Secret Santa (22 page)

He’d exploited someone’s mistake for his own purposes. Sure, he’d thought he was on the side of right—no, he’d been certain of it. But no matter what his motivation, Neil had been happy to trash Charli’s reputation with no thought to the possibility that he’d erred in his assessment of the situation.

Was he any better than Lige Whitaker?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

C
HARLI
STOOD
AMID
crowds of people of all ages in the lobby of the Westin, in Savannah, surrounded by gingerbread houses like she’d never seen before. She didn’t have time to appreciate the artistry it must have taken to create an elaborate gingerbread version of Savannah’s Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, though.

She was looking for her mother.

After she’d finally got Bethie on the helicopter for CHOA, it had taken Charli two days and at least a dozen humiliating phone calls to various people in her mom’s address book, but finally, finally, one of the ladies had miraculously known where Charli’s MIA mom had vanished to.

The Westin Golf Resort and Spa. In Savannah.

Classic move, Mom,
Charli thought bitterly.
You picked another ritzy resort to blow your credit card to smithereens.

Her mother’s friend hadn’t seemed the least concerned about Charli’s mom. She’d brushed away Charli’s fears with a laugh and told Charli, “Oh, she mentioned something about a girls’ trip to Savannah with Brenda Arthur and another friend—now, who was it? They were going to the Westin.”

It fit the Violet Prescott Charli knew to a T: elegant surroundings, dolled up for Christmas in one of her favorite locations, Savannah. If Charli hadn’t been so swamped with catastrophes, she might have realized this was exactly where Violet would have bolted.

As it was, now that Charli was here, she hadn’t spotted her mother, and the desk clerk hadn’t admitted to a Violet Prescott or a Brenda Arthur having registered at the hotel. Privacy? Or had the reservation been made in the name of the third musketeer?

Charli couldn’t think, not with all the hubbub of excited kids around her—or the gingerbread villages. All the exhibits made her think of was Neil—everything Christmassy made her think of Neil.

He was gone. She had lost him. She needed to focus on the things she could still salvage from the wreckage she called a life. Charli took a deep breath and watched as people milled around the villages.

Clustered around tables with fake snow and lights, the visitors oohed and aahed over the intricately decorated gingerbread creations.

Charli didn’t know what to expect whenever she finally did track down her mom. At first, Charli had been sure her mom would bounce back to Brevis pretty quickly. Maybe Charli had been foolishly hoping her mom hadn’t been lying about the thousand-dollar credit limit.

But she’d been gone for four days now, and all Charli’s phone calls had gone to voice mail, with no return calls. It spoke of guilt for sure—an unwillingness to face Charli or her debt.

Who knows how many cards she managed to get approved, or how I’ll pay for it?
The first person she’d talked to was Jed, who’d admitted that he’d agreed with Violet about applying for the Chase card. But he’d been genuinely shocked to hear that Violet had applied for a loan at Lige’s bank. He’d taken the whole thing hard, blaming himself for not doing a better job of looking after her mom.

Charli had spent the past two days desperately searching for anyone who could tell her where her mother might have gone to ground.

At least she wasn’t in Brevis—after the one hundred and twenty-nine messages on her cell phone and various reporters looking for her, she’d stopped answering anything but the state medical board’s calls or the numbers of her mother’s friends or support group members.

Neil had even called a time or two. She had erased the messages without listening to them. Hearing his voice, as cold and impersonal as it had been that last time, would have hurt too much.

And then Charli spotted her. Amid all the gingerbread admirers, there was her mother, her head thrown back, laughing along with three other ladies. They looked very much the part of ladies of the club, with their designer handbags, their coiffed hair, shopping bags dangling from wrists.

Shopping bags.
Charli groaned. She could finally understand the depth of her father’s antipathy for all things Christmas if this is what the season did for her mother.

No. Her mother had done this to herself. Just like Charli had put Bethie’s life in danger. It was your own choices that got you.

Charli pushed through the crowd, trailing her mother through the exhibit. She moved past an elderly lady and a little girl, which reminded her all over again of Julianne and her granddaughter.

“Mom!” But her mother was too engrossed in what someone was saying about a particular entry in the gingerbread contest to hear her. Charli grasped her mother’s arm, causing her to whirl around.

“Charli! Look, girls! It’s Charli! Oh, this is wonderful! I’m so glad you decided to take time off to join us.”

