A Holiday to Remember (7 page)

He followed. “Mine was an innocent enough question.”

“Oh, please. Anyone with an awareness of modern Western civilization knows that schools and libraries and all sorts of institutions walk a fine line during the holidays. No matter what we do, someone will be unhappy.”

“But this is little ol’ Ridgeville, where there’s a church on every other corner. I wouldn’t expect you to have that kind of problem.”

“As this morning demonstrated, however, we do. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

He caught her wrist as she turned away. “From what Sarah said, this ‘bah, humbug’ policy is new. I’m guessing it’s a
change you installed when you took over. What have you, personally, got against Christmas?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” If only she could maintain her poise as he stared at her.

“I don’t believe you. Did you only get coal in your stocking as a kid?”

“We had very nice Christmases, thank you.” She jerked her arm, trying to break free of his grip. “Let me go.”

“Eventually.” Instead, though, he backed up until he could sit on the third step of the marble staircase circling up to the second floor. And then he drew her close, and closer, until she could choose to stand between his knees or sit beside him. After last night, Jayne chose to sit, with several inches of marble between them.

“So tell me about what your family did for Christmas.” Chris had turned toward her on the stair and was watching her face. “What kinds of special rituals did you follow?”

“I don’t recall anything special. My family wasn’t particularly…religious. We bought presents and a tree. That was it.”

“What kind of decorations? Live tree or artificial?”

She’d come up against that blank wall in her mind again. “I really don’t remember. It wasn’t important.”

“Oh, come on, Jayne. Everybody remembers Christmas, if they get it. Santa Claus and reindeer and cookies. Carols and colored lights. Dancing snowmen. What’s your favorite?”

“I don’t know!” She jerked hard, just as he let go of her wrist, and the momentum sent her staggering to her feet. With her cheeks burning and her eyes tearing she scurried to the office doorway, shut herself inside and locked the door.

Then she threw herself down on the sofa and buried her face in her arms.

Why, why,
why
couldn’t she remember?

C
HRIS PUT ON THE SAME
clothes for the third day in a row and went down to the kitchen to check on the girls’ cleanup job. Sarah must have gotten after them because the place looked crumb-free and neat enough even for Jayne Thomas.

Juliet Radcliffe had not been much for housekeeping.

The contrast didn’t shake his conviction, however. Juliet had become Jayne, sometime after that disastrous Christmas Eve, the last time he saw her. And Jayne couldn’t remember holidays with her make-believe family because she’d never had one. She should remember the penthouse apartment she’d told him about, the silver-trimmed artificial trees her parents rolled out of storage every year, the champagne-and-cocaine-fueled parties for Manhattan celebrities.

He could understand wanting to block those memories. But why not remember him, and Charlie and the grandmother she’d come to care about? Why create a complete fiction?

“Oh, hi.” Beth hesitated in the kitchen doorway. “Where’s Tommy?”

“Tommy? Is there another guy around here I don’t know about? Can he lend me some clothes?”

She grinned. “Tommy is Ms. Thomas’s nickname. We only call her that when she can’t hear us.”

“You think she doesn’t know?”

The girl winked at him. “I think she wants us to think she doesn’t know.”

“I think you’re right. Well, Tommy went to get dressed. And maybe take a breather from the responsibility for you young witches.”

Again, she surprised him. “The only witch is Taryn, the pagan. I’m just Jewish.”

“Right. What do you think about Christmas decorations?”

She shrugged. “I can cope. It’s not like I’ve never heard the
Christmas story. And my uncle married a Christian.” She whistled and shook her head. “Boy, were Nana and Poppi mad. But she’s part of the family, and her kids celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. Big deal.”

“Then you should help with the negotiations. Maybe somehow you girls can come up with a compromise that makes everybody happy.”

“Except Yolanda. She’ll never give in.”

“What’s her problem?”

Wrong question. Beth literally backed up, into the hallway. “One of the rules here is that we don’t talk about other girls. I gotta go find the crossword book I want before somebody else steals it.” A second later she vanished into the library, leaving Chris with the proverbial egg on his face.

Not being a puzzle man himself, he didn’t intend to spend the morning in the library, dutifully playing word games or piecing together edges. He’d already brought in enough firewood to handle a month-long blizzard. With the computers down and his cameras at Charlie’s, his professional outlets had been blocked.

