The Promise of Christmas

“Who’s he?” Jonathan asked again, pretty much confirming what Leslie had feared. The little boy hadn’t been told that he was about to be taken from the only home he’d ever known.

But at least if Kip decided not to take him, Jonathan wouldn’t realize that Kip hadn’t wanted him.

“He was your daddy’s best friend from the time they were wee like you,” Ada said. She dropped her arm from around the boy and stepped back.

But not too far back, Leslie noted.

The boy studied Kip for a long moment. “You want to see my radio control helicopter that really flies?” Jonathan finally asked Kip. “It’s pretty cool.”

Leslie watched, holding her breath.

“Sure,” Kip said, smiling at the little boy with a natural ease that confirmed something Leslie had always assumed but that Kip Webster hadn’t yet figured out. Someday he was going to make a wonderful father. “You got one control or two?”

THREE HOURS LATER Ada walked them to the door, but Kip wasn’t ready to leave. He wasn’t ready to end this segment of his life—to move on to whatever was coming next.

“We’ll call you in the morning,” he told the older woman in a low voice. Jonathan and Kayla were downstairs, glued to a Disney video on the large-screen TV that took up one end of the huge sitting room. Still he wouldn’t put it past the precocious little guy he’d spent the past couple of hours playing with to have crept up the stairs far enough to listen in.

“Mr. Brackerfield says you might be takin’ Kayla tomorrow.” Ada looked at Leslie.

“I—”

“This all happened so fast,” Kip interrupted and he wasn’t even sure why. Driven by some unidentifiable tension inside him, he continued anyway. “You’ve known about these kids all their lives,” he said. “We’re not only grieving Cal’s unexpected death, but dealing with the shock of finding out that he kept something like this from his entire family.”

That wasn’t it at all. But Ada was nodding so maybe she’d accept his rambling explanation as a reason for delaying any final decision.

“Just give us the evening to talk, and then we’ll call you with some solid plans.”

“Take all the time you need,” Ada said, her expression gentle. “I ain’t in no hurry. Just want to have the little one’s things packed if she’s got to go.”

“We’ll let you know,” Kip said again, before Leslie could make some definite commitment.

“What was that about?” she asked him as soon as the front door of the condo closed behind them.

“I just—”

“I’m taking her, Kip.” She walked to the parking lot, holding the edges of her black suede coat together as she shivered in the cold. “You aren’t going to change my mind about that.”

“I have no intention of trying,” he admitted honestly. But that was all he could tell her. It was all he knew.

CHAPTER FOUR

CLARA SUGGESTED that Leslie and Kip go out alone for the evening, someplace neutral, and have their talk. Which was why, just after seven, Leslie found herself walking along High Street, the main drag, which ran through Ohio State University in downtown Columbus, with her high school crush beside her. Dressed in her lone pair of jeans and the pink sweater beneath her mother’s borrowed winter parka, Leslie was at least glad to be out of the house.

“It’s just like your mom to insist that we get away from her and all the memories of Cal at the house as we try to figure out what to do,” Kip said, his breath visible in the cold night air as they walked past noisy bars interspersed with tattoo shops, fast food restaurants and closed bookstores. “She was always one to respect personal space, always trying not to pressure you unduly to her way of thinking.”

“Yeah,” was the only response Leslie could manage. If her mother hadn’t been so determined to give her and Cal their “space,” would things have turned out differently?

A group of college-age girls passed, parkas open to reveal the belly rings and bare skin that showed between the button on their jeans and the hem of their shirts. One of them knocked the shoulder strap of Leslie’s black Brighton bag off her shoulder. At least three of them had been talking at once, and she wondered how any of them ever got heard.

“You hungry?” Kip asked.

“A little.” They hadn’t eaten since a quick sandwich before going to meet the kids. Leslie hadn’t finished hers. “Not really.”

Too much on her mind. “That place looks exactly like it did when I worked there.” They were passing the popular hamburger joint that had provided her spending money during her undergraduate years.

“You had money from your father,” Kip said, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “I never could understand why you’d choose to work in a fast food place.”

Leslie shrugged, not expecting him to understand. “I wanted to be like everyone else.” And to have long hours with lots of lights and activity and noise—to keep her from panicking her way right out of college.

Secrets isolated people, casting them into an internal darkness, a loneliness that often resulted in bouts of anxiety.

A convertible drove by with the top down and a group of husky young men wearing blue and gold University of Michigan letterman jackets sitting up on the back seat. They were whooping and hollering loudly enough to be heard at Ada King’s home in Westerville fifteen miles away.

“I forgot, today was the Michigan game,” Kip said. “They must’ve won!”

Michigan versus Ohio State was the big football rivalry, often determining which of the two teams would be playing in the biggest college bowl game at the end of the year.

“Good for them!” she said, smiling. “They won only once when I was a student here, but I wore my Michigan jersey up and down High Street that night, doing my father proud.” She hadn’t had many typical college weekend nights during her time at the university; that November Saturday of her junior year had been one of the few.

“I never understood why, considering the fact that both your father and grandfather graduated from U of M—and you were so obviously a fan, even when you were a kid—you chose to go to OSU.”

Because Cal had been at U of M doing graduate work. “I got a full scholarship to Ohio State.”

Her mom had accepted the explanation, and there was no reason to expect that Kip wouldn’t.

The street was so brightly lit it could almost have been daytime, and teeming with young people intent on a night of living it up. Leslie wondered how many of them would be living it down the next morning. She’d occasionally done that, too. Never again.

“You want a drink?” Kip asked.

They needed to talk. A noisy High Street bar wasn’t conducive to serious conversation. Or any conversation that could actually be heard. “Sure.”

She could use a glass of wine. Take the edge off, at least a little. She was going to take Kayla. Telling Kip wouldn’t be easy.

Neither was making the request she had to make—if he wasn’t taking Jonathan, she wanted Kip to sign him over to her.

But then, she’d never found life particularly easy. And that hadn’t stopped her yet.

LEAVE IT TO KIP to find a quiet corner in a quiet bar—one that actually served food as well as drinks—a couple of blocks down from Ohio State. There was only one other patron in the room and the hostess sat them in a scarred wooden booth all the way at the back, far from the door.

“How’d you know about this place?” she asked, the menu open in front of her.

“I didn’t,” he said, laying his menu down. “I’ll have the steak sandwich,” he told the young man who approached the table, pad in hand. “And a beer. Tall.”

He’d lucked into a quiet bar on High Street. Was there nothing in Kip Webster’s life that wasn’t charmed? Other than his childhood, she reminded herself. From all accounts, that had been sheer hell.

Which could explain why the man felt compelled to turn his back on fatherhood.

She ordered the turkey wrap and a glass of wine. She wasn’t like Kip. She couldn’t be like him, couldn’t let herself think about not doing as Cal wished. The irony of that wasn’t lost on her, either.