by Anna Adams
She acted now as if she were afraid someone would see her talking to him. She looked around as if she expected some sort of security detail to drag her off the property.
“I don’t know what to call you,” he said. She’d walked out on him. “Mom” wouldn’t do.
“Can’t call me Mother?”
“That’s not what you are to me.” He climbed to his feet. “Can you make it up the steps?”
“What am I, if not your mother?”
“The woman who gave birth to me.”
She stopped and her face froze. “You’ve learned well at your father’s feet.”
“Let’s not talk about him. I remember your arguments with each other. We don’t need to recap.”
“Why did you ask me here if you don’t want to see me?” she asked.
“I was curious. Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”
“That morning when your father threw me out? How could I forget?”
“That’s not the way I remember it. I remember begging you to stay, but you didn’t seem to hear me. It was a like a bad dream. Trying to reach you, but you wouldn’t even see me.”
“I don’t remember that,” she said with perfect sincerity.
Jason resisted his own bewildered shock. He wouldn’t ask her why again. Probably because the guy, Bryce, had distracted her. Even now, she refused to admit she hadn’t been a good mother.
“Give me your hand. I’ll help you up so you can see the house.”
“I’m told you’ve owned it pretty much since the day I left.”
“I didn’t know until you called. It’s all but derelict.”
“So I’m noticing.” She took his hand.
He stared at her. For the first time in over two decades, he was touching his mother. And she was a stranger. She’d chosen to be. “It’s not much better on the inside, I’m afraid. I’m surprised you never took a look.”
“I haven’t been inside since it was taken away from me. I figured your father might have me arrested for trespassing if he found out I’d been here.”
When she was steady on the porch, Jason let her go. She tried the sturdiness of the boards, bouncing on the balls of her feet a couple times.
“You make it sound like you’re the victim,” he said. “I don’t understand that. You abandoned us and we never heard from you again. Ever.”
She turned at the doorway. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve heard of visitation?” he asked, easing past her into the dusty, abandoned home. He watched her face as she came in.
Sadness. It couldn’t have been an act. Her eyes seemed to float in tears.
“Why did he do this?” she asked, as if she were alone and Jason not within earshot.
“Who?” But he knew. He just didn’t understand her.
“Your father, of course. How could he let our home die?”
Their home? As if that meant anything to her. Jason went to the nearest window and stared through the broken panes. His father had made sure the home would die.
“You left with another man,” Jason said, exasperated. “You didn’t want to be with Dad or me. He must have known this house was the only thing that mattered enough to hurt you.”
“That’s enough, Jason. I can’t believe you accept that. Have you never learned how your father lies to suit his needs?”
His dad had colored more than one truth. “The kitchen’s here.” Jason led her down the hall. “What did he lie about?”
“Me.” She stopped in the doorway, and he saw the kitchen through her eyes, the hole where the sink should be, the hanging wires and missing fixtures, the absence of hardware on the cabinetry. Tears fell freely down her face. “He lied about me. I begged him to let me take you with me. Then I begged him to let me visit you. After I tried to see you at your school, he had a restraining order applied.”
Jason didn’t want to believe her, but he felt as if someone had punched him so hard in the gut he couldn’t breathe. “How could he do that?”
“I explained to the headmistress that I was only trying to see you, but she said the school couldn’t get involved in domestic matters, and that because I hadn’t been authorized as one of your caregivers, my presence was considered a threat to the children.”
“Imagine that. A woman lurking outside a school’s gates. A threat to the children.” He didn’t know whether to be angry with his father or let his impatience with her explode.
“My ex-husband lied to keep me away from the son I loved with all my heart. I made horrible mistakes when I was so lonely I went a little crazy, but I just wanted to see you. I needed to know you were all right after what I’d done. Did he drive you to school? Did he make your lunches? Did he show interest at all?”
“Dad was busy, but my grandparents did all those things.”
“Busy? He was icy and disinterested—that’s what sent me into another man’s arms in the first place.”
“So he made you cheat on him, is that it?” Jason couldn’t accept her story. “Have you been hanging around outside a shop in town called Mainly Merry Christmas?”
She looked shaken, but nodded. “I shouldn’t have, but I hoped to see you, that maybe we could talk if you saw me. I heard you spend time there with that pretty redhead. You don’t answer my letters. Do you know how long it took me to get up the courage to ask you to see me?”
“Why didn’t you get in touch when I was in high school? My father wasn’t in charge of me then.”
“I tried, so many times. If you’re saying you never heard from me, then your grandparents must have been intercepting my letters. They’re good people, but they’ve always believed anything your father told them.”
“You’ve heard of email?”
“I can’t afford a computer. I have the most basic phone because it’s cheaper than a landline. I have a menial job, and a little house with rent I can barely cover.”
