Christmas on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  “You’re being awfully hard on yourself.” She sounded like she was going to be physically ill.

  He thought of Charlie and of the shelter volunteers talking about how much of herself and her time and her own money Mallory poured into Atlanta’s assistance and homeless community—for the benefit of people she hardly knew and might never see again. He considered her short-lived career as a social worker and the way she’d become instantly attached to Polly.

  Mallory’s problem wasn’t that she didn’t allow people into her life and her heart. It was that she couldn’t handle trusting them once they were on the inside. Yet she was a woman who needed to be loved, to love, so desperately she’d made a life out of caring for people who could have her for only a moment before she moved on to the next crisis.

  “Being honest is important to me,” she said. “It’s what’s gotten me as far as I have.”

  He looked around her kitchen—the Lancers’ kitchen, in a modest but not insubstantial house in an upper-middle class suburb.

  “Honesty got you here,” he pointed out. “Honesty and your grandmother. Don’t tell me you could afford this place on a social worker’s salary, after you worked your way through college. Don’t tell me your grams didn’t love you, if she helped make coming to Chandlerville possible for you.”

  Mallory flashed him a brave smile. “She wanted me to have my dream one day. She knew her heart wasn’t strong, and she knew I wouldn’t want to keep the house I’d grown up in in Decatur once she was gone. She made me promise not to spend the money from selling it.”

  “Spend it, or give it away?” It wasn’t hard to imagine Mallory blowing every scrap of her inheritance on other people and having it feel better than buying something she wanted desperately for herself.

  “Grams left the money in a trust for me to buy a house with when I was ready.” Mallory gestured at their candy-colored surroundings. “She said one day I’d be strong enough to let everything I wanted in life want me back. She always believed I’d make it to a place like Mimosa Lane. This was my do-over. I convinced myself I could belong here the same as I did in the city. That without the daily reminders of where I came from, I’d finally have the life and the Christmas I’d always told Grams I wanted.”

  “Your grandparents sound like they were wonderful people.” Pete heard the loneliness she’d glossed over and the clear love in her voice for the family she insisted she’d never bonded with. “They did everything they could to make your life and your future the very best it could be.”

  “They were good people.”

  “Come to the Perrys’ party with me,” he pressed. “Come get to know some more good people who want to make your life better.”

  She drank her coffee without breaking eye contact. “The Perrys?”

  “Your neighbors two doors down, across the cul-de-sac from my place. They have two rowdy boys and do Christmas like a SWAT team of elves. It’s really something to see. You shouldn’t miss it.”

  Mallory giggled.

  He laughed, too, grateful he could bring some lightness into her life, even if it was only for a moment. “Sam and Emma were friends. Brian’s a good man, a great dad, and one of the coaches of some of the community ball teams. Sam’s quiet and shy, but she’s a sweetheart. I know they’d love to meet you, to really get to know you. A lot of people on the lane would.”

  Mallory shook her head. “I don’t think I’m up for that. Not now.”

  “I don’t think I’m up for it, either,” he admitted. “But they’re Polly’s family, too. These are the people she’s seen her mom and me enjoy being with, more than she’s seen us with her grandparents who live in Boston. Her whole life, these people have been there at school, on playdates, and at the bus stop and picnics and block parties. They were a big part of her world, and I’ve been keeping them from her, using her unhappiness as an excuse. I don’t want Polly to end up thinking that being alone is better than being part of other people’s lives. That’s no way for anyone to live. For her or for you.”

  Even Mallory’s tears were inspiring, because although she was fighting not to cry her lips were softening into that smile that spoke of hope eclipsing sadness.

  “You make it sound so amazing,” she said. “So easy. Just show up and they’ll want to get to know me the way they do the both of you. The way I’m sure they did the first time they met you and Emma.”

  “Like I did the first time I met you.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Her snort would have done the real Grumpy proud. “I was a delight that night, pontificating to you about doing what was right for your daughter because what you’d been through didn’t mean jack when a little girl was hurting.”

  He leaned forward, desperate to hold her because she was talking about so much more than him and Polly. The bitterness, the impatience, the anger, the almost hatred in her voice…It was directed at herself.

  “Mallory,” he said as he curled her close, “what did you and Polly talk about last night?”

  She held herself so rigid in his arms he should have let her go, but he couldn’t. Eventually she relaxed and leaned in, her head resting on his shoulder, her lips brushing the side of his neck.

  Except for him and Polly, how long had it been? How long had this woman gone since she’d held on to someone just for her? Had she let her grams comfort her? Had her mother even tried? And all the patients and even the men in her life since…Had any of them simply held her because she’d needed to know what it felt like to be the center of someone else’s world?

  Pete had taken so much for granted when Emma was alive. And when she was gone, he’d let himself stay blinded for too long to all the things that remained in his life that he should be grateful for. His child, his friends, even his in-laws who’d smothered him and Polly so completely at Thanksgiving.

  “What did you two talk about last night?” he asked again.

  “Mothers.” Mallory trembled as she said the word.

  “Did it help?”

  “I think she’s doing better.”

