LITMIR.BIZ

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      “THIS IS GREAT, AIDAN. Really great.”

      The rare sentiment coming from Dylan as they looked at the packed table touched him. He loved seeing his youngest brother smile again after so many months when they weren’t sure he would survive his injuries sustained in an ambush in Afghanistan.

      His stomach growled. “Everything looks delicious, doesn’t it?”

      “Hope there’s enough to go around now that Jamie rolled in. I would hate to have to fight you for the last piece of ham.”

      “You know you would lose, brother. I have no mercy and I fight dirty.”

      Dylan grinned. “You always did, which is one of the things we love about you.”

      The rest of his family had started to gather in small groups and take seats at the big dining table. Everyone looked so happy that his heart seemed to expand in his chest—just like the Grinch in the book he had read to the little ones the other day.

      Down at the other end of the table, he saw Eliza sit down with Maddie sandwiched between her and Charlotte.

      With all the in-laws and grandchildren, his family didn’t fit all together anywhere else, even in Pop’s big house in Hope’s Crossing. Usually the children complained about having to be separated into another room. He had purposely had a huge table made from planed hickory logs so that he could have everyone together—though it was still tight, he had to admit. He might have to commission a second table to go next to it, at the rate the Caines were growing.

      When everyone sat down, he turned to his father, whom he had seated at the head of the table out of respect. “Pop, do you want to say a few words before we eat?”

      Silly question, he knew. Dermot was Irish. He always had something to say.

      His father stood and smiled at his progeny. “Only this. What a year we have had.”

      He smiled at Katherine, elegant and graceful. She blushed and smiled back and Aidan couldn’t help thinking how perfect they were. Their courtship had taken more than a decade but perhaps that only made it all the sweeter.

      “Three weddings and another in the New Year. Our table is more crowded every year, just as it should be.”

      “Get your elbow out of my plate,” Jamie teased to Charlotte, who made a face.

      Dermot smiled at his squabbling children, then grew serious again. “Every family goes through struggle. Alas, nobody escapes pain in this world, like it or not. We are no different. We have suffered loss and sorrow, sometimes so great we didn’t know how to get through it. But we are the stronger for our pain. It is our trials that bind us together. They remind us we must walk through the dark times so we can fully appreciate the light. The joy and love and miracles around us. I hope we never lose sight of how much we need each other, in good times and bad. Slàinte.”

      Everyone toasted each other. As he looked around the family at his brothers, at Charlotte, at their spouses and children and stepchildren, Aidan suddenly knew what he had to do. I hope we never lose sight of how much we need each other, in good times and bad. He had lost sight of that. Eliza was right. He had been selfishly confident he could handle anything life threw at him.

      He had been so wrong.

      He stood up quickly. “Before we eat, I...need to say something, as well.”

      Carter, the kid who was always hungry, made an impatient little sound but was quickly shushed by Lucy.

      Everyone looked at him with expectant faces. His gaze traveled the table and finally stopped on Eliza, watching him with a curious expression on her lovely, calm features.

      “Thank you all for coming. I know it’s a little different having the holidays somewhere besides Hope’s Crossing.”

      “Different but wonderful,” Charlotte assured him.

      “Right. Well, I just wanted to say how happy I am that you all took time out of your busy lives to come here at my request. Also...I owe you an apology. In retrospect, this might not be the appropriate moment for it when Carter there is ready to gnaw through the table but I don’t know when I can get everybody together, sitting still. It will only take a second, I promise.”

      Eliza watched him with dawning awareness in her gaze.

      He cleared his throat. “Something happened to me this year, something tough I thought I could handle alone. It’s recently come to my attention that by keeping it to myself and not letting my family know when I was going through a rough patch, I was being selfish and maybe even thoughtless and insensitive.”

      “What is it, son?” Dermot asked. “What’s happened?”

      This was a mistake. He should have waited until after the holidays, maybe tomorrow evening after the burst of Christmas excitement had passed. He didn’t want to ruin dinner. If he hadn’t been so fatigued, he might have thought this through a little better and made a different choice. Or maybe he would have chickened out and not said anything at all.

      Whatever, it was too late to back down.

      He glanced at Eliza again. She gave him an encouraging smile and he felt almost light-headed from the approval there. A thought that had been playing through his mind for the past few days, random and scattered, seemed to coalesce into one clear realization. Loving someone—truly loving them—meant exposing your weaknesses to them, not only projecting your strengths.

      With a sigh, he parted his hair to show the scar, his most glaring sign of weakness. “I had a brain tumor removed in September, the week after Pop and Katherine got married.”

      There was an almost audible collective indrawn breath and then the dining room erupted into a dozen different questions.

      Everyone looked shocked, his father most of all, and he was suddenly profoundly sorry for shutting them out.

      “Don’t worry, it was benign,” he assured them quickly. “The surgery went well and they were able to remove the whole thing. I’m doing fine now, just some lingering fatigue and headaches once in a while and a little double vision if I’m at the computer too long.”

      “Aidan. Why didn’t you say anything?” Charlotte exclaimed. “A brain tumor. I can’t believe this! And you didn’t want your family to help you?”

      “I had what I thought were good reasons. The timing of the surgery, for one thing, just days after Pop’s wedding while he was on his honeymoon. The distance between us, with the surgery in California and you all in Colorado. And,” he admitted, “a good part of it was pride. I’m...not good at allowing myself to need other people. I’m learning, though. I invited you all here for the holidays, right?”

      “Just goes to show that even smart guys can sometimes be idiot assholes,” Dylan said gruffly.

      He tore his gaze away from Eliza, who was smiling softly at him now, he saw, and maybe even wiping a tear or two away with her napkin.

      “True enough. It was wrong of me to keep it from you. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Contrary to what I would like to think, I do make them. This particular mistake won’t happen again. We can talk about this later but for now, let’s eat before all this delicious food is too cold to enjoy. Pop. Do you want to say grace or pick somebody?”

      “It’s your home, son. Seems to me you should do the honors, since you have more than most to be thankful for today.”

      Damn right. And he wasn’t about to forget it.

      With a nod, he reached for Charlotte’s hand on one side and his niece Maggie’s on the other and bowed his head.

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      ELIZA HAD NEVER slept well on Christmas Eve.

      When she was a little girl, she had

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