A Holiday to Remember (11 page)

A glance at Chris showed him completely outside the con
versation. He sat back in his chair at the kitchen table, drinking his coffee and looking as if his thoughts were a thousand miles away. With his background, they probably were.

She turned back to Steve. “I agree that Haley should have her wrist examined. We’ve kept snow on it, but there’s no question that it’s still swollen. I can’t leave, however. At least, not unless all the girls can go, too.”

“Well, we can’t carry seven girls plus you and…” His wary look at Chris reminded Jayne of two dogs in the presence of a single bone. “…and Mr. Hammond, here. The weather’s warming up, though. Couple of days, this snow will really start to disappear. Joe Garber told me he’d have the highway plowed up this far by late tomorrow afternoon.”

“The school has a contract with the county to plow our drive, as well. Did he mention that?”

Steve scratched his head. “Uh…no. I’ll have to remind him.”

“I’d appreciate it. Now, what about the electricity? Has power been restored to Ridgeville?”

He pulled a big frown. “Should happen in the next day or so. Big transformer got taken out by a tree—huge sucker, and the power company needed this long to get it cut up and hauled away so they could reach the wires. I saw at least five downed lines on the way up here. I’d say it’ll be several days, if not weeks, before you get power this far into the mountains.”

Jayne fell back in her chair. This was not what she wanted to hear.

“Have you checked on everybody in town?” Chris spoke for the first time. “My granddad lives out River Road. Has anybody been there?”

Ron chuckled. “We didn’t get out there before he got into the office in town, raising he—Uh, raising Cain about you heading up here and not coming back. Feisty old geezer.”

Chris blew out a deep breath. “Feisty. That’s Charlie.”

After slurping the rest of his coffee, Steve got to his feet. “Okay, Ms. Thomas, I think we should get you and that student of yours down to the doctor. We each can take one of you.”

Jayne stood, too, careful to keep weight off her injured knee and trying to ignore the stiffness in every other muscle.

“I can’t leave, Steve. There are six other girls here.”

“Hammond can—”

“No, he can’t. I am responsible for these students. I can’t leave them in someone else’s care.”

His eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “Okay, if you insist. We’ll take the girl, I guess.”

“And do what with her, once she’s seen the doctor? She’s with me because she couldn’t go home. Her parents aren’t in Ridgeville. You would have to bring her back.”

“Oh, yeah.” He thought for a minute, then brightened. “We’ll take you both down and bring you both back.” Before Jayne could correct him, he found the answer himself. “But that leaves the other girls here with Hammond.”

Then he grinned. “So we’ll just take him back with us.” He turned to the man in question. “You can check on your granddad yourself.”

Jayne stared at Chris, and after a moment he lifted his gaze to stare back. As much as she hadn’t wanted him to stay at the beginning, she didn’t want him to leave now. They—the girls and she—needed him.

But perhaps he needed to go. If he’d come to Ridgeville to see Charlie, then he was wasting time he wouldn’t get back.

“Maybe you should—” she began.

“I can’t—” he said at the same time.

They both stopped. Then Jayne, being selfish, motioned for Chris to continue.

He gave her a half smile, then looked at Steve. “Jayne should see a doctor, but you’re not going to get her away from these girls without dynamite. There are…liability issues involved, you know.”

From his furrowed forehead, Jayne thought perhaps Steve didn’t know.

“If I leave,” Chris said, “Jayne will have sole responsibility for seven lively kids. She’s not in any shape to carry wood, stoke the fire or deal with urgent repairs that might come up. I think the students and Jayne will all be safer if I stay.”

“But—” Steve began.

“Since Jayne can’t leave, I think Haley should stay with us. Her wrist will wait another couple of days. Maybe you could point out to the snowplow guy that there’s an injured kid up here who needs help. That should be incentive. And I’ll give you a note for Charlie.”

Jayne almost laughed aloud at Steve’s frustrated expression. Instead she put a hand on his arm and marshaled a grateful smile. “I appreciate the effort you made to check on us. That’s above and beyond the call of duty, I think.”

