Maggie Shayne: An Enchanted Season

Holly heard the rumble of a motor and glanced up and through the window, just in time to see a bus go past. Plastered to its side was an ad for the State University of New York at Oswego. She smiled, shaking her head. “I don’t think the universe is going to take no for an answer. My hometown seems to be calling me. Guess I’ve got no choice.”

Present Day, Detroit, Michigan

“Yes, I do have to go now,” Matthew told his sister. “Yes, Cindy, I know it’s Christmas week. But this is business.”

She sounded heartbroken, but honest to God, if he had to sit through one more warm, cozy, family dinner at her house with her idyllic life and her doting husband and her chubby babies, he was going to swallow a stick of dynamite and a lighter and hope for the best.

“Honey, you know how I feel about the holidays. I know they’re important to you, but ‘to you’ is the operative part of that sentence. This place is a bargain. I can’t miss out, and if I buy it this week, when every other person in the market is taking the holidays off, I’ll have the kind of edge you never get in real estate.”

Spice that up with the phony-baloney goodwill of the season, and the Realtor likely wanting one more fat commission check before the end of the calendar year (to cover her holiday overspending, most likely), and he had it made.

People were idiots this time of year. He was smart enough to take advantage of that.

“Yes, Cindy, I’m flying. Right away? Well, yeah, seeing as how I’m calling you from the airport, I would say it’s pretty much imminent. Yep, I’m renting a car when I arrive in Syracuse and driving up from there. And yes, we’ll celebrate when I get back, I promise. There’s no reason in the world I shouldn’t be back in time for Christmas dinner. My flight leaves Christmas Eve, three p.m.” He almost grimaced at the thought, but tried to make the words sound sincere all the same. “Have a great week, hon. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

He flipped the phone closed, cutting her off before she could dole out any more helpings of guilt, then slipped it back into his belt clip, and dragged his roller bag over toward the concourse, where the flight had just begun boarding.

As he got into his seat, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and told himself he really would do his best to get back to Cindy’s in time for Christmas. Cindy needed Christmas.

And that thought brought to mind the other. The one from long ago, his first Christmas without his dad. And his mom’s tearful explanation about how she’d gone to the secondhand clothing store and tried to find the hat, but that it was already gone. And the proprietor not only didn’t remember who had bought it, he didn’t even remember ever having seen it.

The hat was beyond recovering.

Just like his dad. Just like his childhood after that. Just like everything eventually was. Gone.

Just went to show what getting too attached would do for you. Things are fleeting. Here and gone again. There’s no point getting too used to anything.

And holidays, he added mentally, are just plain stupid.

The wind blew the hat until it came to rest outside a truck stop just a few blocks from the dead man’s house. And there it waited. Eventually, a long-distance driver came out of the establishment, burping in a very satisfied way and carrying a clipboard, a set of keys, and a travel mug full of Joe, piping hot and twice as strong.

He walked toward his rig, and almost tripped over the hat on his way. Then he paused and looked down at it, tipped his head to one side, and shrugging, bent to pick it up. It wasn’t a bad hat. Nothing he’d wear, but the thing had character. He didn’t really want it. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to take the thing, but take it he did. He set it on top of the CB radio inside the truck, and let it ride there as he headed for his next stop in New York’s southern tier. It was almost like having a friend along.

ALL WEEK LONG SHE’D BEEN SEEING SIGNS, TELLING HER TOgo home. And now that she’d arrived, she wondered why.

The house was not what she remembered. Of course, it hadn’t been painted or maintained in twelve years. It showed the signs of neglect, too. There were a few shingles missing from the roof. One shutter had come loose and hung by its bottom bolts while the top of it veered out to the side as if threatening to jump. The white paint was peeling and chipped.

A car horn blasted, and Holly damn near jumped out of her seat, glancing reflexively into the rearview mirror. She saw a dark-colored sports car behind her, and even before she managed to put her own sunshine yellow VW Bug into gear to move out of the way, the hot little black car was pulling out and around her. It roared past, its windows too tinted to let her see the impatient jerk who was behind the wheel.

Licking her lips, she gently corrected her thoughts. For all she knew, the driver might have been late to pick up his little girl from some event, or maybe he was rushing a sick relative to the hospital. He could have a very good reason for his impatience, and she shouldn’t judge.

She let the tense feeling run off her shoulders like water off a raincoat, and eased her Bug into the worn dirt driveway. It used to be pretty solid and bare. Now, grass and weeds had come up, and they brushed the underside of her car as she drove over them.

She brought the car to a stop and got out, then stood there for a moment as memories tried to sweep in. She could hear childish laughter—her own, and her baby sister’s—drifting in from a long forgotten past. She could almost see them, bundled in snowsuits to the point where Holly could barely bend and little Noelle looked like the pink version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Her cheeks, cherry red, her nose and mouth covered by a scarf with snowmen all over it. She was walking, but only just, and holding Holly’s hand, both of them in mittens as they tromped through the snow toward the place where they’d left the sled the day before.

She sighed and stared up at the two-story house. It was an ordinary frame house, nothing fancy, no real style or design to it. It was over a century old, drafty, poorly insulated, and probably needed a new roof and wiring and furnace and God only knew what else. It hadn’t been in great shape when she’d lived in it as a child. She remembered her dad calling it a fixer-upper.

“Why do you want me here?” she asked the house, or maybe she was asking her mom. She wasn’t sure. “What’s the point?”

There was a roar, and then a horn. She didn’t jump this time, just turned slowly to look toward the road where that same black sports car had returned, and sat there, growling like an agitated panther. Its tinted window slid slowly down, and she saw a man’s face, hidden behind dark sunglasses.

Something wafted from him—a feeling—almost like a breeze filled with tiny electric sparks.

She lifted her brows. “You again?” she asked

He frowned, glanced at her car, and then back at her. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was in a hurry.”

“Didn’t do you much good, though, did it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, wherever you were in such a hurry to go, you’re still not there.”

He tipped his head slightly to one side, reached up to pull off his sunglasses, as if it would help him to interpret her foreign language if he could see her better.

“You should slow down. Learn to enjoy the journey. You never really get where you’re going, anyway.”

“Uh—well, where I’m going is the Best Western. And I sure as hell hope I’m going to get there.”

She nodded, and thought he was only pretending not to get her deeper meaning. He looked intelligent enough. Dark hair, nice face. Deep chocolate eyes that made her tummy tighten up if she looked directly into them. And his mouth—well, she just wasn’t going to look at that anymore at all. There was something way too sensual about those lips.