The Night Before Christmas Read online

  “I’m not sure this place is a ‘castle,’ ” Allie said now, as she and Caroline settled onto the couch opposite Jax. “But it does feel big to me now. Too big. Especially when I try to clean it.”

  “You’re going to have help, aren’t you?” Caroline asked, serving herself a piece of gingerbread.

  “Yes, Lonnie Haagan, Walker’s housekeeper from his bachelor days, is already here part-­time. In fact, she made this gingerbread cake batter right before she left this evening.”

  Caroline took a bite of it now and sighed with pleasure. “Tell her to have a whole pan of it waiting for you when you come home from the hospital. Which reminds me,” she said, “how’s everything going, now that you’re in the homestretch?”

  “I feel good,” Allie said, lounging back on the couch. “A little heavy, a little slow, and a little tired, maybe, but you two know the drill, right?”

  “Well, Jax knows it better than I do,” Caroline remarked, and Jax, who was happily ensconced on the couch across from them, threw her an affectionate look.

  “The only thing that’s bothering me,” Allie said, sipping her cider, “is that Walker’s being so . . . so protective of me.”

  “That’s bothering you?” Jax said.

  “No, not the protectiveness. I don’t mean that. I mean . . . what’s behind it.”

  Jax frowned.

  “He’s afraid that something’s going to go wrong,” Allie said. “Something serious.” And she glanced, reflexively, at the stairs, but there was no sign of Walker.

  “Did he tell you this?” Caroline asked. She’d slipped off her shoes and tucked her legs up underneath her on the couch.

  “No, not in so many words. But he doesn’t need to. He has insomnia, first off, something he only gets when he’s worried about something. Half the time I wake up at night and he’s not even there. He’s downstairs. On his computer. And the rest of the time, he tiptoes around me like I’m breakable. Like I’m a Fabergé egg that’s about to be dropped.”

  They were all silent for a moment, until Caroline said, gently, “Well, you can’t blame him, can you? All he has to draw on here is his past experience.”

  And Allie sighed, because Caroline was right, of course. Walker’s ex-­wife, Caitlin, had lost their baby when she was six months pregnant, and Walker, she knew, had always held himself partly to blame for this. He and Caitlin had gotten married because she was pregnant, and, afterward, when it became apparent to Walker how little they had in common, he’d retreated into his work. Caitlin had been desperately lonely, Walker had later learned, and desperately unhappy, and no amount of persuasion on anyone’s part had ever been able to convince him that this hadn’t contributed, in some way, to the fact that one chilly fall day, the baby’s heart had simply stopped beating.

  “No, I don’t blame him,” Allie said now, softly, and Jax, perhaps sensing that the mood in the room had become too somber, suddenly popped up on the couch and said, “I think a toast is in order.”

  “What are we toasting to?” Caroline asked, reaching for her spiced cider.

  “We’re toasting to you,” Jax said, “our bride-­to-­be. Because this is your last girls’ night in as a single woman.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Allie said, grabbing her mug. “As long as you promise you’re still going to come to these.”

  “Are you kidding?” Caroline said, clinking mugs with them. “I’ll be at every single one.”

  “Hmm, we might want you to put that in writing,” Jax said. “Because Allie and I did not see that much of you after you and Jack first got back together. In fact, I was starting to wonder if you two were ever going to get out of bed.”

  Caroline blushed. “We’re getting much better about that, actually.”

  “Are you, really?”

  “No,” she said. “But we’re working on it. Especially now that Daisy’s home. I mean, let’s face it”—­she licked a gingerbread crumb off her finger—­“nobody wants to think about their parents being in love. It’s just too . . . unsettling.”

  “It’s true,” Jax agreed. “Whenever Jeremy and I kiss in front of our daughters, the younger ones shriek hysterically, and the older ones roll their eyes as if to say, ‘Really? Aren’t you two getting a little old for that?’ As in ‘completely ancient, way-­beyond-­sex too old?’ ”

  Allie smiled and shifted around on the coach, trying to get more comfortable. “Seriously, though, how is Daisy?” she asked Caroline.

