Keeping Christmas

“That’s my name,” she insisted before the man could pin her once more with that dark, unnerving gaze. She held Kyle tighter against her as he squirmed to be free. She wished her head wasn’t hurting so, and that the maddening multicolored specks would stop dancing before her eyes. She couldn’t think straight, feeling so bad, and she desperately needed her wits about her. She shifted to her left, retreating a little farther into the darkness outside the circle of yellow light from the porch. “I’m lost,” she said, turning instinctively toward the plump, white-haired woman. “I’m looking for Fuller’s Motel.”

“This isn’t it,” the man said.

“Jacob. Mind your manners,” the old lady said admonishingly.

No, it wasn’t the same old lady. The voice was different. Katie closed her eyes a moment then looked again. The woman on the porch had been joined by another, tall and stooped, standing with the aid of a metal walker. She was even older than the first. And other, curious female faces were staring out from behind the lace curtains at the big bow window that faced onto the porch. They had to be the Owens sisters.

But who is the dark man?

“Fuller’s is a quarter mile down the hill and turn right,” he said as though giving a command. “You can’t miss it.”

“So I’ve been told.” Katie laughed, but it came out more of a croak. At least the damn goose was quiet. Having placed herself between Katie and the porch, she seemed content to wait for Katie to make a threatening move before she attacked. Katie eyed the bird as warily as she did the man.

“Where did you come from, child?” the first old lady asked.

“My car…broke down on the highway.” It had seemed like a very long drive across the valley. These people would know she couldn’t have made the journey on foot. Best stick to the truth as much as possible. “Someone gave me a lift this far. He told me about the motel,” she finished in a strangled whisper, trying desperately not to start coughing again.

“Oh.” The old lady glanced at the man, still standing as though rooted to the ground, his long legs spread to balance him against the icy wind. “I thought perhaps you’d been involved in the accident on the interstate.”

“Accident?” Katie couldn’t keep the fear and dismay out of her voice. These people already knew about the accident? She faced the women on the porch but still watched the dark man from the corner of her eye. Is he the hired help? Or a relative? “How did you know about the bus going off the highway?”

The old lady folded her hands across her middle, looking pleased. “We didn’t know there was a bus involved but my nephew and I saw the flashing emergency lights across the valley from the back of the house.”

“Oh.” Katie knew she’d given herself away but she was too sick and miserable to care. “Please, if you’ll just give me a few more detailed directions to the motel I won’t bother you anymore.” She was so dizzy she didn’t know if she could make it back down the hill but for Kyle’s sake she’d have to keep going somehow.

Sensing his mother’s distress, the little boy began to howl, kicking out, swatting at the blanket that covered him with both small, determined hands.

“Goodness,” the first old lady gasped, coming down the steps. “Do you have a baby under that blanket? I thought so but I’m not wearing my glasses and I wasn’t sure.” She fluttered along the walk, shooing the indignant goose aside, holding out her hands as though to take Kyle from Katie’s aching arms. “How wicked of us to keep you standing here in this awful storm with a baby in your arms.” She took one long, myopic look at Katie. Her jaw dropped. “My God, Katherine,” she said very softly and then shut her mouth with a snap.

Instinctively Katie tightened her grip on her son. “Not Katherine. My name is Katie. Kate, I mean.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she agreed. She looked quickly over her shoulder at the dark man. “Kate, not Katherine.”

“Aunt H, let her go. It’s only a five-minute walk back down the hill to Fuller’s.” He hadn’t moved an inch. It was as if he didn’t want to get any closer to her. That was fine with Katie. She didn’t want to be any closer to him, either.

“Hazel,” the imperious old lady standing in the doorway ordered, “get back in here. You don’t even have a sweater on and it’s freezing.”

“Of course it’s freezing. So is this poor sweet baby.” Hazel reached out to pull the corner of Kyle’s blanket up over his head. Her hands were shaking; her head and shoulders were white with snow. Katie felt guilty for keeping her out in the cold. Kyle looked at the old lady’s plump, wrinkled face for a long moment, smiled and laid his head on Katie’s shoulder. “What a beautiful child.”

“Yes, he is.” Katie managed a smile of her own. “I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

“Think nothing of it, my dear.” Hazel smiled up at her. At five foot seven Katie was several inches taller than her champion. Hazel reached out to pat Katie’s cheek. “Goodness.” She placed her hand more firmly against Katie’s skin. “You’re burning up. Are you ill?”

