by Lori Wilde
“You can’t protect me from everything. My dad couldn’t protect my mother from ALS.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you, Flynn. We’re going to have a wonderful life.”
“You always know what to say to make me feel better. I love you, Jesse.”
“Love you too,” he rasped, and cast a sideways glance at his wife.
Her hazel eyes glowed with a special light since she’d become pregnant, and her curly brown hair had thickened. She’d been pretty, but now? She was stunning.
He slipped his hand from hers and placed it on her belly. The baby kicked against his palm, and a loopy grin took hold of him. This was a miracle. Once upon a time, he figured he’d spend his life alone, and now he had all this. How had he landed a woman like Flynn? It boggled him. Scared the hell out of him too.
His heart jumped into his throat, choked him. He didn’t deserve her. He was a scarred, damaged man who’d spent ten years in prison, even if it was for a crime he hadn’t committed. He knew his faults and flaws, and he was terrified that one day, she’d see them too and leave. He loved her so much. Maybe too much, if that was possible. If he lost her, it would be the end of him.
And now, there was someone else to love. Someone else he could lose. Dad. A father. Him? What a huge concept to wrap his head around. Nine months wasn’t nearly enough time to prepare. They’d taken childbirth classes and learned about all the things that could go wrong. It was a miracle, really, that anyone was born safe and healthy.
But it wasn’t just the difficulty of childbirth that worried at him. He didn’t know the first thing about being a good father. He’d had no role model. No road map to follow. What if he screwed it all up? Raising a kid was serious stuff.
The baby kicked again. They’d decided to wait and find out the sex when it was born, so he had no idea if he was about to have a daughter or a son.
“She’s active today,” Jesse said.
Flynn nodded. “He’s eager to meet his daddy.”
“Can you believe it? Only a week to go.”
“Babies arrive on their own timetables. Could be longer.”
“We need to settle on a name. I’m still up for Hondo if it’s a boy.”
“If we’re going to use family names, I want to name him after you.” She reached out to comb her fingers through his hair. “Jesse could work for a girl too.”
“We could do what your parents did when they merged Floyd and Lynn into Flynn.”
“So Jesselyn?”
“Or Flesse,” he teased.
“Horrors!” She laughed. “I’ve always felt it’s best to give a baby a name that’s all their own. That way they don’t have to live up to anyone else’s expectations.”
“So we’re back to square one on the names?”
“I’m not too worried about it. I think as soon as we see our wee one, we’ll know exactly the right name.”
“I love your confidence,” he said. “You give me courage.”
“Ha! If you only knew how insecure I feel sometimes.”
He touched the tip of her nose with his index finger. “You’ve got nothing to feel insecure about. You’re going to be a great mother.”
“You didn’t think that thirty minutes ago when you caught me on that stepladder.”
“I overreacted. You got the directions?”
Flynn dug around in her purse for a piece of notepaper and unfolded it. “After we pass the Brazos River, take a right into the Post Oak Shores development.”
They crossed the bridge, traveling from Hood County into Parker. Normally, the recipients of the Angel Tree charity had to live in Hood County to qualify for the program, but this family had just moved after being evicted from their home three days earlier. It wouldn’t have been fair to cut them off because their situation had gotten even worse.
Heavy-bottomed clouds bunched, turning the sky dark an hour before nightfall. He switched on the radio, searched for a station that was giving the local weather.
The weatherman announced, “This doozy of an ice storm is expected to hit Dallas/Fort Worth and the surrounding areas around nine o’clock tonight, so get home and stay warm, folks. But don’t worry, kids, it’s not going to stop Santa from making his rounds. He’s got Rudolph to light the way.”
Flynn rested a hand on Jesse’s arm. “Relax. We’ll be home long before the storm hits.”
“Who says I’m tense?”
“You’re clenching your jaw.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin. “You know me so well. I can’t help wishing I’d left you at home.”
“C’mon. You couldn’t do that to me. The highlight of my Christmas Eve is seeing the faces on those Angel Tree families when we arrive with their gifts and food. Giving is the best part of Christmas.”
“Which is why I didn’t bother trying to get you to stay home,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m allowed to worry until we’re back safe and sound.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll grant you a little fretting.”
Daddy.
Jesse grinned. He sure liked the sound of that. Imagine. He was about to have a family of his very own. He turned into Post Oak Shores. It was a poverty-stricken community, composed mostly of thin-walled shacks and rundown trailer houses. Many of the yards were littered with junk cars and overgrown weeds, but a few were lit with Christmas decorations.
“Take a right at the fork in the road. It’s the third trailer house on the left. Lot number sixteen,” Flynn read from the directions.
Jesse took a right and slowed down. Outside number sixteen sat a twenty-year-old Chevy with balding tires and a dented front fender. In the bare patch of ground that passed for a yard was a plastic Big Wheel faded from orange to faint yellow and a wading pool filled with stagnant water. The porch steps leading to the trailer house look rickety. Probably eaten up with termites. He hated the thought of Flynn climbing them.
