Claustrophobic Christmas (12 page)

“Leave Jamie alone, Mother.” Nita sat down on his other side, a half-eaten peppermint stick in her hand, and waved it at their mother like a magic wand. “It’s Christmas. Begone, evil spirits.”

“He must have done something,” Mother repeated. “It’s always the man.”

“It ain’t neither,” Tod argued. “Women’s as much trouble as a flat football in a playoff game.”

Nita bit the peppermint like she wanted to bite off their mother’s head. Or maybe Tod’s. Their sister’s husband was nobody’s favorite, though he’d improved the past year or so. “It’s not Jamie’s fault.”

James squeezed the bridge of his nose, wishing his headache would disappear. “It’s okay, Mother. Darcy doesn’t need many sweaters in Texas.”

“Everybody needs a sweater when it snows. If the electric goes out like in ’97, we’ll all need sweaters. We’ll need long johns and sweaters.” Mother frowned. “We should stock up on bread and milk.”

“There’s not going to be an ice storm.” Nita leaned against James’s arm and licked the peppermint. “Tomorrow it’s supposed to be sunny.”

“Darcy might need the sweater if she didn’t bring anything warm home,” Mother said, as if Nita hadn’t spoken.

“I’m sure she’s properly outfitted.” James bounced Constance on his feet, a mini-version of horsie. “The snow we got last night already melted.”

Mother shook her head, her coiffed grey hair not moving an inch. “I’m just so disappointed.”

“That it isn’t going to snow more?” James asked.

“No, that you ruined things with Darcy Burkell. She’s a nice girl. Very responsible, even if she does live in Texas. I thought this meant you were finally going to settle down.”

“So you’ve mentioned.” James rubbed his forehead. “About a hundred times.”

Mother lowered the screen of the laptop she was using to edit the holiday photos. “Don’t you get smart with me, James Jones. You’ve been showing the signs. Did you think your own mother wouldn’t notice?”

“Signs of what, ageing?” He’d noticed grey at his temples this year. Was that what she meant?

“Your biological clock,” Mother said.

“Men don’t have biological clocks.” He started alternating his foot lifts, jouncing Constance from one side to another. She giggled.

“Your wild oats are gone. I know the signs.”

“No way. I’m full of oats.” He made a noise like a horse and galloped his feet. “Right, Constance?”

“Yes!” Constance was a very agreeable child. “Uncle Jamie is full of oats.”

“Uncle Jamie’s full of something,” Sal said. “Seriously, Jamie, Darcy Burkell? Those Burkells can’t make up their minds about anything. Her brother Chip? He already quit his job at the bank that he only had for four months and says he’s going back to school to be a history professor. There isn’t even a college in Tallwood. What is he thinking? His wife is at her wit’s end. She’s pregnant too, you know. She and I are doing prenatal aerobics together at the Y and she told me all about it.”

Sal had been head cheerleader in high school and was now an event planner. She knew everything about everybody and never hesitated to share that information. James didn’t think he’d tell her the details about his encounter with Darcy, but he’d told Nita an edited version, and she’d told him he was an asshole.

First a prick, now an asshole. He was a regular conglomeration of genitalia.

And he was beginning to suspect the ladies were right. Darcy wasn’t a liar. Her newsletters had footnotes and sources and references and legal mumbo jumbo, exactly like she said. He maybe might have read a few newsletters yesterday, especially the one with the sex in it.

Had she been thinking about him when she’d written it? Well, she wouldn’t be thinking about him in terms that friendly now. He never should have said such harsh things to her. He’d questioned her integrity and her ability to do her job without listening to what she was saying. He’d been too wrapped up in his disappointment because she wasn’t exactly what he wanted her to be. He hadn’t accepted the truth of who she was, and he’d rejected her for being herself.

Yeah, he was an asshole. And even knowing she was rightly pissed, he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d driven by the Burkell’s house on the way to the store for Mother yesterday, to make sure Darcy had gotten home safe after the traffic jam. It was only a few streets away from the Piggly Wiggly. Her tan Buick had been parked in the driveway, grey slush mottling the sides from the salted roads.

He hadn’t stopped.

Constance’s weight vacated his feet. She popped up, shoving her face into James’s. “Did you see, Uncle Jamie? Santa ate the cookies.”

