His face sobered. “How’s Abby doing?”
I filled him in as we ate, telling him all about Momma’s lack of progress in therapy and the upcoming surgery on her spine. Not about the outstanding loan on the farm, though. Or the unsettling crack I’d glimpsed in my parents’ seemingly perfect marriage. Trey was like a brother to me. But some things you didn’t share.
Except with John. I could tell John.
Assuming we ever found time to talk.
I collected our lunch trash and stood to go. “Thanks for keeping me company.”
“Thanks for the barbecue. John will be sorry he missed you.”
“I should have called first.”
“How would you know? He usually goes later, after school. But they had an early practice today. Teacher workday or something.”
“I...”What?
“He felt bad about missing their tournament on Saturday,” Trey said. “But he’s making it up to the guys this week.”
There was a faint buzzing in my ears.“Their tournament.” “The guys.”The wrestling team? Through the static, I remembered John’s comment the night Trey came to dinner.“Your dad’s not the only one who has commitments on Saturday.”
“How did they do?” I heard myself ask.
Trey grinned. “They won. John didn’t tell you? He was pretty pumped. At least he’s not giving up all those lunch hours for nothing.”
“All those lunch hours...”And Saturdays, too. I felt numb. “There’s been a lot going on,” I said. “It must have slipped his mind.”
But I knew my husband hadn’t forgotten. He deliberately hadn’t told me he was volunteering to coach the wrestling team. All those Saturday mornings I thought he was at work, he was at the high school.
I felt so stupid. So blind. How had I failed to see what everybody knew?
When we girls were growing up, we always decorated the tree together, Beth humming carols while Amy flitted like a butterfly, arranging crocheted snowflakes to perfection, and Jo hung the funniest, ugliest ornaments at the top of the tree.
I wanted my babies to have what we had.
John had wrestled the tree into the stand and kept the twins occupied while I strung the lights. Now Daisy lay on her back under the Christmas tree, staring at the decorations twinkling overhead. DJ toddled around her, loading all the red balls onto a single branch in the center of the tree.
I reached into the last box of ornaments, sifting through memories.A pottery heart—Our First Christmas—from John. A pair of baby rattles, pink and blue, Amy had made to mark the twins’ birth. The Popsicle stick reindeer they’d glued together in preschool. Older ornaments, too, from my childhood, one for every Christmas growing up, hidden away in the toe of my stocking. Momma had saved them all to give to me the year I got married.
I glanced at John, methodically stacking empty cartons to go back into the attic. He didn’t have a box from his mother. No ornaments, no traditions carefully preserved and passed on. He didn’t have the example of two parents sticking together for better or worse, in sickness and in health, through chores and children and deployment. The only father he’d ever known walked out on his family when John was a little boy, leaving him without a male role model.
Carefully, I hung an angel on the tree. “I stopped by the dealership today.”
“Yeah, Trey told me.” Was it my imagination or did John sound wary? “Sorry I missed you. How’d your meeting go with Carl?”
“Well. The new accounting system will save him a lot of time. And I think I’ll be able to do some of the work from home.”
The overloaded branch finally gave up its burden, sending red balls bouncing and rolling all over the living room rug. Daisy shrieked—in outrage? delight?—as DJ stooped to grab a ball and threw it again at the tree.
“Good arm,” John said.
“He must get his athletic ability from you.” I dropped to my knees, digging under the couch for a rolling ornament. “Daisy, honey, it’s all right.”
John hooked a finger in the back of DJ’s overalls, hauling him away from the tree. “That’s good. As long as you’re happy. You have enough on your plate right now dealing with your parents.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” I sat back on my heels. “Do you think you could stay home with the twins again this Saturday? It’s the last farmers’ market before Christmas.”
John picked up Daisy. “I can do that.”
