Season of Gifts (Neighborly Affection #8)

80. Alice

Chapter eighty

Alice

T ap tap tap. Henry bounced his thumb against the steering wheel. Tap tap tap.

The stereo was off, the car quiet except for the heater blowing out warmth. He wasn’t tapping to a rhythm Alice could hear. But they’d left the cardiac care center a few blocks back, with his mom in the hands of her medical team for the next couple of hours.

She’s gonna be fine floated in the space between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Except those weren’t the words she wanted—she might as well say hey, you’re making everybody jumpy with your emotions, so stuff them down, okay? Talk about sounding like his dad. Yeesh. Just about anything else would be more open and encouraging. “I don’t know how you’re feeling, but if you want to talk about it, Jay and I will listen.”

“Yeah, Danny says”—Jay, behind her, pitched his voice louder, and Alice lowered the blasting heater—“you have to go at the pace that’s best for you. And that you gotta treat yourself with consent too, not just other folks. So if you make a decision and then get uncomfortable with it, it’s okay to tell yourself to stop and go back and pick the other decision. Like if you wanted to stay in the waiting room.”

She sent Jay a mental high-five. They only had a few more days with Mother before going home, and Henry was working hard at giving up the driver’s seat. He’d called to offer the home health position to a woman they’d interviewed, but they hadn’t heard back yet whether she’d accept.

Henry hummed a note of approval. “I’m pleased that your conversations with Danny are so fruitful. I would, actually”— tap, tap, tap went his thumb—“appreciate altering our itinerary this afternoon, if that’s acceptable to the two of you. Not to return to the cardiac center early, but to add a brief stop before the market.”

“Sure!” Jay’s answer came spring-loaded almost before Henry finished.

“Of course we can add a stop.” Hard to imagine what else they would need for dinner. The kitchen already overflowed with food, and the sunny garden room held plenty of flowers. They weren’t likely to put lit candles on the table with two preschoolers. “Where are we headed?”

“To lay something to rest.” The front of Henry’s jacket puffed out against his seat belt, but if he’d taken a deep breath, he released it without a sigh. “A grudge of sorts.”

On the way to the medical center, she could’ve exchanged a glance with Jay. They’d given Mother shotgun privileges. But he’d insisted Alice take the front seat afterward and claimed the seat behind her for himself.

“Against your dad?” Jay braved the question she’d hesitated to ask.

Henry hadn’t shared every page he’d read, but the man he described and the one who’d written about grief and fear and regret hardly seemed like the same guy.

“Yes and no.”

They wound through tree-lined residential streets, bare branches in dark vees against a cloudless sky. The cemetery revealed itself with crooked lines of headstones spiking up from low snowdrifts as the sedan climbed the hill. Henry turned into a drive marked by squat stone pillars; snow crunched beneath the tires as he came to a stop. The rest of the road—if there was one—hadn’t been plowed.

“We may have a walk ahead of us.” He stared out the windshield, his thumb tapping again. “I do apologize. If you would prefer to wait in the car—”

“Gonna stop you right there.” Alice unbuckled her seat belt and zipped her jacket to her chin. Reaching across the console, she rested her mittened hand on his, trying to push fuzzy warmth into his nervous twitch. “Unless you order us to stay behind, we’re going with you.”

“No. I would be glad for the company.” He shut off the engine, and the vents stopped pumping heat into the car. “I haven’t visited since the service. Seven years.” As he opened his door, the chill tiptoed across her nose and cheeks. “It was early fall then. The leaves had only recently begun to turn, spots of brilliant color dappled throughout the cemetery.”

The snow squeaked under Henry’s feet. The door behind her opened and shut quickly, and Jay appeared at her door, steadying her as she stepped out. His gift was coming in handy already. She’d put the new boots on expecting to deal with slush in plowed parking lots. The snow-covered field of stones in front of them was a bit more than that. She gripped Jay’s forearm in thanks. “Good traction on these, sweetheart.”

Jay straightened her cap over her ears, leaning in as he did. “I’ll break the trail if you stick close to him. Kinda thinking his past wasn’t any happier than ours were.”

His dad sure hadn’t been a happy guy, if his journals were anything to go by. Maybe just because Henry had been reading about tough times, but still.

Swallowing hard, she pressed her nose to Jay’s cheek. “Having that same thought.”

Henry stood in front of the car, shielding his gaze from the sun. Stepping up beside him, Alice took hold of his free hand. “Take your time.”

