The Best Gift

by Markham, Wendy

  “Hmm . . . what was it called?” Doreen asks, obviously clueless but hoping to jog her memory.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we definitely never had an ugly aqua linoleum floor in here,” Debbie says with maddening big-sister certainty. “Right, Mom?”

  “Right.”

  “Yes, we did!” Talk about frustrating. “Come on, I can just see those metal sticks scattered all over it. I even remember the box the game came in—it was red and yellow, and it had a picture of an elf on it and I used to leave the cover off because he was creepy-looking and it scared me.”

  “Jack Straws!” Drew’s grandmother blurts out, so unexpectedly that they all turn to look at her in surprise.

  “Mom, are you okay?” his father asks, touching her wrinkled hand.

  “Jack Straws!” she repeats, and Drew wonders if she’s gone off the deep end like Aunt Stella. Or maybe senility has finally set in. Poor Grandma.

  Then again, she is ninety-five years old. It’s a wonder this didn’t happen sooner.

  “Who,” Drew’s mother gently asks her mother-in-law, “is Jack Straws?”

  “Not who. What!”

  “What?” Drew’s parents exchange a glance.

  “The game!” Grandma says impatiently. “The one Drew is talking about. Jack Straws.”

  “See?” Drew is triumphant. “Jack Straws. That’s it.”

  Grandma to the rescue. He knew that game wasn’t just a figment of his imagination.

  “I had it, too, when I was a girl. Remember, Stella?”

  Stella tilts her helmet thoughtfully.

  Wearing a far-off expression, Grandma goes on, “Oh, yes, Santa Claus brought it to me the Christmas I turned five—you know, he only used to bring us one or two toys back then, not like the piles he brings all of you today.”

  Sean and Katie exchange a wide-eyed glance.

  “One toy?” Katie asks sympathetically. “That’s so sad.”

  “Were you a bad girl, Grandma?” Sean wants to know.

  “Oh, bless you, no. I was always a good girl. Things were just different back then. We didn’t have a lot, and we didn’t need a lot, and we didn’t want a lot.”

  “That’s why they call them the ‘Good Old Days,’” Rick says dryly, glancing at his wife and children.

  “That game was brand-new that year,” she reminisces on, “and all the kids wanted it, but I was the only one who got it. The metal rods with the wooden knobs, the magnets . . . there was an elf on the box, just like Drew said. Magnetic Jack Stra, it was actually called. Oh, we spent hours playing with that, just like Drew did.”

  As his grandmother smiles fondly, Drew wonders if he could possibly have been mistaken. Grandma was five years old in 1920. Was he really playing with the exact same game sixty years later?

  He must have been, because he does remember it—and the aqua-colored linoleum.

  Which his mother claims didn’t even exist.

  Puzzled, he turns to look at Clara and finds her gaping right back at him.

  “What?” he asks, taken aback by the vivid alarm in her eyes.

  “No, I just . . . I have to . . .” She jumps up and rushes from the table.

  “Clara? Honey, where are you going?” Drew’s mother asks as she races past.

  “I just—I need to get some air.”

  Uh-oh. Obviously, the eggs and coffee finally got to her.

  “She, uh, hasn’t been feeling well today,” he explains to his family, pushing his own chair back.

  “There’s a bug going around,” his sister Doreen says.

  “Terrific.” Rick exchanges a worried look with Dani, obviously thinking of that eight-hour drive ahead.

  “Is Aunt Clara going to hurl?” Kevin asks with interest as Drew hurries past him and his scooter toward the front door.

  “No, no, she’s fine. I’ll be right back.”

  Drew steps into the damp, chilly air, closes the door behind him, and looks around for Clara.

  There she is, leaning against the porch railing, hugging herself.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m . . . not sure.”

  “Did you get sick?”

  “No, it’s not that.” She seems to be avoiding his gaze.

  “It’s not?” Puzzled, he goes over to her. “What is it?”

