We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (10 page)

“At other times, I see a sadness in your face that I never saw before, and I wonder who or what put it there. I’m guessing it was Terry.”

His expression was so intense, Jaclyn couldn’t break eye contact. She hadn’t expected him to be so direct. At work they kept their conversations to simple greetings, good wishes and the weather. Half the time he acted as though he’d rather she not be around. But the one thing consistent from the beginning was the impression he gave that he didn’t want to talk about Feld, didn’t want to revisit the old days. Which was perfectly fine by Jaclyn. So why was he suddenly bringing up the past?

He looked as if he was about to say something more, but the kids came flooding back, jabbering at the top of their lungs, and he seemed to think better of it. He turned his attention to passing her their plates so she could dish up the food, then listened attentively to Alex and the girls, who talked throughout dinner about school, the toys they wanted for Christmas and how mean Mr. Alder had ruined their great water fight.

When the girls left the table to play with their Barbies, Alex stayed to tell Cole about the fun he’d had during the summer going to Sand Mountain with his father.

“I used to go out there when I was a kid, too,” Cole told him. “My brothers and I didn’t have a Quad runner or sand rail, but we used to climb the mountain in my truck. One time the engine stalled at the worst possible moment, and I was sure we were going to roll.”

“Did you?” Alex asked, his eyes wide with interest as he pushed his plate away.

“No, I managed to get it started again, and we slowly backed down.”

“Did your dad get mad at you when he found out how close you’d come?”

“He didn’t find out,” Cole said.

“What about your mother?”

Cole hesitated long enough to make Jaclyn wonder if Alex’s questions were bothering him. She couldn’t remember Cole’s mother, or his father, for that matter. She doubted she’d ever seen either of them. They didn’t get involved in community activities, didn’t come out to the high-school football games the way her parents and Terry’s had. Cole was sometimes there, with one or two of his brothers in tow, but he didn’t play on the team. He teased the girls, and winked at Jaclyn, even though he knew everyone around her would tell Terry. And he heckled the cheerleaders and usually left with one of them afterward.

Jaclyn knew Cole and his family had been poor, guessed they were proud, but that was about it.

“She was sick. We tried not to tell her things that would upset her,” he said.

“What was wrong with her—?”

“Alex,” Jaclyn interrupted, “why don’t you go in and turn on the television? It’s seven o’clock. There might be something good on.”

“No, that’s okay,” Cole said. “She had multiple sclerosis.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a disease that does different things to different people. For some reason, my mother went downhill pretty fast. Only five years after they diagnosed it, she couldn’t walk or use her hands. In another five years, she couldn’t see or talk.”

Alex looked horrified. “What
could
she do?”

Jaclyn cleared her throat, wishing her son could read the clues in Cole’s body language. They were saying, loud and clear, that his mother was a sensitive subject. But Alex was just a child, and his curiosity blotted out all else.

“She could only hear,” Cole told him. “And sometimes she’d try to laugh.”

Trailer trash.
In light of his mother’s illness, the epithet Terry’s crowd had reserved for Cole and his family seemed particularly cruel. That Jaclyn hadn’t taken a stand against it made her feel ashamed.

“Where is she now?” Alex asked.

“She died a year after I graduated high school.”

“What about your father—?”

“That’s enough questions,” Jaclyn said, and she knew the firmness in her voice had finally gotten through to her son, because he scowled at her. “Go watch some television.”

“Aw, Mom. I was just talking to him.”

“Do as I say,” she insisted.

When Alex finally left the room, Jaclyn turned back to Cole. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” she said. “I didn’t know. That must have been very difficult for a boy your age.”

“It wasn’t my
age
that made it difficult,” he said, but when she pressed him for his meaning, he added, “It’s ancient history. I’d rather not go into it.”

Jaclyn stood and started clearing away the plates. “Then, what would you like to talk about?” she asked. Now that she’d let him in and fed him dinner, she found herself strangely reluctant to see him leave. He’d been kind to the kids and was easy to have around, and it had been so long since she’d had dinner with a man.

He helped her carry the plates into the kitchen. “What about the days since then?”

“What about them?” she asked, rinsing off the food.

“What happened to you and Terry? You were head-over-heels in love in high school.”

“We had a lot of problems,” she answered. “His father was one of them.”

Cole finished clearing the table while she took the zucchini bread out of the oven. “So, Burt was a problem, huh?” he said when they were both in the kitchen again.

