The Ghost of Christmas Past Read online

  I squared my shoulders, swept open the door like a true Southern belle, and handed the money over to Brian. I didn’t care that his eyebrows rose as he jingled the change in his palm. Let him wonder; I’d paid for my delivery fair and square. “Merry Christmas,” I said as I dredged up a smile for him.

  “Merry Christmas to you, too,” he said, scratching under the edge of his hat. “Do you, uh, want a hand getting this inside?” he asked, retrieving the fruit.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” I insisted, keeping my chin up, as he awkwardly transferred the heavy, delicately stacked basket into my arms.

  It was heavier than it looked.

  Spine straight, I sashayed back into the house, immensely thankful I’d discarded those heels. Only once I was inside and alone did I let myself slump a little.

  “How dare she?” I asked my skunk, who eyed my newly purchased fruit basket with glee. “If she thinks I’m going to bring this to the party, well, she can go…eat a pear!” I added as Lucy began dancing in place. Sure, she thought it was a grand idea. It was hard to insult a skunk.

  “You want a pear?” I asked, balancing the fruit mountain against my hip. “You can have a pear. You and I are going to eat every single pear in this pyramid,” I vowed, trying to keep a grip on the basket. “And we’ll make ornaments out of the wrappings.” If I had to take this absurdity on the chin, then I’d double down on it. Not a part of this crazy purchase would go to waste. I’d wear the basket itself as a hat if need be.

  We hadn’t taken two steps toward the kitchen when the doorbell rang once more. Sweet heaven. I changed direction and deposited the pear monstrosity onto the table by the door. Boy howdy, if this was a delivery from Virginia with a new bottle of perfume she expected me to wear this evening or a wardrobe change so I “appeared as though I belonged” better, I would…I would… I didn’t know what I’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  I heaved open the door. “Ellis,” I said on a sigh of relief.

  My tall, broad-shouldered boyfriend looked amazing in a crisp dress shirt and tie, like a GQ version of the man I’d grown to love, but it was lost on me. I just wanted a do-over of the last five minutes.

  His handsome features clouded, and his beaming smile transformed into a concerned frown. “What’s wrong?” He glanced at the pyramid next to me. “Where on earth did you get those?”

  “From your mother,” I said, stepping aside so he could come in. “To replace those ham and cheese roll-ups you taste tested this afternoon.”

  “It’s the pickles that make them great,” Ellis said. He took a second look at the fruit basket. “My mother gave you a bunch of pears?”

  I shook my head. “Not even close.” I told him the story of his mother’s surprise, the jarring price tag, and I finished by handing him the note. By the time he finished reading it, Ellis’s jaw was almost on the floor.

  “I can’t believe she did that.” He drew a hand through his cropped black hair. “I can’t believe she wrote that. I’m so sorry, Verity.”

  “It’s not your fault.” It wasn’t my fault, either. “It’s hers.”

  “I know.” He took my hands, raised them to his lips, and kissed them. “I’ll pay you back for the pears and let Mom know that she’s way out of line with this.”

  That was a start.

  He wrapped an arm around me and rubbed my back. “Let’s just relax and enjoy the party tonight.”

  “Like nothing happened,” I said, my words sounding sharper than I’d intended. But darn it all. I understood Ellis wanted to have a nice evening with his family, but…

  I drew back to look him square in the eye. “Are you truly suggesting we gloss over what she just did?”

  His hand froze on my back. “No,” he said slowly as if he were searching for the right answer.

  I stepped out of his embrace. “You and I both know this isn’t the first time.” And it wouldn’t be the last. “You’ve been calling her out for her behavior toward me since we first got together, and it hasn’t changed her one iota.”

  Maybe Virginia Wydell thought she could commit any sin because neither Ellis nor I had ever truly stood up to her. Maybe it was because we always took the high road, because we approached her with kindness no matter how poorly she treated us.

  Ellis cringed. “It takes time to wear down a mountain, Verity.”

  “There’s always dynamite,” I vowed.

  “She’s not the kind of woman who bends easily,” he said at the same time.

