We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

by Brenda Novak

  Briefly Cole squeezed his eyes closed against the echo of his mother trying to call to him after she’d lost the ability to speak, and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Feld was just a place, not so different from a thousand other small American towns, he told himself. What had been painful here was gone. Feld couldn’t hurt him anymore.

  “Are we there?” Waking when he slowed for the first traffic signal, Jaclyn blinked and stared out the window. Russ Groves’s small real-estate office was still on Main Street next to One-Two-Three Burgers and Shakes and across from the 7-Eleven on the corner. A handful of new businesses had sprung up since he’d left, and a few had changed hands or been modernized, Cole noticed, but for the most part, returning to Feld was like taking a step back in time.

  “Just about,” Cole answered. “The Wentworth ranch is on the other side of town, right?”

  “Yeah. Turn left at the last light.”

  Cole remembered. Terry’s place had been the weekend party haunt for almost everyone in his graduating class, except Cole. He’d never been invited, but being left out hadn’t bothered him. He’d been too busy wishing for other things—his mother’s improved health, his father’s continued strength, his brothers’ safety and well-being. What he’d hated in those days was the way Terry had taken his father’s money and power, and all it afforded him, for granted, and the way he’d strutted through school looking down his nose at anyone less fortunate.

  He wondered if Terry had changed.

  “How long has it been since you’ve visited here?” she asked.

  Not long enough, he wanted to say. Instead, he responded, “I left about eighteen months after my divorce. I haven’t been back since.”

  “I didn’t think so. The last time I saw you was when I was pregnant with Alex.”

  “At the grocery store.”

  They came to the light and made a left.

  “Do you ever talk to Rochelle?” Jaclyn asked, when they passed the small florist shop owned by Rochelle’s parents.

  “No. Is she still in town?”

  “Probably. She was here when I left a year ago.”

  Great. If he was really lucky, he could run into his ex while he was in town, end up facing every person he’d never wanted to see again.

  “Has she remarried?” he asked.

  “Not that I know of. She—” Jaclyn glanced over at him. “She had a hard time getting over you.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he said.

  A faint grin lit Jaclyn’s face. “Are you saying you’re unforgettable?”

  “I’m saying Rochelle has problems.” And for a while, those problems were my problems. If things had gone any differently, if I hadn’t found out…

  Cole shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind. He had found out. That was the important thing.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jaclyn asked.

  Starting with Rochelle’s mental instability, Cole could have given her a pretty long list. But Jaclyn knew too many people in Feld. Regardless of what had transpired between him and his ex-wife, their marriage was over now, and it was enough for Cole that he’d gotten out. He wouldn’t divulge what Rochelle had done because it served no purpose except to make her look bad. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Jaclyn adjusted her shoulder strap and checked on her sleeping children. “What time do you want to head back tomorrow?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “I thought we’d let the kids spend the day, then leave around seven. That should get them in bed by nine or nine-thirty, early enough for school the following morning. Sound okay?”

  “That’s fine, but you don’t mind? Staying so long, I mean?”

  It wasn’t a matter of whether he minded, Cole realized. It was a matter of commitment. He had said he’d bring them; he’d see it through. Certainly he could survive a single day in the town of his old alma mater if it meant Burt couldn’t accuse Jaclyn of trying to keep her kids from their father.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. I won’t be missing anything.”

  “Do you have family or friends here you’d like to visit?”

  There were a few teachers who’d been kind to him and his family, including one who’d actually come out to the house and tutored Rick—but Cole didn’t know where they lived or whether they were still in town. He thought he might look up Wild Bill, the crusty geezer who’d given him the trucking job when he’d married Rochelle, and he might swing by and say hello to their old neighbor, Granny Fanny. Other than that, the only people he wanted to see were buried in the cemetery.

  “Not really. I lived here less than three years and didn’t make many long-term friends,” he said. “My parents came from Kansas. My extended family on both sides is back there.”

  “Do you ever go to Kansas to visit them?”

  “No. I didn’t grow up knowing any of my cousins, and I’ve been too busy since I got older.”

  “Here it is,” she said, pointing through the window at two white brick posts topped with lion sentries.

  Slowing, he turned down the long, tree-lined drive he’d passed hundreds of times when he was a kid. Under the light of the moon, the Wentworth ranch looked exactly the same as it had in high school. The house was a long rambling affair with a big barn in back and cows lowing off in the distance. Hay piles covered with black plastic sat in a field to one side, and at least a dozen vehicles, from tractors to trucks, were parked at various points along the circular drive.

  “Where did you and Terry live?” Cole asked above the grind of tires on gravel. “Is there a smaller house in the back?”

  “No, we shared the big house with his parents. Technically, we were supposed to have the south wing to ourselves. We had a separate kitchen and everything, but his mother did the accounting and payroll for the ranch, and I pretty much took over as cook and housekeeper, so we usually ate together. It just didn’t make sense to have two people cook each night when we were all living under the same roof, you know?”

  “Sounds like you spent a lot of time with your in-laws.” Cole couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like, living with the arrogant Wentworths, but then, he couldn’t imagine what had attracted her to Terry in the first place. Cole had never cared for him.

