A Magical Christmas (19 page)

“Mommy? Mommy?” she cried.

Julie came rushing along the hallway, falling to her knees in front of Ashley and encompassing her in a tight hug. “Ashley! Ashley, where did you go? I
was worried sick; Daddy is worried sick! I was so afraid that you’d gotten lost someplace outside.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy, honest, I’m sorry,” Ashley said, hugging her mother back, shaken by the emotion in her mother’s words and touch. Julie drew away at last, looking at Ashley. “Where did you go, honey? Even if Christie and Jordan make you mad, sweetheart, you can’t just go running off!”

“I was just up in the attic. I didn’t mean to scare you, really.”

Ashley realized that Clarissa Wainscott was standing behind her mother, watching her. She caught Mrs. Wainscott’s eye. Mrs. Wainscott smiled at her, then said, “I’ll go down and tell Christie to call your husband and son in, Julie.” She walked by Ashley, placing a hand lightly on her head and tousling her hair. There was a nice, warm feel to Mrs. Wainscott’s touch. Ashley liked her very much. Mommy didn’t even seem to notice her. She was still staring at Ashley, and she was holding her tight, as if she was afraid she’d disappear again if she let her go.

“Ashley, promise me you’ll never just walk away like that again.”

“I promise.”

“I can’t believe that you ran up to a spooky old attic.”

“It isn’t spooky. It’s neat. There’s an old rocking
horse and all kinds of old trunks and things. I’ll take you there if you want.”

Her mother smoothed back her hair. “I’m not so sure we should just go prowling around in someone else’s attic. Attics can be kind of private places. They hold a family’s memories. The things that hold a family together.”

Ashley frowned, staring at her. “Is that why we can’t hold our family together? Because we don’t have an attic?”

“What? No, no, of course not, that’s not what I meant. I just meant that the attic holds things that are personal to Mr. and Mrs. Wainscott and we should at least be invited to go there.”

“I was invited.”

Julie frowned. “Mrs. Wainscott told you that you could go up to the attic tonight?”

“No, no, I found a friend—”

“Honey, secret imaginary friends can’t really ask you into the attic,” Julie said, smiling.

Ashley didn’t get a chance to explain that her friend wasn’t imaginary because by then Daddy had come. Christie and Jordan were behind him.

“Ashley!”

Daddy picked her up and whirled her around before setting her down, kissing her on both cheeks, and crushing her into a hug. Then Jordan was on his knees at her side, hugging her, too. “Squirt!” he
called her, but he said it nicely, with just a little bit of accusation in his tone.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” Christie told her, but Christie, too, was down on her knees, pulling her into her arms from Jordan’s. It was really nice. And weird. Nobody had wanted to pay any attention to her. And now they were all about to squeeze the breath from her.

“You called me names,” Ashley reminded her sister.

“I call Jordan names all the time,” Christie said dryly, “and I can’t get
him
to go away!”

“She’s just plain old mean, you have to remember that,” Jordan told Ashley.

“You two stop it right now,” Daddy said. “That’s how this whole thing got started. No name-calling by anyone. And Ashley, young lady, no disappearing again, do you understand?”

Ashley nodded. Jordan and Christie were actually quiet.

“Hello, up there!” Mrs. Wainscott called from the foyer. “Dinner is ready for you, if you’re ready for dinner.”

“Let’s go down,” Daddy said. He offered a hand to Mommy, who was still kneeling in the hallway, right where she’d been when it had just been her hugging Ashley.

She slowly took his hand.

“What’s the matter?”

She made a funny face. “It’s a little unsettling. We’ve had this family fracas right in front of Mrs. Wainscott.”

“We didn’t do anything that terrible,” Daddy assured her. “It’s all right.”

Mommy shook her head. “It’s like—it’s like she sees everything that’s going on.”

“Julie, our dinner must be getting cold. Ashley slipped by her sister and brother, and hid in the attic to brood a few minutes, and—” he gave Ashley a stern look, “scared us all half to death.” He looked at Julie again. “Things like that happen. To all people.”

She accepted his hand at last and stood. “You all go down. I’ll take Ashley to wash her face and hands. She’s all smudged with dust.”

Ashley sneezed. “Are attics supposed to have dust?”

