Merriest Christmas Ever Page 2

  “I’ll help you, Daddy.” Kirsten jumped out of the swing.

  “Gracie, you should take that swing inside.” he said, turning back to her. “The weather will ruin the varnish.”

  She played with the hem of her soft, clinging blue sweater. Lighter than her eyes, it intensified their outstanding violet-blue color. Liz Taylor eyes, he’d once told her. “I’ve been so busy getting settled, I hadn’t thought of it. It...it...came with the house.”

  He strode down the walk to unleash the tree. What made him admonish Gracie about the swing? It was none of his business how she took care of things. Swinging the tree to the ground, he nearly hit Kirsten, who was hopping around underfoot. Giving her a warning look, he carried the pine to the house. If Sonny was around, he wasn’t showing his face until it was inside.

  Gracie motioned him inside. “Put it in the parlor, please.”

  Skipping ahead, Kirsten stared up the steep oak stairway, then peeked into the first room left of the hall. “This must be the parlor, and I’ll bet the tree goes there!” She pointed to the corner between the triple front window and a side window.

  “Exactly right,” Gracie said, hugging Kirsten to her side.

  Merett smiled as Gracie pulled a tree stand from the opposite corner into Kirsten’s chosen place. The room was large but sparsely furnished. A gate-leg table bearing a manger scene stood against the wall to the left of the door. A brocade armchair and a pie crust table with a Tiffany lamp stood on the right. In the middle of the back wall, opposite the triple window, loomed an upright piano. Highly polished, it shone in the sun streaming through the lace curtains. “That piano’s beautiful.”

  Gracie’s eyes sparkled. “It’s my prized possession, and I found it in the attic. At first, I couldn’t believe anyone would leave a piano behind. Then I discovered the player doesn’t work.” She ran her fingers over the keys. “I like it, anyway.”

  As Merett fitted the tree into the holder and tightened the screws that held the trunk in place, Gracie stood with her arm draped loosely around Kirsten’s shoulders. She’d had plenty of experience with kids, mothering Faith who was much younger. And Hope, although she was close to Gracie’s age, looked up to her, too. She’d been a real mother hen, as he remembered. He stood and checked out his work. “There’s just room enough for a star.”

  “When I was a child, we had a ceramic star with an angel painted on it. I’ve always wanted to find another like it, but grandma bought it at a church bazaar, so I probably never will.”

  Kirsten tapped her on the arm. “What kind of star do you want for your other tree? And why do you have two trees? Do they both go here? I don’t mean in this room, because that would be dumb. I mean, in this house, or do you have another house?”

  “Whoa.” Merett gave her a stern look. She was talking a mile a minute, as usual. “A person can’t answer a dozen questions at the same time.”

  She dropped her head, and studied her Mary Janes. “Sorry.”

  Gracie raised Kirsten’s chin with her fingertip, and smiled. “It’s okay. The other tree goes on the landing near the top of the stairway. I’ll use an ordinary star on that tree.”

  “You’re lucky having two trees.”

  “Very lucky,” she agreed, her blue eyes meeting Merett’s over his daughter’s head.

  “I’ll bring your other one in now.”

  “And I’ll make cocoa to warm you and Kirsten. Just set it on the porch, and I’ll have Hope’s husband carry it up as soon as they visit. Frank’s an attorney, and they’re busy a lot. They haven’t even seen my house yet.”

  Merett longed to rub away the tiny crease that formed between Gracie’s brows.

  “Should I call you Mrs. Singleton?” Kirsten asked.

  “Actually, my name’s Ms. Saylor, but please call me Gracie. Ms. Saylor sounds so old.” Gracie grinned and turned up her nose.

  “And it sounds like the name of someone in an Old Maid deck. You know, Mr. Soldier, Ms. Sailor, Miss Marine.”

  “Kirsten!” Merett scolded. Gracie broke up, and fighting to conceal his amusement, he motioned to his daughter. “Come on, squirt. You can help bring in the other tree.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather help Gracie fix the cocoa instead.”

  As his daughter tucked her hand into Gracie’s, a sense of foreboding settled over Merett. Kirsten bonded with anyone who paid her attention, and when he took her back to New York to live, he didn’t want to add Gracie to the casualty list.

