Keeping Christmas

“Maybe I will,” he said too quickly.

Almeda narrowed shrewd dark eyes beneath white eyebrows. “The invitation is withdrawn if you plan to haunt the upper hall and spy on our guest all night long.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he lied.

“Yes, it did.” Almeda wrapped her gnarled hands around her mug of tea. “You think she’s going to murder us in our beds.”

Jacob laughed; it was rusty and almost devoid of humor, but it was a laugh, nevertheless.

Faye kicked Lois under the table but Jacob didn’t notice.

“No, but she might run off with all the money and silver in the house.”

“In her condition?”

“She’d never get out of the yard with Weezer on the porch,” Janet pointed out.

“Good point,” Jacob conceded.

“She’s nothing but a poor, frightened young woman who’s running away from someone or something that has her scared half to death,” Hazel said, echoing his own reluctant conclusions. “I’m certain of it.”

“Well, I’m not.” Jacob leaned his hips against the tiled countertop. He folded his arms across his chest. “But I promise not to harm a hair on her head.”

Almeda refused to be drawn into an argument. “Good. That’s settled. Remember, she’s our guest and she stays as long as she needs our hospitality.”

“It’s the Christian thing to do.”

“It is the season, after all,” Lois said quietly.

“It’s still November.”

“Close enough,” said Faye. “Christmas is my favorite time of year.”

Jacob set his coffee mug on the counter. “I give up. She stays as long as she wants. I’m going back up to my place to put some more wood in the stove. I’ll check on Weezer once more, then I’ll come back here and spend the night in my old room.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” Almeda seconded the suggestion. “We should all be in our beds.”

“Not me,” Janet said. “I’m going to watch Tales from the Crypt. Anyone care to join me?”

“No.” Hazel shuddered. “I hate that show. It gives me nightmares.”

“We’re going to bed,” the twins said, taking turns. “We’ve got a million things to do tomorrow.”

“I meant what I said about the lights on the roof,” Jacob reminded them. “Not till it thaws.”

“Of course.” They grinned. “If the sun comes out you can do it as soon as you get home from school.”

Jacob shook his head. He was defeated, and he knew it. “Good night.” He shrugged into his coat and headed out into the snow.

“He smiled,” Faye said in a stage whisper after he’d gone.

“And he laughed. Almost,” her twin sister added. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him laugh.”

It was many hours later when Jacob returned to the house. He’d forgotten the term papers that needed to be graded. But the back door was unlocked for him, as he knew it would be. His aunts were the most trusting souls on earth. And thank God, beyond ordinary common sense precautions, in Owenburg they still could be. He shook the snow off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door. He did the same with his hat, then took off his shoes. He walked through the house in his stocking feet, climbed the stairs and stopped before his father’s and his grandfather’s room.

He hadn’t slept here in months—he usually stayed only if the weather was very bad or his aunts were having problems with their temperamental old furnace—but he knew it would be ready for him. Probably with the bed already turned down and the radiator steaming.

He hesitated for a long minute, then walked silently down the hall to the room where Kate Smith and her son slept. He watched her from the open doorway. The soft glow of the wall lamps in the hall cast dim fingers of light all the way to the bed.

Kate Smith. He caught himself smiling again. If he had to pick a moment when he’d truly decided she wasn’t dangerous, it was then. She wasn’t much of a criminal if she couldn’t even pick an alias that didn’t make people think twice. But she’d told him to call her Katie. Katie. The name suited her much better than Kate.

She lay on her back, one arm outstretched toward her child, one lying across her chest, just beneath the gentle swell of her breasts. She had very nice breasts. He remembered the feel of them beneath her sweater as he’d carried her upstairs. Jacob looked quickly away. The baby slept beside her, on his stomach, his bottom high in the air.

Just the way his son used to sleep. His heart ached as he stood there staring at them.

And Katherine. How often had he teased her about putting the baby in bed with them. “We can’t make love,” he’d complain, “with a baby between us. It cramps my style and it will warp the boy for life.” Katherine would laugh. He would lean over, kiss the baby and she would put him in his own bed so that they could make love; long, slow, sweet love.

Jacob clenched his fists at his sides. He wouldn’t remember the soft, powdery baby smells, the giggles, the kisses exchanged with the woman he loved as she nursed his son, played pat-a-cake with him. The pain as they lowered them into the cold hard ground together. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. He would not give in to the pain.

Kate Smith bore a physical resemblance to Katherine, that was all. He could handle that. He didn’t have to exchange another half-dozen words with her. Tomorrow, or the day after that, she would be gone. Out of his life forever and he could go on, getting from one day to the next, making it through one more night, one more week, one more Christmas.

He gave the sleeping woman and her child a last look. Her short, dull gold hair gleamed faintly in the diffuse light. The little boy slept soundly, his thumb in his mouth. He looked like his mother, but his build was square and sturdy. Like his father? Kate, although tall, was slender as a child, skinny, really. Too skinny. Jacob liked his women with a little more meat on their bones.

The errant thought and his physical response to it surprised him, amazed him and scared him to death. Thinking about what Kate Smith would look like with an additional ten or twelve well-distributed pounds on her frame was too close to thinking about what it might be like to hold her, or kiss her, or make love to her. Doing that meant he would have to start feeling things again, letting his emotions stir to life, including the agony of remembering what he had lost. He wasn’t about to do that again for anyone. Not now. Not ever.

“Damn,” Greg Moran growled as he slammed down the receiver. “She won’t answer the phone.”

“Give her time to cool down,” his father counseled from his chair by the fire. He didn’t turn around. Neither did Greg. He remained by the inlaid wood desk that sat squarely in the middle of Andrew’s mahogany-paneled study. His hands balled into fists as he rested his elbows on either side of the phone. “She’ll come around. Patrice is a smart girl.”

“Maybe she’s already left town. Checked out of the hotel and went home to her family,” Greg said, following his own train of thought. He loved his wife. He hadn’t thought it was possible to miss her this much. He wanted her back, no matter what it took.

“We’d know. Someone follows her whenever she leaves the hotel,” his father reminded him.

“That’s another thing. I don’t want her finding out she’s being followed. I don’t want her hounded out of town.”

“Don’t worry,” Andrew said. “I’ve got my best guys on it. She’ll get tired of this game in a few days.”

“Sure, Dad.” But in his heart Greg wasn’t so certain. Maybe Patrice was right. Maybe they should let Katie go her own way.

“Patrice will come around,” Andrew repeated smugly. “In a few days you’ll have found my grandson and brought him home. Patrice won’t be able to stay away when she knows Kyle needs a woman to take care of him. She loves that boy like he was her own.”

“What if Katie won’t let us bring Kyle back here?” Greg asked.

“She won’t have any choice. Leave that all up to me. You just find her.” Andrew’s tone was hard as steel.

“She won’t give him up without a fight.” Greg hid a smile. Katie was a scrapper; even his father had to admit that.

“Remember. She’s got nothing to give the boy. We have everything, including the law, on our side.” Andrew chuckled. “Why do you think I make all those… campaign contributions…every election year?”