The Night Before Christmas Page 2

  Jack sighed, considered lying, then changed his mind. “No, not until I was with you and your mother again,” he said. And, for a moment, he almost told her about the surprise they were planning for her. But it wasn’t definite yet, and to get her hopes up now only to dash them later seemed especially cruel. So he pulled on his seat belt and shifted the truck into drive, then glanced over at Daisy, and said, “We better get going. Your mom’s expecting us for lunch at Pearl’s, and I promised Jessica you’d have a hot chocolate with her afterward.”

  “That sounds good,” Daisy said, as Jack pulled out onto the highway. And then, “How’s Mom?”

  “Mom’s good,” he said. “Excited to see you, of course.”

  “And busy with the wedding plans?” Daisy asked, looking out the window at the snowy landscape sliding by. And there was something about the way she said this, and looked away from him as she said it, that gave Jack pause.

  “She’s very excited about the wedding,” he said carefully. “But I’m getting the impression you’re not.”

  “Oh, no, I am excited,” Daisy said emphatically, turning to him. “I’m thrilled you two are getting remarried, Dad. I don’t have any reservations about that. But this wedding Mom’s planned, I have to say, honestly, it doesn’t sound like her at all. And it definitely doesn’t sound like you. I mean, the fancy clothes, and the tiered cake and the sit-­down dinner—­is that really your kind of thing? I thought if you got married again you two would do something like, you know . . .”

  “Fly to Las Vegas?”

  “No, not that. But something smaller. Something . . . I don’t know, intimate. And, and not casual, maybe. But not fancy, either.”

  “I’m not sure you can call this wedding ‘fancy.’ ”

  “Well, by Butternut standards it is.”

  “Maybe,” Jack allowed. “But that’s not saying much. Besides, it’s not like we’re breaking the bank here. You’d be amazed how much less a reception costs when you’re not serving alcohol.”

  “I don’t mean the money, though, Dad. I mean . . . what do you want?”

  “I want to be married to your mother.”

  “No, what kind of wedding do you want?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “I want whatever kind of wedding your mom wants.”

  “So this is about Mom being happy?”

  “Well, yes, to a point. But it’s about more than that, too. It’s about rewriting history. Which is something you don’t get to do very often in life.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, turning toward him.

  He hesitated. “When your mom and I got married the first time, it wasn’t exactly her dream wedding. Her parents hated me, for one thing, so there was no happy family to celebrate with us. And we were broke, for another. Neither of us had any savings yet, and her parents didn’t want to spend any of their money because . . . well, as I said, they hated me. So we put something together. Your mom bought a dress on sale, and her family’s minister married us in a small ser­vice at Lutheran Redeemer. At the last minute, your great-­grandmother relented, a little, and made some iced tea and finger sandwiches for guests to have in the church basement after the ceremony.” (Jack didn’t mention here that in a twist of fate this was the same church basement where he now attended his AA meetings.)

  “Anyway,” he continued, “is it so surprising that your mom wanted something different this time around? Something that felt more . . . special, I guess. More permanent.”

  His mind caught on that word now. Permanent. The marriage that had followed that wedding, of course, had been anything but. And if Caroline wanted something else this time around, how could he blame her? Because while he might not feel that strongly about the details of the wedding, he felt very strongly about the marriage that came after it. “Permanent” was what he had in mind now. And while the whole “till death do us part” thing had always seemed unnecessarily morbid to him, it didn’t seem that way anymore.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Dad?”

  “What?” he asked, slowing down on the highway to let another car pass them. He always drove conservatively when Daisy was in the pickup with him.

  “Aren’t you leaving something out of the whole first wedding story? You know, the part about Mom already being pregnant with me?”

  The truck swerved so slightly it was barely noticeable. “I . . . didn’t think you knew about that.”

  “Well, I do,” she said, looking amused.

  “Your mom doesn’t think you know, either.”

  “Don’t worry,” Daisy said. “I won’t tell her.”

