Love Comes Home (14 page)

What had Jay said? That Kate needed to enjoy the moment and not be forever looking ahead and trying to fix things. He was right. This was a Christmas to enjoy with the family around the Christmas tree. Her mother and Tori were on the
couch, Mama for once not in the kitchen cooking. Graham was in the straight chair close to the stove with Chaucer at his feet, but Aunt Hattie’s rocker was empty.

Not long after Kate and Jay got there, Fern stopped by to tell them Aunt Hattie wasn’t about to set one foot outside with snow covering the ground. Aunt Hattie hadn’t lived eighty years without having more sense than to dare fate by walking around on snow and ice.

They tried to get Fern to come inside, but she stood in the door and let the cold air sweep into the room while she delivered Aunt Hattie’s message. But she smiled as much as she ever smiled when Lorena promised to bring her and Aunt Hattie Christmas dinner and their presents later.

Fern let her eyes fall on Jay. “Bring him with you. Hattie likes him.”

“Kate can come too,” Lorena said.

“If she has to.” Fern tilted her head to peer at Kate from under the cap she wore. “But don’t be bringing that picture box with you.”

Graham spoke up from across the room. “Fern, you need to go on if you’re going. You’re letting all their heat out.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, Brother.” With that, she turned on her heel and stomped off the porch.

“Bye, Fern,” Lorena called after her, but the woman didn’t look around. Perhaps she didn’t hear her with the ear flaps pulled down on her fur cap.

“Same old Fern,” Jay said.

“Not really,” Kate said. “The old Fern would have never come up on the porch.”

“Hattie’s changed her,” Graham said.

Kate didn’t contradict him, but she knew who had really
changed Fern. Lorena. She had changed all of them. Even Jay.

“Can’t we just go ahead and open one present?” Lorena begged Mama now. “Mike and Evie might not even come. You said you weren’t sure because of the snow.”

“I think they’ll be here,” Mama said.

“But it’s already past twelve. Everybody will want to eat again in a little while and then we’ll have to put off presents even longer.” Lorena looked at the gifts under the tree with longing.

“The longer you wait for something, the better it can be, Birdie.” Jay got up off the floor where he’d been leaning back against Kate’s armchair. “And unless Mike’s changed more than I think, he’ll be here for your Mama’s fruitcake or whatever she spent all of yesterday cooking.”

“Applesauce cake with caramel icing, but who cares about cake?” Lorena stuck her lip out in a pout.

“Lorena.”

Kate had heard that same warning in Mama’s voice plenty of times herself when she was younger.

Jay laughed. “I know a girl who needs something to do. Get your boots on, Birdie. It’s snowman-building time.” Jay poked Kate’s knee. “You too.”

“Go.” Samantha reached her hands toward Jay.

“Okay, kiddo, come on. And your mama too.” He looked toward Graham. “How about you?”

“I’ll watch out the window.” Graham scooted his chair a little closer to the stove.

An hour later, a snow family with sticks for arms were lined up in front of the porch. Lorena had fixed the sticks to touch like they were holding hands. After Tori took Samantha
inside to warm up, a snowball fight broke out. So when Mike and Evie got there, Jay barely waited until Mike was out of the car before he hit him square on the shoulder.

“Don’t you dare throw one of those at me,” Evie yelled at Kate, making the temptation impossible to resist. But her aim was bad and the snowball hit the side of the car.

Mike laughed, scooped up some snow, and sprinted after Jay. Lorena shrieked and joined in the chase. Scout barked and ran circles around them.

Evie put her hands on her hips and yelled, “Good heavens, Mike. Stop acting like a child and help me into the house.”

“Oh, let him have a little fun.” Kate went over to Evie.

“But he’s got to bring in our packages.”

“He’ll get them in a minute. Come on, I’ll help you inside if you need help.”

“You can’t be too careful when you’re in my condition. Mike should know that.” Evie looked ready to spill a few tears. The girl could cry at the drop of a hat or a snowball.

