Comfort & Joy (13 page)

Of course.

As if my question were unnecessary. The tension seeps out of me, leaving me strangely limp. I lean back into the seat.

Daniel turns on the radio. “Jingle Bell Rock” blares from the speakers, making me smile. My mom loved this song.

“What does your family do for Christmas morning?” Bobby asks me.

“We go to church.”

“That’s what me and Mommy used to do.”

“I light a candle for my mom,” I add. “So she knows how much I still love her.”

“Would you light one for my mommy?”

“If you’ll come to church with me, I will.”

A long moment passes, punctuated by the thunk of the wipers. Then, quietly, he says, “Okay.”

I look down at him, feeling tears sting my eyes. The courage of this boy slays me. “We can pray for her together.”

“Okay what?” Daniel says, frowning as if he’s missed something. He turns down the radio.

“Joy’s gonna help me light a candle for Mommy on Christmas morning.”

“In church?”

Bobby nods.

I can she how moved Daniel is by those few words. He doesn’t look at his son or me; I suspect if he did that his eyes would be moist. “I can see how Joy got her name.”

Daniel’s voice is so soft and warm. It wraps around me like a blanket. Smiling, I rest my head against the cool window and close my eyes. All at once I’m exhausted.

Daniel pulls into the lodge parking lot and shuts off the ignition. He immediately turns to Bobby. “Come here.”

Bobby launches himself at his dad.

“I’m so proud of you, boyo.”

“But I don’t want Joy to leave.”

“I know.”

I sit up slowly. An ache blossoms in my chest at the sight of them. If ever I am inclined in the future to disbelieve in love, I will remember this moment.

Daniel tightens his hold on his son. “You’re my whole world, Bobby. You know that, don’t you? We’re a team now. You and me.”

“What if Joy comes back later? Can she be part of us?”

Daniel smiles. He looks younger suddenly, unburdened.

I catch my breath. It would be so easy to lose myself in Daniel’s eyes, and find myself in his world.

“Maybe, boyo,” Daniel says, looking at me over Bobby’s head. “A thing like that comes down to . . . I don’t know.”

“Fate.”

We whisper the word at the same time, Daniel and I. It seems as soft as a love song in the cab, and as sturdy as one of these old trees.

But Bobby wants something more concrete. “If she comes back, can she stay with us?”

Daniel is frowning suddenly. I wonder if, like me, he’s come undone by the single word that somehow joins us, gives us a glimpse of
maybe
. “Sure.”

“You promise?” Bobby says.

“I promise,” Daniel answers, still gazing at me. I feel something waken in me, a longing that makes my heart speed up. “All she has to do is say, ‘Open the damn door, Daniel. It’s cold out here,’ and I’ll let her in.”

Bobby laughs. It is the purest, clearest sound I’ve ever heard. “She doesn’t
swear,
Dad.”

For the first time, Daniel and I laugh together.

The best pieces of chocolate in the box are always the last ones. So it is with this second-to-last night I have at the Comfort Fishing Lodge. By the time we get home, the electricity is back on. In no time, the Christmas tree and mantel are pockets of glowing colored lights and there’s a roaring fire in the fireplace.

Bobby and Daniel go to the kitchen for dinner; I go to my room and take a shower. I’m cold to the bone; food is the last thing on my mind.

Rather, I think about tomorrow.

Christmas Eve.

It will be my last night here.

Already I know that my vacation is over. When Stacey gets home—probably from Thom’s office party—she’ll listen to my message and immediately start looking for me. I’ll be “big news.” The authorities will clamor for answers to questions I don’t want voiced, let alone answered. I don’t believe any of them will understand why I chose to walk away from the crash.

The few who
will
understand will be those who have been where I was in early December. People who have lost themselves in the dark woods of ordinary life, who have been betrayed by loved ones and forgotten how to be led by dreams.

And Daniel.

For no reason I can articulate, I am sure he will understand my bizarre choice. He is a man who knows about drifting, about betrayal and loss. I’m certain of it. It’s why he bought this place, those years ago when his family lived amid the red brick of Boston. Sometimes a change of scenery can be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.

