Buch lesen: «The Holiday Visitor»

Chapter Two

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Dear Candy,

It’s going to be a hard Christmas for both of us. Would that I could send a hug through a letter, my sweet friend, for you would surely have one now and anytime you opened an envelope from me.

Hard to believe that our parents both passed in the same year. And so young. I guess it’s true that someone can die of a broken heart. I watched Mom slowly dwindle over the years, losing whatever zest she’d once had for life. It seemed as though she had the energy to see me raised, but once I left for college, she had no reason left to live.

Much like you say it was for your father.

In answer to your question, no, I won’t be alone for Christmas. I was very glad to hear that you wouldn’t be, as well. I picture you surrounded by people you care about.

I agree with what you said about heart—that it is the only true source that we can trust to guide us through life.

At the same time, the whole heart thing has me perplexed. If it’s damaged by life’s trials and tribulations, how much can we trust it? How much does it control us and how much can we control it?

Will I ever be able to open up and fully feel my heart, fully give it, or did the “incident” irrevocably change my ability to experience love on the deepest levels? Will I always be as I am now, moving through life without ever being fully engaged? Is there something I’m doing that keeps me trapped? Am I sabotaging myself? Or is this just the inevitable result to what happened when we were kids and a way of life for me that I can do nothing about—much like if I’d been in a skiing accident and lost a leg.

Tough questions. I look forward to your thoughts on this one.

In the meantime, know that I will be thinking about you through the season.

Yours,

James

“MARYBETH?”

Stuffing the letter she was reading into the writing desk drawer, Marybeth turned, smiling as a spry, little woman came through the kitchen into her living area, petting Brutus, two hundred and ten pounds of flesh and fur lounging in the doorway, as she passed.

“Hey! I didn’t expect you until later.” Jumping up, Marybeth stepped over the two-year-old mastiff and hugged Bonnie Mather, her surrogate mother from the time she was twelve.

“My garden club luncheon finished earlier than I thought—the speaker canceled.”

“Well, come on in. The cookies are cooling, but I should be able to frost them if you want to wait.” She’d told Bonnie she’d bake six dozen cookies to take to the soup kitchen.

“How about if I help?” Bonnie said, dropping the colorful cloth purse that was almost as big as she was onto Marybeth’s sofa. “I might not make frosting as good as you do, but I can wield a mean knife.”

“Yeah, right.” Marybeth laughed. “My recipe is yours and you know it.”

“That doesn’t mean I can make it as well as you do.” Bonnie stepped over Marybeth’s dirt-colored pal on her way back out of the room. “I know you argued about having that dog, but knowing he’s here with you sure gave your father peace of mind.”

“I’ve gotten used to having him around.”

“Your dad was beside himself when you first announced that you were going to run this place yourself.”

That was putting it mildly. He’d done everything he could to get Marybeth to sell the bed-and-breakfast she’d inherited from a great-aunt she’d barely known.

“He didn’t miss a single check-in from the time I opened until the day he died.”

“Checking out the guests,” Bonnie said.

Bonnie and Marybeth moved effortlessly in the professional kitchen of the Orange Blossom, assisting each other without word. As well they should considering the more than fourteen years they’d been cooking together. Bonnie had taught Marybeth, who had been written up in national travel magazines for her culinary talents and original recipes, most of what she knew.

Reaching around Marybeth for a stack of cooled bellshaped cookies, Bonnie’s arm rested along her waist. “How are you doing?” she asked softly.

“Okay,” Marybeth said, whipping green food coloring into a bowl of confectioner’s sugar and water icing. “Keeping busy. I have guests arriving today who’ll be staying through next weekend. And then another check-in on the twenty-third staying until the thirty-first.”

“Over Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“A family? Are they taking all four rooms?”

“No, just one person. In Juliet’s room.” Her lone holiday visitor, on a holiday that was going to be very lonely.

“You’re coming over for the day, though, right?” Since her mother’s death, Marybeth and her dad had spent every Christmas with Bonnie, Bob and Wendy Mather.

“I don’t think so.” Marybeth delivered what she knew wasn’t going to be welcome news. She glanced at Bonnie, hoping the older woman would understand and not be hurt. “I…it’s going to be hard this year and I think it’d be better if I had a change. I feel like I need to do something different, to, I don’t know, start my own life or something.” It made a whole lot more sense when she thought about it to herself, than it did when she said it out loud. “Besides,” she added, “I don’t want to be a downer on your holiday.”

“We loved your dad, too, missy,” Bonnie said in her most motherly voice. “We’ll all be missing him. Please come.”

“I…maybe,” Marybeth told her, really feeling like she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not this first Christmas anyway. “I have to see what my guest is going to be doing.”

“You’re only responsible for breakfast and evening libations,” Bonnie said. “You’ll have the rest of the day free.”

“I was thinking about going to the beach. Or…I don’t know. Can I let you know?”

