Bring Me Home for Christmas (19 page)

She thought of the way his arms felt around her, how it felt to have him say he loved her and she held her tongue. “What kind of a house do you think about, Denny?”

“There are lots of houses on big plots around here. But there’s also the houses Paul Haggerty builds. I’ll take you out to Jack and Mel’s one of these days—they have an awesome house on a few acres, and from his front porch you can see forever. He helped build it. That kept the cost down. I’d like to do that—help build my house.” He laughed. “I guess the answer is, I don’t know. I haven’t gotten serious about it yet. But you make me want to get serious.”

Contents

Twelve

The homework club grew to seven kids, about three of whom could have led the class. Danielle, Christopher and Juliet were all ahead of their age groups. But Megan, Maron, Mary and Zoe needed a little extra help. Coincidentally, Megan and Maron were both in the same third-grade class and had the very same issues—very little encouragement, a lot of negative reinforcement, low self-esteem and little confidence.

Becca looked forward to their club every day.

Ellie asked her to help out with organizing the nativity pageant with the children for Christmas Eve, and they met on the weekend afternoons—Mary and Joseph, three shepherds, three wise men and a slew of little angels. She couldn’t be sure she’d be available for more than one rehearsal, but she couldn’t resist. Besides, Megan was going to be Mary! That in itself had done so much for the girl’s confidence.

On Friday, the splint came off, the stitches came out and the splint was replaced with a soft, removable boot. “You can get the foot wet now,” the doctor said. “But I discourage showers. If you lose your balance and put weight on the foot, you could be back where you started. And that’s if you’re lucky!”

He told her to move her ankle, though. No weight on it, but she was instructed to pretend to write the alphabet with her pointed big toe. A. B. C. And so on.

“That hurts!” she said.

“It’s just stiff and sore. It’ll loosen up. Do it five or six times a day. It’ll save you a lot of heartache and physical therapy. Am I going to see you again or are you headed home to San Diego?”

She glanced at Denny. “I’m going to hang around. For a little while. Maybe another week, anyway. I’m helping with the Christmas pageant.”

She couldn’t miss the gleam in Denny’s beautiful brown eyes.

Becca was making her way down to the church for Saturday-afternoon pageant rehearsal when she spotted a familiar car parked in front of the bar. A late-model BMW. Standing beside it was Doug. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his black London Fog dress coat. She could see his shiny black shoes, all mucked up from the mud and melting snow in the street. He wore a red turtleneck and gray wool slacks—he looked so classy and professional.

She slowly made her way to him. “Should I be surprised to see you?” she asked him.

“Let me take you home, Becca. We can talk on the drive. I’ll stay in San Diego for a few days to give us time to sort things out.”

She shook her head. “I’m not ready to go home, Doug. And there’s nothing to sort out. I think what we have, if we want it, is a casual friendship.”

“I’m not interested in that,” he said. “We talked about marriage! We deserve another chance.”

“It was the talk about marriage that forced my hand, Doug. I felt that coming. I knew I wasn’t going to say yes. I had to figure out why.”

“And did you?”

She nodded solemnly.

He grimaced and looked away. He looked back at her. “Have you been drugged or something? Because there was never a hint of this!”

“I think maybe there were lots of hints, but you were a little too busy making plans to notice. I’m sorry you came so far for nothing. Really. Sorry for all the inconvenience. And for your messed-up plans.”

He shook his head. “You turned out to be so completely different than I thought you were.”

“I did, didn’t I? I’m not going to apologize for that.” She backed away a little bit. “Drive very carefully down the mountain. The roads can be slick.”

He stepped toward her and, in a purposely controlled and lowered voice, he said, “Becca, you can’t really choose this hick dump over Cape Cod! Before you know it, you’ll be wearing denim jackets, plaid skirts, combat boots and your hair in braids!”

She smiled tolerantly. “And you’d be embarrassed to take me with you to the Presidential Inauguration. I have to go, Doug. I’m on my way to the church to help them with the children’s Christmas pageant.”

With that, she began to move slowly toward the church. She heard him behind her as the car door opened and closed, the ignition turned and the car moved down the street.