  Caroline sighed. “Too thin, too pale, and too . . . too world-­weary for someone her age.”

  “Still, that’s got to be hard,” Allie sympathized. “Any word yet on the surprise for Daisy . . .”

  “Nothing definite,” Caroline said, with a little shake of her head. It was quiet in the room for a moment.

  “She must be excited about the wedding, though,” Allie prompted.

  “I think she is,” Caroline said, smiling, but then something seemed to occur to her and she jumped up and rushed to the kitchen, and then rushed back, a notepad and pencil in her hands. “I try to keep this in my purse at all times,” she explained, opening up the notebook and scribbling into it. “That way, if I remember anything I still need to do, I put it in here. Tomorrow, for instance, I have to give Lori Pell my decision about whether to have prime rib or beef Wellington at the reception.”

  “What kind of cake did you end up choosing?” Allie asked. The three of them and Jack had spent a memorable afternoon tasting wedding cakes at a bakery in Ely.

  “A two-­tiered buttercream cake with vanilla frosting and pink buttercream roses on it.”

  “Oh, it’ll look so pretty. And what did you decide about the bouquet? Is it going to be the white gardenias or the white amaryllis and white roses?”

  “The white amaryllis,” Caroline said, flipping her notebook closed and suddenly looking as if she was about sixteen. “I’m having the best time doing all this,” she added, curling up on the couch again. “Sampling menus, trying on dresses, and listening to local bands. I didn’t get to do any of this the first time around. And you know what? It’s fun. I had no idea, the first time around, it could be so much fun. It’s probably just as well, though. I would have felt sorry for myself, and I was having a hard enough time as it was, fighting morning sickness and trying to keep my dad and Jack away from each other. I was barely even . . .” But Caroline’s voice trailed off. Something outside had caught her attention and now she got up and moved toward the window that overlooked the lake. “It’s snowing,” she said.

  “Is it? So soon?” Allie said, hoisting herself up off the couch and joining her at the window. “I thought it was supposed to start later.” But there it was, falling in silvery white flurries that seemed to appear out of nowhere, right where the inky darkness of the winter night ended and the yellow glow of the cabin’s lights began.

  “It’s not sticking yet,” Jax commented, coming to stand beside Allie. “But we should probably go soon anyway.”

  Caroline nodded. “I’m so glad it’s snowing now,” she said, “as opposed to tomorrow night. This way, by the wedding, everyone will have had plenty of time to dig out from it.”

  “That’s true. But you’ll still get to have a white wedding,” Allie said, and as she thought about this moment in their lives, with Caroline and Jack getting remarried, and Allie and Walker awaiting the birth of their baby, she reached instinctively for her two friends, both of whom seemed to understand what she was thinking. They put their arms around her, each on either side, and the three of them stood there, silently, for several minutes, watching the snow fall gently through the night.

  Chapter Five

  AS PROMISED, IT snowed heavily during the night, and Daisy, snuggling deeper under the covers, remembered that as a child she’d loved waking up the morning after a snowstorm to find her whole world wrapped in a layer of soft, cottony whiteness.
And when she pulled back her bedroom curtains at nine o’clock that morning, she was not disappointed. At least a foot of snow had fallen overnight, and it looked like the “good snow,” too, the kind you could easily make a snowball with. Or a snowman . . .

  An hour later, she and her dad stood in front of the cabin, surveying their handiwork.

  “What do you think?” Daisy asked.

  “I think he looks a little lopsided,” Jack observed of their snowman.

  “He? Who said anything about it being a ‘he’?” Daisy objected, as she started to unwrap her scarf. The sky was a deep blue, and the sun was radiating off the snow with a brilliant whiteness. Already, the icicles on the cabin’s eaves were dripping, and clumps of snow were falling off the branches of the great northern pines. This snow wouldn’t last long; by midday, it would be turning soft and slushy in the country, and sending streams of water running through the gutters in the town.

