Father Christmas (29 page)

But there the similarity ended. Gail
Saunders dressed in dark, dowdy clothes and exuded chilly
brilliance, whereas Molly...

Molly was soft, gentle, warm. Kind.
Forgiving. Vulnerable to a man who was himself far too
vulnerable.

He wondered, for a minute, what had happened
to Gail, what unnamed experience had scarred her. And then he
abandoned that thought for a far more essential question: what was
going to happen to Molly if she stayed with him?

He knew he was going to hurt her, just as
Gail predicted. He was going to hurt her, and he ought to protect
her from that hurt by sending her away now.

“
I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE she
did it,” Molly muttered, jamming a star-shaped cookie cutter into
the dough. She pressed it through and wrenched it, then lifted it
and shook a perfectly shaped star of dough onto the cookie sheet.
“My own sister. How could she do such a thing?”

Allison spread green sprinkles onto the star
and sighed. The kitchen still held the scent of onions and soy
sauce from the spicy pepper-steak dinner she’d cooked. Although she
had more or less moved into Jamie’s place on the west side of town,
she spent a great deal of time in this house, her home since
childhood and still her grandmother’s residence.

She’d phoned the Children’s Garden that
afternoon and invited Molly to join her, her grandmother and the
baby for supper. “Jamie’s backed up in his work, and he’s bribed me
to take Samantha and disappear for the evening so he can catch up,”
she’d explained.

“
I hope it was a decent
bribe,” Molly had teased, although an evening with Jamie’s darling
seven-month-old daughter and Allison’s feisty grandmother—whom
Molly had known so long, she felt free to call her Grammy, just as
Allison did—was reward enough.

The bribe, it turned out, was an official
engagement ring. The emerald flanked by pavé diamonds was dazzling.
Grammy had observed that any man who would present his fiancée with
a ring that expensive-looking probably expected her to perform
kinky sexual acts. Allison, used to her grandmother’s off-color
jibes, beamed and said she certainly hoped that was what Jamie had
in mind.

Now Grammy was in the living room with
Samantha, trying to teach the baby the alphabet by making her watch
“Wheel of Fortune.” And since Allison knew Jamie needed at least
another two hours to finish writing his weekly column, she had
decided that she and Molly should bake Christmas cookies.

Why not?
Molly had thought. She didn’t have anything
better to do, anywhere better to go. Besides, she was frustrated
and angry, and Allison was the kind of friend who would listen to
her grumble without complaint.

“
It’s been three days,”
she lamented. “Three days, and all he’s done is say hi and give me
this funny smile when he drops Michael off in the morning, and then
when he picks him up. He hasn’t asked me to have dinner, hasn’t
invited me back to his house.... I thought things were so right
between us. And I swear, I didn’t do anything that would make his
feelings change. It must have been Gail.”

Deep in thought, Allison added some red
sprinkles to the green and awaited the next raw cookie. Molly
plopped it onto the baking sheet, and Allison lifted the tub of red
sprinkles again. “Do you know what Gail said to him?”

“
She told me she more or
less asked him what his intentions were. His
intentions
. I mean, come on! Just
because my folks are in Ohio doesn’t mean she has the right to act
like my guardian.”

Allison shook some sprinkles onto the dough.
“Your sister has a hang-up about cops, Molly. From the first time
you mentioned John—remember, at Thanksgiving?—she’s had qualms
about him. He could be any man in the world, but as long as he’s a
cop she’s going to have trouble dealing with it.”

“
She’s a narrow-minded
busy-body,” said Molly. “Yes, she has a hang-up about cops, but so
what? I have a hang-up about men who hate children, but if Gail
started dating a guy who hated children, I wouldn’t
intervene.”

“
She’s your big sister.
She’s just looking out for you.”

“
I don’t want her looking
out for me!” Molly was so angry, she mangled the dough in the
cookie cutter. Sighing, she flattened it with the heel of her palm
and pressed the cutter into it again. “John isn’t just a cop. He’s
a brave, kind man with only one big flaw, as far as I can tell: he
takes too much responsibility for things. Which is a heck of a lot
better than some of the losers I’ve met, who could drive a car
straight into a tree and blame it on the tree.” She cut a neat star
and placed it on the baking sheet. “And John doesn’t hate kids.
He’s a Daddy School student. That’s worth a whole lot of points in
my book.”

