71. Jay
Chapter seventy-one
Jay
J ay closed his fingers around the warm touch—Alice. He’d been tapping her knee, oops, but now she was stroking his knuckles gently, laughing at something Henry’s sister-in-law had said.
“Fighting with traffic would put me in the mood for chocolate”—if so, she hadn’t said anything on their drive up last Friday—“and you’re in luck. Henry and Jay made the most delicious cake. Jay, would you cut slices for us?”
She squeezed his hand and let him go. While Henry tried to get his brother to remember baking with their housekeeper when they were kids, Jay sprang up with silent thanks. Okay, maybe he’d been sitting on the edge of the seat for a while. Like, noticeably. Polite chitchat had swallowed up the first hour after Robert and Constance and their sons showed up, and then it had gone back for seconds. He’d been sitting long enough that even walking to the kitchen and back to fetch the dessert tray was a good stretch.
Henry’s brother and his wife were the king and queen of small talk. Their greetings came with firm handshakes, and politeness coated them thick as the frosting on the cake. Hard to tell if they liked him and Alice, but they didn’t seem to dis like them, so that was already a thousand times better than taking Henry and Alice to meet his family.
And they were still in the getting-to-know-you phase. The kids, Robert-the-younger and Gabriel, hadn’t said much of anything yet. After delivering hugs to their grandma and uncle, they’d pulled out a puzzle from the stack Mom had asked Jay to set up at a side table and sat studying it almost totally silently. Neither could’ve been more than ten. At that age, he’d have been playing a noisy game with trucks or action figures or entertaining Peggy’s kids with hide-and-seek or tag. Though these two had on church clothes. A kid could hardly crawl around on the rug smashing trucks when he was wearing pants that weren’t supposed to get holes in the knees.
Jay set plates of cake by their elbows, then snapped a puzzle piece into place. The little boy, Gabriel, turned wide gray-green eyes on him. The older boy, the one who shared his dad’s name and seemed pretty much an exact copy in every other area, too, looked to his mom.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Kress, but the boys don’t need cake—”
“Now, Constance.” Leaning forward in her seat, Mom patted the other woman’s sleeve. “I’m certain it won’t hurt a bit this one time. The boys are accompanying you to the service this evening, aren’t they? Dinner won’t be until after you return. It’s a long wait for a little boy.” Mom made the best face, all pointy-mouthed sadness and puppy-dog longing in her eyes, and laughed gently. “Robert and Henry often needed an afternoon snack on the holiday as well. Their father was quite particular about the order of the events for the night; he enjoyed passing along the traditions. I believe it resurrected childhood nostalgia for him.” Tapping a finger on her lips, she hummed. “I don’t think you’ve shared much about your own traditions, and of course Alice and Jay won’t have heard our old stories yet. Shall we go around the room and share some piece of the holiday we recall with fondness?” She nodded toward the boys and winked at Jay. “With the understanding that little pitchers have big ears, of course.”
He winked back. No spilling the beans about Santa Claus, got it. Not that he would’ve anyway. This wasn’t his first time at the cool uncle gig.
Gabriel ran little fingers along his fork, but he waited until Robert picked his up. The older boy gravely nodded at Jay. “Thank you, Mr. Kress. Uncle Henry is a competent chef, Mother says, and we appreciate you including us in the dessert tasting this afternoon.”
“You bet.” Two words were better than none, and about all his brain could manage. That kid did not talk like Jay’s other nephews. He did sound like a high-octane version of Henry and his dad, though. Too bad Henry didn’t have home videos of himself as a kid. He’d pay good money to watch his husband have the same personality at nine that he did at thirty-nine. “There’s cookies, too, and caramel corn that Henry and Alice made. Probably good to try a little of everything.”
“Unless you’re allergic.” Gabriel cut neater squares from his cake than Jay would’ve—well, ever. “I’m not, but there’s a girl in my class who can’t have milk, so sometimes she has to say no to stuff at lunch and that’s still polite.”
Jay solemnly agreed it was and added another piece to the puzzle, a wintry forest scene not unlike the woods he tramped through as a kid. “There, that’s my brainwork for the day. Two pieces is a big contribution, don’t you think?”
“Well.” Robert rested his fork on his plate, squinted slightly, and folded his hands in front of him. “It’s two percent of the puzzle, which is a small but not insignificant return on investment. If you’d like”—he gestured to the seat across from him—“you could join us in the endeavor, Mr. Kress. Do you have a fondness for landscapes?”
He could sit down before he fell down, maybe. The vocabulary and quiet confidence on this kid might seem less odd the more time he spent with him. “I might just do that. Let me get your folks and everybody some dessert, and I’ll catch up with you and your brother afterward.”
