A Holiday to Remember (12 page)

“We might not even be here tomorrow night,” Haley added. “We heard those men who came this morning. If the road gets plowed tomorrow, they’ll probably send trucks up here to take us back where there’s electricity and phones and heat and stuff.”

“Then we’d never know the end.” Taryn sounded pitiful.

“You can’t avoid us by fixing the fire.”

Yolanda had guessed exactly what he was doing. He’d gotten up to put on a couple of logs and then stood poking at them, with his back to the girls, trying to invent an excuse.

Because he no longer had any desire to reveal what had happened that Christmas Eve twelve years ago. Partly
because the events of that night reflected badly on who he had been and what he’d done. And partly because he didn’t want to share with these recovering girls the harsh truths behind those events.

Mostly, though, because he didn’t want to tell Jayne the rest of the story. Not in front of her students. Not until he had a chance to tell her other things that mattered more, now, than the past.

She had taken up her usual seat in the corner of the couch. He looked at her as he sought to escape the trap he’d set up for himself.

Jayne met his eyes, her own fierce but determined. “I think you should finish the story. We all want to know how it ends.”

Chris pulled in a deep breath and blew it out hard.

“Okay.” Taking a chair, he braced his hands on his knees.

“After that night on the mountain, Chase and Juliet grew closer every time they saw each other. The next Christmas, he gave her a necklace with an oval of polished granite made from a stone he’d picked up that night at Little Bear. Juliet never took the necklace off.

“For two years she continued to visit in the summers and winters. They spent as much time alone together as they could, and, uh, fooled around. A lot.”

“‘Fooled around?’ What’s that mean?”

Taryn looked at Monique. “They’re making out. Sucking face. Tonsil hockey. Got it?”

“Well, how’m I supposed to know old-fashioned words like ‘fooled around’?”

“Anyway,” Chris said loudly, to prevent an argument, “the summer Juliet turned seventeen, they made love for the first time.”

Taryn looked at Monique. “Do you need a translation?”

“No.”

With a year left of high school, they couldn’t be together all the time, but they talked about going to the same college, getting married and having a life together with adventures all over the world. The train ride between Philadelphia and New York was only a couple of hours, and Chase started spending weekends in the city, sleeping in a hostel and seeing Juliet whenever she could get away from the house.

The phone calls to Philly and the weekend absences alerted Juliet’s parents to what was going on. Chase’s parents got involved, too, and there was talk about private boarding schools and comments like, “too young to be in love” and “if it’s real, a little separation won’t change anything.” Chase and Juliet didn’t believe that any more than any other teenage couple ever did. They kept trying to be together, but their parents cut back on allowances and credit cards, which made things tough.

Toughest of all was Christmas, when Juliet’s parents refused to let her visit her grandmother. She threatened a hunger strike and retreated to her room, but they kept their word. Chase went to Charlie’s house and moped around for three weeks before going back to Philadelphia. As soon as he could, he tried calling Juliet.

Her number had been changed—something her parents had done to them several times before. Juliet had always called within hours to give him the new number. Chase waited three weeks, but she didn’t call.

So he cut class and went to her school in New York to find her, only to be told by her friends that Juliet had been transferred to a private school. They didn’t know the name, they didn’t know her new phone number and they weren’t sure they could get her a message, but they’d try.

“What is this, like, the Dark Ages?” Monique punched her pillow. “How can they treat kids like that?”

“I’d have run away,” Beth said. “They’d never have found me.”

Chris managed half a grin. “Chase did cut loose from his family, as soon as he graduated from high school. He went to live with Charlie and got himself a job in town—in the same general store he’d caught Juliet stealing from. He figured that when she could get free, she would find him there, where they belonged.”

“Did she come to him?” Jayne asked the question, and they all turned to look at her. “Did she escape New York?”

“The next Christmas,” Chris told her, “Juliet arrived at her grandmother’s house. She called Charlie, and Chase was there within the hour.”

A huge sigh blew through the library as all the girls relaxed.

“What took her so long?” Taryn asked.

“The school they moved Juliet to used drugs to keep her under control,” Chris said. “In a way it does sound like the Dark Ages. She stopped taking the pills, got her brain back and at the first opportunity just walked away with nothing but the clothes she wore.”