“Most do,” Daddy assured her. “Jordan, Christie, let’s go on down.”

“Right,” Jordan murmured, starting down the stairs. Christie, still silent, followed him. Julie set her hands on Ashley’s shoulders, spinning her toward the double doors to their guest suite.

“Start washing up, sweetie.”

Ashley nodded, quickly moving to do as she had been told. If it had been someplace else, she might have been scared being alone. But not here.

Because she was never really alone.

“Julie, it wasn’t that big a thing, really,” Jon told her. “Hey, we found Ashley safe and sound.”

“I know. And I’m grateful.” Something still seemed to be twisting in Julie’s stomach. She was embarrassed. “The Wainscotts just seem so damned perfect themselves,” she murmured.

“You’re embarrassed,” Jon said.

“No, it’s not that.”

“It is. And you’re wrong. Nobody’s perfect.”

“Maybe nobody’s perfect, but…”

“But what?” Jon demanded.

“Our behavior is just so bad.”

“Oh.”

“I said
our
behavior. I wasn’t pointing any fingers. And the Wainscotts… when they talk about one another, there’s just so much…”

“So much what?”

“Warmth. As if the other person really matters. As if things are perfect between them, the kind of perfect—”

“Damn it, what is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying. We’re just so…”

“Julie!”

“It just seems that we’re so
ugly
at times.”

Jon just stared at her for a long moment. Julie felt her stomach twist painfully. What she had meant to say just didn’t come out right. She didn’t mean to be so hateful herself all the time. She didn’t mean to be tired and aggravated and selfish. And Jon had looked at her a little bit differently when the night had started. They’d smiled; they’d talked, awkwardly, but it had been nice, and now…

Now he was looking at her with a cool, distant look in his eyes again. Removing himself, perhaps, she thought, from the reach of her claws.

“I’m willing to bet that even your perfect Wainscotts must have a few skeletons in the closet,” he said. But he shrugged, lifting his hands, “We’re probably ruining Clarissa’s dinner. I mean, it’s a bed-and-breakfast and we’re paying, but I imagine that going down to eat the meal would be the courteous thing to do. Especially since we’ve had this conversation before. I’ll go down. See if you can’t hurry Ashley along.”

Jon started down the stairs. Julie watched him go, filled with regret, but wondering if it were possible to go back far enough not to feel such terrible hurt all the time. “Jon!” she said, calling him back.

He stopped, a hand on the banister, and turned to her.

“I didn’t say that
you
were ugly. I said that we were.”

He shook his head, his eyes steady on her. “We’re not.”

She tried to explain. “It just seems that we’re so hateful at times that we’ve even raised our children to be nasty to one another—”

“No, we haven’t. Everyone has problems. Everyone. Siblings fight. That’s life; that’s the way it is. Tonight Christie and Jordan were wrong, and they know it, but they love Ashley, they didn’t mean to hurt her, and whether you want to believe it or not, they wouldn’t want to hurt one another, either.” He hesitated just a second, then he walked back up the stairs to stand before her, not touching her, gripping the banister tightly as he spoke. “And I didn’t mean to hurt you. I don’t know how to say it any more meaningfully than that. I love you, Julie. I loved you when I married you, and I love you now. In my one great extramarital affair, the one you won’t forgive me for, I withered like a damned dying bean pole because she wasn’t you. All I remember from it was a lot of embarrassment and discomfort and misery in wondering just how many years my life would be a disaster if we didn’t get back together. I love you, and I love my family. After all these years. But you know what? I refuse
to go through what I went through before. So if you’re so certain you want to call it quits, you just go ahead and do it now. Give up, throw in the towel. And good luck in your new life.”

C
hristie wished that there was a phone in her room. She didn’t dare go downstairs and ask if she could make a call. She hadn’t seen a phone in the house, but her mother had called to make the reservations here, so there had to be a phone somewhere.

“Ashley?” she said softly.

Her little sister was curled against her, sound asleep. Ashley loved the house. And the vacation. She hadn’t even stayed mad at Christie and Jordan; she had just talked excitedly about the attic during dinner, and Mrs. Wainscott had said that tomorrow they must all go up and find something to wear for the Christmas Eve ball tomorrow night. Dinner had been okay. Despite the fact that her parents hadn’t said a word to one another during the entire meal. She didn’t know where they were now. Her father had gone outside first, then her mother. But she
didn’t think that they were together. They wanted to be alone.

