Seeking Carolina (6 page)

Her smile faded, but did not vanish. She had only just turned thirty their last Christmas together. Poppy died the summer prior and Gram could not face the holidays without all her girls. Even then, Johanna had been slacking on her visits home, but she returned to Bitterly and the melancholy-from-all-directions that permeated every visit. At least she had managed to avoid Charlie and his wife and kids and the newborns she had met briefly at Poppy’s funeral.

And now he was finally free.

The thought came unbidden, warming her from tips to toes. Of all her reasons for avoiding Bitterly, he was no longer one of them.

He’s still got it bad for you.

Nina’s tease whispered between her ears. There was a time Johanna had been confident, even smug, about how bad he had it for her. A whole summer of just the two of them exploring the woods and one another. Over the years, she let herself daydream they hadn’t stopped at exploring, that instead of prolonging the exquisite agony of waiting, they’d consumed one another in a teenage blaze of passionate glory. But those fantasies always ended up with her pregnant instead of Gina, of being stuck in Bitterly when every dream she ever had was to escape it, to become someone new, someone who was not even related to the little girl who’d set her life on fire, and been forced to watch it burn.

Johanna darted into the kitchen and grabbed the old, corded phone off the wall. Dialed. It rang once, twice. Emma picked up on the third ring.

“I want to do Christmas here,” she said before her sister finished saying hello
.

“Jo?”

“Yes, it’s me. What do you think? You do the turkey. Nina and Jules will do the sides. I’ll do all the baking. Your boys can help, if they want.”

“So you’re really staying?”

“Yes, I’m really staying. Say yes. Please?”

Emma sniffed. Her voice cracked. “On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“I want to make lasagna, too.”

Johanna laughed, grateful her shaking hands did not show through the phone. “Done. Do you need to talk it over with Mike or anything? I know his parents are still nearby. His brother.”

“We do Christmas Eve with them. I actually assumed we’d all be here at my house this Christmas. But Gram’s is better, much bigger, and it will feel…right.”

“Fabulous. I’ll tell Nina and Julietta when they get back from shopping.”

“Shopping? For…?”

“A new outfit. Julietta has a date with Efan…”

* * * *

Fifteen minutes later, Johanna hung up the phone, buoyed by the gossip and planning for Christmas dinner. The heights and depths of her emotions in a single morning exhausted her in the same way dancing all night would. She didn’t know how much she could take before collapsing.

Already the idea of baking pies and breads and cakes and cookies flew through her head like recipes being born. Johanna would fill them all so full of dessert they wouldn’t be able to look at another carb for a decade. She imagined Ian and Henry and Gio, flour on their faces and batter on their fingers, baking with her. She would teach them how to mix the dough for butter cookies, and how important it was to work on a cold surface. As she imagined her little nephews piping icing onto perfect star and Christmas tree shapes, the number of children gathered around the baking counter multiplied.

Johanna touched a hand to her clenching heart, felt the locket and took comfort from it. Like Nina, she had never wanted children of her own. They had beaten the genetic odds so far. She had no wish to tempt the fates. But these were not her imagined children. Not Emma’s or Nina’s or Julietta’s.

The vibration of her cell phone ringing in her pocket startled the image from her head. Johanna fished it out.

“Hello?”

She looked at the screen. A dropped call from a number she did not recognize. One with the area code and call numbers for Bitterly. Johanna’s scalp prickled. She hit the call button, listened to the ringing. Four. Five. Six times. He answered just as she was about to hang up.

“Hello? Hello? Jo, don’t hang up.”

“Hey, Charlie.” Her heart hammered. “Did you just call me?”

“Me? No. Why?”

“My phone just…” Johanna closed her eyes. Behind her lids, those children reappeared around the kitchen counter. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I was just wondering…what are you and the kids doing Christmas Eve?”

* * * *

“Daddy? Are you okay? Daddy?”

Charlie blinked at the phone in his hand. The screen showed Johanna had hung up, but the phone number he’d begged Mike for was still clearly illuminated. As he watched, the display went dark.

“Who’s Joe?”

“Huh?”

Millie, his eight-year-old daughter, rolled her eyes, pointed to the phone in his hand.