  “When did you, umm . . .”

  “As soon as I was old enough to count,” Daisy said, archly. “No, not really. When I was about twelve, I think, I was helping Mom organize some papers and I came across your marriage certificate. I realized it was dated six months before I was born. But she’d never told me, so I figured she didn’t want me to know.”

  “It’s not like that,” Jack said, turning off the highway and onto a county road. “I think she was afraid if you knew you weren’t planned, you might think, wrongly, that we weren’t as thrilled about your arrival as we might have been otherwise. But we were, trust me. That wedding might not have been perfect, but you, Daisy, you were perfect. Even though you were still just a tiny bump under your mom’s wedding dress, you were already the best thing that either of us would ever do.”

  “Dad, stop,” Daisy said, brushing at the corner of one of her eyes. “You’re going to make me cry.”

  Jack smiled at her. “No crying, all right?” he said as he drove past the BUTTERNUT, POPULATION 1,200 sign. “Your mom will not be happy with me if I bring you into Pearl’s and you’re already in tears.”

  “No crying,” she agreed, looking out the window at the sight of a town so familiar to her that Jack thought she could probably reconstruct every detail of it with her eyes closed. But at this time of year, of course, Butternut was all dressed up in its Christmas finery, and as they turned down Main Street, Daisy let out a little cry of pleasure.

  “I forgot how pretty Butternut is at Christmastime,” she said, and even Jack, who’d once chafed at a town he’d considered gossipy and small-­minded, had to admit that it did Christmas right. The sidewalks on Main Street were lined, at twenty-­foot intervals, with Christmas trees hung with colored lights, and an enormous lighted wreath was strung on wires over the street’s main intersection. Then there were all the storefronts—­Butternut Drugs, Johnson’s hardware, and the Pine Cone Gallery among them—­which were also strung with lights and hung with wreaths.

  But it was Pearl’s, Jack thought, easing the pickup truck into a parking space right in front, that was the crown jewel of Butternut. Part coffee shop, part town hall, and part gossip clearinghouse, it was the one indispensable business in this town. And it was decorated like it knew it. The brightly polished windows were adorned with strands of tiny white twinkling lights, and its front door sported a lush green wreath with a big red bow on it. Through the windows, Jack could see the miniature red and white poinsettias on each table, and, from the ceiling, the big shiny gold stars that hung down, rotating gently in the draft from the opening and closing front door.

  “Oh, look, Mom put out that sleigh,” Daisy said, pointing at the entryway table where a miniature Santa’s sleigh and eight miniature reindeer were set up. “I used to spend hours playing with that when I was little. And it shows, too. Last Christmas I noticed it was definitely a little worse for wear.”

  “I’m sure that’s just part of its charm now,” Jack said, as he cut the ignition and put the truck in park. “But Pearl’s looks nice, doesn’t it? We spent the Friday night after Thanksgiving decorating it. It helped, of course, that Frankie is so tall he didn’t have to stand on a ladder to hang those stars.” Frankie was the fry cook, manager, and now, part owner of Pearl’s. Jack
unfastened his seat belt and reached for the door handle. “You ready?” he asked when Daisy made no move to join him.

  “Do we have to go in yet?” she asked. “Could we stay here a little longer?”

  “Sure,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Your mom’s not expecting us for another five minutes. Why? What’s up?” he asked, as he turned the ignition and the heat back on.

  Daisy sighed. “Nothing’s up; I just want to mentally prepare myself.”

  “For Pearl’s?” Jack said, bemused. “I wasn’t aware that eating there required any mental preparation. I mean, the menu’s still pretty straightforward.”

  Daisy laughed. “No, I mean, everyone in there will know me, and know everything about me, including at least five embarrassing stories from my childhood. And they’ll know what position I played on the volleyball team in high school, and what my grade point average was, and who I dated.”

  “The burdens of celebrityhood?” Jack teased.