“Mother.” Charli hated the way the word came through gritted teeth. “Where have you been? I’ve called everyone I could think of.”

“Honey.” Some of the joy faded from her mother’s face, replaced by a wary defensiveness Charli knew all too well. “Is something wrong?”

“Something—” Charli choked on her anger. “You disappear off the face of the earth, and I don’t have a clue where you are? And you ask—”

“But I left a message. Charli, I left a message on your phone. I told you.”

“That you needed a change of scenery. Yeah. And you found it all right. Right here. Only the most expensive hotel in Savannah would do, right, Mom? Just a little shopping therapy?”

Now it was her mother whose mouth went tight and angry. “Charli, let’s not make a scene. Why don’t we find a quiet place, so we can talk? Girls―” now she turned to her friends “―will you excuse us?”

“Excellent idea,” Charli muttered.

She followed her mother away from the exhibit, to the hotel’s main restaurant. At this point in the day—midafternoon—the dining room was deserted. They were seated at a table, their iced tea served, before her mother spoke to her again.

When she did, the words came out calm and careful, in a way that Charli knew meant Violet was steaming.

“I left a message. I could have sworn I told you where I’d be staying, but perhaps I didn’t. In any case, I apologize for making you worry. But what I don’t appreciate is you immediately assuming I’m bingeing.”

“Aren’t you? Isn’t this you, Mom?” Charli swept her hand around the elegantly appointed dining room. “And I can see from the shopping bags you’ve been burning up that credit card. Or is it more than one card?”

A muscle twitched in her mother’s cheek. Charli could see her draw in a breath. “I’m not staying here, Charli. We came to see the gingerbread exhibit. I’m staying—with Brenda—at Pauline’s. Whom I would have introduced you to if you hadn’t been slinging such an almighty hissy fit.”

“Pauline’s?” For the first time, doubt crept into Charli’s certainty. “You’re―”

“Pauline lives in Savannah. She’s on our online support group. We’ve been making this Christmas trip a tradition now for about three years. It’s a fun, inexpensive way to enjoy the holidays. We do all the free stuff. And yes, a little shopping—with a budget of a hundred dollars.”

“But...but why didn’t you answer your phone? Or return my messages? I must have called you fifty times.” Charli wanted to believe her mother, but her dad had bought into her lies before, too, to his sorrow.

“Oh, Charli.” Her mother’s anger faded into sheepishness. “I forgot my charger. I—I guess I thought I’d left you Pauline’s number, and so I didn’t worry that you’d worry. You must have been out of your mind.”

“I was. At first, I thought you’d realized I knew about you asking Lige for a loan to get you out of debt, and you’d turn up eventually, but then you didn’t come home, and I couldn’t find you—”

“Wait. Wait. What’s this about Lige, and me needing to get out of debt?” Her mother’s confusion was either real or of Oscar-winning caliber. “I’m not in debt.”

“But he told me...” Charli put her hand to her face. “Oh, no. I can’t believe I was so stupid. So gullible.”

“What? What did he tell you? That I talked to him about a small-business loan? Well, I did. I want to start my own business—wedding cakes. I could do it. You know how I love to bake and decorate. It didn’t occur to me until Beattie Trilby told me I could get big bucks for the cake I made for the Christmas bazaar, but it got me to wondering. I’ve never had a job, Charli. And I could start out small, see how it went. I was just in the bank, and there was Lige, and I asked. But...you thought—”

“No. No. Lige told me. And I believed it.” Charli wanted to cry. Lige had played her. No. She couldn’t blame Lige completely. She’d been ready to believe the worst.

Charli’s mother extended a slim hand to grip Charli’s fingers. “Honey, you look all done in. What on earth is the matter?”

“You...you haven’t heard? You haven’t seen the news?” Charli shook her head in disbelief. Had her mother been under a rock the entire time she’d been in Savannah? She had to have been. Her mother would have called her if she’d heard half the accusations the state and national news media were slinging at Charli.

“About what? What does this have to do with Lige? I haven’t watched television—we’ve been too busy, and Pauline hasn’t even turned it on.”

How to explain the mess Charli had found herself in if her mother hadn’t seen the wall-to-wall coverage of Charli’s horrible mistake? She was almost glad her mother hadn’t been watching the television. The last straw had been when Charli had heard Lige’s thirty-second sound bite on CNN disavowing any knowledge of Charli treating the migrants.

