Читать книгу Keeping Christmas - Marisa Carroll, Marisa Carroll - Страница 11

Chapter 3

“The receipt for this fruitcake has been handed down in our family for six generations,” Hazel said, brandishing a sharp knife as she cut candied pineapple into tiny bits and added it to the bowl of batter, already stiff with crystallized fruits, on the table before her. She used the word receipt instead of recipe, just as Katie’s grandmother had done.

“I’ve never been fond of fruitcake,” Katie admitted as she broke off a small piece of sugar cookie for Kyle, who was sitting on her lap. “Every one I’ve ever had has been dry and tasteless as chalk.” Kyle opened his mouth wide for the bite of cookie, then made a grab for the rest of it. Katie laughed and so did Hazel.

“It’s good to hear you laugh. I know you must be feeling better.”

“Much better,” Katie agreed. “I don’t know how I can thank you for letting us stay here these past three days.”

“By praising my fruitcake to the sky, of course,” she said with another merry grin.

“That won’t be difficult, I’m sure.”

“If you’re not still with us when these are done—they have to ripen, you know—you must give me your address and I’ll send you one.”

“Yes,” Katie said, lying. “I’ll do that.”

She and Kyle were sitting in an antique rocking chair in the sun, in the window alcove of the Owens’ kitchen. The wide windowsills were crowded with blooming geraniums and potted ferns, the winter daylight filtered through lace curtains, but suddenly it seemed to Katie as if the sun had gone behind a dark cloud. It was Wednesday afternoon. She’d been here three days and soon she would have to be moving on.

The back door opened and the twins came into the kitchen from outside. Cold air streamed in with them, stirring currents of warmer air, heavy with the scent of growing plants, spices and wood smoke. Katie took a deep breath and held it, savoring the good smells and the good feelings in the room.

“The reason Hazel’s fruitcakes are in such demand,” Faye said, picking up the thread of the conversation as if she’d been in the room all along, “is because she soaks the things in rum before she stores them away.”

“That’s right,” Lois said, nodding in agreement. Now that she felt better, Katie had almost no trouble telling them apart. “Even the Methodist preacher thinks they’re great.”

“And he’s a teetotaler.”

Everyone laughed. Kyle loudest of all.

“Come on, fella,” Faye said, offering the baby another bite of cookie. “Want to come play with me so your mommy can rest for an hour?”

“You can take him to play if you like,” Katie said, lifting Kyle into Faye’s outstretched arms. “But I’m not a bit tired. I’ve spent the last three days resting. Are you sure there isn’t something helpful I can do?” She’d asked the question a dozen times already that day, and each time she’d been politely rebuffed.

“Thanks, but no,” Lois said. “I’ve already spent the afternoon straightening out the Christmas lights. It seems no matter how carefully I pack them away each year, whenever it comes time to put them up again they’re always a mess.”

“Gremlins,” Hazel said, shaking her head.

“Impatience.” Faye sniffed, cooing nonsense words at Kyle while tickling his belly with the tip of her finger. “You’re always in too big of a hurry.”

“I just don’t like Christmas to be over. And anyway, last year it was freezing cold when we took the lights down. Remember? I thought I’d freeze my…fingers…off before we were done.”

“Well, anyway, I’ve got about half of them ready to go for when Jacob gets home from school—he always stops in on his way up the hill. I got all the kinks out of the wires, and I replaced all the burned-out bulbs.”

“You’ll need someone to hold the ladder so Jacob doesn’t fall off the roof and break his neck,” Janet added, coming into the kitchen through the swinging door just in time to hear the last few remarks.

“Katie can do that,” Faye said without looking up from Kyle’s sugary, beaming face. “She’s dying to get outside, aren’t you, Katie?”

“Well, yes,” Katie said. “I would like some fresh air.” But she didn’t want another confrontation with Jacob Owens. She’d spent the better part of the past day and a half, since she had come downstairs, avoiding him. He didn’t want her in his aunts’ house. He didn’t want her near him. She wanted the same thing. Didn’t she?

“Good, that’s settled. If we aren’t the first house in town to start putting up Christmas decorations the twins pout for a week.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lois sniffed.

