Season of Gifts (Neighborly Affection #8)

50. Alice

Chapter fifty

Alice

S picy cider warmed Alice’s throat all the way down to her belly. She scooped another handful of mixed nuts from the bowl on the side table. She’d munched on more than she needed to since bringing the tree in with Jay, but the sun had disappeared an hour ago and she still hadn’t managed to corner Henry for a talk. A gal could get nervous wondering if life was about to implode.

With a smile hiding not-quite-gritted teeth, she carried her drink toward the stereo, where Henry was futzing with the controls. The low hum of choirs singing carols had occasionally become sing-alongs in the last few hours, rousing and mostly on-key renditions of the classics she knew from childhood.

Forced cheer wasn’t exactly the right word. But the five people in the room were sure putting a metric ton of effort into making tree trimming the merry Christmassy experience they wanted to be having. Except maybe Jay; his enthusiasm was genuine and fresh. And why not?

He had both of his dominants with him, even if neither had taken charge of the event. Mother had designated him her official decorator, which gave him an unending string of tasks to complete. He’d practically worn a path from the boxes of ornaments to the little sofa where Mother studied the options he brought her and assigned them places on the tree, and from the sofa to the tree, where he hung the selections while checking the overall impression with her, and from the tree back to the boxes.

Mother’s friend Lina sat beside her, and the two of them gasped and gushed and guffawed at Jay in his element. The tree he’d selected was marvelous. His eye for decorations was exquisite. His cherubic glee in donning a lace angel doily as a hat was infectious.

Reaching the stereo, Alice bent over Henry’s crouched form. He startled back, their elbows bumping. Just as quick, he steadied her forearm with his hand, keeping her cider from tipping, before he rose.

“Sorry, thanks.” She took a tiny sip for courage. “Anything I can help with?” Pretty nonthreatening, as openings went. She could work up to the emotional intervention.

Henry wrapped his arm around her in a side hug and kissed her temple. “Simply enjoy yourself, sweet girl. We’ve missed far too many moments this season already. I would like for you and Jay to have the relaxing, festive atmosphere you deserve.”

“That you deserve, too.”

He offered a noncommittal hum. “Your happiness is my happiness as well.”

Piercing his outer shell might as well have been building a particle accelerator with some straws and a phone battery. He sounded like himself; he acted like himself. A little less demonstrative with his affection than he would be at home, but his mom was in the room.

Maybe they’d had some monumental talk while she and Jay had been out, and Henry really had shed the distraction and anxiety from breakfast. His obliviousness to her and Jay and their dynamic as his spouses. But she didn’t buy it. That stuff didn’t dissipate; it got buried under layers of must and should and can you help me with .

“Are you happy?” She pitched her voice low; her chances of getting Henry to unburden himself in front of the mom he was caring for lingered around zero percent. But if she could pull him away, even for a few minutes, they could start fixing the secrets and hurt feelings. “You’ve been under a lot of stress. If you wanted to talk—”

“I have you here in my arms for the holiday, my love.” He cradled her tightly to his chest and swayed to the Christmas waltz. The hollow of his neck welcomed her irresistible urge to nuzzle close. “Jay is entertaining Mother; she has color in her cheeks and a smile upon her face. What stress could reach me now?”

Temptation stung. Melting into his embrace, taking his words at face value, would be so easy. And telling him about haring off to visit her parents without his guidance would create new stress.

But she’d promised herself. No secrets and no lies. No heart-pounding fear that any minute Ollie would spill the beans to Mother. “The last two weeks have been hard on all of us. There are things we should talk about.”

“I’ve been distant,” he murmured. “Inconstant. I see that now, and how painful that must have been.” He rotated them slowly, their feet so close she kept sliding against the sides of his shoes. “But I will make it up to you both. I remain the man you married, sweet girl. You needn’t worry.”

Frustration sprouted, wound its way around her vocal cords. “It’s okay for you to admit—”

“I’m sorry, dearest, but it’s coming on six.” His arm rolled; maybe he’d been checking the time at his wrist. “The larger platters are still in the kitchen. Mother should eat something more substantial, and she’s been taking to bed earlier recently, aside from attempting to wait up for you and Jay last night.”

Shit. She hadn’t meant to upset Mother’s health routines. They’d been so late arriving. No wonder Henry had been anxious about checking on his mom. But the kitchen would be perfect. “I’ll go with you. I can help—”

“No, please, immerse yourself in the festivities. Seeing you enjoy yourself is immensely pleasing to me.” He nudged her hip suggestively as their dance ended. “Go on, my good girl.”