  “I thought snowmen were always men,” Jack said, taking off his coat. Like Daisy, he was hot from his exertions. He watched now as she wrapped her red woolen scarf around the snowman’s neck. “I’m not an expert, though,” he added. “I’ve never actually made one of these before today.”

  “Dad, are you serious?” Daisy said, pausing in her work.

  He nodded.

  “You grew up in the state of Minnesota and you’ve never made a snowman before.“

  “Not that I can remember.”

  Daisy looked at him, and he looked back at her, and something passed between them. Something that made a hard lump form in Daisy’s throat. Jack Keegan’s childhood was one of those things there were no words for. Daisy didn’t know a lot about it. Her dad didn’t want her to. But she knew that his back was ridged with deep, puckered scars that his uncle’s belt had left behind on it, and she knew too that if his memories of these beatings hadn’t exactly driven him to drink—­her dad said this was one of the many myths about alcoholism, that something specific could “make” you drink—­they had, at the very least, contributed to it.

  Now, though, her dad gave his head a little shake, and gave her a little smile, as if to say, It’s not important. Not anymore. I have you and your mom now.

  But an anger had started to burn inside of Daisy, and she couldn’t ignore it. “That man wouldn’t even let you build a snowman?” she asked of the uncle who’d raised Jack on his farm after Jack’s parents were killed in a car accident.

  Jack shrugged. “He was all business. To him, that’s all a farm was. A business. And snow . . . snow didn’t mean anything, except, most of the time, more work for him. More work for us.”

  “But didn’t he and your aunt ever let you have any fun?” Daisy persisted. “Even at this time of year? I mean, they must have celebrated Christmas, right?”

  “Wrong,” Jack said, adding some more snow to the snowman’s midsection. He seemed determined, suddenly, to work some kind of improvement on his slightly misshapen form.

  “So there were no presents?” Daisy clarified.

  “No presents,” Jack said, glancing up from his work. “My uncle didn’t like presents. He didn’t see the need for them. And he didn’t want to spend the money on them, either.”

  “And your aunt?” Daisy asked. She harbored, in some way, as much resentment for Jack’s aunt as she did for his uncle. She hadn’t beaten Jack. But she had let her husband beat him. She had literally looked the other way while he’d done it, and then said nothing afterward. A crime of complicity, Daisy knew, could be almost as egregious as the crime itself.

  “My aunt . . .” Jack paused, still working on the snowman. “My aunt didn’t like anything my uncle didn’t like.”

  And that included you, didn’t it? Daisy almost said, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, in a little burst of anger, “Honestly, Dad, I could kill that man.”

  “Well, he died and saved you the trouble, Daisy.”

  “He died? When?”

  “This fall.”

  “How?”

  “He had a heart attack. An old friend of mine called and told me. I couldn’t believe it at first. I always thought that man was too mean to die. And, of course, in my imagination, he was still the man he’d been when I’d left his house as a teenager. Still the big, strapping man. But no, my friend said. He’d gotten old. The way we’ll all get old one day. He’d gotten all bent over, and frail and arthritic. Funny, though, I can’t quite picture him that way.”

  “Did you . . . go to his funeral?

  “Oh, God no.”

  Of course not, she thought. What would have been the point? It was too late, by then. Too late to tell him . . . to tell him what?

  “Dad, if you had seen him again, though, what would you have said to him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Daisy said in disbelief.

  He shrugged. “There’s nothing I could have said to that man that would have changed anything. Nothing he could have said to me, either.”

  “But weren’t you angry at him, Dad? Aren’t you still angry at him?”

  “Yes,” he said, simply. “Yes to both. But when I was drinking, I wasn’t as angry at him as you might imagine I’d be. Alcohol had an anesthetizing effect on me.” Jack concentrated now on straightening the snowman’s lopsided head. “But when I stopped drinking, I was angry at him. Crazy angry. And I had revenge fantasies, too, same as you. What I’d say to him if I saw him. What I’d do to him. But then I realized that that anger was eating me up inside. And I realized another thing, too. I couldn’t be in your life and your mom’s life again if I was still that angry. I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t have worked. So I let go of it. Or I let go of most of it. As much as I could, anyway. There’ll always be some left, of course. But I can’t do anything about that.”