So he went for another walk in the snow, wearing boots that were still damp. Heading away from the manor and the tangled trails of yesterday’s play, he forged a new path through the snow toward a cluster of cottages set at a distance from the main house. Yesterday, Jayne had told him they were originally used as quarters for a few superior servants, but the small houses now offered accommodation for guests and teachers at Hawkridge School.

The bright colors of the buildings—pink, blue, yellow and even lavender—made quite a contrast with the brilliant white of the snow, the dark green of the pines and spruces, garlanded with more snow, and the gray and black tracings of leafless
tree branches. His fists clenched with the hunger for a camera. He wasn’t used to taking pretty landscape shots, but the beauty of this setting begged to be preserved.

Years spent in the dirty snow of big cities and the sparsely forested Asian battlefields had left him empty, Chris realized. He’d forgotten how much he loved these mountains, in winter and summer. Forgotten, too, the pleasure of being with Charlie, who offered love and acceptance without making demands. And in forgetting, Chris had almost left it too late. The doctors had given Charlie less than a year to live.

As he trekked past the lavender cottage, Chris noticed a plaque on the post of the small front porch. Out of curiosity, he detoured to read the three lines on the sign: Jayne Thomas, Headmistress, The Hawkridge School.

“Well, well.” From the sign, he took two strides across the porch to the front door, and was not surprised to find it unlocked. Security around this school was haphazard at best.

He left his boots in the snow and stepped inside wearing only his socks, despite the frigid temperature. Without central heat, the house was nearly as cold as the outdoors. The small entry hall offered entrance to a living room on the right and a dining room on the left, both sized to host a faculty party or a parent reception. Identical mantels graced the fireplace of each room, constructed with marble matching the stone of the staircase in the manor. The furniture complemented the age of the house, with late Victorian mahogany curves, seat covers in purple velvet, lots of thickly framed mirrors, and paintings of overblown flowers. Chris doubted this setting would have been Jayne’s personal choice.

The doorway at the end of the entry hall led into a modernized kitchen left undecorated by its current user. Not even a dishcloth occupied the countertop. The den on the right
offered leather chairs and wall-to-wall bookshelves with a TV cabinet in the center. The remaining walls were paneled and bare. Jayne had hung no photographs of any kind, as if she had no friends or family or pets. Surely she had pictures of her life at some point. Surely she’d traveled, studied, visited…something?

On the other side of the kitchen, a hallway led to a bathroom tiled in lavender, with plain white towels on the racks, but no lotions or perfumes on display. Ignoring his conscience, Chris opened the medicine cabinet to discover pain relievers, dental floss, toothpaste and toothbrush. Nothing personal. Nothing intimate.

Did Jayne Thomas exist at all?

Lavender walls shadowed the bedroom, but a white spread on the antique bed reflected light. A white blanket was folded neatly at the foot, with white pillowcases and sheets at the opposite end. Searching for color, Chris went through the chest of drawers, where navy blue proved a recurring theme for sweaters, turtlenecks and socks. In the closet, navy and black slacks and denim jeans hung beside navy dresses, black skirts and matching jackets, with matching shoes on the floor. The room was perfectly neat, perfectly clean. Practically empty.

Finally he sat down at the dressing table, an elegant piece with an oval mirror, a curved front and inlaid top and drawers. A silver brush, comb and hand mirror lay diagonally across the polished wood. EJT were the initials on the back of the mirror and the brush, in an old-fashioned script with the large
T
indicating the last name.

Chris blew out a long breath as if he’d run a race. He’d gleaned a single piece of information—the
E
would belong to her “grandmother.” What else could he learn?

The center drawer contained handkerchiefs, starched and
ironed to a knife edge, embroidered with EJT. Under them lay a church bulletin. His hand shook as he picked it up.

“Village Methodist Church. Memorial Service for Elizabeth Jayne Thomas. July 14, 1992.” Inside, the order of service listed hymns, Bible passages and a “Message of Hope.” At the close of the service, Ms. Jayne Thomas invited the mourners to a reception at her grandmother’s home on Mica Road.

“Hallelujah!” In his excitement, Chris barely avoided clutching the paper in his fist. Now he had a town, names and an address. He could—

Halfway out of the chair, he remembered he couldn’t really do much of anything, trapped as he was by three feet of snow on the road. Sliding the bulletin back where he found it, he looked through the other drawers, where Jayne kept her lotions, a perfume called Tryst, of which he very much approved, and her plain cotton underwear, bras and panties.