“Are you still trying to manipulate me? Do you think I’ll hand this place back to you? Maybe after I renovate it? A little gift for my long-lost mother?” He walked toward the front door. “I have more reason to doubt you than my father. If I had a child, I’d turn the world upside down before I let anyone keep me away from him. So you’re telling me you made a few efforts, but I’ve been an adult for how many years, and you didn’t get in touch?”
She probably didn’t even remember how old he was.
“I was shocked when I saw you in town. I thought you were your father coming out of the bank, and then I realized he couldn’t look like that anymore.” She touched her hair, which was as dry as straw. “I’ve certainly changed.”
“Your looks have changed. Your story still doesn’t convince me. You left my father for someone else because you were so starved for love?” Those were the words she’d shouted at his dad.
“That hasn’t changed. The man I cheated with cheated on me, and I searched for the next guy who’d make me feel special. Over time I realized there was no such man. And this is who I am now.”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, and I’m not sure what it is you want,” Jason said. “Even if you’re telling the truth, you haven’t given me a good reason for abandoning me.”
He went to the front door, but only so he could turn his back so she couldn’t see his face. His mother’s broken spirit was a shroud around her shoulders. He’d meant to throw her out, but her story repeated itself in his head, and he experienced his first real doubts.
“Stay away from Fleming Harris and her store.”
* * *
“GOOD NIGHT, MISS FLEMING,” called the children in a ragged chorus as they sifted toward the exit, with moms and dads helping them into coats and gloves and scarves.
Fleming held the door open for the little ones, letting in
the cold, Christmassy night air. She tugged a cap into place here, a coat sleeve down a bare wrist there. The moms nodded at her. The dads did likewise. The children each took a lollipop or a candy cane from the bowl in her hand.
She’d never liked peppermint so she’d never been a big fan of candy canes. Until cherry ones came along. But she provided both for the children who’d come in to paint ceramic mugs today.
After the last family trickled out, Fleming consulted her watch. She’d put in a good, hard day. She’d sold more ornaments and gewgaws than she’d hoped to because the parents had been happy to browse while she helped the children with their paints.
With Christmas getting closer and closer, sales were up, and so were Fleming’s hopes.
She felt like she’d earned a break. She reached for the sign that said Open on one side and Closed on the other, tempted to turn it over and get in a few peaceful hours of writing on her own. She could just turn off the main lights and sit in front of her laptop at her makeshift desk, a table laden with wrapping paper and bows and all sizes of gift boxes.
But it was early enough that she might yet make another sale or two. Enough to help pay for the power and heat to keep the building open, come the new year. With the pragmatic thought came her sense of responsibility.
She left the sign on its Open side. Then she went to the back room and scooped up her laptop, unplugging it as she went, and set it on the counter up front. Bathed in warm light, with a living holiday image outside the wide, crystal-clear front windows, she perched on a stool.
She was available to anyone who needed last minute Christmas-themed goodies or a paint-it-yourself ceramic mug or papier-mâché ornament.
The first words came slowly. She saw her heroine, but was more aware of her paint-stained fingers on the keyboard. Her clicking keys echoed in the empty shop. She kept her fingers moving, and then somehow she forgot about the store and the windows and even customers.
She focused on the characters speaking in her head and the cool island breezes blowing across the beach in her story, and the emotions of her heroine, starting a brand-new life in a place she’d longed to be.
“Fleming?”
She looked up, as startled as if she were waking from a dream. Jason, in his usual perfect suit and overcoat, was standing in front of the counter. Only his tie was askew.
“Rough day?” she asked, closing the laptop, careful to look casual in an effort to make sure he didn’t realize what she’d been up to. Her writing was a secret she’d never shared with another living being.
“What were you doing?”
He was too observant.
“Just work. Checking those spreadsheets,” she said.
“I came inside and got all the way here to the counter without you noticing I was around. You didn’t even hear the bells ringing over the door.”
“Spreadsheets are important,” she said. “I’m trying to keep the place open.”
He stared at her, clearly considering. “I know we’re not best friends, and my judgment might be off, but why are you lying to me?”
An odd jolt of guilt shook her resolve, but this was different. This secret was that dream Jason seemed to sense when no one else ever had.
She was afraid of bursting the delicate bubble if she shared her dream with anyone.
“Calling me a liar isn’t very nice.” She stood and walked around the counter, putting distance between herself and her secret. “Did you need something?” She waved her hands toward the shelves and flickering lights. “Something for your family back home?” Mention of his siblings and the father who was a clear source of combined pride and frustration always put Jason off his stride.
“You can trust me, you know.”
She doubted. She always doubted first and, maybe, trusted later. “There’s nothing.”
He straightened his tie with the air of a man adjusting his armor. “I spoke to my mother. I told her to stay away from you.”
