Chapter 15 Holly #2
Jace blew out a breath. “It’s just ... not really something I like thinking about too much, I guess.
I lived with my dad when I was a young kid, and the old man was more the type to blow all his paychecks on booze than to buy toys for a family Christmas.
After that, I was in and out of foster homes.
Probably the closest thing to home for me when I was a teen was a group care home.
” He smiled lopsidedly, without humor. “Nobody was that interested in adopting a sullen, angry teenager.”
Holly’s heart broke for him. She wanted to reach out and put her arms around that younger Jace. I would. I would have. I wish I could go back and do it now. But what she could do was hold him now, and she leaned over to put her arms around Jace, pulling him close to her.
He nuzzled his face against her hair. They sat that way for a minute, until Holly remembered that her dad might walk in on them at any moment, and quickly let him go.
“Tell you what,” she said, reaching for an ornament box at random. “You can pick the topper.”
“The what?” Jace looked slightly dazed, as if he was dealing with some kind of emotional whiplash.
“The box must be around here somewhere—aha.” She took the lid off one of the larger ornament boxes and removed a slightly squashed cardboard carton containing a treetop angel.
“One of our family arguments for years was over what to put on top of the tree. Mom had an antique tree topper from when she was a kid, but no one in the family really liked it all that much. We just didn’t want to tell Mom that.
It’s this kind of—glass pointy thing? Oh, here it is.
” She removed the box carefully, with a rueful grin.
“The one glass ornament we managed not to break over the years. Anyway, one year Noelle saw this absolutely exquisite treetop angel, and cried and cried until Dad bought it for her. And over the years we acquired a few more, and it turned into a thing where every year one of us kids would get to pick the treetop ornament. We usually rotated, but sometimes it would be the person in the family who needed to feel special the most.”
She paused briefly, her hand on the topper box.
“It was Mom, that last Christmas when we were all together, when everyone knew that Mom’s condition was—” She stopped and cleared her throat, then managed to smile.
“We all expected Mom would choose the antique glass ornament, one last time. Instead she picked Noelle’s angel. ”
Holly swallowed, her eyes swimming.
“I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories,” Jace said, leaning his shoulder against hers.
“You didn’t. I mean, the memories aren’t bad.
They’re always going to be there. I’m glad to have someone to talk to about them.
” She shook herself out of the melancholy mood and put her hand on the angel box.
“Anyway, I think this year, you should be the one who chooses. And you don’t have to pick Noelle’s angel.
She’s not here to complain about it if you don’t. ”
There were two angels, a star that lit up, the antique glass topper, a Santa-shaped topper, and ...
“Is this a sloth?”
“It’s a sloth with a Santa hat, yes.” Holly picked it up. “I think this was something Ivy picked out. She was the animal lover among us. See, it clings to the top of the tree.”
“Yeah, I gotta go with the sloth.”
Jace climbed up on a chair to place the sloth at the top of the tree, which was now less obviously a pine and more a festive cone of tinsel and ornaments.
“Oh, oh!” Holly jumped up again, dug through her bags, and found the stuffed dog. “Here, put that up there too.”
It was hard to find a place to nestle a fairly large stuffed toy, but Jace got it squeezed in between the branches, just below the sloth, balanced among the Christmas lights. It made the top of the tree a little lopsided, but with the mishmash of other ornaments, it didn’t look bad to Holly’s eyes.
“If we can’t buy a hairless dog ornament, we’ll make our own,” Holly said, satisfied. “Now for my favorite part. It’s time to turn the lights on.”
Jace turned off all but one of the lamps, and plugged in the power strip running the tree’s lights.
The lights flickered to life, and the tree glowed with festive cheer.
Holly clapped her hands and sat back against the pile of ornament boxes.
Jace sat beside her and put an arm around her, and she snuggled against his shoulder.
“I forgot how satisfying that is,” Holly said quietly.
For that calm moment, all the unpleasantness about Rob, the grief, all the uncertainty and pain of adulthood fell away.
She was once more a child at Christmas, staring at the tree with joy and wonder.
“Oh, and we even have some gifts to put under it. One, anyway.”
She fetched the gifts for Kaden and placed them under the tree. Carol’s present would have to be mailed.
“Will the dogs bother any of this?” Jace asked.
“Rocket never does. I’m not sure about Cupcake, but he’s been pretty good so far. Oh, that reminds me, Jace, you should give him his presents.”
“What, before Christmas?” Jace faked shock.
“He’s a dog. He doesn’t know what Christmas is.”
She collected the plates and let the dogs out of the kitchen. Rocket had clearly been outside, her fur lightly frosted with snow. Dad was still out in the barn, it seemed, and Holly experienced a sad little pang. Whatever got him through the holidays, she supposed.
Cupcake seemed to like his new toys. Rocket promptly stole the pizza slice.
“Should we have gotten her one too?” Jace asked. Cupcake didn’t seem to mind; he had taken his bacon slice off under the dining room table, from which a series of squeaks could be heard.
