Married for Christmas (Willow Park) (15 page)

“I’m not closing you out. We spent all evening together
yesterday. I can’t spend every day with you.”

She made a frustrated burst of sound that woke up Bear.

The dog gave a huff and jumped off the bed, pacing over to
her bed and flopping down there instead.

Jessica scooted over to the warmth the dog had left behind,
so she wasn’t quite so close to Daniel.

“I’m not expecting you to spend every day with me. I’m
expecting you to be yourself. To be real. And to live out what you believe.
You’re not doing any of that. You’re just stewing. I understand you can’t heal
overnight, but I don’t know if you’re even really trying.”

“Would you like to explain that?” His voice was clipped,
like ice pellets. She’d never heard that tone from him before. Not directed to
her, anyway.

“I don’t even know what I mean. It just seems like you’re
stewing this way because it’s safer than moving on, risking being hurt again. I
don’t know—”

She was rambling now, pouring out things she hadn’t even
acknowledged to herself. They felt right to her, but she never would have dared
to say them had she not been so upset and frustrated.

Daniel broke into her rambles. “Your pop psychology is very
impressive, but you clearly know nothing about me or about human nature at
all—if you can trivialize something serious.”

“I wasn’t trivializing—”

“That’s it. The conversation is over.”

His voice was one she recognized. Absolute authority.

It silenced her.

She wasn’t going to keep reaching out to someone who didn’t
want her. She’d taken all the risks she was capable of taking with him. She
retreated into herself—the only place it was genuinely safe—rolling over toward
the wall and curling up in a pose of sleep.

She didn’t sleep. She played out the argument in her mind,
over and over again.

She stayed awake for hours, her back to Daniel, coming up
with better responses and convincing him to see the light.

There was no light. Not until morning.

She must have fallen asleep at some point. When she became
aware again, she rolled over.

Daniel’s place was empty again.

When she got up to go downstairs to let out Bear and get
some coffee, she saw he wasn’t even in the house.

He’d left a note on the kitchen table.

“Gone to church early.”

And that was fine.

That was perfectly fine.

She didn’t want to talk to him either.

Jessica took Bear for a long walk
that morning and then got dressed for church, wearing a festive red sweater to
try to cheer herself up.

It didn’t work. She felt glum and exhausted and like she wanted
to shake Daniel. She was ready to go fifteen minutes before she needed to leave
for Sunday School, so she just sat on the window seat in the bedroom and stared
out at the backyard. It was a gray day and blowing snow, and she watched little
whirlwinds of snowflakes start up and subside against the frozen grass.

Christmas was just three days away.

As she stared, she noticed that the door to the workshop
shed was hanging opened. Every once in a while a breeze would pick it up and
blow it out farther and then bang it back.

She watched it for a minute or two, until she realized she
should go close it so Daniel’s tools wouldn’t get damaged or stolen.

Willow Park was about as safe a town as one could get, but
nowhere was free from crime, and Daniel had some expensive tools that might be
a temptation.

She got up and walked downstairs and out to the yard. The
wind was biting cold as she made her way across the yard to the shed, and it
whipped her skirt around her legs. Even with tights and boots, she’d been stupid
to wear a skirt this morning.

She grabbed the door as another gust blew it farther opened,
and she was about to close it when she glanced inside.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw a large piece of
wooden furniture. She pulled the cord to the light and closed the door against
the wind as she stepped all the way inside.

It was a desk—made to fit in a corner, with three raised
platforms. For monitors, she realized.

It was huge, made of gorgeous walnut, and really well put
together. Daniel was obviously midway through polishing it.

It was for her. There was no other explanation. It was made
to go in the corner near the windows of her office, just like he’d suggested
that first day they were planning out the layout of the house.

She didn’t think he’d ever made anything so ambitious
before. She hadn’t realized he was capable of making something like this. It
must have taken him forever.

He’d done it for her. So many hours of work.

She gazed at the beautiful piece with slightly blurry eyes,
unable to process what it meant, why he’d done it, how this fit with all the
ways he’d been pulling away from her.

She ran her fingers over the smooth surface, her throat
painfully tight.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of this.

The door to this workshop hadn’t been opened yesterday
evening. She would have noticed it. Which meant he’d come out here in the
middle of the night to work on the desk some more.

She looked at his tools, neatly lined up on the work table
and hanging on hooks. She tried to imagine what he was thinking all the time he
was out here working on the desk. Then she noticed a glimpse of color and
walked closer to see what it was.

A photo, a little bent and ragged around the edges, held
down by a hammer.

She realized it was probably a picture of Lila—like the one
he kept on his desk in the study, a memory of the life he’d really wanted and
not the life he had.