Now both deputies blushed bright red.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll give you a list of phone numbers for the girls’ parents. If you would call them all and reassure them that we’re fine and will be down in town as soon as the roads are clear, I would be even more grateful.”

She gave Steve the list and then, using her headmistress experience, talked the deputies into their coats and walked them down the hallway to the outside door where they’d parked their snowmobiles.

As Steve stopped to protest once more, Jayne leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Thank you so much,” she said in a low
voice. “Have a safe trip back.” She squeezed his arm and, at the same time, urged him out of the building.

Standing in the doorway, she waved as they gunned their engines, and again as they wheeled around before disappearing down the drive.

When she shut herself inside, she found Chris standing in the hallway, arms crossed over his chest, his handsome face marred with a scowl. “Was the kiss necessary?”

There was, Jayne thought, a distinct tint of green in those blue eyes. She managed a small, flirtatious shrug. “It’s all he gets.” Then she stepped past Chris and went to see if the girls planned to spend the entire day in their pajamas.

W
ITH THEIR CLOTHES
changed, the girls started serious work on their holiday decorating. Chris devised a stand for the tree using a cleaning bucket and bricks to keep it upright. Since the ornaments would be paper, greenery and pinecones, the tree branches wouldn’t have to bear much weight. After an intense bargaining session, the tree was placed in the center of the library underneath the double-tiered brass chandelier.

“I like it better that way,” he told Jayne as he set up a ladder beside the tree. “I can tie the top to the chandelier and be sure the tree stays standing.”

“As long as the chandelier isn’t damaged.” She stood with her hands gripped together and the line between her brows telegraphing worry.

“So I can fall flat on the floor and break every bone in my body, as long as there’s not a scratch on the brass, is that what you’re saying?”

She recognized the teasing and smiled at him. “Exactly.”

He nodded. “Good to know.” And good to have this kind of harmony, this sense of partnership and trust. They’d come
together to chase the nosy deputies back to town. Not literally, of course, but with a shared, though unspoken, understanding that they must protect the group—the
family
—from the threat of intrusion.

Not for much longer, though. The snow was softening, the temperatures inching higher, and in a day, maybe two, the outside world would invade again.

He tied the tree top to the chandelier with the skeins of dark green wool Jayne had given him. “This yarn is so soft, the chandelier won’t feel a thing,” he assured her.

“That’s mohair,” she said. “It had better be soft, as expensive as it is.” Then she chuckled. “I bought it the day you were chasing me all over town.”

“Stalking you.” Jayne steadied the ladder as he backed down. And she didn’t move away when he reached the floor, so they were standing close together. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I owe you an apology for that.”

She shook her head, but her smile faded. “Clearly, there’s something I don’t know about myself. But…” She raised her troubled golden gaze to his. “…if I was here when I was younger, why doesn’t anyone else recognize me?”

Chris had thought about that. “Most people see what they expect to see. No one in town would be looking for Juliet.” He took a deep breath. “Except me. I never stopped thinking about her. Wanting her, looking for her even when I knew she was dead.”

He’d said the wrong thing. Jayne’s face changed suddenly, even as the girls’ voices sounded in the hallway.

“Oh, look, it’s ready!”

“Wow, cool!”

They came streaming into the library. Jayne stepped back from him, and then away. She’d restored her headmistress
expression—patient, friendly, but also wary. “It is a beautiful tree,” she said as they all gathered around. “I can’t wait to see your ornaments!”

She rarely lied to her students, but Jayne told a huge lie in that moment. She didn’t want to see the tree decorated, wasn’t in the least enthusiastic about watching the library transformed into a holiday setting. With every step they took along this path, her uneasiness increased.

As if that weren’t enough, Chris had just confirmed her worst fears. He still thought of her as Juliet.

Perhaps she had been, once upon a time. With all the missing pieces in her memory, she couldn’t deny the possibility. And she couldn’t begin to explain why she would have let Chris believe she was dead. Obviously, she hadn’t remembered him. She still didn’t. Why not?

