Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane Read online

  “I don’t remember ever seeing them,” Emma said. “I must already have been living in Annapolis.”

  “Joe Herbert took the pictures,” Daniel told them. “There was a business awards dinner that night, something to do with a society of accountants. Joe had also been invited and he’d offered to drive Mom and Dad. When he got to the house, Dad asked him to take the photos.”

  “You know, I’ve never regretted my decision to leave Oliver’s Well all those years ago, but seeing these photos, well . . .” Emma shook her head.

  “Well what?” Daniel asked.

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I would have liked to be with Mom and Dad that night. Maybe if they had told me about the dinner I could have come back for it.”

  “Assuming you were able to wrangle an invitation,” Daniel pointed out. “You weren’t part of their crowd. There might not have been a place for you at their table.”

  Emma frowned. “Thanks for pointing that out, Danny.”

  Well, Daniel thought, all I said was the truth. “I’ll be right back,” he told the others, heading for the kitchen to retrieve another bottle of wine. It was the third they had opened that evening. Usually he didn’t drink much at all, but it had been an emotional day, and tonight, what with the revival of his feelings of loss, he felt the need for something to help him relax and . . . And there was something else he needed help with, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

  “Danny,” Emma said when he returned to the living room. “Look at what I just found sticking out from behind this picture.” Emma held up a piece of slightly yellowed paper.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a love note from Dad to Mom. It was written before they were married. Listen.”

  “ ‘My beloved Caroline,’ ” Emma read. “ ‘I’m counting the days—no, the minutes—until we are joined forever as husband and wife. You’ve already made me the happiest man alive. I can’t imagine what additional happiness there is to come, and yet, I look forward to it with all my heart. Your Cliff.’ ”

  “That’s lovely,” Anna Maria said. “Isn’t it, Daniel?”

  Daniel didn’t respond. He felt . . . Well, he realized, he didn’t know exactly how he felt or why. A little bit angry suddenly, but with whom? Sad. Proud. And something else . . . Emma passed the note to Andie, who then passed it to Anna Maria.

  “Mom and Dad knew what love and commitment meant,” he said finally, and firmly. “They knew what was important. They knew the meaning of family.”

  Anna Maria passed the note back to Andie, who handed it once again to Emma. “We know that, Danny,” Emma said quietly. “You don’t need to remind us.”

  Daniel put his hand out. “I want to keep that note.” His sister handed the paper to him without a word. “I’ll keep it safe.” To himself he added, I’m the only one who can keep it all safe.

  CHAPTER 58

  Andie watched her brother carefully fold his father’s love note to his bride to be and place it in his wallet. Something was wrong with Daniel this evening. For the first time in her life she felt vaguely frightened of her brother. For one, he was drinking way too much and way too quickly. But she felt helpless to do or to say anything. I’ll only make things worse, she thought. Again.

  “What’s in here?” Emma said, opening an album with blue leather covers. “Pictures of Rumi,” she said. Andie looked down at the photos on the open pages. “Rumi’s ninth birthday party,” Emma read. “That’s Mom’s writing, isn’t it?”

  Andie nodded. Slowly Emma turned the pages of the album, and together the sisters watched Rumi’s childhood unfold. Rumi in Halloween costumes; Andie recognized her daughter’s witch costume but not the big green frog. Rumi in a bathing suit on Virginia Beach. That was the time Bob and his parents had taken her there for vacation, Andie remembered. And then there were the many photos of Rumi with her grandmother. Rumi seated on Caro’s lap. Rumi holding Caro’s hand. Rumi and Caro with their arms linked.

  Of course Rumi is still mourning the loss of her grandmother, Andie thought. Of course she doesn’t like me very much.

  “This is a cute picture,” Emma said, pointing at the left-hand page. Rumi looked to be about ten or eleven; she was sitting cross-legged around a campfire with several other girls. Each of the girls was smiling and holding a stick on which a marshmallow had been speared for toasting. Suddenly, Andie became aware of Daniel looming over her.