Feeling the need to remind herself of this brutal truth, she
stepped close enough to see the photo.

She frowned in surprise when she made out details, and she
picked it up to verify.

It was not a photo of Lila. It was a photo of her.

Of
Jessica
.

It had been taken at their wedding, but must have been a
snapshot someone else had taken, since Jessica had never seen it and it wasn’t
by the photographer they’d hired.

She was in her wedding dress and her adorable little fur
shrug, and she was laughing and clinging to Daniel’s arm.

Most of Daniel was cut out of the picture, but Jessica’s
face and upper body were framed in the shot.

She looked happy and surprisingly pretty, but her eyes were
fixed up on Daniel’s face with a look of naked affection.

She flushed, standing alone in the workshop, at how much her
expression revealed of her feelings for him.

But then her mind caught up to what she was seeing, and she
tried to think through the significance.

What was he doing with her picture out here?

Maybe he kept it to remind himself that she was his wife now
and he shouldn’t be yearning instead for his dead wife.

Or maybe…

She couldn’t let herself hope. Every time she’d started to
hope in that direction, she’d been crushed. And it should be more than obvious
that Daniel didn’t want to give himself to her intimately, emotionally. He’d
made that very clear yesterday.

But she was shaky when she carefully returned the picture
underneath the hammer, turned off the light, and closed the door.

The wind was even more biting than usual as she trudged back
to the house, and her mind and heart were spinning with too much to possibly
process.

The phone was ringing when she walked into the house, and
she ran for it.

Maybe it was Daniel. Maybe he would say he was sorry.

As soon as she saw the name of her mother’s nursing facility
on the screen, her heart started to hammer in an entirely different way.

They wouldn’t call this early on a Sunday morning unless
there was an emergency.

The pounding of her heart moved to her ears as the female
voice on the other end explained what had happened. Her mother had fallen. It
was serious. They were taking her to the hospital now—the closest one to Willow
Park, twenty minutes away.

Jessica had jumped up to grab her keys, and she was out the
door before the call was over, before she’d even grabbed a coat.

***

Three hours later, Jessica sat by
herself in an otherwise empty waiting area, staring blindly down at the tablet
in her lap.

Her mother had broken her hip, and they’d taken her into
surgery to try to set it. It wasn’t a life-threatening injury, but in her
mother’s age and state of health, all surgeries were risky.

And it just didn’t seem fair that her mother was hit with
this, on top of everything else.

When Jessica’s phone rang, she snatched it up.

“Hey, I just got out of church and got your message. Is your
mom okay?” Kim asked, her voice filled with concern.

“I guess.” When her voice cracked, Jessica cleared her
throat. “She’s in surgery. She broke her hip.”

“What happened?”

“She fell when she was walking down a few stairs outside at
the home.”

“Do they think she’ll be okay?”

“They said she should be. But everyone looked so concerned.
And the surgery seems to be taking so long.”

Kim’s voice changed. “Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just sitting here in the hospital.”

“Is Daniel there yet?”

Jessica felt a strange lump in her throat and didn’t answer.

“Jess, where is he?”

“He’s at church. It’s Sunday morning.”

“Shit, you didn’t even call him, did you?”

Jessica felt so upset and anxious and exhausted that she was
just numb. Not even close to tears. “I said I was fine.”

“You aren’t fine. Are you there all by yourself?”

“There’s nothing anyone can do. I’m just sitting here and
waiting.”

“But you need some support. Why on earth didn’t you call
Daniel?”

“Because there’s nothing he can do. He had to preach this
morning. We were fighting last night and—”

“And that’s ridiculous! He’d want to be there. Jess, he
needs to know.”

“I’ll tell him when there’s something to tell.”

“Do you really think he wouldn’t come to be with you?”

“I know he would come, but I don’t want him here out of
obligation.” It seemed important for Jessica to say that. Important that she
meant it.

“He’s your husband!”

“I know he’s my husband.” Jessica didn’t want to be having
this conversation. She didn’t have the strength to deal with it. She just
wanted to sit in a stupor and try not to think about anything. “But you know
it’s not a normal marr—”

“I know it’s not a normal marriage, but he’d still want to—”

“I don’t want him here out of obligation,” Jessica repeated,
gritting out the word, since they were the ones she was surest of. “I don’t
want him obliged to me.”

“
Of course
, he’s obliged to you. You’re friends.
You’re in a relationship. You’re married, for whatever reason. Obligation comes
with all of that.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want him to do anything for me
because he
has
to. Only because he
wants
to.” Ridiculously, a
tear slipped out of one eye, although she’d thought she was too numb to cry.
She didn’t even have the energy to wipe it away.

