Chapter 3
Three
Luke
As I step outside, the cold hits me like a slap in the face…which is exactly what I deserve.
What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t. That’s the problem.
I was drunk and maudlin and behaving like a petulant child, and now I’m being blackmailed by a woman in a reindeer costume.
A woman whom, despite my protests to the contrary, I remember very well.
Holly Jo Hadley, the little girl with the perpetually sunny disposition and gap-toothed grin, who followed me around every summer vacation and Christmas holiday.
Any time my brothers and I came down the mountain to play, she instantly became my shadow.
The local boys used to tease me about my “little girlfriend,” but I didn’t care.
She was a sweet, funny kid, and I had a little sister, one much younger and harder to play pretend with than Holly Jo.
And though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I looked forward to seeing her nearly as much as she seemed to look forward to seeing me. But then, hero worship is a heady thing. And as a boy who often felt like the farthest thing from a hero, I was far from immune.
As a child, I would have slain dragons for the girl who called me “Wooke,” the entire first year I knew her. (At four, she still had trouble making “L” sounds.)
As a grown man, I pretended not to know her, clearly hurting her feelings.
Why the hell did I do that, I wonder as I trudge through the snow toward the town square where Arthur is already waiting.
Why did I lie?
The question needles at me as I cross the bridge, my breath fogging in the frigid air and my toes slowly going numb. My shoes are soaked through—of course, I would wear Italian leather loafers to get drunk and commit theft in the wilds of Vermont.
It’s been one stupid decision after another since the moment Elliot picked me up at the train station in Bellows Falls earlier today.
I could have simply said, “Yes, of course, Holly. I remember that we played together as children. I hope you’ve been well.”
Simple. Polite, but impersonal. Done.
Instead, I stood there scowling and grunting at her like something worse than a Grinch.
But then, admitting I remembered would have opened the door to all those things I’m doing my best not to think about. About the boy I once was. About the innocent, na?ve version of myself that existed before my father decided I was old enough to learn that there are no heroes in the real world.
There is only the bottom line and ravenous corporate greed, and people scrambling to hoard as much for themselves as they can before the earth is barren and the riches all gone.
Sentiment is a chink in your armor, Lucas. It’s a weapon your enemy will use against you. Stiff upper lip, son. You’re too old for Santa Claus anyway.
I can still hear his voice in my head, how much he seemed to enjoy cutting short what was left of my childhood.
I’d wanted to shoot back—Which is it, Dad, a chink or a weapon? Stop mixing your metaphors and prove you’re actually smart enough to tell me what to do.—but I didn’t have the courage. He was still a lot bigger than I was back then, when I was first told that I wouldn’t be going to Vermont anymore.
He insisted I couldn’t spare the time away from my “education.”
I was eleven. Elliot was eight. Bran was six, and Ashton was barely four.
“They’re babies, and all of them look so much like your mother,” he’d said, as if that explained everything. “You’re the oldest. It’s time you learned what matters.”
What mattered, apparently, was spreadsheets and profit margins and never, ever letting anyone see me give a damn.
What mattered was learning that I wasn’t one of his children anymore—not really.
I was the firewall, the one standing between my siblings and all the ugliness Dad brought into our lives.
I was the one who had to learn the hard way that our father wasn’t the brilliant businessman he pretended to be.
Before I took the reins in my early twenties, he was, in fact, quickly running a highly successful company that our ancestors had spent generations building into the ground.
I hid that from the others, of course. I spared them the stress and fear.
And in exchange, I became even more of an outcast, the brother they always sensed wasn’t being honest with them, even if they never knew why. It drove a wedge, one that remains to this very day.
I shake my head as I reach the square, banishing the thoughts.
Ruminating is what got me into this mess.
No more rumination.
At least, not tonight.
As I cross the deserted lawn by the gazebo, my gaze is inexorably drawn to the giant tree and its twinkling lights. I look up, up, to the very top where that fucking peg leg will be mounted tomorrow night, a season-long reminder of my loss of control.
Or of my pending arraignment on felony theft charges…
My jaw clenches.
I’m going to have to go along with Holly’s cheery version of blackmail. I don’t see any way around it.
