take a second, I promise.”
Eliza watched him with dawning awareness in her gaze.
He cleared his throat. “Something happened to me this year, something tough I thought I could handle alone. It’s recently come to my attention that by keeping it to myself and not letting my family know when I was going through a rough patch, I was being selfish and maybe even thoughtless and insensitive.”
“What is it, son?” Dermot asked. “What’s happened?”
This was a mistake. He should have waited until after the holidays, maybe tomorrow evening after the burst of Christmas excitement had passed. He didn’t want to ruin dinner. If he hadn’t been so fatigued, he might have thought this through a little better and made a different choice. Or maybe he would have chickened out and not said anything at all.
Whatever, it was too late to back down.
He glanced at Eliza again. She gave him an encouraging smile and he felt almost light-headed from the approval there. A thought that had been playing through his mind for the past few days, random and scattered, seemed to coalesce into one clear realization. Loving someone—truly loving them—meant exposing your weaknesses to them, not only projecting your strengths.
With a sigh, he parted his hair to show the scar, his most glaring sign of weakness. “I had a brain tumor removed in September, the week after Pop and Katherine got married.”
There was an almost audible collective indrawn breath and then the dining room erupted into a dozen different questions.
Everyone looked shocked, his father most of all, and he was suddenly profoundly sorry for shutting them out.
“Don’t worry, it was benign,” he assured them quickly. “The surgery went well and they were able to remove the whole thing. I’m doing fine now, just some lingering fatigue and headaches once in a while and a little double vision if I’m at the computer too long.”
“Aidan. Why didn’t you say anything?” Charlotte exclaimed. “A brain tumor. I can’t believe this! And you didn’t want your family to help you?”
“I had what I thought were good reasons. The timing of the surgery, for one thing, just days after Pop’s wedding while he was on his honeymoon. The distance between us, with the surgery in California and you all in Colorado. And,” he admitted, “a good part of it was pride. I’m...not good at allowing myself to need other people. I’m learning, though. I invited you all here for the holidays, right?”
“Just goes to show that even smart guys can sometimes be idiot assholes,” Dylan said gruffly.
He tore his gaze away from Eliza, who was smiling softly at him now, he saw, and maybe even wiping a tear or two away with her napkin.
“True enough. It was wrong of me to keep it from you. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Contrary to what I would like to think, I do make them. This particular mistake won’t happen again. We can talk about this later but for now, let’s eat before all this delicious food is too cold to enjoy. Pop. Do you want to say grace or pick somebody?”
“It’s your home, son. Seems to me you should do the honors, since you have more than most to be thankful for today.”
Damn right. And he wasn’t about to forget it.
With a nod, he reached for Charlotte’s hand on one side and his niece Maggie’s on the other and bowed his head.
ELIZA HAD NEVER slept well on Christmas Eve.
When she was a little girl, she had always been too excited. She hadn’t necessarily wanted to catch Santa Claus in the act of hanging stockings or anything, she only wanted to stay up and capture every moment of the magic.
She would hide in her room with a flashlight under her covers, humming Christmas songs or reading one of her favorite Christmas stories or perhaps making one up in her head.
A quick check of her phone revealed it was past 3:00 a.m. This was becoming quite a habit during her stay at Snow Angel Cove.
Staying up all night on Christmas Eve might have worked when she was a little girl who could nap with her new toys tucked around her, after the rush and frenzy of opening presents was over. As a mother and as an employee, she didn’t have that luxury. She was going to be exhausted in the morning.
She could sleep in a little, assuming Maddie did, but that was far from a certainty. Her only real job in the morning was to preheat the oven about nine o’clock and then add the breakfast casseroles she had helped Sue prepare the afternoon before.
Each of the siblings was to spend Christmas morning with his or her own family before they all came together for a casual, no-frills brunch.
She rolled over, trying for a more comfortable position. Her body was certainly tired after a long day and an even more hectic week preceding it, but her mind wouldn’t seem to settle.
The evening had been wonderful. Her perfect image of a big, boisterous family Christmas. After Aidan’s announcement, the family had been upset with him but they had all forgiven him for withholding the information, as she had fully expected.
After the delicious dinner, she had seen his sister-in-law Christine—a pediatrician in Denver—peppering him with questions while Charlotte and Dylan interjected a few of their own.
When the meal had been cleaned up, Dermot read the Christmas story from the New Testament in his lilting Irish brogue and then the children performed the short collection of songs they had prepared: “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” Maddie’s favorite, “Away in a Manger,” as well as a medley of angel-themed Christmas songs in honor of the house’s name—“Angels we have Heard on High” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
It didn’t escape her attention that Aidan had slipped out shortly after the children sang and didn’t come back in again while the family was playing laughter-filled party games she had suggested or while they were all heading to bed.
Small doses of family worked best for him, apparently. She could understand that, she supposed.
She flipped her pillow and tried that side for a few minutes, then finally sighed and slipped from bed, surrendering to the inevitable. Sleep would continue to elude her until she managed to calm her mind. She would have some chamomile tea while she checked to make sure everything was ready for Christmas morning, then she would likely be able to drift off for a few hours.
Careful not to wake her daughter, she pulled on slippers and robe, then quietly made her way to the kitchen, where she plugged in the electric kettle and mentally went over the items on Sue’s menu for the day as she waited for the kettle to heat.
When it was ready, she poured it over her chamomile then carried the steeping tea through the house, pausing for a moment in the great room by the huge tree that reflected a kaleidoscope of colors in the huge windows.
The younger children had insisted they keep the tree lights on all night so Santa could find his way. Even the teenagers had chimed in to agree with that one.
It was beautiful, she thought again.