Kim was silent for too long. “I’m really sorry, Jess,” she
said at last. “I shouldn’t be bringing all of this up now. But you need someone
with you. Is there anyone else?”

“I don’t need anyone. I keep telling you. I’m fine.”

“I’ve got a rehearsal I can’t miss right now, but then I’ll
come down. I can be there by mid-afternoon.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I don’t care what I need to do. I’m doing it anyway.”

For no good reason, Jessica’s face twisted in emotion. After
taking a shaky breath, she said, “Thanks.”

After she hung up, she sat with her phone in her hand. Her
tablet had gone black from disuse.

If Daniel called, she would tell him. If he called, it would
be a gesture that he wasn’t closing her out after all. It wasn’t like him to
give her—or anyone—the cold shoulder. He would wonder why she hadn’t showed up
for church. He had a Session meeting after the service, but he’d be back home
by around one. Then he’d wonder where she was.

Maybe he would think she’d gone somewhere to pout by
herself, but maybe he’d feel bad and call to make peace.

Either way, she wasn’t going to call him. She knew what he
would do. He would drop everything and come out to the hospital to be with her.
He’d be strong and comforting and supportive.

And he’d do it all out of nothing but duty, when she wanted
so much more from him.

She’d thought she was getting everything she really wanted
in this marriage, but she’d been wrong. She wanted—needed—a lot more.

She shook the thought from her mind, since Daniel wasn’t the
most important thing right now.

Her mother was the most important thing.

And it felt like every day she was slipping farther away
from her.

Another tear streamed down her cheek, and this time she
managed to swipe it away.

“Jessica, are you okay?”

Her head jerked up at the unexpected voice, and she saw an
elderly woman with a sympathetic smile extending a cup of coffee to her.

Without thinking, Jessica took the coffee and then the sugar
and creamer packets. “Yeah.”

Randa Verbois, who’d lived in Willow Park all her life and
who volunteered at the hospital a couple of times a week, sat down in the chair
next to her. “How’s your mother?”

“She’s in surgery.” Jessica busied herself with putting
creamer in the coffee and stirring it more than it needed stirring. “I don’t
know anything yet.”

“Is there anything I can do, dear?”

Randa had taught her Sunday School. She was allowed to call
her “dear.”

“No, but thank you.”

“When is Pastor Daniel going to get here?”

Jessica felt suddenly trapped. “I…uh, I’m not sure.”

“Well, you let me know if you need anything before he does.”

“Thank you.” Jessica smiled at the woman, despite her
awkwardness.

Of course, Randa assumed Daniel would be coming. He was her
husband.

No one but Kim knew the truth.

***

A half-hour later, nothing had changed
except Jessica had finished her cup of coffee.

She still held her phone in her hand, but it hadn’t rung.
Her tablet still rested on her lap, but she hadn’t turned it back on.

Her mother was still in surgery, and no one had come with
any news.

Jessica tried to pray, tried to be as reasonable as she’d
always been about life. It was just a broken hip. They did this surgery all the
time. Everything would be okay.

Despite her best efforts, she kept imagining how she would
feel if something happened to her mother.

If her mom died, then Jessica would have no one. No family
left. She would be as alone as she’d ever been in her life.

This marriage was supposed to keep that from happening, but
it hadn’t. It hadn’t changed anything at all.

Her shoulders shook, and she fought the rising emotion in
her chest and throat.

“Jessica,” a familiar voice said.

For a moment, she was so numb she thought the voice was in
her head.

“Jessica,” the voice said again. Closer now. Then someone
took four long steps toward her and sank into the chair beside her. He took
both of her hands in his. “Is she okay?”

Jessica stared at Daniel blankly, trying to get her mind to
work.

“Jessica, honey, is she okay?”

“I don’t know. She’s in surgery.”

He released her hands and moved his warm hands up to her
face. “Are
you
okay?”

“I’m fin—” She couldn’t finish the lie. She broke down into
tight little sobs.

She had no idea what Daniel was doing here now, but she was
so, so glad to see him.

He made a wordless, guttural sound and pulled her into a
hug. It was slightly awkward, since they had to hug over the armrest between
them, but she didn’t care.

She cried into his shoulder for a minute or two, feeling
safe and cared for as his arms held her tightly.

Finally, she pulled away, wiping her eyes and feeling kind
of silly, but much better than she had before.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, rubbing her face. She
must look horrible. She was still wearing her church clothes, but her eyes must
be swollen and red, and she’d pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail to keep
it out of her way.