A Hickory Ridge Christmas. Dana Corbit
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didn’t seem happy to see you today.”
“I suppose not.” Todd reluctantly met the other man’s gaze. “I didn’t go about things the right way.”
“It’s hard to know the right thing to do sometimes.”
Andrew now wore his concerned minister’s face. Todd remembered Hannah once mentioning that Andrew had been a clinical counselor before entering the ministry.
“Apologizing to Hannah is the right thing to do,” Todd said. “I know it. She just didn’t give me the chance.”
“I don’t know everything that happened between the two of you or the full reason she ran out of here, but—”
“No,” Todd said to interrupt him. “You don’t.” His sharp tone surprised even him. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault that Hannah had refused to talk to him. He had no one to blame for that but himself. Taking a deep breath to clear his thoughts, he tried again. “I’ve been waiting five years to talk to Hannah…about a lot of things.”
“Have you ever considered that healing this relationship might not be as easy as you’ve imagined?”
“You mean that it might be too late? Sure, I’ve thought about it.” A lot. He took a long breath and shook his head in frustration. “But I have to do the right thing. I’ve prayed about it, and I’m convinced it’s what God wants me to do, so I’m just going to have to find a way to get Hannah to listen to me.”
“You sound pretty determined.”
“I am.”
“I guess you’ll be needing this then.”
Andrew withdrew a pen and notebook from his pocket, wrote something on it and handed to him. It said, “Hannah,” and it had a street address and an apartment number on it. Todd drew his eyebrows together as he looked up from it.
“You didn’t think she still lived at home, did you?”
He answered with a shrug. As a matter of fact, he had. He’d already driven by his old home and that particular house next door several times since he’d arrived in town on Friday. He’d studied that familiar dwelling, wondering whether she was inside and hoping she would pick that moment to go out to her car.
Todd closed his hand over the slip of paper. “Thanks, Andrew.”
“Will you do me one favor when you talk to Hannah?” Andrew waited for his nod before he continued, “When you’re talking, will you be sure to listen, too?”
Of course he would listen, Todd thought as he climbed in his car and turned out of the church lot onto Hickory Ridge Road. He would listen, but he couldn’t imagine what Hannah would have to say. She had nothing to apologize for; that was his department alone. Yet, an uncomfortable sensation settled between his shoulder blades. Why did he get the sense that Andrew knew something he didn’t?
“What are you doing, Mommy?”
Hannah turned from the medicine cabinet mirror where she was repairing her makeup. Rebecca, dressed only in a pair of red cotton tights, underwear and a lace-trimmed undershirt, stared up at her from the bathroom doorway.
Quickly, Hannah turned her back to her daughter and brushed the last of her tears away with the back of her hand. “Nothing, honey. You go ahead and finish changing your clothes. Remember to lay your dress out on the bed so I can hang it up, okay?”
“Okay,” Rebecca answered, though she would likely forget and leave the Christmas plaid dress in a pile on the floor. She started to leave and then stopped, turning back to her mother. “Are you crying?”
“No. Not really.” Hannah pressed her lips together. Now she was even lying to her daughter. When would it all stop? “I guess I am a little sad.”
“Don’t be sad, Mommy.” Rebecca wrapped her arms around her mother’s thighs and squeezed.
“Go on now,” she said, fighting back another wave of emotion.
As soon as Rebecca skipped down the hall, Hannah started swiping at the dampness again. She’d managed to hold herself together all through the ritual of collecting her daughter from her church program and through the drive home, but Hannah’s control had wavered the moment she was alone, changing out of her church clothes.
Todd? In Milford again? Come to think of it, she didn’t even know why he was in town. She might know that answer now if she’d given him a chance to speak. But how could she? Without any notice, she wasn’t prepared to face him. Who was she kidding? Even with six months notice, she wouldn’t have been able to come up with a valid explanation for what she’d done.
All of her excuses for not telling him—her anger for his leaving, her choice to never reveal the identity of her child’s father, her rationalization that Todd didn’t deserve to know—now sounded like the incoherent ramblings of a teenage girl.
That was what they were.
How could she ever have thought she had the right to withhold the information from him that he was a father? No one had that right to wield so much power over other people’s lives.
She had to tell him; that was a given. And she would. Soon. She just needed a little time to regroup first. After that, she would ask around and find out whom he was visiting and how long he would stay. She would tell him everything then, but she would do it on her terms.
Hannah nodded at the mirror, her thoughts clear for the first time since Todd appeared at her church and tilted her world on its axis.
A knock at the front door, though, set her thoughts and her newly settled world spinning once again. Was it Todd already? No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t even know where she lived, although he would only have to ask her father to get that information. Reverend Bob, who still didn’t know the whole truth, either.
Rebecca reappeared in the bathroom, this time wearing a reindeer sweatshirt with her tights. “Somebody’s knocking on the door.”
“I heard. I’ll get the door. Why don’t you go put your jeans on? Then go set up your dolls in the living room, and I’ll be there in a minute to play.”
Again, Rebecca scurried off, but this time, Hannah followed, turning down the hall to the front door. She stopped as her hand touched the wood. Without a peephole to check for sure, she could only hold her breath and hope she was wrong.
Lord, please don’t let it be Todd. It’s too soon. Please give me strength when the time comes. Amen.
Her hand was on the doorknob when his voice came through the door.
“Hannah, it’s me. Todd. I know you’re in there. I can see the lights.”
Panic came in a rush that clenched inside her and dampened her palms. No. She couldn’t tell him now. She wasn’t ready. Not yet.
“Go away, Todd.”
Though she recognized the voice as her own, the words surprised even her. She was taking the easy way out again rather than facing this mess she’d created, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
For a few seconds, there was no sound on the other side of the door. She almost expected to hear the crunch of snow as he trudged down the steps and away from her apartment, but instead there was a more insistent knock.
“You might as well open the door because I’m not leaving.”
Hannah stared at the door. Todd sounded different. The laid-back boy she remembered had been replaced by this determined and forceful guy she didn’t recognize at all, and yet she still found herself cracking the door open to him. Whatever happened to your fear of strangers? But irony encased that thought, for even this new Todd was in no way a stranger to her.
He stood on the porch, the collar of his wool jacket flipped up to shield his ears and his hands shoved in the front pockets of his slacks. Several years on an island off the southern end of the