“So you told him.”

“I told him.”

“He’s happy?”

“Jubilant.” Evie threw her hand out to point at him. “Look at him.”

“And you? How are you?”

“Just peachy. Never mind that I may throw up any second and my waistband is already too tight.”

“So a ray of sunshine as ever.” Kate reached to take her arm, but Evie knocked her hand away.

“Your glove is wet. How long have you been out here acting like a kid?”

“I don’t know. A while. We were just playing around until you got here.”

“Playing around.” Evie gave her that big-sister look Kate hated. “Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up?”

Evie didn’t wait for an answer, but stomped toward the porch, keeping to the rock walk that had been cleared of snow.

“Not if I have to be like you,” Kate muttered under her breath. She shook herself a little. It was Christmas. Jay was home. Presents waited under the tree and hot cider on the stove. Jay and Mike were still running around in the yard like two boys escaped from the schoolhouse. Lorena wasn’t with them now. Instead she was by the snowmen. She’d insisted they make a father, a mother, and two kids.

A moment ago Christmas joy exploded out of her, but now she looked almost sad.

“Are you freezing, baby?” Kate flexed her hands inside her gloves. “I can’t feel my fingers. Or my toes.”

“Me either.” Lorena pushed a smile out on her face, but it slid away like the snow blowing off the roof.

“What’s the matter? Christmas too long in coming?” Kate put her arm around Lorena.

“No, my mother, not Mama, but my mommy from before, she told me that Christmas always comes. It doesn’t matter whether there are presents or not. She said Christmas is in a person’s heart.”

“Your mommy was right.” Kate tightened her arm around Lorena. She couldn’t remember the last time Lorena had talked about her birth parents, although she continued to say her name every night the way her mother had told her to.

Lorena sighed, and her breath hung in the air before the wind whisked it away. “I can’t remember what she looked
like.” She ran her gloved fingers over the snow mother’s face. Bits of coal made the eyes and mouth, and a twig was the nose. Lorena had found pebbles to make her a necklace.

She looked up at Kate. “I didn’t want to forget what she looked like. Or Kenton or Daddy. I was always a little afraid of Daddy. He wasn’t like Daddy now. But I shouldn’t forget what he looked like, should I?”

Kate sent up a silent prayer for wisdom. “You haven’t forgotten them. They’re all right there where your mommy told you Christmas lived.” Kate touched Lorena’s coat over her heart. “They’ll always be there.”

“But why didn’t they come back for me the way Mommy promised?”

The girl’s words stabbed Kate. Hadn’t Lorena been happy all these years with their family? “I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they still will. Maybe they knew we couldn’t bear to lose you after you became part of our family.”

Lorena’s eyes flew wide open as she spun around to look at Kate. “You wouldn’t lose me. Never. You’re my forever sister.”

“I am that.” Kate blinked away tears that were not completely from the chilly wind blowing.

Lorena was taller than Kate, not a child anymore, but Kate saw the little girl she’d found abandoned on the church steps almost ten years ago. Beautiful then in her threadbare dress, bare feet, and tangled hair. Beautiful now with her black curls escaping her sock hat, her cheeks red from the cold, and those deep brown eyes begging Kate to understand.

“But if you had a brother and another mother and father, wouldn’t you want to know them?”

Kate met her eyes. She did understand. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

Behind them, a car door slammed and Mike started for
the house with a sack of gifts. Jay ran up behind them with Scout on his heels. “What’s going on over here? I thought somebody wanted to open Christmas presents.”

Lorena’s smile came back full force as Jay grabbed their hands and pulled them toward the porch. But Kate noted her quick look back at the snow family. Maybe it was time to use her reporter skills to ferret out some information about the Birdsong family. Then again, Aunt Hattie said some pots were better not stirred.

15

T
ori pulled her wool scarf tighter around her head as she walked toward the store. The wind spit snowy ice in her face. February had to be the longest month of the year. It didn’t matter if the calendar did count fewer days. Those days stretched out and mocked them by piling more freezing weather down on the winter weary. Now and again, the sun appeared, but not with any warmth before the clouds blew back in, darker than ever, to dash hope of an early spring.

