“Why? I thought you’d want help with dinner or something,” Chad asked.
“Because I want you out of here while I decorate. She’s the only one who you’ll listen to now.”
“It’s a nice park,” Willow admitted. She unwrapped her ruana from around her shoulders and grabbed the coat Marianne had sent. “How about a snowball race?”
“Dare I ask?”
“What do you mean?”
He grabbed a spare hat from his pocket and pulled it down on Willow’s head. “Can’t have frost bitten ears. Mom’d kill me. I mean,” He added, answering her question, “That you Finleys do not do anything um, normally. I have a feeling this is going to be a complicated race.”
“It’s a race and a fight combined. We pick a destination, find a route to it with some cover for each, pace off like in those old western movies Mother told me about, and then race to the target.”
“So where do snowballs come in?”
She threw him a wicked grin. “The advantage. You throw snowballs. You hit the other person and they take three paces back while you count to five. You can be moving forward on five but you can’t throw before five.”
“You’re on. We race to the truck from the other side of the park. That way you know where you’re going, and we’re on even footing.”
“You should have kept your advantage. I’m going to stomp you,” Willow threatened.
Hand in hand, they started across the park. “Willow?”
“Hmm?” Her mind was fully engaged in strategy to give her an edge.
“I’m sorry for being so harsh with you. I didn’t know how else to get you to see it but—” he swallowed the lump that tried to grow in his throat. “It was cruel.”
“It’s what I needed to hear. You proved yourself a faithful friend, Chad.”
All the way across the park they walked, their feet crunching the snow beneath them, saying nothing. At the east entrance of the park, Chad took a deep breath. “Well, I really hated to kick you while you were already low, and now I hate it more than I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m about to destroy you with snowballs.”
She turned her back to him. Feeling terrible, he whirled her around to face him again and said penitently, “I was just—”
“Are you going to count or am I?”
Grinning, he turned his back on her and started counting. “One, two, three, four—” He took the largest steps he could manage, knowing he could likely throw a snowball farther. “—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.” Grumbling, he walked around a bench wasting perfectly good steps. “—twenty-two, twenty-three—” Realizing the advantage of the bench, he took smaller steps. “Thirty-nine… forty!”
The game commenced in an explosion of flying snowballs. Willow had scooped balls as she stepped away from him, carrying them with her as she walked. At the count of forty, she whirled and fired one after the other, hitting Chad with three of them. She ran ahead as he took his backward steps.
“I’ll get you for that!”
“Gotta catch me first.”
Willow raced through the park. While her agility gave her an edge, Chad’s willingness to dive for cover, often still throwing snowballs, kept the playing field nearly level. Across the park they raced, swapping the lead at regular intervals. People paused and watched as they dodged, retraced steps, and threw.
The truck was in sight. Chad knew if he could reach it first, she’d demand a rematch. They had another couple of hours to kill. Hiding behind a tree, he watched her movements to see if she looked cold or tired. He wasn’t willing to let her win, but if a risk put him out of the game and made her more comfortable, then he would take it.
Her cheeks were rosy, her breath he could see in regular puffs, but she was clearly not gasping for air. He noticed a few kids watching the game and made up his mind. Jumping from behind the tree, he threw several snowballs in her direction and ran for the truck. Willow dodged all the balls and tore after him, pelting the truck, the air, and finally Chad at the very second he hit the truck. Instinctively he raced back three steps and dove for the bumper barely touching it before her.
“I win!”
“Why did you back up?”
“You got me as I hit the truck. I didn’t know the rules, so I didn’t take a chance.”
“I demand a rematch,” she ordered in mock disgust.
Chad draped an arm around her shoulder and led her to the crowd of young spectators. “I have an idea…”
“Boy, Lance was good! I couldn’t dodge his balls to save my life!”
Willow still chattered about the game as they strolled up the walk of the Tesdall home. As Chad opened the door, the entire Tesdall clan and Chuck Majors shouted, “Surprise!”
“Um—surprise? Really?”
“What else do you say when your guest of honor shows up for his party. Get with the program,” Marianne chided as she bustled them into the house. “Willow, you get up there and change into something warm and dry.”
Nothing Marianne could have said would have made Willow feel more at home than those words. She hugged the confused woman and hurried up the stairs to obey. By the time she returned, dinner was on the table and the family waited for her. How something so unlike anything in her home could feel so familiar made no sense to her.
She ate her dinner, barely conscious of the fact that it was delicious. When a cheesecake sporting twenty-six candles arrived, Willow realized that it must be a favorite. She’d learn to make cream cheese. Maybe his mother had a recipe.
After dinner, as Willow and Cheri helped carry plates into the kitchen, she overheard something that sparked an avalanche of drama. “Excuse me,” she muttered to Cheri. “Chuck, come here.”
Willow dragged Chuck from the dining room into the living room. Chad and his father sat talking about some kind of sports scores, so she dragged Chuck down the basement steps. As she left, she thought she heard Chad say, “I’m not sure what’s up, but this is gonna be good.”
Chuck erupted the moment she confronted him. “I don’t get what your problem is, Willow! It was a compliment.”
“Would you have said it to her face?”