  “Ellis,” I pressed.

  “She never has been easy,” he added, deflating. “It’s not only you.” He shook his head wearily. “The entire way over here, she was nitpicking about how hard I applied the brakes, how slowly I pressed the gas pedal. It’s how she is.”

  “Wait.” Reverse. “She’s in your car right now?” He hadn’t mentioned anything about that this afternoon.

  He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “In your driveway.” He at least had the good sense not to bring her inside. “I said I’d give her a ride to the party since Dad is coming straight from the airport in Memphis.” He reluctantly checked his watch. “And I’m sorry, but if we don’t head out now, we’re going to be late for the opening party toast. It’s tradition. Montgomery serves his special recipe hot spiced cider, and he expects us to be there on time.”

  Montgomery would just have to keep it on the burner. “If Virginia can’t make an effort tonight, of all nights, then it’s proof that wearing her down isn’t working. I mean, how long have I been trying to win her approval, and how much progress have I made? Let’s see.”

  “Let’s not,” Ellis insisted, but I was on a roll.

  “First she billed me for the entire cost of the wedding Beau and I almost had, and she didn’t bat an eye when it looked like I would lose my home to pay the debt.” Ellis glanced out the window toward his car as I started counting off the insults on my fingers. “Then she went to my estate sale, bought the necklace my grandmother had worn on her wedding day, and made a point to wear it in front of me, flaunting it while she told me it wasn’t up to her standards. Then she fed me pastries filled with rhubarb when she knows I’m allergic—” fortunately I hadn’t eaten much, so I’d only ended up a little itchy “—and she faked having heart palpitations when we told her we were together. And she accused me of influencing your brother to quit his job as a lawyer in order to dabble in eclectic folk art, which is a career I don’t think anybody even knew about until he invented it.”

  I was going to have to switch hands at this rate, and we still hadn’t gotten to the way Virginia had of addressing me, no matter the occasion, like I was a particularly bothersome insect and all she wanted to do was swat me. Then there was how she treated Ellis.

  “Verity—” he began, reaching for the doorknob.

  “What about when she applied to Yale for you and said it was so you could finally do something worthwhile with your life?” I demanded. “Or when she said it was a shame you’d invested in a distillery instead of something ‘upscale’ like the Sugarland Express?” I paused to reel in my frustration. If I kept recounting Virginia’s laundry list of offenses, we wouldn’t only miss the Christmas party, we’d be here until New Year’s.

  Ellis pinched the space between his eyebrows for a moment. “I take your point, I do. Okay.” He looked at me. “Let’s start small. What should I do about the pears? How can I make this right?”

  That was part of the problem—I didn’t know how he, or we, or anyone could make this right. Virginia’s snide, holier-than-thou attitude wasn’t something that could be fixed in a day. I agreed with him on that. But the answer wasn’t Ellis trying to fix it single-handedly, or me telling him how to do it either. Virginia saw Ellis’s generosity of spirit solely as a weakness she could exploit. I wasn’t like her. I wasn’t going to take advantage of it.

  “I don’t have all the answers,” I confessed. “I doubt there’s a simple fix for any of it, but letting her get away with this isn’t right.” I ge
stured to the pears. “These are just the tip of the Christmas tree, and it’s only going to keep growing if we don’t take a stand. Don’t you want to stop Virginia from torturing us? I mean, if you pay for these, do you really think your mother will ever pay you back, or will you be out the hundred and seventy-two dollars I scraped together just now?”

  Hoooonk! A car horn blared from outside, and I realized it was Virginia, hurrying us along.

  Well, she could wait until the rapture for all I cared.

  Ellis glanced out the window. “Verity, I agree with you, I do,” he said, digging a finger under his collar, loosening his tie. “But we won’t fix an issue that’s plagued me for my entire life in the space of a few minutes in your entry hall. This will still be a challenge for us to work on later, after Christmas.”

  “Sure it will,” I shot back. After, later, tomorrow. Everything was always something to work on “later,” but we had issues staring us in the face right now.

