An Amish Christmas by Cynthia Keller Read Free Book Online Page A

when the children got sick. His many kindnesses were the reason she did her drugstore shopping at his tiny store instead of the less expensive chain. She must owe him a fair amount on the house account. He would never collect it. Alice, the lovely woman at the dry cleaner, would also go without getting paid on their open account. Glen Richards, their wonderful gardener with whom she had spent so much time discussing what plants worked best where. All these people would be cheated. The mental images made her cringe. She made a note to check on the balances and write IOUs. One day, somehow, she would make good on them.
    So many ugly tasks. She jotted down their various insurance policies—medical, life, car. All paid for now, but when the next premiums came due, the policies would lapse, and if one of them got seriously ill or worse, the family would be completely unprotected.
    She could see something of the lengths to which James had gone to hide his situation. For the past three months, he had been careful to maintain his usual system of transferring enough money into their checking account so she could pay the bills. What upset her even more was that if she had known the truth, she could have chosen which bills to pay. He had let her go on paying for cable television instead of putting aside funds for more important things.
    Her mind drifted to the people they knew around town. Shewished with all her heart that she could disappear from Charlotte today, this very minute. She grimaced. To go where? She had several good friends here but no one she would ask to put up a family of five indefinitely. Besides, she could see herself telling her friends that James had lost his job, but sharing that he had lied to her and lost everything in a swindle was a different matter. She knew she could never bring herself to confide that to anyone. Realizing she had to live with this enormous secret made her feel completely alone in the world.
    They could go to a motel until their remaining money ran out, but that wouldn’t take long. And then what? To make matters worse, she didn’t know if she could bear to go anywhere with James ever again. When had he become so obsessed with money and success that he’d given up all perspective? Losing everything, every last penny—it made no sense to Meg. He had no internal brakes, nothing to tell him that things should go so far and no farther. He had lost himself completely.
    “Mommy, can you make me pancakes?” Sam stood in the kitchen doorway in his pajamas, his eyes puffy from sleep.
    Meg put the pad facedown on the desk. She would give the children as long as possible to enjoy the life they knew before she yanked it out from under them. “Plain or blueberry, sweetie?”
    As the day passed, Meg realized that James was avoiding her. Annoyed, she finally went to seek him out. She found him stretched out in the club chair in his office. He sat immobile, his head resting on the back of the chair, his eyes closed. “I’m awake,” he said without moving.
    The sight only irritated her more. “What are you doing,holed up in here?” She stood in front of him. “We have about a thousand things that need to be dealt with, and I can’t do it all by myself.”
    He opened his eyes. “What needs to be done?” he asked in a listless tone.
    “Well, I made some notes and went over …” Meg trailed off as she saw that James was gazing somewhere over her shoulder, clearly not listening. “Is this how it’s going to be? I do absolutely everything to clean up this mess? No, James.
No.
” She crossed her arms. “Yes, I see you’re sad, you’re depressed, your heart is broken. But you and I don’t have the luxury of those feelings. We have three children to take care of.”
    “Kids are resilient. They’ll be okay.”
    Her voice rose. “Whether they’ll be okay is another matter, but before that, they have to be
told
. Have you considered how to break this news to them?”
    “I don’t know.”