“Well, yeah—no—well, before you started messing with my head maybe I would.”
Willow’s eyes flashed. “Excuse me, but before I was “messing with your head,” people avoided your crass, self-centered nonsense. I’m sorry I was so mean as to assume you could rise above that.”
“I don’t get what is so bad. Why is ok for me to compliment her hair or clothes but I’m supposed to pretend that I don’t know she has a fine set of—”
His retort died mid-sentence as she crossed her arms over her chest—and said nothing. Rather than argue the point, Willow glared at him, waiting for his senses to return. Determined to prove himself right, Chuck grew more belligerent until Willow tried a new tactic.
“So what’s wrong with mine?”
“What?”
“Well if it is such an acceptable practice to comment on the size, shape, or in any other way admire a woman’s breasts, why ignore mine? I believe you’ve mentioned that you like my hair, I’m not too tall or too short, oh, and I have nice eyes if I remember. I also seem to recall something about needing my teeth whitened. So, you’ve fairly thoroughly assessed my other assets, why not my breasts, buttocks, and legs while you’re at it?”
“Well, it’s not something to say to a girl—”
Satisfied that she’d tripped him up, Willow crossed her arms and glared at him. “But I believe you said that before I meddled with your fine social skills, you would have.”
“Well I wouldn’t have said anything to your face—”
“Oh,” she began patronizingly. “I see. You do have some scruples. You’ll compliment a girl behind her back—even on her backside! But you won’t be upfront with her.”
“Some girls don’t see the compliment—”
Willow took a step closer and practically shook him. “That
’s because it isn’t. Cheri likes you. If you treat her like you did me at first, she’ll stomp you—if her brothers don’t beat her to it. For that matter, I might beat them all.”
“I—”
“Are you going to try to defend yourself again?”
Chuck nodded. “I wasn’t trying to be insulting. All guys talk about girls. Even Chad probably—”
“Chad!” Willow called interrupting him once more.
It took less than ten seconds for Chad to open the basement door and hurry down the steps. “What?”
“Chuck informs me that it is common practice for men to discuss different women and their physical attributes when in strictly male company. Is this true?”
Blushing, Chad shuffled his feet. He’d never thought about how it might sound out of Willow’s mouth, but every man he knew spoke…appreciatively of women. “Well—”
“See!” Chuck cried like a child who found a co-culprit in a naughty escapade.
Disappointment flooded Willow’s heart. “I see. I’m curious. What was the consensus on me? Do the officers think my legs pass muster? Is my backside too round or too flat? Are my breasts too disproportionate to the rest of my body?” She glared at him. “I’m disgusted!”
Willow whirled to retreat up the stairs, but Chad stopped her. “Willow, I’ve never—I mean we—the guys at the station—none of us, at least when I’m around, ever—”
At the smug look on Chuck’s face, she nearly strangled the oaf. “You just said—”
“You asked if we discussed women’s attributes. I thought you meant if we thought they were pretty or had nice hair or something. I can see Martinez being more crass about his assessments, but they all know I’d stomp ‘em if they talked about a woman like that in my presence. Joe would too. And I don’t want to think of what Judith would do to any of us if she found us—”
“Come on, Chad,” Chuck began defensively. “You know you do it. Every guy does. We appreciate a fine body. God made us that way, and He made women the way they are so we could appreciate them. It’s in the Bible!”
“Not the way you’ve twisted it isn’t,” Chad began. As if he finally understood, he stepped closer to Chuck. “What’d you say about Willow,” he growled.
“Nothing—”
“If you insulted my sister—”
“It was a compliment! I’ve been trying to tell her than for the past ten minutes!”
Turning to Willow, Chad asked, “What did he say?”
“Ask Chris. He heard it.” Why did Chuck not see the problem?
“Chris!”
“Great, the whole house will be down here before long,” Chuck muttered again.
“If you did nothing wrong, Chuck,” Willow began, “then there shouldn’t be any reason for them not to come.”
“People assume the worst about me. Even when I’m innocent, I’m guilty.”
Trying a new tactic, Willow wrapped her arms around him and said, “Maybe because you’re guilty often enough that they forget you can do something right too.”
Chris appeared looking curious but confused. “What?”
“Chris, can you tell us exactly what Chuck said to you?”
“I didn’t hear. He mumbled something, but I wasn’t paying attention,” he admitted.
Chris and Chad looked expectantly at Willow. “Well,” Chad asked.
“Ask him. I feel icky enough without repeating it.”
“It’s not icky!” Chuck protested.
“Then you won’t mind telling her brothers now. After all, you said it to Chris in the first place.”
Shaking his head, Chuck moved toward the stairs. “I didn’t mean for it to be icky but you’re making it icky. I’ll just go.”
As Chuck’s foot hit the first step, Chad stopped him. “My sister likes you, Majors. I don’t know why, but she does. If you hurt her, by being inappropriate, or crass, or by walking out and leaving her to wonder what she did wrong when this is your fault, you’ll regret it. Don’t make that mistake.”
“Right.”
Chris, Chad, and Willow exchanged concerned glances as Chuck reached the top of the stairs and called out for Cheri. Seconds later, Chris excused himself, muttering something about checking on Cheri. Willow leaned against the Ping-Pong table and returned Chad’s miserable gaze.
