A Cedar Cove Christmas

A minute or two later, his brothers were back. “The house is locked up. Door wouldn’t budge.”



This wasn’t going the way Linc had planned. “Okay, so maybe they aren’t home.”



“Then where are they?” Mel demanded.



“How am I supposed to know?” Linc asked, growing irritated.



“You’re the one with all the answers, remember?”



“Hey, hey,” Ned said, coming to stand between his brothers. “Let’s skip the sarcasm. We’re looking for Mary Jo, remember?”



“Where is she?” Mel asked.



“I haven’t got a clue,” Ned returned calmly. “But someone must.”



“Maybe we should ask a neighbor,” Mel said.



“Be my guest.” Linc motioned widely with his arm.



“Okay, I will. I’ll try…that one.” Mel marched down the steps, strode across the street and walked up to the front door. He pounded on it. Even from this distance Linc could hear his knock.



An older woman with pink rollers in her hair pulled aside the drape and peeked out.



“I just saw someone,” Ned yelled. “There’s someone inside.”



Linc had seen her, too.



“Why isn’t she answering the door?” Mel asked loudly, as if the two of them had some secret insight into this stranger.



“Would you answer if King Kong was trying to get in your front door?” Linc asked. Apparently Mel hadn’t figured out that most people responded better to more sensitive treatment.



“Okay, fine,” Mel shouted after several long minutes.



“Be that way, lady.”



“She just doesn’t want to answer the door,” Ned shouted back.



Mel ignored that and proceeded to the next house.



“Knock more quietly this time,” Linc instructed.



Mel ignored that, too. Walking to the door, he pushed the buzzer, then turned and glanced over his shoulder. This house seemed friendlier, Linc thought. A large evergreen wreath hung on the door and lights sparkled from the porch columns.



Again no one answered.



Losing patience, Mel looked in the front window, framing his face with both hands. After peering inside for several seconds, he straightened and called out, “No one’s home here.”



“You want me to try?” Ned asked Linc. Mel wasn’t exactly making friends in the neighborhood.



“Do you think it’ll do any good?”



“Not really,” Ned admitted.



A piercing blare of sirens sounded in the distance, disrupting the tranquility of the night.



Mel hurried back across the street. “Everyone in the neighborhood seems to be gone. Except for the lady with those pink things in her hair.”



Despite their efforts, they obviously weren’t getting anywhere. “Now what?” Ned muttered.



“You got any ideas?” Linc asked his two brothers, yelling to be heard over the sirens.



“Nope,” Mel said with a shrug.



“Me, neither.” Linc said, not hiding his discouragement.



They sauntered back to the truck and climbed inside. Linc started the engine and was about to drive away from the curb when two sheriff’s vehicles shot into the street and boxed him in.



The officers leaped out of their cars and pulled their weapons. “Get out of the truck with your hands up!”



12



Mary Jo hadn’t intended to spill her heart to Grace, but the older woman was so warm, so sympathetic. Before long, she’d related the whole sorry tale of how she’d met and fallen in love with David Rhodes. By the time Mary Jo finished, there was a pile of used tissues on the table.



“You aren’t the only one who’s ever loved unwisely, my dear,” Grace assured her.



“I just feel really stupid.”



“Because you trusted a man unworthy of your love?” Grace asked, shaking her head. “The one who needs to be ashamed is David Rhodes.”



“He isn’t, though.”



“No,” Grace agreed. “But let me repeat a wise old saying that has served me well through the years.”



“What’s that?” Mary Jo asked. She dabbed tears from the corners of her eyes and blew her nose.



“Time wounds all heels,” Grace said with a knowing smile. “It will with David, too.”



Mary Jo laughed. “I guess the reverse is true, as well. I’ll get over David and his lies….” Her voice trailed off…. “Is everyone in Cedar Cove as nice as you and Cliff?” she asked a moment later.



The question seemed to surprise Grace. “I’d like to think so.”



“Olivia—Ms. Griffin—certainly is.” Mary Jo sighed and looked down at her hands. “That firefighter—what’s his name again?”



“Mack McAfee. He’s new to town.”



What Mary Jo particularly remembered was that he had the gentlest touch and the most reassuring voice. She could still hear it if she closed her eyes. The way he’d knelt at her side and the protectiveness of his manner had calmed her, physically and emotionally.



“His parents live in town,” Grace was explaining.



“Roy McAfee is a retired Seattle detective turned private investigator, and his wife, Corrie, works in his office.”



“Really.” She recalled seeing Mr. McAfee’s sign on Harbor Street. What a fascinating profession. She suspected Mack’s father got some really interesting cases. Maybe not, though, especially in such a small town. Maybe she was just influenced by the mystery novels she loved and the shows she watched on television.



