His Christmas Redemption

by Danica Favorite

  Lance didn’t need the old man’s reminder, but as he thought about his words, he figured the nursing home was exactly where he’d end up. Having a family didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t be there anyway. Sometimes he thought about his grandmother, dying in one of those places all alone. He’d been wanting to tell Erin that he would go caroling with them at the nursing home, but he hadn’t yet found the nerve. He didn’t want to get her hopes up that it meant anything other than keeping a long-ago promise made to himself to not let people in nursing homes be forgotten. And yet, until Erin had asked him about going with them, he hadn’t thought of that promise in years. So much for all his good intentions.

  Ricky held his hand out to Lance for the top of his thermos. “I’d best be getting on to check on my other guests. Sorry to have wasted your time.”

  He hated the dejected tone to Ricky’s voice, but he couldn’t bring himself to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

  “Thanks for the company. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom, even if I don’t think it applies to me right now.”

  Ricky gave a quick nod and walked off to chat with some of the others mingling in the area. Lance walked over to the warming hut, not specifically to join Erin, but he did want to know how she was doing after the sleigh ride. Just because he did not see a way to be with her didn’t mean he didn’t still care about her.

  Her friend Janie was in the hut with her and it was clear Erin had been crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll come back. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  Janie stood and patted the seat she’d been occupying. “No. You stay. I should go. The tree cutting party should be back soon and I want to check on the boys.”

  Lance looked over at Erin, who nodded. “Please,” she said.

  He sat and Erin looked at him with such sadness, it made his heart ache. “What Dylan said to you earlier upset me because of something you don’t know. Janie convinced me that it wasn’t good to hide it or keep it a secret.”

  A slew of horrible possibilities ran through his mind and his stomach clenched.

  “You can tell me anything,” he said.

  Erin squeezed his hands. Hers were warm and his felt so cold after being outside. He hadn’t been wearing gloves, he should have known better.

  “Let me get you warmed up,” Erin said. She reached beside her for a thermos of coffee, but Lance shook his head. “I’m fine. Ricky shared some of his with me.”

  “Ricky shared his coffee? You must’ve really made an impression on him. He gets his own special thermos of coffee and he doesn’t share with anyone.”

  Though he knew she was trying to impress upon him how much Ricky liked him, it only made Lance feel worse for letting the man down. That seemed to be something he was good at. Letting others down.

  “Anyway,” Erin continued, “I don’t even know how to say this. I never thought I’d tell you.”

  This was worse than that moment she’d fallen from the ladder and briefly been unconscious.

  “You can tell me anything,” he repeated.

  Erin sighed. “Lily wasn’t the only child we lost. I was pregnant when she died. With the stress of everything, I lost the baby. I hadn’t told you because you were so angry and then you went out of town on that business trip, and that’s when it happened. Nicole took me to the hospital and stayed with me. We got home just before you did.”

  She’d been pregnant? And she hadn’t told him? It felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs and he was gasping for breath, except he couldn’t even make that effort.

  Tears filled her eyes. “There just never seemed to be a good time to tell you. I was going to tell you when we were taking pictures, except you were so angry and impatient, snapping at me for wasting your time, so I thought I’d wait to tell you when you were in a better mood. Then Lily died and you kept saying how irresponsible I was. I just couldn’t find a way to say there’d be another baby. But then there wasn’t, and I figured you’d blame me for that, too, even though the doctor said there was likely some kind of problem with the baby anyway that caused the miscarriage.”

  Erin sniffled and said, “That’s why I was crying last night, over that picture. I was thinking about Lily and the baby... It was supposed to be our pregnancy announcement.”

  She was openly sobbing now and Lance just felt numb. He’d had to face so many difficult emotions already. But to learn he’d lost another child? One he hadn’t even known about?

  “Was it a boy or girl?”

  Erin stopped crying and looked at him. “It was too early to tell. The nurse said that sometimes it was easier if you gave the baby a name to mourn it, and I was kind of hoping for a boy, so I called him Noel. It just sort of fit because of when the baby was due.”

  She’d named their baby Noel. And now the tiny stuffed snowman that she’d insisted on being in the picture made sense. It wasn’t a family picture for the Christmas cards. It was an announcement that they were expecting a baby at Christmas, but he’d been too much of a jerk for her to tell him.

  Would it have turned out differently if he hadn’t been so short tempered with her that weekend? Looking back, he’d been irritated with her because all she’d seemed to want to do was sleep, which was typical for pregnant women. Only he hadn’t known she was pregnant and, of course, Erin would want to tell him in some special way. If he’d known she was pregnant, he liked to think he’d have been a little bit nicer to her and taken care of her. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to work that day and maybe Lily wouldn’t have...

  Lance shook his head. He wasn’t going to go there. Couldn’t go there. It hurt too much to think about. That was why he didn’t understand how Erin had moved on so easily.

  “If the baby was due at Christmas, how can you still love Christmas so much?”

