Christmas on the Coast Page 20

  Amber tilted her head to one side, her expression skeptical. “You could be right.”

  “Give it some thought.” Mary felt a twist of hypocrisy because she knew that she was doing the same thing: blaming herself for something she hadn’t been able, really, to stop from happening. Now she was trying to find peace and self-forgiveness through her actions, through her charitable activities. It helped, but didn’t make her feel completely cleansed.

  “There’s another problem,” Amber said. “I’m keeping a pretty big secret from Paul. Not something I did, but something I promised not to tell. Even if my health wasn’t a barrier, that would be.”

  “Don’t keep secrets,” Mary said automatically. “They’re toxic.” She picked up the puppy to walk inside and saw a car pull up to her house. The driver-side door opened and Mary suppressed a sigh. “Oh, no.”

  Amber had started back toward the house, but now she turned toward Mary. “What’s wrong?”

  Mary just nodded at Imogene, now headed up the sidewalk toward the front door. She hadn’t yet spotted Mary and Amber.

  “You don’t want to see her?” Amber kept her voice low.

  “Not in the least, but I have no choice.”

  Amber nudged Mary toward the side of the yard that wasn’t visible from the front. “Take the puppy in and don’t answer the door,” she said. “I’ll go out and say I was bringing you food because you’re sick.”

  “She’s not going to believe that.”

  “Then I’ll improvise. I can weave a good story when I need to.” Amber grinned. “Go on. I can’t get her out of your hair permanently, but I can give you respite for today. It’ll make me feel useful.”

  Mary scooped up the puppy. “All right. Thank you.” She would probably pay the price for avoiding Imogene, but she just wanted a day to enjoy her puppy and relax by herself. She gave Amber a quick hug, buried her face in the puppy’s fur and sneaked inside.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  STAY HOME, GET extra rest, don’t drive. Yada yada yada.

  The same afternoon she’d gotten home from the hospital, Amber rolled out dough for gingerbread boys, mentally picturing elaborate ways to decorate them. She felt restless. She’d already driven Hannah crazy enough that she’d gone off to spend the day with some friends. Which was good; Amber didn’t want Hannah staying home worrying about her.

  Trouble was, she didn’t want to stay home herself. She needed to be doing something so she could stop thinking about Paul and Davey and what they might be doing, how things had gone after she’d passed out at Davey’s grandparents’ house.

  The knock on the door came as a welcome surprise, and Amber felt pathetically eager as she hurried to get it.

  When she opened the door, she couldn’t help clapping her hands. There was Davey, and behind him, Paul, barely visible behind a bunch of rolls of Christmas wrapping paper and several bags. Beside them, Sarge gave a friendly woof of greeting.

  “We came to help you wrap gifts!” Davey said. “Because you’re sick.”

  “I know it’s intrusive, and early for wrapping. We can leave if you’re not feeling up to this. But we were getting ready to wrap the presents we’ve bought so far, and I wondered if you needed help with yours.”

  “And Daddy doesn’t do it right,” Davey contributed.

  Amber laughed and stepped back from the door so they could all come in. “I would love to have the company,” she said. “And I am good at wrapping presents. So it might be me helping you, rather than the reverse.”

  Paul smiled, a lazy smile that warmed her to her toes. “My dream come true.”

  “Are you making cookies?” Davey was sniffing the air.

  “I sure am, but I don’t know if I can get them all decorated by myself. Do you like to decorate cookies?”

  Davey looked up at Paul.

  “When you were little, you loved it. Remember that picture of you with icing all over your face?”

  “I was a baby,” Davey said.

  Which meant they decorated cookies together as a family, Davey and Wendy and maybe Paul, as well. Amber rolled that notion around in her mind for a minute and decided it didn’t bother her. She’d felt traces of jealousy about Wendy here and there, but it seemed to be gone now. “It’s nice you did that with your mom,” she said.

  “Mommy loved me.” Davey said it matter-of-factly as he marched through the living room and into the kitchen as if he owned the place.

  Amber glanced at Paul and saw him swallowing hard. Of course, he’d have good memories of Christmases with his family before Wendy had gotten sick. She walked beside him, following Davey, and rubbed a hand across his back to show she felt for him.

  He put an arm around her and they walked that way for a few steps, following Davey. And Amber flashed on the future she’d never let herself dream of. Cookies baking in the kitchen, and a little boy to wrap presents with, and a wonderful, kind, handsome man at her side.

  Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. And what was that all about? She stepped away from Paul as they entered the kitchen, checked the cookies in the oven and pulled them out just in time.

  She set the pan on a trivet beside the stove and managed, via a lot of rapid blinking and by sipping water, to get her emotions under control. “I guess you heard we got the house for the new program,” she said, keeping her voice businesslike. “I’m really glad. I think it’ll cheer Mary up, and she needs that right now.”

  “Did the funding come through?”

  “The funding isn’t a problem with Mary,” Amber said, “but it was more getting the inspection and closing done this close to Christmas. It’s working, though, thanks to Kirk James.”

  Davey was unpacking the bag of wrapping paper and ribbons, strewing things everywhere.