“I…don’t know,” Katie said in confusion. She was freezing and too warm all at once. It was a very disorienting and uncomfortable feeling. She wished she could lie down somewhere out of the storm and go to sleep. “I…I’m tired,” she admitted, unable to summon the energy for any more elaborate falsehoods. “I don’t dare be sick.”

“Almeda, this child is ill. We can’t send her back out into the storm.”

“Sick or not, she can’t stay here, Aunt H,” the man said, moving at last, closing the distance between them, looming over Katie like an angry cloud. “I’ll get the Jeep and drive her down the hill to Fuller’s. If she’s sick they can call the emergency squad from there.”

“Jacob!” The old lady sounded shocked. “How can you even suggest such a thing? No Owens has ever turned away a soul in need from this house. We’re not about to start tonight.”

Katie was having trouble focusing her eyes. The sounds of their voices amplified, then receded with nauseating regularity. She swayed on her feet. She had to sit down, and soon, or she was going to collapse.

The dark man took another step closer, as if to press his argument with his aunt. Katie wheeled to avoid him. The sudden movement threw her completely off balance.

“Here, take him,” she whispered, thrusting Kyle into the old lady’s arms. “Please, I…I think I’m going to faint.”

“Jacob,” Hazel said, scooping Kyle and his blanket against her ample chest. “Catch her, she’s going to fall.”

Katie felt the tote slip from her shoulder and land in the snow with a dull thud but she didn’t care. She tried to focus on Kyle, safe in Hazel’s arms, but his face swam sickeningly before her eyes. “No, don’t,” she said, or tried to, as the dark man loomed closer. “I’ll be fine, just let me find a place to sit.”

“Aunt H is right,” he said, sounding every bit as reluctant as she was. “You’re going to fall flat on your face. Here.” He pulled her against him and slid his arms beneath her knees. “Hold still till I get you inside.” Katie stopped struggling and laid her head against his shoulder just to keep the world from spinning completely out of control. “I’m sorry to be so much bother.”

He carried her across the porch and into the foyer. “I’m sorry, too.” He sounded a little breathless from the extra weight, but not much. She could feel his muscles work, even beneath the heavy wool coat, and smell the faint spicy tang of his after-shave.

“Jacob, where’s your Christian charity?” the tall, stooped old lady scolded as he prepared to deposit Katie on some kind of hard, uncomfortable-looking sofa in the foyer.

“I don’t have much to spare, Aunt,” he said, then bit off the word with a curse. “My God,” he said quietly, but there was no reverence in his tone. “Who the hell are you?”

Katie risked looking at his face as she laid her head against the tall curved back of the settee.

“I told you,” she said, fighting nausea as she stared up into his handsome, stone-hard features. “I’m Kate. Kate Smith. But you can call me Katie.”

“No,” he said, standing so suddenly Katie had to shut her eyes against the blur of movement. “You’re not Katherine, but you look enough like her to be…her twin.”

He laughed, a sound that held no mirth at all. “But since she’s dead and buried these three years, maybe I should say instead that you look enough like her to be her ghost.”

Chapter 2

Katherine’s ghost. Who was Katherine? And what did she mean to this dark, unfriendly stranger?

“I’ve been accused of being a lot of things in my life, but a ghost has never been one of them.” No one said anything.

Katie wished she didn’t feel so disoriented and confused. The lights in the foyer were bright and hurt her eyes. She closed them, hoping to alleviate the pain in her head. It didn’t work. She opened them again and found the man still standing by the settee, watching her.

“Please,” she said, unable to look away from his compelling yet shuttered gaze. “May I have a glass of water?”

“Will tea do?” a gentle childlike voice asked at her shoulder. She turned her head to find herself confronted by two smiling, identical faces. Brown eyes stared at her from beneath curly mops of gray-streaked red hair. “We thought you might want something warming. But Faye can march straight back into the kitchen and fetch you a glass of water.” The heads turned, nodded. One disappeared, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. The woman who remained offered her the cup of herb tea. “It’s our great-grandmother’s recipe,” she said, still smiling. “It’s good for whatever ails you.” Katie took the cup. She was suddenly very cold, and the warmth of the thick china mug was welcome. The tea smelled strange, but not unpleasant. It was flavored with lemon and honey and other things she couldn’t identify. She let the liquid run down her throat, soothing and warming, while the aroma drifted up into her nostrils, making it just a little easier to breathe, a little easier to think.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it, as she handed the empty mug back to the red-haired woman. “I think you saved my life.” She wondered if she was delirious and had only imagined the woman’s double standing at her side moments before.