  * * *

  Gracie watched Merett study his daughter, uncertainty playing over his handsome features like shadows on a sunlit pond. Was he afraid Kirsten would be a nuisance while he was gone? “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”

  “See, Daddy? It’s okay.” Kirsten smoothed her pink corduroy jumpsuit and gave him a happy wave. “Want me to see if I can find the kitchen, Gracie?” Without waiting for an answer, she skipped off down the hallway, Mary Janes clicking on the hardwood floors.

  “Walk,” Merett called after her.

  Kirsten turned and gave him a level look. “My mother let me skip in the house.”

  “No. She didn’t.” The look that came over Merett’s face chilled Gracie. Pain, anger, devastation; one gave way to the other.

  “Well, you used to, but you never let me do anything since—”

  “You’re in someone else’s house now. You might break something.”

  Kirsten opened her mouth to retort, but he shook his head, and she clamped her lips shut. Turning her back on him, she walked down the hall.

  Merett slammed out of the house. Kirsten walked demurely to the kitchen and sat down at the big oak table by the window. Bewildered, Gracie followed.

  Neither of them spoke as she poured milk into stoneware mugs and set them in the microwave. A box of assorted Christmas cards lay on the table, and Kirsten opened them. Beside them lay Gracie’s address book. “When I lived in New York,” Kirsten said, patting it, “we never sent cards, but Grampa sends them.”

  “My parents never sent cards, either. But I think it’s a nice tradition.” Gracie had been busy addressing the flyers for Special Effects she’d mailed yesterday, and planned to send a few cards when she had time.

  The front screen banged again, and Merett pounded up the steps. Gracie took the mugs out, and stirred sweet-smelling cocoa powder into the steaming milk.

  “I leaned your tree in the corner by the bay window,” Merett said, as he entered the kitchen. His eyes on Kirsten, he furrowed his brow.

  “Thanks.” Gracie turned to smile at him. “I have to buy another stand, unless I find one in the attic. You wouldn’t believe how many interesting things are stored there.”

  “I’d like to see,” Kirsten said. “I’ve never been in an attic before.”

  Merett gave her a dark look, and Gracie, sensing he was still upset with his daughter, turned away. While a whispered lecture took place, she arranged cookies she’d baked on one of her blue stoneware plates. Stalling for time, she folded napkins, set out spoons, and nothing left to do, plopped three marshmallows into a steaming mug, and walked across the kitchen to set it in front of Kirsten. “Blow first, so you don’t burn your mouth.”

  Merett sauntered over to the counter to get his cup, and Gracie followed. Who would have ever thought Merett Bradmoore would be standing in her kitchen this Sunday afternoon? She was so aware of his presence that her hands shook. To steady them, she stirred the cocoa, and watched wisps of steam float away. He slipped two marshmallows in each of their cups, and shrugged. “I’m surprised you wanted to come back to Ferndale.”

  “Even though Pop never made a decent living here, people were always kind to us, and I like knowing my neighbors and the people I do business with.” She smiled up at Merett. “The only people I knew in Chicago were the people at work, one woman in our apartment building, and...” Gracie grimaced. “Sonny.”

  “You married the guy who lived over Pawley’s Pool Hall?”

  “That’s right. Pool hus
tler, cool dude, drove a black pickup, and wore a leather jacket to match. Smoothest line in town, and I fell for it.”

  Merett leaned against the counter and studied her, his gaze so probing that her pulse pounded in her ears.

  “You were so quiet and smart. Sonny was...”

  Gracie shrugged. “We stayed together ten years.”

  “And then?”

  “Sonny lost his tenth job. Wrecked his fourth pickup. And his leather jacket wore out.” She spooned a half-melted marshmallow into her mouth. No sense in telling him the whole truth. The wound was still too raw. “Our divorce was final six months ago, and shortly after that, I came back to town for Aunt Grace’s funeral. This house was for sale, and I fell in love with it.”

  Looking across the room at Kirsten, Merett gestured. “Okay for her to do that?” She was sorting through the Christmas cards, looking at the pictures and reading the verses aloud to herself.

  Nodding, Gracie studied his troubled face.

  “I liked New York and my work there, but Dad was alone and wanted me here. I felt like I didn’t have a choice.” Merett stalked over to the table where Kirsten had stopped reading to watch fat snowflakes flutter past the window. Sitting down, he drummed his fingers on the table.

