A Christmas Dinner on Marshall Street (The Hills of Burlington Book 5) Read online

  A Christmas Dinner

  on Marshall Street

  The Hills of Burlington

  By Jacie Middlemann

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Christmas Dinner on Marshall Street – The Hills of Burlington

  Copyright © 2016 by Jacie Middlemann

  Cover Art by ADW

  Dedicated to all of my wonderful aunts…who filled our lives with immeasurable joy and set the example for us to follow.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fran stood at her kitchen counter for just a few more moments. The quiet gave her comfort as she forced herself to consider what she had put off for weeks. She shook her head wearily. That wasn't right. Not true. She wasn't going to get anywhere if she wasn't honest with herself. She hadn't allowed herself to think about it for far longer than weeks. It had been months. If she was completely honest it had been almost a year. And what did that say about her?

  She let her thoughts drift to the meal she'd sat down to with her family last Christmas. The traditional dinner with her children that she and her husband looked forward to throughout the rest of the year. She let out a quiet sigh that silently expressed all that she hadn't yet said out loud. But her thoughts voiced them firmly in her head. Not this year.

  She poured herself another cup of coffee from the pot that she had just freshly brewed. She could still hear her husband's words reverberating almost as if he'd just said them. In truth, he had said them more than once. Maybe with different words. Maybe in different ways. But most certainly with the same firm resolve. There was no doubt in his mind. And the meaning behind his words, however he'd phrased them, had never wavered.

  With her cup held between her hands she carried it into her front room where their Christmas tree stood as it had for all the years they’d lived here. Though it was still early in the day she had turned on the lights that covered the tall tree that just brushed the surface of their twelve foot ceilings of ornately molded tin that had been fashioned over a hundred years ago. She could still remember Cade's soft whisper when they'd bought the historical home what seemed a lifetime ago. We have to get a taller Christmas tree. And they had. And in the years that followed she had added more ornaments so their new and taller tree was covered with them as had been the one before it.

  If she did as her husband wanted, this would be the first year she would celebrate Christmas elsewhere. Not in her home of so many years and not surrounded by her children as she had since their birth and all the years since. She reached out with one hand and set one of the less fragile ornaments spinning in its place, a kaleidoscope of glittering colors that caught the eye and lightened the soul. Just as Christmas and all it meant had always done for her.

  But last year had been different. So had been the year before that if she was honest with herself. Almost as if it had been a prelude to last Christmas. She would have seen it if she'd been paying attention. If she'd allowed herself to see it. But she hadn't wanted to. Who would?

  "Frannie?" Cade Wrightmire walked up behind his wife. His approach as quiet as was his low spoken voice. He knew her thoughts almost as if they were his own. He might not share them, most certainly didn't share her worries, but he understood her and that she would. In some ways that only deepened his anger that had lingered over the last many months. But he felt as strongly about this as he had about getting Frannie in front of a minister over thirty years ago.

  "I'm okay," she said, answering his unspoken question.

  He knew better but kept those thoughts to himself. "We're going to be spending Christmas with family, Frannie."

  "But not the family we've always spent it with," she said quietly.

  "No," he said, there was no denying that. "You haven't spent Christmas in Burlington since you were a little girl."

  "There hasn’t been a reason to," she said, her eyes on the sparkling tree. "There was no one there."

  "There is now," Cade said as he laid his hands gently on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. Pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her as he had too many times to count during their marriage.

  Fran smiled into his shoulder. She knew she had walked right to where he had wanted her to.

  “I’ve already talked to your Aunt Charlie,” Cade said softly. He continued to rub his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. There was strength there, he knew. But there was also a fragility she allowed few to see. He saw. He’d always seen it but unlike others hadn’t ever taken advantage of it.

  “You’ve been busy,” Fran said, wondering what he and her aunt, the widow of her father’s brother, had spoken of.

  “Busy enough,” Cade said lightly. “Charlie’s anxious to see you,” he said without elaborating on all else the older woman had to say as well. No one cut through the garbage as well as Charlie McMuerty did and always had. He had little doubt that would ever change. He had been surprised to find out she was active enough on social media to know exactly why he wanted to get his wife elsewhere this holiday season. Once he was aware of that he wasn’t surprised that she would remember it. Charlie’s memory was sharp as ever. His surprise had come only from the realization she’d seen it in the first place. He was about as active on social media as George Washington. He only knew about what had gone on from their youngest daughter.

  Fran let out a quiet sigh. She knew he wanted to do what he thought was right. But she wondered if he could understand that ignoring it as if it hadn’t happened rarely solved anything. It hadn’t for her in all these last many months.

  “Fran, this once it might be a good thing to let him…to let all of them consider Christmas and the traditions we brought them up with, from a different view,” Cade said almost as if he were reading her mind.

