Our First Christmas (33 page)

We drove to Josh's house in his truck after I helped clean up the kitchen. We did not arrive until after midnight.

When we turned the corner onto his private lane, I gasped. “Oh my gosh. I can't believe it. It's gorgeous!”

The trees on both sides were decorated with white lights, the glow glistening off the white sparkle of snow.

“I thought you might like a few lights since it will be our first Christmas together in twelve years.”

“A few lights? Josh . . .” As we made the last turn, his home came into view. “You outdid yourself, Santa.”

He laughed.

“Mr. Claus will not have a hard time finding your house.”

“I haven't been in the Christmas spirit for a long time, Laurel, but you've definitely brought it back.”

“You've done the same for me, cowboy.”

When I stepped into his house I had another surprise. Josh had a towering tree in his living room. It, too, was covered in lights. There were only four ornaments.

I stepped closer. “These are the ornaments I gave you when we were dating.”

“Yes, they are.”

One ornament was Mr. and Mrs. Claus holding hands. Another was two reindeer kissing. A third was of two polar bears on ice skates, and the fourth was a boy and girl elf, the girl elf perched on the boy's back. “I'm so glad you kept them, Josh. I kept mine, too.”

“Then we'll have to hang them up. Merry Christmas, Laurel.”

“Merry Christmas to you. Sit down. I have presents for you.”

He lit a fire, we turned off the lights, except for the lights on the Christmas tree, and he opened his gifts. I bought him an ornament with two moose, male and female, on skis. I gave him two aprons, matching, so we could wear them together while we cooked, a cool cowboy hat, a box of Christmas cookies, and a fishing pole.

He seemed to love the gifts. I got a long kiss for the fishing pole. “I can't wait until we can fish together again.”

He had bought me a Christmas ornament, too. It was two bears in Santa and Mrs. Claus outfits. He bought me a box of lingerie, a new ski jacket, and a pink ski hat.

Then he handed me a ring box. “Will you marry me, Laurel?”

I sniffled and snuffled and couldn't talk, those darn tears getting to me again.

“I love you,” he said, threading our fingers together. “I want to be with you my whole life. I don't want us to be apart again. I promise I will do everything to make sure that you're happy, that we're happy, that our family is happy.”

“Yes. I will, Josh Reed. Yes.” I kissed him, wiped my tears. “This is the happiest moment of my life. I love you so much.”

“Me too, baby.” He leaned over and kissed me, put the sparkling diamond on my trembling finger, and we started the smiling and stripping routine.

“You are the best Santa Claus in the world,” I told him, my breathing heavy, as usual during our naked antics.

“Ho ho ho. And Santa wants to take you up to bed for a special gift, Mrs. Claus.”

“Sounds perfect, Santa. Mrs. Claus says yes.”

And it was.

Perfect, that is.

 

Megan Johnson fingered the divorce papers she'd helped prepare. For herself. To end a marriage of over twenty years. Tossing her car keys onto the counter and leaving her briefcase on one of the kitchen chairs, she walked into the living room of the house she'd lived in most of her life. She couldn't say she was happy about the idea of divorce, not at all. Never had she thought she'd be single again. Never would she have believed that she'd pull the trigger on the divorce. Never had she thought it would be she to break up their once-happy family. But there it was. Despite the heartache and, yes, the fear of an unsteady future, she was relieved. She and Chris had been separated for months and, really, had been drifting apart for the past two years, ever since Lindy, their youngest, had taken off for college.

Chris had said he'd meet her here. After work. But he was late. And that ticked her off. He couldn't even show up on time to this, their final meeting before she actually did the deed.
Typical.
She checked her phone again, expecting that she'd missed a call or text, but no, he hadn't tried to contact her.

That was part of the problem: communication.

Yanking off her gloves, Megan stepped through the archway to the living room, where stairs ran up to the second story and the house had been decorated for the holidays.

It was as if she and Chris were adrift, that the kids had been their anchor. When Brody had left home, Megan had sensed the tides of her marriage turning. Two years later, while Brody was still serving in Afghanistan, Lindy had decided to go to school in New York, and, once their son had been discharged from the army, he'd returned home briefly. His stay was short-lived. Brody was now in Boston, also in college, and Megan and Chris had been left alone. Their marriage had faltered, neither partner understanding the sudden change in their relationship.

And, if she were truthful with herself, Megan would admit that when Adam Newell had joined the staff of her law firm as a senior partner, things had gotten worse.
That
not-so-little complication had been her fault, of course, and she had to fight a crushing guilt.

Now, it seemed, as she snapped on a couple of table lamps, her marriage was over. Not finishing the paperwork had just been putting off the inevitable, which, all things considered, was unlike her. She'd always been organized, a doer, and couldn't stand lack of decision-making on anyone's part, especially her own.

