The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love (28 page)

“Christmas Eve is a special occasion.” She pulled her napkin from under her fork and spread it in her lap. “We always—” Her voice failed her.

“You always…,” Brody prompted, his green eyes dark with concern.

“Holidays were always special occasions for the three of us.” Her eyes drifted to the portrait on the wall above the buffet of Frank, Alex, and herself, taken a dozen years ago, when Alex was just about to leave for college.

Her family had meant everything to her, and now, inexplicably, it was gone. Frank was dead. Alex had his own life, and years of overindulgence on her part guaranteed that he put his own happiness and comfort first. That’s why he’d left her home alone on the first Christmas Eve after her husband’s death.

“My family did the holidays up pretty well too,” Brody said, “but not so formal. Usually my mom burned the turkey or cooked the ham until it was dry as dirt. Don’t get me started on my sisters’ disasters in the kitchen.”

As easily as that, he led her away from her grief-filled thoughts. Before she knew it, he was carving the duck, serving the brussels sprouts and potatoes. They hadn’t said grace. She thought of mentioning it, but decided perhaps Brody’s presence was grace enough. An unexpected source of companionship, of comfort, to get her through the evening.

Before long, he had her chuckling over anecdotes from his
practice, tales of everything from pet skunks who wouldn’t stop spraying their owners to a horse that thought it was a puppy and kept trying to romp with a litter of black Labs.

She heard Ranger scratching at the back door. He’d been totally occupied in the yard, digging after something—a mole probably—and she’d been grateful for the respite while they ate dinner. She’d been worried about Brody seeing just how little progress she’d made with Ranger in the last few weeks. She’d bought a book on dog training and had even read a chapter. But as for putting any of it into practice…

“I’ll get him,” Brody said, rising on his considerably long legs and placing his napkin in his chair—a sign of good manners Esther hardly saw anymore. Most people didn’t know you weren’t supposed to place your napkin on the table until you’d finished your meal. Clearly someone had raised him right, burned turkey or not.

A moment later, the dog bounded into the dining room. He immediately started jumping in place next to Esther’s chair, barking his demand for table scraps. Brody followed right behind him. Esther was about to reprimand the dog—for what little good that would do—when Brody’s deep voice barked a command of its own.

“Down, Ranger.” His words, as well as their no-nonsense inflection, brooked no argument.

Ranger stopped jumping, sat, and looked up at him. Esther couldn’t tell whether the dog was surprised or cowed. Either way,
she didn’t expect it to last very long. Brody sank back into his chair, picked up his knife and fork, and began eating. Ranger whimpered from his prone position on the floor but otherwise didn’t protest.

“How did you do that?” Esther asked, trying to keep the awe in her voice to a minimum. No sense letting Brody know just how impressed she was with him.

He laughed. “Years of practice. I learned early on that a vet’s got to establish himself as the alpha dog. Otherwise, I’d be toast.”

“That’s what I need to know. How to make Ranger think I’m the alpha dog.”

He shrugged. “It’s easy really. You just withhold things. Food, affection.” He shot her a sidelong look. “Sleeping on the bed.”

Esther blushed.

“If you do that,” Brody continued, “you’ve got the upper hand. You have what they want, but they only get it when you say so.”

A chill, sudden and fierce, swept through Esther at his words.
You have what they want, but they only get it when you say so.
The forkful of duck she was chewing, which only a moment ago had tasted like heaven, now had the consistency and flavor of sawdust.

In that moment, with Ranger quiet at her feet and Brody happily consuming a heaping plate of her carefully prepared
Christmas Eve dinner, Esther Jackson experienced an epiphany. Unwanted, unannounced, but an epiphany nonetheless.

“That’s all?” she managed to choke out. Her voice sounded amazingly casual. It held none of the stark realization, the sudden avalanche of remorse that pinned her to her chair. “You just withhold?”

Brody nodded. “Works every time. Like everything else in life, it’s about power. Dogs know that, just like people do.”

Esther couldn’t make a response. Years of behavior, her own behavior, were suddenly stripped of all the justifications and rationalizations. She’d wielded her power to withhold ruthlessly over the years. It had been for a good cause—or causes, to be more accurate. Frank’s career, Alex’s upbringing, social success, the betterment of Sweetgum. But when she’d had the power, she’d used it to further her own ends, demanding that others do everything her way, and now it was gone.

Which meant that whoever she had been, she couldn’t be that person anymore. And if she couldn’t be the person she’d always been, who was she now?

Esther had not planned on having an existential crisis in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner. She took a long drink of iced tea to cover her discomfort. “Why aren’t you with your family this year?” she asked to divert her thoughts from herself. She had no interest in trying to reconstruct herself as a person, at least not until they’d had dessert. Better to deflect the conversation onto Brody. Only at her question, he started to look as uncomfortable as she felt.

“It just didn’t work out this year.”

When he didn’t elaborate, she tried again. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”

“Chattanooga.” He didn’t offer any further information.

“And will your sisters be at your parents’ house?”

He shrugged. “Probably. They’re not too happy with me at the moment.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m here, on call for vet emergencies, instead of with them.”

“But—”

“You do have a great house,” he said, looking around the dining room and also changing the subject. “Still no offers?”

She shook her head. “I waited too long to put it on the market. This is the worst time of year to try to sell.”