“Oh. That was Johanna. You remember her from Henry’s? We’re going to bake cookies at her house on Christmas Eve.”

“Yay!” Millie bounced. “But why did you call her Joe. Joe is a boy’s name.”

“It’s just what I’ve always called her. Now turn around. Let me finish combing.”

“But it’s taking so long. I’m bored.”

“Read your book.”

“I’m tired of reading.”

And I’m tired of combing lice eggs out of your hair.
Charlie took a deep breath, resisted the urge to push potentially contaminated fingers through his hair.

“Come on, baby,” he said gently. “Not too much longer.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Charlie worked through his daughter’s hair with the tiny comb—a feat in itself. Millie had his thick, copper hair. She squealed every time it snarled. Shortcuts would only result in having to do this all over again in a couple of weeks, so he took his tedious time. He thought about all he still had to do, even though Millie was the only one who actually had lice. It was a matter of days before they all did too unless he stripped every bed, vacuumed every surface and put the gazillion stuffed animals in Millie’s bedroom into garbage bags. All the kids would have to be treated anyway, just to be safe. At least Millie was the only one who needed the comb-through.

“Can we still go to the carol-sing tonight?” Millie asked.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Because I got sent home from school. Doesn’t that mean I’m sick?”

“No, baby.” Charlie laughed softly. “Lice doesn’t make you sick. It just makes you itchy.”

“Why?”

“I really don’t know. It just does.”

The front door opened. Charlotte and Caleb. She had just picked him up from his guitar lesson. Will would still be at the hardware store, working. Caleb’s footsteps pounded upstairs to the attic room he shared with his brothers, while Charlotte’s slightly softer tread came towards the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, both hands instantly going to her red, pixie-short hair.

“Not again.”

“Again. You’d best stick to your room until I get the house vacuumed.”

Charlotte started to back away, but stopped.

“Already shampooed?” she asked.

“Just combing it through.”

“I’ll finish. You go do the other stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Come on, Daddy. I’m only around until the end of January. Take advantage of the help while you’ve got it.”

“Thanks, Char.” He handed the comb to his eldest daughter, kissed her cheek. “You’re the best.”

“I know.”

Charlie got the vacuum out of the hall closet, for once grateful the house was small. He could hear his daughters in the kitchen, practicing Christmas carols for the evening’s event—Millie’s, high and sweet, Charlotte’s lower and out of tune. His oldest daughter would come to the Green to help him with the twins, not because she wanted to, but because he needed her to. Halloween was more her thing. Not a single Hunter Moon passed without five pairs of shoes being set outside in hopes of being the lucky one to find theirs full of pebbles in the morning. After Gina left, his oldest daughter forgot to put the shoes outside on the full moon in October, but she did a lot of things she wouldn’t have before—like comb lice eggs from her little sister’s hair.

The vacuum’s roar drowned out their voices. For the next hour, he cleaned. It took him only half that time to shower, wash his hair with the de-lousing solution, and get dressed again. Trotting down the steps, he smelled the sausage and peppers he had earlier prepared, already cooking.

“Thanks, baby.”

His daughter barely looked up from the smartphone in her hand, her long and graceful fingers flying through a text. Charlie pulled the steaming pan from the oven and set it on top of the stove. Another ten minutes, to give it that crisp the kids expected. Gina had given him a few good tips before packing up her life and flying south. The secret to her sausage and peppers had been essential.

“Yours is better.”

Charlie straightened and closed the oven door. “How so?”

“Mom always put too much garlic.”

“She’s Italian. I don’t think there is any such thing as too much garlic for her.”

Charlotte tried hard not to smile, but she cracked.

“You’re a really good cook, Dad. And not because you don’t just open a jar of sauce and splash it on boxed pasta. I’m really impressed with what you put on the table.”

“It’s because you’re used to the cafeteria food at college.”

“It’s because you care. Anyone can put food on the table.”

Another last lesson from Gina—there was food, and there was food. Taking the time to prepare something more than simply edible made people feel loved, cherished. Charlie had wanted the kids to keep that feeling after she was gone, even if they never consciously recognized it like his eldest had.

“I like to cook,” he said. “But your mom is a tough act to follow.”