  “It’s really too bad you weren’t here that summer she went to Girl Scout day camp,” he said. “She had so much fun learning how to cook over an open fire and how to tie knots. The girls even went canoeing. But you know all that, Andie, don’t you?” Daniel laughed. “Then again, maybe you don’t.”

  Anna Maria cleared her throat. “Daniel. Don’t you think—”

  But Daniel cut off his wife in midsentence. “I’m sure Bob sent you photos, but there’s nothing like being there to watch your child experience the world for the first time. It’s all so fleeting. It’s a crime to miss it.”

  “Yes, Danny,” Emma said, her voice tight. “That’s enough of that.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Andie stared down at the picture of Rumi seated at the campfire. She thought that now the image would be forever burned on her brain. And suddenly she felt so very tired of feeling guilty and hurt, tired of being battered around by her brother’s switching from critical mode to loving sibling and back again. She felt . . . she felt wounded. She felt as if she were bleeding out. If someone asked what her motives were for speaking then, she would honestly have to say sheer exhaustion.

  “You’re right, Danny,” she said, and she could hear the note of defeat in her voice. “You’re right about all of it. And you might as well know it from me, before the news gets around town. I spoke to Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon the other day and promised her the George Bullock desk for the OWHA.”

  Andie braced herself against the storm she knew was about to strike. Her brother stepped back from the couch. Andie looked up at him and saw the look of horror on his face.

  “But we’d decided what to do with the desk!” he cried. “We’d decided not to sell it and not to give it away! How could you have done something so . . . something so stupid!”

  “Daniel,” Anna Maria said loudly. “Please.”

  “There’s an easy solution to this, Danny,” Emma said quickly but calmly. “If Andie didn’t sign anything promising the desk to OWHA we can simply not deliver it. We can tell Mary Bernadette that we’ve changed our minds.”

  “I didn’t sign anything,” Andie assured her family. “It was a verbal agreement. I know a verbal agreement has value but . . .”

  Emma took her hand. “Don’t worry, Andie. I’ll stop by the Wilson House tomorrow and take care of it.”

  Daniel, it seemed, was not to be appeased. “I want to know why you ignored the family’s decision,” he demanded, his face growing red. “I want to know what in God’s name made you so carelessly give away our mother’s most cherished possession!”

  Andie said nothing.

  “It’s all right, Andie,” Anna Maria said. Andie saw with sorrow that her sister-in-law looked as if she had aged ten years in the past few minutes. “No real harm was done. Daniel—”

  But once again he cut off whatever it was his wife was about to say. “If anyone has the right to go against Mom’s wishes, which all three of us agreed on—how to dispose of the important items—then it’s me.” He jabbed his chest with his forefinger. “I’m the one who’s been doing all the hard work since Dad died!”

  “Oh, Danny, not again,” Andie murmured.

  “You’re not in the least bit sorry for what you did, are you?” Daniel demanded.

  Andie took a deep breath. “I am sorry. It was wrong of me. I was upset. I wasn’t thinking clearly. That’s not an excuse, just the truth.”

  Daniel waved his hand in a gesture of disbelief.

  Anna Maria got up from her chair and sat on Andie’s left. A
ndie felt grateful for her show of support; still, she felt guilty that she was the one responsible for this terrible scene.

  “You’ve never cared about the family,” Daniel went on, pacing in front of the couch. Behind him on the television screen was the stilled image of Anna Maria and Caro at the wedding shower Andie had not attended.

  “That’s not true,” Andie answered quietly, trying to ignore the taunting image.

  “Yes, it is. At the ceremony this morning you couldn’t even find something original to say about our parents. No, you had to quote that stupid dead poet again!”

  “I thought the words were lovely,” Emma said firmly, “and entirely appropriate. And my words weren’t original, either. Be fair, Danny.”

  Daniel shot her a frown and turned back to Andie. “And the way you just gave away Mom’s desk—our very heritage—as if it means nothing!”

