Jeanette wasn’t quite as certain as Maddie that she and Tom were anywhere near ready for that big a commitment. They’d taken a huge step when they’d slept together and she’d taken an even bigger leap of faith after talking with his father, but marriage or even an engagement? It was too soon for that kind of talk.
“I think you’re all jumping the gun,” she told Maddie.
“Come on. I’ve seen you two together. Everything clicks.”
Jeanette barely resisted the urge to sigh again. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“So what’s the problem?”
“If you can believe it, Christmas. The worst memories of my life are all tied up with the holidays and I’ve managed to overcome that and really find my way back to loving the season the way I did as a child. He’s still so cynical and jaded, it’s driving me nuts. You should have heard him going on and on a couple of hours ago. You would have thought the entire season was invented just to annoy him.”
“Maybe he’s just the kind of guy who obsesses over details, and right now there are a hundred of them related to getting this event off the ground.”
Jeanette shook her head. “It runs deeper than that. It’s all tied up with the phony excess his mother insists on, but please, that doesn’t begin to compare with what I went through.”
“You’ve never explained about that,” Maddie reminded her. “I’ve hoped you would, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t pressure you to tell me.”
Jeanette couldn’t help grinning at the pious note in her voice. “That must have just about killed you.”
“You have no idea,” Maddie replied just as Cole began to wail. “Hold on. Don’t you dare leave,” she ordered Jeanette as she reached for her son. “Give me a minute to find Cal in this mob scene and turn our baby boy over to him. Then you and I can talk.”
“Maddie, this isn’t the best time,” Jeanette protested. “It will only bring you down. Heck, talking about it will bring me down and I’m in a halfway decent place right now.”
“You’re not if you’re thinking that you and Tom don’t have a future because you disagree about the holidays,” Maddie said, then turned to Kyle. “Take your brother.” She handed the baby over to the horrified teenager.
“Mom!” Kyle protested, even as he snuggled the baby against his chest with the ease of someone who’d grown used to caring for his new siblings.
“Find Cal,” Maddie ordered, giving him no sympathy. “He can take over for you,”
“This sucks,” Kyle grumbled, but he went off in search of his stepfather.
“You are putting a serious dent in your son’s social life,” Jeanette told Maddie, who merely grinned.
“Don’t let him fool you. The girls are drawn to him like a magnet when he’s babysitting. He just hates admitting how much he likes having them fawn all over him and Cole.”
“So the baby is a babe magnet?”
“Absolutely,” Maddie said. “Last time Ty was home, he kept pleading to take the baby for a walk in the park. At first I thought it was all about bonding with his new brother, but then Kyle filled me in.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeanette said. “Isn’t Ty dating Annie? I thought they were a couple.”
“Something’s going on there, but I’m trying to stay out of it. So is Dana Sue. Those two kids have been thick as thieves for a while now, but over Thanksgiving they weren’t even speaking. I have no idea if they fought, broke up or what.”
“It must be hard not going to the same college and trying to maintain a relationship,” Jeanette mused.
“We all warned them about that, but Ty said they’d do okay. Annie’d adored him practically forever and he was great with her when she was dealing with her eating disorder, so we backed off. Whatever’s going on, they have to work it out for themselves. It won’t help for Dana Sue or me to get involved.”
“Yet another of your frustrations, I’m sure,” Jeanette said.
“Yes, and since I can’t fix their issues, let’s deal with yours,” Maddie said. “Why did you react so badly when I asked you to work on the festival? And what does that have to do with what’s going on now between you and Tom?”
Since Maddie was as tenacious as a pitbull, Jeanette gave her the condensed version of the Christmas Eve accident and its aftermath.
Maddie’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh, sweetie, I had no idea. I would never have forced you into doing all this if I’d understood why you were so against it. You should have told me right then.”
“It’s worked out better this way,” Jeanette admitted. “I needed to face what happened and let go of all the pain. I actually think I can go to church on Christmas Eve this year with an open heart. I wish Tom were in the same place.”
“Come on, sweetie. This is not that big a deal. You’ll figure this out. You two have too much going for you not to overcome your differences over the holidays,” Maddie said adamantly.
Jeanette tried to come up with an explanation for her gut feeling that would make sense to Maddie. “It’s not the holidays, per se,” she said eventually. “It’s that I don’t think I can be with someone who’s so negative.”
Maddie clearly didn’t buy it. She regarded her knowingly. “You’re making excuses, Jeanette. This isn’t about Christmas or negativity. What’s really stopping you from grabbing on to what the two of you have found with each other?”
Jeanette wasn’t really surprised that Maddie had called her on it. Maddie was an intuitive woman. The problem was, she didn’t have a straightforward answer. “It’s not just one thing,” she said eventually. “I could give you a whole list of reasons we don’t belong