He pointed up the slope. “Do you see the Greek Revival mausoleum with the fluted Ionic columns in front?”

Not really, no. But she did see a little white house in the distance that could’ve come out of a social studies textbook on ancient Greece. “That’s where your dad is buried?”

Was it still “buried” if they weren’t in the ground? Not the time to ask.

“Nearby.” Henry took two steps forward, and Jay smoothly angled in front of him, using his legs to push snow aside. “Thank you, Jay. The mausoleum was filled with generations of Webbs long before Father died, but it makes a convenient signpost.” He followed in Jay’s wake, and she kept up beside him. “My paternal grandparents are entombed within. I don’t recall them.” The slope wasn’t steep, but they moved slowly, picking their footing carefully. “I suppose Robert would.”

“Do you think he’ll—” She nipped her tongue between her teeth. Henry wanted them along for support, not an interrogation. He’d had a ton of family stuff thrown at him in the last two days.

“Change?” He stroked her back, his caress strong enough to settle into her bones through her coat.

“Yeah.” Her brother-in-law had definitely made an effort at breakfast to be not such a robot, but he wasn’t even close to qualifying as laid-back. Their dad had fucked him up pretty hard with the sober responsibility routine. The dad Henry was here to mourn. “I’m sorry. We should talk about what you want to talk about. Or nothing, if you want some quiet.”

“Gabe and Eddie would sure like it if he did.” Jay spun backward for a step, his usual cheer replaced by a twisting frown. “They didn’t come out and say it—well, Gabe sorta did—but I figure they get lots of stuff and not much attention.” He spun back around and marched on, the snow crumpling beside his calves. “If we have kids, we’re not doing that to them. We spend time with them, and we tell them we love them like eighty-seven times a day. Not because they’re perfect or beautiful or smart or funny or artistic or athletic. Just because they exist. Whatever they are or aren’t.”

The cold stung her eyes. She had to swallow twice to get her lips to move. “Sounds like a good start, sweetheart.”

“I suspect we are all in agreement on those points.” Henry tipped his head back; his fingers curled into her coat as his breath puffed out in a cloud above him. “A bit to the right of the mausoleum, Jay. You’ll see a double-width stone with a smooth bell curve across the top.”

They course-corrected to end their upslope trek shy of the mausoleum. WEBB marked a few dozen stones around them, some with dates back into the early 1800s. Jay stepped aside in front of smooth speckled granite reading ROBERT EDMUND III on the left beneath the surname.

Henry stood at the foot of the grave, his chin level and his shoulders back. “I don’t truly know if or how much my brother will change. Before yesterday I would have told you he seemed content with his life.” The breeze ruffled his hair but not his expression, as unmoving as the stone. “I see now the superficiality of that belief. Our upbringing put much stock in appearances. Not entirely different from the all is well strategy Alice’s mother employed.”

Staring at the headstone, he clasped her hand hard enough that the throb of her pulse sang in her fingers. He stretched out his other hand to Jay and pulled him close, so the two of them flanked Henry like bookends holding him upright.

“Hello, Father.” Henry rolled out a low sigh that settled like a layer of fog swirling on the snow. Birds flitted in the branches around them. “I wish things had been different.”

Her words. She’d given them to him yesterday in the kitchen, and now he gave them back to her as shared truth and understanding. They might stand in a vast, snowy emptiness, but the three of them could never be alone.

Henry’s clenching fist eased. He soothed her hand with soft strokes.

“I wish you could have been more open about your private struggles.” A wistfulness spun through his comforting baritone. He too knew sadness that could never be erased, only accepted. “I wish I could have known you better. We are different men, you and I, but I believe I understand now some of what drove you.”

That would be pretty valuable information. Intention didn’t always show up in action. Henry could look at the journals and know his dad’s hang-ups weren’t about him . That was generational shit rolling downhill, the weight of all the dead mausoleum people’s expectations pushing at his back.

“I shall strive to avoid falling into similar traps of the mind going forward.” Henry warmed with wry humor, his mouth curving in a slight smile. “These last few weeks have given me lessons in humility. And I shall endeavor to remember that seeing our parents’ vulnerabilities may be useful instruction for the next generation.”

Releasing her, Henry strode forward. Her fumbling hand found Jay’s, the two of them closing up the gap as Henry crouched in front of the stone and rested his hand on the top. His long coat flared out, dark against the snow behind him. His scarf trailed down his back. He bowed his head. His breath fogged the glossy shine of the granite.