“
Mine, too,” Allison said
with a smile. Setting down the sprinkles, she added, “You know,
Grammy put Jamie through the wringer a lot when I first started
seeing him—and she’s still putting him through the wringer, even
though we’re getting married. It doesn’t matter that he’s going to
be my husband—she still calls him a bum. She’s ten times worse than
your sister.”

“
Your grandmother’s full
of shit. Nobody takes her seriously when she teases like
that.”

“
A man who wasn’t sure of
his own feelings might very well take her seriously,” Allison
argued gently.

Molly’s stomach knotted. She searched
Allison’s face for a sign that Allison hadn’t meant what she’d
implied. But she saw no indication that Allison was joking. “In
other words—” Molly tried not to choke on the words “—you think
John doesn’t feel anything for me.”

“
I’m sure he feels
something
, Molly.”

“
But his feelings are too
weak to matter. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it. He doesn’t
care enough about me to get past whatever the hell Gail said to
him.”

Allison covered Molly’s floury hand with her
own, her fingers stained red and green from the sprinkles. “I don’t
know if that’s true. But if he was really in love with you, do you
think Gail could stop him?”

“
Gail could stop anyone,”
Molly muttered, her eyes burning with tears. Allison was right, of
course. All she’d done was give voice to the thoughts and doubts
that had been plaguing Molly for three days. If John felt as
strongly about her as she did about him, he would have done more
than give her his cryptic smile as he dropped off Michael at
school. He would have let her know that three days after she’d
awakened in his bed, she was on his mind, in his heart.

It was only bad luck that John had been
allowed to resume his usual duties so soon after he’d been stabbed,
that he’d participated in the arrest of a woman who had allegedly
shot her husband and that, despite the fact that Gail had dozens
upon dozens of defenses to prepare, she’d gotten sent to the police
station to defend that particular woman.

Gail had told Molly the woman was innocent.
But if the woman’s husband had broken her heart, Molly wouldn’t
blame her for shooting the guy. At the moment, Molly was very
sympathetic to scorned women.

“
I know John must be fond
of you,” Allison said. Molly shot her a scathing look, but Allison
didn’t flinch. “Maybe he’s just rethinking the situation before he
pursues it further. Maybe he feels awkward because you run his
son’s preschool, and he’s trying to figure out how to balance
everything. And with his divorce so recent—”

“
His wife left him six
months ago—and their marriage was disintegrating long before that.
The only recent thing was formalizing the break-up.”

“
But who’s to say how long
it will take him to recover? Maybe he wants to be completely healed
before he gets involved with you.”

Molly thought of how un-healed he’d been
Saturday night. His right arm and hand had been out of commission,
and when she’d accidentally stroked his bruised ribs...

The knot in her stomach unwound, sending
ripples up into her throat, where they reknotted into a tight lump.
Surely making love to her must have meant something to him. Surely
it had been as significant to him as it had been to her.

“
You know what?” Allison
picked up the snow-flake cookie cutter and pressed it into the
dough. “If it really matters to you—and I know it does—you could
ask him.”

“
Ask him what?”

“
Ask him why he’s steering
clear of you. He might say something you don’t want to hear, but
you’re already assuming the worst. If you want, I’ll go with you.
We could drive to his house right now and confront him.”

“
Oh, God, no!” Molly
laughed in spite of herself. “He’s probably giving Michael a bath
right now. He’s probably drenched in water from the tub even as we
speak. This would definitely not be a good time to confront
him.”

But Allison was right. Molly was doing
herself no favors by stewing at home while John avoided her. The
only way she was going to find out what was going on in his mind
was to ask him.

His answer might be painful to hear. But not
knowing was agony. Nothing he could say to her could make her feel
worse than she already felt.

