Ellen James - Christmas Babies

Maybe her sister was right. Maybe she hadn’t told Bryan the truth because she did find him attractive…very attractive. But slowly another answer came to her. Perhaps deep down she’d known it all along. The main reason she hadn’t enlightened Bryan was because, quite frankly, she’d felt an odd, surprisingly intense disappointment. If a man was going to kiss her the way he’d done, she wished that he could have told her apart from her sister. Kristine and Danni were different. And for once, just once, Danni wanted a man to see without being told.

“What I find most interesting of all,” Kristine said astutely, “is that during your little social tête-á-tête you neglected to tell Bryan you even have a twin.”

“We were just casual acquaintances. The subject of twins never came up. But he needs to know the truth now,” Danni said. “All of it. And if you can’t tell him, I certainly will—”

“No,” Kristine said urgently. “Just give me a few days. I promise I’ll tell Bryan—but just let me do it in my own way, my own time.”

Danni pressed her hand to the window. Waves glided across the sand, surged and fell back.

“Just two days, Danni. That’s all I’m asking.”

Maybe, deep down, Danni was a coward. Because she certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell Bryan he’d been tricked. She didn’t want to see the look on his face when he found out.

“Two days, Kris,” she said at last. “You have forty-eight hours…and not a minute more.”

BRYAN HAD EXPECTED his mother to be taking it real easy. That had been the first thing he’d suggested. It had all happened so quickly. Son gets the midnight call. Son drops everything, flies out to Saint Louis to arrange things. Son transports mother, mother’s belongings and mother’s three cats back to San Diego. Thus son fulfills his dying mother’s plea to live out the last few remaining months of her life in the city of her birth. So what the hell was the old gal doing perched on a high stool, dusting the pantry cabinets?

“I’ve hired a service, Mom. Cleaning’s done three times a week. Meals are Monday through Friday. The weekends we’ll have to fend for ourselves, but that shouldn’t be a problem—”

“I’m not dead yet, Bryan,” his mother said, still chasing phantom cobwebs and imagined dust bunnies with a damp cloth. “I’ve cooked and cleaned and looked after myself since I was ten years old. That’s fifty-seven years of managing things—”

“59 years, Mom. You were sixty-nine last May.”

“I know when my own birthday is,” she muttered. She strained to reach a far corner of the pantry shelves, teetering dangerously on the edge of the stool. Bryan stepped forward, ready to stop her from toppling off. She scowled at him.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

She was anything but fine. She’d lost too damn much weight, seeming to shrink right before his eyes. Her once-thick hair hung listlessly, and new lines had etched into her face. The cancer seemed to be whittling away at her. He’d talked to the doctors in Saint Louis, rounded up the best he could find here in San Diego. They all used the same words, the same phrases. Incurable. Inoperable. We’ll make her as comfortable as we can.

Bryan wasn’t ready to give in just yet. And neither, it seemed, was his mother. She swiped her cloth along another shelf.

“You found me a very nice apartment, Bryan, even if the neighborhood is a bit upscale for my taste.”

The remark was typical of her—paying him a compliment but being sure to throw in a little criticism at the same time. Ever since he was a kid, his mother had operated on the “don’t let your son get a swelled head” theory of parenthood. Namely, she’d done everything in her power to ensure that Bryan didn’t turn out like his father: conceited and cocksure, self-important and self-indulgent.

Not that Bryan had ever had much of a chance to imitate his father. He’d only been seven when Randall McKay was killed in a boating accident. In all the years afterward, his mother had freely elaborated on her dead husband’s faults. She’d dwelled on his inconsistencies, his many annoying habits…never quite able to hide how much she’d loved him in spite of his flaws or how angry she was at him for leaving her. Her complaints about him were her way of keeping him alive. Bryan had long since figured that out.

Funny thing was, lately she hadn’t talked much at all about him. That worried Bryan. Of course, everything about his mother worried him these days.

“I’m not sure an apartment was the right way to go,” he said now.

“I know you wanted to stick me in a nursing home, Bryan. Or, even worse, have me live with you. A parent should never live with a grown child. It’s not good for either of them.”

Elizabeth McKay had a lot of rules. She was not a woman who tolerated shades of gray; she cherished absolutes.

“Okay,” Bryan said, “so you won’t move in with me. But what I really had in mind wasn’t actually a nursing home. More of a…cooperative living arrangement, with nurses on duty—”

“Nursing home,” said his mother flatly. “Doesn’t matter what you call it, or how fancy it is.”

Another of Elizabeth’s absolutes: she would not end up in a nursing home, no matter what the circumstances. So Bryan was playing it her way, trying to give her the dignity of spending her last few months as she wished.

He felt a heaviness inside. His mother had raised him single-handedly, with virtually no help from anyone. Among his father’s failings had been improvidence. Randall McKay had left his widow with no insurance, no assets and a pile of bills. After his death, she’d struggled along on a secretary’s salary. And—unknown to Bryan at first—she’d cleaned houses in her off hours in order to afford a few luxuries for him. Basketball shoes, a guitar when he went through his music phase, even sailing lessons “so you’ll learn not to kill yourself on the water like your poor reckless father.”

Bryan still remembered the jolt he’d had at the age of twelve when, emerging from youthful self-absorption, he’d finally figured out what his mother was doing. Her long hours weren’t all spent at the office typing reports and financial statements. Instead, she spent a good portion of her time mopping other people’s floors, scrubbing their kitchen sinks, scouring their bathroom tiles. Pride had kept her from telling Bryan. Pride…and not wanting him to feel guilty. The day he’d learned the truth had been the beginning of manhood for him. It had given him a hearty dislike for deception, and it had made him vow someday he’d be rich enough so that his mother wouldn’t have to work at all.

Of course, he hadn’t counted on her stubbornness, or her independence. She’d kept right on working, well past the time when he could have supported her several times over. It had been something of a coup when at last he’d convinced her to retire. She’d chosen Saint Louis, to be near one of her girlhood friends. But now…now she was back in San Diego, trying to arrange the end of her life as neatly as she was arranging the cans on her pantry shelves.

Having set down her cloth, she’d lined up the potato soup next to the cream of tomato. “It would be nice,” she said, “if you could meet someone, Bryan. Someone besides those dreadful businesswomen you usually surround yourself with.”

Another backhanded compliment. “Actually,” Bryan said, surprising himself, “I have met someone.”

His mother perked right up. “Oh—who is she?”

He smiled a little. “You could say she’s a carpenter.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “That’s different, at least. About time you got away from those icy corporate types.”