Tanya Michaels - Mistletoe Baby

Her eyes stinging again, Rachel ducked her head. “Nothing wrong with being sentimental, especially right before your wedding.”

“Yeah, but it’s not your wedding.” Arianne stepped closer while Lilah dug a tissue out of her purse. She lowered her voice, her pixie features unusually somber. “You okay?”

God, no. Ending a marriage had to be painful at any time or place, but here in the close-knit community of Mistletoe, Georgia, surrounded by people who loved her and David and didn’t know they lived in opposite sides of their house, made it impossible for her to start the grieving process and move forward. Mercifully, in a few days she’d get some respite. She’d leaped at the chance to house-sit while a neighbor with multiple dogs took a fourteen-day luxury cruise. It provided Rachel a socially plausible excuse for not sleeping under the same roof as her husband, not that she’d been sleeping much.

On the plus side, she was providing tons of job security for people who manufactured under-eye concealer.

“I bet I can guess what’s wrong,” Ari said softly.

“Really?” Rachel’s heart skipped a beat. It was bad enough she and David shouldered this secret, an ironic final intimacy; she didn’t want to burden Arianne with it.

“Maybe it’ll happen next month.” Arianne squeezed her hand. “I just know you guys will make wonderful parents.”

Rachel choked back a semihysterical laugh. She thinks I started my period. It was true that, for months, she’d thought that glimpsing those first telltale signs of blood was the most upsetting thing that could happen to her. She’d recently revised her opinion.

“Someone’s gonna have to help me with this blankety-blank zipper,” came a cantankerous voice from the third dressing room. “I ain’t as limber as I used to be.”

Lilah had blotted her eyes and was now grinning. “On my way, Vonda!”

If Lilah’s bridal party wasn’t the most eclectic ever seen in Mistletoe, Georgia, it had to be in the running. Top five, easily. She had thirty-year-old Rachel, a woman who would be trying to look anywhere but at her own husband during the wedding; a maid of honor who constantly joked that after growing up with two older brothers, you couldn’t pay her to live with a man willingly again; second-grade teacher Quinn Keller, who had the face of an angel and an unexpectedly devilish sense of humor; and seventy-four-year-old Vonda Simms Kerrigan, a town fixture who’d had a hand in Lilah and Tanner’s courtship last winter. The woman was a spitfire who won nearly every card game she played and dated younger men, or as she put it, “hotties in their sixties.”

“Sorry I’m late!” Quinn said breathlessly as a sales-woman escorted her past the mirrored dais toward the fitting rooms. “Our meeting ran over.” She was on a committee bringing Christmas to local families in need.

Rachel nodded toward the space she’d just vacated. “You can use that one.”

No doubt Quinn would look sensational in her dress. Rather than try to find a gown that would suit four differing body types and ages, Lilah had asked the seamstress to create three individual dresses and, for Vonda, a suit. Quinn was the only one with the figure and attitude to pull off a strapless gown in December.

As they waited for the other women to emerge, Arianne turned to Rachel. “You know what might cheer you up? Shopping! Want to hit some stores after this?”

“Um…” In the past, she would have jumped at the suggestion, but time alone with Ari might provide too much temptation to confide in someone.

“Well, think about it,” Arianne said as she turned her attention toward a shelved display of shoes. She picked up a sling back. “Unless you and David have plans?”

“Nothing specific.” Just awkward silence and retreating to separate corners.

If she curled up in the den with a book, he turned on the television in the front living room. If she watched TV, he went for a run. She wasn’t sure if he was avoiding her because he was angry or simply trying to defuse the tension by giving her space. She wasn’t even sure how she felt about it. When he was in the room with her, it was like she couldn’t breathe and just wanted either of them to be anywhere else. Yet whenever he left, her chest hitched with the urge to call him back: Don’t go, hold me, make it better.

But that was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

She’d met him at a time in her life when she was overstressed and questioning what she wanted in life, taking a vacation from her South Carolinian life as an advertising executive in Columbia. David was a natural-born leader, evidenced by civic committees he’d headed and his volunteer duties coaching touch football in early fall and soccer in the spring. They’d barely been on two dates before he was encouraging her to let him shoulder her burdens. He’d advised her as confidently as he did five-year-olds who were confused about which goal to kick toward. It had felt like a blessing at the time.