Jaclyn wasn’t surprised Cole remembered him. The whole town knew Burt Wentworth. The whole town revered him. “Yeah. He was so controlling, so blind when it came to Terry. He refused to let him grow up, and Terry didn’t have the confidence he needed to make his own decisions. I tried to convince him that we’d be better off on our own. I was sure Terry would take responsibility as a husband and father if we could just get away. And I felt like a guest living at his parents’ place. I know it’s tough for others to understand, because I had everything I needed—materially. But I hated it. We had no privacy. His parents knew about every argument we had and silently disapproved of me saying anything when…” Jaclyn let her words trail off. She’d been about to blurt out the whole story of Terry’s many affairs. She’d had so few chances to talk, to really explain what she’d been through, that she’d nearly forgotten Cole would have no sympathy for her in that regard—at least, not if he’d done the same thing to Rochelle.

“When what?” he prompted.

“Never mind.”

He looked at her, obviously curious about her sudden retreat, but Alyssa and Mackenzie entered the kitchen at that moment and saved Jaclyn from having to confront the question in his eyes.

“You said we could call Daddy tonight,” Mackenzie said.

Ordinarily Jaclyn would have asked the girls to wait a few minutes until she’d finished the dishes. But she needed the distraction, so she picked up the phone and dialed. “Did you see if Alex wants to talk?” she asked.

Mackenzie nudged her sister. “Go tell Alex we’re calling Daddy.”

Alyssa headed to the living room. Mackenzie took the phone, and Jaclyn and Cole returned to the dishes. After a minute, Mackenzie came into the dining room, where
Jaclyn was balling up the tablecloth so she could take it to the laundry, and announced that her daddy wasn’t home.

“Can we call Grandpa and Grandma?” she asked. “They might come get us.”

Jaclyn doubted they would. They hadn’t been to Reno yet, and she didn’t really want them to start coming now. Her life was much more pleasant since she didn’t have to deal with them directly, but she hated to disappoint the children. “They go to bed pretty early,” she said, stalling while she tried to make up her mind.

“Not this early,” Alex said, coming around the corner with Alyssa.

Evidently Alex had changed his mind about calling Feld. Since the divorce, his moods shifted quite often. One minute he was angry with Terry, the next he was upset at her. “You want to talk to Grandpa?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

Hoping it might do him some good to touch base with his grandfather and receive whatever reassurance Burt might offer, she swallowed a sigh and agreed. “Okay. Come here.”

This time when she dialed, she handed the phone to Alex and waited to hear what Burt would say. Cole stood at the entrance to the kitchen, looking mildly curious, one shoulder propped against the doorway. The girls wiggled expectantly at her side.

“Hi, Grandpa, it’s Alex…I know, it’s been a long time. I miss you, too. Where’s Daddy? How come he doesn’t come get us…What?”

Alex looked at her, and Jaclyn knew her name had been mentioned. She doubted it was in a positive light. With Burt, it never was.

“I don’t know. She just never has. Dad always comes to get us…I guess I could ask, but…I know…maybe she will…hang on.”

Pulling his ear away from the phone, Alex turned to her. “He wants to see us,” he said.

A trickle of unease crept down Jaclyn’s spine. “Great. When’s he coming?”

“He says it’s your turn to drive us out there.”

Her turn?
Alex made it sound as though she was under some sort of obligation, but it had always been up to Terry to do the driving if he wanted to see the kids. She glanced at Cole, wishing for a moment of privacy, and he seemed to understand because he stepped into the dining room.

“Honey, I would if I could,” Jaclyn said, lowering her voice. “But my car is old and not very reliable. I don’t think it would be wise to drive so far out of town. We could get stranded in the desert.”

“You drive your car to work every day.”

“Right, but work is only fifteen minutes away. If I break down, I can always call someone. Out in the desert, there won’t be anyone to call. I don’t have a cell phone, and I’m not sure there’s coverage out there even if I did.”

“So?”

“It’s too dangerous, Alex. Aren’t you listening to me? We’d have the girls with us. The tires on the car are nearly bald, and it’s been running hot—”

“You always have some excuse. I haven’t seen Dad for a month, but you don’t care!”

Jaclyn was conscious of Cole standing in the other room. He’d given her some space, but she seriously doubted he was out of earshot. Her house wasn’t big enough to avoid his hearing Alex’s high-pitched voice.

Why did this have to come up tonight?

“It’s not my fault that you haven’t seen him, Alex, and you know it,” she said.

“Then, whose fault is it? Dad’s?”

