26
Livvy, this cornucopia isn’t going to work. It takes up the whole table, and we need at least some room for the food.” Chris had no idea where she had seen one, but somehow Olivia had become convinced that a cornucopia was the only acceptable centerpiece for a Thanksgiving table. The problem was, their table was only about three feet by four, and even the smallest cornucopia they could find pretty much covered it.
“But we have to. There’ll be room.” Olivia picked up the tangerine that had rolled off the table and went back to trying to stuff it into the abundance of the cornucopia.
“Livvy. Listen.” Chris squatted on his heels so he could hold her attention. “There is just not room on the table for this. I’m going to move it to the coffee table. I want you to turn it into the most beautiful, Thanksgivingy coffee table in the world. We’ll do something else for the dinner table.”
Olivia looked like she was digging in for the fight, so Chris got to his feet and turned her toward the table. “See, it’s even covering up your place mats, and you worked too hard on them to hide them like that.”
“But you’re supposed to—” Olivia hardly ever cried, but Chris could see that this situation was escalating at a dangerous rate.
“Okay, what about this? We’ll put the big cornucopia on the coffee table, and then you can go get a piece of brown construction paper and the stapler and we can make a little one for the dinner table. Maybe just big enough for one apple, a tangerine, and some grapes. How would that be?”
Olivia considered his idea a moment and decided it would be an acceptable compromise. While she ran off to gather art supplies, Chris checked on his turkey. It was way too big for three people, of course, but Olivia had been as adamant about having a real turkey as she was about the cornucopia. And leftover turkey in the freezer was never a bad thing. He ladled drippings over the bird and checked the temperature. Perfect. Right where it should be for a 2:00 dinner.
Straightening, he looked around the room Olivia had decorated to a fare-thee-well. He had no idea that she had so much longing for celebration stored up in that skinny little body of hers. When it came pouring out, he gave her free rein and stood back. No telling what she’d do when she started in on Christmas.
“Okay, here.” Olivia was back and handing him the paper and stapler. “I tried, but I couldn’t make it work.”
In a deft motion, Chris rolled the paper into a cone and stapled it. “Here you go.”
Olivia grabbed the cone and went to create her centerpiece while Chris ran a sink full of suds and rolled up his sleeves. Sarah was due in an hour, and the place looked like a bomb had gone off.
He wondered why she wasn’t in Chicago as she had planned to be. Unless she told him, he’d never know, of course, since he had promised not to ask any questions, but he was okay with it, whatever the reason. There was something about this Brandon guy that he just didn’t like, and he didn’t think it was entirely because of his history with Sarah. Brandon was too slick, too smooth, and it could have been just for Chris’s sake, but his attitude said, “I own this woman, so back off.” He didn’t deserve someone as remarkable as Sarah.
Of course, if pressed, Chris would have to admit that he probably didn’t deserve someone as remarkable as Sarah either. But he’d spend his life trying, if given the opportunity, and Brandon acted like Sarah was the lucky one.
“Are you going to help me with this, or what?” Olivia was trying to move the cornucopia to the coffee table and spreading its contents over the floor in the process.
“Just hang on.” Chris grabbed a dish towel to dry his hands. “Sorry, I got distracted. And you need to learn to ask for help politely, which would be, ‘Would you please help me, Uncle Chris?’”
Olivia rolled her eyes and sighed. Chris put his hand on the cornucopia, anchoring it to the dining table, and waited.
She sighed again. “Would you please help me, Uncle Chris?”
“Glad to.” He transferred everything to the coffee table. “Now are you good to set this up?”
Already in deep concentration, Olivia just nodded, and Chris went back to his cleanup. A half hour later he took the turkey out of the oven, slipped the sweet potatoes and the Brussels sprouts in, and stood back to survey their work.
“Livvy, everything looks amazing. You did an incredible job. It sure looks like Thanksgiving in here.”
She just nodded and adjusted the place cards one more time. This must have been the way Rita started out.
He gave her a quick squeeze. “Miss Cooley’s going to get here pretty soon. Let’s go get dressed.”
Olivia followed him down the hall. “I sure wish I had a pilgrim dress to put on.”
“Well, we looked. Your pilgrim hat will make you look just like a pilgrim.”
When his phone rang, the first thing Chris thought was that Brandon had convinced Sarah to come to Chicago after all, but it was his sister’s face that filled the screen.
