussions. On top of that he was a lonely man struggling with some misdirected anger. But I don’t think his life has been easy, either. He buried a wife. And, like I told you, burying a child has got to be one of the most heartrending things a father has to handle. And then to have his other daughter move across the country... I feel sorry for him. And though pity is maybe not the best reason to forgive someone, I think it’s a good place to start. For my sake as well as his.”

  “So you can say you forgive him?”

  Donna looked off into the distance, then smiled. “Yes. I think I can. And knowing that makes me really free.” She directed her attention to Logan. “By forgiving him I feel like I’ve stopped letting him have control over me and over my emotions. Holding a grudge, being angry at what he did gives him power over me. I was tired of that, as well.”

  “He told Sarah, when Marilee died, that the wrong daughter died. How can a father say that? How could he possibly even think that?”

  “A grieving man might conceivably say the wrong thing....”

  “If it was just that.” He rocked in his chair, his agitation growing. “He wanted her to come back so he could tell her that he forgave her. For what happened to Marilee. As if it was her fault. What kind of father is he?”

  Donna said nothing.

  “What kind of father does that, Mom?”

  Donna held his gaze, an enigmatic smile teasing her mouth. “You’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to imagine restitution for what Frank did to your father, haven’t you?”

  Logan nodded at his mother’s comment, wondering where she was going.

  “Lately, I’m surprised how quickly that anger has been superceded by what you see as injustice for Sarah.”

  “She wants to go to forgive him. But he doesn’t deserve her.”

  “Do you feel she’s going back to the person she was?”

  “No. She told me that she felt she had spent too much time trying to please the wrong father.”

  “So she’s found her way through this mess of history and brokenness then.”

  Logan nodded his head. “When she asked me to come with her to see him and I said no, she told me that she chose me over him. That until I was ready to see him, she wasn’t going to see him.” His smile held an edge of melancholy.

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  Logan sank back in his chair, a long, slow sigh drifting out of him. “Yes, Mom. I do.”

  “Does she know?”

  “How am I supposed to tell her with her father still hovering between us?”

  “Then maybe you better do something about that, Logan. She asked you to come with her and you chose not to. She chose you over her father. Now I’m going to say that if you really care about her, you’ll put her needs first.”

  “I am. I have, but I don’t trust her dad. I don’t trust him to care for her and love her the way she should be loved. I don’t trust him to not break her heart repeatedly.” He felt he had a strong foundation on which to build that lack of trust.

  Donna smiled. “You are a good man, Logan

  Carleton. And if that’s how you feel, then maybe it’s even more important to let this man into your life. So you can keep an eye on him.”

  Logan let her words settle over his agitation, seeing the practical sense in it.

  “I’m not sure she is going to stay.”

  “Well, I’ve seen the way she looks at you and, from what you’ve said, I’m pretty sure that even if she does decide she doesn’t want to stay I’m sure you’re not going to let her go as easily as you did the first time.” Donna’s eyed probed his as if driving home the truth of what she had just said.

  She walked over to his desk, picked up his Bible and started flipping through it. She seemed to find what she was looking for, and turned the book back to him, open.

  “You might want to read this and then decide whether you can forgive Frank or not.” Donna gave her son another smile. “You’re a good man, Logan. And I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”

  After he heard the outside door close, he leaned over the Bible and started reading what she had pointed out.

  “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”

  Logan continued to read the story of a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants and of the large debt that one owed him. The servant pleaded for mercy and the king forgave him. But then the servant went out and found a man who owed him far less than what the servant had owed the king. But he had no mercy. When the king found out he was furious and punished the servant.

  “‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.’”

  Logan knew the story. Had heard it often growing up. He had never thought it applied to him personally.

  Until now. How much hadn’t God forgiven him? All the anger and bitterness he had stored up and still held. All the sins he had committed against other people and, worse, against God Himself.

  How could he possibly presume to withhold forgiveness from anyone else?

  And yet could he really let go that easily?

  If he wanted Sarah, if he wanted peace with a God who had forgiven him, he had to. Simple as that.

  Logan closed his eyes, fought his second thoughts and let his prayer ascend, hoping that the emotion would follow the action. “Forgive me, Lord. Forgive my lack of forgiveness.”

  He prayed for strength and wisdom. And he prayed for courage. He kept praying until he felt he was as close to ready as he was going to get.

  He picked up the phone and called Sarah’s cell phone. She answered it on the second ring.

  “Hey there,” she said, sounding breathless. “I missed you in church.”

  Logan glanced at the Bible still lying open on the desk beside him. “I had some thinking to do. And some praying.” He paused, sent up a prayer for strength, then said, “I’d like to come with you. To see your dad.”

  “When?”

  “Today?”

  Silence. Had he misread her last night?

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I need to do this. I’ll meet you at three o’clock inside, by the reception desk.”

  * * *

  Sarah pulled her jacket closer as she hurried down the snow-covered sidewalk to the hospital entrance. A chilly wind had sprung up, snatching away what precious warmth she had soaked up in her car. The snow squeaked under her feet, underlining how cold it was.

  But she didn’t care. Nothing mattered. She and Logan were going to finish this chapter in their life and then move on. Where to, she wasn’t sure yet. But one thing she knew, right now Logan was the most important person in her life.

  A few more steps and she was out of the wind. She stamped her feet, getting rid of the snow that stuck to her boots, then scooted inside the warmth of the hospital. The foyer was a jumble of boots of every size and melting snow and Sarah had to do some fancy footwork
to get her boots off and shoes on without getting her feet wet.

  The woman at the reception desk greeted her with a smile. Sarah wasn’t even aware that she was smiling, as well.

  She glanced around the room. No dark head, no tall figure slouching in a chair. A quick peek at her watch showed her that she was only five minutes late.

  She walked toward the doors, glanced out over the parking lot beside the hospital, then back to the reception area. None of the magazines held her interest, but she picked one up anyway and flipped through it, the picture of nonchalance.

  Ten minutes later still no Logan.

  Had she missed him? Impossible. Every time the door opened, sending in a rush of cold air, she had looked up. She had walked to the door any number of times; there was no way he could have walked past her.

  So where was he? Had he changed his mind? Had second thoughts?

  The questions spun and danced, teasing and taunting.

  Should she worry?

  Well, she was at the hospital. Surely if something had happened, she would be one of the first to know.

  She dug in her purse for her cell phone, then realized she had left it at home, so she called from a pay phone but Logan wasn’t answering.

  She pushed herself up from her chair, the reality of the situation hitting her like a slap. Logan wasn’t coming. She didn’t know if she should be sad or angry or disheartened or a mixture of all three.

  She glanced down the hallway toward her father’s ward. She had made a promise to Logan, but she figured that the circumstances had changed. She was here now; she should go see her father.

  But the closer she got to his room, however, the slower her steps became. Could she do this after what she had promised to Logan? Were her father and family’s wishes still controlling her?

  She became aware of music coming from a room beside her father’s. A Christmas carol.

  “O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.”

  She stopped, letting the song flow over her questions and doubts. If she didn’t forgive her father and find atonement with him, she was just like the Israelites. Captive. And in this Christmas season she was reminded that Christ came to give freedom to the captives. Just as she had experienced that day in her father’s room when she read to him from Isaiah.