A Christmas Miracle

by Anna Adams

  “What’s up with you?” she asked, breathing in his scent—of the woods, and smoke from someone’s chimney that had drifted down the mountain and into his sweatshirt. His arms were strong and certain. His touch was kind, and yet confident. She wanted to relax against him, but self-preservation demanded she not fall for this handsome, thoughtful man.

  He’d be leaving her behind soon.

  “I just realized why you were crying that night in your store,” he said. “You must have received a rejection.”

  And he cared enough to comfort her? She took a deep breath. It was comfort. Nothing more. Keep it in perspective.

  She looked up at him, resting her hands against his sides, trying not to notice the softness of his sweatshirt, the heat of him underneath the worn material. “I’ve been rejected a few times,” she said, trying to be pragmatic. But the pain came flooding back as she remembered the “interesting, but not strong enough” comment on the editor’s notes. “Enough to paper the ladies’ room at the shop, but that one—that story—I thought...”

  Jason tucked her head beneath his chin. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You have a spirit of joy about you, Fleming Harris. That must come through in your stories.”

  Her breath caught. She might be drowning in his warmth, and she didn’t have anything to grab on to for safety. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But thank you. I’m not sure anyone except my mom has ever looked at me and thought joyful.”

  “Then people in this town don’t talk to each other. I can tell the folks around here like you.”

  Fleming realized she was still in his arms. She pulled away and eased herself out onto the porch. She’d really wanted to stay right where she was, next to Jason’s beating heart. “What people? I’m not sure everyone is open with their feelings around you.”

  “At the coffee shop after that carol practice I missed, the others in the group asked about you as if we were supposed to show up together. They all hope there’s more to our friendship than a shared interest in singing holiday songs.”

  Fleming wanted to sink into the house’s exposed crawl space. “I really might cry again.” She eased down the steps and struggled to set the next plank in place for him to nail. It was easier when he took the other end, and they settled it on its braces together. “I’m sorry about my neighbors assuming we’re with each other. It’s a small town. You’re well-known because of the bank, and I’ve been here on the square all my life. Gossip is a pretty big industry around Bliss.”

  “I don’t care as long as it doesn’t make problems for you.”

  “Not unless they believe the rumor that you’re giving me a better deal on the loan,” she joked.

  He picked up the nail gun. “That could be a problem.”

  “For you?”

  “For you, after I leave. They might not show their resentment while I’m still around, but after I’m gone...”

  Yes. After Jason was gone. What would happen then?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JASON HAD STASHED his laptop in its bag and was putting on his coat when his cell phone rang. He saw his father’s name before he answered.

  “Dad?”

  “Where are you?” Robert Macland asked without preamble.

  “In the bank, about to head home. Something wrong?” His father tended to act like an emperor, inconvenienced by his subjects’ unimportant business.

  “We’re in town.”

  Jason heard the words before he understood them. “In New York?” he asked, already aware he had that wrong.

  “Mother and Father wanted to come back if you were going to be here for Christmas.”

  “I told you I’d be home for New Year’s.” His father hadn’t seemed to notice Jason never came home for Christmas. None of his siblings put much effort into getting back, either. He felt ridiculous when he realized he was a grown man who’d had too many disappointing Christmases to enjoy them with his family.

  “We’ve rented a house. I’ll text you the address.”

  “How did you find a house on such short notice?”

  “Money talks, son. Especially in a tourist town.”

  Nice.

  “You’re all here already?”

  “Mother and Father and me. Your sisters and brother are planning to come in on Christmas Eve.”

  Jason couldn’t have been more startled. His younger siblings had never lived in Bliss. They knew less than he had about the town.

  “A real family celebration.” The sarcasm escaped him before he could catch it. His father didn’t notice it, however. At least he didn’t say anything. Just waited for Jason to speak again. “All right. Send me the address. I’ll be over in an hour or so, but Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to talk about my mother. You can’t duck the questions if we’re going to be in the same house.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Back at the hotel, Jason changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. He placed calls to his sisters, Beth and Debbie. They didn’t answer. His brother, Tom, was just finishing his first semester at college. He didn’t answer his phone, either, but texted that he’d call after work.

  Much to Robert Macland’s chagrin, Tom worked delivering pizzas because he was no more willing than Jason to ask for money from their father.

  None of them had mentioned to Jason that they were coming to Bliss for the holidays.

  He put the rented house address in his nav and drove to a chalet farther up Bliss Peak than either his or Fleming’s house. Smoke drifted out of the three chimneys in the peaked roof. Lights shone in the early evening darkness from most of the oversize windows, which hung on the house like framed photos filled with books and golden shelving and lamps that invited him inside the warm glow.

  Jason parked in front of a set of wide steps and got out of the car as half the double front door opened and his grandfather emerged. Dressed in flannel trousers and a crisp white shirt beneath a dark green sweater, Connor Macland looked a decade younger than his seventy-something years.