Yes!
Jaclyn wanted to scream the word, but she was the adult in this situation and was determined to act like one.
Tempering her response to something kinder, she said, “I don’t want to place blame. It just hasn’t worked out.”

“Come on, Mom. The car will make it,” Alex pleaded.

“I promise you, honey, I’d take you to Feld if I could, but I can’t. What if something went wrong? We’d be in real trouble.”

Alex narrowed his eyes at her and spoke into the phone. “You were right. She won’t do it. She won’t ever let us see our dad!”

Jaclyn opened her mouth to refute the unfair claim, just as Cole stepped back into the kitchen.

“Tell your grandpa to wait up,” he said. “You’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

“What?” Jaclyn gaped at Cole.

“We’d better start out before it gets too late,” he told her.

“You’re driving us there? To Feld?”

He shrugged. “Why not? My car will make it.”

“But it’s a long drive. We won’t get back until late tonight, and then there’s the problem of getting the kids home tomorrow.”

“Won’t Terry bring them?”

“I don’t know. He’s not even home so we can ask him.”

Alex put on his “please, please, please” face. “Can’t you guys just stay?”

“Where?” Jaclyn asked.

“With Grandma and Grandpa,” Mackenzie supplied, as though the answer should be obvious to everyone.

Jaclyn tried not to blanch openly. “No, guys, listen. Staying overnight is too much to ask of Cole.”

She expected Cole to concur by claiming he had something to do come morning, but he didn’t. He studied one child’s hopeful face, then each of the others before turning to Jaclyn and cocking an eyebrow in challenge. “Feld has a motel or two, if I remember right. I’m sure we can manage a couple of rooms for the night, if you’re up to it.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, knowing everything rested on his answer. She couldn’t say no now, not without adding credibility to Alex’s charge that she was being less than cooperative when it came to letting them see their father.

Cole grinned and mussed Alex’s hair. “Go pack your bags,” he said. “All of you. I’ll run by my place and be back to pick you up in twenty minutes.”

F
ELD
.

God, he was going back. Cole couldn’t believe it. When he’d left, he swore he’d never return, yet here he was, driving through the desert, the lights of Feld just ahead. Worse, he had his high-school prom queen and her children in the car and was taking them to see a family that had always treated him and his brothers with scorn. And he was staying the night. What on earth had possessed him to volunteer for this assignment?

He could have let Jaclyn take his truck, he thought. Then he’d be sleeping in his bed right now, comfortable in the world he’d created, safe from the part of his life he’d rather forget. But she could have gotten a blowout or something, even in his vehicle. No, he’d had to take them. He was caught the moment he’d heard the tears in her son’s voice.

Or maybe he was caught long before that. Maybe he was caught the moment he’d run into Jackie at Joanna’s. He’d known instinctively that someday she’d stir up old painful memories, make him confront Feld one more time.

Cole stifled a groan and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She’d dozed off twenty minutes ago, her face serene in the amber glow of his instrument panel. The children slept, too, while he hurtled ever closer to the demons of his past.

The lay of the land, the streetlights and the buildings on the outskirts of town instantly brought back his senior year and the year after—the year his mother died. But it was the
smell that made the memories crowd so close he could scarcely breathe. Sagebrush and dust and fried chicken from the takeout diner combined to create a scent that was uniquely Feld, a scent that hadn’t changed in ten years.

Briefly Cole squeezed his eyes closed against the echo of his mother trying to call to him after she’d lost the ability to speak, and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Feld was just a place, not so different from a thousand other small American towns, he told himself. What had been painful here was gone. Feld couldn’t hurt him anymore.

“Are we there?” Waking when he slowed for the first traffic signal, Jaclyn blinked and stared out the window. Russ Groves’s small real-estate office was still on Main Street next to One-Two-Three Burgers and Shakes and across from the 7-Eleven on the corner. A handful of new businesses had sprung up since he’d left, and a few had changed hands or been modernized, Cole noticed, but for the most part, returning to Feld was like taking a step back in time.

“Just about,” Cole answered. “The Wentworth ranch is on the other side of town, right?”

“Yeah. Turn left at the last light.”

Cole remembered. Terry’s place had been the weekend party haunt for almost everyone in his graduating class, except Cole. He’d never been invited, but being left out hadn’t bothered him. He’d been too busy wishing for other things—his mother’s improved health, his father’s continued strength, his brothers’ safety and well-being. What he’d hated in those days was the way Terry had taken his father’s money and power, and all it afforded him, for granted, and the way he’d strutted through school looking down his nose at anyone less fortunate.

He wondered if Terry had changed.

