She had done that. In one sentence Lila had shown her a self Cara had been struggling to see. One who’d made a right choice, instead of a series of bad ones.
There were other good things. She knew that. Sara was helping her to find them. Like the fact that Joy was, overall, happy, secure and well loved.
It would take time, they’d all told her.
Like the time she’d spent with Simon on the mountain...she’d started her healing there.
At his gifted hand.
“And when you thought you’d done wrong, a heinous wrong, when you had the chance to get away, you chose instead to turn yourself in, to face the rest of your life in prison in order to bring honor to your daughter. You take accountability, Cara, and that’s the hardest, and in my book, one of the most decent things a person can do. That’s what defines you.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She’d expected the meeting to go very differently.
They talked a little more. And then Cara sat up. “I just... I came here this morning to let you know I’ve noticed the way you and my father look at each other sometimes, and yet... I can’t help but see the distance you keep. And if it’s because of me... I just want you to know it’s not necessary.
“I struggle with how my dad is, some... You know the way he just quietly goes about doing what he thinks is right, taking care of those he loves, without actually checking in with them to make sure he’s got it right? But I love him far more than I ever realized, and I want him happy. If that’s with you... I just want you to know that I would welcome you with open arms.”
Lila’s entire countenance changed. Withdrew. It was like she had left the room and an identical woman took her place. There was no rudeness about her. Or even unkindness. But the welcome sign was clearly gone.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Lila said, her lips tilted like she might think she was smiling. She looked...pained. “But I’m afraid you’re mistaken. There’s no...”
Her voice stopped...just stopped, and Cara had the thought that Lila had been unable to say there was nothing. Because there was?
More than just Cara’s deceased mother had to be standing in the way. Something from Lila’s past? Something Cara’s father had said or done?
But...
What did she really know about either one of them?
She should leave it alone. And she didn’t want to.
Before she could come up with what to do next, Lila glanced over at her.
“If I were ever going to have a... I would be honored for it to be your father. And you and Joy...but that’s not my life,” she said. Her sadness gripped Cara. “This is my life.” Lila spread her hand to encompass the room, but Cara knew she meant The Lemonade Stand. “These people are my family.”
“But...”
Lila shook her head. “I’ve had my family, Cara...”
“What happened to them?”
She wanted to know, needed to know, but Lila just shook her head. And Cara couldn’t let it go...maybe didn’t know Lila well enough to know that her best course would be to let it go.
“How long ago?” From what she’d heard, Lila had been at the Stand since its inception several years before.
“Almost fifteen years.”
Longer than she and Daddy had been apart, and that seemed like a lifetime. But the pain of losing him, and finding him again, the regrets, were still debilitating.
Far, far, far longer than she’d known Simon and yet...missing him was a constant pain in the confusion of her current days.
“So...the pain doesn’t ever go away?”
Lila’s smile seemed more real this time. “It lessens,” she said. “I don’t live with it day in and day out. I’m truly happy here, Cara. I found my course, as you will find yours.”
Lila’s course... The woman emanated peace. Was that what Cara needed, then? To focus on finding peace?
“You seem peaceful,” she said now. “But you’re sure...you’re happy?”
Her father clearly had feelings for the woman.
“I just spent two months hiding out in a cabin in the mountains,” Cara started, knowing what she had to say now. “Hiding gives you a chance to think. To remember things. To let everything flow over you. You hear the small voices. It gives you a chance to find your inside self, if you care to look. And when you find that self, you find peace.”
There were many things she had yet to learn, to figure out. To work through. But this one thing, she knew.
“It’s what my mother taught me,” she said. “To listen to your heart—really listen. To seek out the inner you and listen. I watched her do it again and again during those months she was sick. After every disappointment. When the pain was almost more than she could bear. Each time, she’d find that inner place and be at peace.”
Lila was nodding. “She gave you the best gift and the best life tool she could have given you.”
Yes. This was right.
“But she was dying,” Cara said. “Peace was the end of her journey. She wanted me to use it for the beginning of mine.”
Just like that, it was all so clear. She leaned forward, wished she knew Lila well enough to touch her. “Don’t you see? For those of us who are alive, this peace that you’ve found, that I’ve found, it’s not meant to be the destination. It’s meant to guide us as we reach for more. The peace... It’s not happiness...it’s only the door through which happiness waits.”
It had to be that way. Or what was the point of any of it? The struggle. The pain? The lessons and accountability—they all led to the glory, right?
The happiness and joy?
She didn’t know what it all meant in terms of her immediate future. Or Lila’s or her father’s or Simon’s or Julie’s or anyone’s. But the concept...
Lila had tears in her eyes. She stood, and just like that, their meeting was apparently at an end. Not sure what she’d just done...if she’d totally messed up again, Cara followed her to the door, was ready to walk through it when Lila reached out, pulling Cara to her.
