Jane Goodger by A Christmas Waltz Page B

giving birth to the blond-haired, blue-eyed angel that turned out to be Carson. His little brother was the spitting image of his father, and as soon as he could, John Kitteridge would carry his little son about proudly, showing off Carson while Boone walked behind.
    Boone couldn’t remember his father grieving for his dead wife, so Boone did that for him. Boone’s only real memory of his mother was simply a feeling that he missed her desperately. He couldn’t remember her face, her smell, the color of her hair. He couldn’t remember, no matter how hard he tried, whether she’d tucked him into bed or given him a good-night kiss. He only knew that as a little boy, his life changed the instant his mother died and his brother was born.
    It didn’t matter, even all these years later, how many times he told himself that his father had been a cruel drunk. The seeds of doubt planted by John Kitteridge lived still. Because his childhood had been long years of living in hell, of desperately protecting his little brother, of beatings that left him bloody and words that left him raw.
    He knew everyone felt sorry for him. But because there was something missing in him, no one did a thing. Carson was so loving, so handsome, so full of little-boy mischievousness, how could it be that the father was only good to one child? It must be that Boone deserved it. He must be doing something to get that whupping. You’d think the kid would learn.
    The thing was, it didn’t matter what Boone did—he still got blamed and beaten. He wasn’t sure if he was the dumbest kid or the bravest, but he even took the blame when Carson did something. As if his father would ever lay a hand on his little brother. When Carson got older, he reveled in his father’s attention and joined in on the belittling, sneering when his father sneered, laughing when his father did. But Boone knew, even then, that it wasn’t his little brother’s fault. How many times did he lie in bed and wonder what was wrong with him, that his father hated him so.
    Boone’s life changed when he was ten years old, the day Roy Johnson, the original owner of Small Fork’s only mercantile, gave him a job. Even then Boone suspected the man felt sorry for him, but he didn’t care. He had a job and money to buy food for Carson when his father spent it all on booze. Roy, a gruff man whose own wife had died years before, gave Boone the only kindness he’d ever had.
    Boone worked at the store every day but Sunday and, more often than not, showed up at the store Monday morning with new bruises that Roy would examine and scowl at.
    One day, after a particularly bad beating, Boone didn’t go to the store. His face was swollen and one eye was open just a slit, and he couldn’t bear the thought of Roy looking at him and feeling sorry for him. He hid in their shack-of-a-house, trying to quietly clean up the mess his father had made. His father was snoring off a drunk in another room and if you woke him up, it was purely the scariest thing on earth. But if he woke up to this mess, it would be worse. So Boone tiptoed about, picking up the pieces of crockery and dried-up food scattered about their tiny front room, praying his father wouldn’t wake up.
    The snoring stopped and Boone froze, his hand clutching the skin of a baked potato. He began to shake fiercely, his eyes pinned on the bedroom door, his ears straining to hear whether his father was getting up. When he heard the telltale creak of the bed and his father’s groan, he nearly peed his pants. He couldn’t get hit again. His face still hurt so much. He couldn’t take it, not one more time. He just couldn’t.
    That’s when Roy knocked on the door, and Boone nearly jumped a foot off the floor.
    “Boone, you in there?”
    Boone went to the door, torn between letting Roy in to see him, and keeping him out for fear his father would do something horrible to Roy. He opened the door a crack.
    “I’m not feeling too good today, Mr.