  She stares off into the distance, as if she’s trying to make up her mind about something.

  “Clara . . . what is it? What’s up?”

  She just shakes her head, clearly unwilling—or maybe unable?—to answer.

  “Hey, you’re kind of freaking me out. Talk to me.”

  Finally, she turns her head to look him directly in the eye, her face etched with grim determination that catches him off guard.

  “There’s something you should know, Drew. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Relieved to have left behind the postapocalyptic version of San Florentina, Clara steers the car up the winding road northeast of town.

  “Arriving . . . at . . . destination . . . on. . . . left,” the GPS intones, and Clara slows the car to peer through the windshield.

  9 Sequoia Way is part of a new-looking townhouse complex nestled on the wooded hillside. The boxy two-story cookie-cutter units appear to be distinguishable only by the brass number affixed to the front doors.

  This isn’t the kind of place she and Drew would ever choose to live—not by a long shot. Not after their dream house.

  Maybe something has gone horribly wrong with their finances, she finds herself thinking hopefully.

  That would be much easier to swallow than the alternative scenarios that keep trying to gnaw their way into her consciousness.

  Dickens lets out a bark and she turns to see that he’s up on all fours, panting, gazing out the window at the townhouses.

  “Do you recognize this place, boy?” Clara asks him, turning off the ignition. “Are you home? Is that it? Is this where you live?”

  Maybe he really is a stray.

  A stray who looks like Dickens and acts like Dickens and answers to Dickens.

  “I guess we’d better figure out what’s going on. Come on.” She opens the door and climbs out of the car with effort. It’s kind of exhausting, lugging this big stomach around with her everywhere she goes.

  The dog bounds out after her, making a beeline for unit number nine.

  Clara follows slowly, taking in the neighboring townhouses. At first glance, they all looked alike, but now she recognizes subtle differences between them.

  A tricycle and a plastic Little Tikes picnic table are visible in the yard next door to the right, and several cases of empty beer bottles sit beside the steps next door to the left. Starter homes for young families, transitional homes for singles . . .

  Where do Drew and I fit in here? Clara wonders bleakly.

  Dickens is eagerly parked on the doorstep of Unit 9, wagging his tail in anticipation. Clara reluctantly joins him and rings the bell, wondering what she’ll say to whoever comes to the door.

  But nobody does.

  She rings again, waits again, knocks, knocks louder.

  “Nobody home?” she asks Dickens.

  Knowing it’s nosy, but also perfectly appropriate under the circumstances, she leans toward the window in the door, cupping her hand over her eyes to peer inside.

  A glance tells her the place is empty. Not as in nobody home. As in completely unoccupied. There’s no furniture, no sign that anyone is living in the vacant rooms she can see through the door.

  Not sure what to make of that, she looks at Dickens.

  “Maybe we haven’t moved in yet. Is that it?”

  He trots down the steps and disappears around the corner of the townhouse in reply.

  “Hey! Where are you going?”

  She chases after him.

  When she catches up, she finds him parked beside a pair of glass sliders on the back deck, clearly wanting—and expecting�
�to be let in.

  Dickens is obviously right at home here. It’s hard to believe he’d act this way if they haven’t even moved in yet.

  “Then again, you are a nutty kind of dog,” she informs him.

  Looking agreeable, he thumps his tail on the deck planks.

  There’s no sign of life back here, either, she notes. The deck is empty, while the neighboring ones have plastic chairs, an umbrella table, kids’ outdoor toys. She wishes someone would come outside and perhaps recognize her—or Dickens, at least. She can’t quite muster the nerve to knock on a door and ask if anyone knows her.

  Oh, well.

  “Come on, Dickens. Let’s go.”

  He wags his tail, still looking at the door.

  With a sigh, Clara reaches for his collar to drag him away.

  Then something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.

  Turning her head, she sees that there is, indeed, a hummingbird feeder hanging from a hook beside the kitchen window.

  Meaning . . . what?