“Duty first, certainly.” The boy nodded, and his short sandy brown hair didn’t even twitch. “The cake is excellent—pleasantly moist with a robust cherry flavor. You and Uncle Henry should be commended.”
Jay pinned an imaginary commendation to his shirt and puffed out his chest on his way back to the dessert cart. The smaller boy hid a giggle behind his hand. Jay served Mother next, earning a kiss on the cheek, and then the guests.
Constance accepted her plate with a small smile and leaned up toward him. “Thank you for engaging with the boys. I do hope they weren’t bothering you with their questions.”
Bothering? If his nephews played that quietly, he’d be checking them for heartbeats. “Not even a little bit. My siblings have fourteen kids between them. I’ve been Uncle Jay for a long time.”
“Fourteen, my goodness.” She didn’t swoon like a lady in an old-fashioned movie, but she did tip back enough that her husband steadied her with his hand. “You must have several siblings.”
“Four, but only three have kids so far.” Raising his voice, he headed back to the dessert tray and started slicing the last round. “The oldest are college age, and the youngest won’t start preschool till next year. You must be real proud of your two.” Three plates for Henry and Alice and himself. He balanced one on the bend in his elbow. “You send Mom regular updates on their clubs and sports and stuff, I bet.”
“I—well—” She didn’t, not with that kind of answer. “The boys do speak regularly with their grandmother, except recently, of course. We know she’s been resting to stay healthy.”
“Then there must be a lot to catch up on.” Alice’s bright smile might’ve been fifty-fifty for the cake he was bringing her and for playing co-conspirator in getting Mom stories about her grandsons. “What grades are they in this year?”
That uncorked the barrel. They’d drained off the polite talk, finally, and gotten to the good stuff. Alice scooted over and made space for Jay between her and Henry. An unspoken game started up, Jay and Alice alternating bites of yummy cake with questions to keep the conversation from drifting back into boresville. Mom joined in the questioning, and Henry rested his hand approvingly on Jay’s back. Even picture-perfect Constance had relaxed into her seat by the time Jay cleared the empty plates and rejoined Team Puzzle.
When the sun went down, Jay lit up the tree and started laying a fire in the fireplace. Robert’s family headed out for church, promising to pass along Mom’s regrets. No battle or anything—Henry hadn’t said a word about Mom’s condition before Mom volunteered that she was gonna nap before dinner instead. Watching Jay work, she claimed one of the two tall-backed chairs on either side of the fireplace. “You’re doing quite well, darling boy.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He’d made a fire or five hundred before, and the kindling bucket had plenty of material, so he didn’t have to strain to get the flames going. The flue moved smoothly; Mom probably had the whole setup serviced every year. “You being smart about maintenance is a big help.”
She brushed his hair, tickling his ear, and when he stopped to look, she took hold of his chin and gave him a good-job waggle. “At setting the mood, though the fire is also lovely. The holidays often bear the weight of a melancholy aura here, and it is exceptionally difficult to be melancholy around your joy.”
He pulled his brows down and flattened his mouth into a line. “I could shoot for stern, if that’d help.”
Mom’s laugh flipped his smile back across his face in a heartbeat. “I’m not certain you could be dour if you tried, and I dearly love that about you, Jay. My boys are subdued at showing their emotions—perhaps you’ve noticed?” Her sly look had him snorting at the understatement. “But Henry smiles with much more frequency since you and Alice entered his life, and I quite understand the impulse. You are the life of the party, Jay. Not out of any wildness, I daresay, but out of your sincere interest in others and your boundless curiosity. You are a sorely needed refreshment to shake up hidebound traditions.”
“Not too much ?” He air quoted himself, the sting of something in his chest. Not fear, exactly, but an old pain of waiting for the inevitable scold. Danny would ask him whose voice that was. More than one, none of them his, and all of them a couple hours away, decorating the last felled tree of the season in a gathering way more raucous but somehow less loving than the shine in Henry’s mom’s eyes.
“ Never. ” She tugged him toward her and kissed his forehead. “You are delightfully you, my sensitive, exuberant bonus son. You needn’t change for anyone.”
By the time his in-laws came back from church and updated Mom on the social goings-on, the table groaned under the weight of the deli trays and Henry’s appetizers. Jay had a strong fire going in the fireplace, and the pocket doors to the halls had been tugged mostly shut. The music room seemed a whole house on its own, a cozy one with thick rugs and a warm glow and the occasional whistle of wind against the windows. After they’d all stuffed their bellies, the kids disappeared upstairs with their mom.