  Daisy smiled. “The burdens of living in a small town. Because I’m not unique. Believe me, I’ll know as much about everyone else in Pearl’s as they’ll know about me. I just want to get ready for it, that’s all. All that familiarity. All that . . . concern.”

  “Should we be concerned?”

  “No,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “I’m fine.”

  “You know, honey, every time you say ‘I’m fine,’ I feel a little less convinced that you’re fine.”

  She laughed again, and Jack savored the sound of it. Making his daughter laugh had become one of his great pleasures in life.

  “No, I mean it, Dad,” Daisy said now. “I’m just tired.”

  “From taking exams?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “But they went well, right?”

  “They did. Even abnormal psychology, which I was dreading. The professor is really intense. Abnormally intense,” she added, with a smile.

  “Is that the class you study serial killers in?”

  “No, Dad, sorry. It’s not like Criminal Minds.”

  “I do like that show, though.”

  “Well, take heart then. Because I’m taking criminal psychology next semester.”

  “Now that sounds interesting,” he said. “And how is Will, by the way?” he asked. “I mean, other than the fact that he can’t be in the same state as you.” Will was stationed at Fort Eustis, in Virginia, where he’d been sent after basic training to attend Aviation Logistics school.

  “Well, let’s see,” Daisy said, “he hates the five thirty A.M. wake-­up call, he hates the food, which he says Mom would not let within a mile of Pearl’s, and he hates the fact that the guy who sleeps above him snores so loudly it makes the whole bunk bed vibrate. But you know what? He loves the AH-­64A Apache helicopter.”

  “Is that what he’s being trained to work on?”

  She nodded. “Right now, he’s studying engine disassembly and repair. And whenever he talks about it, he sounds like a little kid who just got a new toy truck or something. If the Apache helicopter were a woman, I’d be in trouble. I’m almost jealous as it is.”

  “They’re pretty cool,” Jack agreed.

  “With a price tag of fifty-­two million dollars, they should be cool.”

  Jack whistled softly. “That’s a lot of tuna melts,” he said, glancing over at Pearl’s, where the afternoon rush seemed to be winding down. “Listen, we better get going, okay? Your mom’s reserved your favorite back booth for your homecoming lunch.”

  “Okay,” Daisy said. “I’m ready to face the music. And, Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “About the wedding. You’re right. Mom should have the wedding she wants to have. She’s earned it.”

  “That was my thinking exactly,” Jack said, reaching for the door handle.

  Chapter Three

  “DAISY, HAVE YOU lost weight?” Jessica asked, frowning, as they sat at the counter at Pearl’s later that afternoon, sipping hot chocolates. Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” was playing on the radio behind the counter, and the gold stars that hung from the ceiling twirled slowly above their heads.

  Daisy sighed. She’d already deflected this question about her weight from her mother during lunch, but she hadn’t expected it from Jessica. Was everyone going to worry about her? she wondered a little irritably. But then she noticed the expression of concern on Jessica’s pretty heart-­shaped face, and she softened. Jessica and her parents were only worried about her because they cared about her, she reminded herself. And she had lost weight, it was true. But she hadn’t tried to. It had just . . . happened.

  “It’s missing Will, isn’t it?” Jessica asked now, tucking a glossy brown curl behind one ear. “That’s why you can’t eat, isn’t it?”

  “I can eat. I do eat. But honestly, it just seems like so much work. Everything seems like so much work. Except Will.”

  “How do you two stay in touch?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s hard,” Daisy admitted. “He wakes up at five A.M., starts his physical training by five thirty, has breakfast at seven, and then has classes all day until dinnertime. He gets one hour of personal time from eight thirty to nine thirty P.M., so that’s usually when we talk, but he has two roommates, so we don’t have a lot of privacy. There’s also no Wi-­Fi in his barracks, only a computer in their common room that they can sign up to Skype on. So we do that whenever we get the chance. But mostly, we write letters.”