“She has a million toys, she doesn’t need more.” Holly went to make sure Cupcake wasn’t destroying the chew toy—the squeaking was getting aggressive—and the sight of the nearly empty dining room table reminded her of another promise she’d made today.
“Jace?” she called back into the living room. “See if you can find any boxes among the ornaments with a train set in them. I think we should set that up tonight, too.”
Her dad came in from the barn while they were working on the train at the dining room table, smelling of hay and cold.
Rocket bounded in from the living room to say hi.
Cupcake’s presence was indicated by the steady SQUEAKASQUEAKASQUEAAAAAAWWK~~ coming from under the table, which her dad wisely did not ask questions about.
“Dad! You’re just in time! We’re about to start the train.”
“Dang, I didn’t know we even still had that thing. Thought Merry took it with her when she left or something.”
“No, we just hadn’t set it up yet.” Holly held out the controller. “Here, take the first spin. Then it’s Jace’s turn.”
Watching her dad and Jace play with the model train seemed to cause something in her chest to settle, arranging itself into a new position.
Family. That’s what this is.
It was what she had been missing for the last few years.
She had grown up with a house full of people, filled with the noisy bedlam of four sisters and a mom who loved to fill the house with baking and decorations, no matter the holiday or the time of year.
From turkeys on the fridge drawn around a child’s hand, to Easter egg hunts on the farm, or just the subdued chaos of evenings at the dining room table with five girls clustered to do their homework, art, or school science projects . .. she had never been without it.
No wonder her clean, tidy condo had seemed so sterile and empty.
And Jace fit here. She could tell that he liked it, and she liked having him here. She experienced a little clutch in her chest, wondering how well he would get along with her sisters. Jace never had the experience of a noisy, chaotic, loving family; would it be too much for him?
Then the toy train derailed as it jolted over an uneven place in the tracks, and Jace and her dad burst into laughter. And she wondered why she had ever been worried at all.
“I’m headed off to bed,” her dad said at last, putting down the controller.
“Wait, come see the tree,” she begged.
They all went into the living room, and her dad dutifully made pleased noises over the tree and gave her a side-hug.
“You two don’t stay up too late, now. Take a flashlight if you need one, Jace, walking back up the hill in the dark.”
“Yes, sir,” Jace said.
The Colonel tromped into the back of the house.
Water ran in the bathroom. Recognizing that the house was settling down for the night, Rocket flopped on her dog bed.
Cupcake jumped up on the couch, slobber-covered squeaky bacon clutched in his jaws, and let out a sigh as he curled up beside Holly.
She reached down to rub his fluffy head.
Then something clattered outside the house, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“It’s just a loose piece of metal on the dryer vent,” she said, grabbing Jace’s arm as he started to get up. “It—it startled me, that’s all. It always does that when the wind blows.”
The clatter sounded a few more times, then died away, but the damage was done. Her heart was pounding like a rabbit’s. She hadn’t realized she was so close to the edge. She’d thought the tree decorating had settled her down—and it had, but her fears were still there.
If Rob was going to try to cause trouble, tonight would be when he’d do it, riled up from their encounter and mad with jealousy that she had found someone who wasn’t him.
The noises from the back of the house settled down, with a final flush of the toilet. Her dad’s door closed.
Holly blew out her breath and rubbed her hand over her face.
“You want to stay up for a while longer?” Jace asked her quietly. “Unless he’s going to be keeping tabs on me going back up the hill.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him, but we can say we were just talking. Or heck, doing more than that.” Confronting Rob today had given her a courage she hadn’t had before. “I’m an adult. I’m freaking thirty-one. My dad can’t tell me not to bring a date home.”
Jace grinned. “You know, he took me out in the pasture a few days ago. I thought for a minute that it was going to be a shovel talk with actual shovels.”
“Oh no.” Holly covered her face with her hands. “Dad.”
“No, it was all right. He—shifted. He’s one heck of a big bear.”
“I know. We all used to ride him when we were kids, you know.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, it was great. Like the best piggyback ride ever. We all understood that we couldn’t talk about it, but the other kids would’ve been so jealous if they knew we had a bear to ride—”
She jumped again as something clanged outside, this time on the porch, and buried her face in her hands.
A warm, strong hand settled on her shoulder. She shivered a little and couldn’t resist leaning into it.
“Are you all right?” Jace asked gently.
“I’m just so stupidly jumpy. I’m sorry.” She moved so that his hand slid slowly off her shoulder, and then got to her feet, causing the dogs to raise their heads. “I think I’m going to make some hot cocoa or something.”
Jace rose too. “Want me to look around outside?”
“No need. I know I’m just jumping at the wind.”
“Your fears don’t have to be rooted in reality to be meaningful,” he said quietly, his gaze steady and calm on hers. “Believe me, I know. Tell you what, why don’t we both walk around outside? It might help, and I could use a walk.”
Holly hesitated. Then she put out a hand and placed her hand in his. A shiver of anticipation rolled through her as his fingers closed gently around hers.
“Yes,” she said. “I’d love to.”