Chapter Eighteen
T he article was a blow to the chest that Jace still felt twenty-four hours later as he arrived at the senior center to visit his uncle. He felt like he’d been moving around in a daze since uncovering Gus’s secret. He’d needed time for the news to sink in before he took the article to Uncle Gus, so he’d worked the Christmas tree lot as usual yesterday evening. He’d closed up shop early so he could attend the dance recital for Bluebonnet Ballet School with Adaline. He’d held her hand in the dark while children fluttered around on the stage and paper snowflakes fell from the ceiling, all the while wondering why Gus had never said anything to him about Marilyn. Why hadn’t his parents? No one had uttered a word...ever.
So much about Gus made sense now. Not just his disdain for Christmas and his overall unhappiness, but everything to do with the way he’d responded to Adaline.
It wasn’t just the puppy. True, that part was a striking coincidence. Fuzzy looked so much like Charlie that Gus probably thought he was seeing things the first time Adaline knocked on the door of room 212. But as Jace had sat reading the words on the computer screen at the library, he’d almost felt like he could’ve been reading an article about Adaline.
Infectious smile...compassionate heart...willingness to lend a helping hand to anyone in need...
Jace couldn’t get the description out of his head. Had Gus seen the similarities too? Did he look at Adaline and the puppy in her arms and feel like he’d been transported straight to the past?
He had to have. It was the only explanation for Gus’s abhorrent behavior toward her. He’d been willing to do whatever it took to make her go away so he could go back to acting like yesterday was dead and buried.
It wasn’t dead and buried, though, and nothing Jace’s uncle did or didn’t do could change that. The Bluebonnet Beacon had said it best.
Marilyn’s spirit will live on in the hearts of those who knew and loved her.
Her spirit lived on in Gus’s heart, no matter how much it hurt. If Jace could get him to share that hurt with him, maybe he could finally let some of it go. Hanging on to it had been eating away at him for more than fifty years.
Jace steeled himself as he opened the door and walked inside the building. His Christmas tree still stood in the center of the lobby. Today, a group of schoolchildren were gathered in front of it, singing carols for the senior center’s residents. The wide room was a maze of wheelchairs and walkers, and Jace had nearly maneuvered his way to the hallway that led to the extended care unit when he spotted his uncle among the crowd, sitting beside Adaline’s grandmother.
Gus’s face was turned toward the performance, and his expression was as stony-faced and inscrutable as always. But he was there. He’d left his room to come watch kids sing Christmas carols. Jace knew better than to think his uncle had suddenly become warm and fuzzy overnight, but this was a start.
Also, Adaline’s gram was a miracle worker. Gus liked to complain about her trying to drag him to the various activities the senior center offered, but clearly the woman knew what she was doing. Jace liked her already, and he barely even knew her. No wonder Adaline adored her so much.
He backed into the corner of the room and leaned against a wall to wait until the concert was over. The kids sang a few more songs, concluding with “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” which prompted hoots and hollers from the elderly audience. Even Gus clapped along to the melody a few times, and Jace’s hopes swelled. Perhaps this long overdue heart-to-heart wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d imagined it would.
He pushed away from the wall and headed toward his uncle to help him back to his room. Two kids from the concert zipped past him—a boy and girl chasing each other, although Jace couldn’t really tell who was running after whom.
“You’re gross!” the little boy yelled.
The girl stopped abruptly to blow him a kiss.
“I’m going to marry you someday,” the boy said, and then the chase started up again.
Jace smiled to himself. It felt like the fifth-grade versions of Adaline and himself had just darted past him—ghosts of Christmas Past.
“What are you doing here?” Gus said when Jace walked up to him, as if he didn’t visit his uncle every single day around this time.
“I came to hang out for a bit. It was nice to find you out here socializing and enjoying some Christmas cheer,” Jace said.
Gus’s gaze slid toward Gram. “This one wouldn’t let it go.”
“You’re welcome,” Gram said with a grin. Then she patted Jace on the shoulder. “Good to see you. I don’t suppose my granddaughter is around here someplace?”
“No, sorry. She’s at the bakery working on the wedding cake for Maple and Ford’s wedding.”
“Marvelous. I’ll see you there, yes?” Gram’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as if she could see straight through all the lies and all the pretense and wanted him to know she wasn’t fooled.
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I have a little something for you—a Christmas gift, of sorts. But it can wait until the wedding.” She flashed him a knowing smile, and the white toy dog in her walker basket barked and wagged its tail as she steered the walker toward the hall that led to the assisted living wing of the building.
“What was that all about?” Gus muttered.
“I have no idea, but let’s get you back to your room. I need to talk to you about something.” Jace gripped the handles of his uncle’s wheelchair and braced himself for a sarcastic comment.
When none was forthcoming, with Gus simply sitting quietly while they navigated the wide hallways of the senior center, heavily decorated for the holidays, another spark of optimism lit up in Jace’s consciousness.
Adaline was rubbing off on him.