“I suppose I should change clothes before dinner,” Grace said, rising from her chair with seeming reluctance. “I’ve enjoyed sitting here chatting with you.”



“Me, too,” Mary Jo told her. It’d been the most relaxing part of her day—except, of course, for her nap.



“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”



Mary Jo figured this was her signal to leave. “I’ll go to the apartment.”



“Are you sure? I know Mack said you should rest, but Cliff and I would really like it if you joined our family for dinner.”



“Where is Cliff?” she asked, glancing over one shoulder, assuming he must be somewhere within sight.



“He’s out with his horses. They’re his first love.” Grace smiled as she said it.



Mary Jo had noticed the way Cliff regarded his wife. He plainly adored Grace and it was equally obvious that she felt the same about him. Mary Jo gathered they’d only been married a year or two. The wedding picture on the piano looked recent, and it was clear that their adult children were from earlier marriages.



Then, without allowing herself to consider the appropriateness of her question, Mary Jo said, “About what you said a few minutes ago…Have you ever loved unwisely?”



Grace sat down again. She didn’t speak for a moment. “I did,” she finally said. “I married young and then, after many years together, I was widowed. I’d just started dating again. It was a whole new world to me.”



“Were you seeing Cliff?”



“Yes. He’d been divorced for years and dating was a new experience for him, too. I’d been married to Dan for over thirty years, and when another man—besides Cliff—paid attention to me, I was flattered. It was someone I’d had a crush on in high school.”



“Did Cliff know about him?”



“Not at first. You see, this other man lived in another city and we e-mailed back and forth, and he became my obsession.” Grace’s mouth tightened. “I knew all along that he was married and yet I allowed our Internet romance to continue. He said he was getting a divorce.”



“It was a lie?”



“Oh, yes, but I believed him because I wanted to. And then I learned the truth.”



“Did Cliff find out about this other man?”



Regret flashed in her eyes. “Yes—and as soon as he did, he broke off our relationship.”



“Oh, no! You nearly lost Cliff?”



“As I said, I’d learned the truth about Will by then and was crushed to lose Cliff over him. I was angry with myself for being so gullible and naive. I’d lost a wonderful man because of my foolishness. For a long time I could hardly look at my own face in the mirror.”



“That’s how I feel now,” she murmured. Will, she thought. She’d heard that name before….



“It does get better, Mary Jo, I promise you that. Will, the man I was…involved with, did eventually lose his wife. She divorced him and, while I believe he had genuine feelings for me, it was too late. I wanted nothing more to do with him. So you see, he really was the one who lost out in all this.”



“Cliff forgave you?”



“Yes, but it took time. I was determined never to give him cause to doubt me again. We were married soon after that and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier.”



“It shows.”



“Cliff is everything I could want in a husband.”



The door off the kitchen opened and Cliff came in, brushing snow from his jacket. He hung it on a peg by the door, then removed his boots. “When I left, you two were sitting right where you are now, talking away.”



Grace smiled at him. “I was about to change my clothes,” she said. “Keep Mary Jo entertained until I get back, will you?”



“Sure thing.”



Grace hurried out, and Cliff claimed the chair next to Mary Jo. As he did, he eyed the crumpled tissues. “Looks like you two had a good heart-to-heart.”



“We did,” she admitted and then with a sigh told him, “I’ve been very foolish.”



“I’m sure Grace told you we’ve all made mistakes in our lives. The challenge is to learn from those mistakes so we don’t repeat them.”



“I don’t intend to get myself into this predicament ever again,” Mary Jo said fervently. “It’s just that…” She hesitated, uncertain how much to tell him about her brothers. “I feel like my family’s smothering me. I have three older brothers and they all seem to think they know what’s best for me and my baby.”



“They love you,” he said simply.



She nodded. “That’s what makes it so difficult. With my parents gone, they feel they should be the ones directing my life.”



“And naturally you take exception to that.”



“Well, yes. But when I tried to live my life my own way and prove how adult I was, look what happened.” She pressed both hands over her stomach, staring down at it. “I made a mistake, a lot of mistakes, but I discovered something…interesting after I found out I was pregnant.”



“What’s that?” Cliff asked. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back, holding his coffee mug. She noticed that his hand-knit socks had a whimsical pattern of Christmas bells, at odds with his no-nonsense jeans and shirt.



“Well, at first,” she began, “as you can imagine, I was terribly upset. I was scared, didn’t know what to do, but after a while I started to feel really excited. There was a new life inside me. A whole, separate human being with his or her own personality. This tiny person’s going to be part David, part me—and all himself. Or herself,” she added, refusing to accept her brothers’ certainty that the baby was a boy.