Seeking Carolina (10 page)

“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered at last, those tears always at her beck and call freeing her voice. “You didn’t push me away. I pushed you away. What I felt for you frightened me, not that you wanted to make love. I wanted to. I can’t tell you how many cold showers I’ve had to take over the years, remembering how much I wanted to.”

“You…really?”

She nodded.

He touched his forehead to hers. “What a mess we made of things,” he said, and lifted his head. “But I wouldn’t change it, Jo. Not to save either of us heartache. I got five of the best kids who ever lived out of the deal.”

“And I got the life I wanted, the life I ran away to have. Now here we are.”

“Now here we are.” He lifted the blankets up higher, shielding her from the bitter air. “I should have told you then that I loved you, Johanna. I loved you so much. I love you still. I know it seems too soon, but really, it’s over twenty years in the waiting. And if you don’t love me yet, it’s okay. I’ll wait until you do.”

Johanna snuggled closer. “You are so certain I will?”

“Pretty cert—”

She kissed the rest of his words from his mouth. Under the covers, she put her legs over his. He pulled her into his lap and even through all the snow-clothes, Johanna felt his desire. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him until they were both breathless. The same ghosts that sent her running all those years ago whispered shivers up her spine. She lifted her head to look into his eyes, her heart flipping.

“You are not the only thing I was running from back then. You aren’t the only reason I’ve stayed away from Bitterly.”

“I know.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Charlie.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“My parents were crazy.”

“Mentally ill.”

“No,” she said. “Bat-shit crazy. They escaped from a mental institution not once but twice. We lived like little rats in New Hampshire. When the house burned and Gram came to—”

Charlie took her face in his hands and kissed her until she kissed him back. When she was calm, he pressed her head to his shoulder and whispered, “None of that matters. Only you matter. You and me. This night. This carriage. Dan pretending not to be listening to every word we say.”

“I am not.”

They laughed softly.

“I’m scared, Charlie,” she said. “And I’m really tired of being scared.”

“Then it’s time to do something about it. For now…”

Charlie tipped her face up. He kissed her slow. He kissed her long. He kissed her until the carriage stopped in front of her grandmother’s house on County Line Road. He helped her down from the carriage and walked her to the front door.

“Dan is never going to let me hear the end of this,” Charlie told her.

“Then you can tell him I saw him wipe a tear or two away and he’ll leave you be.”

“I guess this is good-night then.”

“Oh, you’re not…” She blushed. “I guess you have to get home to the kids.”

“Tomorrow is Christmas. Santa still has to put presents under the tree. Besides, I can’t make Dan drive all the way back to town alone.” He tucked a stray curl into her hat. “I’ll take it as a good sign that you want me to stay.”

“You didn’t see me fighting you off back on the carriage, did you?”

“I kind of had you at my mercy.”

“Oh, really?” Johanna tweaked his beard. “I thought I had you at mine.”

“You did.” He took her into his arms. “Always have. Always will.”

Jingle bells interrupted another long, slow kiss. Charlie pulled away, stole another kiss, and headed back to the carriage.

“Merry Christmas,” he called.

“Merry Christmas,” Johanna whispered. She stood on the porch until the jingle and the clomp faded into the distance. Instead of going inside, she went to the wide expanse of snow-covered ground in front of the house. When they were kids, it would have been trampled by now. Snowmen and snow-forts would have dotted the yard. Tonight, it was pristine.

Johanna tilted her head back, gazed up at the moon, and the stars like salt sprinkled on black velvet. She turned slowly this way, then that. Humming, swaying, turning like a snowflake-sylph, a shiver raced itself through her body. And then phantom arms wrapped around her. She leaned into them, smiled, and wished.

* * * *

I see desire as snowflakes. They twirl about like a windstorm, like a breeze. It lets me remember; I was young once. I felt those stirrings, that love like no other. It kept me warm in the cold, and made the worst bearable. And the worst was so very unbearable.

She twirls in the moonlight, beneath the stars, in the snow. I twirl with her. She doesn’t know. She sees no footprints mingling with hers. But she feels my arms hold her close, even if she imagines them to be his. It is me. It is me. Dancing with my girl.