As the house clock chimed nine, Mom lifted her head and listened. Her eyelids lowered, and her distant smile made her look like she was sitting for a portrait, except Henry didn’t have his sketchbook out. “It’s about that time, darling.”
“So it is.” Henry braided love into his voice as thick as the caress he smoothed across Jay’s shoulders. “Jay, may I trouble you for assistance redistributing the furniture?”
“No trouble.” He leaned into that hold for all he was worth, and Henry upped the ante with a brief clasp at the back of Jay’s neck. He stood at the tug, leaving Alice sprawled against the back of the little couch Henry called a settee. Eyes on Henry, Jay tipped his head toward the couch. Or their wife. Maybe both. “You want this one?”
“I do.” Oh yeah, Henry held a laugh in his throat somewhere; the rich warmth in his voice gave it away. He guided Jay with a glance and a single eyebrow lift. “On three?”
“One.” He crouched for a solid grip.
Alice blinked at them. “Wait, do you need—”
“Two.” He locked eyes with Henry over the arms.
“—me to move? Where—”
“Three.” He lifted.
The couch, even with Alice atop it, hardly weighed much at all. And Alice’s squeak brought out Henry’s laugh in full. They set her down gently, angled toward the fireplace. Henry dipped at the waist. “Your new accommodations for the evening, dearest.”
She sat up straight, chin tilted high, and stared them down with narrow eyes and almost non-twitching lips. Might not work on Henry, but it sure worked on him. His body shifted into an inspection stance without even trying—feet a little spread, hands clasped at the wrist behind his back, head bowed.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” She stared over her shoulder and coughed lightly into her cupped hand. “Have you perhaps forgotten something?”
The side table, where her spiced cider sat waiting. Jay dropped to one knee and pressed both hands to his heart. “For but a moment. Our eyes were dazzled by your beauty, milady, but I shall fetch yonder drink to, uh, quench thy thirst.”
He carefully didn’t pump his fists, but that was like poetry-level talk right there. Henry’s approving hum floated through him.
“Are you proposing?” Gabriel came through the doors ahead of his brother, the two of them wearing matching fuddy-duddy pajamas with piped collars and everything. “I thought you and Uncle Henry were already married.”
“They are. Didn’t you notice the rings?” Robert stepped around his brother. Even their slippers matched, Christmas red with black trim. Could outfits still be fuddy-duddy if little kids had them on? “He’s probably quoting Shakespeare, and we’ve missed the beginning of the scene. Do continue, Mr. Kress, with our sincere apologies for the interruption.”
“Oh, I wasn’t—” Explaining to non-playful kids that he was just having fun with his wife might be a tough sell. Especially since their parents didn’t seem all that playful either. “What’s your favorite Shakespeare? Are you a poems guy or a plays guy?”
Yup, that was a totally normal thing to ask a nine-year-old. Or at least this nine-year-old, since Robert tipped his head toward the ceiling like he was seriously considering his answer.
Alice pressed her hand to her mouth. That almost covered the smile peeking out the sides. She shared a glance with Henry, and he bent in close. “A scene”—she’d hushed so much Jay could barely hear with his head still bowed over her knee—“with Jay reciting Shakespeare has possibilities.”
A low growl left Henry’s lips. The rumble of it shivered down Jay’s back.
“That it does. Another time,” Henry murmured, and it was a promise.
“In fact”—Henry’s brother stopped arranging Mom’s chair and blanket by the fireplace—“you boys are precisely in time to join us for the reading. If you pledge not to spill, you may bring over mugs of cocoa and a bowl of the popcorn to share.”
“They’ve just brushed their teeth, Robert.” But Constance didn’t stop the kids from trekking to the table. Her voice faded as she and her husband sorted it out.
Henry pulled a slim brown book from the bookcase and settled in the tall-backed chair opposite his mom’s. Jay positioned the side table between their little couch and Henry’s chair, refilling drinks for all three of them and adding a small plate of goodies just in case. Alice shuffled around and sat with her back half-leaning on Jay’s chest, her weight a welcome claim. The couch was big enough for three, but right now the two of them scrunched happily in a single corner.
“What’s the reading?” Alice pitched her voice toward Mom, who sat with her hands folded over a blue lap quilt of Christmas stars. “Is this one of the traditions?”