“It was your mother?” He said it so easily, as if it weren’t earth-shattering, as if he shouldn’t be broken and bewildered by a mother who’d abandoned him, only to pop up years later out of the blue as if running away didn’t matter. “Sit down. Let me get you some kind of a drink. I have cookies. Tell me what she said.”
“No.” He spoke so sharply Fleming backed up. He flinched. “I don’t want to talk about what she said.”
“She hurt you.” Fleming was angry on his behalf. How dare the woman cause him more pain?
“Her story is a lot different from my father’s.” His grimace looked somehow rueful. “I just can’t see why she bothered, but you don’t need to worry about her anymore.”
“What do you mean? You gave her the house?”
“No, I showed it to her, though. That’s when she gave me a song and dance about having tried to reach me.”
“Maybe she did try.” Fleming wanted to believe that, for his sake, but he had a phone, an office, an address—he didn’t seem like a difficult person to track down.
He seemed to read the doubt in her mind. “Not hard enough.” He glanced around. “How are things going?”
“Fine. Lots of business this week. I’ve been so busy I think we might be safe until February.” What if he asked to see the books? She flicked a glance at the big clock on the back wall above the counter. “Time to close. I should be putting things away. Thanks for coming by.” She walked him to the door. “Good night.”
He nodded. “‘Night.”
She shut the door, but couldn’t make herself look away as he pulled up the lapels of his coat and walked into the biting wind. She’d hardly been gracious, but what if he’d insisted on knowing what had kept her so intent on the computer?
She should have asked if there was anything she could do for him.
Other than show him the work she’d been doing on her laptop. “Close call,” she said. She shouldn’t feel bad about hiding her secret from a man who insisted she had no place in his life.
She leaned against the window, watching the snow sparkle and the looped strings of lights waver in the wind. The cold from the glass bit into her forehead as she strained to see Jason, hunched in his coat, striding away from her.
She wished she’d given more thought to his pain than to protecting her secrets.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“WHERE’S JASON TONIGHT?”
Fleming didn’t realize the question was directed her way.
“Fleming?”
She looked up. The carolers were all gathered on the square, but Mary Kite, who owned the oil and lube shop at the edge of town, must think Fleming had a hotline to Jason’s activities. That wasn’t so good. Imagine if Jason thought people were turning them into a couple. Not just his mother, or the nebulous possibility of someone, but a real live lube shop owner.
“I don’t know.” She knew she was the woman most likely to blush in the world, but with any luck the darkness offered her a shield. “Maybe he had to work late. I probably should have been doing that myself.”
“Yeah, you and about three or four others of us.” Mary turned her wrist over to check the time on her watch. “I’m one of the files on Jason’s piled-high desk, too.”
“You?” The group seemed to be taking an impromptu break, as their leader engaged in a hot and heavy discussion with the high school’s music director. They often disagreed. “I would have thought everybody needed their car lubed.”
“You would think that, but a chain in Sevierville has been offering a deal for the past year. A good deal. I can’t match their prices, and I hear a lot of local people have made the drive. They get in a little shopping and have their car serviced all at the same time.”
“But how do they shop without a car?”
“It’s one of those quick places. You drive over the well and
stay in the car while they do the oil change.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. I can’t expect to beat them for price or convenience. Not without another loan to build myself a handy well.”
Fleming felt her pain. “It’s hard, when you don’t know what to do next.”
“Maybe Jason will have some ideas for you,” Mary said.
She didn’t mean it in a snide way. Fleming knew that. But Mary’s words felt like a well-aimed knife as she turned back to the group, who had finally agreed on the song they would sing next.
Fleming did likewise, and joined her voice with the others, but tonight she didn’t have as much as fun as usual. She wandered with the others around the square, singing and laughing when required, but in her head, she kept hearing Mary’s hopeful suggestion that Jason could help her store out of its troubles.
And she missed him.
She hated admitting it, but the night was not as fun because Jason never showed up.
She didn’t want to face him with so many unsettling thoughts no doubt clearly printed on her face, but she wondered what had kept him. She wished again that she’d found a way to be more helpful with his mother and the strange story she’d given him.
After they finished practice, Mary suggested everyone join up for coffee.
“Thanks,” Fleming said, “but I have to pick up today’s mail, and I have a few tasks to do in the shop.”
The other carolers waved goodbye. Fleming hurried toward the post office, which sat behind the square on a little side road. Folks who had a postal box were also provided with keys that opened the box area any time of the day or night.
Fleming let herself in and picked up the mail. But as she turned to leave, she saw Jason walking up with his key in his hand, side by side with Amanda Brent, who ran the dry cleaner’s next door to his hotel.
Fleming almost laughed at the sudden surge of jealousy that caught her by surprise. As if Jason was her friend only. As if he couldn’t hang out with other women in Bliss.