“You are a fine woman, Cara,” she said softly by her ear. “I will think about what you said.” Then she pulled back. Cara opened the door.
“Cara?” She turned around, and Lila was stoic again, back in the room, there by the tea neither of them had touched. “About your father and I? It can’t happen,” she said. “I just need to make sure you understand that.”
She wasn’t sure she did. At all.
But she nodded anyway.
The Lemonade Stand, Christmas Eve
LILA WRAPPED THE last present and put it with the others on the kitchen counter. She had half an hour or so before she’d need to carry them in to put them under the tree in the cafeteria.
Any resident who was safe to go home had done so, to return the next day. But the rest, the majority of them, would be gathering for a church service and then meeting for punch and cookies and a gift exchange.
It had been tradition, since day one, that each bungalow—or cul-de-sac of bungalows, depending on the population—put up a donated tree of their own and decorated it with provided ornaments. Those residents also had gifts for each other under their trees to be opened Christmas morning.
The gifts could be purchased with monies saved out of what was given to the residents for their care, or they could be homemade in any of the craft buildings and classes on premises. Their purpose was to give each resident the chance to give. And to receive. To embody the spirit of Christmas. The hope of Christmas. To bring alive the hope that children feel at the thought that Santa might bring them something they wouldn’t ordinarily get.
The residents at the Stand, most of them, had long ago lost that hope. The idea was to bring that back to them. That sense that anything was possible. That if we did good for others, good would abound with happiness
available as a result.
Lila believed in Christmas with all her heart.
For the night’s gift exchange, they drew names. But Lila always had something under the tree for every single resident in her care. Something that she chose with them in mind. Giving those gifts was her happiest moment every year.
Sara and the other counselors would all be there. Lynn Bishop and her family would bring life to the party. The shelter had four kids that year—including little Joy.
Selfishly, Lila was glad that the little girl who’d captivated Lila’s heart was with them for the holiday. And she also knew that it was time for her and her mother to leave them. Any help Cara needed at this point could be provided with regular counseling. Her ex-husband was behind bars. And her father was ready and financially able to give her a fresh start.
A happy ending. One of the best.
Cara had found her peace and through it was finding happiness. She was a wise one, that girl. A woman who’d put thoughts in Lila’s head that had never been there before.
Entering the silent cafeteria after she knew everyone else would be gathered for the service, Lila took the gifts off the cart she’d used to bring them from her suite and placed each one under the brightly lit tree.
It had been a good year.
For each one that passed with more women being given new lives, she was thankful. At peace.
When she was done with the presents, she took the last thing on the cart—an angel ornament, this one made out of sea shells—and, giving it a kiss, hung it on the tree—a tree covered in angel ornaments, all of them different, all of them handmade by Lila. Every one of them to honor her little girl and the work they still did together.
“Here’s another one, Mom. Ella and I made it together.” She froze. Sure that she’d imagined that voice.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Frightened, needing to reassure herself that everything was fine, that she was just particularly emotional that year, she swung around and saw them. Ella and Brett and that precious baby boy, standing there holding out a raffia-and-lace angel with the word Livia written in gold on its dress.
She’d only told one person about the angels on the Stand Christmas tree.
Edward. In a moment of conversation between friends.
So, how had Brett known?
He didn’t come toward her. She couldn’t move.
He looked...so good. Soooo good. He’d been a young man heading off to college the last time she’d seen him in person.
And now...the broad-shouldered man before her, in a suit and tie—with a beautiful woman attached to one elbow and a waving baby in his arms...
Her son.
Lila’s heart pounded. It broke.
He’d become everything she’d known he could be.
Everything she’d known he’d become.
Soaking in the sight of him, promising herself that that was all she needed, just that Christmas glance, she hated the tears that sprang to her eyes, obstructing that view.
“So...here’s the thing...” Brett’s voice reached her ears, though he continued to respect her need for space between them.
“You have a right to your choices, to live your life as you see fit. Just as we...your family, have the right to love you. And sometimes loving someone means believing in what they can’t see. Knowing them when their own mind convinces them that they are something else.”
She shook her head. He was using rhetoric that she taught every day. It wouldn’t work on her. She wasn’t one of them.
She was one of the...
“I can’t do it anymore, Mom.” Brett’s voice broke. “I can’t watch you waste the rest of our years together.”
Her son...her firstborn baby boy...the grown man he’d become, had tears in his voice...on his face. He was hurting...
“We’re coming to you, Mom. For as long as it takes. As of tonight, Ella and I have moved into The Lemonade Stand.” He named a bungalow she knew to have been vacated the day before. “I own the place. I have the right to live here. You go ahead and go home to your condo every night if you need to. You stay in your suite. You do what you must. But every day, we will be here. We will see you. Eat at a table with you. For as long as it takes for you to see the you that the rest of us see. To forgive yourself...”
