“I didn’t think you would mind,” Joe told his mom as she handed him towels and washcloths.
“Of course not.”
“The neighbor offered to keep the girls but she didn’t have room for Owen and he didn’t want to leave them there alone. Frankly, I didn’t either. So I just packed them all up and brought them all here. I should have called first.”
“You had your hands full. How is their mother?”
Joe shrugged, looked down the hall and lowered his voice. “They’re keeping her for tests. I don’t think it looks good. The neighbor said she’s been pretty sick. A really bad cough. Pneumonia maybe? Hopefully nothing worse.”
His mother nodded. “Pneumonia can be bad enough. You did the right thing.”
“I feel bad about Van.”
“Van? Why on earth?”
“This is all so new for her. It was hard enough to talk her into living out here with us. It’s her first Christmas in a long time. Probably since we were in high school. I wanted to make it special for her.”
“It will be special. Have you ever known a Christmas not to be?”
“I guess not.”
“Now no more worrying. One thing at a time.”
He followed her back to the bedrooms, dropped off towels and toothbrushes, showed the kids the bathroom and then led them back to the kitchen.
He was glad to see Van, his dad and his granddad already had places set and food on the table. The microwave beeped as they came into the kitchen. Owen went right to his usual place. Motioned for his sisters to sit down, which they were reluctant to do until his mother pulled out a chair for the older one, Haley, who sat down. Kayla climbed up to the seat next to her sister.
“We may need the dictionary,” his mother said.
His father went to get the unabridged volume that had served as a booster seat since Joe could remember.
As soon as the kids were served, Joe excused himself and pulled Van back into the living room.
“Go eat before it gets cold again,” she said.
He loved her so much he was stupid with it. He’d always loved her. Known from the first they were meant to be together. And if he hadn’t been so clueless and stubborn, they would have been together all these years.
Those might have been their children sitting around the kitchen table instead of displaced kids whose mother could barely feed them and was now too sick to work.
But he had been clueless and stubborn and he was determined not to make the same mistakes now that Van had returned. He’d wanted this quiet night of tree decorating. A perfect way to ease Van back into the notion of being here permanently.
Not here, in his parents’ house, but nearby on Enthorpe property. Joe had his eye on his grandparents’ old farmhouse, closed-up since Granddad had come to live with them. It needed a lot of work, but it would be perfect—eventually.
“Joe? Are you all right?”
Joe started. “Yes, I just wanted to see you.” He pulled her close and held on.
“Is it bad?” she whispered.
“The doctors don’t know.”
“Those poor kids.”
“You don’t mind that I brought them back with me?”
“Mind, why should I?”
“Just that I thought we’d have this quiet evening at home decorating and just hanging out, then all this. I’m sorry.”
Van pulled away and stared at him. “You think I’m that selfish?”
“What? No. I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”
She sighed, shook her head. “I’m not disappointed. You should do what you want. It’s your house.”
That little sliver of ice in her voice stabbed Joe’s heart. It’s yours, too, he wanted to say. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t their house. It had taken all his and his family’s persuasion to get her to move in with them instead of staying in town with Dorie Lister like she had planned.
His dad and granddad had fixed up the back wing as a suite so they’d have some privacy. One bedroom and a sitting room.
Van had been surprised that the family hadn’t questioned their sleeping arrangements. Which was ridiculous. In their eyes, Van was already a member of the family. Now if he could just convince Van.
He scooped her back into his arms and kissed her. At first she was a little stiff. But not for long. He kissed her until she kissed him back; kissed her until she finally pulled away, laughing.
“Okay, I get it. I overreacted. Sorry. Long day.”
He reached for her again, but she slapped him away. “Go get some food before Owen eats it all.”
She took his arm and they went back into the kitchen. His granddad rolled his eyes when they squeezed through the door together.
“I was just saying to Haley and Kayla,” his mother said, “that I didn’t know if there would be visiting hours tomorrow at the hospital, but that it was Christmas cookie-baking day and we’d make some especially for her that you could take by later.”
“Sure,” Joe said. He sat at the place setting next to her and pulled a chair closer for Van. She passed him a platter of pork chops. “Glad you left me some,” Joe said. “Van was afraid Owen might eat them all before I got back.”
Owen smiled back at him, not his regular grin, but a good facsimile. Joe was proud of the boy. After his initial panic, he’d stayed calm and let Joe deal with the hospital.
There had been a minor skirmish when Owen had insisted on staying at his own house with his sisters. He didn’t want them to stay with the neighbor. “She smokes all day and all night. It’s bad for them to be over there.”
Joe agreed. So he had invited them all to come home with him.
He looked over the table, every place taken for the first time since the last holiday. This was the way it should be. Family.
“Dope tree by the way,” Van said to Owen.
This time Owen’s grin was real.
