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Authors: Curtiss Ann Matlock

Tags: #Christmas Romance

Miracle on I-40 (13 page)

BOOK: Miracle on I-40
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“Is this it?” Jon asked excitedly.

“Which one?” Anna said, craning her neck.

“There…” Lacey pointed, and Cooper came to a rolling stop at the curb in front of her parents’ large sloping yard. While the sameness of it all was heartily reassuring,  and a little strange, too. Quite suddenly she felt nineteen again, as if all the years since were wiped away.

She stared at the house, feeling as if she couldn’t move, even when she saw the front door opening. Then people stepping out onto the porch. Her parents…yes, it was them. Oh, her mother’s hair was white.  Her father. Why, he was bent.

When Cooper said, “I’ll go up and speak to them,” she could do nothing but gape at him in astonishment.

Ignoring Lacey’s expression, Cooper got out of the truck, paused and gave his hair a quick swipe. He felt foolish. It was none of his business. But he didn’t want the kids going up there and being rejected by their grandpa right in front of their faces. The memory of his own hurt caused him to stride toward the large brick house with firm, long steps.

He came to a stop, look up at the porch and took quick inventory of the people staring at him—a stern, no-nonsense type of man with silver hair and deep creases on either side of his turned-down mouth, the woman stylish and petite and standing one step behind the man. A movement behind the curtains of the window indicated onlookers inside.

Cooper returned his gaze to the silver-haired man. “I’ve brought Lacey and your grandchildren for a visit.” He watched the man’s eyes grow small. “Will you welcome them?”

“Who are you?” the man asked after a long, silent moment.

“Just a friend,” Cooper replied.

Another long pause in which the man’s taut expression seemed to crumble. His eyes turned moist when he said, “Please ask my daughter and her children to come in.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

Lacey saw Cooper turn walk forward in brisk steps. Her father, too, came forward and looked toward the truck.

She opened the door. The both dreaded and hope-for moment had arrived, and she suddenly felt she couldn’t cope with either. She about fell out of the cab, and then Cooper was there, offering his steadying hand and reaching to help Anna.

Then joy burst within Lacey, when her mother came hurrying down the walk with open arms.

“Mama!”

“My baby!”

The scent of Yardley’s Lavender and the softness of silk in her mother’s hug. Her mother slipped away to Anna and Jon, and Lacey was left gazing up the path at her father, still waiting on the porch. She walked slowly toward him.

The same man, yet changed. The sternness was there, but softened with the frailty of age.

“Daddy...” She reached for Jon and Anna, taking refuge with them. “These are my children.”

She couldn’t remember ever seeing her father cry, but now a tear slipped down his cheek. Lacey blinked, her vision growing almost too blurry to see. When her father opened his arms, she rushed to embrace him, feeling his rough face against hers, his coarse silver hair.

“Oh, Daddy, I’ve missed you.” And then she cried into his white dress shirt. Still, the starched white dress shirts.

“Welcome home,” her father said gruffly. He squeezed her tight, then, self-consciously averting his gaze, he pulled away and turned to the children, pure pleasure lighting his face. “So, these are my grandchildren…”

Bedlam broke out, with Beth and her husband and children pouring from the house, everyone hugging and talking excitedly.

Suddenly Lacey remembered Cooper. Fearing he might have already slipped away, she looked around and saw him there, captured by her mother.

Emily Sawyer was never one to forget the propriety of inviting a guest for refreshment. Cooper was trapped, because the older woman had him firmly by the arm.

* * * *

Talking with Leon Sawyer, Cooper drank a third cup of coffee and finished off a second piece of pumpkin pie. He knew he had to get gone. The way Lacey kept looking at him—had been looking at him throughout the day—had him churned up inside, like a wildcat caught in a net.

He felt overwhelmed by the rest of the crowd, too. He had rarely been surrounded by a family like this, so many people, so much talking, and lots of questions about him— what he did and where he lived and about family. That was a big one.

“Who are your people, Mr. Cooper?” Emily Sawyer asked in her cultured tone. She was what Cooper thought of as a real lady.

But he didn’t understand the question and just stared at her.

“She means your family,” Lacey interpreted. “Cooper’s from Tennessee, Mama, but he was an only child, and his family is all gone.”

