The Man From Her Past Read online

  “Grampa’s a grown man. He can choose to say words little girls shouldn’t. When you’re older, you can say ugly words, too.”

  “Butt, Cass? You don’t think that’s one bad word too far?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how kids her age use it. With face and head and colors and—well, it’s best if we just go with it as an avoidable word.”

  “Sorry, Hope.” He parted them. “Shall we continue, ladies? Hope, I remember skating here with your grandmother and your mom.”

  “What was my grandma like?”

  “A queen. As beautiful and regal as a real queen. I don’t know why she ever looked at me. And then one day she married me and we had your mommy.”

  “Lo-o-ove,” Hope pronounced it with three syllables. “Jeff McClaren loves me.”

  Cassie nearly fell through the ice. “Who’s Jeff McClaren?”

  “A little kid,” her father said, and tugged her back to give Hope more room. “Who probably won’t be planting a ladder against her window.”

  His joke distracted Cassie from the pint-sized philanderer with his eye on her daughter. “You’re feeling better,” she observed.

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave me.” His plaintive tone was unfamiliar.

  “I’ll stay until I’m sure you’re okay.”

  “Why don’t you want to live here? We’re family. Van is your family.”

  “Van is my ex-husband.” She glanced at Hope and then said a grateful prayer of thanks that she didn’t turn around and demand to know what an ex-husband might be. “But you are my family, and you can count on me and Hope.”

  “Until you think I’m well enough to get on by myself.”

  “Not because I don’t want to live around you. I’m not sure this is a good place to raise Hope,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t Van have some say?” He lowered his voice. “As much as you?”

  Cassie wriggled inside, uncomfortable with the lie her father believed. She disliked lying. For one thing, the truth always showed up, no matter how you tried to discourage it. But this truth might drive her father all the way back to the depths of his illness.

  “Van understands,” she said.

  “No man would, and Van is a family man.”

  “Mommy, my hands are cold.” Hope skated back to them in a wobbling circle.

  “Let’s get some cocoa to warm them up.” She hugged her daughter close. “And you can tell me about this Jeff guy. A Casanova, you say?”

  “Casa means home in Spanish. I’m learning in my brand-new school.” Hope giggled. “You’re funny, Mommy. Jeff isn’t a house.”

  “Grampa, are you up for cocoa?”

  “Mmm. I love it.”

  He grabbed Hope’s hand and off they skated, together. Anyone else would think him a patriarch, showing off the third generation. But Cassie had seen the dullness come back to his eyes. Just that quickly, he was more Hope’s buddy than Cassie’s father.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, there was another parade, this one with candles and carols.

  “You don’t think Hope’s too young?” Cassie asked her father as they packed a thermos of hot chocolate in her bag.

  “We’ll bring her home if she doesn’t like it,” he said. “Come on. I want to go.”

  Just then the doorbell rang. Leo made for it. “Who could this be? We’re not letting anyone hold us up.”

  While he answered the door, Cassie leaned into the kitchen stairwell. “Hope? Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, but I wanted to wear my skirt.”

  “Your legs would have frozen. Put on the clothes I gave you.”

  Hope stomped down the stairs in cords and a pale green sweatshirt, her ponytail half-undone on one side and skewed to a spot just over her ear.

  “Better let me fix your hair.”

  “We’re gonna be late ’cause you keep fixing me.”

  “We’ll catch up with everyone wherever they are when we arrive,” Van said behind them. “As long as we find parking. Everyone gets there at different times.”

  Cassie turned, the ponytail band in her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  Van veered toward her father, who busied himself with a tea towel. “Leo? What happened to Cassie asking me to drive you?”

  “Dad?”

  “I thought he’d have more room in that big car for us all. We’re wearing coats, you know.”

  “Grampa, you’re in trouble again,” Hope said as he scurried up the back stairs. Hope took too much joy in her grandfather’s machinations. “But I like Mr. Van’s car. Who’s the present for, Mr. Van?”