“How long has it been since you’ve visited here?” she asked.

Not long enough,
he wanted to say. Instead, he re
sponded, “I left about eighteen months after my divorce. I haven’t been back since.”

“I didn’t think so. The last time I saw you was when I was pregnant with Alex.”

“At the grocery store.”

They came to the light and made a left.

“Do you ever talk to Rochelle?” Jaclyn asked, when they passed the small florist shop owned by Rochelle’s parents.

“No. Is she still in town?”

“Probably. She was here when I left a year ago.”

Great. If he was really lucky, he could run into his ex while he was in town, end up facing every person he’d never wanted to see again.

“Has she remarried?” he asked.

“Not that I know of. She—” Jaclyn glanced over at him. “She had a hard time getting over you.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he said.

A faint grin lit Jaclyn’s face. “Are you saying you’re unforgettable?”

“I’m saying Rochelle has problems.”
And for a while, those problems were my problems. If things had gone any differently, if I hadn’t found out…

Cole shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind. He
had
found out. That was the important thing.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jaclyn asked.

Starting with Rochelle’s mental instability, Cole could have given her a pretty long list. But Jaclyn knew too many people in Feld. Regardless of what had transpired between him and his ex-wife, their marriage was over now, and it was enough for Cole that he’d gotten out. He wouldn’t divulge what Rochelle had done because it served no purpose except to make her look bad. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Jaclyn adjusted her shoulder strap and checked on her
sleeping children. “What time do you want to head back tomorrow?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I thought we’d let the kids spend the day, then leave around seven. That should get them in bed by nine or nine-thirty, early enough for school the following morning. Sound okay?”

“That’s fine, but you don’t mind? Staying so long, I mean?”

It wasn’t a matter of whether he minded, Cole realized. It was a matter of commitment. He had said he’d bring them; he’d see it through. Certainly he could survive a single day in the town of his old alma mater if it meant Burt couldn’t accuse Jaclyn of trying to keep her kids from their father.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. I won’t be missing anything.”

“Do you have family or friends here you’d like to visit?”

There were a few teachers who’d been kind to him and his family, including one who’d actually come out to the house and tutored Rick—but Cole didn’t know where they lived or whether they were still in town. He thought he might look up Wild Bill, the crusty geezer who’d given him the trucking job when he’d married Rochelle, and he might swing by and say hello to their old neighbor, Granny Fanny. Other than that, the only people he wanted to see were buried in the cemetery.

“Not really. I lived here less than three years and didn’t make many long-term friends,” he said. “My parents came from Kansas. My extended family on both sides is back there.”

“Do you ever go to Kansas to visit them?”

“No. I didn’t grow up knowing any of my cousins, and I’ve been too busy since I got older.”

“Here it is,” she said, pointing through the window at two white brick posts topped with lion sentries.

Slowing, he turned down the long, tree-lined drive he’d
passed hundreds of times when he was a kid. Under the light of the moon, the Wentworth ranch looked exactly the same as it had in high school. The house was a long rambling affair with a big barn in back and cows lowing off in the distance. Hay piles covered with black plastic sat in a field to one side, and at least a dozen vehicles, from tractors to trucks, were parked at various points along the circular drive.

“Where did you and Terry live?” Cole asked above the grind of tires on gravel. “Is there a smaller house in the back?”

“No, we shared the big house with his parents. Technically, we were supposed to have the south wing to ourselves. We had a separate kitchen and everything, but his mother did the accounting and payroll for the ranch, and I pretty much took over as cook and housekeeper, so we usually ate together. It just didn’t make sense to have two people cook each night when we were all living under the same roof, you know?”

“Sounds like you spent a lot of time with your in-laws.” Cole couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like, living with the arrogant Wentworths, but then, he couldn’t imagine what had attracted her to Terry in the first place. Cole had never cared for him.

With a sigh, she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “It wasn’t so bad at first. I thought they were very supportive and good to us. His father was paying for everything we had, everything we did. But we were working for it, too. Both of us. I might never have been directly involved in the business, but Terry spent nearly twelve hours a day out on the ranch, and I wasn’t exactly sitting around. I was doing things that enabled Terry’s mother to stay in the office.”

She shook her head, staring out the front window at the house where she’d spent all her married years. “Burt never seemed to credit us for what we did, though. He acted like
he was God and we were living on his good graces, that we were ungrateful wretches if we ever talked about leaving the ranch.”

“Golden handcuffs.”