  She shrugged. “Because Christmas is a time of hope. I don’t have my babies, but I can still choose joy, hope and peace. Choosing not to live because they died doesn’t honor them in any way. So instead, I make the most of the time I have. While the new memories won’t replace the ones I lost, I might as well have something good to go with the bad.”

  Then she gave him a soft smile. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t long for things. I want more children. I want a husband to love me. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable by asking you to give us another try. I know we can never reclaim what we lost, but I’d like to think that there was good between us, and if we tried, we could make it good again.”

  “I can’t be the man you want me to be,” he said, repeating what he’d been telling himself and what he’d told Ricky. This new information didn’t change any of it, it just gave him more reason to grieve and more reason to realize how he’d failed her in the past.

  She nodded slowly. “Maybe that’s true. Like I said, I didn’t mean to burden you with any of this. My feelings, the baby and everything else. I still believe we can help each other with our grief, but I know it’s too uncomfortable for you. And I’m sorry for pushing you to be someone you don’t want to be.”

  Then she sighed. “I thought that if you loved me, you’d be able to open up to me. But the opposite of that, and also true, is that if I loved you, I would accept you for who you are and not expect you to share your emotions. So maybe this is for the best. Maybe neither of us loves each other the way we think we did.”

  She stood and leaned down to give him a hug. “Thank you for taking care of me. Whatever the counselor needs from me to say that you’re fit to go back to work, it’s yours. I think we both have the answers we need. Our marriage wasn’t meant to be. And I promise I won’t ask you to sell the house again. When you’re ready, we can sell it together, or you can buy me out.”

  When she walked away, it hurt more than watching her leave the courthouse after their divorce. That had been final, but this was even more so. And it felt like it was ripping h
im in two.

  * * *

  She’d never thought she’d tell Lance about Noel. But she’d been feeling melancholy last night and then today, with what Dylan said, it all just came out. Janie had said that telling Lance was the right thing to do, but seeing the pain on his face, she wasn’t so sure.

  Erin stepped out of the warming hut just in time to be greeted by a bunch of snowy boys. Their laughter brought a smile to her face, and even though she was hurting, she needed to focus on them. Tonight she’d settle in for a long soak in the claw-foot tub and have another cry.

  As much as Lance had come to make peace with her, it was clear she still needed to make peace with their past, as well. She could admit now that she’d been unwilling to date because a small part of her was always hoping that they’d somehow find their way back together. The past two days made her realize that it wasn’t going to happen.

  So maybe, when Lance left, her heart could break once and for all and she could find happiness with someone else.

  But that thought made her sick.

  “Mr. Ricky has all kinds of trees that would make great Christmas trees,” Dylan said. “I don’t know why we have to wait for Mom and Dad to get back to get our last one. Wouldn’t it be great for them to come home and see that we’d gotten one all by ourselves?”

  She gave the little boy a squeeze and smiled. “Yes, which is why we’re decorating the whole house. But getting a Christmas tree and decorating it together is a family tradition, and we do it as a family.”

  “Can Uncle Lance come?” Dylan asked.

  Erin glanced back at the warming hut. Lance hadn’t come out yet.

  “We’ll see,” she said. “I don’t know how long he can stay.”

  Dylan kicked at a pile of snow. “That means no. You always say ‘we’ll see’ when you really mean no.”

  “It means we’ll see. I can’t make plans for him.” She reached forward and ruffled his hair. “And where is your hat? It’s cold out and I don’t want you getting sick.”

  “In my pocket.” Dylan pulled it out and showed it to her.

  Janie joined them, shaking her head. “I told you to put it on.”

  Dylan groaned and did as she asked before running off to join the others.

  “How’d things go with Lance?” Janie asked.

  Erin shrugged. “He didn’t say much, as usual. He wanted a few details, and I gave them to him. But I think telling Lance made me realize just how different we are and how much more work it would take to ever get us back together.”

  “I’m sorry,” Janie said. “I was hoping that telling him would bring the two of you closer.”

  Erin shrugged. “Not if it means opening up emotionally. But thanks for trying.”

  She turned and looked over at the warming hut. Lance had stepped out and was chatting with Travis. He looked happy, and Erin supposed that was the upside of not being willing to dig into the deeper emotions. He could hear what was devastating to her and then happily go on with his life moments later.

  If anything, it was further confirmation that Lance wasn’t the man for her. She needed a man who could handle sharing his emotions and working through them together. And he needed a woman who could love him without the complication of all those feelings getting in the way. That made her resolve to find a way to keep Lance in the boys’ lives even more difficult. When he met that woman, Erin wasn’t sure she could handle it.

  Chapter Nine

  Lance was surprisingly eager to join them for caroling at the nursing home the next day. They hadn’t spoken about anything of import since their time at Ricky’s yesterday. But there wasn’t anything left to say on the subject. Erin had agreed to give him what he needed, and even though he hadn’t said it, that also included his space.