  Gracie was determined to find a subject that would make him feel better, and he had said he liked New York and his job. “What did you do in New York?”

  “He worked for a newspaper,” Kirsten piped up, “and I took dance lessons and voice lessons, and hated them both.”

  “I always wanted to take dance lessons,” Gracie said, sitting down at the table. At least, his daughter was conversational. “I wanted to wear a pink tutu and silver toe shoes, and dance ‘Swan Lake.’“

  Kirsten leaned forward and spoke confidentially. “You wouldn’t have liked it. Those tutu things scratch, and toe shoes are sure to pinch, and it’s all very boring.”

  “What would you rather have been doing?” Gracie asked, chuckling. Merett was staring out the kitchen window, and she wondered where his thoughts were.

  “I’m pretty good at art. I was going to take painting lessons if we’d stayed in New York, and I might have liked those.” Gracie nodded; she’d been good at art, too, and longed for lessons. “I’d really, really have liked horseback riding lessons,” Kirsten went on, “but my mommy didn’t like the way horses smell. I also wanted to play basketball, but I wasn’t old enough for the team. You have to be in fourth grade. I was in first when we moved here. I’m in second now. I might not have been able to play basketball, anyway. It makes you smell, too.” Kirsten held her nose.

  “Honestly, squirt.” Merett sighed.

  “I like it better when he calls me Princess,” she told Gracie, as if her father weren’t there.

  As Kirsten turned back to the Christmas cards, Merett sat, shoulders slumped, watching her. To fill the silence, Gracie turned on the radio that she kept tuned to an Indianapolis station with a DJ who shared her love for Christmas songs. I’ll Be Home For Christmas flooded the room. Smiling, she folded her arms and leaned against the end of the counter. “I’ll bet your dad’s glad to have you and Kirsten home for the holidays, Merett.”

  His stormy expression deepened.

  “Grampa is glad, and I am, too,” Kirsten said. “It’s better here than in New York. Anyway, our ‘partment felt weird without Mommy.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you it’s a-partment?” Merett snapped. “Put those cards in the box. It’s time to go.”

  Gracie heard the break in his voice, and knew he was hurting. Had Kirsten’s mother deserted them?

  “Do we have to leave?” Kirsten lifted her dark eyes to his. “Can’t we stay and help Gracie decorate her tree? Puh-lease.”

  Merett rose and pulled out Kirsten’s chair. “Gracie can get along fine without us.”

  And we can do without her. Gracie could almost hear his unspoken words. He wore a signet ring, not a wedding band, on his left hand. But he clearly didn’t want any involvement. Not with her, at least.

  He was hell-bent for the front door when Gracie’s black kitten yowled and dived under the hall table. “Dad-dy! You stepped on the cat. Here, kitty, kitty.” Kirsten got down on her knees and tried to coax it out. “I didn’t know you had a kitten, Gracie. What’s its name?”

  “Spook. He’s always hiding and jumping out when you least expect him.” Gracie kneeled to scoop him out. “I wondered where you were, you naughty kitten.”

  “May I hold him?” Kirsten asked, arms outstretched, and he settled into her arms with a forgiving purr. “I wish I could have a cat.” She looked accusingly at Merett, who stood, arms folded, by the front door.

  “You’re always wishing. Last week, it was a dog.” He took her pink jacket off the hall tree and held it out to her.

  “You wouldn’t let me have that, either. You won’t let me have a pet of any kind. Except something boring like a fish.”

  “We’ve had this discussion before, Kirsten. Put this coat on.”

  She slowly handed the kitten to Gracie, slowly put on her jacket and one mitten, then stopped to pet Spook again.

  “March!” Merett barked, and Kirsten stalked out the front door, her dad dogging her heels, but not before Gracie saw the tears that filled her big brown eyes.

  Watching from the parlor window as they drove away, Gracie felt a deep sense of loss. Fifteen years ago, Merett Bradmoore had given her — a nobody freshman wearing thrift shop clothes — the gift of hope, but somewhere along the way, he’d lost his own.

