05 Take Me Home for Christmas

by Brenda Novak

  “He doesn’t burn meat. He barely cooks it,” she said with a chuckle. “But it’s so tender it melts in your mouth.”

  Once again Eve suffered a twinge of jealousy. “You’re lucky to have someone who loves you so much.”

  Cheyenne touched her arm. “You’re thinking about getting older, aren’t you?”

  “I’m thirty-four, Chey. And I want kids.”

  “It’ll happen.”

  “Here in Whiskey Creek?” Eve gave her a doubtful look. “I know all the eligible men. Just about the only guy I haven’t seriously considered is Aaron. Dylan’s other brothers are too young for me.” She laughed as if it was a joke, but she was secretly wondering how Cheyenne would react.

  “I love Aaron, but...you don’t want to get involved with him,” she said.

  Eve forced a smile. “Of course not.” She jerked her head toward the window. “I’d better go.”

  “Would you like me to go down with you?”

  “No need to overwhelm her. One adult she hardly knows is enough.”

  Cheyenne hugged her. “You’re so good.”

  Eve missed the old days, when she’d had more time with Chey. Now Chey, Gail and Callie were all married. Even Noah had a wife and a baby on the way. Eve had never dreamed the biggest playboy in the group would settle down before she did. She felt like the last person to leave a party....

  But she wasn’t the last. Ted hadn’t married. He hadn’t even been serious with anyone since Sophia. Riley, Baxter and Kyle were single, too, but they didn’t really count. Riley had a kid—he’d actually been the first to have one. Baxter was gay and in love with Noah, who wasn’t. And Kyle had been married. His wife had revealed herself to be the spawn of Satan so they’d divorced within months, but at least he’d known some kind of romance. Actually, he was still in love with Olivia, who’d married his stepbrother. So why was her love life so uneventful?

  She’d survive, she told herself. She shouldn’t wallow in self-pity when there were people suffering from much bigger problems than a bout of loneliness. People like Sophia. She’d once been the most popular girl in school, the daughter of the mayor. And she’d married the richest guy in town. How would it feel to suddenly become a pariah after having all that? The reversal alone had probably given her whiplash. And what about poor Alexa?

  Eve had such great parents. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to find out her dad was a total douchebag.

  Alexa was sobbing by the time Eve made it down to her. She was crying so hard, in fact, that she didn’t hear Eve’s approach.

  “Hey, kiddo. You okay?” Eve asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  Alexa was too distraught to even be startled. She hiccuped and wiped her cheeks as she looked up. “Am I—” she glanced around the cemetery “—am I not supposed to be in here?”

  Eve knelt beside her. “It’s perfectly fine for you to visit your father’s grave. I just didn’t want you to be alone if you needed someone to talk to. You don’t know me very well, but I’m a friend of your mom’s.”

  “You are?” She sounded skeptical, and for good reason. Eve had never even been to Sophia’s house. They’d had coffee together a few times at Black Gold with the others. That was it.

  “We went to high school together,” she said to bolster her claim.

  With a sniff, Alexa again dashed a hand over her wet cheeks. “Oh.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” Eve gestured at the flowers adorning the grave. “I know it’s hard to lose someone you love.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” she asked.

  Eve lowered her head to meet Alexa’s eye. “Do I think what’s true?”

  “That he did all those terrible things? That he didn’t love us like he said he did?”

  Oh, boy... Eve took a deep breath as she tried to come up with an answer that would help instead of hurt. “Sometimes, when things go wrong, people panic and make foolish mistakes. I bet your father wasn’t in the best frame of mind at the end. I’m sure he would’ve regretted his actions, had he lived. He loved you. There’s no question about that.”

  “But he did steal everyone’s money? And he was leaving us?”

  Alexa’s expression grew more beseeching. She seemed to be pleading for the truth, so Eve felt she had to be honest even if what she said would be painful to hear.

  “That’s what the evidence seems to suggest, sweetheart.”

  Two more tears slipped from her pretty blue eyes, eyes that were so much like her mother’s. “And now I have no one,” she said as if the world had just stopped turning.

  Eve feared she’d gone too far. “You have your mom. She’s not going anywhere.”

  Alexa’s tears started to fall faster and she had to gulp for breath as she blurted, “My mom’s not the same. She needs help.”

  “In what way?”

  “Maybe she’s drinking again. I don’t think so because there’s nothing in the house, but...she could be hiding it from me.”

  Eve felt a new measure of alarm. “You’re saying she’s drunk?”

  Alexa shrugged. “She can’t get out of bed.”

  Did Sophia have a drinking problem? If so, she wouldn’t want anyone to know about it, which made Eve feel like some nosy, intrusive bystander, gawking at the scene of a car crash. “She’s grieving, like you. The process affects us all differently.”

  “It’s more than that,” Alexa insisted. “She won’t eat, won’t let me open the drapes, hardly ever talks to me.” She plucked a blade of grass. “I’m going to have to call my grandma, but—” she turned her watery gaze to her father’s elaborate marble headstone “—then she’ll make me come and live with her.” Getting to her feet, she picked up her bag of groceries. She seemed so weary she could hardly move.