  Erin looked up from the craft she was doing with the group of ladies to see Lance talking to an older woman who’d been sitting by herself. They were deep in conversation, and Erin could tell that Lance had made the woman stay. She forced herself to look away, not wanting to give herself any more reason to like him more.

  “Look at my reindeer,” Edna, the lady she’d been helping, said with pride. Erin often found herself partnered with Edna for activities, and the sweet woman had become very dear to her.

  Erin smiled. “You should send that to your daughter in Denver. Maybe she’ll put it on her tree.”

  “She only wants checks from me,” Edna said, throwing down the reindeer. “She never calls, except to ask for money. I haven’t seen her in nearly two years.”

  This was why their church’s ministry was so important. People like Edna needed to know that someone cared about them.

  Erin picked up the reindeer. “I think it’s beautiful. So if you don’t hang it on your tree, I hope you’ll let me put it on mine.”

  Not that she had room on her personal tree that she kept in the study. It was already overflowing with ornaments, and Lance scowled at it every time he walked by. At least he wouldn’t be around to witness the family tree. Even though the boys were really hoping he would stay for them to cut it and decorate it together, she wasn’t sure he could handle it.

  “I’ll put it on my tree,” Edna said, snatching it out of her hand. “Now I’m going to go over to the other group and make me a snowman.”

  The rest of the group at her table had also finished the reindeer, so they all got up to go to some of the other craft stations to make something else. They’d planned to make an afternoon of it, doing various crafts, then later, after supper, singing Christmas carols around the tree. She’d only told Lance about the carols part and, when he’d made it clear he was coming, she’d had to explain that it was going to be an all-day activity.

  A day that he spent in the corner with Mary, who never participated in any of their activities. But maybe, having Lance there would make her want to join in.

  Erin got up and went over to them. “I have room at the reindeer table if you’d like to make your own reindeer,” Erin said.

  Mary glared at her. “What would I want with a reindeer? They put me in here to die and it’s not like I can take a reindeer with me.”

  “It’s just something pretty to brighten your room. And it’s kind of fun, doing crafts.” She kept her tone light, trying to be cheerful.

  “I don’t do crafts,” Mary said. “And I hate Christmas.”

  No wonder Mary and Lance were getting along so well.

  “Why do you hate Christmas?” Erin asked.

  Mary gestured at the craft tables. “All the commercialism. It’s just an excuse for people to make and buy more junk they don’t need. When I was a little girl, it was all about family, being together, caring about each other. And where’s my family now? Probably up in Aspen, shopping and skiing to their hearts’ delight. I’ll probably get a package from them, with some junk I’ll just regift to one of the nurses because I have no use for it. All those scented lotions and soaps. They give me a rash.”

  Put that way, Erin could see why Mary hated Christmas. “I can understand that,” Erin said. “To be honest, I’ve never been comfortable with that aspect, either. All the stores, sales, buying a bunch of stuff for people they don’t really want or need. That’s why our family is intentional about gift giving, and we make it about finding something special for the other person.”

  At Lance’s snort, she continued. “But I will admit that I absolutely love the decorations. It’s so beautiful to see all the lights.

  “Growing up, we were never allowed decorations. Our father said they were a waste of time and money. We couldn’t even have a Christmas tree. But every year he’d dutifully give us a ridiculous present that seemed to be more about the show of giving us something than it was about doing something nice for us. So my sisters and I promised ourselves that when we could have Christmas without him, we would do whatever made us happy, as long as whatever we did in terms o
f gifts or something had a special meaning.”

  As she spoke, Lance’s face had softened. “I didn’t know that about you. You never told me that story about your father.”

  Erin shrugged. “I generally don’t tell a lot of stories about my father. He wasn’t a very nice man.”

  “I hate Christmas for a lot of the same reasons as Mary,” Lance said. “My father always made it about showing off the fancy gifts he could give us that weren’t about us at all but about him impressing everyone around him. And my mother’s Christmas décor, it was about having the prettiest, fanciest house around to be better than all her friends and neighbors. She’d waste thousands of dollars on decorations every year, trying to outdo everyone else. It made me sick and I promised myself I would never fall into that whole commercialism trap.”

  Mary grinned. “I’m glad to hear someone else isn’t wasting their time and money on all those geegaws that no one needs.”

  “You never told me that about your childhood,” Erin said to Lance. Knowing now how he saw Christmas, she wished she’d been more sensitive to those memories. Though, in all fairness, she had tried talking to him about it, but he’d always shut her down. Maybe the fact that he was willing to open up about it now meant that he was making progress with his therapy.

  “I agree with you and Mary,” Erin said. “That’s a terrible way to have to live. I just like decorating and having pretty things around me. I decorate for all the seasons, but Christmas is the easiest and most fun. Besides, the thing I love most about all of the Christmas activities is that we do them together.”

  The grin left Mary’s face and she looked like she was about to cry. “That’s all I want from my children and grandchildren. But they never come to see me. They just send me expensive froufrous, thinking it makes up for the fact that I’m sitting here all alone.”