Chris hadn’t told her how Juliet “died,” except to say he’d thought for twelve years that he’d killed her. Dead people usually left a body behind. Why assume she was dead, if there wasn’t a corpse?

Perhaps, after all, this was simply a case of a strong likeness between Jayne and Juliet. The same hair and skin, the same eye color—these things happened all the time. Chris had never seen the birthmark on Jayne’s hip, so he couldn’t know without a doubt that Juliet’s looked identical. Logic and reason suggested a genetic resemblance. That was all.

Even if Jayne had been Juliet, she wasn’t anymore. She didn’t remember a background of money and status; true or not, she recalled a middle class family and upbringing. Her adult self had been shaped by those memories and her years with Elizabeth Jayne Thomas, not by anything that had happened to Juliet. So the person she had become was not the person Juliet might have been.

By his own admission, the woman Chris had responded to in these last few days was not the woman Jayne knew herself to be. The disappointment struck her like an arrow to the heart.

She had fallen in love with the Chris Hammond she’d come to know. He was simply glad to have rediscovered the Juliet he’d loved twelve years ago.

Fortunately, Jayne had her responsibility to the girls to fall back on. The preparations in the library consumed the entire day, with a break for chili cooked over the fire at lunch. Yolanda and Monique worked with Jayne in the kitchen on the holiday meal. With the exception of sherry wine or liqueur, the ingredients for a traditional English trifle were easy to find—cake from the freezer, rich raspberry jam and canned peaches, instant pudding and whipping cream. Jayne would have omitted the sherry in any case.

Both Monique and Yolanda contributed to whipping the cream. “This is taking forever,” Monique complained after a minute spent whisking. “How long do we have to beat this stuff, anyway?”

Yolanda lasted about two minutes. “Man, my wrist is tired.” By taking turns, the two girls managed to froth the cream into thick, stiff peaks. And when Jayne covered the top of the trifle with those peaks, the two girls stood back in awe.

“Looks beautiful.” Monique brushed a finger through the leftover cream in the bowl.

“And delicious.” Yolanda licked the spoon. “I can’t wait to get a big helping.”

“First,” Jayne reminded them, “we have chickens to roast and potatoes to bake.”

Yet another of the antique cooking tools kept on display in the main kitchen was a roasting spit, which Chris installed in the library fireplace. An iron rod speared the three chickens neck to tail and was then suspended over a bed of coals to cook the meat. Monique assumed responsibility for turning the spit every half hour to keep the birds cooking evenly.

Yolanda went back to the kitchen with Jayne. Together they wrapped ten potatoes in aluminum foil to be placed on the coals for baking. Then they peeled oranges and bananas to create a fruit salad called ambrosia, and prepared green beans to be cooked in a pot over the fire.

“This looks as good as any meal I ever had.” Yolanda was stirring coconut in with the oranges and bananas. “You really know how to cook, Ms. Thomas.”

Jayne shook her head. “I’m just making do with what we have. Thank goodness for the boxed dressing mix and the canned cranberry sauce.”

About four o’clock, as the daylight began to wane through the windows, Taryn and Haley came into the kitchen.

“Can we set the table?” Taryn carried a bag of holly with her. “Is it okay if we use candles tonight?”

“That will be nice.” Jayne tried to decide where to hide next, since the holiday had now invaded her kitchen as well as the library. “Since we’re going to be elegant, I think I’ll get into some different clothes.”

She stopped in the library to tell Monique where she would be, in case something happened with the chickens. The meat seemed to be progressing nicely, however.

“You go,” Monique told her. “Take your time. We’re all good.”

Jayne paused in the doorway to watch Chris hanging a pine branch garland across one of the windows. He was concentrating, while listening to instructions from three different girls, and so didn’t look her way.

Which was just as well. She couldn’t afford to lose—as one of her favorite songs put it so well—another piece of her heart.

