expecting for dinner on Christmas Day.
Lucy smiled and explained that this year it was to be just her brother Earl, his wife Chris and their daughter, Caitlyn. “And you and Eric, of course,” she added, and her smile was so radiant Devon had to look away, and wonder at the traitorous prickles that had come to the backs of her eyes.
Thus prompted, Lucy went on to talk about past Christmases when her children had been small and the household had included Great-aunt Gwen, and even farther back in the past when she and her brothers had been the children and their parents still alive. Boisterous Christmases, then, when the farmhouse had been crowded with children and noisy with laughter and music.
Listening to her, Devon felt a heaviness around her heart. Memories…everything here is memories, she thought.
What was it Eric had said about memories making people who they are? Who, then, am I? she wondered. The heaviness became an ache.
When the salad was finished, Lucy handed her a stack of plates and bowls and asked her to set the table. “That was always the children’s job,” she told Devon with an impish little smile. “First Ellie’s, then Eric’s.”
Devon smiled back, but it felt bleak and fraudulent.
She had no appetite for dinner, and had to force herself to choke down polite helpings of Lucy’s delicious homemade beef stew and the fresh green salad she’d helped to make. There was no reason for it; the atmosphere in the kitchen was comfortable and welcoming, as always. In spite of the baby she insisted on holding in her lap, Lucy bounced up and down, back and forth between tending to Emily’s needs and everyone else’s, and ignored everyone’s urgings to relax. Eric chatted with Mike about computer things and avoided Devon’s eyes. They all reminisced-incessantly.
But Devon realized that, there in the midst of Eric’s family, surrounded by unself-conscious love, easy conversation, affectionate teasing and warm remembering, she felt alienated…left out. And envious.
After dinner, Devon insisted on doing the dishes. “You must have other things you need to do,” she told Lucy, nodding toward the baby she held casually cradled in the crook of one arm. “This is about the only way I know of to help. Please, it’s the least I can do.”
So, with twinkling eyes and secret smiles, Mike and Lucy vanished like co-conspirators behind the closed door of their bedroom, taking Emily with them. Eric went back to traipsing mysteriously up and down the stairs. Up to her elbows in soapy dishwater at the kitchen sink, Devon could hear him whistling tunelessly each time he whisked past the open doorway.
And each time he did, her heartbeat accelerated.
Dammit, she thought, staring into the froth of bubbles.
Devon wasn’t accustomed to failure. She desperately wanted to blame someone else for it. Blame Eric, blame his parents, this farm, the entire cotton-pickin’ Midwest, for that matter. One thing she knew for certain: she was sick to death of all of it. She couldn’t wait to get away from these people and their old-fashioned corn-fed ways, their constant conversation and mushy Christmas songs, their house cluttered with holiday decorations, and a kitchen that always smelled of something cooking. Something fattening, naturally. She couldn’t wait to be back in L.A., back at her job where she was almost never a failure, back in the solitude of her own cool, quiet apartment with its uncluttered serenity, everything in its place and classical music playing on the stereo.
She shivered.
Footsteps passed by in the hallway, and a rush of tuneless whistling, like a playful gust of wind. Her heart quickened, and her cheeks grew hot. “Dammit,” she whispered to the sinkful of soap bubbles. “Dammit.”
Later, still dodging Eric like a character in a French farce, Devon listened at her bedroom door until she heard him go downstairs, then quick-stepped down the hallway to knock on Lucy and Mike’s door.
“It’s me-sorry to bother you,” she said in a low, urgent voice in answer to Mike’s cautious “Who is it?”
The door opened halfway and Mike’s face appeared, wearing a look of cordial inquiry. “Hey, Devon-what can I do for you?”
Behind him, Devon could see a bassinet beside the bed, and an overflow of pastel blankets, and Lucy sitting crosslegged on the floor in a sea of wrapping paper and stick-on bows.
“Could I trouble you for some of that paper?” She nodded toward the mess on the floor. “And a couple of bows, some tape and scissors… Oh-and if you have any to spare, a couple of boxes, about…yay-big?”
“Sure-help yourself,” Mike said cheerfully, while Lucy was already scolding and absolutely forbidding Devon from even
But Devon stood her ground. And later, back in her own room with all the gift-wrapping supplies she needed, she had the strangest feeling Lucy had been pleased to find that Devon could be every bit as stubborn and strong- willed as she was.
It was late-by Iowa farm standards, not the L.A. lifestyle Devon was accustomed to-by the time she finished wrapping her gifts for Mike and Lucy. It took her longer than she’d expected, since she didn’t normally do her own gift-wrapping, and it took her a few abortive tries before she got the hang of it. The finished product still lacked the professionalism and elegance she was used to, but under the circumstances, she thought it would do.
The house was quiet; it had been some time since she’d heard Eric’s footsteps, and there wasn’t so much as a peep coming from Lucy and Mike’s room. What better time to play Santa’s elf, Devon thought wryly as she tiptoed down the stairs to the parlor. While everyone was asleep, she’d slip her two small gifts among the growing pile under the tree…
In the parlor’s near darkness, she felt for the twin light switches beside the door and chose one. And it was the Christmas tree that sprang to life, bathing the room in the soft glow of its multicolored lights. Her breath escaped in a tiny involuntary pleasure-sound, like that a child might make, as she stood in the doorway and gazed at the shimmering tree, tiny lights reflecting off a mishmash of ornaments accumulated through generations of a family’s Christmases without regard to taste or style. And before she knew what was happening, she found herself blinking away tears.
Silly, she thought.
She dashed away the moisture on her cheek with a finger, but the ache in her throat remained.
Then, as she stood there alone in the doorway of that quiet, empty room, something came over her, a feeling so vivid it was more like memory than imagination. She saw the room no longer empty, but filled with people… adults in all the chairs, crowded together on the sofa-even perched on the arms-and children on the floor, all gathered around the tree. And no longer silent, but alive with laughter, and Christmas music playing on the stereo- something schmaltzy, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”
And Devon was no longer alone, as someone came behind her to slip his arms around her with the ease of someone who’d done the same thing countless times before. Someone whose touch and scent, though familiar to her as her own, never failed to make her heart bump, and beat with a new and faster rhythm. His arms enfolded her in their warmth and the lonely ache inside her vanished. A smile bloomed across her face as he whispered her name…
Chapter 13
S he drew in her breath with a shuddering gasp. The vision vanished, and the parlor was empty and silent again.
Cold and aching once more, Devon placed her gifts beneath the tree, turned off the lights and went back up the