  Eve couldn’t let her go home by herself. “Why don’t I come with you?” she said. “I’ll check on your mom, see if there’s anything I can do.”

  She’d expected Alexa to be relieved to have reinforcements, but her lips slanted into a frown. “Thanks, but...you’d better not. No one’s supposed to know,” she said and started off, all but dragging those groceries along.

  Eve wasn’t sure what to do. She stood where she was and watched her for a few seconds, then jogged to catch up. “Lexi, I’m your mom’s friend, as I told you. And it sounds like she could use a friend right now.”

  “But then she’ll find out I told you,” Alexa said.

  “You only told me because you love her and you want to get her the help she needs.” Eve took the bag of groceries. “So let’s put these in my car and drive over together, okay? We’ll do what we can to get her back on her feet.”

  Alexa looked as if she was afraid to even hope, the poor girl. “You think it might work?”

  “Sometimes we have to fight for those we love. What I think is that we need to stage an intervention.”

  Alexa remained skeptical. “Is an intervention like rehab? Because she’s already done rehab. That lasted the whole month of September.”

  Eve secretly winced at the information the innocent Lexi had revealed. But at least it enabled her to view Sophia in a far more sympathetic light. Sophia had always been the girl who had it all. But maybe she was just more skillful at hiding her troubles. “It’s not rehab. It’s where your loved ones get hold of you and shake some sense into you, get you turned around and heading in the right direction.”

  For the first time since Eve had confronted her, Alexa lifted her chin and seemed to overcome her tears. “Will it work?”

  “We won’t know until we try.”

  Her sniff sounded more decisive than before. “Yes,” she said with a nod, “I want to stage an intervention.”

  Eve reached out with her free hand. “Let’s do it,” she said, but before they left the inn, she checked
the sack, found it full of cold cereal and snack items and decided to grab a few ingredients from her own pantry.

  9

  Voices carried up to Sophia. At first she imagined she was still in rehab, that some of her fellow “inmates”—as they’d jokingly referred to themselves—were talking in the hall outside her room. But when she opened her eyes and blinked at the ceiling, she realized she was at home. Then the rest of what had happened during the past month came rushing in on her. Skip was dead but he hadn’t just stepped out of her life like she’d long hoped he would; he’d done everything he could to ruin her first. She had a thousand dollars or so to her name and no way to earn more. Alexa needed her but she was turning out to be as terrible a mother as Skip had always accused her of being. And all of that reminded her of why she didn’t want to wake up. She was going to lose her daughter. Agent Freeman had warned her. There didn’t seem to be a damn thing she could do about it, though. Except sleep. Sleep was her only escape.

  She almost drifted off again, but Alexa was talking to someone in the cathedral-like entrance of their house, and curiosity got the better of her.

  Had her daughter brought home a friend from school?

  No, she’d come back a while ago. Alone. She claimed she was being treated as well as ever, but Sophia hadn’t seen any proof of her life returning to normal. Where were the girls who used to hang out with her? The girls who liked to come over and play in the game room? Or visit the garage to see the two Ferraris Skip owned? Or make an ice-cream creation at the soda fountain in the basement?

  Sophia couldn’t think about that, wouldn’t think of it. It hurt too badly to suspect that her daughter might be suffering more than she said. That she might be hiding her pain because she was worried about Sophia.

  She’d left after school to go to the store. She must’ve run into someone there.

  “Alexa?” Sophia called.

  The talking quieted for a moment, then her daughter responded. “What?”

  “You got home okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “I brought a...a friend.”

  Good. She needed one.

  When they moved into the kitchen, Sophia couldn’t hear them anymore, so she pulled the blankets over her head. At least her daughter was safe. At least Lexi had something besides soup to eat. Now Sophia didn’t have to regret letting her go out alone.

  The pungent smell of garlic and tomatoes woke Sophia some time later. She didn’t think she’d been sleeping long, but she knew her daughter didn’t have the cooking skills to create such a delectable smell—like an Italian restaurant. Maybe her friend was helping her.... She was about to call Lexi’s name, to find out what was going on, when she heard a light tread on the stairs and saw a woman, not a girl, poke her head into the room. “Hey.”

  Sophia squinted, trying to identify this person, but it was too dark to see. She’d been keeping the blinds shut. The sun had set since the last time she’d fallen asleep, anyway. The digital clock on the nightstand told her that. “Who is it?”

  “Eve.”

  “Ted’s friend?” Sophia definitely didn’t want anyone connected with him to see how badly she was faring.

  “Your friend.”

  That couldn’t be true. She didn’t have any friends. She’d alienated them when she was a teenager, right before making the biggest mistake of her life by marrying Skip. But she didn’t want word of her diminished state to get back to Ted, so she struggled to put some energy into her voice. “Oh, hey. Sorry I’m not feeling well. Maybe you could come back another time.”

  “But then you’d miss the amazing dinner Alexa and I cooked for you. Where’s your robe?”

  “What?” She’d expected Eve to apologize and excuse herself. That was what most people would do. It wasn’t as if they knew each other all that well.