“Hey, Kaitlyn. Happy Thanksgiving.” Sarah was due any minute, and Chris was in a very good mood. “Wish you were here with us. Livvy has this place looking exactly like Plymouth Plantation would have looked if construction paper and pipe cleaners had been invented then.”
“Wish I were there too.” Kaitlyn sounded subdued, but maybe he was comparing the way she always sounded with the way he felt at the moment.
“Do you want to talk to Livvy?”
“Sure.”
“Livvy! Your mom.”
She came running down the hall, grabbed his phone, and disappeared back into her room. Chris sharpened his carving knife. He would prefer to carve the turkey before they sat down, but Olivia had seen a picture of the turkey being carved at the table and had made it clear that that should be the procedure.
A few minutes later Olivia was back. “She wants to talk to you.”
Chris glanced at the clock. Sarah was due this minute. He tried to make his voice easy and calm. “So, what are you doing today? Going out for turkey?”
There was a silence long enough to make Chris wonder if he had lost the connection, and when Kaitlyn did speak, he could hardly hear her. “Chris, I want to come home.”
“Where? You mean Scottsdale?”
“No, I want to be with you and Livvy.”
“Oh. Okay, I told you you’d always be welcome, so come. I’m afraid the welcome mat’s not out for Jase, though.”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“I don’t know. He just left.”
“Kaitlyn, are you all right?” This wasn’t just a heads-up that she intended to wander back west. “What’s wrong?”
“Chris, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t find work. I had to sell my bike, and now that money’s gone.” She started to cry, and through the front window, Chris saw Sarah pull into his driveway.
“Hang on.” He covered the phone with his hand. “Livvy! Miss Cooley’s here.”
Olivia raced past him out the front door, and when she ushered Sarah inside, he pointed to his phone, mouthed the word Kaitlyn, and walked back to his room and shut the door.
“Okay. Do you have a place to sleep tonight and enough to eat?”
“Yes, but they’re going to throw me out if I don’t pay them something pretty soon.”
“Everything’s closed till tomorrow anyway, so this is what we’re going to do. Give me the name of the place you’re staying and how much you owe, and I’ll see they get paid. I’ll wire you enough money to eat and get to the airport, and I’ll have a ticket waiting for you there. Think that would work?”
“When would I come?”
“Just as soon as I can work things out. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Are you good with that?”
“I’m good.” Chris heard her sniff and take a deep breath. “Oh, Chris. I’m such a loser.”
“No, you’re not a loser, Kaitlyn, but I do think it’s time you stepped up, don’t you?”
“Okay then, I’m going to go. Livvy and I have company. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow, and we’ll get this thing rolling.”
Chris hung up and rubbed his eyes. I love you, Kaitlyn, but your timing stinks. He stood up, shoved his phone deep into his pocket, and squared his shoulders. Tomorrow he’d do everything he could to take care of Kaitlyn, but today was Thanksgiving, and Sarah had come to dinner.
When Chris scooped a sleeping Olivia from his big chair and carried her off to bed, Sarah took advantage of the moment to unfasten the top button of her pants and pull her sweater down to cover it. This was the second meal she had shared with Chris and the second time she had eaten to the point of pain. She was going to have to watch it if she spent much time with Chris Reed. And she was beginning to think she’d like that a lot.
Chris came back in and switched on some soft jazz before sitting next to her on the sofa. “She’s out. I guess planning the world’s best Thanksgiving takes it out of a girl.”
“Chris, that was an amazing meal. If you tell my mom I said so, I’ll have to deny it, but that was the best Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had in my life. What in the world did you do to the turkey to make it taste like that?”
When he started to tell her, she held up a hand. “No. That was a rhetorical question. I’m not going to cook a turkey, but I’ll eat one like that any day.”
Chris grinned and slid an arm along the back of the sofa. “Glad you liked it, and your secret is safe with me. Mom will never know.”
They fell into an easy silence, and when Chris slipped his arm off the sofa and around her shoulders, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean her head against his shoulder.
“You know, if this were my house, we’d be looking at a fireplace instead of a blank television screen.”
“I know. This is a first-class mobile home, but it does lack a fireplace. Maybe I should get one of those DVDs of a fire, so we could stare at that instead.”
She leaned back to look up at him. “Seriously? A fireplace DVD?”
“Sure. Haven’t you seen them? You just pop it in and you have a fire, complete with crackling.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Sarah smiled to herself and went back to staring at the blank screen. Even sitting and talking about absolutely nothing with Chris made her happy.
