Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour (140 page)

“You don’t have to tell me, Max.”

“You know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world—”

She silenced him with a touch. “I’m glad for you. Really. You’ve been alone too long.”

“You’re a good woman, Trudi Hightower.”

“And you’re a good man. Now quit being such a chickenshit and ask her out for a date. Unless I miss my guess, it’s Friday night, and I know a doctor who shouldn’t be going to the movies alone anymore.”

He leaned down and kissed her. “Good-bye, Trudi.”

“ ’Bye, Max.”

He climbed into his truck and headed for the theater. He had no intention of going to Julia, but when he came to Magnolia Street, he turned left instead of right, and drove down old Highway 101.

All the way to her house he told himself he was crazy.

All or nothing.

He’d had
all
once; it had practically killed him.

In her yard, he parked and sat there, staring through the windshield at the house. Finally, he got out, walked up to the front door and knocked.

Julia opened the door. Even in a pair of faded Levi’s and a white cable-knit sweater that was two sizes too big, she looked beautiful. “Max,” she said, obviously surprised. She eased forward and closed the door behind her, blocking the way.

“You want to go to the movies?”

Idiot.
He sounded like a desperate teenager.

Her answer was a smile that started slowly, then overtook her face. “Cal and Ellie are here playing Scrabble, so yeah … I could go to the show. What’s playing?”

“I have no idea.”

She laughed. “That’s my favorite.”

The movie, as it turned out, was
To Have and Have Not.
Julia sat next to Max in the darkened theater, watching one of the great screen pairings of all time. When it was over, and she and Max were walking through the beautifully restored lobby of the Rose Theater, Julia got the feeling that they were being stared at.

“People are talking about us,” she said, sidling close to him.

“Welcome to Rain Valley.” He took her arm and led her out of the theater and across the street to where his truck was parked. “I’d take you out for some pie, but everything’s closed.”

“You do like your pie.”

He grinned. “And you thought you knew nothing about me.”

She turned, looked up at him, no longer smiling. “I don’t know much.”

He stared down at her; she expected him to come up with some smart-ass comeback. Instead he kissed her. When he drew back, he said quietly, “There. You know that.”

When she didn’t say anything, he opened the door and she got in.

All the way back to her house they talked about things that didn’t matter. The movie. The baby he’d delivered tonight, the waning salmon populations and declining old-growth forests. His plans for Christmas.

At her front door she let him take her in his arms. It was amazing how comfortable she felt there. This time, when he bent down to kiss her, she met him more than halfway, and when it was over and he drew back, she wanted more. “Thanks for the movie, Max.”

He kissed her again, so softly she hardly had time to taste him before it was over. “Good night, Julia.”

By late December the holidays were first and foremost on everyone’s mind. The Rotary Club had hung the streetlamp decorations and the Elks’ had decorated their Giving Tree. On every corner in town there were tree lots set up; local scout troops were going door-to-door, selling wrapping paper.

Today had dawned bright and clear, with an ice blue sky unmarred by even the thinnest cloud. Along the riverbanks, where the ground was warmer than the air, a layer of pink fog rose from the bending shoreline to the lowest branches of the trees, turning everything beyond it to a blurry uncertainty. It was easy to picture magic in that haze; fairies and spirits and animals that lived nowhere else on Earth.

All day, as usual, Julia had been at Alice’s side. They’d spent a lot of time outside in the yard.

Julia was trying to prepare Alice for the next big step. Town.

It wouldn’t be easy. The first hurdle was the car.

“Town,” Julia said quietly, looking down at Alice. “Remember the pictures in the books? I want us to go to town, where the people live.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Out?” she whispered, her mouth trembling.

“I’ll be with you all the time.”

She shook her head.

Julia carefully extricated herself from Alice’s clinging hold. Very carefully, she held Alice’s hands in hers. She wanted to ask the girl if she trusted her, but trust was too complicated a concept for a child with such limited verbal skills. “I know you’re scared, honey. It’s a big world out there, and you’ve seen the worst of it.” She touched Alice’s soft, warm cheek. “But hiding out here with me and Ellie can’t be your future. You’ve got to come into the world.”