“Oh.” Emily Sawyer looked like she found this quite strange.

And Cooper felt a little strange, with the way everyone kept giving him those secretive looks.

Everyone except Leon, who looked at him as if he was trying to guess his coat size. Once Leon asked him how long he had known Lacey. Cooper could tell his answer didn’t set to well with the man, who held strong views and was trying to hold them on his tongue.

Cooper saw the attachment between Lacey and her father, but he saw the personality clash, as well. Too stubborn people with opposite outlooks.

“Surely you’ll stay for dinner,” Emily Sawyer said. “We have plenty of leftovers from the big meal at noon today.”

“No, thank you, ma’am. I have to get this haul up to Washington.” He rose, looking around for his coat.

“But it’s Christmas Day. Surely you can celebrate Christmas Day.”

“Oh, I’ve had a good celebration,” he said, catching a glimpse of Lacey’s eyes on him. All of them were looking at him. “And I couldn’t eat another bite on top of this good pie.” He didn’t want to appear rude.

Jon and Anna came with Lacey, walking Cooper out to his truck. Jon shook Cooper’s hand, and then Anna lifted her arms for a hug.

Cooper was really struck by this. He bent down to her level, and her small arms went around his neck, as she said solemnly, “Good-bye, Cooper.”

He couldn’t say anything. He just gave her a squeeze.

Lacey then hurried the children back to the house. “Give me a minute alone with Cooper, you two.” She watched them go up to the house, not at all certain of facing Cooper.

Finally she folded her arms close and slowly turned to him, seeing the colorful lights on the houses up and down the street, and the sky overhead was clear, crisp pale blue of evening.

“The clear sky means really cold tonight. It’ll be clear for your drive to D.C., though.”

“Yeah, should be an easy drive.”

“I am very grateful for the ride out. I’m sorry for all the inconvenience.” She searched his dark eyes for any encouraging sign that she might say something of the feelings pushing up into her throat.

“You didn’t cause the snow,” he said, reaching up and opening the cab door and tossing in his hat, as if eager to be on his way.

“I know you could have come ahead of that storm, had it not be for me and the children.”

“We made it okay.”

They gazed at each other for an awkward moment. Lacey was trying to get what she needed to say to her tongue, when he asked, “You want me to stop and get you next week for the ride back?”

“Do you want us to ride back with you?” Hope sprang ahead of all the other feelings.

But he gave a shrug, which was not a response she was seeking, and he said, “It’s no problem for me. I’ll just take a few local loads up around D.C. to fill the time. I’ll be heading to Albuquerque anyway.”

“I asked if you
wanted
us to come.”

He stared at her, then shifted his stance. “Look...you’re askin’ me for somethin’ I can’t give, Lacey. I don’t have it in me to give.”

His words just broke her heart and made her furious at the same time. She couldn’t accept it. She felt that if she could only make him understand.

“You can’t know that at this point,” she said. “We don’t know anything at this point, except there darn sure is something between us. I know I have feelin’s for you. I’m not fool enough to say that I love you. I can’t know that yet, but I do know that I
think
I’m halfway in love with you, and that’s really something.”

His gaze had shifted to her shoulder, yet still she said, “Maybe it’s more what I can give you, Cooper. But you can’t know, if you don’t give it a chance.”

Cooper shook his head, his eyes bleak. “Lacey, I’m just a burned-out old driver. You and me…we’re like water and diesel fuel. We aren’t gonna mix. You don’t see things like they are, only like you want them to be. I’m not anything at all like what you think you’re seein’. And life just doesn’t turn out like that.”

“Like what, Cooper? You don’t think I can really love you? How can you know at this point?”

“Sometimes, Lacey, love won’t change the facts. It didn’t with your dad when he got angry and threw you out, did it.”

“It did when I came back.”

“And there was a world of hurt in between.”

Lacey shoved her fists into her coat pockets. He was determined to reject the idea of them having anything, and she was a fool to try to change his mind.

“Well, thanks so much for bringin’ us,” she said, stepping backward. “And for goin’ up to check out Daddy for me.” She wouldn’t cry. She would die first. “We’ll be fine. And we’ll ride back on the bus.”

Something flashed across his face, pain maybe, and Lacey felt a slice of triumph, and confusion.