He remembered Juliet’s preference for wild prints and scanty styles. But he didn’t doubt anymore.

The information he’d gained would be useful as he tried to pry Jayne from the colorless, featureless present she currently occupied. Someone—maybe Elizabeth Jayne, the so-called grandmother—had tried to create a past. Had she died before she could help Jayne develop a present?

And who would be helping Jayne shape her future?

Despite his injured shoulder, Chris had taken a snow shovel to the front staircase of the Manor. While the girls stayed inside, he’d cleared the individual treads and a wide section of the terrace at the top.

Now Jayne sat on one of the bare steps, watching the girls play in the late-afternoon sunlight.

“They’re like bees out there, buzzing from one place to the other.” Chris dropped down beside her. “What do you suppose they’re talking about?”

“If I had to bet, I’d say Christmas.” She gave him a sidelong glance that expressed more than a trace of the morning’s irritation. “Thanks to you.”

“That’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“At least they aren’t fighting…. Wait, I spoke too soon.” An argument had broken out between Yolanda and Taryn. The snow figure Taryn had been working on for the last hour lost its head. Then Yolanda got a fistful of snow in the face.

Jayne started to stand, but Chris grabbed her arm. “Let them settle it.”

“They’re more likely to embroil the rest of the girls in a full-scale war.” She stood up too quickly and her feet imme
diately slid out from beneath her, so she sat down hard again, with the edge of a step in her back.

Or there would have been if Chris hadn’t put his arm between her and the sharp stone.

She pivoted toward him even as she heard his hiss of pain. “Are you okay?” Leaning forward, she helped him ease his arm out from behind her. “Did I break the bone?”

He grinned. “You aren’t that heavy. Anyway, this coat’s pretty thick. I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” And she was—more than fine, in fact, as she sat with her knees pressed into Chris’s side, her hand on his thigh and his shoulder firm against her chest. His face was only a few inches away, close enough to show her the flecks of icy-white and coal-black in those bright blue eyes, the heavy texture of his thick lashes, the surprising smoothness of his skin beneath the stubble. “You’re going to have a regular beard before the snow clears,” she murmured.

“How do you feel about that?” His voice rumbled along her nerves, to fingertips and toes and deep into her belly.

Why did he care why she cared? “I—”

“Ms. Thomas!” The shout jerked her awake like a splash of frigid water.

“Coming!” She surged to her feet with no clumsiness at all and started toward the huddle of girls in the snow.

Striding along the cleared path to the lawn, then sidestepping down the slope, Jayne indulged in a silent rant. Either Yolanda or Taryn had probably drawn blood by now, because they weren’t being properly supervised by the one person they’d been taught to depend on.

How could she have made so many stupid mistakes all at once? Forgetting her dignity, ignoring her responsibilities,
abandoning her principles—she must be losing her mind. Because of Chris Hammond.

Taking a deep breath, she broke through the huddle of students. “Okay, let’s just calm down…”

But Yolanda and Taryn were still on their feet, side by side. In the center of the ring of girls was Sarah, kneeling beside Haley, who sat on the ground with her arm cradled against her.

Jayne knelt on her other side. “What happened?”

Haley raised a tearstained face. “I slipped and fell backward. Now my arm hurts.”

Holding back a sigh at the child’s overreaction, Jayne put a hand on Haley’s knee. “Does anything else hurt? Your legs? Your back? Your head?” Haley shook her head three times, and Jayne smiled. “Good. We’ll help you up, and then I’ll walk you inside—”

Haley shook her head again. “I can’t walk.”

Alarm fluttered in Jayne’s chest. “You said your legs don’t hurt.”

“But when I move, my arm hurts really, really bad. Maybe Mr. Hammond could carry me?”

Jayne choked back a chuckle. “Mr. Hammond has his own hurt shoulder, remember? And he’s already overextended himself shoveling the steps. I think Sarah and I can help you walk without too much pain for your arm. Let’s give it a try.”

Haley took the suggestion badly and sobbed most of the way to the stairs, then shrieked with each minor jolt as they ascended to the terrace. Chris held the door open and shut it when the last girl got inside.

Haley stopped them all in the center of the entry hall. Staring up at the second floor, she whined, “Do I have to climb all those steps?”