“I’m sorry, Chad. On your birthday too. I shouldn’t have stepped in. It wasn’t any of my business.”
“You tried to help a brother in Christ.”
“But did I beat him up with the log from my own eye in doing it?” she asked as she sank to the floor, exhausted.
Chad sat next to her, wanting to comfort her and yet feeling awkward at the same time. “Willow, I can’t see you confronting a situation like that unless you did it out of love. Just what did he—” As she quoted Chuck’s latest gaffe, Chad’s hands clenched at his sides. “That jerk—”
“I can see that he tried to be complimentary in his gauche way. I just knew, instinctively I guess, because Mother certainly never said anything about it, that it was wrong. Terribly wrong. I can see that he admires Cheri. You said she flirted with him, so she must see something in him, but if he said anything like that to her face, I think she’d kill him.”
A deep chuckle escaped before Chad could stop it. “She’d have to beat Chris and me. And Dad,” he added as an afterthought. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“So if you don’t talk about stuff like that, why did you look so embarrassed?”
“I don’t know,” Chad admitted. “Suddenly it seemed vulgar to talk about women at all.”
Marianne called them upstairs. Willow stood and grinned at Chad. “So, did I ever come up in those conversations?”
“What conversations?” Chad stalled, his brain searching for a nice generic response to what he feared would be the question.
“Oh, about whether this girl or that is pretty? What was the consensus on me? I’ve never been able to decide.”
“If you’re pretty! What a joke.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I always thought Mother was beautiful, and I don’t look anywhere that nice. Bill agreed. I forgot about that.”
“You’re joking right?” Chad protested.
“What?”
“Get upstairs, girl! Of course, you’re pretty. I swear; girls are the most aggravating creatures on the planet.”
“Chad!” Cheri’s voice called from the top of the stairs. “Quit flirting down there and get up here and open your presents!”
Willow cocked an eyebrow at Chad as she started up the steps. “Flirting?”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Cheri and Chuck sat together on the couch as Willow and Chad emerged from the basement. To their surprise, Cheri kicked Chuck and motioned for him to talk to them. While Chad sat in a chair decorated with balloons and streamers, Chuck glanced miserably at Cheri and then cleared his throat.
“I owe you guys—and probably everyone else, an apology. Cheri says Willow is right, and I’m sorry.” Cheri’s foot shot out and kicked his shin again. “I’ll make sure I’m more careful in the future.”
With obvious determination to avoid the topic, Marianne passed Chad a gift. “This is from Grandma and Grandpa. They left it for you on Thanksgiving.”
“Hmmm is it a Rockland Warriors sweatshirt or t-shirt?” Seconds later, he pulled a t-shirt from the box. “Two t-shirts in a row! I think they figured out that I wear those out faster.” He winked at his mother and accepted the next gift.
“Oh, Chris!” He shook the box. “Ok, not a book on discovering my inner child or one hundred ways to overcome addictive tendencies…”
“You’re asking for one for Christmas man…” Chris warned.
As he pulled out tickets to the next Warrior’s game, Chad grinned. “You just hope I can’t get the night off so you can have them. Pretty sneaky.”
“Except that I already cleared the night off with your chief. Take Willow. She’s probably never been to a football game.�
��
Chad pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slipped the tickets safely inside. “I’ll do that. I’ll definitely do that.”
Cheri pointed at a gift bag near Chad’s feet. “Open mine!”
The second Chad lifted the bag, he groaned. “Not another one!”
“Well you didn’t like PI or Hugo so it was either this, Chrome, or Cool Water. I really think I should have gone with Cool Water.”
“You should have gone with,” Chad began as he pulled a box of Burberry from the gift bag, “with a squirt gun. It would have been very useful right now.”
“But if I’d given you a squirt gun, you wouldn’t want one right now, so it’d have been a waste.”
Chad rattled the box. “So is this.”
Willow asked to see the box and opened it. “Can I spray it?”
“Sure, stink up the place for all I care.” To Cheri he added, “But I’m not wearing it.”
“Every guy should have a scent. Even Chris has one.”
Chad snorted. “Yeah, Green Irish Tweed. The name alone says, ‘psychologist with a pipe.’ We really should get Chris a pipe.”
“I like it.”
Willow’s voice was quiet and thoughtful. “If I had a father, and he was anything like Mother, I think he’d smell something like this.”
Marianne smiled to herself as she handed Chad her gift. “Happy Birthday Laddie.”
From within a large box, Chad pulled a few black metal candle dishes, a framed picture of the family, two empty frames for “whatever pictures you want to add,” and at the bottom of the box, two small matching wrought iron based lamps. “Trying to spruce up my apartment, Mom?”
“Well, if you won’t…” she confessed as she passed him Christopher’s box.
Christopher pushed a cardboard box with an oversized Christmas bow on it. “Happy birthday, son.”
A portable battery charger brought a smile to Chad’s face. His father always chose exactly that kind of gift—something practical, something you definitely wanted, but the kind of thing that you’d never buy for yourself.
Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 2 Page 21