Christmas morning dawned with a bright, clear sky and just a touch of frost in the air. Bess woke to find a brand new robe at the foot of her bed. She slipped it on and went in search of the rest of the family. She found them in the living room, gathered around the lit-up Christmas tree with an LP of holiday music playing on the turntable.
There were presents under the tree, including the chambray shirt she’d wrapped the day before, along with an apron she’d made for Agnes. Bess sat down on the sofa next to Judd, taking Daniel from his arms.
“Merry Christmas,” she told her baby boy, letting him grab her finger with one, tiny hand. She felt Judd’s arm settle across her shoulders and looked up just in time to catch a twinkle in his eyes. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” she told him, feeling herself grinning stupidly.
They exchanged presents. Agnes had knit the baby a beanie hat and several pairs of booties. She gave Bess a pretty, round sewing basket decorated with summer wildflowers. Judd acted as if the chambray shirt was the best he had ever owned. He kiss Bess full on the lips as if Agnes were not watching, mingling his breath with hers so that she could taste the coffee he’d been sipping, laced with just a touch of peppermint.
Bess felt her fingers tremble as she opened the present from Judd. It was a large, rectangular box, wrapped in sparkly, green paper. When she had carefully undone the tape so as not to tear the paper, the opened box revealed a smaller package, this one wrapped in paper with red and green stripes. Two more times, she repeated the process, until finally she revealed a gold necklace with a heart-shaped charm framed in turquoise stones.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
He looked as if he were going to say something, but turned instead to pick up the present he’d bought for his mother, a silvery shawl with tassels that sparkled in the light.
Bess nursed Daniel, put him down for a nap, and changed her clothes before they all sat down to a Christmas feast of ham and turkey, oyster dressing and giblet gravy. The homemade biscuits melted in Bess’ mouth, and the green beans, canned from Agnes’ garden, tasted summer fresh.
They were just about to dig in to the delicious-smelling pies when someone knocked at the back door. It was a sharp, brisk sound that made Bess’ heart skip. Agnes, already at the counter slicing up dessert, answered the door, stepping back to invite the visitor into the kitchen.
Bess just managed not to roll her eyes when Lillian stepped into the house, her voice dripping honey as she wished the room a happy holiday. The infuriating woman even walked right over to Judd, who had politely stood up at her entry, and gave the man a kiss that just missed his lips.
Agnes pasted a thin smile on her face and said with a kind of nettled patience, “Lillian, we weren’t expecting to see you today. What a surprise.”
“Oh, but Judd said specifically that I should drop by if I found myself at loose ends today, and I couldn’t resist the temptation of meeting the new addition to the family.”
Bess stood up from the table, deliberately misunderstanding the other woman. “Oh, but we’ve met, Lillian, remember?”
Judd, whose cheeks had taken on a ruddy hue, hid a smile behind a forced cough. Bess shot him a glance filled with fire, touching the turquoise heart around her neck as a talisman against the evil intent she could feel rolling off Lillian in waves.
Lillian ignored Bess altogether, placing her perfectly-manicured fingers onto the crook of Judd’s arm. “Where is little Daniel?” she asked him, looking up at his impassive face with eyelashes fluttering.
Bess, battling a wave of nausea from the gooey flirtation, refused to give Lillian the satisfaction of thinking she was succeeding in her attempts to ruin the day. She walked over to the counter full of pies and chose a slice of the chocolate with its meringue piled high.
“How generous of Judd,” Bess said to the kitchen cabinets, keeping her back to the room at large, “to invite a lonely spinster to our first-ever Christmas together.”
“Bess,” Agnes admonished from right at her elbow, but it was a softly-spoken reprimand and mostly overshadowed by the sharp intake of breath from the other side of the room.
“I’m sorry, Lillian,” Judd said, his voice sharp, “I should have mentioned my invitation to my wife. Maybe then she would have been more gracious.”
So much for their truce. Bess turned so that she could lean against the counter for support and gave the couple standing across from her an icy stare, perfected through years of being picked on and judged. Agnes, glancing between the three other adults in the kitchen, threw up her hands and exclaimed, “I’m too old for this nonsense. I’m seeing to my dogs.”