  “You have a young lady downstairs who’s setting a beautiful table, just waiting to show her mother all the wonderful things she helped make. So I’m going to wrap you up in your robe and walk you down the stairs. And you’re going to have dinner. Maybe once you’ve got some food in your stomach, you’ll have the strength to shower.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I—I’m sick.”

  “Then we’ll take you to a doctor.”

  She didn’t want a doctor. She was terrified of what a doctor might tell her, terrified she’d wind up like her mother. She just wanted to continue hiding from the world until she could get back on her feet. “I’ll get up later. Maybe another day.”

  “You can’t put it off, Sophia.”

  She raised her head. “Why not?”

  “Because it’ll only get harder.”

  There was truth in that. Sophia knew it. How had she even arrived at this dark place? It was humiliating to feel so lost, so helpless. Skip would never have stood for it. She was embarrassed herself. She had so many enemies who would take pleasure in seeing her crushed and broken and, for all she knew, Eve was one of them. “You don’t have to trouble yourself,” she muttered. “I’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “That’s what I hope. Are you hungry?”

  She should be, but... “I can’t tell.”

  “That means you’ve been hungry for too long. Let’s get some food into you.”

  The light went on. Sophia covered her face against its painful brightness as Eve collected her robe and slippers, then helped her put them on. “You ready?”

  “For what?” Sophia couldn’t believe this was happening. Eve had never shown any interest in her before, not since high school, and they certainly hadn’t been friends back then.

  Eve slipped her head under Sophia’s arm so she could support the majority of her weight as they stood. “For a trip to the dinner table.”

  Sophia’s chest grew tight as she leaned on a woman who had no particular reason to care about her. She hadn’t cried since she’d taken to her bed. It felt like she’d been numb since the funeral. But she was starting to feel more acutely again—and the burning and prickling sensation of coming alive stung so badly she could hardly bear it.

  “Eve?”

  They took a few careful steps toward the door. “Yes?”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because life is hard enough without trying to manage the worst of times alone.”

  She swallowed the tears that were welling up. “Do you believe I knew what Skip was doing?”

  “Did you?” she asked as they entered the hall and approached the long, sweeping staircase.

  “No.”

  Eve paused, staring into Sophia’s face. “Then stop letting him get the better of you,” she whispered. “What he did was terrible. But you can still make a good life for yourself and Alexa if you fight. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. Eve was right, of course. Sophia had to change her thinking, had to get past the despair. “How do I start?” she whispered.

  “By taking it one day at a time. Or, if that’s too much, one hour at a time.” Eve squeezed her tighter. “Will you try?”

  “I will,” she said and meant it.

  “Then you’ll be fine.” Eve helped her down to the dining room, where Alexa was waiting with a hopeful smile on her face.

  “Doesn’t the food smell good, Mommy? And doesn’t the table look pretty?”

  Sophia shifted her gaze from the antipasto, to the spaghetti and meatballs, to the salad and garlic bread. Alexa had set out their best crystal, china and silverware for this Italian feast. There was even a slice of lemon in her water glass.

  This meal signified something, she realized: It signified a new beginning.

  “It does look pretty,” she breathed and made herself a promise as she sat down. No matter how bad it got, she wouldn’t give up. Wouldn’t allow her mother-in-law to take
custody of Alexa. Wouldn’t allow alcohol to ruin her. She’d prove Skip wrong, damn it. The whole town, too. She’d prove she had more backbone, more strength, than anyone imagined. And she’d do it by getting a job and working herself out of the mess he’d left her in.

  But just after she’d eaten and had begun to talk and laugh and feel a sense of well-being for the first time since Skip went missing, there was a knock at the door.

  Sophia was in no position to see anyone, so Alexa answered it.

  “Who was it?” Sophia asked the moment Alexa returned.

  She handed Sophia an envelope. “He said his name was Mr. Groscost.”

  “The guy who bought the tractor place from Noah’s dad?” Eve said.

  When Alexa shrugged, Sophia exchanged a glance with Eve and opened the letter.

  “What does he want?” Eve murmured as Sophia skimmed the contents.

  Feeling some of the old panic, Sophia swallowed hard and read the letter more carefully. “A ‘certain number’ of Skip’s investors want to meet with me.”

  Eve blanched. “What for?”

  “To discuss their ‘options.’”

  “What options?”

  “Repayment of some kind, I guess.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t tell me they’re coming here,” Eve said.

  “No. They want to meet at the church.”

  Eve took the letter and read it for herself. Reverend Flores was among those who’d signed it. He must’ve lost money investing with Skip, too, which was why he’d offered the church as their meeting place. “You don’t have to go. As a matter of fact, I suggest you don’t.”

  “Listen to Eve, Mommy,” Alexa begged.

  Sophia hated seeing the haunted look back in her daughter’s eyes. “Maybe it’ll help,” she said.

  “How?” Eve asked.

  “I can’t hide in this house forever. We just established that, didn’t we?”

  “But I have no idea how these people will treat you. Actually, I do have an idea. That’s why I’m worried.”