“
Let’s get this batch in,”
Allison said, adding a swirl of colored sprinkles to the final
cookie and carrying the sheet to the oven. “I want to send you home
with a plate of cookies. You might need them for
comfort.”

Molly smiled sadly, not bothering to point
out that if John told her he wanted nothing more to do with her,
the most delicious holiday cookies in the universe weren’t going to
do any good.

***

SHE DIDN’T HAVE the opportunity to talk to
him the next two days. When he dropped Michael off at school both
mornings, the entry was crowded with parents, and John’s faint
smile barely reached her through the swarming adults and the
children in their clumsy boots and snowsuits. When the students
were picked up in the evening, he seemed to slip in and out, as
well.

She could have telephoned him. But to learn
over the phone that he wanted nothing more to do with her would be
too cold, too impersonal. If couldn’t see his eyes while he talked
to her, she wouldn’t know whether to believe him.

Shoving herself out of
bed
Saturday morning, she acknowledged
that the moment of truth had arrived. If John didn’t attend today’s
session of the Daddy School—the final class of the year—she
wouldn’t have to confront him and ask what the hell was going on
between them. His absence would be her answer.

She tried to convince herself not to dress
for the occasion. The truth was, she had no idea what the occasion
would be: something on the order of a funeral, or a grand,
passionate reconciliation, or a nuclear-powered blow up.

She put on jeans, a shirt and a patterned
wool sweater, figuring they’d suit any of the three alternatives.
Her appetite had been a sometime thing all week, but she forced
down a half a grapefruit, a cup of coffee and one of the buttery
Christmas cookies Allison had sent her home with Wednesday evening.
Then she brushed her teeth, slapped on a neutral lipstick, grabbed
her keys, and headed out to her car.

At ten o’clock, her students began to arrive
with their youngsters in tow. Gordon showed up with Melissa, the
four-year-old in the throes of terminal sibling rivalry. Hank
showed up with his son Joey. Avery, with Keisha clasping his hand
and managing to skip in her bulky fireman-style boots. Rick and his
daughter Rebecca. Lance and his son Brett.

Shannon was on hand to watch the children
for the duration of the class. As soon as the children had been
liberated from their outerwear, she trooped them up the stairs.
Molly watched them go, then turned back to the small group of
fathers, feeling her spirits sink.

John wasn’t there. She had her answer, and
it was the one she’d dreaded.

“
Well,” she said with
forced cheer, “I’m glad you all managed to make time for today’s
class, what with the demands of the holiday. Why don’t we all go
into the Pre-K room, and—” Hearing the squeak of the front door
opening, she paused. “Oh, wait—it sounds like we’ve got a
straggler.”

Two sets of footsteps echoed down the hall,
one heavy and adult, the other the quick, light trot of a child
running. Michael’s voice pierced the room: “Where’s the children,
Daddy? I wanna go with the children!”

The Russo men emerged into the room, Michael
bubbling over with energy and John lagging a few paces behind him.
Michael looked exuberant; John looked wary. His leather jacket hung
open to reveal a pale gray sweater above brown corduroy jeans. His
hair was wind-tossed, his hands buried in his pockets. His eyes
went straight to her, dark and troubled.

“
Hello, John,” she said.
The presence of the other fathers compelled her to greet him as if
he were just another student. “The children are upstairs with
Shannon,” she told Michael. “You can go up and join
them.”

“
I go with the children!”
he announced, not bothering to remove his jacket before he vanished
up the stairs.

Her gaze moved back to John. He was still
staring at her. She couldn’t interpret his expression, except to
recognize that it was grim. He wasn’t thrilled to see her. He
wasn’t even pleased to be attending the Daddy School class. But he
was here—whatever that meant.

“
Let’s go into the Pre-K
room,” she repeated for his sake. She wasn’t going to find out why
he’d come until after class, if at all, so she figured she might as
well get the class started. She waited until they had all settled
their bodies on the floor cushions and the ledges, avoiding the
child-size chairs, and then began. “Given what’s going on at this
time of year, I thought we’d talk about being a good father during
the holidays. Are any of you having any problems with your children
that relate to the holidays?”