CAN'T MISS CHRISTMAS: A NOVELLA (Mirror Lake) Read online

  “Well, I’ll be going, then. Great to see you, Grace.” He cast her one last glance she felt clear through to her toes before he turned to go. Everything they’d left unsaid felt as heavy as a winter wool blanket.

  “Graham, wait. Let me sign a book—for Emmy.” She loved his little niece and knew she was a big fan because Emmy wrote her letters and told her so. In them, she also expressed her disappointment in their divorce. Grace couldn’t fix that for her, but she could keep her stocked in books as best she could.

  He was already walking away and didn’t seem to hear. Disappointment rifled through her. Outside the windows, snow was coming down in furious swirls and driving flurries, as chaotic as her thoughts. She took a big breath, trying to channel calmness.

  Monica was back, looking at her phone and frowning. “No rental cars available. Only compact models.”

  “Amtrak? Greyhound? Private driver?” Grace asked.

  “Excuse me,” a familiar voice said. Grace looked up, startled, to find Graham back at her side. The light touch of his hand on her elbow seared clear through to her skin. “Just come with me,” he said to Grace in his usual firm, confident way, not letting go. “Despite everything that’s happened between us, you can still trust me to keep my word. I’ll get you to Philly on time.”

  “Grace, you’re welcome to ride out the storm with my family,” Monica said, darting a contrary glance at Graham. “My folks would love having you. You can travel to Philly right after Christmas, when the weather calms down.”

  Grace looked past Monica to Graham, who wore his usual stoic expression. At one time, she’d trusted him with everything—her hopes and dreams, her greatest fears, her deepest sorrows. But all that had been eroded, and they rarely even spoke to each other now except when they had to.

  Maybe going with him now could enable them to mend some of the hurt between them. Maybe fate was giving them an opportunity to smooth over some of the sharp edges of their relationship.

  Lest she get too mushy, surely after they spent a few hours together, reality would set in. She’d remember all the reasons they’d divorced, instead of everything getting muddled and blurred by the intense bodily reaction he still stirred in her.

  Either way, she could survive anything for five hours, and she’d get to Philly on time. The extra bonus was that he was a confident and experienced driver in bad weather. “It’s okay,” she said to Monica. “I’ll ride with Graham.”

  Something flashed in his eyes. Maybe he felt a little triumphant, or perhaps just glad of the rare opportunity to torture her for five hours straight. Or maybe he felt the same nagging pull she did, to make amends and to heal old wounds. After all, that was what Christmas was for.

  CHAPTER 2

  The traffic started out at a creep but thinned out once Graham drove out of the city, as if all smart people had the good sense to get the hell off the road in anticipation of Storm Armageddon. Unfortunately, Graham couldn’t count himself as one of them. In the pitch-dark night, the snow blanketed windshields and cars and the road in a slippery, bluish-white blanket.

  The traffic was nothing compared to what was going on inside the car. Conversation was as painful as tooth extraction, overly polite and superficial, skirting around anything meaningful or potentially awkward. Grace’s career was meteoric; his business was finally turning a profit, and they were expanding to other states. They hadn’t made much progress beyond that.

  “Where are you spending the holiday?” he asked. Please don’t say with Maxim. Maxwell. Maximillian. Whatever his name was. The guy with the horn-rimmed glasses and the I’m really successful haircut who was currently number three on the New York Times list for his latest cheesy thriller. Not that Graham had looked or anything.

  “My sister’s,” she said. Oh, her horrible half sister, who was a privileged, entitled pain in the ass and hadn’t even visited after their baby had died. Graham must’ve unconsciously made a face, because she said, “What? Blakely and I are closer now. I can’t wait to see her.”

  Which he pretty much knew was a fib, but he let it go. Grace’s father had left when she was eight, and her mother had remarried a well-to-do real estate developer and had Blakely, who couldn’t be more different from Grace. Despite losing the family-of-the-year lottery, Grace had turned out pretty well, though sometimes Graham wondered if her tendency to put up a tough front was a reaction to the scars of her past. Neither of her parents seemed to really care enough to actually be parents to her: her mother lived overseas somewhere, and her father cropped up every couple of years, usually when he needed money.