Christie turned on her back and sighed, wishing she could fall asleep. She smiled, thinking that she had liked Aaron Wainscott. Of course, he was older. And if Jamie hadn’t been in her life… but Jamie
was
her life. Still, she liked Aaron, and she was glad he had asked her to come back and talk. She intended to do so. She wondered what Aaron and his father could possibly have disagreed on. Mr. Wainscott was wonderful. Tall, handsome, with something wonderfully gentle and noble about him as well. And Mrs. Wainscott was so lovely and so sweet. They were… perfect.

Something rebelled within her, and she reminded herself that her own father was a very handsome man, and noble, maybe, in his own way. He worked very hard. She knew that. She loved him. He was smart, he paid attention to her—he was just so damned pigheaded. Her folks had taught her all her life that there was no difference between people—religion didn’t matter, race didn’t matter, nationality didn’t matter. But Jamie lived on the wrong street—as if he’d chosen his own address!—and so he was condemned.

She twisted in bed. Well, she’d like to compromise, as Aaron had said. But she wasn’t giving
Jamie up, and if her folks didn’t accept Jamie, next year she’d be gone.

And that was that.

She closed her eyes tightly. She wanted to sleep. The house was warm and beautiful at night, but Christie wanted it to be day again. She wanted to ride back out to the cemetery and talk to Aaron. She hadn’t met a friend so easy to talk to in a very long time.

Just when she thought that she might have drifted off, she heard a gasping sound from the next room. She sat up in bed and listened.

“Jordan?” she called softly.

There was no answer. Ashley’s little mouth was open and she was breathing deeply in her sound sleep. Christie slipped out of bed and walked into her brother’s room.

“Jordan?” she whispered again. There was no light on in the room, but her own had been dark so her eyes had adjusted. Looking around, she saw that her brother was half on the daybed and half off it. He was on his back with his head hanging nearly to the floor.

“Jordan!” she cried, running across the room to him. She picked up his head, trying to put it back on the daybed. “Jordan, damn you, talk to me. Jordan, don’t you do this to me. Jordan!”

His skin was cold. He wasn’t responding. Christie panicked.

She leapt up and went rushing into her parents’ room, throwing the door open.

But they weren’t there. Neither of them.

“Oh, God!” Christie breathed.

But she didn’t waste time just standing there; she rushed out into the hallway, gripped the banister, and screamed, “Help! Help me, please!” at the top of her lungs.

There was enough moonlight to brighten the property nicely.

Jon had left the house as soon as he could manage to do so courteously after dinner. Not that the meal had been unpleasant in any way. Jordan and Christie had been eager to make things up with Ashley since they’d all had such a scare. And Clarissa had talked about the ball, and how they must all dress up and enjoy the festivities. Julie had been polite but withdrawn, watching what went on rather than taking any part in it.

The pond drew Jon. Clarissa had told him earlier that there was a little shed near it where he could find skates that he was more than welcome to use. He hadn’t been ice-skating in years, not since he’d been a kid and his folks had taken him north for the holidays each year. He’d been fairly decent at it in
those days, though, and he was tempted to try again. The ice, the air, the night, were all inviting.

Jon went to the old wooden shed by the pond. The door wasn’t locked, and he opened it. He wondered if he were crazy, coming out by himself in the night to try skating again. He wondered if he was in the middle of a midlife crisis, but he decided he had a few years to go before that actually happened. He was definitely trying to recapture something, though. Something clean and fresh—innocent, maybe. He wanted to believe again. In what?

Himself, maybe.

There was no light in the shed, or if there was, he couldn’t find it. It was all right. Enough moonlight poured in so that he could see around him. All sizes of skates hung from hooks along one wall. There were what looked like sleds leaning against a far wall, and a table in the center of the small building seemed to be laden with all manner of tools.

Jon looked at the skates, whistling softly. Some of them were really antique, probably worth a bundle. Not wanting to take a chance on destroying what might be valuable property, he tried to find what looked like the most modern pair in his own size. Jesse Wainscott must skate, he thought, because there were plenty of men’s skates in a size large enough for him.