A Winter’s Wedding (Christmas Cove #3)

Chapter 19

Carol had never wanted to have a housekeeper more than she did now following a long sleepless night. Instead of rest, she forced herself to deal with her emotional baggage in the only way she knew how; by cleaning out every inch of her home. However, no amount of sparkling and dust free surfaces made her feel better.

Maybe she had been wrong, all those years ago, for how she had reacted to her father’s threats. Maybe she could have told Edwin the truth. And maybe she could have saved herself from alienating all the people in her life who ever wanted to care about her, instead of throwing up walls wherever she could. Over the years, she had been very good at cramming it away for a long time, something she prided herself on, but now that same pride was causing her grief and pain.

Needing a bolt of energy, she put the kettle on and ignited the gas stove below. While the water boiled, she sat at the little kitchen table where a scattered pile of photographs lay. Images of her youth stared back at her like ghosts through time. After high school, she had run away and never planned on coming back, nor did she want to remember the life she left behind. No matter how hard she tried to move on, there was this place, this Cove, and that man who held a piece of her heart, calling to her.

Picking up a polaroid from the dispersed stack, her past laughed at her. In the image, she stood beside a young Edwin, shoulder to shoulder in their formal wear, and in the background, a skulking father with a bottle of something dangling from his fingertips. Carol had been so blind to just how bad things really were back then, until the night of the winter formal.

She closed her eyes and imagined how that night should have gone. Dancing in the snow, with the man she was falling in love with. A kiss. A sweet embrace. A possible future where she and Edwin could have been happy. But dreams don’t usually come true , she thought and tossed the photo back to the table as the kettle whistled.

She turned the flame off, and poured the hot water into a little teacup. While the tea steeped, she gathered the photos and shoved them back in the old shoebox. She rubbed her neck, sore from using the vacuum and mop all night. Carol didn’t need a stroll down memory lane; she really needed one of those spa days, only she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts any longer.

Just as she finished her thought, the house phone rang. She only hoped it wasn’t Pa. “Hello?”

“Carol. I’m so glad you’re home.” Carol was relieved to hear America’s voice coming through the receiver. “I tried your cell but?—”

“This storm. It’s been a mess. Are you almost home? Please tell me you are.”

“Why? What’s the matter?” America said.

“Oh, nothing with the wedding. We have all that under control just like you planned. It’s just—I could really use a friend,” Carol said and stirred the darkening liquid in her painted teacup.

“You sound… tired. Or sad?” America said, and of course, she could hear it in Carol’s voice. “What’s happened?”

“Do you have time to talk? I’d rather just speak when you get home. I’m sure Leo doesn’t want to hear all about my problems.”

“He’s not here,” America said, staccato.

“Where is he? Wait, where are you?” Carol couldn’t think of a good reason why they would be apart, unless they had stopped for gas or something along the way.

“I am at a diner. In Buffalo. I don’t know where Leo is, and I don’t care.”

“America Greene, maybe it’s you who needs to talk to a friend,” Carol said and suddenly felt like her problems weren’t as time sensitive as America’s seemed to be. “This is why you called?”

“I told him I wished this whole marriage thing hadn’t happened at all. Everything is a mess. More than you know.”

“What do you mean?” Carol sat at the table, moving the teabag back and forth in her cup, “the whole marriage thing? Nothing has happened yet.”

“First, he surprises me in Vegas, for no good reason?—”

“He had a decent reason?—”

“Fine. But then our flights home got canceled. And the bakery canceled. Leo’s credit card got stolen or something. Our car got broken into and all of my things were thrown in the slush, including my dress. Not that I need it anymore.”

“America that sounds awf?—”

“Oh, and my parents’ flight got canceled too. They’re somewhere, who knows. And with this storm coming in, I bet other people won’t be able to make it to the wedding either. The whole thing is ruined…”

America finally took a breath and Carol was able to get a word in, though she hadn’t followed everything America said. “And you feel like calling the whole thing off?”

America answered in the form of a sound in her throat.

