Holiday Homecoming. Jean C. Gordon

“Your mother didn’t come?”

      “No,” Aimee said. He identified her by her name knitted into her ski cap. “Robbie is running a temperature.”

      “So Mom’s making Aunt Natalie come,” Amelia finished for her sister. “We’re supposed to meet her here.”

      “Making Natalie come” was probably right. After yesterday’s tree cutting, he couldn’t see Nat volunteering to come and decorate his house. He also had trouble with the idea of Natalie doing something she didn’t want to because Andie had told her to. The Natalie he used to know, at least. Thinking back, though, had he really known her then, either?

      “Grab some branches,” he said. “I want to get the garage cleared out and the tree in the house before everyone else gets here.”

      Several cars were parked in the driveway and women were milling around the garage when Connor and the girls walked back around to the front of the house. A quick check didn’t find Natalie among them. He flexed the tightness out of his shoulders. Maybe he’d have time to escape to his office before she arrived.

      “Hi. We were hauling the branches I trimmed from the tree out back. You could have gone in. The door’s open.” He bounded up the stairs and held the door open for his parishioners and the girls. “I’ll get the tree and be right in.”

      He stared at the tree, his stomach flip-flopping in an all-too-familiar way, as it had when he’d gotten off the school bus as a kid and seen his father’s truck in the driveway, not knowing what condition he’d be in. Connor grabbed the tree and dragged it through the kitchen and dining room to the living room.

      “I see you brought down the tree stand,” Karen Hill said. “Did you get the decorations, too?”

      He didn’t know there were any decorations. He’d thought Jared and Becca had used their own decorations last year.

      “There should be a big box or two of decorations church members and former pastors and their families have donated over the years.”

      “I’ll go check,” he said, glad for the escape.

      “I’ll help you,” Hope volunteered. When they’d gotten the tree stand down yesterday evening, she’d been fascinated by the attic, from the trapdoor in the upstairs hall to the pull-down ladder stairs.

      “Okay.” He and Hope could get the decorations, and then he could make his excuses and go work in his office. Karen and the twins would be more than happy to keep an eye on Hope.

      When they got upstairs, he opened the outer trapdoor, unfolded the ladder stairs and climbed up two so he could reach the latch on the inner insulated trapdoor. The second door had been installed as an additional heat barrier when the attic was insulated several years ago. He pulled it open, making sure he snapped the lock brace so it wouldn’t close on them while they were in the attic. With all the insulation, any calls for help might be so muffled no one downstairs would hear them.

      “You go first,” he said. “Hang on to the rails.”

      Connor followed Hope and quickly found the box of decorations, along with another box marked “manger.”

      “Here’s another one,” Hope said, holding up a small box marked “Christmas.” “I’m getting good with my reading, aren’t I?”

      “Yes, you are. I’m going to take the three boxes down. Then you can come down.”

      “But I’m going to carry my box down the real stairs,” Hope said.

      He stacked the boxes in order of size and maneuvered his way down the ladder, placing them on the floor so his hands were free if Hope needed help. They carried the boxes down to the living room.

      He placed the decoration and manger boxes next to the tree, which the women had already put in the stand while he was upstairs. “Karen, would you mind keeping an eye on Hope? I have some work to do in my office.”

      “Making a run for it?” Karen said.

      He was that obvious?

      “I’m teasing,” she added.

      His expression must have given away his guilt. After all, it was his house, his tree. A piece of him felt he should be a part of the decorating, despite the toll on his equilibrium.

      “It’s no trouble,” she said.

      “We’ll help,” the twins said.

      “We’ve taken the babysitting class at the library,” Amelia added.

      “Thanks. If you need me for anything, give a shout.”

      As he made the turn at the stair landing, he heard one of the twins say, “Aunt Natalie, finally,” sounding a lot like Natalie’s oldest sister. The knot in his stomach that had been tying and untying all afternoon loosened, replaced by his inner voice repeating “coward” with each step he climbed away from her.

      * * *

      “Look what I found in the attic,” Hope said, lifting a silver-and-blue star from a box.

      Natalie’s heart stopped. It was the star Connor had bought for her Christmas tree. She hadn’t had the heart to use it or throw it away. It must have been in one of the boxes of stuff she’d brought home from college before she’d moved to Chicago. A few years later, she’d told Mom to go ahead and donate or give away anything in the boxes. It hadn’t occurred to her Mom might add it to the parsonage Christmas decorations.

      “Plug it in, Aimee,” Hope said. The star twinkled with diffused light. “It’s beautiful. Connor is going to love it.”

      “No,” she blurted before she could stop herself. “I mean that’s an old decoration. Wouldn’t you like to go with Connor and help him pick out a brand-new one?” Several of the women looked at her strangely. But she couldn’t let Connor come down and see that star on his tree.

      “No,” Hope retorted as sharply as Natalie. “It’s beautiful, like the one my grandmother and me had, and Connor is going to love it.”

      “Sweetie...” Natalie touched Hope’s shoulder.

      She pulled away. “Leave me alone.” The little girl jumped up and ran upstairs, hugging the star to her chest.

      Natalie rose, helpless to corral her emotions into any action that would make sense to the women around her.

      “Let her go,” Karen said. “Connor has a room that’s hers upstairs. She’s probably overtired. Hope was telling my daughter-in-law in Sunday school class that she and Connor had a big night last night and he let her stay up way later than Jared and Becca do.”

      “All right.” Karen knew more about kids than she did. Natalie set to work untangling the intertwined strings of lights, a nice mindless job.

      A while later, Amelia tracked down Natalie in the kitchen as she was getting a bottle of water from a cooler of drinks one of the women had brought.

      “I went upstairs to see if Hope wanted to come back down and help decorate the tree and I couldn’t find her. I think she went up to the attic. Someone left the ladder down.”

      “Did you look for her there?”

      “No, you have to climb a ladder. Remember, I’m afraid of ladders.”

      Amelia had fallen off the ladder to the hay mow when she was a toddler and broken her arm. But it surprised Natalie that she still had a fear of ladders.

      “Does Co— Pastor Connor know?”

      “No, I didn’t want to tell him. We said we’d watch her.”

      “Where’s Aimee? Can she check the attic?” She hated that she couldn’t stop herself from coming up with ways to avoid going upstairs where Connor was.

      “She went with Autumn to get some more tree boughs.”

      “Okay,