  “Did it help you?” His hand slid through her hair, his fingers brushing against her cheek and tipping up her chin. He kissed her, softly, when all night he’d dreamed of devouring her lips with his own, taking and giving.

  She laughed sadly and kissed him back. “Don’t I sound better?”

  His touch grew firmer. “You sound like you expect to be alone for the rest of your life. That that will be all you can ever handle, no matter what your grandmother or I or anyone else thinks. And you’re telling yourself you don’t really mind. Don’t help my daughter love her mother and me again, don’t hold Polly in front of your Christmas tree, don’t kiss me like you do…Don’t reach for us the way you are and tell yourself you can’t handle it, Mallory. Don’t give up the way you seem to be okay letting everything else go before it can hurt you like your mother did.”

  “What do you want from me?” She jerked away from him. No more self-deprecating laughter. No trace of tears in her level, emotionless gaze. “At the shelter. Last night in your foyer. Just now. Kissing me and dancing with me and holding me. Inviting me to be your plus-one to go meet your neighbors—”

  “Our neighbors.”

  “Whatever you want, whenever you’re ready to go there again, you could have it a hundred times easier with another woman. Someone just like your wife and your friends and everyone else you know. Someone who doesn’t hate her mama for abandoning her. Someone who didn’t make her grams pay for the childhood she’ll never get back, no matter how hard she’s searched for it everywhere she went except at home. Someone who doesn’t want to run every time she turns a corner and finds something from her past making everything in the here and now impossible to feel real.”

  “I want someone who never quits when she’s needed, no matter how hard the next choice is or how afraid she is of making it. She’s brutally honest and doesn’t let the people she loves quit, either, even though she thinks she’ll fail at helping them and might never be
able to make them love her back. Even when the one woman she wanted to help most never let her, and she’s been trying to make up for that her entire life. I want someone who knows how badly love can hurt, real love—not the fairy-tale thing movies and books tell us caring about someone should look like. But no matter how hard she tries to protect herself, she can’t seem to stop caring about people.”

  “Pete…I…” She shook her head, as if the words she wanted to say simply weren’t there.

  “Come to the holiday party with us next weekend. In the meantime, let me help you look for your mother. Because I know you’re going to even though you’re talking like you’re through with her. You can’t help yourself. You’ll volunteer wherever you’re supposed to be tomorrow and do whatever you can for as many people as you can. You’ll be at school next week, beating back the flu before Christmas break starts and making sure Polly keeps getting better. But the whole time you’ll be using every contact you know to look for your mother—even when you don’t think she’ll want to be found. Won’t you?”

  She nodded, looking impossibly young as she smiled ruefully. “She’s my mama. What else am I gonna do?”

  “You’re going to let me help you search for what’s left of your family, Mallory. Whatever you think about her, whatever happens once you find her, you need to see this through. And you don’t have to go through it alone. Not this time. Then come to the Perrys’ party so Polly and I won’t have to go there alone. Doesn’t that sound fair?”

  “What”—she shook her head, her voice a little girl’s whisper—“what are we doing, Pete? I don’t understand what we’re doing. What any of it means. And I…”

  “I don’t understand, either. Not fully.” He pulled her into his arms and began rocking them both, like last night. Like he rocked Polly when nothing else seemed to get through. “But I’m strong enough to find out, mostly thanks to you. And I think you are, too, just like your grams said all along. Being alone is a choice. It’s how we protect ourselves, and it’s how we give up when it feels too hard to keep fighting to belong. But if you still wanted that, you wouldn’t have moved to Mimosa Lane. Don’t give up, not this week. Let’s give this a shot.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I dwell in possibility…

  “She wore this one all year long,” Polly said Tuesday afternoon. She’d come over after Mallory had gotten home from work—just as she had on Monday. She’d brought more of her mother’s pins and more of Emma Lombard’s stories, wanting to share them with Mallory now before putting the pins in the cookie jar Pete had expertly repaired on Sunday.

  Then she’d reached inside to pluck out one of the treasures she’d shown Mallory Saturday night.

  “It’s a beautiful Christmas tree,” Mallory responded. And it was. Vintage and nostalgic looking, it was like a miniature of something you’d see in a Currier and Ives print, or Norman Rockwell, or some movie on the Hallmark Channel. “She wore it all year long?”

  “She loved Christmas. It made her happy even when it was hot outside. She’d sing Christmas carols whenever she wore it, one time at a Forth of July barbecue. Everyone started singing with her. It was crazy, but everybody loved it. We had so much fun that day.”

  Mallory smiled and sipped the coffee she’d poured for herself after making hot chocolate for her guest. They were munching on celery and peanut butter, with raisins sprinkled on top—one of the few snacks she remembered from when she was very little. Polly had come a long way from Franken Berry.

  Not that she and Mallory hadn’t dived into bowls of that, too, once the kid had woken up on Sunday. Her daddy had already headed home, leaving them to their girl time. He hadn’t pressured Mallory to talk about their kisses and the dance they’d shared, more of her memories or the raw truths she’d told him that she’d never discussed with anyone but her grams. And he hadn’t insisted on an answer for whether or not she’d join him and Polly at the neighborhood Christmas party. At least not beyond saying and doing all the right things to tempt her beyond bearing.