“So, why aren’t you on your way home? We can’t do much with us being here, and you being there.”

“I just want to go back to Friday and start this whole week over,” America said with a deflated tone.

“Believe me when I tell you, that’s never going to happen.” Carol was speaking now from a place of experience. “You can never redo your life, nor do you really want to. Listen, I’m not sure how you got where you are right now, but all you can do is decide to take the next good step. You don’t want to say something or do something that you can never turn back from.”

America was silent on the other end of the line, and Carol processed her own advice in the absence of words. America was certainly having a bad day, and was certainly overreacting, but hadn’t Carol also overreacted to Edwin wanting to know the truth last night?

Hadn’t she used her father’s alcoholism as an excuse to not get close to anyone? The only person she hurt in the long run wasn’t her father, long in the grave, but herself. And due to her actions, Edwin had suffered as she hid her heart from him. In truth, she had hurt everyone she cared about. Now, even if she told him the whole truth, could he forgive her?

Edwin had wanted her to open up. He had practically begged her to. And she ran. Fear had played another trick on her, and she wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to someone she loved.

“America, you still there?” she asked, even though America’s little sobs could be heard through the phone. “I need to tell you a story, and maybe, just maybe it will help give you some perspective.”

“Okay,” she barely said.

“You know about Pa and me attending the winter formal back in high school, and that our moment was cut short, but that’s not even the half of it. I was in love with Edwin. I knew it for sure by the end of the dance, and I wanted to tell him. We went outside to get some fresh air, and it started snowing. When I nearly slipped, Edwin caught me before I hit the ground and possibly ruined my dress. We were about to share our first kiss when my father’s station wagon ripped round the side of the gym where I was wrapped in Edwin’s arms.”

“I know all of this, Carol.”

“Bear with me.” Carol said more irritated than she meant, “Sorry. My fuse is a little short from not sleeping last night.”

“What was last night?” America asked.

“I’ll get there, but I’ll skip the forty years in between,” she said, and America chuckled through the line which was a good sign that Carol’s story was already helping her. “My father was a drunk. And that night, I knew it was trouble. He had already threatened Edwin, or anyone else who would touch me. So, when I saw him coming, I stood up and kicked Pa right in the shin so hard that he fell to the ground. I’m sure my father saw the whole thing and he actually acted concerned for me once I got in his car.”

Carol cleared the emotion from her throat and took another sip of her tea. “I was too embarrassed to come clean to Edwin after that and honestly thought I wouldn’t see him after graduation. I left town, and he joined the army. That was that, as they say.”

“Only, it wasn’t. Was it?”

“Do you know I’ve spent decades pretending to hate the only man I’ve ever loved. And over what? A teenager’s misunderstanding of the world. My shame at who I was, and my fear about becoming like my father and hurting those around me led me to a place where I did exactly that, only a different way. Don’t make the same mistake.”

“But you have no idea?—”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever happened between you and Leo doesn’t define your future as long as you don’t allow it to. You love him, right?”

“You know I do.”

“Does he know that?” Carol said and placed her hand on the shoebox filled with her past.

“I don’t know. Not after what I said to him this morning.” America took a loud raspy breath.

“Tell him. And then get your butts back here so we can have that party!”

“And what are you going to do about Pa?”

Carol thought about what she would tell someone else in her shoes. She would say to lean into the truth. “It’s not as if I can make things worse with him, is it?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I think it’s time he knows the whole story. Then I can stop making decisions for him and let him choose what kind of relationship, if any, we will have.”

“I suppose we both have some apologies to take care of, don’t we?”

“Talk to you soon. And good luck,” Carol said and hung the phone on the hook. Knowing what she had to do, and actually wrestling up enough courage to do it were entirely two different things. She threw back the rest of her tea as though it was a shot of something harder and placed the teacup back on the table with a newfound determination.

Her life no longer belonged to the memory of someone who never did anything to deserve her. It didn’t matter that she was in her fifties, there was so much life left in front of her, if she could just get out of her own way first.