  “How’s it going, son?” he asked.

  Jason ignored his outstretched hand and hugged his grandfather. “I’m fine. What are you all doing here? Did Dad drag you down so he could check on my work?”

  Connor laughed. “More like we dragged him so we could check on you, once Evelynn realized you weren’t joining us for the holidays. As per usual.”

  Nodding, Jason followed his grandfather inside. His small, elegant grandmother was hurrying down the hall, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “Jason, honey,” she said, and her accent, still East Tennessee, made him feel as if he really had come home. “You’re a little early for dinner, but we’ll have a coffee and talk. Are you surprised to see us? I was a little worried we’d be impinging on your work schedule.”

  “I’m surprised, but happy to set work aside,” he said, and he was. They weren’t crowding him by bringing the holidays to him. They were welcome in this place that would probably haunt him the rest of his life, with its beauty and its kind people and its gossip and sense of community.

  A man could have a family here, of people related to him and people he just cared for. If he were the kind of man who trusted those kinds of people.

  “I’m so glad to be back.” Evelynn hugged him tight and pulled his face down to hers to kiss his cheek. “Your father always acted as if we’d be betraying him if we came back here. To be honest, your grandfather and I visited on the sly, when your father thought we were elsewhere, but we stood by his edict that we not bring you children.”

  “Why?” Jason shut the front door and took off his coat in the echoing hall. Their voices bounced off cedar walls and glass skylights. “Why did you let him be such a tyrant?”

  “We wanted to make sure you children had a
good chance in life,” Evelynn said. “To do that we had to make sure he didn’t cut us off.”

  “Like he did your mother,” Connor said. “He couldn’t use money against us, but we loved you children enough to do whatever he asked.”

  “You’re aware I can hear you?” Robert Macland came out of a room on the landing above the entrance hall. He simply laughed at his detractors. “I’ve always done what’s best for my family. You all know that. Jason, feel up to some skiing before dinner?”

  “I didn’t bring my things, Dad. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “They’ve had to make snow, but it should be sufficient. I thought I’d visit the office with you tomorrow, if that’s satisfactory?”

  This one time, his father was signing his paycheck. “Sure, Dad. But I need to speak to you for a second.”

  Robert waited, not answering. His expression remained bland. Jason began to climb the stairs. “Gran, Grandpa, we’ll be out in a minute.”

  At the top of the stairs, he followed his father into an office. “Now you explain, Dad.”

  Robert sat behind a desk just made for a man like him. It felt like a Fortune 500 office. He settled into the chair that seated him as if he were on a throne.

  Jason sat in the chair across from him, declining to be intimidated. “Now,” he said. “My mother says she tried to stay in touch. You say she didn’t.”

  “I kept her letters from you.”

  Blood rushed to Jason’s head. “Why did you do that? Why haven’t you ever told me?”

  “She gave up,” Robert said. “I never would have given up on you. I haven’t. I still believe one day you’ll come to work for me. And I know you’ll forgive me for protecting you from that woman.”

  “She’s a wreck, Dad. I don’t know when your friend left her—”

  “Or she left him.”

  “No. She said he cheated on her, and she’s alone. I don’t think she’s had anyone to love in a long time. Including me. I’m not a child. I should have had the opportunity to know her and make my own decisions. You destroyed her like you destroyed our house.”

  “My house. I bought it. I kept it.”

  “You let it fall to pieces.”

  “Because of her.” Robert Macland tapped the side of his cheek with his finger, as if he were thinking. “I have no regrets. I couldn’t trust her with you, and she doesn’t deserve your trust, either.”

  His self-satisfied tone convinced Jason the argument was pointless. His father would never change. He was always going to be right. Those who did as he asked were accepted. Everyone who made a decision contrary to Robert Macland’s would face trouble.

  “What else are you hiding from me?” Jason asked.

  “You have all my secrets,” Robert said, with an amused smirk that annoyed Jason.

  “Dad, I’d advise you not to do this again. If I were like you, I’d cut you out of my life right now. As it is, I don’t want to be around you.”

  “But you have no choice because you love my parents unconditionally.”

  “What do you even know about unconditional love?”

  “That there’s no place for it in my life,” Robert said. “And that’s what I’ve tried to teach you. So you won’t let your guard down. You’ll thank me someday.”

  When he’d had three wives who’d prefer to be anywhere but with him? Jason would avoid that fate at all costs.

  “I’m getting out of here.” He paused. “Do you still have my mother’s letters? I’d like to see her side of the last twenty years.”

  “I trashed them, and before you feel too bad for her, remember that she made choices. I didn’t make them for her.”

  “Right, Dad. None of this is your fault.” This was why he’d avoided working for his father in the past. The bitter arrogance was like looking in a mirror of what could be.

  Robert followed him out of the office. Jason’s grandmother was waiting downstairs, hovering as if she wasn’t sure what might have been happening above. She’d prepared herself for the worst.