  “So, you like living on the Upper East Side?” he asked. When they were married, they’d lived in a simple walk-up in Brooklyn.

  “Yes, very much,” she said.

  “You living with Maxim?” Oh hell. What was he doing? He’d meant to drop some subtle hints until the answer came out naturally in the conversation. So much for that.

  She rolled her eyes. “Maxwell.” She paused. “And no, I don’t live with him.”

  “Oh, sorry. Maxwell.” He wasn’t sorry. And for some reason, he was unreasonably happy she didn’t live with him. He, unlike Maxwell, didn’t skydive over the Burj Khalifa, swim with sharks in South Africa, or bungee jump off some high-assed building somewhere in China. He liked his life calm, orderly, and in control. Those qualities had enabled him to survive his divorce as well as build his business into what it was today.

  Except Grace had disliked his craving for order. Felt he was too emotionally buttoned up, and accused him of seeing things in black-and-white terms.

  “How about you?” she asked. “You dating anybody?”

  He shrugged. Up until last month, he’d been seeing a nice woman who was punctual, neat, and didn’t challenge his every move—basically the opposite of Grace. On paper, Niki was perfect. She wanted a relationship, and a future with marriage and children, as he did. She was intelligent, fun, and a great cook (unlike Grace, who nearly set herself and him on fire trying to caramelize crème brulée with a chef’s torch for his birthday one year). Niki was also a fanatical exerciser, whereas a workout for Grace was pushing the trash can to the curb on the Thursday nights he worked late. If you’d asked him if there was anything wrong with Niki, he wouldn’t’ve been able to think of a single thing.

  Maybe that was the problem. There was no friction, no conflict—no challenge. The silences he and Grace used to have had always been filled somehow with a kind of underlying understanding…but with Niki, they were awkward.

  Were “awkward silences” a good enough reason to break off a relationship? She’d taken it well, but sometimes she still called him, hoping they’d get back together.

  “Oh no,” Grace said. “That’s a long pause. I’m afraid to ask why.”

  “I’m not seeing anyone,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, I’m not either. I broke it off with Maxwell.”

  “Because he only hit number three on the New York Times list?”

  She crossed her arms. “That was snarky, Graham.”

  He paused. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Why did you break up with him?”

  “It feels weird discussing this with you.”

  He shrugged. Damn weird. “We were best friends for a lot of years. I don’t know why it should be.” He just really wanted to know.

  “He was in love with who he wanted me to be, not who I was. He kept pushing me to be more adventurous, travel more, eat more exotic food… I’m just not like that.”

  “I always liked you just the way you were.” Yeah, yeah, he should shut up already. But it was true. She was perfect just the way she was. Except for being stubborn. And difficult. And too proud to ever ask for help.

  She turned to him then. “I hate to admit this, but you’re right. You never tried to change me. You never complained when I was overweight or—”

  “You were never overweight. Right now, you look like you could use a couple of cheeseburgers.”

  “I’m a vegan. I’ve
purged my body of all impurities.”

  Including him, he supposed.

  “I’m messing with you.” She grinned widely for the first time, and wow, it hit him like a sucker punch to his gut. “I took up jogging.”

  Well, who said people never changed? They drove in silence for a while, and Graham tried in vain to quash the edginess that had his nerves standing on end. And he hadn’t even had any coffee since the morning.

  As soon he could, Graham exited the highway and stopped at a convenience mart for gas. It was a relief having something to do. If he didn’t stop reacting to her—his whole body on alert, his pulse pounding, his imagination racing to places it had no business going—well, it was going to be a very long trip.

  “White Christmas” blared from a speaker as Graham filled the tank. He turned up the collar on his coat, wishing he had on more comfortable clothes for the long drive.