She heard the thud of feet approach her and she looked over her shoulder to see Denny catching up to her. “That him?” he asked.

She nodded, then resumed walking.

“You sent him away?” he asked.

“Of course. That’s over. Completely and totally. It wasn’t that much to start with.”

“He drove all the way up here to try to convince you it was something.”

“He’s used to having things go according to plan.”

Denny was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “That’s a helluva car.”

“I know. But I’m pretty focused on who’s in the car.”

To Becca’s great surprise, Megan didn’t appear for homework club after school on Tuesday. Since Maron was in her class, she asked, “Was Megan sick today?”

“No,” the little girl said. “She had a accident and her dad had to come and get her.”

Becca gasped. “What kind of accident? Is she all right?”

“She just peed herself. But it made her cry a lot.”

“Oh, no! Poor Megan! I think that happens to just about everyone. I think it happened to me when I was a little girl. I hope she won’t be too upset.”

Maron shrugged. “She was in the girl’s line. But she kept wiggling, so Mrs. Anderson put her at the end of the line. Twice.”

Becca felt her cheeks grow warm, then hot. Surely there was more to the story, she thought. As a second-grade teacher she had encountered that particular problem plenty of times. They kept spare underwear in the nurse’s office for just such emergencies. Kids could lose all track of themselves or just get so caught up in their activities they waited too long. Just as often, someone would throw up with apparently no clue it was about to happen. It was the stuff of elementary school. And Megan was only eight.

Becca would never put a little girl who was waiting for the bathroom at the end of the line if she was wiggling! That’s just asking for it! “Can’t you excuse yourself to the bathroom whenever you need to?” Becca asked. “Raise your hand? Ask permission?”

Maron shrugged again. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

She sighed. “We have bathroom breaks every hour. If you don’t take the break when it’s time to, you can color or paint or talk quietly, but then you have to wait for the next time. And then there’s no talking, playing, pushing or laughing in line…or else. Megan kept saying she really had to go.”

Becca raised her eyebrows. Nothing wrong with some rules; it was a good idea to help these little ones establish their own limits and boundaries. But dangling “playtime” if they pass on the bathroom break was too tempting.

“I bet Mrs. Anderson felt really bad about the accident.”

“I think the whole class always makes her feel bad,” Maron said. She shook her head, then went back to copying her spelling words.

Can’t get much by kids, Becca thought. It seemed pretty obvious that this particular teacher was not a happy person.

After the children had gone home for the day, Becca made her way down to Denny’s efficiency. Inside, she heard the shower running. She picked up the phone and called her mother.

“Remember that teacher I had in fifth grade?” she asked. “Was her name Mrs. Anderson?”

“No,” Beverly said, laughing. “Johnson, I think. I’m not sure I remember, but I’ll never forget her face.”

“Me, either. One of my little girls has a teacher who sounds so much like that. Very punishing, very unhappy, thrilled when you screw up. Her teacher kept pushing her to the back of the bathroom line because she was wiggling too much and she had an accident.”

Beverly gasped.

“This little girl has had such a hard year. Her dad was injured in a logging accident, lost his arm and his job, and the family is struggling. You’d think she could cut her a little slack.”

“Is the little girl awfully upset?”

“She didn’t come to our homework session so I guess the answer is probably yes. And you know what came to mind? I was in tears most of fifth grade, believing the teacher hated me, believing I’d never make it to sixth grade. I was miserable, and I didn’t even have a troubled home life! I had every advantage, and I was destroyed.”

“But here’s what you did have, Becca—the best sixth-grade teacher in the world, Mrs. Dallas. We met with her before school started and explained how hard your fifth grade was. By the very look in her eyes, she wasn’t surprised. Everyone knew that teacher was hard to survive, but there was nothing they could do. I think Mrs. Dallas made an extra effort for you. It was not the difficult teacher that made you want to teach, it was the wonderful teacher who inspired you!”

Denny came out of the bathroom, holding a towel around his waist. He blew her a kiss then proceeded to quietly dress.