  Plenty of people like hummingbirds. Yes, Doris happens to be obsessed by them—but that doesn’t mean she’s responsible for this one.

  Particularly since we haven’t even moved in yet, Clara reminds herself.

  Still, she looks back over her shoulder at it as she heads toward the car with Dickens in tow. She can’t help but feel like it’s much more than a coincidence.

  Her thoughts are scrambled as she drives back home through the fog with Dickens snoozing peacefully on the seat beside her.

  Pulling into the driveway at home, she glances up at the house and through a veil of fog, is startled to see someone beside the front door.

  “Drew!”

  Hope soars into her heart.

  Startled by her outburst, Dickens scrambles to life on the passenger’s seat.

  Then the mist thins and she realizes it isn’t Drew after all, and the burst of hope nose-dives to her gut.

  The figure belongs to a female. Whoever it is waves and comes eagerly toward the car.

  Clara turns off the engine, puts the car into park, and tries to regain her composure.

  The woman is a tall, blonde, beautiful stranger.

  But when Clara opens her car door and steps out, she finds herself caught in a fervent embrace.

  “I’m so glad you’re back!”

  Caught off guard by the greeting, Clara replies, her voice muffled by her visitor’s jacket, “I just . . . I just went to town for a little while.”

  With a laugh, the woman releases her. “You know that’s not what I meant. Wow, look at your belly! You’ve gotten so big—I mean, in a good way,” she adds hastily.

  Getting a good look at her for the first time, Clara realizes she’s not a woman after all. She’s about college-age, and there’s something vaguely familiar about her.

  Having leaped out of the car, the dog hurtles himself at the girl and she welcomes him with open arms. “Hey, Dickens! It’s so good to see you, buddy!”

  Dickens.

  So it is him.

  Clara realizes she knew it all along, deep down inside. Of course it’s Dickens. Crazy dog.

  Crouching to rub Dickens’s fur affectionately, the girl looks up at Clara. “Where’s Drew?”

  Good question.

  And one she’d been praying the newcomer might answer. So much for that.

  “He’s not here—right now,” she adds, her head spinning. Surely, if this girl knows her and Dickens and is asking about Drew, she’d been expecting to find him here.

  That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?

  “Awww . . . I wanted to tell him that on our last day I did a double black diamond chute in deep powder! He was so right.”

  “About what?”

  “You know—when he told me that I’d be way more likely to regret it if I didn’t try it than if I did. Last time we went I didn’t do it, and I regretted it. So this time, even though I was scared out of my mind, I made myself try it. And I did it!”

  “That’s so great . . .”

  “Yeah, and I would have done it again if we could have stayed another day. But my mom was ready to come back home first thing this morning. You know how she is—she just doesn’t like to be in the house for Christmas—it’s too hard. Anyway, she says maybe we can go back to Tahoe in January, so I’m definitely going to try it again.”

  Piecing together the fragments of conversational clues, Clara knows only that the girl has been away on a ski trip with her mother, who thinks Christmas at home is too hard.

  Wondering who the heck she is, Clara looks around to see if her car offers a clue—and sees that there isn’t one.

  What, did she helicopter in?

  “Well, I’d better get back home,” she tells Clara, giving Dickens a final pat before standing again. “My mom wants me to watch my brothers while she goes out to get some groceries into the house. Don’t tell Drew my news—I want to tell him myself. He’s going to be really proud of me.”

  The girl starts away, toward the stand of trees alongside the driveway.

  Ah—so she came on foot.

  And all at once, Clara realizes who she is. She’s a good head taller, but if you strip away the baby fat, the glasses, the braces, and . . .

  “Amelia!”

  Startled, the girl turns back. “Yeah?”

  “Uh, tell your mom I said hello.”

  “Sure.”

  “And your dad, too,” she adds as Amelia walks on.

  The girl stops in her tracks. After a moment, she turns, and the look on her face makes Clara’s blood run cold.

  “Wh—what did you say?”

  Oh, no. God, no.