D
INNERTIME HAD BEEN SET
for five o’clock. Chris assembled with the girls in the big entry hall at four fifty-five to wait for the headmistress. Then they would all process together to the kitchen, where dinner waited on the table. After dinner, the library would be revealed.

The girls had changed into party colors. They all wore some version of sweatpants in dark green or navy blue or bright red, with white or maroon or black sweatshirts, and turtlenecks underneath. On a whim, they’d decided to wear mismatched socks—polka dots with stripes, pink with purple, plaid with checks—and were having fun showing off their choices.

Selena came to stand beside Chris. “You found different clothes? Whose are they?”

“One of the maintenance staff, I guess.” He hitched up the black jeans, which kept sliding down on his hips. “He’s about my height, but maybe thirty pounds heavier.” The Hawkridge sweatshirt—burgundy with a gold hawk emblem over the heart—hung in extra folds around his waist.

She thought for a minute. “That’s probably Mr. Trevino. He’s nice.”

“That’s good.” Chris winked at her. “I’d hate to be wearing a bad guy’s jeans and sweatshirt.” The girls had an apparently endless supply of clothes, and even Jayne had managed to
change pants and shirts most days, but the wardrobe he’d arrived in had gotten too dirty to wear.

Yet another sign that this adventure would be coming to an end. Chris didn’t relish the prospect.

The case clock on the wall beside the front doors chimed five and, at that exact moment, Jayne stepped into the entry hall.

Her eyes widened as she took in their appearance. “You all look wonderful. So festive.” She glanced at the girls’ feet and smiled. “I love the socks.”

But Chris, along with the girls, kept silent, stunned by the change they saw in Tommy herself. The clothes were more or less the same, dark pants and sweater, white sneakers. She’d put on a green turtleneck in place of the standard white one. The indirect glow of their flashlights showed off the creaminess of her skin in contrast to the bright color.

The most startling difference, though, was with her hair. For once the severe ponytail was gone. The mahogany waves floated softly around her face, then fell into glossy curves at her shoulders.

She looks, Chris thought, about ten years younger. They probably never realized that she’s not old, or even middle-aged. She’s still young, and should be living that way.

“Wow, Ms. Thomas.” Beth voiced the words they all were thinking. “You look beautiful!”

“Thank you.” She bowed her head. “Then we all look beautiful together.” She cocked her head as she looked Chris up and down. “Even Mr. Hammond, in his borrowed threads.”

“Are we ready?” Haley had appointed herself the leader of the procession and the other girls had let her have her way. “Line up, everybody.”

“That means two by two,” Chris told Jayne as the students got into place. “You’re beside me at the end.”

She stepped into the designated spot, but didn’t look at him, or smile or say a word.

“We have decided to call this our Peace Day,” Haley announced. “We want to celebrate peace as it exists and create even more peace. Our Peace Day carol is ‘Dona Nobis Pacem.’ Everyone should sing along.”

Chris frowned, trying to translate the Latin.

“‘Give Us Peace,’” Jayne said quietly, just as the girls began to sing.

The quiet words were amplified by the acoustics of the big, two-story entry hall. When the music broke into two parts, and then three, the harmonies echoed all around.

“This is what heaven sounds like,” Chris murmured, to himself as much as Jayne.

“This is why I’m here,” she answered, nodding.

Yolanda and Sarah opened the double doors and Haley led the way into the hall. They all filed into the kitchen and took their places at the table, still singing, with Chris and Jayne entering last.

As the final notes floated away into silence, Jayne clasped her hands under her chin and gazed at the second surprise of the evening. “Oh, my.”

All the flashlights had been set around the perimeter of the kitchen, while the table had been set with candles to light the meal. Around the base of each candle was an arrangement of greenery—pine, mistletoe and cedar sprigs with holly leaves and bright red berries. A sheet of aluminum foil underneath the greens reflected the flickering lights.

“This is beautiful,” she told them. “And so creative. Who needs electricity when we have such elegant and resourceful light?” Then she sniffed the air. “And the food smells fantastic. Let’s eat.”