Eight Maids a’Milking

Christmas morning was a wind yawning across a painted sky. It was the sound of ice crystals whispering, the smell of cinnamon and butter lingering. The morning was the first of all her days ahead, and Johanna woke with a smile brought with her from dreaming.

And what dreams. Sexy dreams. Softly sensual. Sweet. Already fleeting. Johanna caught glimpses of Charlie, of summer long ago, of his kids gathered around the baking counter. She could still smell Christmas Eve’s cold air, and the way her perfumed scarf tasted when she breathed through it. When the images faded completely, the feel of them left their imprint, a photo-negative pulsing behind her eyes.

Johanna dressed quickly, combed gently through her curls that would frizz wildly at the touch of a brush. Sounds of pots and pans and sisterly quarreling told her Nina and Julietta were already up and preparing their contributions to the feast. A smile twitched at Johanna’s lips. She was not at all certain either of her sisters could cook. She recalled the one time Nina invited her to dinner at her apartment in Manhattan, a dinner that went from burned to take-out with a phone call. At least Julietta had proven competent at following a recipe when she came to help out in CC’s a couple summers ago.

Johanna had walked into the bakery more than four years ago, in need of coffee and carbs after a day on the beach. The name hooked her, the for-sale sign attached to the front window reeled her in. The desperation to do something better than wander through her life nudged whimsy into action. Within a week, she had put in an offer. Before the month was out, Johanna Coco was elbows-deep in batter, and a resident of Cape May, New Jersey. The boyfriend she’d been vacationing with got lost somewhere in the process. She couldn’t even recall his name.

Johanna stared at herself in the mirror. Grimaced. She pulled the locket from its place under her clothes, clicked it open, and looked into the faded image of her mother’s face. The curly hair. The tiny chin. The huge eyes. Even the curve of her smile. Johanna could have been looking at her own picture a decade-and-a-half-ago, but she would not see herself in her mother. If she did, she would never be able to look at herself again.

“Johanna,” Julietta called up the stairs. “Where did you put the measuring cups?”

“Hang on, I’ll be right down.”

Johanna left the melancholy in her room, sailed down the steps and into the country kitchen. It was Christmas. She was in love. There was no room for ghosts no matter what Dickens had to say on the matter. Julietta had all her ingredients for the cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, and peas with pearl onions lined up in gradient order on the counter. Every spoon she needed to stir, measure, or taste with, every bowl for mixing. The only things missing were the measuring cups that would go into the spot Julietta had left open for them.

“They’re right here.” Johanna pulled them out of a drawer and handed them to her sister.

“That’s not where Gram kept them.”

“Sorry.”

“Did you use all the butter yesterday?”

“No. It’s there in the bowl, on the counter.”

“You didn’t put it in the fridge?”

“Of course not. I always keep my butter on the counter. It’s butter.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Come on, Jules. I run a bakery. If there was something wrong with room-temperature butter, I’d know by now.”

“Well, I can’t use it.”

“Of course you can.”

“No, I can’t. Can you take me to the store?”

“On Christmas Day? Nothing’s open.”

Julietta looked from her ingredients, to the bowl of butter, to her sister.

“Leave everything the way it is. I’m going to look it up.”

“You can’t take my word for it?”

“No,” Julietta said, and took her laptop to the dining room table. The fury of her fingers on the keys had Johanna and Nina exchanging worried glances.

Johanna moved closer to her oldest sister. “This is odd, even for Julietta.”

“Not really.” Nina resumed slicing the
sopressata
Gunner had brought from Queens. “You know she’s very particular.”

“But this?” She pointed to the perfectly aligned ingredients and cooking utensils. “And since when is she some kind of germophobe?”

“It’s not germs. It’s something not being the way it always is. Gram didn’t keep butter on the counter. It’s as simple as it gets.”

“Or measuring cups in the drawer by the sink.” Johanna sighed. “I worry about her, Nina. What is she going to do without Gram? With all the changes? How will she cope?”

“Fine.” Julietta returned, her laptop tucked under her arm. “I’ll use the butter. But from now on, it goes back in the fridge.”

“Sure thing, commandant.”