“Stay.”

Julia started to respond, but before she’d formed the first word, she was interrupted by a honking horn.

Alice’s face lit up. “LEllie!” She let go of Julia and ran to the window by the front door. The dogs followed her, barking out a welcome, falling over themselves in a rush. Elwood knocked Alice over. The girl’s giggles rose up from the tangle of bodies on the floor. Jake licked her cheek and nudged her.

The front door opened. Ellie stood there, grinning, then dragged a Christmas tree into the house.

For the next hour Julia and Ellie struggled to get the tree in its stand, upright, and clamped down. When they were finally finished, both of them were sweating.

“No wonder Dad always drank heavily before he put up the tree,” Ellie said, standing back and surveying their work.

“It’s not
absolutely
straight,” Julia pointed out.

“Who are we? NASA engineers? It’s straight enough.”

The dogs, sensing that Ellie was finally done with her task, made a run across the floor.

“Boys! Down!” Ellie said, just before they ran into her and sent her flying.

Alice giggled. The minute the sound slipped out, she covered her mouth with her hand. She looked at Julia and pointed at Ellie.

“Your LEllie needs to get control over her animals,” Julia said with a wry smile.

Ellie emerged from the tangle of canine bodies. Laughing, she pushed the hair from her eyes. “I should have disciplined them as puppies, it’s true.” Climbing free, she stepped away from the dogs and headed for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Julia called after her.

“You’ll see.”

A few moments later Ellie came back downstairs; she was carrying several huge red poinsettia–decorated boxes, which she set down on the floor by the Christmas tree.

Julia recognized them instantly. “Our ornaments?”

“Every one.”

Julia moved closer. Lifting the first box top, she found skeins and skeins of lights. All the bulbs were white, because Mom said it was the color of angels and hope. She and Ellie coiled the tree in those lights, wrapped the branches in the way they’d been taught. It was the first time they’d decorated a tree together since high school.

When the lights were all in place, Ellie plugged the cords into the wall.

Alice gasped.

“You think she’s ever seen a Christmas tree before?” Ellie asked quietly, standing beside Julia.

Julia shook her head. She went to the box and picked up a shiny red apple ornament. It hung from her finger on a filigree gold thread. Kneeling in front of Alice, she offered the girl the ornament. “On the tree, Alice. Make it pretty.”

Alice frowned. “Tee?”

“Remember the book we read.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
?”

“Ginch.” She nodded, but her frown didn’t ease.

“Remember the Who’s tree? Pretty tree, you said.”

“Oh,” Alice said, blowing out her breath on the word. She understood.

Julia nodded.

Alice took the ornament carefully, as if it were made of spun sugar instead of bright plastic. She walked slowly across the room, stepped over the dogs and stopped, staring at the tree for a long time. Finally, she placed the gold thread on the very tip of the highest branch she could reach. Then, slowly, she turned around, looking worried.

Ellie clapped enthusiastically. “Perfect!”

A smile broke over Alice’s face, transforming her for this wonderful moment into an ordinary little girl. She ran to the box, chose another ornament, then carried it carefully to Ellie. “LEllie. Prittee.”

Ellie bent down. “Who is giving me this pretty ornament?”

“Girl. Give.”

Ellie touched Alice’s hair, tucked a flyaway strand behind her little shell pink ear. “Can you say Alice?”

She pointed emphatically toward the tree. “Put.”

“You’re creating a little dictator here, Jules,” Ellie said, moving toward the tree.

“A nameless one,” Julia said quietly. It stuck in her craw that Alice couldn’t give them her name and wouldn’t take the name they gave her.

Alice ran to the box and chose another red ornament. After clapping and hopping up and down at Ellie’s placement of her ornament, Alice darted over to Julia. “Jew-lee. Prittee.”

Alice was literally sparkling right now. Julia had never seen the girl smile so brightly. She swept down and pulled Alice into her arms for a hug.

Alice giggled and hung on. “Kiss-mas tee. Nice.”

Julia twirled her around until they both were breathless. Then, smiling, they moved on to the task of decorating the tree.

