Page 25 of Meet Me at Christmas
“There are things about the adult you that feel familiar sometimes,” he said. “I can’t quite pinpoint it, but every now and then, something in the way you walk or the look you give me—it’s as if I can almost feel the recollection surfacing, but I can’t quite reach it.”
With the brightly colored strand of lights in her hands, she faced him. He looked up at her, so many questions in his eyes, then turned away.
Stella went back to stringing the tree before she did something she shouldn’t and poured her heart out to him. With the music jingling, she continued, strand after strand, until the tree was covered in bright, happy lights. She moved the chair and stepped back to view her work. “How’s that?”
“It’s good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She slid her hands into her pockets and admired the tree in the big bay window that used to be hers. “I should probably get home,” she suggested. She’d suffocate on her buried memories if she stayed any longer.
“That feeling, it’s happening right now,” Henry said, his face crumpled in confusion. “There’s something about you standing here by this tree that feels… natural.”
It was anything but. Nothing about them as adults was normal.
His attention slowly turned to the bedroom door and then back to her, something else possibly registering. She kept her focus on his face, blinking to keep the view of the bedroom out of her peripheral vision. She wasn’t sure of her expression, but whatever he saw in her eyes caused him to look back at the bedroom door once more. Her heart felt as if it would burst right from her chest; her hands began to shake. Right then the one deep memory she’d tried so hard to run from all these years assaulted her before she could rein it in.
“Remember when I said I helped you decorate a tree before? It was a lot like this one,” she said, trying to keep herself together.Continue talking about the tree.“Perhaps that’s why.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, but an interest deep behind his gaze made her even more nervous.
She clicked off the radio. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at the hospital.” She needed to get out of there. Her old life was swallowing her up, and if she stood across from Henry much longer, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to maintain her composure.
“See ya,” he said.
She went to the front door and let herself out, keeping her gaze straight ahead. Her heart hammered. When she got into her car, it took everything she had not to gasp for breath and sob into her shaking hands.
She’d refused to think of the memory of that horrible moment in the bedroom for so long—until she was faced with it today, the vision of it slamming into her temples. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep the mental image at bay, but it burst through anyway, as if trying to break its way out of her mind: the cramps, the menstrual cycle she wasn’t sure she should be having, the negative test that had been positive only a few days before…
Sitting in her car now, she felt as if she might not survive the one secret she’d been holding for her entire adult life: she wasn’t capable of having children. The doctor’s voice had been eerily tranquil as she told Stella,“You have a uterine malformation that will make carrying a child to term nearly impossible.”
She’d never told a soul except her doctor about anything—the pregnancy or the loss of it. And until today, she’d been able to keep running, to put miles between herself and all the reminders, to fill her days with new cities and people in an attempt to drown it out.
How would she ever be able to face Henry tomorrow?
* * *
“Took you a while to get home from the hospital,” Mama said when Stella walked in.
“I stopped by Christmas.” She stripped off her winter garb and relished the warmth of inside.
“That’s festive.” Her mother breezed past her, patting her on the back as she headed into the kitchen.
Stella followed, still in a cloud of unease.
“What were you hoping to find?”
She had no idea what she’d been hoping to find by going to Henry’s. Her mind still on what she’d just left, she could barely process her mother’s question. “What?”
“At the Christmas tree farm. What were you looking for?”
“Oh. Nothing really. I just thought it would be nice to walk around,” she lied, still unable to face the events of that fateful day that were pouring through her mind like a torrent.
“Well, the cold temperatures have done a number on you. You’re white as a ghost! I know what will fix it: I’ll make you some hot cinnamon cream tea and then we can get to work on the parade. Having you working on it with me gives me strength…”
Her mother kept talking, but Stella was still distracted and didn’t hear any of it. Her eyes had landed on the diamond necklace that was stretched out on the kitchen table. It seemed to shimmer defiantly, reminding her of its curse.
Right now, the bad luck that it supposedly carried didn’t seem too far-fetched. She’d had burning coffee spilled on her in its presence, returned to an almost empty family home except for her grieving mother, had barely enough to work with on Henry’s case to write her second piece, and now… Now she was dealing with old skeletons in her closet.
She reached over and picked up the necklace, the delicate chain hanging from her finger, as she wondered if it hadn’t been lost by someone at all. Perhaps it had been discarded on purpose. Part of her wanted to throw it out with the trash and never see it again, but the possible value of it stopped her. She set it back on the table.
