Coming Home For Christmas. RaeAnne Thayne

their marriage, he had struggled to show them.

      She and her parents had provided a sanctuary for him, a place where he had been loved and accepted from the moment they started dating. She could remember her father taking Luke on fishing trips into the mountains and her mother showing him something she was growing in their beautiful gardens. Luke had lapped up their attention.

      When her parents had died so unexpectedly, she had withdrawn into herself and her pain, leaving him with nothing.

      She fought the urge to rub her hand against the ache in her chest. Unlike her parents, she had made the choice to leave him alone and she couldn’t blame him if he could never forgive her for that.

      As Luke drove around the lake toward home through a beautiful wintry scene, blue skies contrasting with the new snow that coated everything, her heart began to pound. Whenever she returned to Haven Point to see the children’s plays or ball games—always sitting in the back, always trying to stay anonymous—she felt the same sense of peace, as if this was the one place in the world she belonged.

      Sometimes before heading back to Boise to the airport, she would have the car service she hired drive past their house, the one on Riverbend Road. If she were extraordinarily lucky, she might see the children playing outside in the yard with their dog or Luke doing something around the house.

      Those moments were rare and precious and she cherished them, yet they were like a beautiful, perfect rose that came with plenty of thorns. Seeing the children at home, growing bigger each time she saw them, also made her feel terribly lonely as she rode out of town. She would often cry silent tears the entire way to the airport.

      This time would be different. This time she would actually be able to see them. Talk to them. No matter how difficult it was to see Luke again, she could hold on to that joyful thought.

      What would they think of her? The reality of the situation started to seep through. Would they be as angry and closed off as Luke? Or would they maybe be a little bit happy to see her again?

      As he turned onto their road, panic welled up, cold and relentless, and she had to force herself to breathe slowly and evenly. She could handle this. Couldn’t she?

      When he pulled into the driveway, she thought the house looked cold and rather forlorn. She could see no sign of life.

      Luke turned off the engine. “I tried to find a room for you at the inn when we stopped for gas, but Megan says they’re full. Some holiday event going on at Caine Tech and they’ve booked the whole place.”

      No room at the inn. How appropriate for this time of year.

      “I don’t mind. This will be fine,” she answered. Did he really think she would rather stay at a hotel instead of with their children?

      “There’s not much here,” he said, an odd sort of warning in his voice. He unlocked the door and walked inside. As soon as she followed, she knew exactly what he meant.

      The place was empty.

      No pictures on the walls, no knickknacks, no furniture except an old sofa.

      The house where she and Luke had started their marriage with so many high hopes was now a hollow shell.

      “I don’t...I don’t understand. Where are...Cassie and Bridger?”

      He set her suitcase down with a thump beside the front door. “In school until I pick them up. Then they’ll be at home. My home.”

      “Oh. I thought...” Her words trailed off as she only now realized how stupid and shortsighted she had been.

      “You thought I would let you see them? Talk to them? Hell no, Elizabeth.”

      Of course he wouldn’t let her see the children. She should never have been foolish enough to expect otherwise. Disappointment rolled over her like a snowplow, with sharp, fierce intensity.

      “You...won’t?”

      “You lost any rights where Bridger and Cassie are concerned when you walked away from us. I won’t let you break their hearts again.”

      She could feel herself sway, her legs unsteady. For one horrible moment she was afraid she would fall to her knees. She reached behind her for the wall, hoping he didn’t notice the gesture.

      “I would never hurt them,” she said, her voice small.

      “What do you think you have been doing for the past seven years?”

      She had hated his silence during the drive but this bitterness was far worse. Elizabeth closed her eyes, the pain and loss and loneliness almost more than she could bear.

      He would never agree, but everything she had done had been in her misguided effort to protect her children. They were the entire reason she had left in the first place.

      “I...see.”

      “You created this situation, Elizabeth. Because of you, I have been their sole caregiver. I’m the only one who gets to decide what’s right for them. You gave me that responsibility when you left—before then, actually, when you checked out emotionally after Bridger came along.”

      She drew in an unsteady breath, hating his reminder of what a terrible state she had been in, lost and depressed and overwhelmed.

      She had suffered severe postpartum depression made worse by the clinical depression. She hadn’t asked for it, had she? Hadn’t wanted it. He made it sound as if she had chosen to be depressed instead of fighting it with everything she had. She had tried prescription medicine, therapy, everything the doctors recommended. The next step would have been an inpatient program, which in retrospect had probably been exactly what she had needed.

      That was the past. Hadn’t she paid the price all these years?

      She found it hideously ironic that the only good thing to come out of the severe brain injury she suffered in the accident had been that the cloud of soul-stealing depression had lifted.

      She had traded one problem for about two dozen more.

      Luke stood beside the door, unyielding and rigid as one of the oak trees growing outside. She wanted to yell at him, to fight and argue and pound her fist against his chest until he let her see her children. She couldn’t. The harsh truth was, he was exactly right. She had lost any right to even call herself a mother.