  And I dared her to honk again.

  We still hadn’t talked about how Ellis really felt about my job, and piling his mother’s attitude on top of that was too much “later” for me to handle.

  “We’ll take care of everything, I promise,” Ellis vowed, reaching for my hand. His tie was askew, making him look more like himself than ever. “But right now all I want is to get my family together for the holidays and be a family, warts and all.” Hoooonk! The horn blared across my front yard. “A real family Christmas feels harder and harder to pull off every year,” Ellis managed over the blast, “and you’re not helping by making us late.”

  I avoided his grasp. “Oh gracious, am I making us late?” Was I the one causing a problem? “Is the so-punctual-you-could-set-a-sundial-by-her Virginia Wydell going to miss five minutes of a Christmas party because of me and my pesky feelings?”

  Ellis looked horrified.

  Well, he should be.

  “Verity, please—”

  “No.” Somebody needed to say it, and it might as well be me.

  I hated to hurt him. I didn’t want to make things worse, but I was tired of throwing myself into the line of fire again and again and expecting anything other than for it to hurt. I would not—could not—sit in a car with Virginia Wydell and pretend everything was fine.

  “I’m drawing a line and it’s right here,” I said, pointing at the floor of my foyer. “And I’m going to tell her myself.”

  My discarded heels lay near the stairs and I fetched them, using the newel post as an anchor as I shoved them on my feet. “We’re going to settle this once and for all.”

  “Verity—” He reached for me, but I’d learned to dodge from Lucy and evaded him easily. I swung the door open, heaved the basket into my arms, and went to tell Virginia Wydell exactly what I thought of her “gift.”

  3

  I stepped out onto my porch to find Virginia eyeing me from the front passenger seat of Ellis’s police cruiser. Her platinum blond hair, cut in a neat bob, looked as icy and unfeeling as her heart.

  The pointed ends of my glittery heels began to crush my toes less than two steps down the front porch, but I didn’t care. I was a woman on a mission.

  My stride didn’t waver so much as an inch as I stalked directly for her.

  I balanced the fruit mountain on my hip like I was born to it and jerked her car door open. She startled at the gesture, or perhaps it was the sight of me advancing like a Christmas commando bent on making her wish she’d never picked a fight.

  Virginia sat stiffly, almost too prim, in a tailored pair of white slacks and a red cashmere cardigan over a white silk blouse. She wore big diamond solitaire earrings and a matching diamond necklace that sparkled merrily in the glow of my Christmas lights. She arched a perfectly groomed brow at me. “Your place is in the back seat, dear,” she said, her voice light but venomous.

  “Not tonight.” I was done taking a back seat to Virginia Wydell. “We’re going to talk about the way you’ve been treating me and your son. Starting with this.” I extended the basket toward her. My arms shook. I was so mad, and it was so heavy.

  She peered at me like I was trying to hand her a dead animal. “I know your mother didn’t teach you those manners,” she said, slamming the car door closed. A moment later, the window rolled down. “How can you expect to fit in with that attitude?”

  “This is exactly what I’m talking about.” Her manner, her smugness. “Your intentions were cruel, and your gift—” The basket began sliding from my hands. “You can have your pears.”

  Virginia trilled a little laugh. “Oh no, Verity, I couldn’t possibly show up at the party with something so gauche. A gift like that is appropriate for someone like you, but it would never do as my hostess gift.” That was when I noticed the small gold-wrapped box with a red velvet ribbon sitting on her lap.

  Ellis snaked up beside me. “Here, Verity,” he said, trying to take my load of fruit before I dropped it all over the driveway.

  But no, this wasn’t for him. This was for her. “You,” I said, slowly and clearly so there was no way she’d be able to mistake me, “behave like a truly terrible person. You’re impossible to please, you hold everyone to a higher standard than God, much less yourself, could hope to reach, yet you have the nerve to act righteous while doing it.” It felt like I’d uncorked a champagne bottle in my brain, and now that I’d started telling her what I really thought, I couldn’t stop the words from spewing out.