  Chapter Two

  Kirsten didn’t speak to Merett all the way home. Damn, she was stubborn. A pet was a big responsibility for a seven-year-old, and he didn’t feel like taking care of one for her. Besides they had Tippy, Mama’s dog. How she’d loved that yapping ball of fur! When Merett was younger, he’d complain about Tippy, asking when they were going to get a real dog and she’d laugh. “This house isn’t big enough for two dogs. Besides, big doesn’t mean real.”

  Mama was full of wisdom. “Pretty is beautiful, simply put,” she’d told him, when he had said that Gracie Singleton was pretty, but Holly was beautiful. “Simply put” described Gracie perfectly. Warm, pretty, happy. If he hadn’t already been seeing Holly...

  Merett scrubbed a gloved palm over his eyes. His mother had always understood him, while his father seldom did. When he wanted to quit band in high school, Dad was irate. “Life offers many choices, and we can’t do everything. Merett would rather play sports than a trumpet,” Mama explained. Dad furiously asked why he couldn’t do both. “He can’t do justice to everything, and Merett always wants to do his best.”

  How true, and how short he’d fallen. And Mama with all that wisdom wiped out, so that some days, she didn’t know her own name. Dad said she recognized him; he could tell by the light in her blue eyes. Merett, sure the light was the vacancy behind them, hadn’t visited his mother since she’d gone to live at Sunny Haven.

  “Daddy, you just drove by Grampa’s house.” Kirsten tapped him on the elbow with a mittened hand, and pointed with the other, which was bare.

  Grandpa’s house, not our house. He wasn’t even giving his child a home of her own. He should do something about it, but that was the purpose of Harry Bradmoore buying his only son the Daily Reporter — to bring him home, so they could live together. Further evidence his dad didn’t understand him. He never wanted to publish a newspaper. He was a reporter.

  Swerving into the neighbor’s driveway, Merett turned the Jeep around. It was a good thing his daughter was with him, or he would have wound up in Daleville. An awful thought hit him. What if he ended up like his mother? What if he forgot what he was doing, and where he was going, and who he was? Fright made his voice gruff. “Where’s your other mitten, Kirsten?”

  She held up her bare hand to stare at it. “I must have left it at Gracie’s.”

  Merett sighed, and then realized he’d been doing that a lot lately. Odd that Gracie Singleton, who’d prob
ably never been to the ballet, dreamed of taking lessons. What else had she wanted to do that she couldn’t? “You should be more careful,” he scolded, taking hold of Kirsten’s bare hand. “It’s cold outside. Look how red your fingers are.”

  “Losing something is an accident.”

  She had one big new tooth on the top front, and the baby one next to it was loose. She was cute, even if she was impossible. “Your loose tooth wiggles when you talk.”

  “I didn’t lose the mitten on purpose.” She was impossible to distract when she was set on a subject. “We should go back to Gracie’s, and get it.”

  “And pet her kitten so you could long for one, and pester me some more?” he teased, poking a finger in Kirsten’s ribs. “We’ll get you some new mittens.”

  Parking the Jeep in the circular driveway close to the house, Merett leaned across to open her door. She was a wise little imp, part old lady, part innocent child. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for him to deal with her. “Go ahead, hop out.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “I like those mittens, and it’s snowing. I need to go back to Gracie’s. Now.”

  Merett pictured Gracie opening her door. Widening her eyes. Licking her lips. Her sweet scent enveloping him. Scrambling out of the Jeep, he slammed the door. Kirsten could pout all she wanted. Gracie made him feel the way he did when he had had chicken pox and couldn’t scratch, and he couldn’t — wouldn’t — go back again.

  * * *

  Making soft clucking noises, Gracie washed the cups and cookie plate. Poor Kirsten. Gracie had only seen Merett angry once before. In high school, soon after he started dating Holly Lagere.

  Holly, with her long ebony hair and designer fashions, was always laughing, joking, and hanging out with the most popular kids, and dating the coolest guys. One night, when she was out with his best friend Pete Hancock, Gracie saw Merett at the public library, alone, and forgot all about doing her homework. Book open, he beat a rapid tattoo on the table with his pencil. The clock chimed nine, closing time, and he broke his pencil sharply in two. He headed for the double doors, and Gracie, moving swiftly, got there at the same time. Crashing into him, she reeled, and just as she hoped, he caught her. Wondering how she’d had the courage to work such a ploy, she looked up and nearly drowned in his ocean-green eyes.