“I forgive you for not being the man I needed you to be, Father.”

Her stomach churned; her heart rattled her ribs. She couldn’t say the same. Not yet, and maybe not ever. They could go forward, her and Dad, but only if he worked at doing better. Henry would never have that chance with his dad. Their relationship was over and done; all that could shift was how Henry thought about it. How he revised his hypothesis with the new information from his dad’s journals. How he dealt with the resentment—well, she would have resented, anyway—of knowing there had been another man, a deep thinker he’d never been granted access to.

“The forgiveness isn’t for you but for me. Judgment and anger rooted a fear in me that persists though I had thought it conquered. Now that fear has hurt the ones I love—and me as well.” Henry took a long, slow breath, his jaw shifting. “I shut them out when I most needed their presence, their compassion and guidance. They steady me in ways uncountable and unknowable but gratefully felt.”

Jay leaned into her, his head coming to rest against hers, his hair tickling her cheek. Wrapping her arm around his back, she snugged their bodies. Henry hadn’t glanced at them, hadn’t strayed his gaze from the gravestone, but he didn’t need to. His apology rang as loud and solemn as a church bell.

“The gift of their love allows me to take steps into the unknown, Father. I wish you could have known that strength.” The stone must have been cold, and Henry had left his lined driving gloves in the car, but he pressed his fingertips against the grave marker regardless. “In the year ahead, I will attempt to share this knowledge with Robert and bridge the distance between us. I will use this strength to protect Mother by honoring her wishes rather than stealing her choices. And I shall not live my life at arm’s length as you did. My dear ones will know how endlessly deep my love for them runs. They will be neither trophies to display nor boxes to be checked.”

The crisp air chilled the inside of Alice’s nose. Snow skittered away under her heel. In her mind, Robert and his family stood at the front door as it swung open for their arrival, positioned like a photo card just so, not a hair out of place or a collar askew. Adam droned on, showing off his house room after room, announcing the finishes by brand name and rattling off the dimensions and the cost like a sales pitch.

Those were the end results of chasing perfection. Keeping score. A life of hollow victories was actually a stack of losses—and if you knew enough to know you weren’t happy, you chased more empty wins thinking maybe they’d be the thing that finally switched on the this is enough happiness. Only nothing ever did, because the trophy wasn’t the prize any more than the blueprint was the machine. The real things took work to build, and the work was being deep in the messy emotions with the people you loved.

Jay nudged her a hair off-balance about half a second before Henry embraced them both, his arms wide, her face unexpectedly buried in the collar of his coat.

“I don’t suppose—” Henry shook his head slightly, wedged between them as he was. “I don’t suppose I believe Father’s spirit is here, that our ghosts haunt the living as they do in Dickens’s morality tale, but I must admit I feel lighter, as though invisible shackles have fallen away. Confronting mistaken beliefs is a powerful remedy for any number of feelings.”

“You taught me that.” Jay squeezed hard, compressing coats and lungs before he eased up. “My head’s thicker than yours, so it took a while to work its way in. If you want homework assignments to think about the topic, I have these great prompts in my notebooks.” The sly tease in his voice gave away the smile as much as the wiggle working its way down his back. “You might recognize the questions, though. This guy I love gave them to me every week for years and years—”

A rough kiss hushed him, Henry cupping the back of Jay’s head and holding him still. Eyes closed, lips fused, they spoke without words. Shorter kisses followed, lighter and lighter, until Henry opened his eyes and fastened his gaze on Alice.

“And you, sweet girl? I spied you having thoughts before I gathered you up.” He peppered her forehead and cheeks with kisses, his mouth warm, his lips gentle. “What epiphany has struck you so?”

“Oh, no, I, it was just—” She claimed a full kiss, pouring her energy into him, all of the joy they’d built together. “This visit is about you making peace with your dad. It doesn’t have to be about me. I’m sorry that one-sided conversations are all you can have with him.”

One eyebrow lifted, Henry dramatically scanned the sea of headstones. “It seems a fitting place for laying ghosts of any kind to rest.” He tugged her hand between them, folding it within his against his heart. “Are you thinking of your own turbulent parental relationships?”