  “You say that everything you do is for your family, for your son,” I said, jerking my head in the direction of a horrified Ellis. Well, let him see how to get the message across. “But, Virginia Wydell, in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never put your family’s needs above your own. Never! Not when Ellis wanted to become a cop, not when Beau was having trouble with work, and I don’t know enough about Harrison to venture a guess, but seeing as he’s never around—and I know you’d be flaunting him all over Sugarland if he were—I’m thinking he probably doesn’t care for your company either!” Virginia gasped, but I pressed on, gamely keeping my grip on the basket though my arms were starting to ache.

  “I’ve bent over backward trying to form even the most basic positive relationship with you, and you took that as a license to insult me, my family, my work, and now this, tonight.” The fruit. The note. “I’m done. If putting up with you is the price of admission into Wydell family get-togethers, then I’m. Not. Interested.”

  Virginia appeared markedly paler than she’d started out. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen before in a non-life-threatening situation, and her lips were still parted from her gasp. I had well and truly stunned her.

  Good.

  Of course, it didn’t last.

  “Well,” Virginia said, taking her time, drawing a weak, fluttering hand to her chest. “Are you going to hit me with a pear?”

  It took me a moment to realize I’d reared back with the basket, as if I was about to dump them all in her lap.

  It would serve her right.

  I straightened. “I’m not going to get violent. But—” I’d meant what I said. “—I’m not getting in that car with you.”

  She blinked once. Twice. “I’m more than happy to spend my Christmas Eve without you.” Her lips quivered into a small but snide grin. “And here I was, thinking that you’d never find a gift I actually liked.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, then,” I snapped. I turned around and almost ran right into Ellis.

  He stared at me like he’d just witnessed a road wreck, but it didn’t take more than a second for his natural chivalry to kick in. “Let me carry those for you, Verity,” he said quietly, taking the pears from me. This time, I let him.

  “Let’s go inside,” I told him.

  Virginia wasn’t getting another second of my attention or my company, and she certainly wasn’t getting my pears.

  I strode up the front porch steps, craving the shelter of home, needing to be back where I belonged. Where someone put me first, even if that some
one happened to be a little skunk with a saucy attitude and a mild fruit addiction.

  Sure enough, as soon as we stepped into the foyer, Lucy waddled straight for me, all nuzzles and kisses. “You’re worth ten Virginia Wydells,” I said, scooping her up and kissing her right on her cold little nose.

  Ellis set the basket on the table by the door, then cleared his throat. I wasn’t sure what he thought he was going to say. There was nothing to say.

  “It’s not that I don’t think you’re right,” he began.

  “I am right.” We both knew it.

  His shirt was hopelessly wrinkled, and his hair stuck up in places where he’d been running his hands through it. I reached up to at least straighten his tie.

  He held up a hand. “I think…” he began. “It doesn’t matter,” he concluded, shaking his head.

  “It does.” His feelings counted. “You matter. We matter.” He didn’t have to look so miserable when I said it. He was letting his mother’s smug attitude and false manners get into his head again. He was a good son, but he’d never satisfy her. “Stay with me tonight. Let Virginia walk to the party.”

  “Verity—” he began.

  “Or drop your mom off, let her be with the Wydells, and you can come back and spend the evening with me.” I was enough. We were enough. I touched his arm. “What have they ever given us other than hurt?”

  “You make it sound so easy,” he said, closing a hand over mine. He huffed out a chuckle. “You and me and no complications. We could feast on pear pie.”

  “My grandma had a killer recipe for pear pudding,” I said, leaning into him.

  “Poached pears, pear toast,” Ellis said, warming to the idea. He drew me into a hug, careful not to squish Lucy. I breathed in the warm scent of his cologne and relished the feel of his arms around me. He was a good man.

  “I wish this was easy,” he mused.

  “Me too.” But he was worth fighting for.

  His fingers trailed down my back. “I’d eat nothing but pears if it meant I could spend the evening with you.” He tilted back to look at me. “But I have to go to Montgomery’s house tonight.”