But divorce. That was different. So final.

Eyeing the Christmas tree positioned in the bay window she felt an overwhelming sadness. Trimmed in white, silver, and bloodred, a few of the old hand-me-down ornaments from her parents adding spots of color, this tree stood where one had during the winter holidays for all of her thirty-nine years. She'd grown up here, in this part of Connecticut, in this very house, only moving away for college when she and Chris were first married. In this Cape Cod–style house, her parents had raised their two daughters, and they probably would have lived here forever, had things been different. Megan's mother's struggle with and loss to cancer had changed all that.

When Carol Simmons had passed, everything had changed. Everything. The cluttered rooms filled with a lifetime of memorabilia, the echoing, empty hallways, and the lack of life had proved too much for Megan's father. No longer was there the sound of Carol's off-key humming as she baked, or her deep laughter, or even the scent of her perfume underlaid with the odor of a cigarette to waft through the rooms. Barely six months after laying his wife of a quarter of a century to rest, Jim Simmons had packed up and moved to Arizona where, to Megan's mortification, he'd found a woman twenty years his junior. He'd married Lara after a whirlwind courtship of less than three months. In less than a year from the time he'd buried her mother, her father had started a new life.

Meg had met Lara several times, of course, over the years. Still, she couldn't say she was a fan of her stepmother, and though she tried to “get over it” and “be happy” that her father wasn't grieving any longer, it had seemed false and taken her years to accept.

Something within her withered, and she told herself it wasn't as if she wanted to make such a final, irrevocable move, but she felt she had to.

The upshot of her father's move to Arizona, other than his giddiness at his May-December marriage, was that he'd sold this house to Chris and Megan, so they as a young couple had returned to the one place in the universe she considered home. And she still did. She flipped a switch and hundreds of tiny, clear lights, like stars in a dark sky, winked on. She should have felt that same tingle of anticipation she'd always experienced when the tree was lighted, but tonight . . . nothing.

She stared through the window. Outside, snow was falling, the late evening seeming serene and peaceful, the lawn covered in a thin blanket of snow beneath which was a slick layer of ice, from last night's storm. The area was supposed to be blessed with a white Christmas if the weatherman was to be believed, and a dangerous one as the roads had yet to be cleared. On her way home, she'd slid a couple of times, narrowly missing a struggling minivan as it tried to climb the hill leading to this street.

Frowning, she glanced at the clock, her mother's, still mounted on the wall. Six twenty. She'd been home nearly half an hour, and Chris was late.

For the first time since arriving home, she was starting to worry. Again, she pulled out her phone, and this time she called, but when Chris's voice answered as part of his voice mail message, she cut the connection.

He'd be here. He knew that it was time, and what she wanted.

Still . . .

Craning her neck, she looked past the yard and along the street to the corner and half expected to see familiar headlights turning toward the house. Instead, the darkness settled deeper. Nervously, she ran her fingers along the window frame.

She saw her pale reflection in the glass, an image she'd noticed before, though always before, at this time of year, there had been a sparkle in her eye, a smile upon her lips, and the watery image seeming young at heart. Odd, how things turned out, she thought now, standing in the house where the soft hum of the furnace was the only noise to break the silence of the coming night. Here, where there had been parties and laughter, and . . . Oh, God, now there was nothing.

Walking to the fireplace where the grate was cold and the framed pictures on the mantel of her once-happy family stood at attention, every sunny smile seeming to mock her, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the place. The thought that she would have to sell the family home bothered her, just as it nearly broke her heart to be considering divorce.

But there it was, in plain black-and-white, she thought, glancing down at the pages, all neatly typed, ready to be signed and filed, clutched in her hand.

Feeling a chill, she didn't bother taking off her coat and walked to the hallway where she adjusted the thermostat up a few degrees. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glint of something silvery on the hardwood floor, just beneath the tree. Upon closer examination, she discovered that an ornament had fallen off a branch, and, as she picked it up, her throat tightened. The ornament was really a tiny silver picture frame that surrounded a picture of Chris and Megan at their wedding twenty-odd years earlier. How fitting that it had fallen, she thought sarcastically, but surprisingly the glass hadn't cracked, and the etching along the silver frame, O
UR
F
IRST
C
HRISTMAS,
was still legible. Her heart grew heavy as she stared at the faded photograph. How long ago it seemed. She started to put the ornament onto a branch again, intent on tying the fraying red ribbon over an empty limb, but she hesitated and instead slipped the small frame into the pocket of her coat, all the while wondering if Hallmark or whomever ever came out with an ornament for O
UR
L
AST
C
HRISTMAS
.