She chuckled without humor. “No kidding. Burt even threatened to disinherit Terry one time, when he brought up the subject of our moving. Terry kept telling me we’d leave eventually, and I kept trying to be patient, to compromise, to get along, but…” Her eyes grew troubled. “There were some…other issues that came into play, and pretty soon I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Cole put the transmission in Park and cut the engine. “Do you like living by yourself better?” he asked.

Jaclyn paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Living alone has been difficult. I won’t lie about that. It’s something I never pictured myself doing. But I’m getting by, and I certainly don’t regret leaving Terry. If it weren’t for the kids—” she glanced at them again as if to reassure herself that they were still sleeping, peacefully oblivious to her words “—I would never look back.”

So, it appeared he and Jaclyn had more in common than he had thought. They might have come from opposite sides of the tracks. She might have been Miss Popularity and he a two-bit punk trying to scrape enough together to buy a new pair of jeans when his others wore out, but neither of them held any love for Feld or the Wentworths.

“Let’s get this over with, then.” He started to open his door, but Jaclyn stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“There’s something you should know before we go in.”

“What’s that?”

“Terry and his family may not be…friendly. He’s been trying to talk me into coming back to him, and I won’t.”

“I don’t expect them to roll out the red carpet. They never liked me to begin with.” He started to climb out again, but she pulled him back.

“It’s more than that now. He might blame you that I won’t take him back,” she clarified.

“Me? How?”

“You gave me a job.”

Cole scowled. “What does that have to do with your relationship?”

“It gives me the ability to support myself. He and his father made sure I didn’t get much when we divorced. They were hoping desperation would drive me back.”

So that was the answer to the child support riddle. Cole had wondered, but he also knew the Wentworths had plenty of money. Why would they be so stingy with Terry’s children? “What about the kids?”

“I don’t know how they justify their behavior where the kids are concerned. I know they love them, so it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t be more worried that they have heat in the winter and food in the fridge. The only thing I can figure is that they don’t really understand how hurting me hurts them.”

Disgusted, Cole shook his head. The Wentworths had all the odds in their favor, and they were still playing dirty. “They know. They’re counting on the fact that you’d never let anything hurt your kids. You’d come back first.”

Jaclyn thought about that for a minute. “I probably would. If it came down to them having what they needed, I’d do anything. But I’d sacrifice a lot of things before turning tail and running back to Feld. Anyway—” she grinned at him, a hint of triumph in her expression “—I don’t have to worry about that now that an old friend has given me a decent job.”

If Cole had ever been glad he hired Jaclyn, and lately he was—every time he smelled dinner cooking or found a freshly ironed shirt in his closet—he was happy now. He loved that he was the one who’d given her exactly what she needed to fight the Wentworths. Burt might think he could get away with pushing his ex-daughter-in-law
around, that he could use her own children against her—and maybe in Feld he could. But Jackie wasn’t in Feld anymore.

“Anyway,” she was saying, “you were so nice to bring us out here, I wanted to warn you. I thought if you understood what to expect, you wouldn’t be hurt.”

Cole chuckled. “The Wentworths can’t hurt me, Jackie. You don’t ever have to worry about that.”

“I’m glad
someone
is safe from them,” she said, her smile sincere but her expression skeptical. “Still, maybe you’d better stay here while I take the kids to the door.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll help you carry their bags. Suddenly I’d like to see Burt and Terry one more time.”

Jaclyn seemed unsure of how to take his words, but Alex roused at that moment and cried, “Hey, we’re here!” which woke the girls.

“Fine, let’s go,” she said, and Cole spent the next few minutes helping Jaclyn get their overnight bags out of the back of the truck and bringing them to the door. Then he waited on the doorstep beside her, the three children standing in front of them, while Alex rang the bell.

“H
I
, B
URT
,”
Jaclyn said, when Terry’s father answered the door.

Even though he hadn’t seen her since their last day in court, Burt Wentworth didn’t respond directly to her. He spoke to the children, instead, trying to make the snub as obvious as possible.

“Here they are, all safe and sound,” he announced to Dolores, who stood behind him, wearing what she called a housedress, a cotton print number that fell to just below the knee and snapped up the front. As always, she looked like a sweet, gray-haired grandma. But Jaclyn had done the unforgivable when she’d divorced Terry, and couldn’t count on any kindness coming from Dolores.

Jaclyn greeted her, but Terry’s mother followed her husband’s lead and spoke only to the children.

“Come give Grandma a hug. We’ve missed you. Seems like we never get to see you anymore. Why did you have to go and move so far away?”