Stacey, too, will understand, and she will forgive me. The question is: can I forgive her? Even with all that I have learned, I don’t know the answer to that, and truthfully, I don’t want to think about it. I haven’t much time here at the Comfort Lodge. I need to soak up every second and fashion the time into memories. I will need them when I’m home again.

It is the need for
more
that sends me in search of them again. I go out to the lobby, where Bobby and Daniel are watching
Miracle on 34th Street
.

“Oh, good,” Bobby says at my arrival. “You didn’t miss anything.”

He doesn’t yet know how many times we watch Christmas movies in our lives. I take a seat in the red leather chair by the fireplace.

Together—like a family—we watch the movie.

As I watch the scenes unfurl, I can’t help thinking of other Christmases, long ago.

“My mommy loved this part,” Bobby says softly.

Onscreen, a young Natalie Wood is running through her new house, finding the cane that proves a miracle.

“Mine, too,” I say as the screen goes black and the credits roll.

Bobby’s smile dips for a second, then returns. “You wanna play Chutes and Ladders?”

“Of course,” I answer.

Daniel laughs. “It’s better than watching the Grinch again.”

Bobby laughs at that, and the sound of their braided laughter—Daniel’s throaty and full, his son’s high and childish—finds a soft spot in me.

Bobby runs upstairs and is back in no time. Within minutes, the game is set up on the card table.

Daniel sits on the hearth facing the game. The fire backlights him. It is impossible not to notice how handsome he is. “Well, boyo,” he says, rubbing his hands together, “you ready for a whoopin’?”

Bobby giggles and sets out our pieces. I sit in the empty chair to Daniel’s left. Bobby sits across from me. “I get to move for everyone,” he says, trying to stack the cards on the place where they go.

“Aye,” Daniel says. “You always do. Just like you open everyone’s presents.”

For the next hour, Bobby leads us around the board. He picks all the cards and moves all the pieces and laughs whenever he pulls ahead. Daniel and I can hardly get a word in edgewise, but, in truth, we’re not trying very hard. I can tell that Daniel is captivated by his son’s smile, and I am mesmerized by the pair of them.

Unlike me, Bobby will never know the nagging ache of an absent father; he will have the loss of his mother inside him, like a thin shadow on a bright day, standing close, but he won’t have that dragging sense that he was unloved, somehow, unworthy. For the whole of his life, he will go to sleep at night knowing his father loves him.

“You sure are laughin’ a lot tonight, boyo.” Daniel’s voice pulls me back into the moment.

“Joy keeps getting the
worst
cards,” he answers with a giggle.

“It’s hardly my fault.” When I look up from the board, I catch Daniel’s gaze and wonder if he sees who we could be together. I try to come up with a gem of a remark—one that will make him want me the way I’m beginning to want him—but nothing comes to me, and the moment moves on.

As the night darkens, and we go from Chutes and Ladders to Candy Land, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m a guest here. Otherwise, I’ll reach for Daniel. I’ll touch his arm and say something stupid like “Are you lonely, too?” or “Do you feel it, this spark?” It takes all my self-control to say nothing of importance. Each moment I’m silent, I know, is a moment lost, a second that brings me closer to good-bye.

This night—and everything it represents—is the dream I’ve held onto all my life. A family held together by love, a child who needs me. A man who knows how to love. I want so desperately to belong here, to be invited to stay. I could start over here, maybe get a job at the local high school and help Daniel refurbish this place. I’d be good at it; I know I would. If only he’d ask me. If only I had the courage to say it first.

“You have to go all the way back,” Bobby giggles, looking at my card. “Look, Dad, Mommy has to go back.”

Suddenly the crackling of the fire is loud in the room, as is Daniel’s indrawn breath.

“I mean Joy,” Bobby chirps happily, moving my man back.

Daniel looks at Bobby; his face is pale, his lips tight. I don’t know him well enough to read his expression. Is it fear that Bobby has come to love me too much? Or regret that some things longed for can’t be had? Or is it grief for the woman who should be at this game table on this night? I don’t know. All I know is that I wish he’d looked at me, if even just for an instant, and smiled. Instead, I see how he avoids looking at me in this moment where I’ve been called Mommy for the first time in my life.