  Cassie hadn’t noticed the lumpy package. He asked her with a look if he could hand it over. She couldn’t turn down something for Hope.

  “Couldn’t get Beth to wrap that for you?” she asked under her breath.

  “That’s not nice,” he said.

  “Sorry.” She swept a hand toward Hope. “Be my guest.”

  “It’s for me? Oh, boy. Up, Mommy.”

  Cassie hoisted her onto a stool by the island. “You’re getting bigger, my girl.”

  “I can’t get smaller.” She folded her hands in her lap, all demure as Van handed her his gift.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again before Christmas.”

  She opened the package with uncharacteristic deliberation, plucking the bow off first and then gently peeling the tape back from the paper. But when she unfolded the paper, a white, fluffy stuffed cat tumbled to the floor, followed by a massive box of crayons and a beautiful journal bound in pink leather, printed with white kittens jumping for a ball of yarn.

  “Mr. Van.” She slid down and scooped up the cat and hugged it so tight her mouth stretched with the effort.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice thick, “don’t I get one of those?”

  Tears started in Cassie’s eyes even before she saw them welling in Van’s. He lifted her girl high and the two of them hugged as if they’d been best friends from the day of her birth.

  If only.

  The words whispered in Cassie’s head, a temptation and an accusation all at once.

  She couldn’t have stayed. Van hadn’t wanted her. The attack had made her stop trusting marriage. She’d known she was carrying a child who’d need unconditional love.

  But that part seemed to be coming ridiculously easy to Van.

  “Look, Mommy.”

  Van set Hope down and she brought her haul to Cassie, who knelt beside her. “Wow.” She flipped through the journal. “It’s perfect for writing your alphabet and for drawing.”

  “Just like a big girl’s.”

  Cassie couldn’t help smiling over Hope’s head at Van, whose jaw seemed locked tight. He managed a grin, but then went to the window beside the door.

  “Mommy, can I take Kitty caroling with us?”

  “Sure. Will you run up and get Grampa? You can show him Kitty.”

  Hope bolted up the stairs, her kitty’s tail flapping beneath her elbow.

  With his eyes on Hope’s ascending back, Van moved in front of Cassie. “I really didn’t know your father was matchmaking,” he said.

  “I’m not complaining.” For the first time in five years, she put her hand on his. “I sent her after him because I wanted to thank you for thinking of my daughter. She’s not used to a lot of gifts. Our money’s stretched, and sometimes I can’t give her things like that beautiful kitty. It’s so soft I know it was expensive.”

  His smile seemed to grow from inside him. Again, he looked away. “Thanks, Cass. That was the nicest thing you could have said.”

  “But you should be careful about my dad. He thinks you’re Hope’s father, and he might say so in front of people. He thinks I’m doing you wrong—not giving you enough say in my decisions about her.”

  He brushed his hand against her sleeve. “I may have made more trouble for you with my quick-thinking but not very well thought out solution.”

  “I’m thinking of the trouble for you.”

  “I d
on’t care what anyone says.” He leveled his gaze on her. “I never did.”

  “Cool cat, Van,” Cassie’s father said as he negotiated the stairs, hand in hand with Hope. “You’re going with us to sing carols?”

  “Dad, you know Van already gave you away.” She laughed at Van’s tensed stance. “Accidentally.”

  “He used to be faster on his feet.” At the bottom of the stairs, he tried to lift Hope, but Cassie stopped him.

  “You need to get a little stronger, and she likes to walk with you.”

  “You hold my hand so I won’t get lost,” Hope said, but she glanced at Cassie as if to say she’d be the one keeping an eye out.

  Cassie watched them head for the door, bemused. What a family. All looking out for each other, all sure they knew what was best.

  “They’ll leave without us, Cass.” Van hurried her. “I wouldn’t put it past Hope to jump behind the wheel.”

  “Me, neither, with Dad instigating.”

  VAN SEARCHED for a quiet moment to caution Leo about trying to set him up with Cassie. She was reluctant enough without her father’s overly wholehearted approval.

