Page 38 of Meet Me at Christmas
Stella grinned.
“You were always his rock, that grounding force that could settle him down.”
The waiter slid a mug of coffee onto the table in front of Stella. “Milk?”
“Yes, please.”
He hustled off behind the bar and grabbed the jug and a spoon, returning and setting them on the table. “Just pass it back to the bar when you’re done.”
Stella nodded as she poured the milk into her mug.
“He never stopped waiting, you know,” Mary Jo said, the lighter moment sliding away.
Stella set the milk on the table and stilled her hands. “I didn’t want him to wait,” she said, emotion catching in her throat.
“He didn’t even try to move on. I used to get upset with him for that, and our arguing about it got pretty heated, but I let it go because he was usually on leave and I didn’t want to spend our precious time fighting.”
Tears brimmed in Stella’s eyes. “He wanted lots of kids,” she said, knowing, but not bringing it up to Mary Jo, that she wasn’t able to offer him that. “I thought he’d find someone wonderful who could give him a house full of children.”
Mary Jo shrugged. “He just closed in on himself after you left.”
“I don’t know if I made the right decision in leaving the way I did,” she admitted. “But I am who I am because of it.” Elbows on the table, she pressed her fingers into her eyes. “Marriage is an awful lot to put on someone at eighteen. Life is a mess, isn’t it?”
“It sure can be.” Mary Jo grabbed the milk and poured some in her cup. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all had big dreams, you know. You’re the only one who actually did something about them.”
Stella looked up from her coffee mug. “What wereyourdreams? You never told me.”
Mary Jo leaned on her fist, her elbow propping her up. “I always saw myself somewhere else—maybe on a beach or an island—but I never really knew how I’d get there. That’s why I called it a ‘dream’ instead of a ‘plan.’”
“You’ll never know what you might want if you never take that step and see.”
Mary Jo sat up straighter and smoothed the napkin in her lap. “Life has gotten in the way. I felt like I needed to be there for Henry after you left, and then we lost Mom and now Henry’s accident…” She shook her head. “It’s just not my time.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…” She couldn’t help but wonder if she’d stayed, would Mary Jo have been able to take a chance on the life she’d wanted? Stella wished she could make it up to her somehow. But where would she even begin?
* * *
“Stella, would you come here for a minute?” Mama called from the front entryway that night.
Relieved, Stella had just sent off her first article to her editor and now had been trying to begin an outline for her second. She set her laptop aside and got up off the sofa. When she reached the open, two-story entryway, her mother’s head was tipped back as she squinted at a brown spot on the ceiling.
Stella walked underneath it to get a better look, and when she did, a drop of water plopped right onto her cheek. She wiped it away. “Looks like a leak.”
When Stella was a baby, her father had remodeled this part of the farmhouse, lifting the ceiling two stories. The only thing on the other side of that wet spot was the roof.
“The melted ice must be coming in,” Mama said. “How am I supposed to fix that?”
Stella knew what her mother wasn’t saying: how were they supposed to fix it without Pop? “I’ll see if I can find someone to take care of it. Right now, let’s get a bucket and some towels to protect the floor.”
“I’ve got some old towels in the closet that your dad used to use to dry off the cars after he washed them.” Mama strode to the door in the hallway, drew out an armful, and brought them over. “He’s got a bucket in the back garage.” Her voice broke on the words.
“I’ll go get it.” Stella gave her mom’s arm a squeeze of support. Then she slipped on her boots.
When she opened the front door, the night air blew in like an icy slap in the face. Crossing her arms to keep warm, she jogged around the side of the house, and down the little stone path that was still covered in a frozen sheet of ice. The quick momentum she’d built to manage the cold slowed to a stop when she reached the detached garage where her dad had spent so much of his time. She eyed the latch, imagining his strong grip around it.
“Come in.” Pop’s words blew on the wind, as if her mind were playing tricks on her.
She remembered one winter day when she was around ten years old. She had opened the metal latch and called Pop’s name above the whine of the buzz saw.
