Christmas Surprises

by Jenn Faulk

  "No fever or anything?," Rachel had murmured, doing a quick assessment with her eyes and hands, ever a nurse and a caregiver and a better sister than Maddie could have asked for when she married Grant.

  "No, I'm okay," she'd said. "Thanks."

  "Good," Rachel had answered. Then, after only a short pause, "Can I pray for you, Maddie?"

  And Maddie had weakly nodded her assent, appreciating Rachel even more as she welcomed the hand that reached for hers, bowing her head, and eagerly accepting every word about strength, forgiveness, wisdom, and grace, so much grace, for her.

  She knew what to pray, obviously.

  "Thank you," she'd whispered.

  Rachel had nodded. "Now, on to the next thing," she'd sighed with a smile. "I've got baby lotion all over my bedroom walls to tend to."

  "Baby lotion?," Maddie had asked.

  "Long story," Rachel had answered, grinning even wider. "Merry Christmas, Maddie."

  Maddie thought about it hours later, after she'd joined in the Christmas festivities downstairs with everyone else, with Grant sitting quietly by her side, his hand loosely in hers, so many things still left unsaid between them. She'd gotten up halfway through the morning as the kids were just beginning to play with their toys, expecting that Grant would surely leave soon to be at the restaurant for the lunch rush, determined that she would do something to help out around here, simply so she wouldn't have to see him leave.

  Lotion on the walls. She could help clean that up.

  So, she'd set out to do that, and now, as she sat and looked at the wall, she thought about how maybe things could be okay.

  Grant was going to do what he was going to do. She couldn't change him.

  But she could be honest. She could tell him what she really thought, rather than always stepping around issues, so fearful of becoming her mother.

  She'd become much worse in her effort to avoid becoming her at all, hadn't she?

  Honest. Open. In a way that she hadn't been before, just as soon as Grant got back from the restaurant --

  Or now. Because there he was, coming into Micah and Rachel's bedroom.

  "What are you doing?," he asked, his voice soft and careful, just like it had been all morning.

  She considered why it was like that, thinking about how he was this way after every fight they had, every silent fight as she very rarely spoke honestly about his offenses, her own failings, and the frustrations they both felt.

  He was always careful afterwards, though, watching himself, trying to make peace.

  She loved that about him. No matter how she saw him in a fight, he was like this.

  Honestly, it wasn't his fault that she came to every fight looking for offenses, looking for him to behave badly. But it was to his credit that he came along afterwards, no matter what had happened or had been said, with such understanding and gentleness in his tone, in his demeanor, even if there was no way he could understand any of it.

  It didn't mean he was always right, though. Even if she was the one with the messed up past and the baggage, it didn't mean she was always the one who was wrong.

  It was all so complicated, learning how to fight, learning how to forgive, learning how to be married. Falling in love with him had been so easy, and she'd concluded, with stars in her eyes, that marriage would be similarly uncomplicated.

  Still good, though, even if it wasn't a breeze.

  She reminded herself of this as she looked over at him. "I'm trying to save your sister's paint job," she murmured, giving him a faint smile, as she looked down at the cloth in her hand. "Trying to repaint her bedroom is the last thing she needs, now that she's going back to work."

  He nodded... then tilted his head to the side, inhaling deeply. "Is that... baby lotion?"

  "Yeah," she sighed, looking at the wall. "All over."

  "Micah and Rachel are weird," he noted.

  Before she could correct him on this, he gave her a smile.

  "Just kidding," he said. "I know it was that weird little freak of Gracie's. He was walking around with a pancake on his head at breakfast, yelling 'butt' at me every few steps."

  She smiled at this. "Makes you wonder what our baby is going to yell at you."

  That he didn't like him, like his mother did?

  No. Hopefully not. Surely not.

  "I do like you," she said softly, wanting to clarify that, as good an apology as she could make right now.

  His face softened. "I like you, too," he said quietly. "I never stopped liking you."

  Even though she'd been unlikeable.

  He was a good man, after all.

  "Why aren't you at the restaurant?," she asked, expecting to hear that he'd leave soon, just as she'd tell him they were okay again. He was needed there, and she understood that, just like she'd try her best to understand whatever came next...

  "I'm taking the day off," he said. "Spending Christmas with my family. My staff can handle it."

  She nodded at this, an inadequate response to the magnitude of what he'd communicated.

  "You know," he said, not looking for a response either way, apparently, "I can't get it right all the time. Not even half the time, Maddie. But I can't live in a one-sided marriage where you just... just disappear and never let me know where you're at."

  What?

  "What are you talking about?," she asked, very nearly holding her breath at this.

