Ellie was too stunned to absorb their words. Her gaze shuttled between the mess on the table and her son, who glowered at her even as he relinquished the bat to his father. Why was he staring at her as if he wished he'd smashed her rather than the gingerbread house? What had she done to provoke his rage?

"You lied," he answered her unvoiced question. "You're a liar." Tears streaming down his cheeks, he ran up the stairs and into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

"He's such an idiot," Katie murmured, hurrying to Ellie's side and hugging her.

I lied? she wondered. What had she lied about?

Curt exchanged a puzzled glance with her. The bat looked adorable in his hands, so small and harmless. Yet Peter had used it as a weapon, wrecking Ellie's hard work. Suddenly, she hated that bat.

"I'll go talk to him," she said, then pursed her lips, squared her shoulders and marched up the stairs. She knocked on Peter's door and, when he didn't respond, inched it open.

He was seated on his bed, red-faced, wet-cheeked, clutching his new glove. "Care to tell me what this is all about?" she asked from the doorway. His forbidding expression kept her from entering the room.

"You lied," he said accusingly again. "You told me Santa exists and Nana told me that's a lie."

Ellie opened her mouth and then shut it, utterly stumped. Why would her mother have said such a thing?

"She told me I was a big boy and I should know the truth. Danny Barrone was right. There's no such thing as Santa Claus, and you told me there was."

Ellie felt her strength draining from her like air from a balloon. How dare her mother interfere? How dare she deny Peter the chance to believe, just a little longer?

"What I told you," Ellie reminded him, swallowing to steady her voice, "is that Santa exists for everyone who believes in him. Maybe Nana doesn't believe in him, so he doesn't exist for her."

"No, she said there was no such thing as Santa, and I was a big boy and I should know the truth." Peter glared at her. "She said all the presents came from you and Dad, except for the Lego set. That came from her and Poppa." Fresh tears spilled down his cheeks.

"Oh, Peter." Ellie ached to hug him, to urge him to hang on to his dreams and myths for as long as he wished.

"You lied," he said. "You treat me like a baby."

Ellie heard footsteps along the hallway behind her, and then the warmth of Curt joining her in the doorway. He still held the bat. "Say goodbye to this bat. It's going into storage for a while," he told Peter sternly.

"I don't care." Peter rolled away from his parents and hid his face in the corner where his bed met the wall.

"Let me talk to him," Curt whispered to Ellie.

She hated to leave Peter when his resentment was gusting toward her like a toxic fume. Just the sight of his slender back, his drooping gray sweatpants and his little feet, the soles of his socks permanently stained a smudgy gray, sent shudders of grief through Ellie. Had she blown things so terribly by allowing Peter to believe in Santa for one more year? Did Ellie's mother loathe her enough to undermine her relationship with her son? Why couldn't her mother get over the fact that Ellie had not fulfilled the promise of her youth? She'd made a good life for herself and her family and she'd never regretted her decision not to attend medical school. Why couldn't her mother accept who Ellie was?

She was so overwrought she realized she'd be useless in any conversation with Peter right now. Relinquishing that task to Curt, she stalked down the hall to the stairs. And decided Curt's taking over was just one more shred of proof that Ellie was inadequate as a mother.

The girls were in the kitchen when she arrived. They'd salvaged what they could of the gingerbread house and stacked the bigger chunks on a plate. "We'll cover it with red-and-green wrap," Katie announced, pulling the holiday-hued plastic wrap from a drawer. "That'll make it look good."

"And Peter can't have a single piece," Jessie added. "He's such a jerk."

"Yeah, Mom." Katie flung her arms around Ellie's shoulders-when had Katie gotten tall enough to stand eye-to-eye with Ellie?-and hugged her hard. "You should've stuck to having daughters," she said. "Boys are creeps."

"Except for Tyler Berlin," Jessie singsonged, teasing Katie. "He's so cool." She issued an exaggerated sigh.

"He is cool," Katie said defensively. It dawned on Ellie that her daughter had a crush on this Tyler boy and Ellie hadn't known anything about it until now. "He'd never do anything this asinine."

"Is that a bad word, Mom?" Jessie asked, turning her big, hazel eyes to Ellie.

"No." Ellie sank onto one of the chairs and watched her daughters smooth the plastic wrap around the plate.

"It sounds bad," Jessie said, glaring at Katie. "I don't think you should use bad-sounding words when Mom is upset."

"I'm not upset," Ellie a.s.sured her daughters. She'd already been branded a liar; one more lie didn't make much difference.

"Anyway, we loved the house," Katie insisted, patting Ellie's shoulder. "Let's go watch The Secret Garden."

The girls disappeared to the den to view their new DVD. Alone in the silent kitchen, Ellie let her head drop into her hands. Another shudder pa.s.sed through her.

Peter could be dramatic, she reminded herself. And the holiday excitement, the presents, the food and all the rest of it had wound him tightly. He'd overreacted to the news about Santa. It wasn't Ellie's fault. It wasn't.