“Did my sister tell you it’s an old family remedy?” Once more there were two. “Here, I brought you a glass of spring water, as well.”

“Thank you,” Katie said again, holding the glass with both hands because she was trembling so hard. She took a sip and handed it back, looking from one pleasant, girlish face to the other.

“We’re twins,” the woman on her left said. “I’m Lois Owens and this is my sister, Faye.”

“You might as well introduce everyone,” Faye said with a grin that was filled with mischief. “I’m afraid there’s enough of us to confuse someone who’s purely well.”

“Faye, you speak as if you’ve just come down out of the hills,” the tall, bent woman broke in. “I’m Almeda Owens. My sister, Hazel Owens Gentry, you’ve already met,” she said with a sweeping gesture of her gnarled hand. “This, also, is my sister, Janet.”

Janet, plump, gray and inquisitive looking, gave Katie a brief nod and a long, assessing look. “The baby needs changing,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“And this,” Almeda went on, ignoring her sister’s comment about Kyle, “is our nephew, Dr. Jacob Owens.”

Katie said, “Oh,” because she couldn’t think of anything else. If he was a doctor, his bedside manner left a great deal to be desired. Jacob said nothing at all.

“Janet’s right about the baby needing to be changed,” Hazel said in the awkward silence. “And I believe he’s hungry, as well.” She still cuddled Kyle to her chest, but he was squirming and fussing.

“Yes,” Katie said wearily. “I was just getting ready to give him his bottle when…when the bus went off the road.” She gave Jacob a defiant look. He made no mention of her change of stories.

“Where are his diapers?” Janet asked. “I’ll get them.”

“In my tote.” Katie sat up, ignoring the pain in her neck and shoulders. She looked around. “Where is it? I…I remember it falling from my shoulder.” Suddenly she felt like crying. Everything she owned was in that bag, even her purse. And she’d lost that twice in the same evening.

“I’ll get it,” Jacob offered roughly. “Don’t start crying about it. No one steals anything from this yard with Weezer around.”

“Oh, dear, Weezer. She’s still out in the storm.”

“I’ll pen her up, Aunt H, don’t worry.”

“I’ll go with you and bring in the bag,” Janet offered.

“Come straight back, Jacob, and help us get Katie to bed. She doesn’t look stout enough to negotiate the stairs,” Hazel ordered, bouncing Kyle up and down, shushing his increasingly loud and angry squawks as she did so.

“You’re not planning to keep her overnight?” Jacob turned on his heel, his hand already on the doorknob.

“Oh, no,” Katie said at the same time. “I couldn’t impose.”

“You’re not imposing.”

“We’d love to have you,” the twins said, speaking as one.

“Too cold to be taking a baby out on a night like this.”

“An Owens has never turned away a soul in need,” Almeda said, ending the argument.

Katie saw Jacob’s jaw tighten and his expression grow even bleaker than before. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I can have the Jeep warmed up and drive her and the baby down to Fuller’s in less time than it will take to make up a bed.”

“Yes,” said Katie. “We’ll go to Fuller’s.”

“No, my dear. The matter is settled.” Almeda gestured toward her nephew. “Janet can get Kate’s bag from the yard. Carry the child upstairs. No,” she said, fixing Katie with a dark-eyed stare that was every bit as formidable as her nephew’s. “I won’t hear any more arguments. You’re not well, and not thinking clearly.”

“Stay here tonight for the baby’s sake, if not your own,” Hazel added more gently. “Fuller’s aren’t used to many visitors at this time of year. The rooms will be cold. And you need your rest.”

“What’s the baby’s name?” Faye—or was it Lois?—asked, running her fingers over Kyle’s silky hair.

“Kyle Michael.”

“Kyle. I like that name. Let me hold him, Hazel. You can’t have him all the time.” Kyle, diverted by the soft lilt of her voice, stopped squirming and allowed himself to be taken into Faye’s arms.

“I want to hold him, Faye.”

“You can change him,” her sister said with a grin.