“Never mind Janet,” Faye said, ignoring her elder sister while concentrating on making Kyle laugh even harder. “She’s an old Scrooge.”

“I am not. I’m just practical. A virtue sadly lacking in several members of this family.”

“You’re a Scrooge,” Lois said firmly. “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. I want to make it last.”

“Christmas should be in your heart, not on the front lawn,” Almeda said, coming into the kitchen from the short hallway that connected the big room with the bathroom and her bedroom.

“Christmas is in my heart,” Lois insisted. “That’s why I want everyone to enjoy the season as much as I do.”

“In the spirit of the season,” Katie heard herself say. Christmas had never been her favorite holiday. She knew enough about herself to know why. If you didn’t have a family, Christmas could be a very lonely time of the year. Michael and Kyle had helped keep away the loneliness she always felt at Christmastime. But now Michael was gone and she and Kyle were truly alone. “I’ll hold the ladder for Jacob while he puts up the lights.”

For some reason she didn’t want to think too closely about, she couldn’t stop herself from offering to do the chore. Besides, it was the least she could do for the quintet of wonderful old ladies who’d given her shelter from the storm. She was almost well; nothing was left of her illness but a lingering cough and runny nose. The Owens sisters had been as kind to her as if she was their own flesh and blood. They adored her son. They treated her like family; more like family than any of her own relatives, including her parents, had ever done. Just because she didn’t like their nephew was no reason not to repay their kindness in such a simple and relatively painless way. In the spirit of the season.

“You’ll need a pair of boots,” Hazel said, pouring the fruitcake batter into buttered pans. “What size shoes do you wear?”

“Eight and a half,” Katie said, trying not to blush. She resisted the urge to shove her feet under the rocker. “I doubt if any of you have feet that large.”

The twins snickered. “Janet does.”

“Wrong,” Janet said, not showing any sign of malice. “I wear an eight. You’re welcome to my boots even if they pinch,” she went on with a nod to Katie. “But I’ll be wearing them myself, since you’ll need my help untangling Lois’s thousand strings of lights if Jacob is going to get down off that ladder before midnight.”

“Quit exaggerating,” Faye scoffed, shaking her head. Kyle did the same. “There’s nowhere near a thousand strings. There’s twenty or twenty-five at the most.”

“I wear an eight and a half. She can borrow my boots,” Almeda decreed as she lowered herself heavily onto a chair at the table. “They’re on the back porch. Just like new, I might add. I don’t go out much anymore in this kind of weather.”

“If we wait until tomorrow the snow will be all gone and it will be forty-eight degrees,” Jacob said, coming through the back door, picking up the thread of the conversation just as quickly as his aunts had done earlier. Katie wondered if it was merely the result of living so closely together for so many years, or something in the Owens’ genes.

“Oh, Jacob, you’re not backing out on us, are you?” Lois asked, looking as disappointed as a child. “I penned Weezer up so she won’t try and eat the bulbs. I have all the boxes down from the attic. I’ve checked all the extension cords, and even un…packed a dozen strings.”

“Untangled, you mean,” Janet said under her breath.

“Unpacked,” Lois insisted. “I saw Mrs. Barnett, down at the crossroads, already has her Santa and reindeer set up out on the lawn. We can’t let her get the jump on us, Jacob. We just can’t.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Jacob said, giving his aunt a salute. Katie almost thought she saw the glimmer of a smile cross his lips, but it never reached his eyes. They were blue, she noticed without wanting to—dark, dark blue. Navy blue, like the color of his coat and the knit cap on his dark head. Katie took a closer look at his clothes. It was a navy-issue coat, a pea coat, and a watch cap, both of which had seen better days. So Dr. Jacob Owens had been a sailor. One more tiny nugget of information to add to her private list of the things she knew about him.

“Give me a minute to get this tie off,” he said, suiting action to words as he pulled the knot from a gray knit tie and opened the collar of his long-sleeved gray-and-red-striped shirt. “I’ll call the Calhoun boys to come and give us a hand.”

“We don’t need the Calhoun boys, Jacob,” Lois said, smiling across the room at their reluctant guest. “Katie’s going to help.”