  All night, through countless days of Christmas and about a thousand first Noels, Leo hovered just out of Van’s reach, hand in hand with Hope. And always, when Van least expected it, Cassie drifted back to him.

  As they sang, she leaned against his arm or smiled into his eyes the way she used to, as if they had a secret that excluded the rest of the world.

  Surprise became a slow ache. He knew this woman who still felt like his wife too well. Five years ago this would have been a night for locking the doors and turning off the phone.

  They’d have climbed the stairs to their room, still half-furnished because they were waiting to move into their real house, and he traveled so much and she worked just as hard. They’d have switched off the lights and opened the drapes, and the sun would have set on their lovemaking. The moon would have risen on their bodies, twining with devotion only to each other.

  But Hope reminded him of the five years that separated the love he craved from the life he could expect. After valiantly keeping up all night, Hope decided she could no longer walk and sing at the same time. She searched for her mom, who’d stopped to speak to her former high school English teacher. Van started toward her.

  Hope dragged her hand out of Leo’s. She was hand-over-handing up the front of Van’s coat when Jonathan Barr approached, wearing a smirk totally out of context with the song of “Good King Wenceslas.”

  An “Ah, at last I see the truth about you and Cassie” smirk.

  Van’s first instinct was to set Hope safely out of range and deck the guy. He searched for Cassie among the crowd now cheerfully singing for the medical staff hanging out of windows at Honesty General.

  She’d already seen him—and apparently Barr, as well. She sidled between the other carolers, shaking her head until she got between him and Barr.

  “No,” she said.

  “No what, Mommy?”

  “Nothing, baby. You like hanging out with Mr. Van?”

  “Why don’t you go to your mom for a second? I see someone I have to talk to.”

  “You don’t.” Cassie put her hands behind her back. “You think you have no choice, and if you didn’t—well—I’d be sorry.”

  He didn’t realize he was trying to dance around her until she cut off his access to Barr, who was now laughing. Idiot. How he’d kept his job in the bank was a mystery to Van. He’d never become president, but he must have something on every member of the board to stay employed, considering he lacked compassion or simple human decency.

  “Van, no one’s in danger. He thinks he’s solved a riddle. What do we care?”

  “I still need to shove his teeth down his throat.”

  “Bad man?” Hope twisted to see who they were talking about. “Like that man at home, Mommy?”

  “Just a not-very-nice man.” Cassie begged him with her eyes to stop.

  “I forgot you knocked someone down,” he said.

  “I thought I had to.”

  “Then you understand.” But he’d lost the will to fight. “I still don’t get what you were doing, taking on a man.” That wasn’t his Cassie, and he’d been too shocked when he first heard the story to demand an explanation.

  “He busted into the shelter with a big metal tube. I thought he might kill someone, and…” Her gaze drifted to Hope. “Other people were there. I had to do something, but I feel sick when I think about it. I took classes after we moved to Tecumseh. But how could I think violence was a good choice?”

  Hope reached for him and when he took her, she dropped her head onto his shoulder.

  “No one needs violence here.” Cassie watched Barr fade into the crowd. “I gave my daughter the idea that fighting was all right.”

  “Fighting back sometimes has to be,” he said, and then wished he hadn’t as she glanced at Hope with worry in her eyes. “Don’t be afraid of what’ll happen if you stay here.”

  Her intense expression showed he was right. Hope might have plenty to fight about if the parents of Honesty’s toddlers didn’t watch their tongues. She shook her head and focused on her little girl’s limp body in his arms. “You look tired to me, Hope.”

  “No.” She yawned as wide as the Grand Canyon to prove it.

  “Let’s find Grampa. Where do you think he rambled off to?”

  “I’ve been watching,” Van said, only just aware he’d kept Leo’s longish gray hair and blue wool overcoat in sight. “He’s by the pizzeria sign.”

  “Don’t go far.” After a few minutes, Cassie brought her father back and they wove through laughing groups of impromptu singers to Van’s car.