His good girl. She wavered on the edge of safewording. That would shake him up. But it would hurt him, and one thing she’d learned about Henry—even when he was calm and poised on the surface, his currents ran deep.

“We’ll talk tonight, though. I…” Sourness coated her tongue. “I really need you to hear me.”

“Whatever you need”—cupping her cheek, he sprinkled kisses in her hair—“I will provide.”

He strode from her, loudly praising Jay’s artful decorations and encouraging him to enlist her in the effort before he disappeared down the hall.

Heaping Henry’s burdens higher tasted so acidic that even downing the rest of her cinnamon-and-clove cider couldn’t wash out the sting.

She joined Jay at the tree, her broad smile floating on an ocean of uncertainty. The optics screamed happy family Christmas. Mother and Lina sat as close as sisters while she and Jay transformed the room. Mother had done up her hair, and a touch of color shaded her eyes. Her nails gleamed, trimmed and polished and shining with clear coat. Her outfit was immaculate, a touch dressier than Alice’s, but then she hadn’t been out traipsing around in the trees. Aside from occasionally needing to catch her breath after a bout of laughter, she could’ve been any completely healthy seventy-something-year-old.

Henry brought in a meal fit for eight and fixed a plate for Mother. He fed Jay a handful of appetizers with his fingers, and Jay’s starry-eyed devotion followed him everywhere he went. He laughingly chimed in as Mother and Lina shared stories of him as a little boy, how he could barely clamber onto the piano bench for his first lesson and once climbed the library shelves to the ceiling to discover what books the grownups were hiding from him.

Only Alice’s prickling discomfort refused to let her sink into the cozy scene. Maybe she was imagining a problem that no longer existed. But she knew the horror of believing so hard that things were fine that she aided Dad in his scheme to cook the Christmas steaks and wound up back in the hard plastic hospital chairs with Ollie gripping her hand so stiffly she ached for hours.

Just after eight, when Lina had departed and the lights on the tree twinkled amid a collection of bows and balls and silver garland, Mother delicately covered her mouth and yawned. “Dear me, I believe I’ve run out of daylight.”

Setting his napkin and glass aside, Henry rose to his feet. “It’s been an exuberant day, with little rest to speak of. I’ll help you to bed.”

“No, no, you stay, darling.” Mother extended her hand. “Jay, you sweet boy, will you accompany an old woman upstairs?”

“An old woman?” Leaving what had been his hip-to-hip seat beside Henry, Jay scanned the room. “You’ll have to point her out to me. There’s just you and Alice here.”

Mother sighed, pressing both hands to her heart. “Oh I do like this boy, Henry. How wonderful that you’ve chosen to keep him. And”—she reached for Jay as he positioned himself to help her up—“that he has chosen you in return. It’s no small thing to have people to share your life with.”

Mother turned her gaze on Henry; the corner of his eye twitched. She swiveled her head toward Alice, and that sharp gaze came with a raised brow. “Time together is such a blessing. I often found the discomforts of the day faded after dinner, when Robert and I had time to discuss the oddities weighing on our minds.”

An arctic chill swept from Alice’s back teeth to her toes. She didn’t always catch social cues. But Mother’s message couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a nudge to talk to Henry. She must’ve heard about Alice’s misadventure from Ollie. “Wise advice. Communication is so important.”

“Yes.” Henry stared at the tree, his face blank. “We risk losing irreplaceable things when we fail to listen.”

“Goodnight, darlings.” With Jay at her side, Mother delivered kisses to Henry and Alice, the brush of her lips a dry whisper in front of each ear. “I’m giddy as a schoolgirl wondering what tomorrow’s calendar will hold for us.”

The slow, steady beat of footsteps trailed out of the music room. Henry began gathering the last of the glasses and the small dessert tray. Alice scooped up a handful before he could take them all. “To the kitchen?”

The answer was obvious, but her firm tone would show him she wasn’t going to be left behind again.

“Yes, thank you.” He squinched his mouth in a wry twist. “I may need a moment to alter tomorrow’s card, and I would appreciate if you avert your eyes while I do so.”

“I can keep a secret.” Oh boy, could she. She winced so hard her ears tingled. “I mean, I won’t look.” Following him down the hall with a stack of little plates in one hand and three glasses pinched in the fingers of the other, she took slow, even breaths. “I, uh, I reached out—” She glanced up the stairs as they crossed the entryway; Mother and Jay were just now at the top. She fell silent until the swinging kitchen door was safely between her mouth and Jay’s ears. “I reached out to Nat about a thing for Jay. For all of us, really—”

“Is she arriving tonight?” The tray rattled against the counter as it landed.

