Coming Home For Christmas. Lindsay McKenna

it when I first married him. I only found out about it...later.”

      With a hiss, Kyle gripped her hand firmly. “Look at me.”

      Anna held his intense stare. She felt his hand warm and gentle around her coolish one. “What?”

      “Your nose, Anna. How did it get broken?”

      The rasp in his voice was deadly and sent a shiver down through her. Unable to look away, she said, “Tom hit me one night.” She pulled her hand free of his, tucking it protectively in her lap. “I went to the police that night after it happened, Kyle. I pressed assault charges against him and they threw him in jail.” She touched her nose. “I was scared, but my parents and your parents backed me up. They surrounded me, protected me and helped me through that period of my life. My father fired Tom. He was sent to prison for a year. When he got out, he left for Texas. He signed the divorce papers and I was free.” She gave him an uneasy look. “It’s not something I’m proud of. I made so many mistakes.”

      Kyle sat there wrestling with his rage over what had been done to Anna. “I wish... I wish you’d told me,” he managed tightly.

      “And what could you have done, Kyle?” She searched his angry eyes, saw the fury in the line of his thinned mouth. “You were somewhere. God only knows where. We weren’t married. There was no legal tie between us, except that you’re my emergency contact. The SEALs wouldn’t have let you come home.” Her voice grew thin with weariness. “I managed to get through it. I had asked your parents to not email you anything about it because I knew it would upset you. And I didn’t want you distracted and maybe get you killed. That’s why I never said anything to you about it.”

      Kyle looked away, his gut churning. His mother had emailed him about her divorce, but he didn’t want to bring it up right now. “God, Anna. I wish... I wish I’d been there.” And he didn’t finish the rest of the sentence that if he’d married her at twenty-two, this would never have happened. Because he loved her and would never hurt Anna. He’d never lift a hand to harm her. Ever.

      * * *

      “YOU START CUTTING up the construction paper for the paper chains,” Anna told Kyle the next evening. Today the sun had shown up after the blizzard, and Kyle had been out working all day until dusk with the wranglers, getting hay to the five thousand Herefords on the ranch. He’d come in just before dinner, taken a shower and changed clothes, and Anna made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

      He sat down, picking up the scissors after rolling up the cuffs on his red flannel shirt to his elbows. “And you’re going to string the popcorn, I hope?” He held up his hand, showing how large it was compared with hers.

      Kyle had seen a marked change in Anna this morning at breakfast. It was as if getting to talk out her toxic marriage had somehow helped her. Tonight, her ginger hair was tied in a loose knot at the back of her head and she’d put some plastic mistletoe in it to look festive. He liked the gold velour sweater she wore with her jeans and bright red fluffy slippers with Frosty the Snowman on her feet. In the past, Kyle remembered Anna always dressed up for Christmas decoration night.

      She wore pink lipstick and her cheeks were tinged nearly the same color. Even her eyes sparkled, although Kyle missed the gold flecks he used to see in their depths. Still, Anna was happier than he’d seen her since coming home. He knew how much Christmas meant to her. It meant the same to him.

      “Yes, I’ll save you from a fate worse than death,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll string the popcorn. You just cut, glue and make the paper chains.”

      He liked sitting across from Anna. She was quick and efficient with thread, needle and popcorn. Soon, she had ten-foot-long chains lying out in neat order across the length of the table. Kyle was clumsy in comparison, but he knew how to cut the colorful paper into half-inch strips and then use the glue gun to create the chains. Within an hour they had enough to encircle the tree.

      There was Christmas music playing in the background and Kyle, because he was tall, got the job of stringing the lights from the top down on the Scotch pine. As soon as he had the tree swathed in lights, he helped Anna place the paper chains and then the popcorn strands around the tree.

      Standing back, he smiled at her. “Looks pretty decent, doesn’t it?”

      She grinned. “It looks beautiful. Come on, you can help bring out the decorations.” She caught his hand, gave it a quick squeeze and pulled him over to the coffee table. There was one large cardboard box sitting on it. Each year’s decorations were carefully placed on sturdy, thin plastic shelves to keep them in order by the year that they’d been created.

      Sitting down, he worked with her to bring out the oldest ones first, which were going around the top of the tree. The paper decorations brought back a lot of warm memories, and as they moved from their six-year-old decorations through age ten, Kyle’s heart squeezed with a fierce love for Anna. Every year, there were memories, some good, some bad. They were all immortalized by two young children with color crayons, construction paper, glitter and a gold thread for hanging each of them on the tree.

      Anna had carefully and painstakingly preserved each year’s worth of events with both their families. Kyle remembered all of them sitting at the oak table, each of them cutting and drawing one main event that had taken place in their life that year. When the family was finished, there was a paper story of meaningful events that had occurred that particular year before Christmas. Anna had put photos with them, as well. For Kyle, it was an unexpected treasure trove, and it once more served to tell him just how important, how central, Anna had always been in his life.

      For the next three hours, they talked, reminisced and then hung the oldest decorations around the top of the tree first. Some were of people, a photo with a name, who had passed on. Kyle remembered getting a black pony named Bart at age seven, and he’d drawn and colored it and then hung it proudly on the tree. As they reached the bottom of the tree, Anna handed him new construction paper, glitter, scissors and an ink pen.

      She sat down opposite him. “Now you need to think about what decorations from this past year you’d like to make.”

      Kyle scowled. “What? An M-4 rifle? A Kevlar vest?”

      “Whatever was important to you this year.”

      “What are you going to create?” he wondered.

      “I’m going to make an image of you,” she said, smiling softly. “You came home.”

      His heart twinged. “Then, I’ll try to draw you. Not that I’m an artist,” he protested.

      “Okay, that sounds good,” Anna murmured, giving him a wicked look. “Just get my hair and eye color right.”

      “Oh, I think I can do at least that much,” he said, picking up some crayons. For the next twenty minutes, Kyle carefully drew Anna. Only this time, he drew a large pink heart behind her. He watched her quickly draw him, black hair and all, using some glitter for a leather belt around his waist and detailing his black combat boots on his feet.

      She then drew a picture of Trevor Bates, their foreman who had died in the car wreck. Anna carefully cut Trevor’s face and shoulders from a photo she’d taken of him previously and glued it in place. Kyle saw moisture come to her eyes. She wiped them from time to time as she drew the man who had been like a second father to her. Anna was easily touched by everything and everyone. Kyle thought about the two babies she’d miscarried. He couldn’t imagine the pain and anguish she’d gone through twice. He tried not to think too much about it because it was obvious her husband had not offered support during her times of gut-wrenching loss and grief.

      When Kyle studied the tree, he clearly saw all the events from age six through today. There were a lot of people, cows, dogs, horses and depictions of events that had affected the lives of those who lived on this century-old ranch. The last decoration with Kyle’s likeness was at age twenty-two when Anna had drawn him in his SEAL uniform. And for the babies she’d lost, she’d drawn two cherub angels, their name on each one. For Kyle, this was more like a Tree of Life than a Christmas tree. The Native