Page 134 of Season of Gifts

Mom’s voice rang out from the phone speaker.Jay pressed his face to the back of Alice’s head and nodded.Henry nodded too, his gaze on hers always.“Exceptionally proud,” he murmured.

“You did all the things I couldn’t.”Fierceness had taken hold of Mom, her voice crisp as any scolding but filled with praise.“You gave you and your sister a better life.I am amazed by how far you've gone.Amazed, do you hear me?You are the star that gives me hope, Allie.And seeing you—how strong you are, how determined and successful and happy—baby, I want to make you proud of your mom.I don’t want Thursday to be the last visit you ever make to this house.”

“I don’t want that either.”She could hardly choke out the words for the shock.Mom was proud of her.Not angry with her for leaving.Not bitter and resentful, not faking cheerfulness because that’s what brought in the tips.All these years, she’d been afraid to ask, because she was damn sure of the answer.And she’d been so very wrong.“I want us to be a family.”

“You have never, not for one minute, stopped being my daughter.Or your father’s, for all the idiocy that comes out of his mouth these days.You made me a mom, and I will always be your mom.Things need to change here, I know that.I don’t want to be the mom you have to hide from your new husband.Husbands?Your sister says you have two—”

Holy shit, what had Ollie done—

“—and I don’t really understand how, but if they make you happy, then I’m happy for you, baby.”

If Alice’s fingers hadn’t been clenched so tightly, she would’ve dropped the phone.“You—” Even Henry’s eyes had widened; his mouth hung slightly open.Mom had no idea of the feat she’d just accomplished.Alice laughed, and the tension whooshed out of her in a woozy-headed rush.“You are?”

“Of course I am.I want the best for you, Allie.You were always adventurous.So curious.No wonder it takes two good men to keep up with my girl.”

The muffled snort in her hair was Jay.Henry contented himself with a smirk and an agreeable eyebrow lift.

“Lord knows I couldn’t keep you contained.When you were a toddler, I’d turn my back for half a second and you’d be climbing up the cabinets onto the counter.Your dad built that jungle gym for you girls, do you remember?And you stayed out all day until you mastered those bars.Blisters on your hands and the biggest smile on your face.”

“I remember.”The happy times floated up, close enough for her to grab them like a fistful of birthday balloons.The bristly outer shell, the one she’d built to survive, to get her and Ollie through the not-normal normal—she’d have to let the last of that go.Scrunching into Jay’s hold, she laid a hand over Henry’s heart.He covered it with his own, the platinum promise of forever right in front of her.The sturdy thumping in his chest gave her the courage to try again.If Mom and Dad broke her heart this time too, Henry and Jay would help her fit every piece back together.“You know what else I remember?”

“What, baby?”

“The year Ollie climbed out of her highchair onto the table and started eating the pumpkin pie with her fingers.”Christmas dinner hadn’t even been on the table yet; the raw steaks waited on the counter for Dad to take them outside.

“Fourteen months old and exactly like her big sister—fearless.I was terrified she would fall and crack her skull.”

“So you scooped her up, and you were messing with the high chair—”

“She shouldn’t have been able to loosen that strap—”

“And Dad’s walking over to the silverware drawer, calm as can be, and he pulls out three spoons, and he trades you two and takes Ollie.Pulls the chairs all around to one side and sits down with her on his lap, and he says…”

She held her breath, waiting, and joined in only when Mom laughed and began, in Dad’s lower register: “Best start in before munchkin and I eat this whole mess of pie.”

Rich laughter surrounded her, in her ears and over the phone.“Hey, Mom, my husbands walked into the room in time for the punchline.Do you want to meet them?”

“I would love to, honey.”

She started the introductions, basking in the glow on Henry and Jay’s faces.Getting Dad to shake his addiction wouldn’t be as easy as one show of backbone from Mom.But it was a start.And it was worth it.Some days would be frustrating and difficult and complicated and make her cry.But some days there’d be pie.

Chapter seventy-one

Jay

Jayclosedhisfingersaround 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 todislike 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—”

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