Juliet’s parents wanted her back, of course. She would inherit a fortune from her grandmother, and more from her parents, so they wanted to control who she would marry, where she lived and what she did. Chase’s parents had cut off his inheritance, so now he was just a grocery boy trying to marry a rich girl, and that made him completely unacceptable.

“He didn’t care about the money. Chase wanted to get married and start their life of adventure together. But…”

Chris paused a moment, hesitating over the rest.

“What do you mean, ‘but?’” Selena demanded. “How could there be a ‘but’ at this point?”

Nothing to do but go on. “Juliet avoided the idea of getting married,” Chris explained. “She’d been so eager before, but now Chase would ask, and she would say, ‘Yes, yes, someday soon.’ But he couldn’t get her to commit to a definite day.”

She was different in other ways, as well. She was skittish about kisses, about making love. Only if they’d had some wine, or beer, and she was a little drunk—or more than a little—did she relax and become the lover he remembered.

Chris halted when Jayne got up from the sofa. He thought she might be leaving the library, but instead she walked to one of the French doors and stood staring into the snowy garden. She had braced herself, he thought, with her arms crossed over her breasts and her hands close to her face.

He didn’t know how to make what was coming any easier for her.

Christmas Eve, Juliet’s grandmother asked Charlie and Chase to join them for dinner. They had a nice meal and, since it was snowing, Charlie accepted an invitation to spend the night.

Once the grandparents went to bed, Chase sat with Juliet in front of the fire. He put his arms around her, tried to kiss her, but Juliet pulled away.

At this point, Chase—a frustrated teenage male—lost his
temper. “What’s the matter with you? You don’t want me to touch you anymore. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t find you, couldn’t get in contact with you. Is there somebody else?”

“Don’t be stupid.” She was looking out the window at the snow. “There won’t ever be anyone else.”

So Chase went to join her at the window. “Then love me,” he said, not being very bright. He put his arms around Juliet and pulled her into a kiss.

After enduring a moment or two, she exploded out of his hold. “Don’t,” she pleaded, hiding her face in her hands. “Please don’t make me.”

The words, the way she said them, helped Chase grow up between one minute and the next. He recognized real trouble behind Juliet’s actions, and knew he would have to discover the source.

So he said, “Let’s go for a drive.”

They’d done this several times in the past, taken her grandmother’s old convertible out for an evening on the mountain roads…but never in the winter and never in the snow. Still, the suggestion brought a smile to Juliet’s face and that was all that mattered to Chase.

They bundled up in their coats and hats and gloves, lowered the convertible’s roof and sailed down the long driveway. He drove a reasonable speed and he kept his eyes on the road. Juliet stuck to her side of the bench seat, and Chase didn’t even try to hold her hand. He hoped that would make it easier for her to talk to him.

So they rode on through the snowy night and, eventually, Juliet revealed what had happened to her. Last Christmas, in New York, her parents had introduced her to the man they wanted her to marry. He was old, in his thirties. He would take good care of her, they said. All she had to do was be nice to him, let him have his way.

They threw an engagement party, with a Christmas tree in every room. Juliet had been locked in her bedroom until they came to get her to introduce the “happy couple.” But when the door opened, it wasn’t her mother or her father. Her fiancé came in…and he locked the door behind him.

Chris stopped to take several breaths. His heart hammered against his ribs. His hands had clenched into fists and he had to think about relaxing his fingers. Then he continued.

The man raped Juliet. When he finished, he told her parents he would not marry her because she wasn’t a virgin.

When he paused again, the girls didn’t say anything. He shouldn’t have burdened these young women with the grim truth. But he couldn’t stop now.

Chase had pulled off the road—he was too upset to drive. He wanted to kill Juliet’s parents, and the man who had forced her. He hated himself for not being there, for not keeping her safe. And he hated himself for wanting her when she’d been treated so cruelly.

So he started driving again, and this time he wasn’t careful to stay slow and safe. The snow blew like sand across the pavement as they fishtailed around the curves, coasting down the hills and charging up the inclines. Snowflakes stung their cheeks and burned their eyes, and the speedometer crept higher. Juliet didn’t ask him to stop. She laughed and shrieked and urged him on.