  Paul moved to assist him. “Let’s put the rolls all in a row over here,” he suggested, pulling out one of the chairs. “And we can leave the ribbons in the bag, or you can line them up along the edge of the table.”

  “I’ll line ’em up!” Davey started doing just that.

  Paul raised his eyebrows and smiled at Amber. “Sorry to take over your kitchen like this. But I’m glad to hear that Mary is getting the house for the new program. What’s our next step?”

  “It’s up to us to make sure the program is planned well enough to apply for some grant funding in the spring,” Amber said. “Mary is providing the initial funds, but lately, she’s been really keen on having everything set up so that even if she’s not able to keep funding the whole thing, the program will continue.”

  “It’s definitely needed,” Paul said. “I’m sure we can get the state groups to contribute or at least endorse it.”

  “Come on, Daddy.” Davey tugged at Paul’s arm. “We got to decorate and wrap and stuff!”

  “Okay, sure, sorry.” Paul grinned at Amber and it took her breath away. He was incredibly handsome. And he cared about Mary as well as his son. He’d even been kind enough to come here to help her out, almost certainly realizing that she’d be bored and lonely on a day like this.

  She sat down at the table and started looking through the wrapping paper they’d brought. “Why are you going all black and white and brown?”

  “It’s classy?” He shrugged. “Wendy’s family always went for these colors for their wrappings. And it does look nice under the tree.”

  “Not questioning that.” Amber was sure it looked like House Beautiful. “In fact, I bet they use white lights rather than multicolored ones, right?”

  “Yes, they do,” Paul said. “Davey and I do, too.” He glanced at her and then away, and it seemed like he was expecting her to make fun of their drab ways.

  She had always been a multicolored lights person herself, admittedly verging on the tacky. But that wasn’t important. “I think it’s nice that you keep some of Wendy’s traditions alive,” she said quietl
y.

  She thought about the woman she’d met so briefly. She had definitely seemed tense and anxious to Amber. And she’d been really troubled, because she’d done something on impulse that she couldn’t figure out how to fix except by lying. From everything Amber knew about Wendy, everything she’d heard as well, it seemed that Wendy was normally a very moral person. The fact that she had strayed from Paul, that the results of her affair were alive and in front of her every day in her son’s beautiful face, must have been terribly hard for her.

  But the hardest thing, harder even than that, was the fact that she’d gotten so sick so young. Amber had had a taste of the fear a mother felt at the thought of possibly not being there for her child. She’d worried about Hannah constantly from the moment she’d gotten her diagnosis almost ten years ago. She worried about Hannah still.

  But for Wendy, it had to have been so much worse. Wendy had been the mother of a younger child, more vulnerable, and what’s more, she had known that he wasn’t biologically Paul’s child. How that must have terrified her, the thought that Paul would find out and abandon Davey.

  And from what Georgiana had said, the biological father wasn’t willing to take responsibility. Wendy had probably known that about him, or at least guessed it.

  In a terribly difficult situation, in a traumatized state of mind, Wendy had made the best decision she knew how to make.

  Amber got a sudden impulse. “Do you have any pictures of how Wendy and her parents decorated and wrapped their gifts?” she asked Paul.

  “Do I...” He frowned. “Actually, I do. We always took a lot of pictures on Christmas.” He scrolled through his phone and soon came upon several examples of Christmas morning pictures, with the gifts wrapped in tastefully matching shades of black and white and tan, with matching bows. “It looks like you did a different color of bows each year,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He opened one of the shopping bags he brought, and inside was a jumble of various colors of bows. “I didn’t go that far, though. These are left over from other years.”

  “Tell you what. Let’s use the neutral wrapping paper and we’ll choose a color family for this year. It looks like you might have enough blues and purples and greens to do all your packages. If not, I can probably dig up some bows in those colors myself.”

  “Thanks.” He let his hand rest briefly on hers, and she heard what he wasn’t saying. Appreciation for her willingness to carry on Wendy’s traditions in this area, for Davey’s sake.

  “When are we going to decorate cookies?” Davey asked. Clearly, he’d gotten bored with the gift-wrapping discussion.

  “Just give me five minutes, buddy,” Amber said. “What color frosting do you think would look best on the gingerbread boys?”

  “All the colors!” Davey waved his hands wide. “’Specially blue. That’s my favorite.”

  “Well, okay, then.” Amber pulled up the white frosting she’d made before, quickly divided it into smaller bowls and found her food coloring. She hummed as she stirred it in, creating a rainbow of frosting colors, with Davey kneeling on a chair beside her, giving advice. All the while, she kept putting in new trays of gingerbread men to bake, assembly line fashion.

  Quickly, she got both Davey and Paul set up with frosting and gingerbread boys. “You decorate these however you want to,” she said. “I trust your judgment.”

  “That might be a mistake,” Paul said, but he gamely scooped up a lump of pink frosting and spread it over one of the cookies. Davey watched, then did the same with blue frosting.

  Amber found some colored sugar and other decorations that she and Hannah had used to make cookies in years past, and she pulled out a bunch of them for the boys to use. Sarge ran around devouring bits of cookie and frosting that fell to the floor.