  “This was fun,” Leo said, as Cassie helped Hope with her seat. “Like old times.”

  “Dad.” On automatic, she resisted her father’s ongoing matchmaking.

  “I’m not saying I wish we could have the old times again.” He turned up his collar and burrowed in. “You remember how awful they were.”

  As if bidden by Leo’s teasing sarcasm, a memory of another Christmas appeared in Van’s head. His and Cassie’s first kiss, almost an accident beneath the mistletoe in her front hall. He’d touched his lips to hers and started to raise his head, but she’d cupped his nape, drawing him closer, changing forever from a friend into the woman he loved.

  It had been that simple.

  Then.

  “Van?”

  She’d turned up in the passenger seat beside him. He stared at her, still half in the past. Her mouth curved, and he remembered the taste of her.

  “Van,” she said, a note of warning in her voice. She glanced at her father and Hope, clearly to see if they’d noticed the undercurrents in the front seat.

  “Sorry.” He checked the traffic and pulled onto Square Court. Slowly, they inched around to the road that led to the lake and Leo’s house.

  By the time he pulled alongside the curb, he’d reined in his errant heartbeat and schooled his breathing into an even rhythm.

  Still, he took a lungful of the frozen air outside. Like some lovesick kid, he marveled at ice sparkling on the bare branches and moonlight dusting the streets and houses in an extra translucent layer of light.

  “It looks like Santa’s coming,” he said as Cassie eased her daughter out of the car.

  “She’s asleep.”

  “I’ll carry her.” Leo reached for her.

  Cassie turned her hand over and held her father off, but the gentleness in her touch pulled Van like an invisible cord. “I’d like to let you, but she’s a big girl. You still have to get steadier on your own feet first.”

  “You’re brutal, young lady.”

  “Because Hope and I are staying, and I don’t want you to take caring for her for granted.”

  “You’re staying?” Over the top of the car, he stared at her, his eyes full of gratitude. In the lamplight, his eyes glittered. Van felt like a Peeping Tom. Leo tapped the car roof. “I�
�m so glad, Cass.”

  She smiled, her effort valiant. “Me, too, Dad.” She started up the sidewalk. “You coming in, Van?”

  How many times had he fabricated an excuse to come over since she’d arrived back home? “Sure.” He let her get most of the way to the porch before he punched the button to lock his doors.

  They went inside before him. When Van entered, Cassie had carried Hope upstairs and Leo was still taking off his coat in the hall. Van helped him.

  “I’m tired, man. I’m going up to bed, too. Will you be all right on your own until Cassie comes back down?”

  Van hung his and Leo’s coats in the closet. “Sure. You’re not setting us up again?”

  “Nope. Too tired, and besides, they’re staying. Did you hear Cassie tell me they’re staying?”

  “I heard, but Leo, don’t read more into it than you should. Ask her how long she’s staying before you assume anything.”

  “Forget it.” Leo laughed off Van’s caution. “But I’ll lay off my subtle effort to get you two back together. Suddenly, we have more time to persuade her she should stay home for good.”

  He turned and started up the stairs, wobbling as if he might tumble backward any second.

  “You should have said you were tired.”

  “I had work to do.” He leaned on the banister for several seconds. “But I am exhausted. And sometimes, I think I’m hanging on by a thread. I’m going to bed now before I do anything that will make Cassie think…”

  He finished, but Van couldn’t understand what he meant, and stopping him again seemed pointless. Van was still staring at the empty landing when Cassie came to it.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He went to bed. Did he seem normal to you?”

  She leaned over and lowered her voice to match his tone. “I can’t hear you.”

  He waved her down and met her at the foot of the stairs. “Did he seem okay?”

  “I don’t know. He’s pretty obvious about wanting us back together.” She pointed to the living room and they went inside. She shut the door behind them. “Even Hope wants to know if you’re my boyfriend.”

  “After such a good evening together—all of us—that disgusted tone hurts.”