Jayne fought back a roll of her eyes. “Let’s look at your arm first. Maybe you don’t need the infirmary.”

Sarah herded the other girls underneath the staircase and toward the storeroom to take off their coats. Jayne led Haley into the office. “I’ll help you slip out of your coat and gloves and then see what we’ve got.”

What they had, she saw at once, was more complicated than she’d hoped. Haley’s wrist was swollen and red.

“You’ve definitely got a bruise,” she said, touching the skin gently with one finger. “Possibly a sprain.” She glanced at Chris over her shoulder. “What do you think?”

He crouched in front of Haley. His blunt fingers, handling the childish wrist, seemed gentle and sure. “I’d say definitely a sprain.” Looking up into Haley’s tear-streaked face, he smiled. “I think ice is what we need. Fortunately, we’ve got mountains full of the stuff.”

The resulting giggle surprised Jayne. She would never have gotten such a reaction. But then, Chris Hammond’s smile was a powerful force, as she knew all too well.

“A great idea,” she said. “I’ll walk you down to the kitchen.”

Haley sniffed again. “Could you help me, Mr. Hammond?”

He straightened up and took a step back.
“I’m
going to fetch a bucket of snow. I suspect Tommy…er, Ms. Thomas will take good care of you. She knows where everything is.” Avoiding her glare at his use of the forbidden nickname, he sidled out the office door.

Half an hour later, Haley had been settled into one of the soft leather chairs nearest the fireplace, with her feet on an equally soft ottoman and the injured arm wrapped in a towel within plastic bags of snow. A mug of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies sat within reach of her good hand. Taryn lounged on the floor on one side of the ottoman, Selena on
the other. The rest of the girls were cozily arranged near the hearth, enjoying the fire’s warmth and the sweet snack as blue shadows crept across the snow beyond the window at Jayne’s shoulder.

Haley set her mug down and looked across at Chris, who was straddling his usual chair. “Tell us more of the story, Mr. Hammond.”

Jayne cleared her throat. “I believe that should be a request, not a royal order. And perhaps now isn’t the best time.”

“Please, would you tell us more, Mr. Hammond?” Haley’s voice could scarcely be heard above the pleas of the others joining in.

And Chris, damn him, was happy to oblige. “I’ll make this installment short, since dinnertime isn’t too far away.”

“I’ll start cooking,” Jayne said, heading for the library door. An adolescent romance was the last thing she wanted to think about. In fact, she would prefer to avoid thoughts of romance altogether.

But the girls protested her departure. “You can sit here,” Sarah said, scooting toward the middle of the couch and patting the end cushion. “There’s plenty of room. And this is a warm spot.”

Jayne couldn’t refuse the sweet invitation. “Just don’t blame me when you get hungry.” She made a show of getting comfortable, then looked at the man across the carpet. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The gleam in his eye told her he knew she didn’t want to stay. And why. “Very good. I think we’d reached the point where Juliet had come back to the mountains for the summer.”

“And she and Chase were going to have all kinds of adventures,” Haley interjected.

“Exactly. Juliet managed to get away from her grandmother’s house almost every day without letting anyone know where she
would be spending time. And since he couldn’t think of anything else to do, Chase included her in his explorations.”

Three summers and winters passed as Chase and Juliet grew from kids into teenagers. During the Christmas holidays they played in the snow, skiing and sledding and building forts for snowball fights. Summers were long but not lazy. They paddled Charlie’s canoe in nearby creeks and streams, and hiked as many of the park trails as they could reach on bicycles.

On hot days, they swam in the pond behind Charlie’s house or in the reservoir that gave Ridgeville its water. All kinds of berries came into season and they picked their share, along with apples, peaches and pears. Charlie paid them to weed his garden, and the money bought them tickets to the only movie theater in town. After they ate dinner with Charlie, Chase would bike home with Juliet. The first time, she introduced him to the German shepherds, Helga and Gretchen, who turned out to be big babies when they knew you.

Most nights, after Juliet went into the house for dinner with her grandmother, she came back to the woods inside the big iron gate, where Chase waited with the dogs. They spent the evening hours climbing trees or watching the stars wheel across the mountain sky. Sometimes they talked, but they were good enough friends that they didn’t have to say a word.

On the first night of August in the year they both turned fifteen, they were lying on their backs in the grass, watching stars pop into the sky.

