A Family Christmas

Tess patted his thigh. “Keep telling yourself that, hon.”

He glowered, but he wasn’t as miffed with Tess as he pretended. She was only asking the same questions he’d asked himself. She’d probably guessed that he was feeling oddly uncertain.

Tess had her own fix-it streak and would gladly be the one to push him over the edge into unwelcome territory. For his own good, she’d say. With a twinkle in her eye.

“So,” he said in a low voice. “Spill the beans.”

She sighed again. “Most of this is rumor.”

“I’ll take it with a grain of salt.”

“You’d be better off talking with Rose herself.”

“I don’t know that the Spanish Inquisition could make her talk.”

“She’s not that bad!”

“Bad enough.”

“Why do I feel we should have theme music?” Tess said. “The song about not giving a damn about your bad reputation would do. That’s Rose, all right.”

“You’re wrong. She does care.”

Tess turned her head on its side, still propped on her fist. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve looked that closely?”

He wondered how much he’d given away. “Get on with it, Marian.”

“What I remember…” Tess looked off across the library. “Rose was a different sort of kid when we were in grade school. Shy and quiet, but also stubborn. Rebellious at times. She didn’t take well to authority, like her older brothers. But it was as if the teachers expected no better. The Robbins were that sort of family.”

“What sort?”

“Not…admired,” came the careful answer. “The father was a hunting and fishing guide. Something of a blowhard. A big drinker, arrested at least once for illegal poaching. I don’t know a lot about Maxine, Rose’s mother, except that she stayed close to home. The brothers were hellions.”

“And Rose?”

“She wasn’t too friendly, but then she didn’t get much of a chance to be, either. All the ‘good’ mothers warned their kids away from playing with the Robbins. Let’s just say, we sure weren’t having picnics or slumber parties out at Blackbear Road.” Tess ducked her head to press her knuckles beneath her nose. “In retrospect, I feel pretty awful about that. Rose must have been lonely, even if she acted like she didn’t care.”

Evan pushed down his rising empathy. “If she was this lonely outcast you say, how did she get the reputation?”

“This is where the rumors begin.” Tess took her voice down another notch. “When we got older, like fifteen, sixteen, the boys started paying more attention to Rose. She was striking—black hair to her waist, slim, tanned. The snobbier girls dismissed her because she didn’t have the right clothes or social graces. But of course the boys didn’t care about that.”

Evan’s mind drifted, imagining Rose at sixteen. He could see her—a wild rose of the forest, hardy but also beautiful and so fragile.

Damn. Where was the poetry coming from? Somebody ought to slap him in tights and call him Romeo.

Tess continued with a shrug. “What mattered to the boys was that she didn’t have a curfew. Or many other rules. The Robbins kids basically ran wild.”

“I see.”

“Supposedly, Rose had a few temporary…alliances. And the boys talked. Bragged. You know. So she got this reputation. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was overblown, knowing how gossip balloons in this town.”

Evan was familiar with the concept. His first year as head coach, he’d suspended several of the team members for drinking and breaking curfew. The incident had expanded into a brouhaha that took over a school board meeting. Some of the more belligerent parents had wanted him reprimanded for overly harsh discipline, but he’d remained calm and kept a firm stance, and wiser heads had prevailed.

Tess had fallen silent. He prodded her. “And then?”

“Rose started hanging with a bad crowd. They got into trouble—underage drinking, petty vandalism, that kind of thing. People said she was just like her brothers. Then, I don’t know, there was an incident that was hushed up pretty fast, except that people whispered about it for a long time. They said there was some kind of confrontation between Black Jack Robbin and the Lindstroms. The rumor was that Rose had become involved with Rick Lindstrom—led him into temptation, according to his parents.”

“Or vice versa.”

“All I know for sure is that the Lindstroms wouldn’t want their son associating with someone like Rose. Rick’s gone now, died in a forest fire out west, but I remember him well. The golden-boy type—handsome, charming, spoiled and arrogant. I seriously doubt that Rose was the instigator, in whatever happened between them.”

Evan’s stomach dropped. “Do you think it was only a sexual thing?”

“Probably. That’s what my classmates assumed.” Tess aimed a “sorry” look at him, as if he had a personal stake in Rose Robbin’s love life. “But there was also a rumor about ill-gotten money, stolen maybe, or a payoff. The cops were supposedly called in, and suddenly Rose went away. Some said she ran away, some said she was sent to juvenile detention. After a while, it was clear that she was gone for good. She didn’t come back, even for a visit, not until her father’s funeral.”

“Did you ever ask her what she’d been doing, all those years away?”

“Sure. She said she’d been working here and there. Never got married, never had kids.”

Evan mulled that over for a minute or two, counting up the years. He hadn’t been able to imagine what Rose would find interesting about his basketball team—good kids, all of them, but just an ordinary group of teenage boys, fascinating only to their girlfriends and their…

Parents.

Suddenly the explanation was obvious. Though times had long changed since the days when a girl in trouble was sent away in shame to spare the family embarrassment, the epidemic of pregnant teenage runaways remained. He knew well, having put in a work-study course at a shelter and a runaway hotline during his college years. It was astounding that no one else in Alouette had come to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, he could be way off base.

“Hold on,” he said when Tess started to rise. “You’re sure Rose said that, in so many words?”

“What—the marriage and kids part? I don’t remember her exact words. But it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Tess slid sideways in her chair, eyeing him doubtfully. “Evan. What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Rose’s business was her own, as long as she didn’t make trouble.

“Be nice,” Tess warned as she stood.

“Of course.” He glanced up. “When haven’t I been?”

“Oh, every now and then. Like whenever you see wrongdoing.” Tess looked worried. “I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. You’re thinking that there’s something wrong with Rose.”

“No, I’m not. Honestly.” Evan rose, towering over the petite librarian by nearly a foot. He tapped her under the chin. “I’ll give the woman a fair chance.”

“Does that mean Lucy will get the lessons?”

“Maybe. We’ll see what Rose thinks. She might not be willing.”

“Turn on that charm of yours.” Tess tossed a saucy grin over her shoulder as she walked back to the main desk, reminding him why he liked her so much. Connor Reed was a lucky guy to have won her heart.

“What charm?” He considered himself to be a standard-issue, salt-of-the-earth type. A good guy. He worked hard, loved his daughter, paid his bills, did what was right. Solid, but nothing spectacular. Krissa had married him for that, and six years later asked for a divorce for the same reasons.