“Okay, but I get to feed him, too.”

“His food is in the bag. I hope it hasn’t frozen out there in the snow.” Katie stood and immediately wished she hadn’t. She grabbed the arm of the settee and tried to sit back down before she fell. Jacob was at her side before her hand closed over the carved wood. His disapproval was so strong Katie could feel it like a wall between them. But with one swift movement he scooped her up in his arms, holding her high against his chest.

“Please, put me down.” She had never felt so helpless in her life. She didn’t like it, not one bit.

“If my aunt Almeda says you’re spending the night, you’re spending the night,” Jacob replied in the same cold, gruff voice he’d used before. Again, Katie felt the fine tremors in his muscles and realized this time the tension in him was not from the exertion of carrying her in his arms, but having her near at all.

Who was Katherine? she wondered again.

Katie lifted her aching head, determined to ask him, but one look at Jacob’s hard jaw and set, uncompromising features drove the question from her mind.

He carried her up the curving staircase, pausing for a moment at the half-landing to allow his aunt Hazel to precede them the rest of the way. He stopped in front of a door some distance down the long, well-lighted upper hallway and waited as Hazel switched on the overhead light and turned down the quilt-covered spindle bed in the middle of the room.

“I’ll fetch a heating pad for your feet, my dear. And what about your night things?” she asked, turning away from the humpbacked cedar chest at the foot of the bed, her arms full of blankets.

“In my bag,” Katie mumbled as Jacob let her legs slide free of his grip. He kept his arms around her as her feet found the floor, but his touch was impersonal. Katie shivered again but not entirely from her fever. His hands were warm and strong, his touch sure and confident. He would be a skilled and demanding lover, or a formidable foe.

She sat on the firm, comfortable mattress as quickly as her aching muscles and spinning head would allow. She couldn’t imagine where such wayward thoughts were coming from.

“Your nightclothes?” Hazel was asking her again.

Katie wasn’t certain how to tell her hostess she’d be sleeping in an oversize T-shirt she’d bought in Gainesville their first night out but had never worn. She’d been afraid to stop for the night anywhere along the way. She’d slept—if that’s what you could call her restless catnaps with Kyle in her arms—on the bus.

“Here’s your tote,” Janet announced, appearing in the doorway. The room was large and high ceilinged but it now seemed filled to overflowing with people.

“Thank you,” Katie said. “If you’ll show me where the bathroom is, I’ll…change.” She couldn’t help but be aware of Jacob’s presence in the room. She was suddenly very reluctant to talk about nightclothes and bedtime rituals in front of him.

“It’s right next door, my dear. That’s why I had Jacob put you in this room.”

“There are only two bathrooms in this old pile,” Janet complained. “The other one’s downstairs, where Almeda sleeps. She can’t climb the stairs anymore.”

“This house is over a century old,” Hazel explained. “Bathrooms were a luxury when it was built, not a necessity.”

“I hate hiking down that damn freezing hallway in my bare feet in the middle of the night,” Janet went right on complaining.

“Wear your slippers,” Hazel threw over her shoulder. She frowned down at the sleep shirt Katie had fished out of the tote from beneath a stack of disposable diapers. “That doesn’t look very warm, my dear.”

“I’ll be fine,” Katie insisted. She was starting to shiver again.

“Perhaps I should get you one of my nightgowns. Or Almeda’s?”

“No, really.” Their kindness was limitless, and for that reason overwhelming. “All I need are a couple of aspirins and some sleep.” She glared at Dr. Jacob Owens briefly. Why hadn’t he suggested something to make her feel better?

“Here’s the little one,” Faye or Lois announced, sliding past Janet, still firmly anchored in the doorway. She was carrying a dry and sated but still-sniffling Kyle in her arms. “He’s all ready for bed,” she said, indicating the one-piece terry sleeper she’d obviously found in the tote, “but he still wants his mamma.”

Katie let the sleep shirt fall into her lap and held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart.” She cuddled her son in her arms. He gave her the quick hard hug he’d just learned how to give and smiled brightly.

“Hi,” he said, hiccuping on a sob. “Hi,” he repeated, loudly and plainly. It was one of his favorite words.

“How old is he?” Hazel asked, closing the chest. It seemed she had decided not to press the matter of the nightgown.