“I thought my friend James would make an offer.” He shrugged. “Maybe he still will.”

“You haven’t spoken to him?”

“He usually spends the holidays skiing. But I thought, from what he said after Thanksgiving, that he wanted to be settled in Sweetgum by the first of the year.”

“Why Sweetgum? He doesn’t seem the small-town type.”

Brody paused. He knew exactly why James Delevan wanted to relocate to Sweetgum. Esther could see it in his eyes, but she could also see he wasn’t going to tell her. He would protect his friend’s privacy. His discretion made her like him even more.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.” What was
it about Brody McCullough that made her want to be a different person? Kinder, more relaxed. Esther had never in her life wanted to be kind. Nor had she worried about being relaxed.

Her feelings toward Brody weren’t wholly romantic in nature, either. At least, she didn’t think they were. It had been so long since she’d had any experience with that kind of thing that she couldn’t tell. She liked his company, in spite of her discomfort at some of his insights and observations, and he seemed to feel the same way. Drawn to her, yet wary. And, in an odd way, friends.

They had finished eating, so she rose from her chair and picked up their plates. He started to stand as well, but she waved him back to his seat. “Stay put. I’ll get dessert and coffee.”

He did as instructed, which gave her a moment to collect herself. As she used her kitchen torch to crystallize the tops of the crème brûlées she’d pulled from the oven, Esther thought of the book Eugenie had assigned them to read,
Gone with the Wind.

Left to her own devices, she’d never have picked it up, but with so much time on her hands, and finding herself alone for most of it, she was making good progress through its pages. To her surprise, she’d found herself captivated by the story. Not so much by the tumultuous love between Rhett and Scarlett but by the blindness and stupidity of the heroine. Over and over again, she’d thrown away the love she could have had for the love she thought she wanted. Standing in her kitchen, with Brody and Ranger in the next room, Esther knew she wasn’t much different from Scarlett O’Hara.

Was it too late? Were her life and choices so set in stone that she couldn’t go back and change things? Not with Frank, of course. That part of her life was gone forever. But perhaps losing her husband and her home was more than twin tragedies. Perhaps those very losses held the seeds of some new beginning.

The idea both thrilled and terrified her, so she pushed it aside and attacked the crème brûlées with the torch until their tops were almost black and the smell of butane permeated the air.

“How could you forget the sage?” Althea Munden rolled her eyes at her daughter Maria in exasperation.

Maria took yet another deep breath. She’d taken a lot of them since they’d gotten out of bed that morning. So much for the joy of Christmas Day.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sure if I run over to Vanderpool’s—”

“You think the grocery store is going to be open on Christmas?” Her mother’s pencil-thin eyebrows darted toward her hairline.

“I can’t be the only cook in Sweetgum who’s forgotten something. And I’m sure Mr. Vanderpool wouldn’t mind. It would just take a minute.”

As soon as she made this last statement, she realized her error. Mr. Vanderpool lived above his grocery store across the street from Munden’s Five-and-Dime. Now that Maria and her
mother and sisters lived in the rooms above their store, too, they were in the same class as Mr. Vanderpool.

“Why don’t you just open the window and call across the street?” her mother said with a sniff. “Now that we live above the store, we might as well act like it.”

Maria grabbed her wallet from the kitchen counter and a jacket from the hook by the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“C’mon, Mom.” Daphne intervened. “We can start on the pecan pie while Maria’s gone.”

Stephanie, as usual, was still asleep in the other room with her comforter pulled over her head to drown out the rest of her family.

Maria slipped out the door and pounded down the narrow staircase. She let herself out the exit on the side of the building, around the corner from the square. At least they had a little privacy when it came to their comings and goings.

They’d only lived above the store for two months, but already the Munden women showed the strain of the close quarters. A combined kitchen/living/dining room and a shared bedroom—along with the world’s smallest bathroom—were hardly enough space for one person, let alone four. But what choice was there? Daphne was desperately looking for a job, but she hadn’t worked anywhere in years. Her major responsibility had been overseeing the farm. Stephanie was supposed to be looking for a job as well, but mostly she disappeared early in the day and didn’t come home until late. Maria had no idea what
she did with her time, but she doubted it was anything constructive. And as for their mother, a job was out of the question, but criticizing and nitpicking had always provided her with full-time occupation.

Maria shoved her wallet in the pocket of her jacket and looked both ways before crossing the street. There was little chance of much traffic this early on Christmas morning, but habit was habit. She jogged across the street to the store opposite, Vanderpool’s Groceries and Sundries. Her father and Mr. Vanderpool had been cronies for as long as Maria could remember. They’d encouraged each other, extended each other credit, and generally kept each other afloat in the treacherous waters of the Sweetgum economy.

Maria ducked beneath the green-and-white-striped awning and peered through the door. The lights were on, which was a good sign, and then she saw Mr. Vanderpool’s familiar balding head moving down one of the aisles. She rapped on the glass, softly at first, and then louder until he heard her and turned his steps toward the door.

“Maria! It’s good to see you.” He leaned forward and she gave him her customary peck on the cheek, a ritual they’d followed since she was a little girl and had developed a tremendous crush on him. The fact that he’d given her a lollipop whenever she was in the store had secured her affection from an early age. “What did you forget?”