  Andie folded her hands tightly in her lap and said as calmly as she could, “You’re obsessed with things, Danny. You’re held prisoner by the material. The concern you show for the most minute and inconsequential contents of this house, envelopes stuffed with out of date coupons, soup spoons and fish forks, that ridiculous desk. Danny, let it go. It’s making you so unhappy.”

  “Things have meaning,” Daniel argued. “They hold our memories.”

  Andie sighed. “Things are nothing, Danny. The memories are inside you.”

  Anna Maria stood abruptly. “This—this conversation,” she said, her voice trembling, “is leading nowhere. I suggest we call it a night and—”

  “Mind your own business, Anna Maria,” Emma cut in. “This is between siblings. And Andie is right. Danny’s behavior is troubling. I for one am tired of it.”

  Andie was shocked. She had never heard her sister use such a tone or such words to their sister-in-law, to anyone. She tried to catch Emma’s eye, but Emma wouldn’t look up from her lap.

  There was a moment of heavy silence. Andie half expected Daniel to defend his wife against Emma’s harsh words, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned and stalked off toward the kitchen. “I need another drink,” he said, letting the kitchen door slam behind him. And instead of going after her husband, Anna Maria quietly returned to her chair.

  CHAPTER 59

  Emma felt that every breath was a challenge. She was shocked and embarrassed by how she had spoken to her sister-in-law; she had never been so rude to anyone in her life. She lifted her head and turned to Anna Maria, who was sitting in the armchair she had occupied earlier. Anna Maria looked stricken, almost ill. Emma was about to apologize sincerely and profusely when Daniel came storming back from the kitchen, clutching a half-empty bottle of wine by the neck.

  “And you’re not much better than Andie,” he said, pointing a finger at Emma.

  This is getting worse by the minute, Emma thought. I’ve got to stop this. But she realized she had no idea of how.

  “Joe told me about the conversation he had with you the other day,” Daniel went on. “He told me that you were upset Mom chose me to be the trustee of her estate and not you, the big expert. How could you have doubted my abilities, my honesty?”

  Emma shook her head. “I never doubted your honesty, Danny, not for a moment, and I certainly never told Joe that I had. And my wondering about your qualifications was my problem,” she argued, “not yours. You did a great job. I just felt—”

  “You felt that I was incompetent. You felt that I’d make a mess of the estate.”

  Emma could deny it no longer; her brother was now clearly drunk. It would be best, she thought, to keep her mouth shut and let Daniel run out of steam. There was never any use in arguing with someone under the influence.

  “And you still haven’t chosen a real estate agent like I asked you to!” Daniel said, gesturing with the open wine bottle and sloshing some of the wine onto the carpet. “The one thing I asked you to handle and you let me down.”

  “I’m working on it, Danny,” Emma said quietly.

  “How hard can it possibly be, especially after I did all the real leg work? Are you just lazy, is that it?”

  Emma said nothing. She could feel Andie’s distress; it was emanating from her like a wave of heat. Her own distress had made her grow cold. She could only guess at how bad Anna Maria was feeling.

  Daniel had more to say. He put the bottle of wine onto the coffee table with a thud. “I don’t know how I put up with the two of you. You didn’t even want to take part in this morning’s memorial service.”

  “That’s simply not true!” Andie protested, her voice strained.

  “Danny,” Emma said, now seriously angry and insulted, “cut it out. You’re acting like an insane person.”

  Daniel chuckled and shot a pointed look at Andie. “Me, the insane one? I think you’re talking about our sister. I was the one Mom and Dad turned to and trusted, right from the start. I was the one who mattered to them.”

  Emma could hold her tongue no longer. She didn’t care that Daniel was drunk. She didn’t care what he thought or said about her at this point, but she would not allow her sister to be defamed and mocked yet again. Still, she was hardly aware of the words that spilled from her mouth. “You think you know everything about our parents, but they were ours, Danny, not yours exclusively.”

  “I was here.”

  Emma laughed and shook her head. “I bet you don’t even know that Mom broke her first engagement to some high society type to marry Dad.” She felt her sister’s hand on her arm, but restraint was no good now. The words were out.