“Of course. And if you say no and change your mind, you can drop in, too. You know that. You don’t need an invitation.”

Meeting Bonnie’s gaze, Marybeth blinked back the tears she was so valiantly trying to prevent. “Thank you.”

“It’ll be strange having Christmas without you.”

“I know. I just…I have to do this. Okay?”

Bonnie’s okay didn’t sound happy. Or even satisfied. But at least the dreaded chore of telling her was done.

“So what was that you were reading when I came in?” Bonnie asked after a few minutes of silence as the two of them, spreaders in hand, covered dozens of sugar cookie renditions of Santas and bells and Christmas trees with red and green and white frosting and sprinkles.

Marybeth grabbed the nonpareils. They’d always been her favorites—even way back when her mom had been the one doing the baking. “A letter from James.”

“A recent one?”

“Yeah. His mom died this year, too.”

“So you’re still writing to him.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Fourteen years and he continues to write regularly?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize you were still in touch with him.”

“Of course I am.” She was addicted to him. With every single one of the hundreds of letters she’d received from James over the years, she’d read and reread the most recent until she heard from him again. And if something in her life was particularly challenging, if she needed some extra strength, she’d pull out the plastic storage boxes under her bed and reread some of the others, as well. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked the person she was closest to in the world next to James.

“I don’t know.” Bonnie’s shrug, the way she was concentrating so hard on putting little Christmas tree sugar shapes in a row along the cookie to make them look like a string of lights, caught Marybeth’s attention. “It’s just that I worry about you.”

“About me?” No way. Those days were long gone. She didn’t need sympathy anymore. Or worry. She was a big girl now. All grown up, in control and happy with her life. “And James?”

“Not you and James. I wish there was a you and James.” Bonnie’s reply wasn’t timid. “Look at you, sweetie. You’re twenty-six years old and gorgeous with those blue eyes and blond hair, and you haven’t so much as had a date that I know of since you graduated from college three years ago and took over this place.”

“That has nothing to do with James.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Of course not.” Frost, sprinkle, lay out to dry. Frost, sprinkle, lay out to dry. She worked her way through a pile of stars.

“Then what does it have to do with? Your mother?”

“No!” Her mother’s death had been fourteen years ago. She’d lived before then. And since. So why did people continue to seem to tie every single thing in her life back to that one event? “It’s not that I have a problem with dating,” she said. “I’m not afraid. I have no aversions. I simply haven’t yet met a man who inspires any feeling in me. There’s no attraction. No spark.”

“What about with James?”

“I’ve never even seen a picture of him, how could there be an attraction?”

“What about feelings of affection?”

“Of course I have feelings for James. How could I not? He’s my best friend. I can tell him anything.”

“This guy you’ve never met.”

“Right.”

“You sure you aren’t using him as an excuse not to open up too completely to any of the real, flesh-and-blood people in your life?”

“I open up to you. You’re flesh and blood.”

“I’m different,” Bonnie said. “I’m talking about people out there in the world. Someone you could actually build a life with.”

Marybeth frosted. Cookies for Bonnie. Cookies for the senior center. Cookies for here. With any luck, she’d be done in time to have a tray of them on the desk at check-in by three o’clock for her visitors to enjoy.

“I have a life,” she said after taking time to think about what Bonnie had said. “James isn’t taking the place of any other relationships,” she continued. “He’s his own relationship. We have these ongoing philosophical discussions that always hit home with me. Probably because, based on the unusual nature of our relationship, we talk about things that people don’t usually share. You know, deep, random thoughts, illogical matters of the heart and head and life. Observations that generally pass through your mind and are forgotten in the business of daily living.” She’d been discussing the meaning of life with James for fourteen years and wasn’t about to stop now. Wasn’t sure she could even if she wanted to.

“You have no idea how many times we help each other find solutions to challenges we’re facing. We don’t judge each other. We just talk.”

“All things you could be doing with a spouse.”

“Do you and Bob do them?”

Bonnie’s silence was answer enough.

“James is my peace, Bonnie. My solace and support. He’s my kind inner voice counteracting my inner critic who, as you know, so often tries to rule my life. He’s not a romance. Or a partner in life.”

Marybeth finished the stars and the Santas and moved on to help Bonnie with the trees. And because her friend remained silent, she continued to talk. “James is like this ethereal being who, unlike any spiritual, omniscient being, knows nothing of my everyday life, you know? And he shares nothing of his. We share a past, a dark time. We both went through the same thing at the same time in our lives. That’s it.”

“I hope so, my dear,” Bonnie said as they finished up. “I just know that your idea of normal isn’t healthy. You, here all alone, living vicariously through the people who parade in and out of this inn.”

“I take care of them. It’s my job. My livelihood. And I like it.”

“I know you do, sweetie, and I’m thrilled that you’ve found something that satisfies you. I just wish you had a private life, too.”