“I have to go home next week,” Juliet said, and sighed. “School starts the sixteenth.”

“That sucks.” Chase couldn’t think of the words to ex
press how much he would hate seeing her leave. So he said as little as possible.

She threw a stone into the air and caught it again. “I think we should do something really fantastic first.”

“Like what?”

“Bungee jumping.”

He snorted. “Who wants to take a dive and not hit the water? That’s dumb.”

“Okay. Parachuting?”

“Costs a hundred dollars, at least. I don’t have it, if you do. Anyway, you have to be eighteen or twenty-one or something.”

“Oh.” After a minute, she turned on her side to face him. “Then I think we should spend a night outdoors.”

This time he shrugged. “That’s no big deal. I sleep on Charlie’s porch all the time.”

“Not in town, stupid. I think we should climb up into the mountains and spend the night there.”

He rolled over to look at her. “You’re crazy.”

That comment only made her more determined. By the end of the argument, Chase had agreed only because Juliet threatened to go without him. He knew Charlie would kill him if he let her go alone.

Of course, he also knew he should tell Charlie about the plan and let his granddad put a stop to it. But Chase wasn’t a chicken or a snitch. Anyway, he could handle himself in the woods. They’d be safe enough, and he’d have a great adventure to take back to school with him in the fall.

With plenty of provisions in their backpacks and a casual goodbye to his granddad, they set off that morning as if it was any other day. Leaving their bikes locked to the rack at the ranger’s station, they took the trail headed for
the summit of Little Bear, where they’d decided to spend the night. The day was standard for the Blue Ridge Mountains in summer—a cool mist hung over them all morning as they hiked the steep path. When they stopped for lunch at a scenic overlook, they couldn’t see ten feet past the edge of the wall.

“I hope it clears soon.” Juliet finished her sandwich and tossed the wrapper into the trash can. “Two points for me. If we get nothing but fog we might as well have stayed in the valley.”

“It’ll clear,” Chase said, with more confidence than he felt. He threw his potato-chip bag at the can…and missed.

“I win.” Juliet grinned, picked up his bag and threw it away. “Let’s get moving.”

Shaking his head, Chase followed her. He wondered if he would ever be cool. Would Juliet still like him if he never was?

The clouds began to lift about an hour later. Soon the sun shone warm and bright, giving them great views of the blue mountains and the green valleys below. Juliet took off the sweater she’d worn in the chilly morning, revealing a short black tank top that hugged her curves and showed more bare female skin than Chase had ever seen, even in her bathing suit. He took off his sweatshirt, too, but he couldn’t be sure whether it was the sun or Juliet that had warmed him up.

At three-thirty, they reached a level spot with a stone bench set against the mountain, and a walled overlook revealing a straight drop down for a thousand feet.

“Listen to this.” Juliet stood in front of the sign posted above the trail marker. “The remainder of the Little Bear Trail requires climbing as well as hiking, going up and coming down. Do not attempt to reach the summit unless you are comfortable with vertical heights and can use
your arms to support your weight.” She turned to Chase. “Sounds awesome.”

“Sounds hard. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You think you can climb better than me?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t back down this time.

Juliet laughed and nodded. “Okay, you probably can. But I’ll be okay. Let’s go.”

Before he could stop her, she strode up the path and around a bend, leaving him no option but to follow.

“That sign wasn’t kidding,” she panted, a bit farther on. They were finding roots and rocks with their hands to help pull them up the trail. “Too bad we’ve already been hiking all day.”

He knew she was getting tired. And he’d noticed storm clouds gathering on top of the higher mountains. “Let’s turn around, Juli. We don’t want to spend the night in the rain.”

“I thought we would find a cave.” She ignored the suggestion to stop.

After a flatter section gave them a chance to catch their breath, they came to the next climb, which looked absolutely vertical.

Staring up, Chase shook his head. “Not worth it at this point in the day. And there’s not enough shelter here to stay the night. We’re going back.” He started walking down the way they’d just come.

“You can be a wuss if you want to. I’m not.”

He jerked around and saw Juliet already ten feet up the climb. “Damn it, Juli. Why can’t you just give in?”

She didn’t answer, but kept climbing. As Chase stood at the bottom, gathering his own energy to make the effort, a softball-size rock came hurtling at his head.

“Hey,” he cried, looking up. “Watch out—”