Yet guilt rolled over her like a tidal wave with a sharp undertow, dragging her down and pulling her away from sh.o.r.e. She'd betrayed her son. She'd-well, not lied, perhaps, but fudged the truth.

She was a failure.

She wasn't sure how long she sat alone in the kitchen, inhaling the lingering scents of good food and hearing the m.u.f.fled music and dialogue from the movie playing in the den. When she felt two strong hands alighting on her shoulders, she flinched. She'd been so lost in her thoughts, so busy wallowing in guilt, she hadn't heard Curt enter the room.

She raised her head and peered over her shoulder at him. He ma.s.saged the base of her neck gently, rubbing his thumbs over the sore, knotted spots. "How are you doing?" he asked.

"The h.e.l.l with me. How's Peter?"

"Sulking. He'll survive. You might even get an apology from him before bedtime."

"I should apologize to him," Ellie said glumly. "He's right. I lied to him about Santa."

Curt released her and circled around to the chair across the table from her. He gazed at her, then reached out and covered her hands in his. "Don't be so hard on yourself, babe. You don't have to be perfect."

"Maybe not perfect, but I have to be good enough," she countered. "I'm not."

"Oh, Ellie..." He dragged her hands across the table and lifted them to his lips. He kissed one hand, then the other. "You're good enough."

This was why she loved him-because when her confidence slipped, he sh.o.r.ed her up. When doubt gripped her, he pried that monster's claws off her. When she was sure she wasn't good enough, he insisted she was.

She wasn't convinced, of course. Curt was telling her not the truth but what she needed to hear.

Sometimes, though, being lied to was a good thing. Maybe someday Peter would learn that.

In the meantime, Ellie treasured Curt's lie, met his gaze and gave his hands a loving squeeze. The one thing her mother had said today that Ellie could agree with was that she should thank G.o.d every day for a husband like him....

TEN.

STRETCHED OUT ON THE BED, Ellie appeared wistful, lost in a reminiscence. Her eyes glittered, focused on something he couldn't see. Let me in, he begged silently, then realized she wasn't thinking about Africa, about the stuff she didn't want to share with him.

"What?" he asked.

She smiled faintly. "I was just remembering the Christmas when Peter smashed the gingerbread house."

"Oh, G.o.d." Curt let out a short laugh. "What a horror show."

"He could be awfully intense sometimes."

"No kidding."

"Remember when he got into a fistfight in the middle-school cafeteria because someone said his Little League team cheated?"

Curt laughed again. "I thought I'd have to represent him in court."

"No one got hurt, as I recall. Sixth-graders don't have big fists."

"Yeah, but someone wound up with peanut b.u.t.ter in his hair."

Ellie nodded. "And Peter's shirt got torn. I wasn't happy about that."

"Then there was the time he went to some friend's house and the two of them drank their way through the kid's parents' liquor stash," Curt reminded her.

"Oh, G.o.d." Ellie winced. "Peter and Doug Rauss. They always found trouble. That was the summer before they started high school."

"Peter was sick as a dog."

"A good thing, too. If he hadn't vomited out all that c.r.a.p, we might have had to take him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped."

"Funny," Curt said, though it wasn't that funny at all, "when I think about Peter, I don't remember the bad stuff, all the gray hair he gave us. My memory just sort of edits it out."

Ellie sent him an odd look. Then she relaxed and picked up her gla.s.s of port, which sat where she'd left it on the nightstand, an inch of ruby liquid in it. "That's the way memory works," she agreed. "Selectively."

"Defectively," he corrected her.

"Self-protectively," she corrected him back.

He studied her from his vantage in the wingback chair. The pillows behind her head had mussed her hair, and he wished he could slide his hands through it. He longed to rejoin her on the bed, to have her next to him, to feel the warmth of her and lean into the dip in the mattress caused by the weight of her body. Maybe the reason he wanted her now was that his memory had edited out all the bad things between them, all the reasons divorce had made so much sense when they'd broached the idea a month ago.

"Hit the play b.u.t.ton," she said, angling her head toward the TV. "Let's keep going."

He wondered if she'd read his thoughts and decided to use the movie to distract him. He wasn't so easily distracted-the movie only reminded him of how good things had once been between them-but he wasn't about to pressure her. That he'd gotten her to trust him enough to return with him to their tres romantic room was some kind of miracle.

He tapped a b.u.t.ton on the remote and the movie resumed. The screen went black, and then a written caption appeared in stark white: "They say the greatest tragedy a mother can experience is to outlive her child."

The muscles in Curt's neck tensed. He'd known it was coming-any story of Ellie's life would have to include this part-and he'd been worried about how she would respond. He'd neglected to consider his own response. But d.a.m.n, it was going to be hard on him, too. To outlive one's child was also the greatest tragedy a father could experience.