The food was more delicious than any dinner Chris could remember. Jayne sat beside him, contentment radiating around her like a candle’s glow. The girls still acted like teenagers—there was a certain amount of playing with food and giggling, along with some arguing over who got to pull the wishbones on the birds. They were kids, after all. Kids who loved each other. Kids who were all part of the same family.

He wondered if Jayne wanted children of her own. Working with teenagers all day and then coming home to a baby might be more than she wanted to take on. Especially if her husband wasn’t home every night.

Maybe her husband would have to think about changing jobs.

After the elaborate meal, cleaning up the kitchen took longer than usual, but the girls pitched in with an amazing lack of complaints.

Then Haley resumed her mistress of ceremonies role. “The Peace Tree awaits,” she said. “Follow me.”

A few snorts greeted her dramatic tone. Hurt flared in her face and for a second Chris thought hostilities would break out.

But Jayne stepped up beside her. “Could you sing one more round of ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ as we go in? That was so beautiful.”

As Jayne no doubt knew, no one could carry on a disagreement while singing “Give Us Peace.” The girls fell into their double line again as they crossed the hall into the library.

Chris hadn’t seen the finished project before he went upstairs to change his clothes, so the overall effect surprised him. Jayne stopped still in the doorway and he stood just behind her, taking in the scene as the girls wandered the room admiring their handiwork.

The garlands of pine branches he’d helped wire together were draped across the tall windows, silhouetted against the
silvery light outside. Holly twigs with their berries had been tucked into nooks and crannies all over the room, between books, at the corners of paintings and maps, into vases and decorative pottery. Set on every available table were stainless steel bowls of all sizes—no doubt borrowed from the main kitchen—filled with glittery pinecones and balls of crushed aluminum foil and more holly.

In the center of this splendor stood the Peace Tree. The slender evergreen they’d brought back from the woods had been transformed. Aluminum foil icicles hung from the branches to twinkle in the firelight. Sprays of holly provided touches of red, with more glittery pinecones adding sparkle. The top of the tree held a bird figure fashioned out of foil—a dove in flight, Chris realized, with holly in its mouth instead of an olive branch. A seasonal symbol of peace.

“Terrific,” Chris said, when he’d taken in every detail. “You girls are geniuses. I’m only sorry there aren’t more people able to share your vision and your celebration tonight.”

Jayne, still standing motionless in front of him, hadn’t said a word.

“I think Ms. Thomas is stunned speechless,” he joked. “Did you ever believe you’d see your headmistress without a word to say?” The silence was stretching beyond bearable, and the girls’ faces were beginning to reflect their concerns that something was wrong. He gave Jayne’s shoulder a little nudge.

She jumped, and seemed to wake up. “I’m sorry, I’m just so surprised and amazed and delighted, I was in a trance for a moment there.” Moving into the room, she gave each girl a tight hug. “You all have created something truly beautiful, a celebration coming out of the care you have for each other and, I think, your hopes for the world in which you’ll make your futures. I am immensely proud of all of you. Happy Day of Peace!”

They all returned the salute. “Happy Day of Peace.”

After some time spent talking by the fire, as well as seconds on trifle for everyone, the usual evening rituals resumed. The girls tucked themselves into their bedding and turned their flashlights off so that only the fire lit the room. After such a busy day, Chris figured they’d fall asleep early. Then one more day to play in the snow before—

“Okay, Mr. Hammond, tonight’s the night.” Selena and Beth were sitting up, staring at him. Yolanda had propped herself on one elbow. Taryn, Haley, Sarah and Monique were obviously quite awake.

“Tonight’s the night for…?” He let the phrase trail off, hoping for any answer but the one they gave.

Monique rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. You got us hooked, telling us about a guy who killed the girl he loved. So tonight’s the night we get to find out what happened. And why.”

“We’ve been waiting,” Sarah pointed out.

Selena nodded. “You owe us.”

Chris winced and shook his head. “It’s late. You’re tired. I’m tired.”

“Too bad,” Beth said.