After that, she had turned the television off and avoided newspapers. She had her own hands full with the medical board’s inquiry and finding her mother.

Her mother. Who hadn’t needed tracking down at all.

Charli began a stumbling explanation of all that had transpired, stopping and starting, having to go back and tell bits and pieces of it so that she could fill in gaps. But all the while, her mother sat, patient, still, intent on Charli’s every word.

It was only after Charli had told her about the money and the notebooks and the donation, about Lige and the migrants and Julianne’s little granddaughter, that her mother spoke.

“Sweetie. You’ve been through such torment. And I’ve been here, having a rollicking good time. I am so sorry. So sorry that in the midst of all this, you were worried about me. I am so sorry that you doubted me.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Mom. I guess I’ve got to learn to trust you.”

“Trust doesn’t come easy to you, does it? And I deserve some of that doubt. Still, Charli, you have to let people grow. And change. We’re not always going to be the way you left us.”

“Did you know, Mom? About Dad? And Lige? Or was Lige lying about that, too?”

Her mother stared down at the table. “I didn’t know your father still had the money. Honestly, I figured he’d spent it all trying to get me out of debt years ago. But I knew that Lige had made some sort of arrangement Chuck wasn’t very happy about. He didn’t tell me the details, just enough. When he finally told me—the bare bones—I made up my mind I’d never put him in that situation again. That’s when I got serious about the counseling and the support groups. It changed my life. It changed your father’s. We...we had some very happy years. Very happy.”

Charli dropped her head in shame. If she’d just come clean to her mother from the get-go, if she hadn’t been so certain that her mother was too fragile to face the truth, none of this would have happened.

“What about you, Charli? What are you going to do? Is there any way I can help you?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ve blown it. I may lose my license. And I’ve lost Neil, too. I really screwed up, Mom.”

“You’re acknowledging it. That’s a start. Are you working with the medical board? I mean, it sounds like, even though you dragged your feet about it, you ultimately did the right thing. And you saved that little girl. Whatever you have to face, I’ll be there for you. I’ll do whatever I can, whatever you need.”

“How can you be so willing to support me, when I’ve made a complete royal screwup?” Charli couldn’t wrap her head around how her mother was not the one in trouble, but was instead supporting
her.

“Because there have been times when I screwed up. Royally. And if your father hadn’t been willing to help me, I wouldn’t be here.”

“What do I do, Mom?”

Her mom’s hands strayed to the strand of pearls at her neck, pearls Charli’s father had given her for their twentieth wedding anniversary. “I say, don’t hold back. Go ahead. Shout it from the rooftops. Give the whole story to Neil, let him print it in the paper. The world should know what a slimy piece of work Lige Whitaker is. Even if it makes your father look bad. It can’t hurt him. Not anymore. And people will understand why you did what you did.”

Charli didn’t want to think about the paper. Correction, she didn’t want to think about Neil. But she couldn’t help it. Maybe it would be better if she did leave Brevis. Brevis to her would always mean the men she’d lost—her father, through death, and Neil, through her own stupid stubbornness and fear.

She couldn’t think what the right words were to say to her mother. She found herself staring at her hands as though they could give her the magic answer. Lamely, she said, “People understand about addiction, Mom. But they’re not going to understand—or forgive—what I’ve done.”

“Maybe. I’m sure there will be consequences you have to face, Charli. I hope they’re not permanent. But if they are, I have no doubt you’ll find your wings again. And don’t give up hope. Anything’s possible.” Rueful laughter shook her mother’s slight frame. “After all, I would have never thought I could routinely get up in front of a crowd of strangers and say, ‘Hi, I’m Violet Prescott, and I’m a compulsive shopper.’”

Their waiter swooped in, refilled their glasses and, when he found no takers on anything else, swept off to another table.

“I don’t think it would do any good to try to talk to Neil,” Charli started.

Her mother wagged a finger. “No. No cowardice. You never were a coward, Charlotte, and I won’t let you start now. Begin with the hardest part, and everything will be easier from then on. It’s Neil that’s the worst of this, isn’t it? Oh, the rest of it’s no picnic, I know, but it’s Neil you look as though you’re ready to weep over.” Before Charli could protest, her mother added, “So...promise me. No more secrets. No more skeletons rattling around in the Prescott closets, okay?”