She’d caught a cold. She always had a cold in February. Her nose was rubbed raw from constant wiping, and she and her father had kept up a duet of coughing all through the night. Daddy’s cough was no better in spite of trips to the doctor and Aunt Hattie’s potions.

“Spring will be here soon,” he told Mama when she worried over him. “Warm weather is the best cure.”

But the sound of his coughs hung a pall over the house and made February even darker. This very morning he looked so tired at breakfast that Mama talked him into not going to his shop until later. Mama told Tori to stay home too and keep Samantha in out of the weather, but Tori couldn’t stay
home every day. It was her job to help her mother at the store even if she hated waiting on people and listening to their complaints about every livelong thing from the price of coffee to the bananas being too ripe. Or not ripe enough. Still it was her job. A job she needed. She was an adult. An adult with a child. So she left Samantha with her father and headed to the store.

At least it was her job now. Kate was moving back to Rosey Corner. She and Jay had found a house to rent. Jay got a job at the feed store over in Edgeville where he’d worked before the war. Kate had lost her job at the newspaper. Kate said she didn’t care, but Tori wasn’t sure she meant it.

Once Kate was back in Rosey Corner, she could work at the store again. “And give you more time with Samantha,” she’d told Tori. Trying to help. That was Kate. Always trying to make things right. She knew Tori hated working at the store. But what would Tori do instead?

She’d asked Kate that. “If I don’t work at the store, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know. Why do you have to do something? Can’t you just be a mama?”

“That’s the problem. I am a mother. A single mother. I can’t expect Mama and Daddy to take care of me forever.”

“Are you tired of living here?” Kate had looked around the bedroom where they were changing clothes after church on Sunday.

“I don’t know that I’d say tired, exactly.” Tori peeled off her good dress and reached for a skirt and sweater. Lorena had already grabbed up Samantha and headed back out to the stove where Jay and Daddy were talking. Pans rattling meant Mama was finishing up dinner.

Evie and Mike weren’t coming. They hadn’t been home on Sunday but twice since Christmas. Evie claimed there were just so many times a day a person could upchuck, and riding all the way to Rosey Corner from Louisville put that number over the top.

It was chilly back in the bedroom they had once all shared and that Tori and Samantha still shared with Lorena. Even though the house was small, the stove in the sitting room couldn’t put out enough heat to warm every corner when winter winds pushed at the walls. This time of the year they missed the old woodstove in the kitchen. A shiny electric range had replaced it, but unless they left the oven on with the door open, that stove didn’t do much to keep a person warm on a cold winter day.

“Do you wish you had your own house?” Kate didn’t wait for an answer. “But of course you do.”

Tori wasn’t sure whether she did or didn’t. It might be nice to have a house, but what would she do without her parents helping her with Samantha? “I don’t know. Samantha and I might be lonely rattling around in a house by ourselves.”

“Maybe you could move into one of Aunt Hattie’s spare bedrooms.”

“And live with Fern giving me those stares?” Tori shuddered at the thought. “No, thank you. Samantha doesn’t need that. And neither do I.”

Kate laughed. “Fern’s not so bad.”

“Would you want to look at her every morning at breakfast?” She was sorry for the words as soon as they were out. They echoed back to that Sunday before Christmas when Evie had asked if Clay Weber was someone she could look at across the breakfast table.

“Maybe not.” Kate hung her suit up on a hanger hooked to the back of the bedroom door. She smoothed out the skirt for a long moment. “I see Samantha is still carrying around that doll the Weber girls gave her. Mrs. Weber should sell those dolls.”

“I think she does.” Tori slid off her stockings and pulled on wool socks. She hated being cold. She rolled her stockings into a ball and kept her eyes away from Kate. She knew what Kate wanted to ask, but it was a question she didn’t want to answer.