“Katie?” Jacob turned on her, tie still in hand, the indulgent half smile he’d been wearing wiped away in the space of a heartbeat, replaced by a frown.

“I’ll be glad to help,” she said hurriedly. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but Jacob made no effort to hide his antagonism for her and she couldn’t help wishing Lois had never asked for her assistance.

“I don’t need your help,” he said bluntly, tossing the discarded tie on the table and reaching for his coat.

“Yes, we do,” Lois piped up. “The Calhoun boys have basketball practice every night after school. They won’t be able to help until the weekend. I don’t want to wait that long to get the lights up. You promised,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest. “You promised.”

“I promised,” he said between clenched teeth as he rebuttoned his coat. “So let’s get going. This family spends entirely too much time and energy worrying about Christmas.” He walked out the door.

“Oh, dear,” Lois said, biting her lip. “Now I’ve made him mad.”

“It’s not you, Lo,” Faye said, offering her Kyle’s plump cheek to kiss. “It’s Christmas. You know how much Katherine loved the holidays. He doesn’t want to remember that she and the baby are gone forever. And Christmas is the hardest time of year for him....”

And the baby. So Jacob had lost a child, as well as his wife. She thought of her own loss. She had loved Michael, and she truly mourned his loss. Sometimes she wondered how she could have gotten through it without Kyle. To have lost the woman you loved and the child she bore you…together… The loss would be incalculable. Perhaps she’d judged Jacob Owens too harshly. Perhaps she should…

An imperious tapping came at the window beside her chair. Katie leaned over and lifted the lace curtain. Jacob’s dark, harsh features stared back at her, below eye level, framed by blooming pink geraniums and green leaves. “Let’s get going,” he called loudly through the old, green-tinged, wavy glass. “It’s colder than a witch’s—”

“Jacob!” Almeda called, holding up an imperious hand. “Watch your language.”

“Yes, Aunt,” he hollered back. The darkness didn’t leave his face, but Katie thought she saw just the slightest hint of softening in his deep blue eyes. He lowered his voice. “I’ll watch my p’s and q’s.”

“See that you do,” Almeda replied. Her hearing was evidently very good for a woman of her years.

“C’mon, Kate Smith,” he said, more softly still. “Get a move on.”

“I will,” Katie said, wondering why she was in such a hurry to do what he told her. He was a thorn in her side. He was moody and distrustful and he made her feel like a criminal for accepting his aunts’ hospitality. Now she was practically falling out of her chair to do his bidding. No, she told herself stubbornly, I’m doing it for his aunts. She squared her shoulders just a little. For his aunts. “I’m coming,” she said, and dropped the curtain.

The last thing in the world he wanted was to be hanging Christmas lights with the alleged Kate Smith as his helper. He hated Christmas because it reminded him more than at any other time of year of what he had lost. But for his aunts’ sakes, especially for Faye and Lois who celebrated the holidays with the intensity of children, he tried to hide his bitterness. He was surprised they hadn’t already come up with a scheme to keep Katie and her little boy with them until after New Year’s. Christmas was for children, after all. And they had no children or grandchildren of their own to spoil, as they would have lovingly and joyfully spoiled his son. Resolutely and quickly, because he’d had so much practice at it, he changed the direction of his thoughts.

“Let’s hurry this up a bit,” he said, tugging on the string of big, old-fashioned, teardrop-shaped outdoor lights that Katie was feeding up to him. “I’d like to be down off this ladder before dark. Did you hear me, Kate Smith?” He twisted his head around and looked down at his assistant, standing half a dozen rungs below him on the heavy wooden ladder. “I’m freezing my can off out here.”

“So am I,” came the spirited reply. “And I don’t like being up on this damned ladder any more than you.”

“No one asked you to come up,” he reminded her, enjoying the play of emotions across her expressive face, despite his reluctance to be in her company.

“It’s a dirty job, but someone had to do it,” she shot back, sniffling into the tissue she had wadded into her glove. “If I didn’t volunteer, you really would be up on this thing all night.” She looped a coil of lights in her hand, grabbed the sides of the ladder and leaned back, the better to glare up at him. “I suppose you expect your seventy-five-year-old aunt to come crawling up here and be your gofer.”