  Daisy stirred her hot chocolate, thinking of the last letter she’d gotten from Will. It had literally made her blush, though blush in a good way. “You know,” she confided to Jessica, “Will had never written a letter before he started writing to me. I mean, it was always just him and his dad in their family and his dad isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to stay in touch with, anyway. But it turns out Will’s pretty good at writing them.” So good, in fact, that Daisy had letters from him she’d reread so many times that their pages were coming apart at the creases. “It’s not enough, though,” she said now. “None of it is. No matter how hard we try, it’s just not the same as being able to reach out and touch each other.”

  Jessica nodded, her brown eyes sympathetic. “That part must be so hard, Daisy. I mean, Frankie and I touch each other all the time and it’s still not enough.” Daisy stared into her cup of hot chocolate and said nothing. She didn’t want to encourage this line of conversation. She loved Jessica—­her sweet but scatterbrained best friend from childhood—­and she loved Frankie—­equally sweet, but practically gargantuan in size—­but she preferred not to think of them together. At least, not in that way. Some things, it turned out, were best left unimagined.

  “Daisy,” Jessica said, looking around and lowering her voice, though the few customers lingering over their late lunches weren’t sitting anywhere near them. “Do you and Will ever, you know, sext?”

  Daisy shook her head. “No. Will can’t have a cell phone during training. But, God knows, there’ve been times when I’ve thought if he did have one, I’d be willing to try it,” she admitted. Times when being separated from Will had begun to feel like an almost physical pain to her. “But honestly, Jessica, even if I could sext, I don’t think I’d do it. I’m not much of an exhibitionist, and Will doesn’t seem like one either. And then there’s . . . there’s that picture of my great grandma Pearl. You know, the one hanging in my mom’s office? I think of it, and I think, ‘that woman would not have approved of me taking pictures of myself with my clothes off.’ ”

  Jessica nodded. “I’ve seen that picture, Daisy. And your great grandma Pearl doesn’t look like she would have approved of anything. At least not anything fun. But you’re going to see Will soon, aren’t you, in just a few months?”

  “In two months.”

  “Daisy, you say two months like it’s two years.”

  Daisy smiled, a little tiredly, and reached f
or the can of whipped cream on the counter between them and gave what was left of her hot chocolate another generous squirt of it. “Do you want some pie, too?” Jessica asked. “I think there’s still a piece of apple left.”

  “No, thanks,” Daisy said, “I had the special for lunch,” the special being her favorite sandwich at Pearl’s, the French dip. “I don’t know why I’m even eating this,” she said, spooning the whipped cream off her hot chocolate and into her mouth.

  “No, it’s good,” Jessica said. “Keep eating. We’ll fatten you up in no time.”

  “Hmm, Pearl’s is good at doing that,” Daisy observed. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and when Daisy had finished off her whipped cream, Jessica slid off her stool and went around to the other side of the counter and got a soup bowl out and filled that with whipped cream, too. Then she pushed it, determinedly, over to Daisy. “Keep going,” she said, in a stern voice, or at least in as stern a voice as someone who was as sweet as Jessica could muster—­and Daisy laughed and dug her spoon into that, too.

  “How’ve you been, Jessica?” she asked her friend, between bites. “I know you and Frankie are still going strong, but what about everything else?”

  “You mean, like work?”

  Daisy nodded, though this was another topic she hoped not to dwell on. She had gotten Jessica a waitressing job at Pearl’s last summer, after Jessica had flunked out of cosmetology school. But things had never gone smoothly for her here, and they both knew that if she weren’t Daisy’s best friend, Caroline would have fired her long ago.

  “Work’s going better,” Jessica said. “Really, it is. Frankie helps me out whenever he can, and your mom, your mom has been in such a good mood since she and your dad got back together. Even when I do make a mistake, she almost never loses her temper at me. These last few weeks, though, she’s been a little stressed out about the wedding. But I can’t blame her. I mean, who wouldn’t be, right?” And then Jessica blushed, and, leaning closer to Daisy, she whispered, “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course.”