She did have a private life. Not a single one of her guests had ever stepped foot beyond the public parts of the house. What went on out there was work. What went on back here was her life.

She simply hadn’t found anyone she wanted to share that life with in the way Bonnie meant. Marybeth didn’t really even want to try.

“I’m not lonely,” she told her pseudomother. “But if I ever start to feel that way, I promise you, I’ll find someone. I’ll start frequenting the personal ads if I have to.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Bonnie assured her. “I know of a half dozen people in this town who’d love to take you out.” So did she. Unfortunately none of them interested her in the least.

CRAIG ANTHONY MCKELLIPS drove slowly by the Orange Blossom Bed-and-Breakfast, every one of his senses reeling with sensation. His mouth watered. He could practically taste the oranges that were pungently ready for picking on the trees that lined both sides of the lot, separating the freshly painted white Victorian home—complete with grand balconies upstairs and an even grander porch down—from the picturesque old homes on either side.

Sweating in spite of the crisp fifty-nine-degree temperature, Craig pushed the button to lower his window a bit and was hit with the sweet scents wafting from the wildly colorful, but perfectly tended flower gardens in manicured rings in the yard and lining the entire front of the house. He could taste a hint of salt in the air, letting him know that he was by the ocean again. By nightfall he’d be feeling the salty residue on his skin.

And the quiet. It amazed him! This California coastal town, maybe an hour’s drive from the Los Angeles he’d known as a kid, was the exact antithesis of the noisy, frenetic southern California he’d grown up in.

A perfect place to spend his first Christmas alone—his first Christmas since his mother passed away.

Satisfying himself that he knew where the house was, Craig drove by for now. Judging by the empty, five-car parking lot down a small hill to the side of the house, none of the other guests had arrived—or else were out for the day. Check-in wasn’t until three.

Would the other guests be there at three, too? Filling the house with chaos and confusion, noise, distracting their hostess? Would he know who she was? She might not look like the photo he’d seen of her in the travel brochure. Maybe she had an employee who handled registration.

Driving slowly through the small town, Craig used the breathing techniques he’d perfected over the years to quiet his mind. After months of constant push to get through all of the commissions that were due by Christmas, he needed this break from the studio that consumed so much of his life.

And from the constant drive to create.

He also needed the inner calm his work brought.

When he couldn’t settle the energy thrumming through him, Craig found a spot close to the water and parked. He thought about calling Jenny. His wife should just about be landing in Paris.

But he didn’t.

Reaching over, he locked his cell phone in the glove box of the rental car.

What he needed was a good long walk on the beach.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS, everyone!” Marybeth turned to wave at the gathering of wheelchairs in the recreation room of the seniors’ center the Saturday before Christmas, bearing the collective weights of people who’d grown dear to her over the three years she’d been catering their Christmas lunch party. This year she’d brought homemade ornaments for them to hang on their bedposts—ornaments she’d crocheted during the evenings while she and Brutus watched television.

She lingered, helping lay out all the food, handing out the gifts and chatting with everyone. They pressed her to join them for the meal, but she bowed out claiming her arriving guest as her excuse.

Leaving the seniors’ center she headed over to the Mathers’s to unload the pile of gifts she had for them on the backseat of her Expedition. Though Bonnie had tried all week to get her to change her mind, Marybeth still thought she wanted to be alone this first Christmas without her dad.

“I can’t believe you aren’t coming over on Monday,” fifteen-year-old Wendy said as she helped Marybeth carry in packages.

Her dad was still at work and her mother was at the soup kitchen.

“It’s just this one year,” Marybeth told the teenager who was as much daughter and sister to her as longtime neighbor. “I think it’ll be easier if I’m not following the same traditions, you know?”

“I get it,” Wendy said. “I’m not sure Mom does, but she’ll come around. She always does.”

“Hey,” Marybeth said, nudging the younger girl. “How’d your date go last night?”

“With Randy?” Wendy had had a crush on the boy from their church for months and he’d finally asked her out.

“Who else?”

Wendy’s blush was answer enough. “It was good,” she said and Marybeth knew immediately that this was one of those times when the word was a definite understatement.

Finished with the presents, Wendy walked with Marybeth back to her car. “Who was your first boyfriend? I don’t remember him.”

“That’s because I never really had one,” she said. “And it’s a good thing because you’d have been bugging us all the time if I had.”

“No,” Wendy said, frowning. “Seriously. What about that first time you met someone and just knew you’d die if he didn’t like you as much as you liked him?”

Warning bells ringing, Marybeth stopped by the door of her car. “I never met anyone who made me feel that way,” she said slowly, while her mind raced ahead. “But I knew some girls who did,” she added, remembering how frantic her friend Cara had been their last year in junior high. The girl had even run away from home to be with the guy she’d thought was her soul mate. “And what I can tell you is that as intense as those feelings are, they can’t be trusted until you’re a bit older. Right now, they aren’t just from the heart, but get confused and mixed up with hormonal changes, too.”