A series of photos filled the screen, one fading into the next: Peter at around age four, towheaded and freckled, standing between his two sisters and reaching up to hold their hands. Peter perched on Curt's shoulders, his grin so big it nearly split his face. Peter in front of the Magic Kingdom castle at Walt Disney World, a Goofy sunhat on his head. Peter in a school portrait, stiff and formal against a blue-gray background. Peter with one of his Little League teams. Peter with one of his basketball teams. Peter with Ellie and Curt at his middle-school graduation ceremony, dressed in pressed khakis and a collared polo shirt, one hand clutching the various certificates and citations he'd received and the other arched around Ellie's shoulders. That was the year he'd surpa.s.sed Ellie in height. He clearly had an inch on her in the photo. Her smile was as bright as his.

The montage was accompanied by a plaintive Warren Zevon song. Curt recalled how much Peter had loved the old Zevon hit "Werewolves of London." He'd been too young to know what a werewolf was, but whenever Curt sang that song to Peter, he'd howl along: "Aaa-oooh!" He'd sounded as wild as a mystical beast.

Peter had probably never heard the song Jessie and Katie had chosen for this part of their movie, though. Zevon had recorded it when he himself was dying of cancer-a wistful ballad imploring his loved ones to remember him once he was gone. "Keep me in your heart for a while," he crooned in a broken, heartfelt voice.

The images on the screen blurred as Curt's vision filled with tears. He closed his eyes but couldn't shut out his own pictures of Peter, all elbows and knees, all fierce energy. So much love in that boy, so much righteous indignation. Just like Curt, he'd wanted to conquer the world. Just like Ellie, he'd wanted to save it.

The song washed around Curt and he swallowed, struggling against the sorrow that welled up inside him. The greatest tragedy was for a parent to outlive a child. Christ, what an understatement.

He hadn't heard Ellie's approach, but suddenly, her hand rested on the back of his neck, caressing. She pried the remote from his fist and the song stopped. She must have paused the DVD. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he mumbled, ducking his head so she wouldn't see his tears. d.a.m.n it. He wasn't fine. He was falling apart.

She walked away-with the movie's soundtrack no longer playing, he could hear her footsteps-and then returned and dabbed at his face with a tissue. He pulled the tissue away from her. He wasn't going to have her wiping his tears as if he were a helpless child.

"I'm fine," he repeated, opening his eyes and gazing at her.

She was kneeling on the floor in front of him, gazing up into his face. "This is the first time you've cried," she said quietly.

She didn't have to finish the sentence. The first time you've cried since we lost Peter. "I've cried plenty," he said.

"I never saw you cry."

"I cry in the shower." He meant to use the past tense, but the truth slipped out. He still wept for Peter sometimes-in the shower, or when he was jogging on the treadmill at the fitness center near his office and his tears were camouflaged by the sweat dripping down his face. Or sometimes at night, when Ellie was asleep and he lay beside her in their cold, loveless bed, and grief crashed over him.

Now Ellie knew-not only that he cried, but that he deliberately concealed his tears from her. He'd never wanted to break down in front of her. She'd been such a wreck after Peter's death-withdrawn, out of touch, teetering on the razor-edge of clinical depression. She'd been emotionally mutilated. One of them had had to remain strong, so Curt had remained strong.

"You should have told me," she said.

He heard a hint of reproach in her tone, and it transformed his embarra.s.sment into anger. "Told you what?" he retorted. "That I was hurting, too? You needed to be told that?"

"I only meant, you shouldn't have hidden your feelings from me."

"I didn't." His tears were gone now, his resentment building. "I was quite clear about how I felt and what I needed. You didn't want to hear it, Ellie. Every time I reached for you, you shut me out and retreated into yourself. My feelings disgusted you. So I stopped sharing them."

His outburst vibrated in the air, hot and bitter. Ellie held his gaze for a second, then turned from him. She pushed herself to stand and moved back to the bed, her head held high but her steps uncertain.

He'd drawn blood and it felt good. Maybe he was a son of a b.i.t.c.h-Ellie undoubtedly believed he was-but he took satisfaction in making sure she knew she wasn't the only one who'd been betrayed. She wasn't the only one with ugly scars etched onto her soul, the remnants of wounds inflicted by the person she'd married.

He watched as she sat on the edge of the mattress near the night table, her feet planted on the floor and her hands resting on her knees. She still held the remote control. Fine. Let her control the freaking movie. She liked to think she was the injured party in all this, but the fact was, she'd always been in control.

Curt was pa.s.sionately in love with her, insanely dependent on her-but she didn't need him. She had Africa, after all. She'd saved a kid's hearing. She'd probably saved a few kids' lives, too. She'd been respected over there, revered. Loved.

d.a.m.n it, he hadn't sent her to Africa. She'd chosen to go there, eager to put as much distance between herself and him as she could. She'd walked away from him, all the while insisting that he'd walked away from her. If he had, it was only after she'd slammed the door and bolted it.

She'd been in control all along.

She startled him by speaking. "I still miss him. Every day. Every minute. Even when I think about him smashing the gingerbread house or chugging booze with his friend." She glanced toward Curt but didn't meet his stare. "I don't cry that much, though."