  Something must have happened to Jeff Tucker. The pain in his daughter’s eyes is as blatant as the freckles on her nose once were.

  Three years is a long time. Freckles fade. Awkward little girls grow up to be beautiful young women. Loved ones are lost.

  “I’m glad, too,” Clara manages to say. “That’s what I said. You know—about your black diamond run.”

  “Oh!” Amelia’s expression relaxes. “I thought you said something else.”

  Clara shakes her head mutely.

  “And it was double black diamond,” Amelia amends with a smile, before starting toward home again.

  “Double. Of course. Good going, sweetie.”

  Clara watches until the girl has disappeared between the trees.

  Only then does she allow the thought that’s been trying to break in from the moment Amelia asked about Drew.

  She didn’t ask about their child.

  Nor did she glance into the backseat as though she were expecting to find someone small strapped into the car seat there—the car seat that doesn’t exist.

  Her heart aching anew, Clara unlocks the front door and steps over the threshold.

  The house feels emptier than ever. She makes her way past the stacks of boxes to the kitchen, where she dumps some food into a bowl for Dickens. He dives noisily into the meal.

  Realizing she’s hungry, she looks around for something to eat. There isn’t much. The fridge hasn’t been replenished since yesterday, and the cupboards remain bare. Nancy Tucker isn’t the only one who should be buying groceries.

  But Clara is too exhausted to go out again. Maybe she can just order something. In town earlier, she’d noticed that Drew’s favorite pizza place had reopened in a new location.

  They had ordered so much takeout when they first moved into their house that Clara easily memorized the number. With any luck, they haven’t changed it.

  Picking up the telephone receiver to dial, she hears the static dial tone that indicates a waiting voice mail message.

  Her heart skips a beat.

  Quickly, she presses the incoming calls log, praying she’ll see a familiar number.

  There isn’t one. There have been two calls since she left the house, and she doesn’t recognize either of numbers on caller ID.

  Okay. That’s okay.

/>   Whoever called left messages, but she’ll need a password to retrieve them. She hurriedly dials the message access code and that, at least, still works. She follows the automated prompts that lead to a request for her password. Then, holding her breath in anticipation, she enters the one she and Drew were using three years ago.

  Please, let it work. Please, let it work.

  “You have . . . one . . . new . . . message.”

  Yes! It works!

  On the heels of that triumphant thought comes another: there’s only one message. That means the other caller hung up without leaving one.

  “First . . . new . . . message . . .” the robotic operator announces.

  Please, let it be from Drew. Please, let it be from Drew.

  Clara holds her breath.

  “Clara, it’s me,” her mother’s familiar voice greets her. “I’m just checking in on you again. Where are you this early in the morning? Are you all right? Maybe you’re asleep. Okay, call me as soon as you wake up so that I won’t worry.”

  No chance of that. Some things never change.

  But for once, Clara welcomes her mother’s nagging questions. The knowledge that her mom is still out there somewhere, alive and well in 2012, is a tremendous comfort.

  It would be even more comforting to discover the same thing about her husband.

  Again, she checks the call log.

  Who called and didn’t leave a message?

  Does it matter? It was probably a telemarketer, or someone taking a survey. They hang up on voice mail all the time.

  Drew would have left a message.

  Still, curiosity gets the better of her and she highlights the unfamiliar number, then presses redial.

  Someone answers on the first ring—a familiar male voice saying a cheerful “hello.”

  “Drew!” she shrieks. “Oh my God, Drew! Where are you?”

  But he’s still talking.

  “You’ve reached the voice mail of Drew Becker. Please leave a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”

  Heart pounding, Clara waits impatiently through the drawn-out beeeeeep that indicates he’s got numerous messages.

  “Drew, it’s me. Where are you? I missed your call, and I need you to call me back right away, please! Please, call me right back!”

  Not wanting to break the connection, she presses the phone hard against her ear, trying to think of something else to say—something that won’t strike him as odd.