  He wished everything was more comfortable on this crazy drive. When he walked into the store, Grace was buying pretzels and a coffee. He got a coffee too, and paid for her things before she could protest. At the last second, he asked for a couple of lottery tickets, an instant scratch-off game and one of the daily numbers tickets.

  “You still buy those?” she asked from her spot in front of him in line.

  He used to buy them all the time. He hadn’t, though, since those days when they were broke and poor and winning would mean a ticket to a new life.

  But today was…different. He’d bought it on impulse, maybe as a talisman for luck. To survive the drive intact. Or more than that. Something deep down inside made him buy it because it reminded him of the old days.

  When they were broke. When all they had was a mattress on the floor and an old steel shelf from his dad’s garage where they kept their underwear and socks. When dreaming of winning the lottery brought visions of a less dumpy apartment, furniture, a car.

  Those had been the happiest times of his life. They’d been so in love. They’d had everything and never even knew it. But of course he couldn’t say any of that.

  “You sure you’re not hungry?” he asked. “It’s a five-hour drive in good weather.”

  She looked hungry. He knew her well enough he could tell. She was a little pale, a trace of dark circles under her eyes. Or maybe she was like him, too nervous and keyed up to think about food. “We can stop and get something after we’re on the road for a while. Does that sound good?” he asked.

  “I thought you hated to make stops,” she said, her mouth pulling up in a smile. “When we were married, I used to have to barter for pee breaks.”

  “Maybe I’ve learned to be a little less…”

  “Anal?”

  “Ha ha. In all fairness, I recall several road trips where we made plenty of stops at rest areas but never got out of the car.”

  That made her blush.

  “We were young,” she said, clearing her throat. Their eyes met, and he could swear he saw a piece of the same heartbreak that was currently wreaking havoc with his entire body.

  “We’re still young,” he said, his frustration coming through a little. It was just that they were acting like a pair of eighty-year-olds reminiscing over times that were gone forever.

  They could still create good times.

  Oh hell. There he went again. It had taken him so long to get over her. Longer yet to even look at another woman. And here he was, two years later, after just thirty minutes in her presence, fantasizing about everything he’d worked so hard to leave behind. Old habits died hard.

  When the clerk handed him the lottery tickets, he pocketed the daily number one for later and handed the scratch-off one to Grace. Another old habit.

  She looked at him and then the ticket and frowned. “You want me to scratch off the numbers?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  “For old times’ sake,” he said. “Well, why not? We may as well start this journey off on the right foot.”

  She rolled her eyes, but for a heartbeat, something flickered in them. He wasn’t sure, but maybe she’d been touched a little by the corny gesture.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, using her nail to scratch off the numbers.

  “We didn’t win,” he said, looking over her shoulder. Of course they hadn’t. They’d both lost, badly, a long time ago. Except that had nothing to do with a lottery ticket.

  “Where you folks headed?” the cashier, an elderly man who appeared to be in his seventies, asked.

  “To Philadelphia,” Graham answered.

  “Well, be safe. I’ve seen a lot of pileups when the weather gets like this because they don’t salt like they should.”

  “Thanks. You get home safe too.” Worrying about the weather temporarily took his mind off Grace. He was glad to get back to the car, crank up the defrost, and flick on the wipers, the smell of heat and really bad coffee filling the air.

  Grace held her coffee wrapped in her hands, close to her face.

  “Don’t you have gloves?” he asked. She looked cold.

  “I forgot them somewhere.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re thinking I haven’t changed at all. Still forgetful. I know you’re always prepared for every situation, but I’ve done just fine without you, gloves or no gloves.”

  “I know you have,” he said quietly. Yes, she had done just fine without him. “I wasn’t being critical. I was just wondering if you should buy a cheap pair before we leave.”

  “Oh.” She looked chagrined. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. You were worrying about me.”

  “Just being a friend. That’s acceptable, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll always consider you a friend. Even if we don’t have to deal with each other the rest of our lives. Like Janine and Ted.”