She almost yanked her mitten loose, the knit an unwanted barrier between her skin and his. “A little, but more about what you said about checking boxes and accumulating trophies, and about your brother, and about my college ex.” Only last week she’d been enduring his obnoxious attitude, his ridiculous bragging. “He has this great wife, friendly and sweet, and these two adorable kids, and a good-paying job”—demotion aside, but that was his own fault, not hers—“and a huge house, but it’s empty. Not the house, just his eyes, you know? Everything he has is about keeping score. It’s all interchangeable to him. He could swap out the wife and kids and not care as long as they looked equally valuable—enviable, that’s the word—to people he’s trying to impress.”

Jay tipped his head, sweet confusion in his eyes.

Henry clicked his tongue. “Engaging in a bit of online stalking, were you?”

“Huh?” Like she would’ve gone deliberately looking. “No, when we were at his house for dinner. On the work trip?”

“Your ex was on your trip?” Jay shuttled his mouth sideways, more curiosity than accusation in his voice. “I thought that was your boss.” Brown eyes went wide. “You dated your boss?”

“Whoa, slow down, I told you—” No, she’d told Ollie.

She’d meant to tell Henry and Jay, but then things had been so fucked up, and they’d barely had time to get through the big emotions Saturday night before they’d all crashed hard. She’d talked about visiting her parents and blanked on everything else.

“Shit, I’m sorry. It completely slipped out of my head, I guess because it doesn’t feel important. He doesn’t feel important.” She flipped from face to face, trying to keep tabs on both expressions, her body tensing. “Not my boss. Adam works for the company that called us out there. Me turning him down is clearly still some big deal in his head—he wouldn’t have been harassing me otherwise—but it’s a nothing for me. Just disgusted by his behavior and sorry for him that he hasn’t figured out what’s important.”

Henry narrowed his eyes, evergreen depths drilling into her. Now she was in for the third degree. “Harassing you?”

“What?”

“You said this unimportant fool was harassing you. How so?” The cool edge of Henry’s anger hardened like ice.

Beside her, Jay vibrated with kinetic energy. “Did he hurt you? Are you okay?”

“No, just words, I’ve practically forgotten about it, really. It wasn’t anything like…” Harassment of course would make her husbands think of disastrous nights at the club. This didn’t even come close. She slunk her hand up Jay’s chest and into his neckline, rubbing the solid line of his jaw. “He wanted to hear me say I would’ve been better off with him, that’s all. Stroke his ego, confirm his belief that I was still thinking about him—because he was still stewing about me. Only I’m not, because he just wasn’t that…”

Tension faded into a wolfish smile, though Henry’s eyes stayed dark. “Consequential?”

“Exactly. And all he did was land himself in more trouble.” The grin taking over her face might’ve been mean. But he’d deserved what he got. “The board demoted him. Mostly for the financial hit, but also for ‘unprofessional conduct.’” That had been Wade’s doing, with his years of experience at winning over execs. “Oh! Did I at least tell you that the boss thinks I’d make a great aerospace engineer?”

“You did not”—that stern tone thick with amusement could melt her insides—“but we will graciously allow you to rectify the oversight.”

Jay rattled her by the elbows. “Like rockets? Spaceships?”

“Just like that.” She squealed as he lifted her and let out a whoop that echoed through the graveyard. “It’ll mean more training. But no more client trips for a good long while.”

Henry eyed the sun and their shadows, stretched far across the snow. “Tell us the tale on the way to the market, then, unless either of you has something you need to do here?”

Her feet touched the earth again. “Not me.”

“Nope. The ghosts are good and busted.” Jay hummed a naggingly familiar tune as he tramped down the trail toward the car.

Henry gestured Alice ahead of him. “I will want to hear all about that trip and your emotions in great detail, dearest. And I am exceptionally pleased with your insights surrounding what matters to you. I would not wish that glorious heart of yours wasted on a hollow life.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that anymore.” She had claimed two incredible husbands, a loving mother-in-law, a slew of caring friends, a better relationship with her sister and hopefully her parents, a new sister in Nat—and tonight she’d be adding Mother’s dearest friend and her family to the circle. “I can’t imagine a life more full of love.”

“Nor can I.” Stopping her with his arms around her waist, he kissed her beneath her ear, nipping at the soft skin as Jay ate up the ground ahead of them in long strides. Releasing her, Henry gave her a gentle push in the back with both hands, his voice a low whisper. “Race you to the car.”

He took off, bounding after Jay, the ends of his scarf flying behind him. She lost precious seconds gawking before her feet started churning snow. Life was full of surprises.