  “I know you’re still not happy about what happened,” she said slowly. Venturing carefully in what they really hadn’t ever spoken about. At least not like they should have. And that was her fault. Her way of dealing with it had been by not dealing with it at all. And hadn’t that so often been her way?

  Cade let out a long and close to ragged sounding sigh. “You’re right about that,” he said. He wasn’t going to lie to her. They’d made many mistakes during their marriage but that wasn’t one of them. “I will admit though, that once we got past the initial surprise of it,” he said slowly, thinking to himself that was a mild way of putting it but he couldn’t think of any other at the moment that worked better. “I realized you were right in not wanting to confront Blair about it. Doing so would have only made me feel better and accomplished little else.”

  “I know it wasn’t easy for you,” Fran said quietly. She knew admitting as much as he just had wasn’t easy for him either.

  “There’s a lot in life that hasn’t been easy, Frannie. You know that as well as I do. We deal with it and get past it just like we always have,” Cade said, then paused for a moment before continuing. He decided they needed to get it out there in the open instead of letting it continue to stew in the background. “He needs to understand that it was wrong, Fran. Letting it slide doesn’t help him one damn bit.”

  “I know that,” she said. And God, she knew it more than he could imagine. “But being lectured by us at this point in his life isn’t going to do that. It won’t achieve what needs to be.” She shook her head wearily then continued before he could respond. “
Anything we say about it won’t be heard, Cade. And more than that, what we say won’t matter when all he has to do is look around him to see others doing the very same as he is. Until someone else says something to him, someone who matters in a different way than we do, he’s simply not going to hear.” And it broke her heart to think of it.

  Cade swallowed the many arguments he would liked to have set out had it not been for the pain he knew his wife had endured a year ago and ever since. More than once he’d wanted to take his youngest son to task for the lack of consideration he’d blatantly shown for a woman who loved him more than any other…regardless of his idiocy. Instead he pressed the point that he’d begun to just weeks after last Christmas in preparation for the one only days away.

  “So, we’re good for Burlington?”

  Fran nestled in closer to the man who had been her best friend since long before their marriage and every day since. No matter how she felt about it she knew he was right. “We are,” she said quietly. He might be right but she knew too that this Christmas, no matter what had happened last year, wouldn’t be the same without her children…including the child who’d hurt her so much with only a handful of words. Yet even as those words still haunted her, she had so many others to remember as well. Words and memories that she held close to her heart. Ones that she remembered when she needed…to soften the hurt of the more recent ones of words so carelessly written for and to the new online world he felt more at home in than theirs.

  She thought of the little boy dressed in his favorite cartoon character pajamas, running to her with his arms spread wide, nestling close into her embrace as he looked over her shoulder at the same tree she now stood next to. Mama…he came. Santa came. Just like you said he would. And she remembered how he’d given her one of his sloppy kisses moments before he’d wiggled away to search for his name on the many gaily wrapped gifts piled under the tree. She held that cherished memory close. Let it settle in over the more recent one she would give dearly to be able to forget. She knew deep down in his heart he hadn’t meant them. But would give dearly if he hadn’t lost himself in the moment and taken another one to think before writing them, before sending them into the world where they could never be taken back…even if it were his desire to do so.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Aunt Charlie, it is so good to be here with you,” Fran said as she clung tight to her aunt. They’d arrived only minutes before to find her aunt sitting on the long porch of the Marshall Street house hat her aunt had grown up in.

  “Sweetie, I’m so glad you’re here,” Charlie McMuerty held her niece close as they walked through the front room of her childhood home towards the kitchen at the back of the house. “I just wish you could have visited sooner but spending Christmas with me makes up for all that.”

  Fran simply drew in the scent of her aunt’s favorite perfume. It was the same lilac scent that she could remember from her earliest childhood days when long visits to her aunt’s home in Burlington had been a summer tradition. Summers, she remembered, that had been filled with family. She could even now remember long days spent with her cousin, Carrie. Days that slid into nights spent whispering in the dark of her cousin’s bedroom long after the lights had been turned off and they’d been told to go to sleep.

  “I can’t wait to see Carrie,” Fran said as they stood at the back window and looked out to the Carriage House that sat at the back of the Marshall Street property. She knew her aunt lived there now with one of her granddaughters. “Are you certain it’s all right for us to stay here?” she asked. She knew that the property, both the house and the Carriage House behind it, was now owned by the daughter of one of her aunt’s sisters. And not just any niece but Mary Lane, an author of numerous novels that she herself had read long before she realized the family connection. As a child she’d played with Mary Elden but hadn’t connected her childhood playmate to the woman who’d become a favorite author of many not to mention the current owner of the house on Marshall Street. And not just this house as she’d learned in a phone conversation with her aunt the night before. Mary Lane was also now the owner of her aunt’s former home on Woodhaven Street. The house was only a couple of blocks away, the very same place she and Carrie had spent all those nights softly whispering in the dark of her bedroom.

