Page 62 of Fa-La-La-La Faking It
Take a look around. This was all you, Adaline. And no matter what happens after midnight on Christmas Eve, I’ll never forget it.
Could it be true? Could Jace really love her...just the way she was?
“Sis, you’re brave in ways that no one else is. You throw your whole heart into everything and everyone around you. Don’t ever change that—not for anyone. That’s no way to protect yourself from heartache. I know you’re lonely sometimes, but when you find the right person, he won’t run away from those big feelings. He won’t love you in spite of them.” Ford leaned across the counter until her eyes met his. “He’ll love youbecauseof them.”
Adaline swallowed, pulse pounding in her ears. “I think I might’ve already found that person.”
“I think you might be right,” Ford said.
She had...and she’d let him walk away without a fight.
Maybe it wasn’t too late, though. Maybe there was something she could do to dial back the clock and restart their countdown to midnight.
Maybe it was time to let herself get really,reallycarried away.
Adaline took a deep breath just outside room 212 at the senior center the following morning. So much had happened since the first time she’d knocked on this door. As per usual, it was unadorned compared to the other doors in the extended care unit. Not a wreath or bow in sight. No matter how much headway she and Fuzzy had made with Gus in recent days, he was still the same Gus Martin he’d always been—the grinchiest grinch of them all.
No wonder the man favored green Jell-O.
But that was neither here nor there. Now that Adaline knew why he loathed Christmas the way he did, she understood. But just because she understood his feelings, that didn’t mean the way he’d treated Jace was acceptable. There was no way of knowing exactly what happened, but whatever had transpired had been enough to drive Jace clear out of town and to turn his back on the only family he had left.
That wasn’t Jace. He’d picked up his life, left his Christmas tree farm and moved to Bluebonnet, all because he’d wanted to be at his uncle’s side during his final days. The fact that he wasn’t here anymore was purely Gus’s doing.
And now Adaline was going to fix it, whether Gus the Grinch liked it or not.
Hand poised to knock, she glanced down at Fuzzy standing in perfect heel position beside her in his Comfort Paws vest and wobbly reindeer antlers. It was hard not to think that, in a weird way, they’d come full circle together. “Are you ready for this?”
Fuzzy wagged his feathery tail.
“Good boy,” Adaline said and knocked three times in rapid succession.
This time, no one yelled at her from the other side. Her knock was met with nothing but silence. Adaline grimaced to herself, and an alarming thought struck her.
Gus hadn’tdied, had he?
Then a loud snort followed by a rumbling snore sounded from within the room, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Asleep or not, they were going in.
“Hi there, Uncle Gus. Would you like to pet the dog today?” she said brightly as she entered the room. “Just kidding. Today, you don’t have a choice. I have some things to say, and you’re going to listen.”
The snoring stopped abruptly, but Gus’s eyes remained firmly shut. A littletoofirmly, actually.
No matter. Adaline preferred a silent and docile Gus, even if he was pretending to sleep in an effort to ignore her. Maybe she’d manage to get a word in edgewise this way.
She stood at the foot of the bed and crossed her arms. A little bit of the fight went out of her when she noticed how fragile he looked. He’d lost weight since his early days at the senior center. His hospital gown looked like it might swallow him whole. The chess set he loved so much was collecting dust in the corner of the room. His wispy gray hair, which had looked nice and neat following the haircut Jace gave him, was now matted to the side of his head. Adaline’s fingers itched to reach out and smooth it in place.
She didn’t dare.
“Jace is gone,” she said, and immediately her voice went wobbly. Ugh. She’d been determined not to show any hint of weakness, and already she was screwing this up. She cleared her throat and plowed on. “He went back to Texas Tidings, where I’m assuming he’ll spend Christmas all by himself. Make no mistake, this is entirely your fault.”
She paused in case he wanted to wake up and argue with her. Gus pressed his lips together but kept his eyes clamped shut. Adaline rolled her eyes. This nap was even faker than the start of her Christmas romance had been.
“I’m sorry about Marilyn. I really am. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to lose someone you love like that. When Fuzzy and I started coming around, I’m sure it brought back painful memories for you. I’m sorry for that too.” Fuzzy pressed his warm little body against her leg, and she remembered she wasn’t supposed to be apologizing. She’d come here to take Gus to task. “But that doesn’t excuse your appalling and hurtful behavior. Jace loves you, Gus.”
She let out a laugh as if the old man had responded with a snort of surprise, because if he’d been “awake” that’s exactly what he would’ve done. “Yeah, I know. I don’t understand it either. But he does. He loves you enough to be here for you until the very end, and do you know what you did? You pushed him away and made him suffer the same kind of loss you did when Marilyn died. Only this is even worse, because Marilyn didn’t have a choice. Butyoudid.”
Adaline was starting to pant like Fuzzy. She’d worked herself up into a good and proper rage. She hoped the kitchen at Cherry on Top was fully stocked, because she felt a rage bake coming on.
“Is that really what you want? For Jace to turn out like you did? Because that is precisely what’s going to happen.” Her voice cracked as she thought about Jace’s crushed expression when he’d come to tell her goodbye. He’d even left his beloved trees behind in his haste to get away and shut himself off from the world. “It already has.”