  Daniel’s face became even more alarmingly red. “You’re lying!” he cried.

  “Why would I lie, Danny? What possible good could it do for me to lie about something like that?”

  And then the unthinkable happened. Daniel stalked over to the fireplace and with one violent movement he tore the portrait of Cliff and Caro off the wall and threw it across the room. The painting landed against an end table, a corner of which tore through the canvas, leaving a brutal looking slash from Cliff’s forehead down through Caro’s shoulder.

  Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. She was horrified. She thought she might be sick. An unpleasant tingle ran through her from head to toe, as if she had experienced a bad electric shock. She glanced at her sister and thought she had never seen such a genuine look of fear on anyone’s face. Anna Maria had gone deadly white.

  After what seemed like an eternal moment, Daniel, breathing heavily, but in a very controlled voice, spoke. “Why don’t the two of you just pack up and go back to where you came from,” he said. “I was stupid to think that I needed you here. Leave and I’ll take care of everything like I always have and let you know what I decide. If you even care to know.”

  With that he turned and began to stalk toward the front door. Anna Maria leapt from her seat and reached for his arm. “Daniel, no,” she cried, but he yanked his arm from her grasp and snatched his coat from the hall closet, sending the hanger clanging to the floor.

  Anna Maria was crying now, and without looking at Emma or Andie, she grabbed her own coat and followed her husband out of the house.

  The house seemed steeped in silence, a heavy, thick thing that threatened to choke Emma. She thought she would almost rather the sound of voices raised in anger to this shocking quiet.

  Finally, she found her voice. “I guess we should clear all this away,” she said, helpless to say anything important, anything meaningful.

  Andie got up from her chair. “It will wait until morning,” she said, and she left the living room without another word.

  A moment later Emma heard the door to the den close firmly and quietly. She surveyed the wreckage of the evening, the wine stain on the carpet, the destroyed portrait, the photo albums strewn on couch and chairs and coffee table, the videos separated from their cases. Andie was right, she thought. There was nothing here that couldn’t wait. With some effort she got up from the couch, turned out the lights, and slowly climbed the stairs to her bed.

  CHAPTER 60r />
  Emma looked down at her empty plate. “I’m surprised I have an appetite after last night’s scene,” she said to her sister. “I literally devoured those eggs.”

  “I think my finally confessing to promising the desk to the OWHA revived my appetite,” Andie said ruefully, eyeing her own empty plate. “More’s the pity.”

  “And I slept like the proverbial log. I was sure I was going to be wide awake, replaying every awful moment of the argument.”

  “The calm after the storm?” Andie wondered. “Or simply our bodies being smart enough to take over in order to give our minds a much needed rest.”

  “I wonder if Danny was able to get any sleep.” Emma shook her head. “Until last night I didn’t fully recognize the depth of his pain. He must have seen our behavior toward the whole question about the sale of the estate and the future of Mom’s desk as an insult.”

  Andie nodded. “I agree. I mean, I knew he was under a lot of pressure, self-imposed or not, but I had no idea he was so near the breaking point. I feel bad. I should have seen what was really going on.”

  “Still, throwing the painting . . .” Emma shook her head.

  “It was pretty extreme. Danny’s never shown a temper like that. He must have been building up to that for weeks, months.”

  “It’s funny,” Emma said, “but I thought he seemed calm and at peace at the memorial service. I thought that maybe he’d let go of some of the tension he seemed to be holding. I guess I was wrong.”

  “The calm before the storm?” Andie grimaced. “I have to say I always hated that painting of Mom and Dad. I don’t know why.”

  “You, too?” Emma asked. “It really was pretty awful. I suppose it was technically good, but there was something off about it. Anyway, I shouldn’t have used the fact of Mom’s first engagement as a weapon. It was childish of me, even mean. I wanted to hurt Danny. I wanted to shock him out of his complacency, his assumption of status as Keeper of the Flame.”

  “None of us acted beautifully last night,” Andie said. “Except for Anna Maria. You have to admire her loyalty to Danny. She could have justifiably walked out on him when he threw the painting.”