  “Of course it is,” Charlie said easily. She gave her niece another quick hug before moving to the refrigerator to find them something to drink. “Mary can’t wait to see you again. She knew exactly who I was talking about when I called to tell her you were visiting over the Christmas holiday. She well remembers the summers you spent with me.” She gave her niece a quiet smile. “She also remembers how much better you were than she was at the fancy footwork during your jump-rope years.”

  Fran smiled at the memory. “Carrie was better than I was,” she said with the smile spilling over into her voice.

  “At times,” Charlie agreed softly. “But you had your own style, Fran.” She gave the woman a quiet smile as she led her over to the table. “Sit with me and drink your juice. When Carrie gets here I’ll make some coffee for all of us.”

  “From everything I’ve heard she’s a very busy lady these days,” Fran said as she listened to the sounds of Cade dragging their luggage up the stairs. She knew him well enough to know once he was done he’d spread himself out on the big bed in the room they’d been given and either nap or patiently wait for her to come up. He was completely capable of sitting through a conversation such as the one she and her aunt were having. One that would continue when her cousin arrived. But he’d rather not and would simply keep out of it to start with instead of trying to find an excuse to leave once he’d stepped into it.

  “She is that, sweetie. No sooner than she and Court married, her stepson moved in with them. Addie wasn’t far behind. She moved in as soon as they finished the attic for Rob and Addie was able to take the room he’d been in until then.”

  “How is it working out with having two teenagers in the house?” Fran knew from experience it wasn’t an easy time for either adult or teen. She knew a little bit about Addie’s situation. She’d gotten several calls from Carrie over those first couple of months, sometimes for advice and sometimes just to talk. She also knew that living with her Aunt Carrie had been the best possible thing that could have happened for Addie. She knew it had been difficult but with time and Carrie’s never-ending patience the traumatized teenager had slowly recovered from the online harassment that had sent her parents into a panic. And with reason. The daughter who had been outgoing and filled with laughter and joy had suddenly and within only days retreated into a shell of silence. Yet for as much as she knew about the situation with Addie, she knew next to nothing about Rob, the son of Carrie’s first and now former husband, who was also living with Carrie and her new husband.

  “Everything is just wonderful,” Charlie said with absolute conviction in her voice. “It helps that Addie and Rob get along as well as they do. Being that they’re cousins you would hope for that but I wasn’t counting on it since they really only met when Rob came to live here. I was a little worried because in a way his arrival may have made Addie feel a little displaced in their little family. But I was worried for no reason. It’s worked out wonderfully.”

  Fran ran her fingers along the edge of the cold glass holding the juice her aunt had poured for her. “How is Rob doing?” she asked quietly. Most of what she did know about the young man was what had been splayed across the news in all formats possible. She understood the only reason for that was because his father, Carrie’s former husband, was a U.S. Senator, so any form of tragedy involving them was apparently newsworthy. In this case it had been the death of Rob’s mother, a woman who’d been a bit more than an acquaintance in the early years of Nick and Carrie’s marriage.

  Fran sighed at all the pain it must have caused Carrie then and now though her cousin would never admit to it. She herself had never been fond of Nick. But then neither had she known her cousin’s husband all that
well. But despite all that had happened, not to mention their divorce, Carrie had taken in the son who was the result of that long ago affair. From the little she’d heard from her aunt, even now Carrie and her new husband were doing all they could to help him recover from the injuries he’d suffered in the tragic car accident that had killed his mother. She looked back up at her aunt. Asked the question she wouldn’t feel right asking Carrie. “It sounds like he’s getting along well with Addie but what about with Carrie? How is that working out?”

  Charlie lifted her glass and took a small sip of the cold liquid as she thought about Fran’s question. If it were anyone else she’d give them a quick answer and leave it at that. But it wasn’t just anyone. “In all honesty I had some concerns about her decision for Rob to live with them.” She let out a quiet sigh. “Especially so soon after she and Court were married. But it’s working out. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some rough times. Rob has had a lot to deal with.” She gave her niece a somber look. “And unfortunately it’s not just having to deal with the loss of his mother. Several weeks ago the media finally figured out where he was. They got to him before Court and Carrie knew they were even around. Rob handled it well but it was very difficult on him. He’s barely nineteen and they surrounded him like a caged animal. For as much as he tries not to let it show, maybe even to himself, he grieves. None of them cared one wit about that.”

  “He lost his mother,” Fran said gently.

  “Yes, but for as much as he loved her I’m afraid there was a bit of resentment there as well. There were things between them that were left unresolved when she died.” Charlie closed her eyes for a moment, thought of all that the young man she’d grown to care deeply for continued to deal with. “And Carrie believes that he was conscious immediately after the accident and that his mother was as well for a time before she died.”