  With a sigh, she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “It wasn’t so bad at first. I thought they were very supportive and good to us. His father was paying for everything we had, everything we did. But we were working for it, too. Both of us. I might never have been directly involved in the business, but Terry spent nearly twelve hours a day out on the ranch, and I wasn’t exactly sitting around. I was doing things that enabled Terry’s mother to stay in the office.”

  She shook her head, staring out the front window at the house where she’d spent all her married years. “Burt never seemed to credit us for what we did, though. He acted like he was God and we were living on his good graces, that we were ungrateful wretches if we ever talked about leaving the ranch.”

  “Golden handcuffs.”

  She chuckled without humor. “No kidding. Burt even threatened to disinherit Terry one time, when he brought up the subject of our moving. Terry kept telling me we’d leave eventually, and I kept trying to be patient, to compromise, to get along, but…” Her eyes grew troubled. “There were some…other issues that came into play, and pretty soon I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Cole put the transmission in Park and cut the engine. “Do you like living by yourself better?” he asked.

  Jaclyn paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Living alone has been difficult. I won’t lie about that. It’s something I never pictured myself doing. But I’m getting by, and I certainly don’t regret leaving Terry. If it weren’t for the kids—” she glanced at them again as if to reassure herself that they were still sleeping, peacefully oblivious to her words “—I would never look back.”

  So, it appeared he and Jaclyn had more in common than he had thought. They might have come from opposite sid
es of the tracks. She might have been Miss Popularity and he a two-bit punk trying to scrape enough together to buy a new pair of jeans when his others wore out, but neither of them held any love for Feld or the Wentworths.

  “Let’s get this over with, then.” He started to open his door, but Jaclyn stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “There’s something you should know before we go in.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Terry and his family may not be…friendly. He’s been trying to talk me into coming back to him, and I won’t.”

  “I don’t expect them to roll out the red carpet. They never liked me to begin with.” He started to climb out again, but she pulled him back.

  “It’s more than that now. He might blame you that I won’t take him back,” she clarified.

  “Me? How?”

  “You gave me a job.”

  Cole scowled. “What does that have to do with your relationship?”

  “It gives me the ability to support myself. He and his father made sure I didn’t get much when we divorced. They were hoping desperation would drive me back.”

  So that was the answer to the child support riddle. Cole had wondered, but he also knew the Wentworths had plenty of money. Why would they be so stingy with Terry’s children? “What about the kids?”

  “I don’t know how they justify their behavior where the kids are concerned. I know they love them, so it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t be more worried that they have heat in the winter and food in the fridge. The only thing I can figure is that they don’t really understand how hurting me hurts them.”

  Disgusted, Cole shook his head. The Wentworths had all the odds in their favor, and they were still playing dirty. “They know. They’re counting on the fact that you’d never let anything hurt your kids. You’d come back first.”

  Jaclyn thought about that for a minute. “I probably would. If it came down to them having what they needed, I’d do anything. But I’d sacrifice a lot of things before turning tail and running back to Feld. Anyway—” she grinned at him, a hint of triumph in her expression “—I don’t have to worry about that now that an old friend has given me a decent job.”

  If Cole had ever been glad he hired Jaclyn, and lately he was—every time he smelled dinner cooking or found a freshly ironed shirt in his closet—he was happy now. He loved that he was the one who’d given her exactly what she needed to fight the Wentworths. Burt might think he could get away with pushing his ex-daughter-in-law around, that he could use her own children against her—and maybe in Feld he could. But Jackie wasn’t in Feld anymore.

  “Anyway,” she was saying, “you were so nice to bring us out here, I wanted to warn you. I thought if you understood what to expect, you wouldn’t be hurt.”

  Cole chuckled. “The Wentworths can’t hurt me, Jackie. You don’t ever have to worry about that.”

  “I’m glad someone is safe from them,” she said, her smile sincere but her expression skeptical. “Still, maybe you’d better stay here while I take the kids to the door.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll help you carry their bags. Suddenly I’d like to see Burt and Terry one more time.”

  Jaclyn seemed unsure of how to take his words, but Alex roused at that moment and cried, “Hey, we’re here!” which woke the girls.

  “Fine, let’s go,” she said, and Cole spent the next few minutes helping Jaclyn get their overnight bags out of the back of the truck and bringing them to the door. Then he waited on the doorstep beside her, the three children standing in front of them, while Alex rang the bell.

  “HI, BURT,” Jaclyn said, when Terry’s father answered the door.

  Even though he hadn’t seen her since their last day in court, Burt Wentworth didn’t respond directly to her. He spoke to the children, instead, trying to make the snub as obvious as possible.

  “Here they are, all safe and sound,” he announced to Dolores, who stood behind him, wearing what she called a housedress, a cotton print number that fell to just below the knee and snapped up the front. As always, she looked like a sweet, gray-haired grandma. But Jaclyn had done the unforgivable when she’d divorced Terry, and couldn’t count on any kindness coming from Dolores.

  Jaclyn greeted her, but Terry’s mother followed her husband’s lead and spoke only to the children.