“Sick,” she told herself, and sighed. She had to go through with the divorce and move forward with her life. It would be best for everyone, she rationalized, though a bit of melancholy burrowed deep into her soul and begged to differ. She'd told herself she would wait until after the first of the year, let the kids get back into their routine at their colleges, and—

Her cell phone jangled, and she slid her hand into the pocket of her slacks to retrieve it. Finally. About damned time. Still scanning the documents, she hazarded a quick glance at the screen, expecting to see Chris's number and bracing herself for an excuse as to why he was running late. Instead she spied a number she didn't recognize, but she figured it was a client who needed a little handholding after hours. She could do that.

“Megan Johnson,” she said automatically as she came to the page with the division of property.

Over background noise she couldn't immediately identify a deep male voice said, “This is Officer Ben Sheldon, Connecticut state police, Mrs. Johnson.”

Her heart leapt to her throat.
The police?
This couldn't be good. In a heartbeat, she thought of her kids.

“Are you the wife of Christopher Johnson?” he asked, then rattled off their street address.

Oh, dear God, what had happened? “Yes.” But Chris didn't live here anymore, she thought, he'd moved out months ago. . . . Oh, God. He'd never changed his ID that she knew of; his driver's license would still list her home as his residence. A sick feeling grasped her stomach. “Where's Chris?” she asked, starting to panic. “What happened to him?”

“I'm sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Johnson, but your husband was involved in a multiple-car accident.”

“What? No!” She felt her knees buckle, and she fell against the back of their couch. There had to be some mistake. “Involved?” she repeated, trying to make sense of what the policeman was saying. “What do you mean? Is he all right?” Her heart was hammering; her usually steady voice barely a croak.

“He's being life flighted to County General.”

Oh. God. “But . . . but he's alive?” she said, fear and relief battling within her. “You're telling me that he's alive?” Otherwise they wouldn't bother with
life
flight. In desperation, she clasped both hands over the phone. Her divorce papers fluttered to the floor, scattering under the forgotten Christmas tree.

“He was alive when the helicopter took off.”

“Thank God. I'm—I'm on my way to the hospital.”

A pause. “Mrs. Johnson?”

She'd already started searching for her keys as she walk-raced for the back door. “Yes?” she shouted, now running toward the back door.

“You'd better hurry.”

 

County General was a madhouse.

Ambulances and helicopters had brought the injured, and police and emergency workers were dealing with the ensuing chaos. Several news vans were parked near the front entrance of the hospital, reporters already standing outside the brick building, snow blowing around them as they spoke into microphones and looked steadily into the eyes of cameras held on the shoulders of crew members.

After circling the parking lot twice, Megan found a spot, slid into it, cut the engine, and sent up a quick prayer for Chris's life. Then she locked her CR-V and dashed through the snow to the wide glass doors that opened automatically to a vestibule, where a second set of doors whispered open. She saw the information desk wedged between the emergency room and the admitting area and skirted a huge decorated tree as she made her way to the desk where, amazingly, there was only one man in a business suit standing in line. As she approached he was already walking away. “I'm looking for Chris Johnson,” she said to a harried-looking woman manning the phones behind the desk. A bit of a thing with kinky gray hair, she glanced at Meg and held up a finger, finishing a call that had come in to her headset.

Meg stood on one foot, then the other as another woman came up behind her to wait her turn. When the receptionist finally said, “Thank you for calling,” Megan said again, “Christopher Johnson. The police told me he was in an accident and brought in here via life flight . . . and . . . and I have to find him, to find out he's okay.” Then realizing she hadn't identified herself, she added, “I'm his wife. Megan Johnson.” She was frantic, her heart pounding in dread, fear that he might not make it sliding through her like a ghost.

“Just a second.” The woman, whose name tag read Betty Hilgaard, held up a finger again.

Meg wanted to scream as the tiny woman talked into her headset again, answering another person's inquiry about a patient. It was all she could do to keep her cool. To distract herself, Meg scanned the room; every chair in the lobby was occupied, and people were standing in the hallways. The ER was filled to overflowing, patients wheezing and coughing, a toddler crying, a muted TV mounted high on the wall with pictures of the accident site visible.

Her heart nearly stopped.

On the way to the hospital, she'd listened to radio reports and found out there had been a twenty-three-car pileup on the interstate. According to the information she'd heard, a truck loaded with Christmas trees had hit a patch of ice, skidded across two lanes of traffic, and jack-knifed. The vehicles near the huge truck had either run off the shoulder or slammed into each other or had been smashed by the falling bundled trees that had somehow been torn loose of their bindings and, like torpedoes, had sailed and dropped onto the icy pavement and any vehicle in their paths.