Patterson confirmed the news. “I know Ben’s had his hands full—two sick kids is a lot for one adult to manage.” She put a hand over Brenna’s forehead. “I think I’m about to get my own case to deal with. Come on, honey.” She put an arm around her daughter. “Let’s take you home to bed.”
Brenna looked up in horror. “Mama, it’s Halloween!”
Karen winced. “Oh, yeah. Let’s get some medicine, then, see if you feel well enough to go out tonight.” She looked at Cait. “School might be optional, but trick-or-treating is a mandatory commitment.”
Nodding, Cait kept her face straight. “Makes perfect sense to me.” Then she smiled. “I hope you feel better, Brenna.”
She wondered if Maddie and Shep were still too sick to enjoy Halloween. What a shame, after all the time and thought invested in their costumes. And poor Ben, having to be the one to say no.
Later that night, after the trick-or-treaters had stopped coming and Anna and David had gone to bed, Cait sat in the living room with her guitar, playing with chords she eventually realized had segued into “Bobby McGee.” She might as well go ahead and call, she decided. Then she could get them all off her mind.
“Hello?” Even the one word sounded tired.
“Hi, Ben, This is…Cait. I, um, hear you’ve got two patients to nurse this week.”
“Yeah.” He gave a rough cough. “Which was bad enough before I got sick, too.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s awful. Have you got someone to help you? Did you call the Shepherds?”
“Nah. They don’t need to come over here and catch this bug. Besides, I’m the parent—I can take care of my kids.”
“But—”
“And we’re doing okay. We sleep a lot. Take our medicines at the same time, read a story or two, doze off in front of a movie. We’ll get through.”
It was hard to argue with such stubborn independence. “Is there anything I can do? Do you need groceries? Drinks? More medicine?”
There was a long pause. “I—I think we’re covered, thanks.” He sounded stunned. “I appreciate the thought, though.”
“Please call if you need something.” He wouldn’t, of course. Why should he think about counting on somebody who was only passing through?
Why was she making trouble for herself by wishing he would?
“I guess you started on the Christmas pageant in choir today,” he said. “Maddie’ll be sorry to have missed that.”
If he wanted to talk… “We sang a few songs. She’ll catch up.”
“I think she knows most of the popular carols by heart already.”
That sounded all too familiar. “You must really enjoy Christmas, having two children to share the season with you.”
He cleared his throat. “To be honest, Christmas is the one time of year I almost wish I’d never had kids. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another day.”
Now it was Cait’s turn to pause. “Really?”
“And it takes everything I’ve got to get through the damn month of December without exploding—or simply walking away and never, ever coming back.” The bitterness in his voice was barely suppressed.
Shock held her silent. Ben Tremaine, the ultimate dad, didn’t like Christmas, either?
“Sorry,” he said, when she didn’t respond for a minute. “Chalk that insanity up to the fever and forget about it. And thanks for checking in.”
“Don’t cut me off.” Cait sat up straight, clutched the phone tighter, to keep him with her. “You can’t say something like that and just hang up.”
“Sure I can. And should.”
“What happened at Christmas that makes you hate it so much?”
“I can’t just be a grinch on principle?”
“It takes one to know one.” She grinned. “And I know that even grinches have history.”
He drew a rasping breath. “Okay. It’s not too complicated. When I was six years old, the woman who called herself my mother walked out of the house on Christmas Eve and didn’t come back. My dad celebrated the next twenty-two anniversaries of her departure—until he died, that is—by getting drunk and staying that way until the new year. I just never got into the Christmas spirit, somehow.”
Cait was quiet for a long time. Finally, she took the risk. “I know what it’s like to—to dread Christmas.”
“I guess the holidays are a tough time to be traveling from one show to the next.”
Though he couldn’t see her, she shook her head. “No, what’s tough is just watching. From the outside. Knowing you can’t get in.”
“Why can’t you get in?”
The hard part. “I was kicked out, more or less. By my father.”
After a few seconds, he said, “Your turn to explain.”
She sighed. “My senior year in high school, he and I had major disagreements over what I would do after graduation. He was thinking about college, a music education degree, a job as a church choir director and organist.”
“While you wanted the career you’ve got.”
“Exactly. The sooner, the better. And it all came to a head on Christmas Eve, about an hour before the pageant I’d been working on for three months. My dad found the college applications he assumed I’d submitted, hidden where I thought he’d never find them.” She gave a wry laugh. “Just my luck, that was the year he decided to wear his plaid vest, the one packed away in a cedar chest. In the attic. Right underneath all those application papers.”
Ben’s laugh turned into a cough. “I guess he raised holy hell.”
“There wasn’t much holy about it, in my opinion, anyway. He threw me out of the house and forbade me to darken the doors of ‘his’ church that night and at any time in the future.”
“What about your mom?” A gentle question.
“She died when I was four, during a miscarriage.” Cait took a deep breath. “It’s not just the baby we’re worried about with Anna. The ultrasound her doctor did at her six-month checkup showed the same condition my mom had—the placenta is too low in the womb, which could cause serious bleeding. So…we have to be really careful.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I haven’t given Christmas much thought since the showdown with my dad. I mean, I believe the basic story, but the human applications…”
“Leave a lot to be desired.”
How