Until, of course, he made a mistake. Chase rounded a blind corner in the other lane and looked up into the headlights of an oncoming car. He braked, slid and jerked the wheel. The convertible bucked and went onto the shoulder of the road, through the guardrail and straight down the side of the mountain.

“Chase woke up in the hospital a week later. He had been thrown clear of the convertible, which burst into flames. Juliet’s body had burned to ash in the car.”

Chris stirred in his chair and cleared his throat. “So there you go. That’s how he killed the girl he loved. Not a very cheerful story for Peace Day. But you asked for the end.”

Around him, the girls had all dissolved into tears at some point during the story. Now, as the tears dried, the questions and comments started.

“Did she come back to haunt him?”

“I hope he went to New York and got even with her parents and the rapist.”

“Maybe we could have a séance and contact her spirit.”

“Why weren’t they wearing their seat belts?”

“Then they both would’ve burned up. That’d be worse.”

“I wonder if he ever found another girlfriend.”

They looked to him for answers, but Chris just shrugged his shoulders. The girls talked quietly about the story for a while, but sleep captured all of them soon enough.

Only then did he look over at Jayne. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t even breathed, so far as he could tell, since the last time
he’d glanced her way. He stood up from his chair and took a step in her direction.

She put up a hand, signaling for him to stop, and came to him instead. He tried to read her face, but she was keeping every emotion locked away.

“I need some time,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t follow me.”

Her footsteps sounded in the hall. Chris heard a door brush across the floor, and the click as it closed again, with Jayne on the other side.

Now she knew everything. Did she believe him?

Did she remember?

I
N THE STOREROOM,
Jayne pulled on her coat and boots. Then she went outside.

With the full moon like a lantern overhead, she followed the girls’ tracks through the snow around to the front of the manor. Past the front steps, lines of footsteps squiggled in all directions across the lawn, like a bizarre map carved into white stone. She smiled, thinking of the games she’d watched the girls play out here, chasing each other and floundering though the snow. A host of angels lay off to one side. Three snow folks stood sentry on the other.

She reached a point where the students had all turned back. One set of prints continued forward, however, and those she followed, stepping where Chris had stepped because it made the walking easier. Although he’d wandered a bit, looking at the cottages for guests and teachers, Jayne had no doubt about his final destination. Big boot prints on her lavender front porch confirmed her assumption. Chris had been inside her house.

Leaving her boots outside, as he probably had, Jayne walked through the rooms she’d lived in for almost three
years now. With windows on all sides, the house was never completely dark unless she drew the drapes, and tonight the snow reflected bright moonlight through every pane. She didn’t expect to see any damage, or find anything taken, didn’t have many possessions beyond her books that someone else would want. A teacher’s life rarely offered luxury, and that’s all she’d lived.

At least, all she remembered living.

In the bedroom, she knelt by the bed and pulled a plastic storage box out from underneath the four-poster. The plastic was stiff with cold, so it took a minute to work the top off.

Inside were papers relating to her grandmother’s death, the sale of her house and land, the small insurance policy she’d left and the few investments she’d owned. One file folder contained photographs Elizabeth Jayne Thomas had kept on her wall. A yellowed snapshot showed a smiling family of four—dad, mom, daughter, son—posed on the porch of a suburban home. Mother and daughter shared the same reddish-brown curls and hazel eyes as had Elizabeth Jayne before her hair went completely white. Dad and son had been sandy-haired, with dark brown eyes.

This was the family Jayne had grown up knowing, had mourned and longed for. She’d cried with her grandmother on the anniversaries of their deaths. There was a wedding shot of the parents, baby photos of the son and daughter. All babies look pretty much the same.

Jayne set the pictures aside and lifted out a small cedar chest, the kind popular in gift shops throughout the Smoky Mountains. This one had rested on Elizabeth Jayne’s dresser, never opened in Jayne’s presence. She’d gone through the trinkets after her grandmother’s death and found nothing of real value, nothing she wanted to wear in remembrance. But
she hadn’t been ready to throw out her grandmother’s treasures, either. So she’d tucked the box away.