“Well? What did you want to talk about?” Gus said after he was tucked back in his bed.
Jace’s pulse kicked up a notch. It’s now or never.
“Marilyn Miller,” he said quietly.
Gus’s head jerked back as sharply as if Jace had reached out and slapped him. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me the first time,” Jace said, infusing his tone with as much grace and patience as he could muster.
“I don’t know why you’re asking me about this. I don’t know anyone by that name,” Gus barked and fished around in his bedsheets for the remote control. When he found it, he jammed buttons at random, like he might stumble upon one that would make Jace go away. “You can leave now. I’m tired. I’m old and I need my rest.”
Jace sat down in the chair he usually occupied when he and Gus played chess. He wasn’t going anywhere. This conversation was obviously going to be their toughest chess game yet.
“Uncle Gus, I know about Marilyn. I know what happened on Christmas Eve. I just want to talk to you about it, so I can know you better. That’s why I’m here. You’re the whole reason I came back to Bluebonnet.” He took the printed copy of the newspaper article out of his pocket, unfolded it and placed it on the over-bed table secured to Gus’s bed. He smoothed down the creases so the article lay perfectly seamless and flat.
Gus stared at it and didn’t say a word as his eyes filled with unshed tears.
Jace waited. And waited. Still...nothing.
He cleared his throat and gestured toward the picture that accompanied the article in the Beacon . It was the same photograph he’d found in the storage closet—the one with Charlie nestled in Marilyn’s arms and her horse leaning over the fence railing behind her. “I found the original of this picture in the barn at your farm, along with a lot of Marilyn’s things. You obviously loved her very much. I’d love to hear more about her...about your life together.”
Finally, Gus turned his gaze on Jace. The old man’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot, but beneath the grief and sadness, a fury was building. Rage like Jace had never witnessed before burned in the bottomless black of his pupils.
“Don’t say her name ever again,” he spat. “You didn’t know her. You’ll never know her. You don’t get to talk about her as if you did.”
Jace felt like he’d been sucker punched, but he wasn’t giving up. If he let it go now, he’d never get the chance to have this talk again.
“Then tell me about her. I want to know her, Uncle Gus. I want to know you, too. The real you. This...” A lump clogged Jace’s throat, and he swallowed it down. He waved a hand at the frail man in the bed—a man he scarcely recognized anymore. Physically, he was nothing but a shadow of the uncle who’d taken him in all those years ago. But he’d changed in other ways too. He’d always been a quiet man, but he’d hardened since that time. He’d been holding on to so much unresolved grief and trauma that it had poisoned him from the inside out. Not all at once, but slowly over time. Day by day. Year by year. Decade by decade. “This isn’t the uncle I remember. You’re my family, Gus. I want to be here for you. All you have to do is let me.”
“What were you doing in the storage closet at the barn?” Gus demanded, homing in on one small detail above and beyond everything else Jace had just said. “I told you that closet was off-limits. I forbade you to ever set foot in there.”
“When I was ten years old,” Jace snapped back, and immediately regretted it. Letting his uncle’s cruel words get to him wasn’t going to help matters.
“I’m a grown man now, and I’m all you’ve got,” Jace said with exaggerated calmness. “You need me as much as I need you. I’m here to help.”
“I don’t need your help, and I never asked for it, either. I can die all by myself. People have been doing so since the dawn of time.” Gus pointed a shaky finger at the door. “You need to leave now.”
Jace stood and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. Maybe both of us could use some time to cool off. We can take this up again when I come back tomorrow.”
“You misunderstood me, boy. I want you to get out and stay out.”
Jace’s blood turned as cold as ice. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets so Gus couldn’t see how profoundly his words had just affected him. “You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t.” Gus pounded his fist on the over-bed table with such force that the printout of the article from the Beacon fluttered to the floor.
Jace wasn’t about to pick it up. Let Gus lie there on his deathbed and look at it for the rest of the day. What did he care?
“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Gus said, voice dripping with venom. “Now, go. What are you waiting for?”
Loss swept through Jace. What was he waiting for? For his uncle to rescue him, take him in and make all his problems disappear like he’d done back when Jace was a dumb little kid?
If so, he’d be still waiting long after Gus was dead and buried.
Nothing was ever going to change, was it? Gus was never going to let him in. The man was locked up tight, and he didn’t care who he hurt. Jace had been foolish to come back to Bluebonnet and even more foolish to think he could get to know a person who was unknowable, down to his very core.
Jace closed his eyes tight. All at once, he was a kid again, hiding in the back corner stable in the barn, but this time Gus wasn’t coming to find him.
No one was.
“Goodbye, Uncle Gus. I always loved you, and I always will,” he said. It was like talking to a brick wall. “Merry Christmas.”
Jace turned his back to the bed and prepared to leave room 212 for the final time. If that’s what his uncle truly wanted, then that’s what Jace would give him—one last parting holiday gift.
Even if it killed him.