By the time they finished dinner, they decided it was too late to finish decorating the tree and to postpone it until tomorrow. Mom took the girls off to get ready for bed.
Van considered asking if she needed help, but that would have been ridiculous. Mom had raised six children. She didn’t need anybody’s help, let alone Van’s. So she started clearing the plates instead.
Taking that as a cue that everyone else was free, Owen and the three Joes wandered out to see what was on television.
The Great Escape. Van didn’t mind. When she’d first come to live with Joe she’d been petrified that she might break a plate or a favorite dish. Which was absurd. She organized entire households, rearranged china closets, handled the finest crystal. She filed important documents, planned anniversary parties, screened nannies and made home-decorating decisions.
People called on her for every minutia of their daily life while they concentrated on business or volunteering or whatever they did that kept them too busy to take care of the basics. She was in demand.
And now she was elbow deep in sudsy water, washing pots and pans on a New Jersey farm. And it felt good. She still sometimes had to stop herself from rearranging the craziness of the Enthorpe cupboards or changing the traffic flow of the enclosed porch. She was learning to love the erratic nature of life with the Enthorpes; it was busy, messy, spontaneous, but it was full of life and love.
Van snorted. If her friends could see her now. But they could. Her friends were here. When she’d arrived in Whisper Beach a few short months ago, she was on her way to a posh vacation in Rehoboth. She hadn’t meant to stay, hadn’t wanted to say. Her past held some pretty unpleasant memories, but also some good. And the good won out.
Now she was commuting between Manhattan and Whisper Beach while she set up her second location. And then?
Really, was that a question? Why set up a location in Whisper Beach if you weren’t planning to stay?
The house was quiet and Van couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the prospect of opening two new businesses. Maybe it was the excitement of Christmas. The addition of three children to their midst. Her growing love for Joe and the equally growing indecision of whether she should could commit to life with him when she knew they might not work out. Despite what Suze said, she knew she could never divorce Joe, no more than she could turn her back on his family. Was she being selfish?
Just watching him tonight with Owen and his sisters made her realize how ill-equipped she was for being in this family. She didn’t know how to do family, how to do kids, and she’d never know because she couldn’t have them. And she knew Joe wanted children more than anything.
She turned slightly, watched his back rise and fall with sleep. Studied the moonlight glancing off his dark hair. She wanted to grab hold of him and all the Enthorpes and beg them not to let her go. At the same time she wanted to run until . . . until what?
She’d run once before. It had worked out in the end, but there had been some scary, awful times. She didn’t want to be like that. She didn’t want to lose her father again after just getting to know him. She’d never known him before. The father of her childhood had been a nasty drunk. Now he was the man he was supposed to be, should have been: sober, an artist, a compassionate human being. A father who loved her and whom she could love.
What on earth was she supposed to do?
She turned over, away from the window and the moonlight and away from Joe. She heard a sound, held still, and listened.
An animal call?
She sat up. It was coming from inside the house. One of the kids.
She slipped out of bed, hurried to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. She could hear crying coming from down the hall. She recognized that sound. Recognized and relived it as she stood in the doorway, indecisive, waiting for the whimpering to turn to full-fledged terror.
“What are you doing?”
Van whirled around. Joe was propped up on one elbow and squinting at her.
“One of the kids is crying,” she said.
“Oh.” He pushed the covers back, grabbed his jeans off the back of the chair and grabbed his tee-shirt as he headed for the door. “Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of it.” He brushed past Van and met his mother coming down the hall in the opposite direction.
How had she managed to hear the crying from the other side of the house?
Joe and his mother didn’t have to exchange words, they simply opened the door to the girls’ bedroom just as a scream erupted from the room.
Van grasped the doorjamb, her own remembered terror holding her there.
Joe and his mother went inside, shutting the door behind them. The screaming finally tapered down to exhausted sobs.
Van turned from the door and got back into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, her knees to her chest, and lay there shaking. From cold, she told herself. But she knew it was really from inside, the cold dread of memory that still overtook her even in the best of times.
The nights when her father was drunk and angry, the terror of living with strangers in Manhattan, other runaways and immigrants who worked for the cleaning service where she’d found work. The terror of knowing she was going to die when she began to lose the baby she’d made with a stranger because she’d been so betrayed by Joe and life.
Oh, she recognized the terror in that little girl. She’d wanted to reach out to her, tell her she was safe here.
She’d wanted to comfort them, tell them that everything would be fine. But even if she’d gone instead of Joe and his mother, she couldn’t have told them that. No one knew what would happen in their lives. They could only hope. Small comfort to a terrified child . . . or adult for that matter.
She couldn’t even convince herself, so she’d let Joe go instead.
From down the hall, she heard a door open and shut, Joe and his mother talking in low tones as they walked back down the hall. And as selfish as it was, Van felt her own shortcomings more than ever.
And when the bedroom door opened, and Joe came back to bed, Van pretended to be asleep.