Page 63 of Fa-La-La-La Faking It
She began to pace at the foot of the bed. There was so much more she could say, but she’d already cut to the heart of the matter. Gus knew what he’d done, anyway. He just needed someone to call him out on it and make him see straight.
Adaline wasn’t finished yet, though. She still had one thing left to tell the cranky old man, and it was the most important thing of all.
“No one can fix this but you.” A tear slipped down her cheek. So much for the promise she’d made herself not to cry. “Believe me. As sure as the Grinch is green, I’d do it myself if I could. Butyoucreated this monster. You made Jace believe he was better off alone—unknowable and unlovable, just like you. You made this mess, and now it’s time to fix it. So quit wasting time in this bed and do the right thing before it’s too late.”
Adaline huffed out a breath. She’d done it. There was nothing left to say, so she plucked the rotary telephone from his bedside table and plunked it down on the over-bed tray within easy reach. It was Gus’s turn to do the talking now.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered and searched Gus’s face for a hint that her words had hit their mark.
Nothing. Not even a flicker of movement on the elderly man’s face.
So Adaline led Fuzzy toward the hallway to begin the rounds of their Christmas Eve visit. The wedding was just hours away. She pulled the door closed behind her, and just before it clicked, she thought she spied Gus’s left eye crack open and his hand twitch toward the phone.
But she couldn’t be sure. She might’ve just been wishing for it so hard that she’d imagined it was real. Like Santa and his flying reindeer. Or that with a little faith and a dash of Christmas spirit, a grinch’s heart could grow three sizes.
Or that a Christmas tree farmer might truly find his way home before the holidays came to a close.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jace took the call from his uncle, because of course he did.
He’d been in the middle of an emergency meeting—on Christmas Eve, no less—when his cell phone vibrated on the smooth wooden surface of the conference room table.Bluebonnet Senior Livingflashed across the display screen, and he’d stopped mid-sentence to pick it up. The only glimmer of hesitation he’d experienced was when the thought that Gus might’ve died overnight passed through his mind.
Wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake?he’d thought.Merry freaking Christmas.
But that was just the sort of negativity Jace had recently promised himself to do away with, so he’d tapped the accept call icon and said hello.
Now here he was, sitting at Gus’s bedside. It was the one spot where he’d never expected to find himself again. Never wanted to, to be frank. He wasn’t even sure whether he’d driven hours to get here before Christmas Eve ended—upon Gus’s request—to accept an apology or to be further berated. His uncle had solemnly asked him to come back, and the seriousness of the older man’s tone had left Jace no choice.
So here he sat. Knowing Gus, he might not even mention the awful things he’d said the last time they saw each other. Jace clasped his hands together and tried to prepare himself for the worst.
Gus wheezed in his bed, as if the words he wanted to get out were so difficult to articulate that they were trying to choke him to death. Jace handed him a tissue and his uncle coughed into it, bent over so that his frail back was exposed through the opening of his hospital gown.
The ties had come loose. Jace stood and gently refastened them while Gus caught his breath. And just when he convinced himself to give up on the idea of any kind of real breakthrough in their relationship, his uncle spoke the two words Jace never thought he’d hear.
“I’m sorry.”
Gus’s tone was gruff, as always, but the sentiment was clear. Shock radiated through Jace. He didn’t have the first clue what to say.
There was no real need to fill the silence, though, because his uncle wasn’t finished.
“It’s been a long time since anyone mentioned Marilyn to me.” Gus’s chest rattled. “Right after the accident, my wife was all anyone could talk about. But as soon as we’d put her in the ground, people stopped saying her name. People do that, you know—they don’t like feeling uncomfortable, so they just pretend everything is fine and go out of their way not to say things they think might upset someone.”
Jace nodded and managed not to point out that what Gus was describing was exactly the way he’d been acting for as long as Jace had known him. Now wasn’t the time. His uncle was finally ready to talk, and Jace was here to listen. He’d been wanting this for so long that he didn’t dare utter a word of interruption.
“At first, it was a relief. The pain of losing her nearly did me in, and I needed some time to try and figure out how to cobble a life together after she was gone. Her horse wasn’t there anymore, either. Every time I walked into the barn, I expected to see that animal’s majestic head pop out over the stall door, but it never did. I couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere near that stall until the day I found you hiding in there.”
Gus paused, and his chest rose and fell with a stutter. Jace concentrated with all his might on breathing in and out. The stall where Gus had found him had been the stall that had belonged to his dead wife’s horse. Still, he’d gotten down on his knees to gather Jace in his arms and carry him back to the log cabin. How hard must that day have been for his uncle?
Jace had never once stopped to consider that question—not even after he’d found the newspaper article.
“All I had left of her was her little dog—Charlie, she called him. Cute as a bug in a rug. But dogs don’t live forever either, and by the time Charlie passed on, it had been years since anyone had brought a casserole over to the house or stopped me on the street to reminisce about something Marilyn had done or said in happier times. It felt like everyone had forgotten her. Everyone but me, anyway.” Gus finally shifted his gaze so his eyes met Jace’s. “So I decided that was the best thing for me to do, too—to forget.”
He seemed to be waiting for Jace to say something, so Jace tried to lighten the mood a little by offering him a small smile. “How’d that work out for you?”
The sound that came out of Gus next was the closest thing to a laugh that Jace had heard out of him in years. “Ha. Not too great, it seems.”
His voice drifted off, and his expression turned serious again. The lines in his face deepened with exhaustion.