She listened to the music for another long while before speaking again. “So what’s with Kaitlyn? Everything okay?”
He sighed and shifted a bit. “Not really, but I don’t want to bore you with my family stuff.”
She tucked her feet up under her. “I’ll tell you my tragic story if you tell me yours.”
“Deal.” He looked down at her. “Who first?”
“You.”
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I like that.” Chris pulled her a little closer and started his story.
Sarah listened without saying much until he finished up by saying, “And so I guess she’ll be living here, at least for a while.”
“You’ll be a little crowded, won’t you?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do about that. I guess the best thing to do would be to give her and Olivia my room and take Olivia’s, but Livvy is so proud of her room. I hate to do that. Maybe I can give Kaitlyn my room and take the couch. I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”
“You know, when my cousin Ray ran the now-defunct High Lonesome Saloon, he had this little one-room travel trailer that he lived in. It’s up at the ranch now. Maybe we could haul it down and park it outside here.”
“You think that would be okay? It would sure solve my problem. Kaitlyn could have my room and I’d sleep out there.”
“No, Chris.” Sarah looked up at him. “This is your house; you’re not giving up your room. The trailer is perfectly fine, and Kaitlyn can sleep out there.”
He grinned. “You’re awful bossy for such a little thing, aren’t you?”
She settled herself more comfortably. “You have no idea.”
“Okay, so you’ve heard my story, what about yours?”
“Ooooh.” It was half sigh, half groan. “Well, first of all, Brandon and I are over.”
“No going back?”
“No way. Not a hope, not a dream, not a prayer. We’re done.”
“Okay. How are you doing with that?”
“You know, not bad. I mean, when I ended things with him, I told him I never wanted to hear, see, or speak to him again, ever, and I meant it. But we’d been together since we were sophomores in college, and I really expected the hole that he left to be painful. I mean, wouldn’t you think that?”
He nodded against her hair.
“But it’s not. At least not much. And even that’s getting better, not worse. I’m just now realizing how completely controlling he was, and I feel like someone has come along and clipped those strings. At first I just collapsed, but now I’m seeing that I can walk, and run, and dance on my own. I don’t need anyone pulling my strings.”
“It’s only been a few days, Sarah. You might want to give yourself a little more time.”
“It’s been a long time coming, though. I tried to break things off when we graduated, but he would not let it go. I wouldn’t take any of his calls, so he turned up in Last Chance one day and finally talked me into giving him one more chance.” She slapped her hand over her eyes. “When I think of all the things he ‘finally talked me into’ in the years we were together, I feel too stupid to live.”
Chris took her hand from her eyes and enveloped it in his own. “Don’t say that. You’re not, not by a long shot.” Sarah heard the change in his voice. “Think he’ll show up here again?”
“No. I think it finally sank in this time. I haven’t heard a word from him since Saturday, and that is so unlike Brandon. I blocked his number right away, so he may have tried to call once, I don’t know. But before, that would have slowed him down only long enough to reach for another phone. I’m pretty sure he’s moved on. In fact, I think he was moving on before I even knew about it.” She leaned away and looked up at Chris. “See? That’s what makes me so mad. I was the one who said I wasn’t sure, and I was the one pushing everyone else away to give us a chance.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“And then here’s Brandon. Calling me every night to tell me we belonged together and at the same time chasing every woman in the entire state of Illinois.”
“Wow. All of this and a new job too. When did he sleep?”
Sarah saw he was trying to hide a smile, and she snuggled back against him. “You’d like me to stop talking about Brandon, wouldn’t you?”
He drew her closer into the shelter of his arm. “As long as you stay right where you are, you can talk about whatever you want to.”
They fell into a comfortable silence again, lost in whatever thoughts floated past.
“Chris?”
“Mmm?”
“Can we go to Papa’s again? I love that place.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s take Livvy next time. I bet she’d love to see all the brands.”
“Okay. I didn’t see mac and cheese on the menu, but maybe there’s something there she’d eat.”
Sarah leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. The soft wailing of a saxophone wound its way through a room still redolent with the aroma of Thanksgiving dinner. She could not remember feeling such peace and well-being.
When she opened her eyes and looked up, Chris was watching her. She knew he was going to kiss her. She could read it in his eyes. And this time, she closed her eyes and lifted her face to meet his.