Now she fingered past the gold-filled chains, the ceramic flower pins and faux pearl earrings, the crystal bead bracelets. The object of her search lay at the bottom, in a corner, hidden by shadows and the absence of lamplight. But Jayne found it by touch—cold, smooth, flat—and pulled it out.

This pendant had puzzled her because of its uniqueness. An oval piece of polished granite had little in common with the rest of Elizabeth Jayne’s jewelry. And now she knew why.

Chris had given this pendant, on its chain, to Juliet. Elizabeth Jayne had hidden the pendant and called the girl who wore it Jayne. Jayne Thomas.

“Are you all right?” The glare of a flashlight filled the room.

She shrieked and dropped the stone. “What are you doing here?” Scrambling to her feet, she stared at the man standing in the doorway to her bedroom. “I told you not to follow me.”

“When I realized you’d gone outside, I got worried.”

“You’ve left the girls alone, exactly what I didn’t want to happen.” She’d lost control of her voice, which sounded high and squeaky.

“Settle down. I woke Sarah and she said she’d keep watch while we were gone.”

With her eyes squeezed shut, Jayne struggled to regain some sense of balance and self-possession. “You don’t have the right to walk into my house uninvited.” Then she laughed. “Of course, that didn’t stop you the first time.”

“I’m trying to help you, Jayne.”

She opened her eyes to glare at him. “Why keep up the pretense? You’ve been waiting for this moment all week, haven’t you? Call me by the right name—call me Juliet.”

Taking a step toward her, he said, “You remember?”

“No. I don’t remember any more than I ever did. But here’s your proof.” She bent to pick up the pendant and held it out in the palm of her shaking hand. “It’s what you wanted. Proof.”

He kept his hands in his coat pockets. “Yes, I’d say that is the stone I gave Juliet. She never took it off. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” Pushing past him, she hurried through the house. She would have rushed out into the snow but she had to stop and put her boots on. So of course Chris caught up with her before she’d finished. And since he hadn’t bothered to take his boots off, he walked beside her when she stepped off the porch.

“But what do you
think
happened?” he asked again.

The cold air and clear sky poured a bit of calm into her mind. “I can only guess. Maybe she…I…wandered away into the woods. Elizabeth Jayne found me, realized I didn’t remember anything and…and adopted me.”

“You said you woke up from a coma.”

“That’s what she told me.” She stopped without warning, letting him walk on, getting some distance between them. “Don’t you see, all I know is what she told me?”

He turned back, and they stared at each other in the moonlight. Finally, Chris took a deep breath. “It’s hard to accept that Juliet could be alive and not know me. Not remember
us.
I’ve lost the best part of my past.”

“It’s hard to understand how someone could pretend to love and care for me and be lying to me with every word.” She opened her hands in a helpless gesture, then let them fall to her sides. “I’ve lost the only past I knew.”

She started walking again, and they continued back to the
manor together. “The girls do not need to know about this,” she warned as they passed the walls of Emmeline’s garden. “You’ve told them too much as it is.”

They reached the side door, and she paused to look at him before going in. She couldn’t read his face, couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“I will continue to use Jayne Thomas as my name, whatever the facts might be.”

He tilted his head. “I didn’t expect anything else.”

His simple comment told her the final truth—Chris wanted Juliet, not Jayne. Even if his Juliet no longer existed.

“Well, then we’ve reached the end of the story, haven’t we? The mystery is solved, the pieces put together and everybody’s satisfied.” Swallowing tears, Jayne pushed open the door and entered the hallway.

“Not by a long shot,” Chris muttered, following.

A
FTER TENDING THE FIRE,
Chris went back to the infirmary to sleep that night. Being stretched out on a hard bed was more restful than trying to sleep curled up in an armchair.

Besides, he had thinking to do, thinking that wouldn’t be encouraged by having Jayne just across the room. She’d taken a real blow tonight. Finding out she’d been raped, and hearing the account of their crash down the mountain, would have been enough of a shock, without discovering the lies her “grandmother” had given her as memories.

