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IN HORRID slow motion Dirk watched disaster unfold, unable to stop what had been set into play, only able to do damage control by reacting quickly.
Reaching out to keep from falling back, Abby had grabbed hold of the table her village sat on. Only she didn’t catch the table. She caught the steeple of the church and kept going, the church traveling with her, knocking pieces of the village left and right.
“No,” she cried as she kept going back, too off balance to do a thing to stop the pending catastrophe as the table tipped. “My mother’s village!”
But rather than saving her houses, Dirk caught hold of her, righting her while the table and its contents crashed to the floor.
The sound of glass crashing into glass sent her cat tearing from the room with a screech.
“Are you okay?” he asked, visually che
cking her, grateful not to see any blood as she could easily have cut herself on the broken pieces.
“My mother’s village!” She pulled free of him and dropped to her knees, picking up the pieces.
“Those are just things. Are you okay? The baby?”
When he’d watched her falling back, his anger had dissipated into fear. Fear that she might be hurt, that she might lose the baby.
Abby ignored his questions about her well-being and righted the table. She picked up the church first, noted the missing steeple, the chip at the base. She dug her fingernail into the chipped area and took a deep breath, then continued to pick up piece after piece.
Dirk knew that she connected the decorations with her family, with the connection the three of them had once shared.
He bent to help her, picking up the pieces of the train set and placing them back on the righted table, carefully reconnecting the track, the train engine and cars. Two of the houses were intact, so was the schoolhouse. The carousel had a tiny chip at the base. All the other village houses had larger breaks.
Dirk took her hands into his. “Sit down, Abby. This is only upsetting you. I’ll do the rest, save what can be salvaged.”
“No. I think you’ve already done enough, don’t you?” Her chin lifted. Her eyes blazed, blazed so intently that Dirk winced. He’d never seen that anguish, that pain, that accusation in Abby’s eyes before.
“I didn’t do this, Abby.” But he hadn’t been innocent. He’d been so wrapped up in his own emotions over his family’s “surprise” that he hadn’t considered Abby’s emotions, hadn’t acknowledged that she’d been trying to do something good by having his family there. Instead, he’d attacked the moment they’d walked out the door.
“No, I did this,” she admitted, glaring at him. “I ruined my mother’s Christmas village.”
A coldness had crept into Abby’s voice. A coldness he’d never heard from her. A coldness that held finality.
Her fingers clasped tightly the church steeple she held. She looked ready to snap into as many pieces as the village collection had.
She looked like she wanted to snap him into a zillion pieces and toss him out with the trash.
Abby didn’t say anything more. She couldn’t. Her throat had swollen shut with emotion. Her voice gone. Perhaps for ever.
She stared at the church’s steeple in her shaking hands. Her entire insides shook. Her mother’s Christmas village. Broken.
How could she have been so stupid as to fall into the table? How could she have been so stupid as to fall in love with a man who could never love her back?
“Abby?”
She sucked in a breath, knowing she couldn’t just keep sitting here, staring at the shattered remains of the only tangible things she had of happier times, of her childhood.
The damage was done. There was no undoing it. She’d make do with the best she could, to repair the pieces she could repair. Try not to wonder if fate wasn’t trying to tell her something.
That she might dream of the wonderful Christmas village scenario with Dirk, but all she was going to get was shattered dreams, and the sooner she accepted that, the less she’d have her hopes crushed.
“These are just things. You still have your memories of the Christmases with your parents. That’s what’s important.”
Hearing Dirk say that made something snap inside Abby. Something that perhaps had been on edge from the moment she’d found out she was pregnant. From the moment she’d realized she’d never have her happily-ever-after dream. Never have magical Christmases of her own. Never have what her parents had had. Tonight, watching him with his family, had shattered all hope.
“How dare you call my mother’s Christmas village ‘things’?” she accused. “You, the man who could care less about his family.”
