opened the oven door and reached for the potholders, but Mike was already there, taking them from her and lifting the heavy roasting pan onto the counter.
“He’ll call,” he said in a low voice, catching her eyes and holding them across the sizzling, crackling pan, through a fog of garlic and spices and oven-roasted beef. “He always does.”
Lucy held on to the quiet confidence in her husband’s eyes and drew strength from it, as she had so many times before. And she smiled her special smile, just for him, to let him know she appreciated it.
“So, there you have it,” Wood said, coming upright in his chair in hand-rubbing anticipation of dinner. “No pitter-patter of little feet any time soon. Personally, I’m in no hurry to become a grandparent. Hey—I don’t feel old enough to be a grandparent. I feel like I just got grown-up myself. Frankly, I’m enjoying spending time with my wife.” He reached for her hand as she slipped into the chair next to him. “Anyway, we keep pretty busy, between my classroom full of kids and Chris’s physical therapy patients.”
“It’s not a matter of being busy,” Lucy said, in between carrying platters and bowls to the table. “Lord knows, we’ve always got plenty to do around here. It’s just—” she broke off, frowning, to survey the table, then finished it as she seated herself. “It’s just too quiet, that’s all. Earl, will you please ask the blessing?”
He did, since she’d made the “request” in her no-arguments tone of voice, and then everyone was busy passing and serving and tasting and exclaiming about how good everything was. After that, conversation turned to the blizzard that was predicted to arrive later that night, and the new versus the old and familiar Christmas specials on TV.
It wasn’t until later, when the taillights of Wood and Chris’s car had gone bumping down the gravel driveway to flash bright and then wink out as they turned onto the paved road, that Lucy could finally turn into the comfort of her husband’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his chest.
“Mmph,” said Mike in a tender murmur. “What for?”
“I didn’t expect to feel like this—not at Christmastime.”
“Like what?”
It was a moment more before she could bring herself to say it. “Sad…” And then added quickly, afraid he might misunderstand, “About getting older, I mean. I always thought I’d be like Gwen, so full of laughter, right to the end.”
“Gwen had her sad moments,” Mike said into her hair.
“I suppose. I think—” she turned her head to one side so she could listen to his heartbeat and was silent for a moment, drawing strength from that. “I think it’s because everything’s changed, and I haven’t. I still feel exactly the same as I did when I was young, and Mom and Dad and Gwen were alive and all the kids were home and it seemed like the house was always full of people and noise and laughter. I don’t know how to explain…”
“You don’t have to. You miss the kids. I miss ’em, too.”
Lucy nodded. She and Mike held each other and listened to the silence together, and after a while she found that the silence didn’t seem quite as lonely as before. “It would be nice to have some grandchildren,” she said, with a laugh and a very small sigh. “To visit now and then.”
Mike chuckled. “Maybe we could rent some.”
She wasn’t sure what it was that woke her. She lay for a moment, blinking and disoriented, listening to the howl of wind and the dogs’ excited barking, watching patterns of light and shadows move across the walls.
“Mike—wake up! Someone’s coming up to the house.”
They’d fallen asleep watching television, as they often did, Mike stretched out on the couch with a book on his chest and his reading glasses askew, Lucy bundled in an afghan in Gwen’s La-Z-Boy recliner. She righted the chair with a ka-bump and struggled out of the afghan, at the same time searching with her feet for her house shoes. “Mike! There’s a car coming up the drive. Who on earth do you suppose—”
“Wha’ time is it?” Scowling at his watch, he answered himself in tones of disbelief. “Almost eleven?” By that time Lucy was halfway across the kitchen.
She stopped in the service room long enough to grab a coat, which she was shrugging into as she stepped onto the back porch. The cold stabbed at her, making her gasp. The dogs were less frantic now that they’d achieved their purpose and the household had been properly roused. Lucy quieted what remained of the racket with a sharp command, then stood hugging herself as she watched the car lights drive past the front of the house and right around to the back door, the one everybody except strangers always used. Not a stranger, then.
She had begun to shiver violently, but it wasn’t from the cold. She no longer felt the cold at all, in fact, only a strange numbness.
The car crunched to a stop near the bottom of the steps, just where Wood and Chris’s car had been parked a few hours before. Lucy found that she was standing at the top of the steps, but when she would have started down, Mike’s arms came from behind to encircle and hold her where she was. The car’s headlights went dark. The door opened, while Max and Tippy, the two Border collies, circled close, wriggling and whining.
Lucy wondered how she could shake so hard and still stand. She wondered how she would stop herself from bursting into tears.
The driver—a man—stepped out of the car and slowly straightened. For one brief moment he lifted deep-set shadowed eyes toward them while his hands reached to touch the dogs’ eager, searching muzzles, buried themselves in thick, silky fur. His face was gaunt, hard-boned, a stranger’s face.
Lucy’s breath caught in a sharp whimper. She could see that his lips were moving and knew he was speaking to the dogs, but she couldn’t hear his voice for the rushing wind inside her own head. She felt Mike’s arms around her, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. She clung to his arms with icy fingers and tried to draw a breath, tried to speak—anything—just to say his name. But she couldn’t. Not even in a whisper.
He was moving quickly now, almost at a run, not toward her, not toward the house, but around to the other side of the car. Then he was opening up the back door, and for what seemed to Lucy like a very long time he leaned into the car, bending over something inside. Suspense keened in her ears as she watched him take something bulky from the back seat and come back around the car, carrying it by a handle. Something covered with a blanket…
Mesmerized, Lucy stared at the blanketed something as her son carried it toward her up the steps, slowly, one at a time. It could not be what it seemed to be. It couldn’t. But, two steps below her he halted, swinging the thing from his side to in front of him so that he held it in both of his hands, like an offering in a basket.
There was no mistaking it; it was an infant’s car seat.
Lucy tore her eyes from it, then, to gaze into the face of the hollow-eyed stranger. He smiled, though she could tell it was an effort, his teeth showing white in a beard-shadowed face.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. Merry Christmas.”
The breath she thought she’d lost came forth in a rush, but before she could make her lips form a reply, she heard Mike’s voice saying calmly, “You’d better come inside, son. It’s cold out here.”
Then,