“I think she saved me,” Becca said. “You know, I’ve had some monumental brats in the past couple of years, but I wouldn’t treat the worst kid so meanly!”

Beverly laughed. “You better not, Becca. A young teacher like you—it’s so important that you focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You had a couple of crappy teachers, but you had way more wonderful, inspiring teachers. And if you look at your teaching career, young though it is, you’ll see that it’s been shaped by the excellent teachers. You’ve learned so much from them. You’ve become like them in so many ways. You haven’t chosen teaching out of retaliation—you chose it to be as positive an influence as you can!”

“Oh, Mom,” she said. “Thank you for saying that.”

Beverly laughed. “Just because we’ve been known to disagree, doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you, Becca. And I’m really starting to miss you, too.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Becca promised. “I’ll let you know when I’m headed that way.”

“Be careful on the snow and ice!” Beverly said.

When she hung up the phone, she found that Denny was dressed and sitting in the chair, waiting for her.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he said. “Not on purpose, anyway. But I’m sorry if you’re missing your mom. If you need to go home, just tell me when. I can drive you.”

“And then I’ll miss you,” she said. “It’s no-win.”

“We have to face it, honey,” he said. “We’ve talked about everything but where we go from here.”

She straightened and paid attention.

“I don’t know what comes next for us, but whatever it is, it’s got to be me and you. Together. Forever. I want to marry you, Becca. If you want that, too, we have some things to work out. We have a geographic situation. And I think we’ve both been putting off talking about it.”

“I know,” she said very softly.

“I have two jobs and a good opportunity here, Becca. Maybe you could give it a try, since you don’t have a job to go back to in San Diego. You could probably find a good teaching job somewhere around here if you want to, but if not, I can support you. And since good jobs are real hard to find in this economy, I shouldn’t give up two paychecks. Remember, I don’t have a degree.”

That made her almost gulp, thinking of what Doug had said and feeling angry all over again. “I might not have a job in San Diego, but my whole life is there.” She shook her head. “I don’t have anything here. I don’t have anyone but you.”

“You will have more good friends here,” he promised. “Everyone loves you. This is a great place, once you get to know it. It’s hard to explain, but everything is a team effort here. It gives a person an interesting kind of confidence, the way no one is ever left uncared for. If I needed something, I can name fifteen people who’d be right there lending a hand. And I can name twice as many people I’d be happy to help out. I’ve never had that before. It’s more family than my family was.”

“Oh,” she said weakly.

“If you could just try,” he repeated. “Give it a chance. Consider it. See if it works out as well for you as it has for me. I mean, works out for us…”

“Denny, we talked about what happened to you when your mom died, when we broke up and you went to Afghanistan, but we haven’t talked about what happened to me, and we should. It was horrible. I didn’t eat or sleep, I was depressed, my grades dropped and it was a struggle to graduate. I’m scared, Denny. What if I give this place a chance and you change your mind again? What if I leave everything I know and love to be here with you and you come up with some profound reason why it’s better for us to split up, like before?”

“Whoa, honey, I won’t, I swear to God. I always knew that was a stupid mistake. I regretted it right away. I learned from that. You can trust me. I love you so much.”

“I do trust you,” she said. “And I love you, too. But it’s going to take time for me to feel a little more secure about that. I want to go home. Think things through. Everything and everybody I love is there…everyone but you.”

“Okay,” he said. He said it quietly and smiled, but it was a weak smile. “Let’s plan next week, after I get Jilly’s farm caught up and you’re done with all the stuff you have planned with the women and the kids. You have your pageant practice on Saturday and some hen party on Sunday, right? I’ll get you home in plenty of time for Christmas. Will that work?”

“Thank you,” she said. But she was afraid to ask if he would stay.

Becca and Denny went to Jack’s for dinner and sat up at the bar. It was easier now that she could dangle her injured leg. As soon as they’d eaten, Denny started helping out behind the bar, in the kitchen, around the tables. The place was packed. Mel had kept her word and brought out the Christmas decorations. There were pine boughs heaped on the mantel and twinkling lights everywhere.