“It’s your turn, Dad,” Bobby says, reaching for another card.

And the game goes on. I try to forget that Bobby called me Mommy and that Daniel looked so hurt by it, but I can’t. It makes me
want
—that single word and all that it implies.

Mommy
.

I learn something about myself this cold winter’s night. Something I should have known, perhaps; had I known it, I never would have walked away from the crash site.

You can run away from your life and your past, but there’s no way to distance yourself from your own heart.

At eight o’clock, Daniel ends our perfect evening.

“I know a boy who needs to get ready for bed,” he says, standing up.

“Aw, Dad,” Bobby whines, making a face. He is getting up from his chair when he smiles. “But Joy and me hafta wrap your present.”

Daniel looks down at his son. “Now?”

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” I say to Daniel. “All presents need to be under the tree.”

Daniel isn’t fooled. “You just want to stay up. Okay. I have a few presents of my own to wrap, but I want you upstairs by eight-thirty. Should I set the timer on the oven to remind you?”

“No way.”

“I’ll make sure he’s on time,” I say.

Daniel stands there a moment longer, looking at us. Bobby is right beside me now. He’s so excited his little body seems to be vibrating.

“Okay then,” Daniel finally says. “See you in half an hour.”

When he is gone, Bobby runs to the sofa and pulls his copy of
Green Eggs and Ham
out from under the cushion. “I need to practice one more time, okay?”

“Sure.”

We settle into the comfortable cushions together and open the book.

“I . . . am . . . Sam. Sam . . . I . . . am.” Bobby has memorized this part of the book, so he runs through it quickly. By the time he gets to page sixteen, he has slowed down and begun to sound out the words. “
I
 . . . w . . . ou . . . l . . . d
would
not like th . . . em
them
h . . . ere
here
or th . . . ere
there
.”

I tighten my hold on him.

By the time he finishes the book, his smile is so big it’s like a storm wave breaking over the beach. Uncontainable.

“This is the best present you could give your dad.”

“Arnie Holtzner won’t call me stupid now.” He twists around to look up at me. “Thanks.” He says it quietly, but it still hits me hard.

“You’re welcome.” I lean toward him and gently kiss his forehead. It should be a perfect moment, a memory to take away with me, but when I feel the velvet of his warm skin and breathe in the sweet citrus scent of his hair, all I can think about is how it will feel to say good-bye.

I ease back from him, trying to smile. “We’ve got a few more minutes before your dad is expecting you. Will you help me with something?”

“Sure.”

“I need a piece of paper and something to write with.”

Bobby slides eel-like off the sofa and runs to the registration desk. He is back in mere moments, holding a yellow legal pad and a red crayon.

I can’t help smiling. I haven’t written with a crayon in years. “Okay. Let’s go to the card table.”

We clear the game and take our seats, side by side, tucking in close. I hand Bobby the crayon and position the pad in front of him. “You’re going to write a list out for me. It’s your dad’s Christmas present from me.”

“I can’t . . .”

“Yes, you can. It’s good practice. I’ll tell you the words and you sound them out and write them down. It’ll make my present extra special.”

He looks so scared I want to hug him. Instead, I don my best teacher’s face and say, “The first word is
ideas
. I . . . d . . . e . . . a . . . s.” I help him sound it out but let him spell it himself.

The crayon quivers in his hand. He holds it tightly, fisting it, and bends over the paper. “Go slow,” he says, frowning in concentration.

It takes almost fifteen minutes of working together, but in the end, we have a list that looks like this:

Ibeas.

 chng nme/rmantic

 pant trm

  flwrs

   fix cbns

   websit

    no crpt flr

“Wow,” Bobby says when we’re done. “My mom wanted to do some of these things. You think he’ll do it? I wish—”

“I know.” I don’t want him to say his hope out loud. Some things need to be simply planted in the soft dirt of possibility. “But you remember this, Bobby: What matters is you and your dad being together. You guys are a team now. A family.”

Bobby looks up at me. “You’ll come back someday, won’t you, Joy?”

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. Now, let’s wrap this present up and put it under the tree.”