  And Daisy, at a loss for words, came around to his side of the snowman and surprised him with a hug. He hugged her back. “All right,” he said, when the hug ended, “that’s enough feeling sorry for me for one day. And besides,” he added, going back to putting the finishing touches on the snowman, “I’m not alone in having had an unhappy childhood. Do you know what I read somewhere?”

  “What?”

  “That eighty-­five percent of Americans consider themselves to have grown up in a dysfunctional family. Eighty-­five percent. Think about it. That puts me in the majority of ­people.”

  Daisy said nothing. She wasn’t sure if systematically beating a child qualified as dysfunctional so much as it qualified as criminal.

  She watched as her dad brushed some loose snow off one of the snowman’s shoulders with a proprietary air. “There,” he said, stepping back. “I’ve officially finished my first snowman. With a little help from you.”

  “A little? Dad, I did all the heavy lifting,” Daisy objected, jokingly, and as she did so she reached down and scooped up some snow in her gloved hand.

  “You contributed somewhat,” he teased. “You put the scarf on.”

  She used both hands now to form the snow into a perfect ball, as she backed, casually, away from him. “Dad, what about snowball fights? Did you ever have one of those?”

  “Yes. Those I know something about. We used to have those at school, during recess or—­”

  But before he could finish, she’d lobbed a snowball at him, and it had caught him on his right ear. He laughed, and he hadn’t even wiped the snow out of his ear before he was reaching down and scooping up a snowball of his own to throw at her.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, they came back into the cabin, knocking snow off their boots and peeling off their layers of outerwear. From the front hall, Daisy could see the Christmas tree in the living room, all done up with white lights, white ribbons, and silver ornaments. It amused Daisy that each year Caroline had a Christmas tree theme; this year it was a white and silver tree. Last year it had been all animal ornaments and colored lights. One yea
r she had strung sand dollars with white silk ribbons and hung them all over the branches. Only the profusion of colorfully wrapped presents under the tree stayed the same from year to year.

  Now, as Daisy pulled off her boots, flushed and warm from the snowball fight, she wondered why the cabin was so quiet. They’d left her mom puttering cheerfully around in the kitchen, enjoying a rare day off from Pearl’s, and jotting down last-­minute notes on what Daisy now referred to as her “wedding pad.”

  But now, as she padded into the kitchen in her slightly damp wool socks, Daisy felt a strange foreboding, and, as soon as she saw her mother, she knew she was right to feel it. She was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, a determined expression on her face. This was her mom in crisis mode, Daisy knew, and her stomach tightened immediately.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” her mom repeated, getting up and topping off her already full cup of coffee from the coffeepot on the counter.

  “Mom, it’s not . . . it’s not anything having to do with anyone we know, is it?”

  “What? Oh, no, Daisy. No, no, no,” she said, pushing a strand of her strawberry-­blond hair out of her face. She was still in her nightgown, and, for some reason, in the kitchen’s morning light she looked incredibly young, and incredibly vulnerable, to Daisy. “It’s nothing like that,” she said, gesturing for Daisy to sit down at the table.

  “Nothing like what?” Jack asked, coming into the kitchen.

  “Nothing terrible,” Caroline said, quickly. “I promise. It’s just . . . after you two went outside this morning I got a call from Lori Pell at the White Pines, and . . .”

  “And?” Jack prompted her.

  “There was a fire there last night. Nobody was hurt,” she said quickly. “But in one of the back offices there was an electric space heater, the old-­fashioned kind, with the coils in it, and someone left it on overnight. It was too close to a desk, and some papers caught fire.” She paused and gulped a little more coffee. “Fortunately, it didn’t reach the guest rooms, and everyone got out safely, but the main part of the inn is closed now, due to smoke and water damage. And our wedding, obviously, is canceled.”