Kathleen Creighton - The Black Sheep’s Baby

“Getting colder,” the man himself announced as he ducked into the service room across the hall to wash up in the laundry tub. “That storm’s on its way. Be here before morning.”

“Forecast said midnight.” Lucy’s brother Wood zigzagged over to give his wife a hello kiss, peeling off gloves and ski cap on the way. “Pack it up, darlin’. I want to get back to the city before this thing hits.”

“Edward Earl,” Lucy said in a no-arguments voice-well aware that as his big sister she was the only person alive allowed to call him by his given name-“you’ve got plenty of time, you can stay and have some supper. I’ve got a roast in the oven and a Jell-O salad in the fridge, so you just go on in there and get washed up. Supper’ll be on the table in ten minutes.”

“I’d do as she says, if I were you,” Mike said in a warning tone, grinning as he came into the kitchen, rolling down his shirtsleeves. He paused to give Lucy a peck on the cheek.

“Smells good. What’ve you two been up to?”

Though she wasn’t the demonstrative sort, she gave him an elbow in the ribs to let him know her heart was doing a happy little skip-hop at his nearness.

“Looking up recipes. Everything all battened down out there?”

“Everything that can be… More recipes?” Mike was looking sideways over Chris’s shoulder at the spread on the table. He cocked an eyebrow toward Lucy. “Who’re you cooking for, the third division?” In an aside to Wood he added, “We had leftovers from last Christmas dinner for Easter.” And then, probably because he knew very well how precarious Lucy’s mood had been lately, coming up on this particular holiday season, he wrapped his arms around her and murmured next to her ear, “Honey, there’s just gonna be the four of us. You don’t need to go to so much trouble.”

“Five,” Chris said firmly, shuffling magazines into a stack as she stood up. And when nobody said anything for a second or two she lifted her head and looked her husband hard in the eyes. “Caitlyn’s coming. She said she would.”

“She said she’d try. ” Wood’s voice, too, was gentle.

“She’ll be here.” Chris gathered up the pile of magazines and marched off to the parlor.

Wood muttered what sounded like, “I hope so,” under his breath as he pulled out a chair and sat in it. And after a moment, “Sure does seem strange, doesn’t it? Not having a houseful of kids around for the holidays? Doesn’t seem like-”

Lucy interrupted him with a swipe at his shoulder. “Edward Earl, take off your coat before you sit down at the table!”

“Yes’m.” He rose obediently, not trying to hide a grin.

“And hang it up, too-you know where it belongs.”

“Just like old times…” he grumbled good-naturedly as he carried his chore clothes across the hall to the service room.

“Old times…” Lucy muttered angrily, turning to the sink. It wasn’t that she was angry, really, just that she could feel a familiar heaviness creeping around her heart, thinking about the season…the quietness. She hated that heaviness; it made her feel old and scared, panicky and depressed, all at once. Old times. How I miss them… Mama, Daddy, Gwen. And the children. Where did the children go?

Not to be put off, Wood was saying as he reclaimed his chair at the table, “Speaking of ‘old times,’ I was thinking about how it used to be, you know? When we were kids.” His wife came back in just then, and he craned to look up at her and reached for her hand. “You should have been here, Chris.” And then he laughed. “I’m surprised you weren’t, actually. Mom had this habit of inviting people. Anybody who didn’t have anyplace else to go, Mom made ’em welcome here at our house. But even without the strays, we always had a crowd-remember, Luce? Aunts, uncles, cousins-whatever became of all those cousins, anyway? Does anybody ever see them anymore?”

“We mostly lost touch after Mama and Daddy died,” Lucy said without turning from the sink where she was washing green beans. “I get cards from some of them at Christmastime. You know, those letters everybody sends now that they’ve all got their own computers.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Wood, lacing his fingers together behind his head and gazing around the kitchen, “is where we used to put everybody. This room-this house -sure seems a lot smaller that it did when we were kids.”

“Everything seems smaller than it did when we were kids,” Mike put in. He’d taken his usual place at the foot of the oval oak table and was indulging in a back-cracking stretch. “Something about perspective.” Everybody paused to look at him alertly in case he meant to go on, since it wasn’t Mike Lanagan’s way to do much talking at times like this. Mostly, Lucy’s husband liked to just watch and listen, like the reporter he’d been and still was, she knew, in his heart.

“What we did, was,” she said when it had become apparent Mike had said all he was going to for the time being, answering Wood’s question even though she knew he hadn’t really expected an answer, “we put all the leaves in this table and the grown-ups squeezed in right here in the kitchen. The kids got to eat in the parlor. Dad would bring in two sawhorses and put planks on them, and Mom would put the oilcloth tablecloth from the kitchen table over that. The good linen tablecloth went on this table, along with the good china.”

Lucy turned on the faucet to run water over the beans. “Us kids got to eat on plastic or paper plates, like a picnic. I’m surprised you don’t remember that, Earl. You always used to try to start food fights with your cousin Donnie- Donnie Hewitt, remember him? He could make milk come out of his nose, which is a talent I don’t imagine benefited him much later in life.”

Wood passed an embarrassed hand over his eyes. His wife was gazing at him in wonderment. “That was a long time ago. I guess we’ve grown up some since then.” There was a reminiscing silence, and then he added without any laughter at all, “I wonder sometimes, you know? About Mom and Dad-what they’d think if they could see the way we turned out.”

Lucy didn’t say anything, but became intent on chopping up bacon to go on the green beans. She was thinking about Wood-Earl-and how he’d been just in high school when their parents were killed in that car accident in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Thinking about it, even though it had been so many years ago, made her throat tighten up.

It’s this season, she thought. She hoped she wasn’t turning into one of those people who hate the holidays just on general principles.

Wood went on, after clearing his throat in the loud way men do when they’re in danger of showing emotion. “They’d have to be surprised about old Rhett becoming president of the United States.” Everybody laughed at that.

Lucy surprised everyone, herself most of all, when she turned, swiped the back of her hand across her nose and said fiercely, “They’d have been just as proud of you, Earl, becoming a teacher. Just think of all the lives you’ve-” Embarrassed, she broke it off and jerked back to the sink.

There was a long pause, and then Wood said softly, “Know who I think they’d’ve been proudest of, Lucy? You. ”

She made a sound like a startled horse. “Me!”

“Yeah, you. Keeping this place going all by yourself, after Rhett and I ran out on you. Think how many generations this farm has been in our family. All the way back to-”

“Great-great-I don’t know how many greats-Grandmother Lucinda Rosewood, my namesake.” Lucy picked it up, smiling around the ache inside her. “Who once foiled a Sioux raiding party when she set her barn and fields on fire, tied up her baby in her apron and climbed down the well and hid there-”