“Did he drink the beer?” They couldn’t leave milk out anymore after what had happened with the lactose intolerant poodle three years ago.

“Yes! Every drop. He was thirsty.”

“From the looks of my empty beer cooler, he was real thirsty,” Tod said with a chortle.

“Go ask Grandpa if he’s ordered the pizza yet,” Nita told her daughter.

Constance waded through the detritus of the gift opening session and left the room. Nita, Sal and Mother started arguing about how much in the wrong James was in regards to Darcy, with Tod interjecting the occasional off-color comment.

James tuned everything out. The kids, the arguing, the sounds of the season. The booze and cookies last night hadn’t been a great combo, but after a few more of Tod’s cheap beers, he hadn’t cared. He’d volunteered to put together Constance’s Barbie ski lodge, so he’d been alone in the great room, the only one awake in the silent, sleeping house. No jingle on the roof, no reindeer paws, no…Christmas joy.

No Darcy.

He’d stared out the front bay window, watching the Christmas lights reflect off the smattering of snow Tallwood had gotten, and all he’d wanted was to be watching it with Darcy.

He missed her. It had been two days, barely, and he missed her. One thing he was sure of, missing her this much wouldn’t be conducive to a successful relationship. He’d always be traveling, always without her. He’d always be missing her. If he couldn’t enjoy himself away from her, how could he escape the feeling that all his travel back and forth was wasted time?

But the real question was, could he stop missing her now that he’d started?

James’s father, tall and wiry, appeared in the doorway. “What’s everyone want on their pizza?”

Everyone shouted out favorite toppings. James couldn’t hear himself think his self-pitying thoughts.

“Carl, I already made a list and put it beside the phone. Didn’t you see it?” Mother set the laptop aside and followed her husband out of the room. In fact, everyone but Nita followed, still yelling pepperoni or cheese or ham—or boogers, dog poop and worms in the case of Sal’s boys.

“So.” Nita crumpled the peppermint wrapper. “When are you going over there?”

James stared at his clasped hands, at the cut where he’d nicked himself last night during his inebriated construction efforts. “Over where?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “It’s totally your fault. You owe Darcy a giant, groveling apology.”

James raised his eyebrows. “You told Mother it wasn’t my fault.”

“I lied.” She licked pink candy stain from her fingers. “It’s your fault.”

“I know.” So this is what it was to be emo. “That still doesn’t mean it can work out between us. She’s not going to travel with me, Nita. We’ll be apart most of the time. What kind of relationship is that?”

“The kind that suits a travel photographer. You’ve been apart six months and it hasn’t stopped you from falling for her.”

“That was before,” he said darkly. He hadn’t actually told Nita he and Darcy had had sex because he didn’t want to hear it.

She bumped him with her shoulder, unaware he’d been a bigger asshole than she realized. “My advice, my brother, is to go before the pizza gets here. Who wants to eat pizza with dog poop on it?”

“The boys do,” James said. “I heard ’em say so.”

“When Darcy asks if you’ve eaten, you can say no and get invited to dinner. Clever, right?”

“She won’t ask if I’ve eaten. She won’t even invite me in the house.”

“She’s a Tallwood girl. She’ll ask. As upset as you say she was, it means she cares for you a great deal, Jamie.”

“She told me to fuck off.”

Nita’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t lose your temper and yell back, did you?”

“Come on. Of course not.” The women in his family had worse tempers than the men. The men didn’t dare, not with so many women around.

“Then you’ve still got a chance.” Nita patted him on the knee before she went to make sure her pizza requirements were being met.

James was already tired of emo. Brooding was not his style. He liked to make decisions, act and put things behind him, but right now he wasn’t sure what action to take.

There was always the option of running away from Tallwood again. Going here, going there. Taking pictures and never coming home. But that was a life that sounded about as appetizing as dog poop pizza.

The fact was, he really was getting old. He really was ready to settle down. By God, Mother was right.

He took Darcy the sweater. She might not have anything warm in her suitcase, and it was cold out there.

Chapter Eleven

The doorbell rang. Pop hobbled down the stairs into the den and swatted at Darcy’s brother Chip with his cane. “Get outta my chair and answer the door.”

Chip exchanged a glance with Darcy before removing himself from the brown La-Z-Boy Pop had had since before Mom died. “Who’d be showing up here on Christmas?”