“What?” Did he already know? Nat had said she couldn’t even start until Sunday. “No, I don’t think—”

“Should I prepare a room tomorrow, then?” Tense, hawklike, he took the plates from her.

“Prepare—” She set the glasses beside the sink before she dropped one. “I think we have crossed wires. She’s not coming here; we don’t have to prepare anything.”

“Ah, excellent.” Henry unbent a fraction, his shoulders smoothing out. “I have full faith in your ability to craft something splendid for Jay. If I may leave you with this?” With a splayed hand, he indicated the dishes on the counter. “I must amend our activities list.”

As he burgled one of his calendar cards, she scraped plates and loaded the dishwasher. He disappeared, taking the card into his mother’s studio. She’d promised not to look, but every second he was gone ate into the time his mother had created for them to talk privately. She sped through the cleanup and turned off the lights in the music room. The glow from the tree and the electric candles in the windows faded, leaving afterimages in her vision.

“Thank you, Alice.” Henry stood silhouetted by the light from the stairway spilling down the hall. “My change is accomplished, and the doors are all secured. Shall we venture upstairs?”

She took the arm he offered, her heart pumping an ocean of heat out to her fingertips in waves. “There’s something else. About my trip.”

“I owe you an apology, Alice.” He led her to the stairs and sighed deeply. “I was not my better self that day I reached you at the airport. My reaction was overly brusque.” He climbed almost as slowly as Jay and Mother had, as if the gravity had increased and their feet could scarcely clear the risers. “I am sorry that my own stresses may have made your week more difficult or affected your ability to work with a clear mind. Will you forgive me?”

“No, I—”

His steps faltered. Fuck.

“Yes, I mean, of course, but I’m not asking you for an apology. Not about that, not for me.” She babbled down the hallway to their bedroom. Was Jay ahead of them or behind? He knew everything she meant to tell Henry about the trip. But not so much about how utterly they’d failed Jay, and how much she needed a one-on-one with Henry about what they owed to Jay and how she’d fucked up and maybe didn’t deserve to be called his dominant at all. Not until she could do better. “I just—we—we’re overdue for some honesty. You don’t have to start; I can start.”

Henry ushered her into the bedroom ahead of him and closed the door. Jay wasn’t inside; he must still be helping Mother.

“Actually, if I may begin?” Henry stepped in front of her and lightly clasped her shoulders, his thumbs a gentle pressure through her knit top. “I fear I have inadvertently replicated the circumstances of your childhood, forcing you into a role in which you had little information and great responsibility.”

“That’s not your fault.” But her knees trembled. This conversation would be harder than just the bare facts of it. “You didn’t choose for your mom to be sick. None of us chose that.”

“Ah, but I kept a barrier, attempting to shield you from the details of Mother’s illness.” His thumbs rolled toward her neck, a massage digging into the knots above her collarbone. “I recognize now that rather than the comfort I intended, that was a source of distress, echoing your earlier experiences.” The familiar face of her dominant greeted her, wise and all-seeing. “You need honesty from me, the honesty I have always promised you.”

She swayed in his hands, following his silent tune. Nothing she could tell Henry would cause him to turn away from her. Even if he chastised her for confronting an emotional mountain without his assistance, he would understand why she’d had to do it. “We both need honesty. We mess things up without it.”

“Then I will give you truth.” Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back and swallowed. As he exhaled, he brought his gaze back to hers, a weariness suddenly weighting his eyes and lining his face. “I am tired, Alice. I would, in this moment, love very much to take a hot shower without worrying about what might happen in the fifteen minutes I am indisposed.”

Laying another burden on him now would be blatantly selfish. Mother was in her room for the night, and Alice’s phone hadn’t blown up with messages from Ollie. They could find peace for a few hours. The weariness was what he’d been hiding all day. If he could show her that, they were okay.

“Then you should have that.” She smoothed her hand against his chest, her wedding ring resting over his heart. “I could join you, if you want, or Jay could, and you could let us take care of you.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles one by one. “The shower here isn’t nearly so large as ours, sweet girl, though I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Just a few minutes to myself, and I will be refreshed and ready for whatever you wish.”

“Go shower.” Leaning in, she kissed the corner of his mouth. The night they’d been here alone, the night Jay had been so distant, their bodies had brought them back into alignment. Lessened the fear and the loneliness. Making that happen for Henry and Jay tonight would ease both of her husbands. The talk could come after, when they’d reaffirmed those bonds. “I’ll handle the rest.”