“Fifteen months,” Katie said, holding her son close to her heart, absorbing his warmth and his unconditional baby love.

“What about his father?” Jacob asked.

This time Katie had no trouble meeting his hard, assessing gaze.

“He’s dead,” she said bluntly. “Kyle’s all I have left in the world.” She held the little boy out to him. “Please take a look at him. He seems fine, but considering we were involved in an accident, I think a doctor should examine him.”

Jacob’s arms remained stiffly at his sides. He made no attempt to take the baby from her. Katie’s arms began to tremble from a combination of fatigue and Kyle’s weight dragging on her shoulders. Her son was a strong, sturdy little boy. She sat him on her lap.

“What kind of a doctor are you, anyway? You won’t give me so much as an aspirin. And you won’t even touch my son?” Her indignation got the better of her tongue. “What are you, some kind of mad scientist or something?”

Jacob laughed, but the harsh grating sound only sent more shivers racing down Katie’s spine. “Closer than you think. My aunts are very fond of introducing me by my title. The ‘Doctor’ is academic, not medical. I have a Ph.D. in microbiology.”

“Jacob was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee.”

“Now I’m the science teacher at Owenburg High. But I’m not so far beyond redemption that I’d begrudge you two aspirins. And if I was,” he said with what might have been the beginning of a very reluctant smile, “my aunts would have my hide.”

Maybe it was her fever? Maybe it was that phantom smile? Katie wasn’t sure afterward what made her say it, but she had to know. “And who was Katherine?”

The curl of a smile turned into a sneer, then disappeared completely. “She was my wife.” He turned on his heel and left the room.

“Oh, dear.” Hazel watched him go.

“I thought he was getting better,” Faye—or Lois?—said with a sigh. “It’s a good thing school’s back in session tomorrow or he’d be shut up in his cabin for days.”

“Grief is a dreadful thing when it turns inward,” Hazel said very softly. “I’ll get you aspirin and a glass of water.”

“How long has Katherine been dead?”

“Three and a half years.” Janet took three steps into the room. “We don’t talk about it.”

“I see. I’ll apologize before I leave.”

“Best not mention it again,” Janet said flatly. “We have a baby bed.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the doorway. “But it’s in the attic. The twins and I will bring it down tomorrow.”

“Please, don’t bother. We won’t be imposing on you any longer than necessary. If we push a chair or something against the edge of the bed so he doesn’t roll off, he can sleep with me,” Katie said hurriedly. She didn’t want to think about Jacob Owens or his dead wife any more that night. It would be hard enough finding the courage to face him in the morning before she left this place.

If she ever saw him again. The prospect of never laying eyes on Jacob Owens again in her life was not quite as appealing as it should have been but she felt too miserable to analyze her feelings.

“We can arrange that.” Janet went off in search of furniture to act as a guardrail for Kyle. Hazel went to get the aspirin and a glass of water. Faye—or was it Lois?—smiled a good-night and left the room, as well. Katie and Kyle were alone.

“I feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Katie confessed to her son as she nuzzled the soft, warm skin at the nape of his neck. “Except I don’t think there’s a tall, dark, very handsome ogre in Alice in Wonderland.”

She considered what she’d just said. “Handsome?” The word came out more of a snort than a question. “The man is not handsome. He’s a monster. A son of a…gun,” she finished hastily, remembering how quickly Kyle picked up new words these days. “But,” she said thoughtfully, sitting her son in the middle of the bed as she started to undress. “I think he’s an ogre with a broken heart.”

“Is she asleep?” Jacob asked his aunt Hazel as she came through the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen.

“Yes. She’s exhausted, poor thing, but I don’t think she’s seriously ill.”

“Great-grandmother’s cherry bark tea will fix her right up,” Almeda said from her customary place at the head of the oblong hickory table that had stood in the window alcove since his father’s father was a boy.

Janet followed her sister into the kitchen. She was trailed closely by the twins. “Jacob. We thought you’d gone back to your cabin.” The younger Owens sisters exchanged speaking looks.

“I wanted to check on the furnace before I turn in for the night,” he said, not quite truthfully. He didn’t want his aunts alone in the house with that woman, although he didn’t want to say so and bring their combined wrath down on his head. He didn’t trust Kate Smith’s story, or her intentions, even though she did look sick and tired and terrified beneath her know-it-all facade. He wondered, briefly, what she was really running away from.