He wanted to talk about all of this with Jayne, wanted to hold her while she sorted through the lies and the truths of the last twelve years. Together they could reconstruct the past, and then leave it behind as they went ahead with the rest of their lives. Together.

As soon as he’d seen her, on her knees in the bedroom of
the lavender cottage, he’d recognized the barriers she’d erected between them, like a snow fort with walls a foot thick. He’d need a battering ram to break through.

Unfortunately, he’d already done all the battering his conscience would allow. He’d been so stupidly sure of himself, busting in and planning to force Jayne Thomas to admit her true identity. All he’d thought about was what
he
deserved, regardless of the cost to Jayne.

So now he had the truth, and he
deserved
every bit of it. Juliet hadn’t died that night. She was alive and well and living in Ridgeville. And she didn’t remember him at all. How about that for a twist of fate?

With the skimpy pillow twisted under his head and the blankets twisted around his body, Chris finally fell into an uneasy sleep. In general, he rarely remembered his dreams, but on this night he revisited the accident over and over again, each time waking up as he was tossed out of the car. He came to rest in different places—against a tree, in a deep, violent river, on the rocks of the mountainside. And every time Juliet glided past him, just out of reach. Finally, as the first light of dawn outlined the treetops with silver, Chris fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Only seconds later, or so it seemed, he sat straight up in bed, awakened by the loud, angry ring of a telephone.

T
HE SHRILL NOISE,
after days of silence and a night without sleep, didn’t make sense at first. After three rings, Jayne remembered how to answer the phone.

When she said goodbye and hung up, she turned to find seven expectant faces gathered around her.

Sarah spoke for them all. “The phone works?”

Jayne nodded. “That was Deputy Greeley. The snowplow
will be here by noon, and the drive should be clear before dark.” She took a deep breath. “We can load into one of the vans and drive down to Ridgeville in time for dinner.”

The festival of rejoicing lasted through breakfast and kitchen cleanup.

“Our last day of oatmeal,” Monique crowed. “Tomorrow morning, it’s bacon and eggs with all the trimmings.”

“I’m taking a two-hour bath.” Beth closed her eyes in contemplation. “With bubbles up to my nose.”

“Not if I get to the tub first,” Selena teased.

“I’ll throw you for it.” Beth held up a hand. “One, two, three.” A fast game of Rock, Paper, Scissors left Beth the undisputed title of First Bather.

“Can we call home?” Sarah asked. “I think my parents are worried.”

“Everyone can make a ten-minute call this morning,” Jayne told them. “We’ll go in reverse alphabetical order.”

Yolanda smiled on her way to the phone. “Thanks.”

Jayne was at the kitchen table with her third cup of coffee, still timing phone calls, when Chris came in.

“We’re reunited with civilization, I gather.” His voice sounded even rougher than usual. When he sat down facing her, he looked tired. “Is there more good news?”

She told him the arrangements for the day. “You can take one of the school cars and go to your grandfather’s house. I know you must be worried about him.”

Chris acknowledged the point with a shrug. “I’ll be glad to see him.” He took a long swig of coffee. “Where will you and the girls stay?”

“Good question. I’ll call the hotel when the phone is free to see if they have enough rooms for tonight. Or to make a dinner reservation, at least.” She smiled, hoping to spark an answer
ing grin from him. “Nobody is cooking this evening, if I can help it.”

His mouth twitched, then curved slightly. “I’m thinking about a medium-rare steak, myself. Nothing that resembles a stew.”

“Or soup.”

“Or a sandwich of any kind.” His eyes had brightened, and Jayne felt some of the life come back into her own spirit.

“I guess you’re still responsible for these hellions,” he said, nodding at Taryn on the phone with her grandfather. Holding the receiver to her ear, the girl heard Chris’s comment and stuck her tongue out at him.

“Unless all their families show up to take them away tonight.” The thought depressed her. “We’ve still got two weeks of vacation left before classes start again. Some of them might go home, but I suspect several will stay.”

Chris set his mug down with a clank. “Will there ever come a time when you aren’t in charge? When you only have to consider yourself?”

She didn’t know where his anger came from, but her temper sparked in response. “What else do I have? Where else would I go?”

At that moment, Taryn hung up the phone and turned around. “What do we do now?”