“Oh my goodness, yes, one of the oldest. It predates me by decades. Perhaps a century.” She accepted her mug from Henry’s brother and patted his cheek in thanks. He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes closed a little, like a barn cat greeting a good friend. The whole family was kind of a snowdrift after an ice storm—a thin crust of shiny politeness on top, and a whole heap of fluffy emotions hiding underneath. “My Robert had heard it from boyhood before we wed, and his father had as well. He considered it a necessity for building character.” Mom glanced at the boys in their pj’s on the rug, sitting cross-legged in front of a silver tray with a green placemat holding their snacks. “He took to heart the lessons in the duties that social standing confers. Though I did sometimes think he rather missed the injunction to freely dispense love and kindness above coin.”
Robert and his wife settled on a second repositioned couch across from Alice and Jay. They didn’t sit quite so snugly, but he did have his arm around her.
The fireplace popped, and Henry raised the book. “Shall I begin? Unless you’d care to read this year, Robert.”
“As ever, I shall entrust that task into your keeping, little brother. Your readings are a good deal livelier than mine.”
That sure sounded like a compliment. It didn’t even come with any kind of snide follow-up.
Henry pulled them into the pages of A Christmas Carol . He’d read a ton of stories to Jay over the years, but not this one. His voice had drawn Jay into world after world, first escaping nightmares, then bringing soothing calm with the rise and fall of every line. Tonight he towered above them, impossibly tall, his voice booming as the three ghosts. He crouched, small and wistful, as Scrooge watching the chances he’d missed in the past pass him by again. Henry never left his chair, but his voice painted pictures all the same. Jay nuzzled against Alice, her sweet-crisp scent a comfort against the graveyard chill of Scrooge’s final warning.
The kids drifted off before the ending, and Henry’s sister-in-law unbent enough to lean against her husband, and even Mom’s eyes slipped shut a time or two. Henry’s voice warmed as Scrooge awoke a changed man, lesson learned. He closed the book; the clock chimed midnight.
The fire had settled into a cheery red glow. The whole house hushed. Snowflakes fluttered against the darkened windows. Henry smoothed the book cover, where faded gold lettering had all but worn right off. He had sturdy hands. Working hands, hands made for gripping and claiming and guiding and praising.
“Our beds are waiting.”
Jay stumbled upright on autopilot, Henry’s trance still wrapped around him. Alice followed, rubbing his back. “Mother, let’s you and I go up together, and I’ll make sure you have everything you need for the night.”
“Thank you, darling girl.”
Robert offered a hand to his wife. “Give me a moment to get the boys settled. I’ll return shortly to assist with the remainder of the night’s work.”
“Work?” The fire could be banked, and the food still out didn’t need to be in the fridge. “What can we help with?”
A flurry of quiet talk crisscrossed the room. When the blizzard ended, Henry and his brother each carried a sleeping boy upstairs while Alice went with Mom. Jay, with Robert’s keys in hand, fetched four extra suitcases from the back of their SUV and deposited them in front of the tree.
“Thank you, Mr. Kress.” Constance knelt by the tree skirt and arranged gift after gift from Santa. After two empty suitcases, the tree skirt was a fading memory. “Henry has mentioned you with fondness many times these last few holidays, and Robert’s mother simply adores your visits. We’re so pleased to finally meet you.”
“It’s just Jay, really.” He scooped gifts and passed them to her. He couldn’t truthfully say Henry had spoken of her often. “I’m glad to be here. It’s quieter than at my folks’ house, but it was a great day.” Starting with Henry taking an interest in his shower. Had that only been this morning? “How early should we be up for the unwrapping?” His nieces and nephews always started clamoring well before dawn, checking for evidence of Santa. Tonight would be short sleep. “Four? Five?”
Constance laughed. “Robert and Gabriel know better than to disturb the tree before breakfast. Mrs. Webb starts Christmas morning at a civilized hour—around nine, I’d say.”
“Nine?” Those were some well-behaved kids. But damn if he’d turn down extra hours in bed with Henry and Alice. “Nine it is.”
Her husband returned and ferried the empty suitcases out to the car. Jay helped Henry move the desserts to the kitchen and cover the trays. He scouted the music room a final time, but they’d cleared the lot. Not a stray plate or cup or napkin left, just the white glow from the tree and the faded red behind the fireplace screen. Presents spilled out from the tree and along the curve of the piano. Snowy corners frosted the windows. He’d stepped inside a painting of Christmas, more real than real.
Wood glided into the wall with a soft thud, the pocket doors once again open. Switching off the tree lights, he raised his head toward the hallway. “Almost done.”
Henry leaned against the doorframe, his hip cocked, the light from the hall spilling around him. He stretched out his hand, fingers up, tips gently curled. “Come to bed, husband.”
The hypnotic baritone lured him in, the spirit of a Christmas present with no regrets. He slipped his hand into Henry’s. The grip held; the magic was real. “Merry Christmas, husband.”