LITMIR.BIZ

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were just getting ready to start the annual gift-exchange game, she realized, where everybody picked a wrapped gift and passed it either left or right while someone—in this case, Janie Hamilton—said certain words when she read a passage from a holiday book.

      “We saved a spot for you,” Claire told her. “Pass left when you hear the word the and right when you hear and. What are we reading, Janie?”

      Janie held up a familiar Dr. Seuss book. “Sorry. My kids have all the Christmas books in their rooms, which are a total mess until I shovel them out. All I could find was How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

      “My fave,” Alex said, stretching her feet out on a cushioned ottoman.

      Maura took the empty seat and spent the next few minutes giving an Oscar-worthy performance of someone enjoying herself as, with much laughter, they passed the gifts back and forth, until Janie finished with the Grinch carving the roast beast and everybody ended up with their final gift.

      To her delight, her prize was Charlotte Caine’s gift, a beautifully presented bag of almond brickle from Charlotte’s store down the street, Sugar Rush.

      “Thanks, Charley. Just what I needed!” She smiled, thinking how pretty the other woman looked tonight in her white silk blouse and ruby earrings, despite the extra pounds she carried.

      The distraction of opening presents gave her a much-needed chance to gather her composure, so she was almost ready when Ruth finally brought up what she knew was on everyone’s mind.

      “So it’s true,” she said in her abrupt way. “Harry Lange’s son is Sage’s father.”

      She would like to deny it, but what would be the point? Everybody knew now, and she couldn’t stopper that particular bottle. Trust Ruth not to shy away from the topic everybody else had been avoiding.

      “Yes,” she said, with as much calm as she could muster.

      “I always knew that boy was a troublemaker,” Ruth said promptly.

      “He wasn’t. Not really.” Jack might have been on fire with grief for his mother and with anger and bitterness toward his father, but it had consumed him quietly. To everyone else, he had been hardworking and reliable. An excellent student, a diligent employee at his summer construction job.

      “A decent man stays around to take care of his responsibilities,” Ruth said stubbornly.

      “He didn’t know he had responsibilities here, Ruth,” she said, wondering if her voice sounded as tired to everyone else as it did to her. “I never told him I was pregnant.”

      “Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?”

      A bubble of laughter with a slight hysterical edge welled up inside her. “Yes. Yes, it was. Very stupid,” she answered.

      “What was stupid?” Angie asked, on Ruth’s other side.

      “Not telling the Lange boy she was pregnant so he could step up and do the right thing.” Ruth said.

      Like marry her? Oh, that would have been a complete nightmare. She had believed it then, and nothing had changed her mind in the intervening years. She had loved Jackson Lange with a desperate passion, and he obviously hadn’t loved her back nearly as intensely. If he had, he never would have left.

      Only after he took off did she realize the twisted way she had subconsciously reenacted her own childhood in their relationship. Her father had walked away from their family in order to pursue his own professional and academic dreams. By falling hard for Jack just months later—an angry young man who already had one foot through the crack in the door on his way out of Hope’s Crossing—hadn’t she perhaps been trying to replicate and repair her family life by trying to keep him with her, as she couldn’t keep her father?

      Her love hadn’t been enough to keep Jack in Hope’s Crossing any more than she had been able to keep her father from walking away from their family.

      “Look, you’re all my dearest friends,” she said now, realizing everyone’s eyes were on her, though they made a pretense of carrying on conversation. She supposed it was better to confront the weird turn her life had just taken head-on rather than dance around it. “I don’t want to put a damper on the party, but I know everyone is wondering. You’re all just too kind to pry.”

      Except Ruth, anyway, but she didn’t need to point out the obvious to anyone there.

      “I might as well get this out in the open, then we can go back to enjoying the rest of the party. Jack and I dated in high school. We kept it secret because…well, because of a lot of things going on in our respective families. the timing didn’t seem right.”

      Her mother’s lips tightened, and Angie reached out and rubbed a hand on Mary Ella’s arm. She wanted to assure her mother that James McKnight’s defection of his family and the emotional fallout from that hadn’t been the only reason for their secrecy.

      After years of mental illness, Jack’s mother had committed suicide herself just a few months earlier. Sometimes Maura wondered if Jack had only turned to her out of a desperate effort to push away the pain.

      “After Jack left town, I discovered I was pregnant. For a lot of reasons that seemed very good at the time, I decided not to tell him I was pregnant and to raise Sage by myself.” She lifted her chin. “Personally, I don’t think she’s suffered for my decisions. She’s bright and beautiful and well-adjusted. Chris has been a great stepfather to her, and she loves him. If our marriage had lasted, I’m sure he would have adopted her.”

      Okay, she was spilling way too much here. She caught herself and wanted to change the subject, but on the other hand, these were her dearest friends. She would rather be open with them from the outset about Jack and Sage, rather than have them all shake their heads and worry about her behind her back. Hadn’t she endured enough of that since Layla’s death?

      “How did they find each other?” Alex asked.

      “As you all must know, Jack is an architect. Apparently Sage attended a lecture he gave a few days ago on campus. She knew he was from Hope’s Crossing and they struck up a conversation. In the course of the conversation, they both connected the dots. And here we are.”

      Silence descended on the group as everyone mulled the information. Claire was the first to break it. “How are you doing with all this?”

      “Peachy. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s all very civil.” Except for that moment when she had wanted to smack him and tell him how he had shattered her heart. “It will be interesting to see what happens. My hope is that Jack and Sage can develop a friendship. They have a shared interest in architecture, after all. Perhaps Jack can, I don’t know, mentor her. Help her with her studies, maybe.”

      “That would be great,” Angie said. “Does that mean you think he’s sticking around Hope’s Crossing?”

      Oh, she hoped not. The very idea made her stomach cramp. “I doubt it. Jack isn’t a big fan of our little neck of the woods. Not to mention that he also hates his father.”

      “Not a big shocker there,” Mary Ella muttered. She had a long-standing feud with Harry Lange, the wealthiest man in town, who seemed to think he owned everyone and everything in town—not just the ski resort he had developed, but everybody in Hope’s Crossing who owed a living to the tourists he had brought in to enjoy it.

      “Is there anything you need from us?” Claire asked.

      A little spiked cider would be a good start. “I’d like to get back to the party. You have all found time in your holiday-crazed lives for this, and I don’t want to ruin everything with more drama. Can we just forget about Jackson Lange for now?”

      Everybody seemed to agree, to her great relief. Katherine Thorne asked Janie a question about one of her children who had broken an arm sledding off the hill at Miner’s Park, and the conversation turned.

      She loved these women.

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