Judd stepped out of Lillian’s grasp then and walked over to Bess, his black glare pinning her in place. “Why don’t you offer our guest a slice of that pie, cupcake?”
She flexed her hand at her side, and he grabbed her wrist lightly as if he could tell she was itching to slap him. A silent battle of wills ensued, brief but devastating. Bess sighed out her surrender and took a slice of the chocolate pie in her free hand. “Agnes makes the best meringue I’ve ever tasted. Please, have a slice.” There, she thought, her voice had even managed to come out steady.
Lillian crossed her arms in front of her low-cut blouse. “I was hoping to speak with you, Judd,” she said, giving Bess a triumphant look before adding, “about an important matter. Alone.”
Judd kept his eyes on Bess, as if he were afraid she might fling the plate full of pie in Lillian’s direction if he weren’t watching. “Whatever you have to say, Lillian, just say it.” He paused, and his lips curled briefly into a self-deprecating smirk. “Bess and I have no secrets.”
The last word shot through Bess with the force of a bullet. She caught her breath and laid the pie plate back on the counter before she dropped it. Lillian sat down in a chair and crossed her legs, so that the sexy curve of her legs was on full view for Bess’ husband. She licked her ruby red lips and calmly crossed her hands inside her lap.
“I’m concerned for you, Judd. Do you know the kind of woman you married?”
“Lillian,” Judd warned.
“You need to hear this,” she insisted, but her voice quavered a little. She took a deep breath before plunging on. “She has a record, Judd. She’s been arrested for,” she looked around as if the room were being watched, “prostitution.”
Bess watched as the words that would take away everything she had sank into Judd’s brain, watched as the eyes which had never left her face showed despair and then blinding fury. Because she couldn’t bear to see all her dreams die right there in his eyes, she turned to face her real enemy.
“Those records are sealed. How threatened you must feel.”
Judd recovered a part of himself, cutting off whatever Lillian might retort, and ordered her in a voice that brooked no argument, “Leave.”
Lillian scrambled to her feet and hurried to the back door, without so much as a peep. Her eyes shot Bess such a look of triumph as she opened the door to go that Bess felt it like an ice-cold bucket of water thrown over her head.
The kitchen was silent, and Bess worked her lips trying desperately not to cry. If she concentrated on breathing in and out, maybe she could make it to the next minute. Judd released her wrist as if her skin burned and took a step back from her. His Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively. Finally, he sighed and looked up.
“Are you going to explain any of that?” he asked the ceiling.
Bess took a shuddering breath. “Please, don’t make me,” she begged.
“Is there any truth to it?”
The images flashed across her brain, Ruben’s attention to Lydia, the rolls of cash he carried in the front pockets of his too-tight jeans, the night she’d gone with Lydia to his dreadful row house where obscene noises eased through the thin walls and everything ended in police sirens and blood.
“A little,” she told him, “but not in the way you think.”
“Then, in what way?”
Bess hesitated, then pulled herself up straight. “No,” she said, as much to herself as to Judd. “What does it matter who I was? Do you not trust that you know who I am?”
Judd’s nostrils flared in and out. For one wild moment, she thought he might reach back and hit her. Instead, his shoulders slumped. “I could ask the same thing of you, Bess.”
He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room then. Bess’ legs gave out on her, and she slid to the cold linoleum, laying her head on her knees and wailing until she was dry of tears.
She did not see Judd again the whole of that day. Agnes, seeing Bess’ puffy eyes and her son’s absence, wisely kept her own counsel. By nightfall, Judd had still not returned. Bess lay awake all night, alone in the full-size bed, unable to fall asleep. When she got up the next morning, it was to find sheets and a pillow piled on the sofa, where Judd had obviously slept.
It was two more lonely days before he returned to their shared bed, but his manner had cooled, and he kept his hands and arms to himself. Bess, putting the bricks of her protective wall back in place, slept pulled in on herself, pouring all the love she could muster onto the only person who really wanted it, the baby boy who’d brought her to this now-lonely house in the first place.
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