6
Eli,” Miranda said, exasperated, “why are you so nervous?” Since early that morning, while Miranda was up to her elbows in cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, every few minutes Eli had been going back and forth to look out the window. “If you’re searching for Santa Claus, I don’t think he remembers where this house is.”
She’d meant to make a joke, but it fell flat. This year she hadn’t been able to afford much in the way of gifts, and she was constantly worried about how she was going to support them in the coming months.
She stopped herself from thinking of the bad things, such as money and where and how. She also wouldn’t allow herself to think of Frank Taggert, the rotten—
Calm down, she reminded herself.
“Is Chelsea coming over?” she asked. She felt some guilt over having separated them for so long, but after she’d returned from the cabin, she’d been so angry she hadn’t been coherent. It hadn’t taken a lot of work to find out what her son and Chelsea had been up to. Eli kept files on everything—and she’d read them in horror.
Yes, he’d done good things, but the danger of his illegal acts was frightening. She’d separated the two kids, not allowing them to continue. She’d also shredded all the stationery they’d collected and had forbidden anything like it to be done again.
And in one harrowing, terrifying episode, she’d at last confronted her terrorist of an ex-husband—and won. No more giving him money to pacify him. And no more fear that he was going to take Eli away from her.
For all that she had accomplished some things, the last months had been hell. But on the other hand, they’d also been good for her. Sometimes she thought she was at last growing up. The things she’d talked about to . . . him—she couldn’t even bear saying his name—made her see how vague her life had been. Because of him, she’d decided to take charge of her own life.
She was sorry for the unhappiness she saw in Eli, but she knew the changes she was making were for the better.
As for “him,” she’d returned his letters unopened. She wasn’t even curious as to what was in them. An offer of money to assuage his guilt? Apologies for taking advantage of her?
Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
The fact that she now bore the consequences of their “meeting” was beside the point. That she dreamed of him at night and remembered him during the day meant nothing.
“Not now,” Eli said, and Miranda almost didn’t remember what she’d asked. “Later—” He broke off as his face suddenly lit up in a grin. In fact, his whole body seemed to light up. He gained control of himself, and doing his best to appear calm, he went to sit on the sofa and picked up a magazine. Since it was a copy of Good Housekeeping, Miranda knew something was up.
“Eli, would you mind telling me what is going on? All morning you’ve been looking out that window and—” Halting, she listened. “Are those hoofbeats? Eli, what are you up to? What have you and Chelsea done now?”
He gave her his best look of innocence.
“Eli!” Miranda said. “I think that horse is coming onto the porch!”
When her son just sat where he was, his head down but looking as though he were about to burst into giggles, Miranda smiled too. She had an idea that she was going to open the door to find pretty little Chelsea on her pony, her hair streaming down her back, a Christmas basket in her hand. Miranda decided to play along with the game.
Wiping her hands and putting on her best stern face, she went to the door, planning to look surprised and delighted.
She didn’t have to fake the look of surprise. Shock would be more like it. She didn’t see Chelsea’s pony but an enormous black horse trying to fit itself onto her little front porch. A man, dressed all in black, his face turned away from her, was on its back, trying to get the animal under control without tearing his head off on the low porch roof.
“You have any mares around here?” the rider shouted above the clamor of the horse’s iron-shod hooves on the wooden porch.
“Next door,” she shouted back, thinking that she knew that voice. “Could I help you find your way?” She stepped back from the prancing hooves.
After a few powerful tugs on the reins and some healthy curses muttered under his breath, the man got the horse under control, then turned to look at her. ?
??Miranda,” he managed to say.
She could say nothing. Turning, she went inside the house and bolted the door behind her.
Frank was off the horse in seconds, not bothering to tie the animal but leaving it where it was and going to the closed door. “Miranda! Please listen to me. I need to talk to you.”
Miranda, with her back to the door, squinted at her son, who was bent over the magazine as though it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen. “Eli! I know you are somehow involved in this and I demand to know what’s going on.”
Outside, Frank spoke through the glass-paned door. “Miranda, I must talk to you.”
“Over my dead body,” she shouted back. “And get your horse off my porch!” She looked at her son. “When I get through with you, young man, you are going to be very sorry. This is an adult problem and adults are handling it.”
Eli bent more closely over the magazine, fascinated by what was going on around him, and straining to hear every word that was being said. How he wished Chelsea were here!