“Hey,” Janet yelped from the ground. “I’m not seventy-five. Hazel is. I’m seventy-two.”

“I was speaking in round figures,” Katie said, swiveling her head to shower one of her glittering, disarming smiles down on his aunt. Jacob felt a small, unwelcome twinge of regret that she wasn’t going to be smiling when she looked up at him again. Her smiles were really marvelous, something to behold.

“Not round enough,” Janet responded and laughed. Katie laughed, too. Her laugh was even more infectious than her smile. When she laughed she reminded him the least of Katherine. His wife had been a passionate and caring woman, but her emotions were always under control. Katie X—he’d taken to calling her that in his thoughts—wore all her emotions on her sleeve.

“I was trying to make a point,” Katie said, hooking her arm around the rung of the ladder in front to feed Jacob another few feet of lights that he looped through hooks set permanently under the eaves of the house.

“You succeeded.” Jacob tugged hard enough to cause the fragile colored-glass bulbs to bang together dangerously.

“You have no sense of humor,” Katie said. Provocatively? He couldn’t be sure. She tilted her head, watching him, challenging him. The lights were tangled just below his reach. Janet had stepped away from the base of the ladder to answer an urgent plea for help from the twins. He was alone, twenty-five feet in the air, with Katie X. He reached down for the string of lights just as she lifted them toward him. Their gloves hands met, but it was as if the barrier of cloth didn’t exist. He felt a jolt of sensation go through him as strong and as real as if the Christmas lights had shorted out in his hands.

“I lost my sense of humor and everything else three and a half years ago,” he said bluntly. He yanked on the lights again. The tangle came loose and he started back up the ladder to the peak of the roof.

“That’s when your wife and child were killed?”

“Yes,” he said. The word was scarcely more than a growl.

“Was your child a boy or a girl?” She wasn’t going to let him alone until she had the information she wanted, it seemed. He remained silent for a long moment, hooking the lights with mechanical efficiency, searching his heart for any weak spots in his defenses before he spoke again.

“A boy.”

“How old?” Her voice was soft, caring, but he refused to hear anything but the prying words.

“Eighteen months.”

“Near Kyle’s age,” she whispered, but he heard her, anyway.

“Yes.”

“His name was Kent Jacob.” It was a combination of Katherine’s father’s name and his own. He was surprised he’d been able to say it out loud.

“How did it happen?” She passed him another loop of lights and he started methodically stringing them down the far side of the roof peak, as far as he could reach.

He considered telling her to mind her own business but somehow he knew it would do no good. Katie X was nothing if not single-minded.

“It was a freak accident,” he mumbled, tightening a green bulb that had come loose in its socket with more force than necessary. “They were sitting in the car, in our driveway, waiting for it to stop raining when lightning struck a tree next door. Half the damn tree came down on top of the car. They were both killed instantly.”

“I’m sorry,” Katie said, so softly he could barely hear her.

“Being sorry doesn’t help.” He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He never wanted to talk about it.

“My husband died very suddenly, too,” she went on, ignoring his bad manners. “A little less than a year ago. On Monday he said he didn’t feel well. On Wednesday he collapsed. On Friday he was dead.” She sounded as unbelieving as he had been when he learned of what had happened to his wife and son. “It was pneumonia. Some kind of virulent strain.”

“No one dies of pneumonia anymore.”

“Michael did. And now Kyle and I are all alone.”

“Except for whoever you’re running away from.” He glared down at her, wanting to make her suffer a little in return for making him answer her questions.

“We’re not running away from anyone,” she said so quickly he knew immediately she was lying. The color drained from her face, leaving two round spots on her cheeks and her nose bright red. She looked as if he’d hit her in the stomach with his fist. He felt just as lousy as if he had.

“We’re not running away,” she repeated, staring up at him with frightened, defiant eyes. Brown eyes, the color of spice or café au lait, rimmed with long, sooty lashes. What was the old cliché about eyes like that? Bedroom eyes. Jacob crushed the thought with a silent curse.