“I’ll see you back at Gerald’s then,” he said.

“Yes. See you then.”

She did not stand there and watch the truck leave. But from inside the house, she heard the sound of the engine as it faded.

* * * *

Late that night, when everyone was asleep, Lacey slipped down to the kitchen for a cup of warm milk. As she pulled the mug from the microwave, she heard her father’s shuffling footsteps.

“Can’t you sleep?” he asked, entering the kitchen.

She smiled. “No more than you.”

Her father gazed at her a minute, scratching his head, then reached into the refrigerator for the milk carton.

“I’ll make it, Daddy. Sit down You’re not supposed to stand on that leg.” At his look, she said, “Beth told me about the problem with your veins.”

“Please don’t plague me like the others—nag me like they do, or pander to me, either.” He sat at the table.

“I didn’t, Daddy. I came home to make up and to have my father again. And it was big of me, too.” She was rewarded by his slow smile.

She hugged him, and he hugged back. She stayed there a long moment in his embrace, that felt at once wonderful and strange. Her father had so seldom hugged her as a child.

When she moved away to the microwave, her father said, “Are you being kept awake by thoughts of that young man who brought you here?”

The question surprised her. “Some, I guess.” She deposited his cup in front of him and took a chair at the table.

“When you were younger,” he said, “you never talked to me about the boys you liked.” He took note of her expression. “Okay, I will admit that I would not have listened. I suppose it is a bit late to start?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, Daddy, I think it is. I don’t think I want to talk about men in my life, other than to say there are not any.” He looked so disappointed that she touched his arm. “But I love you for the invitation.”

As they drank their milk, he reached for the photo album she had given him, opened it, and asked questions about each picture, as if hungry to catch up on his grandchildren’s lives.

“You doin’ all right out there in New Mexico?” he asked her. “Do you make enough to support you and the kids?”

 “We do okay. Yes, sometimes things are really tight, but we eat well and have a decent apartment in a friendly neighborhood.” For the first time she realized that she was proud of how much she had made of her life. “I like waitressing, Daddy. I’m good at taking care of people that way. The kids have everything they need and plenty of extras. We’re doin’ okay.”

“You have to think of the future, Lace. What if…” Seeing her expression, he stopped.  “Well, if you’d like to come here to live, you would be welcome. I’d…I’d like it Lacey.”

The tone and inflection as he said her name touched her to the core. “Thanks, Dad. That means a lot.”

They leaned their heads close and looked at the picture album together.

* * * *

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she ran the brush Jon had given her in long strokes through her hair. It was a lovely brush-and-comb set, yet what Lacey held most dear was the look of love on her son’s face when he had presented it, a gift bought with his own hard-earned money. And little Anna had made a snowflake for Lacey at school and carried it all the way on the trip in a card that she had also made herself, with a drawing of Santa Claus. Oddly enough, Anna had drawn the Santa with a black coat, Lacey realized.

She gave thanks for the blessing of her two children, as she looked at the crystal ball snow scene Cooper had given her. She shook it and set it down, watching the snow fall gently onto the little tree.

Just then Anna came in the room. She had a been to the store with her grandparents. She showed Lacey a dog collar that she had bought for her puppy. “Santa said I would get my puppy later, but I thought I would have it by now,” she said, doubt slipping into her eyes for the first time since Christmas Eve. “Cousin Buddy says I did not see Santa, but we did, didn’t we, Mama?”

“Yes, we did,” Lacey said immediately and even though she knew she was digging a big hole for herself.  Probably lots of kids had been scarred for life by this Santa Claus thing.

“Oh, what does a kid like Buddy know? I’m sure you will get your puppy. But, honey, we’re goin’ home on the bus, you know, and I imagine Santa found that out, so he will wait until we get home to bring your puppy.” Right then and there she made up her mind that she would get that puppy for her daughter. And she knew a lot of men she could get to dress up like Santa and bring the puppy, too.

Jon entered as she spoke the last part. “Why aren’t we goin’ back with Cooper? I don’t wanna go back on no bus.”

Anna looked questioningly at her, too.

“I know that it won’t be as much fun on a bus, but it’s the way it has to be. Cooper...he has a schedule to keep.”

BOOK: Miracle on I-40
9.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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