  ’“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ in July, huh?” she asked. It sounded amazing, being that easy and free about life, having fun and not worrying about whether anyone would accept you, because everyone always did. “I bet she hoped one day you’d want to wear all of these, too.”

  Polly had also brought over an owl that her mother had made a habit of wearing to school events, because owls were so smart and never forgot what was important. And yesterday she’d shown up with a family of butterflies—two big ones and lots of baby ones, some gold, some silver, others with painted wings. Because butterfly families were free, her mom had said every time Emma and Polly saw the beautiful creatures at the park or at home in their garden.

  Polly’s hands slid to her lap while she finished chewing her latest crunch of celery.

  “Would wearing your mom’s pins be too weird?” Mallory asked, broaching the question the little girl’s stories seemed to be leading them toward.

  “Wasn’t it weird, bringing your mom’s doll back with you Saturday?” Polly asked. “And keeping it under your Christmas tree?”

  Mallory nodded.

  Touché.

  “It’s really weird,” she said. What had Pete said about allowing herself to see what love really looked like? “But actually”—there was more than peanut butter clogging Mallory’s throat now—“it’s not my mom’s doll. It’s mine. At least, I think it is. I couldn’t leave it there at the shelter…alone, for someone else to find and throw away. Because it was mine, and…”

  “And your mommy kept it for you since you were little?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Like your mom kept all of these for you.”

  Though the realization didn’t warm Mallory’s heart the way she was hoping, Emma’s pins were starting to become sweet memories for Polly. Emma had fought to the very end to stay with her daughter, which made all the difference in the world. Mallory couldn’t wait for the day when Polly really got that. It would be like every Christmas fantasy of Mallory’s all rolled up into one perfect present.

  The little girl sniffled. She was crying just a little after letting even fewer things get to her this week at school than last. She seemed less emotionally fragile by the day—bravely looking for her answers while Pete gave Mallory the breathing room she needed to do the same.

  “I know everything reminds you of your mommy, sweetie,” Mallory said. “I know how that is, and I know how hard that can be. But eventually you won’t want to hide all these beautiful things away.” Mallory collected the Christmas tree and the owl and put them inside Mickey’s tummy along with the butterfly family and the rest. “One day you’ll realize you want to wear one of them. Then you’ll want to set them all free to be memories again by sharing them with other people besides just me. You’ll sing your own Christmas carols. And everything will be right here waiting for you. Take all the time you need. Whatever it takes, just so you don’t throw them out of your life for good. That’s our deal, right?”

  Polly nodded. She pushed her plate away after eating almost as much of their snack as Mallory had. She reached for her hot chocolate, mirroring Mallory’s motions as she drank.

  “You haven’t found your mommy yet, have you?” Polly asked. “And you haven’t decided if you’re coming with us to the party on Saturday?”

  Mallory’s hands clenched around her mug.

  Pete had told his daughter about his invitation, which shouldn’t have been a big deal. Except Mallory smelled a rat in the overbright smile suddenly spreading across her little friend’s face. So much for Mallory’s breathing room.

  “I’ll hold your hand the whole time,” Polly rushed to say. “You’ll see, it’ll be fun. You won’t have to go alone. We’ll do it together, and that will make it easy, really. Give it a shot.”

  Let’s give it a shot…

  The phrasing was too spot-on to be a coincidence.

  The man who seemed so certain he understood Mallory enough to know what she could and
couldn’t handle on Mimosa Lane hadn’t learned jack about when to stop pushing his luck.

  “I’m sure we’d have a great time, sweetie.” She took their empty mugs and plates to the sink and rinsed them. “And if I decide to go, I can’t think of anyone I’d want to go with more than you.” She turned toward the table and smiled when she saw Polly slipping the Christmas tree from the cookie jar and pinning it to the front of her pink corduroy jumper. “Why don’t we go find your daddy? He’s probably getting ready to call you home anyway for bath time and dinner.”

  Pete had made a point of sticking to an afternoon schedule so Polly had a new routine to immerse herself in. Which meant Mallory would likely find him in the Lombard kitchen when she confronted him about using his daughter as a guided missile aimed straight at Mallory’s heart.

  She and Polly threw on their lightweight jackets. The weather had warmed since the weekend to hover most of the day in the low sixties. Polly insisted on heading out the front door instead of using the patio. She rushed down Mallory’s driveway and across the cul-de-sac to the house two doors down from Mallory’s and across the street from her own. The Perry house.

  Mallory followed at a more leisurely pace, shivering a little in the deepening twilight. Pete was there, talking with a petite redhead who seemed to have been digging in the flower bed beneath her mailbox. She wore jeans and an oversize men’s rugby shirt, probably her husband’s. There wasn’t a hint of makeup on her face. Not that her features needed a single artificial thing to enhance their natural beauty. She was exactly the type of woman Mallory envisioned a man like Pete falling head over heels for.