  “Still going out, son?” she asked. “You don’t mind skiing in the dark?”

  “They light the trails. See you all later.”

  “Don’t break your neck,” Evelynn said. Though she smiled, she looked after her middle-aged child with a hint of worry.

  “He’ll be fine.” Her husband tugged her close within the circle of his arms. “Luckiest son of a gun ever born, honey.”

  “I know. I’m being foolish, but I always worry his luck will run out before he realizes he doesn’t rule this world.” She pulled away. “Jason, come see what I’m making for dinner. Your sisters should be here within the hour. I’m making their favorite fish and roasting vegetables. They’re supposed to text me when it’s safe to fire everything.”

  “Gran, I’m so glad to see you.” Her chattering was the loving background music of all the good days in Jason’s life. He dumped his coat on a chair by the stairs and followed her to the kitchen. “Coming, Grandpa?”

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  Jason looked back at his grandfather, but Evelynn took his arm. “Not to worry. He gets fed up with your father’s egotism, but a walk will cool him down. He’s suffered more than any of us for leaving this place. Except maybe you.”

  “Me?”

  “Your mother came back? Is that what I understand?”

  “About five years ago.”

  The kitchen opened onto a view of the mountain, stretching away in a spiky field of evergreen trees that looked slightly gray with fallen snow. A stream foamed white all the way down the incline. Several other chalets clung to the mountain to the east and west, but he couldn’t see them without leaning against the glass.

  Jason studied the view from the window. Far above the town of Bliss, they seemed to be all but alone in a winter landscape.

  “Does she appear to be all right?” Evelynn asked.

  “Not really. She seems to believe the things Dad says about her. She initially said she wanted the house, but I think she just wanted to see it. I didn’t remember it. I didn’t even know about it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t remember. We left when you were too young, but imagine your life if you’d lived it in the freedom of these mountains rather than within the constrictions of city life, with your father climbing the next rung of every success ladder he could find.”

  “Success ladder, Gran?”

  “You know what I mean.” She set a cutting board on the work surface, which was the size of a cafeteria lunch counter.

  “I still don’t understand why you never brought us here.” Meaning him, his sisters and his brother.

  She took vegetables from the fridge, which closed with a snick as if it were sucking air from the room and compressing it inside.

  “I don’t think your father minded so much about Beth and Debbie and Tom, but he wouldn’t have wanted you to come. He didn’t want your mother to find a way to see you. He didn’t want that to happen.”

  “I didn’t even know she wanted to,” he said. “Dad told me she never made the slightest effort. I never heard from her, and I don’t understand why she’d give up when I was finally old enough that Dad couldn’t interfere anymore.”

  “Your father admitted all this?” Evelynn opened a bag of cauliflower. “He’s my son, but I don’t understand him. We didn’t raise him to be so afraid of loving,” she said with a thoughtful, inward look.

  “My mother told me, and I asked him. He said she just gave up. She thought I didn’t want to hear from her, so I assume that he played us both.”

  “Honey, Teresa was not a nice lady. She had some habits not suited to taking care of a child.” His grandmother spoke in hushed tones, as if the information she had was too shocking to share.

  “What do you mean?”

 
; “She used to just run off. With men.”

  “Run off?”

  “Leave for days at a time. She made no effort to hide her behavior. It was as if she wanted your father to know.”

  Considering his own rather wasted freshman year of college, during which he’d done anything he thought might shock his disapproving father, Jason wasn’t surprised. It had taken him years to understand why he’d acted the way he had, but he knew now. “She was probably trying to get his attention.”

  “She got it, all right. I felt sorry for her at first. She was such a pretty young thing, and she adored your father when they married, but I believe they soon came to realize what they could expect from each other.” Evelynn seemed regretful as she began to clean the ends off the cauliflower. “And by the time they divorced, I didn’t even trust her enough to agree that she should see you. The courts gave your father custody without a fight.”

  “You mean she didn’t fight.”

  Evelynn shook her head. “I don’t believe she was in the country. She’d gone to Spain, or Portugal. I can’t remember.”

  “I remember when she left, but I also saw her a few days ago. She’s remorseful, Gran. I don’t think it’s just an act.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe she realizes what she truly lost by leaving your father.”

  “She lost everything. Literally.”

  “I mean you. You forget, the doorman called me down to you on the street that day.” Evelynn set down the knife as if she were going to hug him again, but her cell phone rang. She picked it up and answered. “Debbie, are you and your sister on the ground? How long until you get here?”

  Smiling in anticipation of seeing his sisters, Jason went in search of his grandfather. He didn’t need to talk about his parents any longer. They’d both made horrible choices, but he’d tried to work at some sort of relationship with his father. The more time he spent with him, the less reasonable Jason’s own attitude toward his mother seemed.

  Or maybe Fleming’s soft heart had begun to tenderize him.

  “Gran,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m going to find Grandpa and ask him if he wants to go out for a while. We’ll be back.”