“I’m not all worked up.” But Joella saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes before he picked up his plate and cleared it from the table. “But I don’t see why Mr. Jordan Scoville has to come in and ruin Christmas for everybody. It’s not fair!”
Seven wasn’t old enough to hear the explanation that life was seldom fair. So all Joella knew to do was pull Nathan close to her and give him a hug that she hoped would wipe away a little bit of his frustration. “Nathan, we don’t need the Scovilles’ lights to have a wonderful Christmas.”
“Yes, we do,” he mumbled against her chest. “If we don’t have lights, we won’t have any Christmas.”
“We sure will, sweetheart. I promise you. We’ll have the best Christmas ever, even if we don’t have a single light.”
She wasn’t sure how she was going to keep that promise. But she’d raised her son to know that one of the things he could count on was that his mom wouldn’t fib to him. As she ran a sinkful of hot, soapy water, she closed her eyes and whispered, “God, I know You’ve got a lot more important things to worry about. But please don’t let me be fibbing this time, either. If it means changing Jordan Scoville from the Grinch into jolly old Saint Nick, please help me see to it that my boy gets his fill of Christmas joy our last year in Bethlehem.”
Jordan was glad, as he drove up to the Scoville estate on the edge of Bethlehem, that he had chosen to stay in one of the family’s smaller houses near the center of the village. He could deal with the massive stone Tudor in small doses. But he didn’t feel up to coping on a daily basis with the suffocating rigidity it symbolized to him.
The circular driveway gave off impressions of darkness and isolation as he pulled the black Lincoln to a stop. The single round window in the carved wooden door glared forbiddingly and the tap of his heels on the marble entryway echoed of solitude. The feeling shivered around him and through him, the memory of his childhood.
Now thirty-four, Jordan thought he’d long since put those memories to rest. It disconcerted him to discover they merely lurked in quiet corners of his heart, waiting.
He shouldn’t have come back. He knew it. If he’d had another choice, he wouldn’t have.
Dinner hour had just begun at the Scoville estate, so Jordan joined his father and his uncle in the dining room. He’d already eaten his microwaved chicken-and-vermicelli frozen dinner while standing, the morning’s newspaper spread across the kitchen counter, open to the business pages. He read of stock options and interest rates while devouring the low-fat, low-salt, low-taste food. It had settled heavily in his tension-knotted gut, and sat there still as he accepted the glass of tea his uncle Truman offered. Truman’s hand trembled, the spout of the pitcher tinkling against the rim of the crystal goblet like chimes in the breeze.
“So, my boy, are you getting settled in?” Nerves gave Truman’s voice a quivering quality not much different from the sound of crystal against crystal.
“Yes, thank you.”
“I truly don’t understand why you feel you have to stay over there, anyway,” Mitchell added, and paused for an explanation that didn’t come. Eventually he jabbed his fork in the direction of his half-eaten veal chop. “We would have fed you, you know.”
“I’m accustomed to feeding myself,” Jordan said, and instantly despised the stuffy chill of his voice. As a little boy, how many times had he sworn he’d never let himself sound that way? He tried to soften his words, his tone, but couldn’t be sure he’d succeeded. “I don’t eat heavy dinners much anymore.”
They ate and he sat, sipping his tea, wondering how they managed to force food down their throats while waiting for the ax to drop.
You have to understand, Venita had said, they were only trying to help. It made all the sense in the world to them.
He waited for them to finish. He listened to their small talk about the men at the club he might remember, and who had broken eighty last summer. Truman rhapsodized that with the mill closing, giving him more time on the greens, perhaps he could shoot his age next summer. Jordan couldn’t keep his mind on their words. His thoughts kept straying to Venita’s revelations—and the slow-voiced, softeyed woman who wanted him to reassure her about the future of Bethlehem’s families.
The sweet tea tasted sour on Jordan’s lips.
At last they finished their meal—including an excellent trifle made from one of Grace’s original recipes, although the cook from Jordan’s childhood had passed away about fifteen years ago, before his mother, even. Jordan felt the past tug at him again. Grace, with her big, soft arms and the broad expanse of her comforting embrace, had always been fragrant with homey spices. Between Grace and Venita, he’d gotten all the hugs a little boy needed.
The feeling welled up in him again, that needy feeling that had swept over him when he’d watched Venita’s young friend, Nathan, engulfed in his mother’s hug. Needy and empty.
Shrugging it off—again—he followed Mitchell and Truman into the drawing room.
Lambs to the slaughter.
Ornate Art Deco lamps with their tasseled shades cast a soft, golden glow over the dark-paneled room. Leather-bound books and crystal growing dull beneath a film of long-standing dust set the tone for the room. Truman poured coffee. Mitchell accepted, Jordan declined.
“Well,” Mitchell began cheerfully, “I hope you and Venita resolved this whole issue of the Christmas lights. You know, people have grown concerned, but I kept telling them, wait until Jordan arrives. He will know exactly how to take care of this little situation.”
“Oh, yes,” Truman added. “Rightly said.”
“We’ve resolved the issue,” Jordan said. “The lights will be dismantled as soon as possible.”
“Dismantled?” Truman’s withered shoulders straightened a tad beneath the seersucker. “But surely not now. Not right before Christmas.”
“Oh, surely not.”
Jordan set his jaw and refused to be moved by the dismayed confusion in his relatives’ voices. “We’ve been approached by a buyer. Some sort of theme park. Some of these decorations are antiques. Quite valuable, it seems. Venita tells me if we act quickly, we can get a good price.”
“A good price? But, son, these decorations, they’re…well, they’re…priceless.”
“And lest we forget, they belong to the town, you know.”
“They belong to the mill,” Jordan corrected his uncle. “Like everything else in this town. And like everything else in this town, those decorations are going to have to be converted to cash if we’re going to keep you two out of prison.”
“Out of—!” Mitchell’s hand jerked, sloshing his coffee onto the arm of the striped velvet chair that had always been “his” chair. A Brugge lace antimacassar soaked up the brown liquid, another minor indiscretion that would go unnoticed now that his wife was gone.
“Prison? Oh, my!” Truman leaned over and very carefully, using both hands, set his china cup on the Duncan Phyfe side table that was no longer highly polished. “Surely, my boy, you don’t mean that.”
“I’m afraid that’s exactly what will happen,” Jordan said, doing his best to soften his boardroom voice. Why was he using his boardroom voice at all? Why had he found himself despising his actions so many times in these few short hours since he’d been back in Bethlehem? “Unless the two of you have a very good explanation for the four-point-six million that’s disappeared from the retirement trust fund over the