Margaret Daley - Tidings of Joy

Was his new job thrusting him back into a world he didn’t want to be in? He needed a job and had been glad for a reference from Samuel, but the more he thought about the duties Nick wanted his assistant to do the more he felt as though he was being thrust back into the corporate life he’d wanted to avoid, that very life that had required hours and hours of overtime. If he had been with his wife and daughter when they had come home to find a stranger in their house, then maybe they would be alive today.

Still he needed the job. He would just have to take it one day at a time and not let his job consume his whole life. Not ever again.

With his heartbeat slowing, he strode toward the stairs that led to his apartment. A quick look toward the left halted his progress. Crystal sat on the deck, drawing something on a pad. Suddenly she threw down her pencil, tore off the sheet and crunched it into a ball. She tossed it into the yard where several other similar papers lay crumpled.

The frustration and anger that marked the teenager’s face drew him toward her. If his daughter were alive, he would want to be there for her. That was impossible, of course, but he could help Tom’s daughter.

“Nothing working out?” Chance gestured toward the wadded-up papers in the grass.

Crystal took the pencil her service dog had retrieved for her and looked up at him. “What’s the use? I’m not any good anyway.”

He descended the two steps to the yard and smoothed out one of the sheets. He whistled. “If this isn’t good, then I hate to think what you consider bad. Who is this?” He came back to sit in the lounge chair next to her.

“Just a guy. No one important.”

“Are all those attempts of him?”

Crystal nodded, peering away.

“Do you always waste your time drawing someone who isn’t important to you?”

She sighed, then shook her head. “He doesn’t know I’m alive.”

The anguish that wrenched her voice did the same to him. He cleared his throat and asked, “How do you know?”

“I just do. I might as well be dead for all he cares.”

The pain her words produced stole his breath. “I’m sorry. I…” Words failed him.

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