  “Come give Grandma a hug. We’ve missed you. Seems like we never get to see you anymore. Why did you have to go and move so far away?”

  Alex cast Jaclyn a blame-filled look, and Jaclyn’s false smile faltered. But Cole put a hand on the small of her back, a silent communication of support, and she became more determined than ever to finesse her way through this uncomfortable meeting.

  “Where’s Dad?” Alex asked, as the children burst into the house babbling excitedly.

  “He went out with some friends tonight,” Dolores said.

  “Where?” Mackenzie pressed.

  “I want to see him,” Alyssa said.

  “I don’t know, dears. He’ll be home shortly, though, I’m sure.”

  Jaclyn thought she could guess where Terry and his friends were. They hadn’t changed how they spent their weekends in the past twelve years. She doubted they’d change in the next. They were all going nowhere fast, and that more than anything had fueled her disappointment in Terry when he was her husband.

  But she didn’t have to worry about Terry anymore. She was steering her own ship now. Being in control was a little scary, but it was also unbelievably liberating.

  “Here’s their stuff,” Jaclyn said to no one in particular, when Burt and Dolores left the door standing open and allowed the children to press them back into the house. No one had acknowledged Cole. No one had invited them in or thanked them for bringing the children to Feld. But Jaclyn hadn’t expected any great show of gratitude. She hadn’t come to town as a favor for the Wentworths, anyway. She’d done it for her children.

  “We’ll pick them up tomorrow at six o’clock, grab a burger and head out. We don’t want to get home too late.”

  At first Jaclyn thought Burt and Dolores were going to ignore this statement, as well, but finally Dolores glanced up long enough to respond with a clipped “That’s fine.”

  Eager to be gone, Jaclyn put her hand on Cole’s forearm to draw him away, but just as they reached the outer glow of the porch light, her ex-father-in-law addressed her.

  “Terry said you had a new man. This him?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Burt angled his gray, buzz-cut toward Cole and shoved his hands in his pockets to rattle his change. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, but his shoulders were wide and his hands big, the effect of which gave him a square solid look. “This your boyfriend?”

  Jaclyn let go of Cole’s arm, only now realizing, amid her preoccupation, that she was still hanging on to him. “Um, no, Cole’s my boss and an old friend. You might remember him. He went to high school with Terry and me. He’s the oldest of the Perrini boys.”

  “Perrini boys, huh?” Burt squinted at Cole, obviously sizing him up. “I remember him, all right. Caught him and his brothers out here ruining my lawn with their truck tires one night.”

  If she’d heard about that incident, Jaclyn didn’t remember it, but she didn’t put it past Cole. Everyone did that kind of thing in high school. It was how the teenagers of Feld created their own fun in a town that had one theater and no mall. And Cole had been as wild as they came. He was always in trouble, unpredictable in every regard, except one—if anyone messed with his brothers, there’d be hell to pay from Cole.

  “I guess we all did a few stupid things like that,” she said, hoping to mediate so the conversation wouldn’t turn ugly.

  But Cole clearly wasn’t interested in her help. “That must have been someone else,” he said flatly.

  Burt rocked up onto the balls of his feet and jingled his change again. “Oh, yeah? Seems to me it was you.”

  “No, I was at the 7-Eleven that night. I remember b
ecause Terry got busted for stealing beer, right after he threw up at the front door.” Cole smiled. “But maybe that incident slipped your mind, since nothing ever came of it. You knew the police officers involved and fixed things with the store clerk, too, I guess, because Terry got off, just like he always did.”

  Burt clamped his mouth shut. He’d been trying to put Cole down, to insinuate something about his background and poor upbringing, but Cole had quickly and easily turned the tables on him. Peeling out on someone’s lawn was one thing. Stealing beer from a store was something else, and Terry had been underage, though Jaclyn knew his father cared more about the embarrassment Terry had caused him than any moral implications.

  “I guess boys will be boys, huh?” Cole said. “See you tomorrow at six.” Slinging an arm around Jaclyn, he walked her to his Navigator and opened the door for her to climb in. To the casual observer, she knew his actions made them appear closer than they were, but she didn’t care. Cole was putting Burt on notice that she wasn’t alone anymore. He was lending her his support, and it felt…well, wonderful. Having Cole with her was like putting the wind at her back. She hadn’t realized just how tough it was to weather Terry and his family’s ill will alone.

  “Thanks,” she said, as soon as he’d climbed in and started the truck.

  “You don’t have to thank me. I didn’t do anything,” he said, but he took her hand, and Jaclyn gladly entwined her fingers with his. The last few minutes had united them somehow, made them allies against the Wentworths and Terry—even Feld.

  “Where should we stay for the night?” he asked.

  There were only three motels in town, mom-and-pop establishments with small, cabin-like rooms. None was very expensive. None was very nice. But they were good enough for Jaclyn. She was just glad to put some distance between her and the ranch.

  “Let’s see if the Starlight Motel still has its Jacuzzi,” she suggested.

  He hesitated before pulling out of the circular drive and onto the road. “I didn’t bring a suit.”