  "You don't tell me these things," he said, hurt in his eyes. "You've not said one word to me about everything you yelled about last night. You just disappear and don't say a word until you can't hold it back. And I have no idea where you're coming from half the time, because I'm not in your head, Maddie. I can't read your mind."

  No kidding. And she'd never thought of it like that.

  "I know you're probably regretting all that we decided to do with the book royalties and that you've been upset about the sales from your new books," he continued on, telling her more than he'd told her in months. "And I get that you resent me for it but haven't been willing to tell me."

  "I don't resent you," she said, interrupting him. "Grant, that was my decision to do away with the royalties and write a new kind of genre. That was the right thing to do, and... I'm thankful that you helped me get there. I don't resent you. Not for what you've done for me with the books."

  He looked up at her hopefully. "I just assumed," he said softly. "And it's okay, whatever the books bring in, because we're a team with the restaurant and we can make it on that alone."

  Of course, they could. She'd never doubted his ability to provide --

  But maybe he had. Maybe it had been part of the reason he'd been pushing so hard to make it a success, losing himself in it, sacrificing things because he thought he had to in order to provide, to make up for the loss he thought she felt because of what he'd encouraged her to do, because he thought she resented him.

  Why had neither one of them spoken to this?

  Because Maddie didn't want to be like her mother. Because Grant was already susceptible to losing himself in the work. He'd been like that back when she met him, and given his silent, hurt wife and her refusal to connect with him on any real level... well, it had been easy to fall back into it and justify himself because he had a family to support.

  "Oh, Grant," she sighed, seeing things much more clearly now. "I'm sorry."

  I'm sorry.

  "I was just trying to get you what you needed," he said, still trying to explain himself, even though she now got him much better than he got himself, honestly. "I mean, I know how it was with your mom and your dad and how a lot of their problems started with the money and how your mother never felt secure. I never want you to feel like that. You gave up a lot when we married, and I've just wanted to show you that we can make it on the restaurant alone. I've just been trying to get you what you need."

  "I need you, Grant," she said. "I need you, not all the great things you're trying to do for us. And I know it's important to you, and I'm so thankful that you
work so hard. But you're spending all of yourself on the restaurant, at the expense of everything else. And if it was just me and the baby... well, then, I wouldn't even mention it. But it's God, too. You don't even come to our small group with me anymore. And you're out of church more often than you're in church. And there's never enough time to even pray with me at home, and..."

  And she'd said enough. She could hear her mother in the words, though thankfully in a less screechy, less angry voice. But still. Her mother, pushing and pushing and pushing her father until he was so sick of her that he left.

  Grant would never leave. Maddie had enough faith in who he was to know that, but a man could stay right there with you, in your home with you, in your bed with you, and leave you all the same. Grant had been doing that in part, consumed in his work and absent emotionally more and more, and Maddie could see her words, her nagging words, pushing him even more.

  But it had to be said. By his admission and hers as well. And now, not just for her sake but for his, as he began to forsake the very things that had mattered so dearly to him back when they'd first met, back when he'd been the one to help lead her back to Christ and away from the filth she'd been living.

  Who would he even be apart from Christ? Certainly not the man she'd married. Certainly not the best friend she'd ever had, which he had been.

  "Why didn't you say that, then?," he said softly. "Why didn't you say it months ago, back when I was already convicted and needed to hear it?"

  Because she had been scared of being too honest, knowing that her own failings could drive him away...

  But no. They couldn't.

  "I mean," he said, "I'm culpable for my own choices, but maybe God was prompting you to tell me so that --"

  "So that I could speak that truth into your life," she said softly. "But I didn't. And now..."

  Now, here they were. Much farther apart than they'd ever been.

  But it could get better.

  "You want me to be honest?," she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "Please. I feel like I'm drowning out here by myself. I need you."

  "You're more than the restaurant," she said. "You're more than an income, Grant. God made you for more than work."

  He took a breath at the words.

  Relief. He'd needed it, and she'd been the one to give it.

  She marveled over this, at how the hard words that she'd been afraid to share had been the very thing he'd needed.

  Honesty. Openness. Saving her marriage.

  So simple yet so complicated as her heart raced at the thought of being this honest and open for the rest of their lives.

  "Let's go," he said suddenly.

  "What?," she asked, wondering at his meaning.

  "You and me," he said. "There's never going to be an ideal time. So, next week. Let's just leave. Let's go on the cruise and just take some time away together."

  Leaving the restaurant during the holidays? But there were going to be New Year crowds, money to be made off high capacity weekends...

