Page 155 of Season of Gifts

“Ohh no you don’t, mister.”Alice laid her hand over his and teasingly peeled his fingers back from her hip.“Not until I know what put that smile on your face.”

He buried his face in her stomach and peppered her with kisses through the shirt.She grabbed hold of his chin, just a dash of control holding him still.A giddy joy heated him up.His fingers and toes curled.The star at the top of the Christmas tree glittered.

“I think I might be the rummy club’s official unofficial grandson.”

Chapter seventy-nine

Henry

Father’sancientdeskdwarfedMother.Rummaging in the top drawer, she seemed a rebellious teen hunting for a flask to spirit away to an illicit gathering.

Henry distanced himself at the window.Standing before the desk provoked a disdain for Father’s periodic interrogations about his various accomplishments at school, and he needed no more complicated emotions to juggle.The yard outside bore the trampled paths and raised defenses of the snow forts they had built yesterday.Every participant had come out a winner, owing to Jay’s ingenious rules for the snowball battle, which called for fifteen-minute periods with a rotation of team makeup at the end of each.

“It was pleasant to see Robert’s sons enjoying themselves.Lina’s granddaughters…” Henry cast through his memory and retrieved scant details.Her daughter would be twenty-five now?Twenty-six?“They are a bit younger than the boys, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes.Brooke is teaching second grade, and Lina is caring for the girls when their preschool enrichment program ends for the day.Ah.Here we have it.”Mother triumphantly raised an unassuming keyring, from which dangled a cluster of small keys.“I’d quite forgotten where I’d tucked these away.But it has occurred to me, these past few days, that the contents might be useful for you.Contextual, shall we say.”

“The contents?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment, darling.Come sit with me.”Mother daintily claimed a perch on the leather sofa, setting the keys aside.“I suppose I rather surprised you at breakfast.”

Only yesterday he’d claimed the selfsame seat with Robert at his side as he laid out his assessment of Mother’s health and what they were to do about it.Utterly unnecessary, as it turned out.“You did.Though had I not been so stubbornly focused on addressing the problem myself, I might have expected you would have an idea in mind.My determination to effect a solution blinkered me to other possibilities.”

“And to accepting help.”She grazed his shoulder with a consoling caress.“It doesn’t behoove us to attempt to match the divine.We have neither the omnipotence nor the omniscience to complete such tasks alone.The role you assumed is more weight than one person ought to carry.”

How quickly the coin flipped.He’d been on the obverse of this conversation with Alice many times in the last six months as she defined what dominance would mean in her life, what expectations and obligations it would demand of her.Reminding her that she need not achieve—or even seek—perfection, godhood, came easily enough.Accepting his own counsel, innocently echoed now on his Mother’s lips, was far more difficult.

“That would explain why I did such an abominable job at it.You have quite capably constructed your own elegant solution without me.”His self-deprecating smile met with Mother’s unamused stare.

“Henry.”Mothers the world over had perfected just that disappointed tone.“I won’t have you brooding over this.You are my son, and I will always need you and value your advice in addition to your company.”

Chastened, he bowed his head.“I do know that, Mother.I am irritated with myself for seizing control in such an intrusive manner, but I am not stricken with fears of losing your love.You have been clear all my life that your love is not contingent upon any particular behavior or accomplishment, nor upon meeting some standard of perfection.”Would that Father’s love had been so freely offered.

Mother wrapped his hand in both of hers and laid them upon her knee.“Your presence has aided my recovery, eased my mind, and encouraged me to treat this illness with the seriousness it deserves.If you were overzealous and bedeviled by the past, so too was I.This incident, however, may have been beneficial for us both.”

True, the experience had surfaced emotional detritus he needed to address before it negatively impacted Jay and Alice again.And it had raised his attention to the fact of Mother’s aging, which perhaps all grown children shied from facing.She might need more and different support from him in the years ahead, and better that he be prepared for it now than fail her later.What she had gained, though— “How so?”

“Having you here has reminded me”—her face turned soft, her smile wistful, the delicate skin beside her eyes crinkling—“of how much I have missed daily companionship.After your father’s passing, I had Lina here.And then her family needed her, and she too left.Sometimes it seems as though this house has been fifty-three years of people slowly leaving me.A bit more macabre, and it might be an Agatha Christie whodunnit, wouldn’t you say?”

She laughed, squeezing his hand tightly, and he covered her clasp with his free hand.He too had lived alone for several years.Integrating Jay so deeply into his life, his daily habits, had been a challenge.But it remained the most important step he’d taken in securing happiness.Without Jay, his heart and mind would not have been ready for Alice.Without Alice and Jay, his happiness would be shallow indeed.“Even those of us who enjoy the quiet must allow that a bit of fuss enriches our souls.”

Her soft hum accompanied a gentle nod.“The cardiac care therapist has encouraged me to explore that feeling, which prompted me to review and realign my priorities.I may have five years left on this earth; I may have a decade or two.Regardless, I knowwhoI would care to spend that time with.You and Robert have settled your roots elsewhere”—perhaps his shoulders dipped, and that necessitated Mother’s forceful rattling of his hands—“and that’s as it should be, though your rooms will ever be waiting for your visits.My close call spurred Lina and I to discuss our regret at how our lives have drifted.Had I not had this heart attack, I would have hesitated to intrude by suggesting she and the girls move in.But I did ask.And to my delight, I find that she also would have hesitated to ask despite devoutly wishing for that very reconnection.As I said: beneficial.”

“I’m pleased you’ll have the opportunity to reinvigorate your friendship.Lina’s absence in the house these last few years has been odd to me as well.She’s as much a fixture of my childhood memories as you and Father.”The oppressive weight of the dark wood crowded him, the sofa he and Mother shared a life raft lost in the sea of Father’s storm.She ought to have chosen the parlor for this talk; her own décor reigned in that space, gave it life and love.Perhaps that explained why the masculine mahogany of Victor’s office at the club remained warm and comforting while Father’s cherrywood retreat seethed and roiled: No amount of good hearts could cheer this loveless space.“Well, perhaps more than Father.”

Grimacing, Mother clicked her tongue.“I do wish you’d had a chance to air your emotions with your father.It would have done you both good.”

“I doubt he would ever have countenanced such a thing.And it is, of course”—a lump unexpectedly developed in his throat, forcing him to clear it with a cough—“too late to change now.”

Mother chafed Henry’s hand, rotating it palm up and open.“It’s too late to speak with your father, yes.But if you choose, you may still come to know him better.”

She settled the keys in his hand and folded his fingers around them.Metal edges pressed into his skin.

“The small brass one opens the barrister bookcase.”

The bookcase had stood in the same spot along the wall since before his birth.Row after row of narrow ledger books filled the shelves.“If you mean to show me Father’s business acumen, that may be a knowledge better suited to Robert.”

“I thought they were financial records myself for a great long while.But on our wedding anniversary, the first one after his passing—” She gusted out a hard breath and gave a quick headshake.“Well, it hardly matters the reason.I opened the bookcase, thinking to run my fingers across the pages he’d spent so much time with, to trace the neat lines of his penmanship.”

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