The sound of movement caught her attention before she saw more people move forward. Julie. Hunter. Cara and Joy. And...Edward.
“I met your son a while back through Hunter,” Edward said, not keeping his distance. “When Hunter told me that Brett was the founder of The Lemonade Stand I had to tell him how much the woman he had managing the place for him impressed me. To the point that I’d found myself having fallen in love with her.”
Lila shook her head. “You can’t love me...” she whispered. And was filled with shock when she heard herself—sounding just like one of her victims.
Openmouthed, she stared at him. He kissed her. Quickly, chastely, and yet... Lila felt exposed.
And...
“You’re going back to Florida,” she had to point out. To bring some sense to whatever was going on. Either she was losing her mind or the rest of the world was.
She searched desperately inside herself for the peace that kept her safe.
And safe for others.
Edward shook his head. Took her hand. Knelt down. “I’m going into practice here in Santa Raquel,” he said from down on one knee. Which made no sense to her at all. Why didn’t he stand up? “I’ve already applied for and received my license to practice in California, have my space picked out and doctors who are ready to send referrals. Joy needs a lot of family around her, not just one of us or two of us, and with Hunter and Julie here, Cara and I decided that it was best that we stay.”
He was just babbling now. Ridiculously. In front of other people.
Things were happening inside her. Intense things. They made peace harder to find. But she needed it. Had to cling to it...
He squeezed her hand. “Cara’s going to start college in January, by the way,” he said. “She wants to be a nurse...”
Lila had expected that might happen. Glanced at Cara and nodded her approval of a very special resident.
She looked at Joy, who was watching her with serious eyes. Eyes that saw far too much for such a young soul.
Much like Livia had...
“So...when Brett heard that you’d told me about your son, he told me that he was that son. I can tell you, I was pretty much floored with that one, but when I thought about it, it all made sense... The two of you working together in the way you could, to bring help to all of the victims, who, like both of you, couldn’t find their own way out...”
She’d tried to find a way. Tried so hard. She’d found peace.
Lila looked at Brett, lips trembling. He still had tears in his eyes as he smiled at her, and his sweet baby boy stuck a finger in the corner of his eye. Ella reached for little Jerimiah’s hand and gently pulled it back. Brett didn’t even blink.
He’d take a finger in the eye without a flinch. Just as he’d taken her fists...
“Brett, interestingly enough, has a different version of that day.” Edward was talking again, from down on the floor. He really needed to stand up. “He said your blows didn’t leave a single bruise, Lila. Did you ever think to ask, my love? Did you ever see this damage you thought you inflicted?”
“I...” She hadn’t been able to bear the sight. The fact shamed her. And yet...
She looked at Brett. “I lost control of myself,” she said. “The emotions...they took over and I lost control...”
She had to find her peace. Her calm. Couldn’t let...
“And even then, while you lashed out with pain and grief, your blows landed on my chest, Mom, not on my face, not my ribs or bones or org
ans. And there was no strength behind him. They left no mark. Whether you knew it or not, even out of control, you weren’t trying to hurt me.”
“But I did. I saw the look on your face...”
“I was shocked to see you striking out, yes, but only because it was so out of character. I was scared to death you were losing your mind right before my eyes. I’ve tried to tell you this...so many times...”
She’d scared herself to death.
The truth crashed down around her with so much force she thought for a second that everyone in the room could hear it.
In those few brief moments she’d seen a self she didn’t recognize and she’d been frightened beyond her ability to cope. So much so that she’d gone into emotional hiding. Her gaze sought Cara’s. The younger woman’s look was intense, her eyes moist. She knew.
Through years of counseling, of seeking her inner truth, Lila had found her peace. And had been hiding behind it ever since. She was dying. Not living.
“So...I’ll wait for as long as it takes,” Edward was talking again. “And I’ll be repeating my question as many times as it takes, but here’s the first go round. Lila McDaniels...will you marry me?”
Everyone was staring at her. Most of them crying. The pressure closed in. She’d... For so long... There’d only been...
She looked at Brett—whom she hadn’t hurt. Even in her grief, her out-of-control burst of emotion, she hadn’t inflicted pain? He nodded.
Then at Ella, who also nodded.
Cara and Joy, both nodding. Even Julie and Hunter.
“We’ve all got your back, Mom,” Brett said. “Just give yourself the same chance at happiness you give to everyone else.”
Julie coughed, drawing Lila’s attention. She remembered saying something similar to the younger woman about giving herself a chance to be happy.
“Excuse me a minute,” she said to Edward. She pulled her hand away and, like an automaton, moved toward her son. She didn’t stop until she ran into him, wrapped her arms around him and took a long breath. “You’re completely sure?” she asked, looking him in the eye.
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