“Carolers?” Darcy suggested. She rubbed at the tomato sauce on the cuff of her sweatshirt.

“In Tallwood? I don’t think so.” Chip disappeared, his footsteps echoing through the big, empty house. Her other siblings and their families had returned to their homes after the traditional pizza buffet, the kids anxious to play with their new toys. Chip and his wife were still here because Nancy, in her third month of pregnancy, was napping in Chip’s old bedroom.

Darcy and Pop were getting ready for a classic movie marathon. Westerns this year. Hail to the Duke. Right now, the Weather Channel was on, the green and red blotch of the storm that had caused havoc on the interstates in Arkansas dispersed across North Carolina and Virginia. Not quite a white Christmas, but it had definitely been a blue one.

At least for her.

She thought she’d hidden it well enough. When there were mostly men in the family, nobody noticed things like moodiness or depression unless you screeched at them about it.

Darcy heard two sets of footsteps now and male voices, pausing in…sounded like the kitchen. Getting drinks, no doubt. Maybe it was Pop’s friend Bud. He hadn’t been by yet and he usually showed up during the holidays with a bottle of whiskey for Pop. Pop didn’t like whiskey, so he returned the favor by giving Bud whatever bottle of whiskey Bud had given him last year. Sometimes he even remembered to wipe the dust off.

It wouldn’t surprise Darcy if there were only two bottles involved in the exchange, swapped back and forth these many years.

“You got Bud’s whiskey ready?” she asked him. Whiskey sounded tempting tonight. She’d already finished the pizza, the chocolate, the pie, the remaining jelly beans, the vegetable soup—hey, she had to eat something healthy—and the cake.

“Your damn brother got into it at Thanksgiving,” Pop said. “I coulda kilt him. Had to go out and buy a new bottle.”

Darcy didn’t need to ask which brother. Chip walked down the stairs, ice clinking in his highball glass.

“Look who’s here,” he said, a strange expression on his face.

Darcy glanced up to see James follow Chip into the den. She tried to say, “Hello,” but it came out more like, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Pop wrenched himself around in the recliner, peering over his glasses at the intruder. “Huh? Who’s that there?”

“James Jones,” James said evenly, ignoring Darcy’s rude greeting. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Burkell.”

So what was he doing here? Had she left something in his truck? Good Lord, her panties. She noticed he was bearing gifts—a rectangular box and a bottle of whiskey with a bow around the neck. If Pop wanted her to unwrap the box in front of everyone and it had her travel comfort cotton panties in it, it might be the death of her.

“Happy holidays.” He shook Pop’s hand and gave him the whiskey. “I hope you like Jack Daniels.”

Darcy, despite the nervous buzzing in her ears, heard Chip snort.

“Thanks, son.” Pop waved a hand at the direction of the couch. “Take off your coat and sit a spell. Darcy, get the man a drink. You want some of this?” He hefted the large bottle.

“No, I’m fine,” James said. He locked gazes with Darcy for a minute, and she scooted all the way to one end of the long couch. She hoped he’d take the hint and seat himself at the other end, but he settled into the middle. “Chip already offered.”

Instead of taking Mama’s rocking chair, Chip perched on the trunk near the mantel. His back to Pop, he winked at Darcy.

“So why are you here, James? Is this a business meeting?” he asked innocently. Chip had been the brother who’d told James’s sister Sal about Darcy’s need for custom photography. In essence, he’d set them up.

By the sly expression on Chip’s face, she wondered what he knew. The pit of her stomach lurched like Frankenstein’s monster. The only one who’d asked her about James had been Nancy, but Nancy was too sweet to say boo to a goose. She hadn’t been able to get anything out of Darcy beyond a shrug.

“I was in the neighborhood,” James said. He slipped out of his parka and set it beside him with the gifts. “I thought I’d stop by.”

Chip leaned forward, his hands around his glass. The ice tinkled as he shifted. “Is that so? I don’t think you’ve ever stopped by before, except maybe trick or treating.”

“Shut up, Chip,” Darcy muttered.

“I’m sure I did trick or treat here. My parents’ house is on Walnut,” James answered. He was about as convincing as a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Darcy prayed Pop didn’t realize something was up, because he was blunt to the point of offensiveness and there was no telling what he’d say.

“You’re the one who’s been taking pitchers for Darcy’s little books,” Pop said to James.