Unfortunately, in “simplifying” her life and inviting David to gloss over her problems, Rachel had lost herself somewhere along the way. In the past year, she’d begun to question whether her husband loved her-romantically, not just dutifully-but could she really blame him for not seeing her? She wasn’t even sure who she was. Resolution number one for the New Year: find out.

David was stepping out of the shower that evening when he heard the tentative “Hello?” from the outer room. Reflexively, he clutched his towel around him, as if the woman on the other side of the door hadn’t seen his nude body a thousand times. As if she might accidentally burst in while he was undressed and make the strain between them even worse.

The thought was truly asinine on all levels. When was the last time Rachel had “burst in” anywhere? Since the miscarriage last spring, it seemed as if even rising from her chair took effort. And how on earth would it be possible for the awkwardness between them to become worse?

“In here,” he called back.

“Okay. Just checking.” Her words were followed by retreating footsteps.

He dried off and dressed, keeping his movements slow and deliberate so that he didn’t impulsively run after her. The caveman deep inside him seemed to think that tossing his wife onto the bed and making thorough love to her would somehow resurrect what they’d once shared.

Stupid caveman.

The once sexy part of their marriage had long become regulated by ovulation predictor kits, and each fruitless encounter was more perfunctory and less satisfying than the last.

So what now, genius? In school he’d excelled at problem-solving. As it turned out, participating in teen extracurricular activities for gifted students and graduating college with honors didn’t educate a man on understanding women. He’d tried so damn hard to be the perfect husband, and she’d just…walked away. Had she really become so numb that she had no feelings left for him?

As he walked down the hall, he heard her in the kitchen, the sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing. Her back was to him as he rounded the corner into the room. She poured herself some tea, presumably to wash down a couple of the aspirin in the big white bottle she held. Her shoulders were slumped in a defeated posture that tugged at his heart.

He used to hug her whenever she’d had a bad day, cajole her into a better mood. Cheer up, he’d say, you still have me. If he tried to embrace her now, would she stiffen and pull away?

“How was the dress fitting?” he heard himself ask. Inane small talk as if he were killing time on an elevator with a casual acquaintance.

His wife turned in his direction but didn’t quite meet his eyes, addressing one of the light-stained wood cabinets just past his left shoulder. “Lilah will make a beautiful bride.”

“Tanner’s a lucky man.”

She nodded, her fingers trembling a little as she tried to get the lid off the aspirin.

“Let me.” He walked toward her, palm extended.

She recoiled. “I can do it.”

“Dammit, Rachel-” Her vulnerable expression quelled the reactionary anger that had been rising in him.

She looked somehow both harder and more fragile than the woman he’d once known. Her eyes were shadowed, and there was a chafed spot on her bottom lip. She had a bad habit of chewing on her lip when she was upset. He glanced up in sudden realization that he was staring at her mouth and she’d caught him doing it.

Defensiveness made his tone gruff. “You look like hell.”

Her normally warm gray eyes were the color of cold steel. “Thank you so much.”

“I didn’t…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just worry about you.”

“That’s not your responsibility anymore,” she said with an attempt at a smile, as if she was trying to point out a positive.

His pride-his heart-stung. “I guess we can’t all just turn off our emotions and walk away from vows so easily.”

For a second, he thought she might throw the aspirin bottle at him. Instead, she turned toward the counter, dismissing him with her body language.

He clenched his fists at his sides. He’d known this woman for years. Laughed with her, loved her, said things to her he couldn’t imagine sharing with another person. Yet the prospect of beating himself upside the head with one of the pots hanging over the kitchen island seemed less painful than a three-minute conversation with her. How had they come to this?

“I’m sorry,” he said. He rarely lost his temper, and he needed his composure now more than ever. “That was uncalled for.”

“You’re entitled to your anger.” With an audible pop, the lid finally came off the bottle. “It’ll be easier when I’m at Winnie’s. I’m supposed to go over tonight to spend time with the animals and look over all the instructions with her.”