  “We’re decorating cookies in school,” Davey said, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on his work. “Miss Kayla said I was good at it. Now I’ll be even better.”

  “Miss Kayla is smart,” Amber commented, letting her gaze flicker to Paul’s. She was pretty sure she didn’t have anything to worry about in terms of Kayla, from what Paul had said before, but she couldn’t restrain a slight feeling of jealousy.

  “She’s very understanding,” Paul said, raising his eyebrows at Amber. “She can read between the lines. I’ll have to tell you about that sometime.”

  “She’s a good reader,” Davey agreed. He squirted a huge glob of yellow frosting onto the head of a gingerbread boy.

  Amber had to laugh at the double conversation that was going on, and Paul’s lips twitched, as well.

  She loved sharing a joke with him. Loved sharing holiday preparations and memories with him. The air was full of the smell of cookies, along with the pine scent of the little Christmas tree she’d bought. Christmas carols hummed away on the radio.

  If only this could go on. Maybe it could go on. But not if secrets stood between them.

  Certainty came to her: if she wanted to get closer to Paul and Davey, she needed to tell Paul the truth, and sooner rather than later.

  * * *

  “THANKS FOR COMING.” Mary opened the door to Imogene, who looked almost dressed up in jeans and a flowered, smock-type top, her hair combed. “Meet my new baby, Coco.”

  Mary picked up Coco, who was walking toward the door with a mixture of interest and fear. Mary’s initial assessment had been exactly right: Coco was on the timid side.

  “Cute.” Imogene glanced at the dog and then walked into the middle of the living room and looked around. “So, is this a social visit or...”

  Actually, this was Mary’s last effort. If it didn’t work, she was going to withdraw support from Imogene and, if anything happened, file a harassment claim against her. Something about her conversations with Kirk and Amber, and then taking the step forward to adopt a new puppy, had given her courage. She didn’t like feeling cowed and dependent on Imogene.

  But she’d decided to give their relationship one last chance, and to really go for it, be honest and open, try to connect as adults.

  She snuggled Coco close for a minute and then put the dog down so she could focus on her stepdaughter. “Listen, we’ve been so at odds since you arrived in town, and I realized I don’t quite understand why. I haven’t taken the time to listen to you. I was hoping we could chat, and you could tell me what made you so angry at me.”

  Imogene stared at her, eyebrows rising high. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

  “I know that something terrible happened to both of us. I don’t know why it made you so angry at me.”

  Imogene stared at her, mouth hanging open a little, and then spoke. “You killed my father.”

  The words were a claw digging at Mary’s chest, but she was glad to have it out in the open. “No, Imogene. A bad man killed your father.”

  “Yeah, your ex-husband.”

  “Yes, I know.” Mary closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. The puppy leaned against her leg and she reached down to scratch it. “I know. That’s what I believe, too, though he was never convicted. Believe me, I wish I’d never married your dad to bring that into his life.”

  “Me, too.” Imogene started pacing restlessly around the room, picking up knickknacks and pillows and putting them down. “You never did anything for me except take my dad’s attention away. And get him killed. My life sucked after that.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Mary should probably have offered to take Imogene after Ben had been killed. Imogene’s biological mother was not a nice woman, which was why Ben had had full custody of his daughter. But Mary had been so flattened with grief about her own daughter, and about Ben, that she’d been unable to fathom how to nurture an angry, grieving fifteen-year-old who already hated her.

  Imogene finally sat down, flopped back against the back of the sofa and ran her hands through her
hair. “You knew what your ex was like and you let him know where you were. Where we were. You had an affair with him, and you invited him to come and take out Dad to get his money.”

  Mary blew out a breath. She’d gotten bits and pieces of that story over the years, but had never heard the whole thing put together. “If that’s what you think, then I don’t blame you for hating me. But, Imogene, it’s not true.”

  “My mom explained it all to me,” Imogene said, her eyebrows drawing together. “She figured it out, and she told me how it was.”

  Mary shook her head back and forth, slowly, holding Imogene’s gaze. “I loved your father very much. I would never have done anything to intentionally harm him.”

  “You say that now, but why would you have married my dad if not for his money? He was ugly and awkward.”

  “He was pure goodness.” Even picturing him now, Mary could almost see the sweetness coming from his eyes, feel the kindness of his hands holding her. He’d offered protection and a refuge when she needed it, but it wasn’t just that. She’d never known a man as good as Ben, before or since.

  “He was a schmuck, at least that’s what my mom said. She said there was nothing good about him except his money.”

  Mary pressed her lips together to keep herself from shouting at Imogene. After all, Imogene was just repeating what she’d heard. Most likely, there was a part of Imogene that wanted to respect her father, that remembered him with love. However tainted by her mother’s harsh views, Imogene had at one time made a sandcastle with her father. They’d played catch, and he’d even let her paint his toenails pink. She knew all that from family pictures she’d looked through after marrying Ben.

  The trick now was to counter what Imogene’s mother had said without totally offending Imogene. Mary knew that Imogene’s mother had been a beautiful woman who in fact had married Ben for his money and then had had multiple affairs. No wonder she’d accused Mary of the same. Pure projection.