“It’s the prettiest tree we’ve ever had,” Ellie said, sitting on the sofa with a mug of Bailey’s in her hand and a Costco fake mink throw rug over her feet.

“That’s because Dad used to buy the biggest one on the lot, then cut off the top to make it fit in the room.”

Ellie laughed at the memory. It was one she’d forgotten: The great big tree, taking up the whole corner of the room, its top hacked off; Mom frowning in disappointment, swatting Dad’s arm.
You never listen, Tom,
Mom would say,
a tree isn’t supposed to be trimmed on top. I should make you get us another one.

But it took only moments, sometimes less, before he had her smiling again, even laughing.
Now, now, Bren,
he’d say in that gravelly voice of his,
why should our tree be like everyone else’s? I’ve just given us a bit of oomph, I have. Right, girls?

Ellie had always answered first, shouting out her agreement and then running to her dad for his hug.

For the first time, as she held a memory in her hands, she tilted it, saw it instead from a different angle. The other little girl who’d been in the room, who’d never called out agreement with her father, whose opinion had never been sought.

Ellie looked at Julia over the rim of her mug. “How come he did it every year? Cut the top of the tree, I mean.”

Julia smiled. “You know Dad. He cared about what he cared about. The tree didn’t matter so he didn’t think about it.”

“But you and Mom cared.”

“You know Dad,” Julia said.

“I’m like him,” Ellie said. All her life she’d been proud of that fact.

“You always have been. People adore you, just as they adored him.”

Ellie took a sip of her drink. “Cal accused me of being selfish,” she said quietly.

“Really?”

“The correct response would have been surprise. Shock, even. Something like: how could he even
think
that?”

“Oh,” Julia said, trying not to smile.

“Say what’s on your mind,” Ellie snapped.

“When I was little, I had a huge crush on Cal. He was everything I dreamed of when I was eleven. But he only had eyes for you. He followed you everywhere. I was jealous every time you snuck out to be with him.”

“You knew about that?”

“We shared a bedroom. What am I, deaf? Just because I never told doesn’t mean I didn’t know. The point is, I remember when you dumped him. He kept coming around for the rest of that summer, tossing rocks at the window, but you never answered.”

“We grew apart.”

Julia gave her a look. “Come on. Once those football boys saw your new boobs, you were
in.
Poor Cal was left in the dust. And when you made cheerleader, well …” Julia shrugged. “You became royalty in this town and you loved every second. In that, you were like Dad. You … moved on from Cal, but somehow you kept him around like a moon caught in your orbit. It’s that magic you and Dad have. People can’t help loving you—even if you’re sometimes too focused on your own life.”

“So I
am
selfish. Is that why my marriages failed?”

“Is it?”

“Is that the kind of questions you learned in that decade of college?”

Julia laughed. “Exactly so. Here’s another one: how does it make you feel?”

Ellie didn’t quite know how to answer that. She’d heard this new picture of herself, but it didn’t feel like a reflection yet. It felt like a possibility, one she could change or talk her way out of if she really wanted to. She’d always thought of herself as a good person who really cared about others. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“For what?”

“I threw you to the media wolves. All I cared about was …” She started to say
finding Alice’s name,
but the pretty little lie caught in her throat. It was only partially true. “I didn’t want to fail. I hardly thought about your feelings.”

Julia surprised her by smiling. “Don’t worry about it.”

“If it matters, I didn’t really know how bad it would be for you. Maybe if I’d known—” At Julia’s look, Ellie laughed. “Okay, it wouldn’t have mattered. But I
am
sorry.”

“Don’t be. Really. Alice is my second chance. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

They were silent for a long moment.

“I want to adopt her,” Julia said finally. “Alice needs to know she belongs someplace, and with someone, even if she doesn’t really understand it all yet. And I need her.”

“What happens if someone shows up to claim her?”

Softly, Julia said: “Then I’ll need my sister, won’t I?”

Ellie’s throat tightened. She realized right then how much she’d missed when she and Julia went their separate ways, and how much it mattered to her that they had come back together. “You can count on me.”