  "But the money --"

  "I already paid for it, apparently," Grant muttered. "According to Micah, I paid for about ten cruises when I let him drill holes into my teeth --"

  "No," she smiled. "I'm not talking about the cruise. The restaurant. I'm talking about the restaurant. The last few bills on the restaurant --"

  "Let's stop talking about the restaurant," he said.

  "But everything you've worked so hard for--"

  "Will still be there when we get back," he said. "And the bills can wait for another day."

  "You don't have to do that for me," she barely whispered.

  "If I work my whole life and gain everything, what's it all worth in the end if I've lost you along the way?" He took a deep breath. "And more than that... I've gotta get right with the Lord again. You know it. And you've helped me see it. I'm hoping you'll be there to help me as I get back to where I need to be."

  This. He really got it.

  She could echo what he'd said, this time for herself. Her own walk had suffered. It was time to get serious about finding her identity in Christ, not in Grant.

  And she really got what he'd said earlier. That it was okay, that it was right, that it was necessary for her to say what she needed to say, to put voice to their problems, and not to continue to sit silently, fearful that the wrong words would send him packing.

  She had to trust him more than that.

  "I'm sorry, Grant," she said softly. "I think this... us, marriage... is always going to be tough work."

  It would be. You couldn't erase years of expectations and wrong assumptions. And Grant couldn't change his inclinations in a handful of seasons either.

  Tough work.

  "But it'll be good work," he said, standing to his feet and coming to her side, helping her up as well, just so he could embrace her, more tightly and more fully than he had in months.

  She was certain of this. Good work. Because God was good, and He'd already, in just these two days, done something big in them both.

  "Can we get it back?," he whispered into her hair. "Can it be like it was?"

  And she closed her eyes, trusted him again, and said, "I think it can be even better, Grant."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rachel

  Pediatric nurse, sitting right there, immobile as her child choked on a Lego. And her husband, a dentist with more than enough medical knowledge himself, sitting right there, equally immobile as his child choked on a Lego.

  All those years in school, all the fancy degrees, all the training in the world.

  And it took a preacher to save the day.

  Well, that figured.

  Zoe let out a huge cough, her little body shaking as the Lego landed halfway across the room, even as she began to cry.

  And like that, everyone woke up.

  "Zoe!," Rachel yelled, finally unfrozen, rushing to her daughter's side just as quickly as Micah did the same. Before she could pull the small, gasping, sobbing girl into her arms, Brian, still wearing that tiara and the matching jewelry, turned the child around, his hands to her face, doing a quick assessment, his eyes checking to see how she breathed.

  "Try eating a smaller one next time, hey, Zoe?," he said playfully, leaning forward and kissing her on the forehead.

  "Zoe, why?," Micah asked, kneeling beside his daughter, reaching out for her. "Why did you eat a Lego?"

  Like there was any good answer for that. Because I'm five, Daddy. Because I thought it was a good idea, Daddy. Because I don't know why, Daddy.

  "Praise God that you're okay," Rachel said now, her arm around Zoe as well, tears in her own eyes.

  "And thanks to Brian's quick thinking," Micah murmured. He looked up at the other man with something different in his eyes, finally.

  Appreciation.

  "Thank you," he said quietly.

  "No problem," Brian said, turning now to Mia, who was still upset over her sister. "Hey, Mia, I thought you were going to put some more bracelets on me."

  This was enough to redirect her attention as Rachel continued holding onto Zoe.

  "Reflexes like a ninja," Jacob grinned. "Brian, you need to come live with us. Our kids are always trying to eat things, stick things up their noses, cram things in their ears --"

  "Maybe you should go and stay with Brian and Mom instead of us," Micah said quietly. "I mean, after the wedding..."

  Before Rachel could gasp out loud at this, she glanced over at Micah, as he looked up at Brian. Not with affection or joy in his eyes but with quiet acceptance.

  The joy would come surely. One day.

  "Oh my!," Gracie squealed. "Natalie! You're getting married?"

  "Yes," the older woman breathed out, obvious relief in sharing this news. "Next month. We're still working out the details, but yes."

  Before Rachel could tell her mother-in-law congratulations, Zoe looked up at her and cried, "Mommy, my throat hurts."

  "Probably so," Rachel had murmured. "Let's go get some water
for you to drink."

  "Here, I'll come with you," Micah said, pulling Zoe into his arms, then carrying her into the kitchen, two steps behind Rachel.

  Once they were there and she'd gotten Zoe a cup, she chanced a look over at him.

  "Married, huh?," she asked.

  "Yeah," he sighed. "Can't say that I'm all that surprised, though. Can't say that I'm thrilled either, but..."