Charlotte turned away, though not before rolling her eyes.

“Look, baby—”

Charlotte slammed the table. “Goddammit, Dad, look at me. I’m two years older than you were when you had me. I’m not a baby.”

Charlie took a deep breath, tried to remember what the counselor said about kids over-reacting to one thing because it was really about another, one they didn’t want to deal with.

“Charlotte,” he said gently. “You will always be my baby. I’ll never look at you that I don’t, for a split second, see the infant in pink frills, the toddler I helped walk, or the little girl I taught to ride a bike. But I’ll try.”

She looked away, fiddled with her phone. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have popped off like a stupid baby. It was dumb.”

“I suppose I can forgive you, considering you combed lice out of your sister’s hair.”

Charlotte chuckled. “Why is it always Millie?”

“I have no idea. Call her and your brothers. Dinner’s on the table in five.”

His eldest left the kitchen, shouting for her siblings. Charlie took the hot pan out of the oven and started slicing bread. Worse than Tony and Millie, who he had worried about most, Charlotte’s anger over her mother’s leaving lingered the longest. Even Will, who vowed to never see her again, had mellowed. How would any of them feel if they knew, once his ego got over the sting of her affair, Charlie had been all for the divorce itself? It was the thought losing his kids he could not handle. To see them only every other weekend and two weeks a year? He couldn’t do it. Gina had made a difficult decision, after more than half her life mothering, to follow love to Florida. Charlie didn’t know how she did it, but he cried like a kid when she didn’t contest his request for full custody, as long as he sent them to her over summer break, and every other Christmas. He had not done either, yet. The kids had refused. Gina let it slide, she said, to let them get used to things.

The real reason was that Gina and Bertie’s house on the beach was way too small to house five kids. This summer would be different, though. His in-laws had finally forgiven Gina enough to see her. She was spending Christmas with them. If all went well, he’d put the kids on a plane as soon as school was out for the summer, and they’d spend it with their mother at their grandparents’ house. She would see her children for the first time in over a year, and he would be alone in Bitterly for the first time in his life.

A week ago, that thought had hollowed his stomach. Today, thoughts of Johanna Coco still popping up at random in his head, it brought an only-slightly-guilty smile to Charlie McCallan’s lips.

* * * *

Luminaries lined the barely shoveled sidewalks. The street had not been plowed after the last snowfall to allow for the horse-drawn sleigh rides usually turned into hayrides for the lack of it. Strings of white lights lit up the trees erected along the length of the Green. The clomping of hooves and jingle of bells rang a constant harmony. Bitterly-town was a Christmas card, painted by Norman Rockwell, and already, groups were singing.

Charlie stood in line with Millie and Tony, gazing at the spectacular, drawn into the familiarity and the joy of this town he loved. He never understood the disdain his wife—ex-wife—had for Bitterly.

Probably reason one why we’re not still married.

Charlie let his thought end there—it would lead to no place good—and instead hoped the twins got their turn before the caroling started. People came from several towns around for the annual sleigh-ride and carol-sing. There were more in attendance than in years previous. He and the kids had already been in line an hour.

“Here you go.” Charlotte returned bearing hot chocolate, handing them around.

“Thanks,” the twins chorused, using mittened fingers to flip the sip-lid that left brown stains behind.

“Do you mind if I go back to the coffee shop?” Charlotte leaned in to ask. “A few friends from high school are hanging out.”

“Not at all. Go. You want me to come find you when we’re done here?”

“Or you can use your cell.”

Charlie laughed. “Right. I’ll call you.”

“Text. Dork.”

He laughed. “Fine, I’ll text you. Have fun.”

Charlotte kissed her little brother and sister, cackling madly as they squealed and wiped their cheeks. She trotted across the street and back into the brightly lit coffee shop where she had worked during high school. Once inside, she pulled off her cap and mussed her hair into spikes.

Charlie sipped at whatever it was passing for hot chocolate in his cup just as the sleigh came whooshing by. The scent of chocolate, the phantom taste of Johanna’s ambrosia a few mornings ago, and the sound of her laughter hit him all at once. He looked up in time to see her in the sleigh, arms raised over her head, whooping as if she were on a roller coaster.