But I don’t want to think about that, either. I just want to get home, drink a giant glass of water, pop an ibuprofen to ward off the headache I can feel coming on, and sink into a deep, hopefully oblivious sleep.
I cross to where Arthur, our long-time Vermont family chauffeur, idles in the black sedan, exhaust puffing white in the cold.
I pull open the back door and slide in, wincing as the gentle slam of the door sends a stab of pain through my skull.
Make that two ibuprofen…
“Good evening, sir,” Arthur says in that warm, gentle way that reminds me so much of my grandfather, and the fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye in person.
I’d been in Japan on business the day he was rushed to the hospital.
He’d told me not to worry about flying home, that a chat on the phone would lift his spirits and he’d be better in no time.
But he wasn’t, and a part of me will always regret that I wasn’t there with my brothers and sister at his bedside.
“I was beginning to worry,” Arthur adds. “That storm’s coming in faster than expected. I was just watching it swirl over the mountains on the radar.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Arthur,” I murmur, staring out the window as I fight to banish the tightness in my throat. “I ran into someone I knew when I was younger. We were just…catching up.”
And she was blackmailing me, I add silently, but in a very sunny way.
Holly Jo has grown into a confident, charmingly sarcastic version of the same sweet girl she once was. And I have grown into a jerk who treated her poorly, while having impure thoughts about her cleavage in that reindeer costume.
In my defense, she did have it unzipped quite a long way.
But still…
Having lascivious thoughts about a woman I once helped blow her nose because she was a baby who couldn’t manage the tissue properly feels…wrong.
“How wonderful!” Aruther puts the car in gear, pulling away from the curb with his usual precision, blissfully unaware of the vile creature in his backseat. “I hope that was nice?”
Define nice, I think.
Aloud, I say, “Very. Holly seems the same. Very kind and community-focused.”
“Holly Hadley?” When I nod in confirmation, Arthur lets out a delighted sound.
“Oh, Mr. Luke, she’s the sweetest girl, and a godsend to this town.
I don’t know how we would pull through the high season without her.
Especially after Kim and Tim Miller had to step back from all their volunteer work.
Tim’s just not as strong as he used to be, not since he beat cancer the second time, you know. ”
“I’m sure. And yes. She seemed very…involved.”
And very intent on forcing me to get involved, whether I like it or not.
We drive in silence for a bit before Arthur glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong, sir?”
I clench my jaw, then force it to relax before I assure him, “Of course not, just tired. I forget how early the sun sets around here.”
“Oh, indeed,” Arthur agrees. “And the nights just get longer from here on out. I love the holidays, don’t get me wrong.
But I’ll be glad when we’re past the solstice, and the daylight starts creeping up again.
” He beams at me in the mirror for a beat before making the turn onto our private road.
“Just another thing to be grateful for at Christmastime! Come the twenty-fifth, we’ll be on our way back to the light in more ways than one. ”
I make a noncommittal grunt and slouch lower in my seat.
Back to the light…
It’s the kind of thing Holly would agree with, I’m sure.
People like Arthur, like Holly—people who move through the world with uncomplicated warmth, believing in the power of community and connection—can build lovely lives, but never a legacy that lasts.
Softness melts away in the acid rain of the real world.
Only cold steel has the staying power to endure.
Dad taught me that, though perhaps not in the way he intended.
His addiction to sex and love—and inability to establish a healthy relationship with either—was its own kind of softness.
A softness like rotten fruit filled with worms…
I’ve never been tempted to take a bite of that fruit, myself.
Never have and likely never will.
I will die alone, and pass the empire on to my brothers’ and sister’s children, assuming they have them. So far, all the Ratcliffes of this generation seem to be suffering from the same curse as my father and his father before him.
On the rare occasions when we find love, it never lasts.
My grandfather’s beloved wife died in a tragic car accident when my father was still a child, hit by a drunk driver on her way to Manchester to pick up the cake for his eighth birthday.
Grandfather grieved her for the rest of his life and never remarried.
My father grieved, too, I think. In his way.
But instead of loyalty to love, the early loss of the most important woman in his world taught him that it was dangerous to give your heart away.