  He frowned, not because he especially cared about the couple who’d lived a few doors down in their apartment building in Brooklyn, but because it sounded like she’d accepted that Graham wasn’t going to be part of her life much longer. “What about Janine and Ted?”

  “Didn’t you know they divorced? About a year ago.”

  “No surprise there. They both had wandering eyeballs.”

  “My point is, they can’t stand each other, but they’ll always be bound by their children. I mean we—we don’t have anything like that binding us forever.”

  “First of all,” he said, “I don’t dislike you. I never felt like I couldn’t stand you.”

  He paused, debating whether or not he should speak what was on his mind. “And second, we are bound by a child.” Judging by the stony silence that followed, the words had dropped hard. But he didn’t regret them. They’d had a child. He had a name. They would always be united by that experience, from the joy and anticipation of pregnancy to their son’s early birth and the heartbreaking roller-coaster ride afterward.

  “We are bound by our son,” he said quietly. “To not acknowledge that is to say he never existed.”

  She turned to him. The defrost fan suddenly sounded jarring, so he dialed it down. It was dark, but under the intermittent lights on the highway, her eyes looked a little shiny. Finally, after all the small talk, he’d said something meaningful. Something that had cut through some of the layers of bullshit that were cemented like a wall between them.

  “No one ever talks about it,” Grace said, looking into the distance. “None of my friends, not even my sister. Sometimes I wish someone would acknowledge what happened instead of always pretending it didn’t.”

  “Same here,” he said. Their baby was a subject that never came up among his brothers. Even his sisters and his parents didn’t bring it up. It was too sad, too crushing. Their baby was a premie who’d fought hard, but there were just too many complications—pneumonia and then a blood infection had overwhelmed his tiny body. Graham drove on in silence, lost in thought. Remembering Joshua just now with Grace reminded him of all he’d lost—and not just his son.

  Just then, the snow went from pelting to total whiteout. Graham
cranked up the wipers, which snapped obediently back and forth.

  “Maybe we should stop,” Grace said.

  “At a rest area?” he said. “Just kidding.” He caught her smiling.

  “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. Maybe it was. But he wasn’t necessarily thinking about the weather.

  * * *

  “Graham, it’s horrible out here.” Two hours later, somewhere in southern Connecticut, Grace noticed him leaning forward, a vise grip on the wheel. “I’m sorry I was so insistent about doing this.”

  She almost expected Graham to say, No surprise there. They’d often butted heads over which of them was most stubborn. Instead, he said, “You’re the big headliner tomorrow. All those kids are waiting for you.” He wiped a foggy spot on the windshield with the back of his hand. “Besides, I need to get home too. Evan deploys to Afghanistan the day after Christmas.”

  “He must be all grown up now.” The last Grace had seen Graham’s youngest brother, he’d been seventeen, and she’d heard from one of Graham’s sisters that he’d joined the military. She missed Graham’s close-knit siblings, and his parents, who’d been married thirty-five years. They’d given her a sense of family she’d never had.

  “I still can’t believe it happened to us,” he said out of the blue.

  She knew immediately he was talking about the divorce. She often thought the same thing herself. Her driving companion had a list of faults a mile long. He was bossy, obsessively prepared, and a little bit of a know-it-all. But he was also kind and upstanding, and he’d rip his heart out of his chest and give it to you on a platter for the asking.

  And he was still the most attractive man she’d ever seen. That fact hadn’t dimmed in the least. Grace reminded herself sternly there was no point in thinking any of this. Divorce was final. There had been reasons for it. Attraction would linger, maybe forever, but so would the problems that caused them to separate in the first place.

  They drove in uncomfortable silence, the snick snick of the wipers like a heartbeat between them. Unwillingly, another memory crept into her consciousness. After the first time she’d slept with Max, she’d run into the bathroom and cried. It was as if she’d belonged to Graham and only Graham, and it had nearly killed her to be with someone else. But she’d done it, and Max was a good man. He simply wasn’t the right man.