The Christmas Light (16 page)

He tilts his head and says, “What’s strange is that on the way home that night I thought, ‘I’m so grateful that I wasn’t in that accident.’ And then when Julie told me that she’d met another man, I felt as if I’d been struck harder than any of you in those cars. Days afterward, I actually thought that you had it so much easier because you were getting out of that accident alive and I felt like a dead man. I remember how creepy the highway felt because it was so dark and the moon was hidden behind clouds, making it hard to see, but my life actually felt darker when she said she was leaving. For months, I walked around with this”—he moves his hands in the air—“awful anger hanging over me. There was this great storm of hate and bitterness that threatened to break me and I think it would have if it hadn’t been for Sofia. Sometimes she’d take hold of my hand as we were walking through a hardware store or somewhere else and I felt as if I could float away if I let go of her hand, so I’d hold on tighter.” He looks over at her playing with Avery in the living room. “She kept me sane.”

Jen nods. “I know. Avery kept me sane. She’s helped me in so many ways to get up and to keep going every day. Even on her hardest days, she helped me go on.”

“Sofia kept me from saying vicious things about Julie or Derek.” He looks at Jen. “Julie’s husband. She helped me realize that our lives are going to overlap, no matter how much I didn’t want them to.” He looks at her. “But lives overlap and mingle in ways I’m only beginning to understand.”

She smiles, nodding. “Is Gabrielle—”

He doesn’t let her finish. “No. Whatever it is you were going to ask. No.”

“I’m glad you took the job with Hazelton and found a house here.”

“Me, too.”

The girls beg them to come into the living room and Jen and Ryan sit on the sofa, where the gifts that Ryan brought still sit on the coffee table. They watch their girls and listen to them laugh, as the dinner rolls rise and Charles Brown begs his baby to “Please Come Home for Christmas.” She reaches over and wraps her hand around his three middle fingers. They sit this way, letting the music and laughter fill the room. They will get to eating, just as they will get to tomorrow and to moving furniture into Ryan and Sofia’s new home, and to starting over and enrolling in school, and to opening the gifts on the table. They will get to all of it.

In time.

Also by Donna VanLiere

Christmas Keepsakes

The Good Dream

The Christmas Note

The Christmas Journey

The Christmas Secret

Finding Grace

The Christmas Promise

The Angels of Morgan Hill

The Christmas Shoes

The Christmas Blessing

The Christmas Hope

About the Author

Donna VanLiere is
The New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of
The Good Dream, Finding Grace, The Angels of Morgan Hill,
and eight Christmas books, including the perennial favorites
The Christmas Shoes
and
The Christmas Hope
. She travels as a speaker and lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with her husband and three children.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE CHRISTMAS LIGHT.
Copyright © 2014 by Donna VanLiere. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Michael Storrings

Cover illustration by Reginald Polynice

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

VanLiere, Donna, 1966–

    The Christmas light / Donna VanLiere.

        pages cm

    ISBN 978-1-250-01065-0 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-250-01066-7 (e-book)

  1.  Single parents—Fiction.   2.  Teenage girls—Fiction.   3.  Married people—Fiction.   4.  Christmas stories.   I.  Title.

    PS3622.A66C4785 2014

    813'.6—dc23

2014026999

e-ISBN 978125001066-7

First Edition: October 2014