A Barker Family Christmas (The Barker Triplets 3.50)

Hard to argue with that logic. Shane chuckled. “One shot. That’s it.”

Herschel’s grin was sly. “That’s all I need.”

Shane grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the cupboard above the fridge and returned with two shot glasses. He filled them both. Handed one to Herschel—who’d managed to crawl from his chair to the bed—and with a nod they both tipped their heads back. The burn felt good going down, and Shane let it settle a bit before eyeing Herschel.

Bobbi’s grandfather was quiet for a few moments, rolling the empty shot glass through his fingers.

“You and Bobbi are having a bit of a tough go lately,” Herschel said.

Shane wasn’t surprised. The elder Barker had always been intuitive.

“Yeah,” Shane replied. He set his shot glass down on the windowsill and leaned back. “You noticed.”

“Hard not to,” Herschel said, shaking his head. “When that girl is upset, she likes to clean. And when she cleans, she mutters.” Herschel grunted. “She’s been cleaning and muttering a lot these last few days.”

Huh. Shane wondered what it was she’d been muttering, but he wasn’t about to ask.

“Christmas is always a little emotional around these parts.” Herschel tossed his shot glass onto the end of the bed and ran his fingers through the thick white waves atop his head. “Their mother, Chantal, passed away two weeks before Christmas.”

Shane cocked his head, studying the man. Shit. Of course he’d known the girls mother had passed away when they were five, but until this moment he’d never known it was so close to the holidays. Chantal Barker wasn’t a subject that Bobbi ever brought up. None of the girls did. Not that he knew of anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Shane offered. “I didn’t know.”

Herschel’s eyes softened. “She’s been gone a long time and yet, sometimes I hear her voice.” He glanced up sharply. “Maybe I’m crazy, but some mornings it’s Chantal’s voice I hear calling me out for breakfast.” He smiled sadly. “She loved when the family was together at her kitchen table. She loved to bake and she loved her girls. She was the best part of my son. When she got sick, something in Trent withered and died. He was never the same, and raising three girls on his own was hard. I helped. I helped as much as I could, but when someone as important as a mother passes, she leaves behind a hole. Sometimes that hole gets filled and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Shane was silent. He’d lost his mother to cancer when he was a teen and the pain of that loss was still inside him. But the hole was plugged. Bobbi had filled it.

Herschel settled back against the headboard, shaking his head. “My twins are so different from each other.”

Shane smiled at that. How and when triplets became twins he’d never know, but Herschel Barker had always called them that. His twins.

“Billie was always so fierce, so passionate about hockey. Her talent was undeniable and Trent kind of locked into that. Maybe he spent more time on her than he should have, but it made him forget, at least for a little while, the pain in his heart. Betty never seemed to care, she always had Matt and her friends to keep her busy, but Bobbi…”

Shane pushed away from the wall and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. Herschel’s eyes were bright and watery with unshed tears.

“Did you know that Bobbi didn’t talk for an entire month after her mother died?”

Something twisted inside him, and Shane shook his head. Again, he had no words. He had nothing but the sharp stab of pain that rifled through him at the thought of a small, sad little girl, missing her mother so badly that she couldn’t speak. A little girl who’d grown into the woman he loved.

Herschel’s voice was low and Shane heard a tremble.

“She didn’t say one word. She wouldn’t speak to any of her sisters, nor to her father or myself. She spoke to no one. She buried herself somehow. I can’t explain it. At the time we were at our wits end. Dealing with the loss of Chantal and then our little Bobbi going mute. The doctors said she’d come around eventually and if she didn’t, well, they’d treat her. One day— a cold, clear day in January—she walked down those stairs and came into the kitchen and asked for a bowl of hot porridge. I can still see her pale face and those big eyes lookin’ up at me over the top of the kitchen table.”

“Did she…” Shane cleared his tight throat and took a moment. “Was she okay?”

“She seemed right as rain. She never mentioned her mother again. Not once.”

Shane frowned. “That’s not a normal reaction for a child.”

“No.” Herschel shook his head. “It’s not. But at the time, it seemed easier to let it go. Right or wrong, we were two men with three little girls in our charge, and we carried on. Trent enveloped himself in Billie’s world of hockey and I tried my best to keep the other two in line.”

For a moment there was only the sound of the wind and the ice pellets hitting the window.

“I tried my best.” Herschel’s voice broke. “But the best isn’t always good enough. Last week she was up in the attic for a long time and when I asked her what she’d been doing up there, she told me that she’d been organizing. That no one had been up there in years and it was a mess. At the time I didn’t think much of it—as I told you earlier she’s been muttering and cleaning for days now. But yesterday I heard her crying in the laundry room and when I asked her about it, she tried to push it off as nothing. Told me she was just overtired.”

Shane’s throat closed up and his fist bunched as he regarded Bobbi’s grandfather in silence.

“She had a picture in her hand. A picture of her mother, and that’s when I knew that whatever this is going on between the two of you, well, it has to be connected somehow. The ghosts that she never dealt with must be haunting her.”