While Julietta began assembling the sides and Nina sliced and arranged the antipasto, Johanna poured herself a glass of milk and grabbed some cookies from the massive pile on the counter.

So many cookies. So many pies. And Charlie had left without taking anything home. There was no way she and her sisters would eat it all, not even if all three of Emma and Mike’s boys ate nothing but sweets all day. Johanna wished she’d thought to send something home with Dan last night after the carriage ride…

“Well, why not?”

“Why not what?” Nina asked.

“I’m going to bring some of the baked stuff over to Charlie and the kids. I want to drop something off to Dan Greene, too, to say thanks for the carriage ride.”

“Just make sure you save a cherry pie. I’ve been trying not to dive into it since yesterday.”

Johanna rummaged around in the mudroom for the grocery boxes her grandmother preferred to bags. She loaded up with four of the eight pies, and half the cookies, she left them in the mudroom and went back inside for her coat and the keys to the Explorer.

Nina glanced up from her finished platter just as Johanna came back through the kitchen. Her sister’s eyes narrowed, focused on…

“Is that Gram’s locket?”

Oh, shit.

Both sisters were on her before she could zip up her coat.

“Where did you get it?” Nina asked. “I haven’t seen it in ages.”

Johanna considered lying, telling them Gram gave it to her years ago, but Julietta would know better.

“I found it in her box the other night when I couldn’t sleep.” Zipping her coat, she scooted around her hovering sisters. “I’m just wearing it,” she lied. “I missed the funeral. It makes me feel better.”

“But Gram—”

“You better not have—”

“We’ll talk when I get home.” Johanna darted into the mudroom, grabbed the box for Charlie’s family and dashed out the door. Dan would have to wait for his goodies. There was no way she was going back in where her sisters could corner her again.

The SUV didn’t turn over right away, but neither of her sisters came after her. While she let it warm up, Johanna thought about Julietta’s assembly of ingredients and hoped taking the locket from Gram’s box didn’t set her off. Her youngest sister had always been odd. Whether her particularities stemmed from a chaotic childhood, the accident, or some gene in her pool, no one could say. They made her Julietta, best-loved and strange. Johanna wouldn’t change her for anything in the world, though she often wondered if Julietta felt the same.

Johanna breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. On the seat beside her was a box full of Christmas cheer for Charlie and his kids. She breathed in their sleigh ride, breathed out her sisters’ discovery, breathed in the first kiss, breathed out Julietta’s future, breathed in all the kisses thereafter, and, smiling, backed out of the driveway.

* * * *

Pulling to a stop in front of Charlie’s house just outside of town, Johanna tried to quell the fluttering in her belly. She had no real idea how Will felt about her and his father and their almost-kiss that had, since then, multiplied. Maybe he was still upset. She hadn’t even thought to ask. At least Charlotte would be happy to see her.

And Charlie.

A thrill shuddered through her. If Will was still upset, she’d leave the goodies and head home, happy enough to have delivered what they didn’t get on Christmas Eve.

She got out of the car, reached back in to pull out the box of cookies and pies. Balancing it, she closed the car door with her butt. Shouting stopped her before she got to the front door. Charlotte, and another woman. Johanna’s heart sank.

The door flew open and Charlotte came barreling down the steps, nearly bowling Johanna over in the process.

“Charlotte Rose, come back here!”

“You had no right coming. Dad paid you for the house. You’re trespassing.”

Charlie came down the steps. The kids piled in the doorway behind him. His eyes found Johanna’s. He mouthed an,
I’m sorry
. She didn’t know what to do, and thus did nothing but stand like a statue.

“I have every right to see my kids.” Gina kept her voice down. “It’s Christmas. You are all supposed to be with me.”

“Yeah, right. You couldn’t even bribe Millie and Tony down with the promise of Harry Potter World. Get it into your head, Mom—no one wants you here.”

“Charlotte, enough,” Charlie told his daughter. Caleb had his arms around Millie and Tony, who were crying. Will stood stone-faced, his arms crossed over his chest like a shield. Gina’s face was a mask but for the tears rolling down her cheeks. Then her eyes moved from one child to the next, and with each glance, she thawed just a little.