“I’ll be okay,” she said, reading his thoughts. “We’re doing a good thing.”
He knew that. It was the reason he was here in the first place, sad memories of the time when he and his mother lived in such dumps. He swung into the driveway, and his headlights swept across the side yard where a thin woman was trying to heft an axe to split a chunk of wood. She swung and missed. Momentum spun her around so fast he feared she was going to chop off her leg.
“Oh my,” Flynn said. “That looks like an accident waiting to happen.”
The gaunt woman set the axe down, straightened, and ambled toward the car as they got out. Her hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail and she wore oversized rubber boots and several threadbare sweaters layered over each other. She hunched her shoulders against the blowing cold. Her cheeks were windburned, her hands chapped. “You folks with the Christmas Angels?”
“We are,” Flynn confirmed.
The woman plastered her palms over her heart and looked as if she was about to burst into tears. “Thank the Lord! I thought since we moved outta Hood County we might not be gettin’ a visit.”
“Don’t worry,” Flynn said softly. “Your kids are going to have a good Christmas this year.”
“I’m Myra. Myra Scott.” She shook their hands as they introduced themselves. “Y’all come on in. Sorry the place ain’t much.”
“No need to apologize,” Flynn said.
Jesse reached into the backseat for the Styrofoam cooler, and Flynn held out her hands to take it from him.
“I can carry that,” Myra said. “You don’t need to be totin’ my groceries in your condition.”
Jesse passed the cooler to the woman and went back for the oversized cotton bag packed with presents.
“I can carry something,” Flynn said. “I’m not helpless.”
“Sweetheart, relax. You don’t have to do everything.”
“Please.”<
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“If you insist, there’s still a bag of nuts and oranges in the floorboard.”
She beamed. “Thank you.”
He nodded for her to go up the porch ahead of him. He wanted to stay behind her so he could catch her in case the stairs gave way. Dammit, why did she have to be so stubborn? He would have been much happier if she’d agreed to stay home. Then again, she wouldn’t be his Flynn if she weren’t a bit bullheaded. Her ability to dig in and do what needed to be done was one of the things he admired most about her.
The trailer was just as cold inside as it was out. Three kids—a boy about six or seven, a girl slightly younger, and a baby around nine months old—shivered around a potbellied stove, the fire inside burned down to embers. Explained why their mother had been out chopping wood.
The kids eyed them as their mother moved clutter from the counter, but they didn’t come over to investigate. He wondered about their timidity. He could tell from their eyes they’d seen too much of the rough side of life.
“Set it here,” Myra said.
“No heat?” Jesse grunted.
She pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her face and looked sheepish. “Furnace don’t work. Potbellied stove gets the job done. Excepting I have to chop the wood and I’m none too good at it.”
Jesse’s gut twisted. He couldn’t go off and leave the frail woman without any heat source for the holiday, especially with an ice storm on the way. He pulled all the money he had from his wallet, money that he’d earmarked for a tank of gas on the way home, but no matter, they still had a quarter of a tank, plenty enough fuel to make it the twelve miles back to Twilight from here.
He laid the two twenties on the counter. “This is to help get you through. I’ll call a furnace repairman out here the day after Christmas and pay for the repairs. In the meantime, I’ll stock you up on firewood.”
Gratitude and relief mixed with the shame on Myra’s face. “Thank you, mister. Thank you.”
Flynn sent him a tender look. I love you, she mouthed silently, and then said brightly to the mother, “Let’s get your kids fed.”
An hour and a half later, the trailer house was stocked with enough wood to get them through the next couple of days, the family had eaten the meal Flynn had put out for them, the healthy helping of leftovers had been put away, the dishes washed, and the presents stashed under an artificial tree that looked as if it had come from the dollar store a decade ago. The room had warmed in the heat from the roaring fire Jesse stoked. The kids were sucking on candy canes and watching a Christmas program on an old tube TV. This was as good as life got in a place like this.
Time to go. The ice storm was bearing down and he had his own family to think of.
Flynn slipped into her coat and gathered their belongings. Myra kept thanking them profusely, and both of the older children came over to hug them as if they were beloved relatives, and damn if his eyes didn’t mist a bit. Too bad he couldn’t wave a magic wand or say abracadabra and make their lives easier.
The second they stepped out into the night, icy wind cut through them, colder than ever. Flynn shivered and clasped her mittened hands together, her breath coming out in frosty puffs. Jesse took her elbow and guided her down the rickety steps to the car.
“That was really kind of you,” Flynn said as he started the engine. “Stocking that woman up with firewood.”
“You think I could just walk away and leave them without any heat?”
“No,” she said, reaching over to stroke his arm. “That’s one of the things I love most about you, Jesse. You always try to do the right thing.”
Her words lit him up inside. Hell, she made him feel so warm and cozy and like the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth. “We gotta get home before this ice storm hits.”
“Those people are going to have a happy Christmas because of you.”
“Hey, you were just as much of part of this as I was.”
He had just pulled out of the Post Oak Shores development and turned onto Highway 51, when out of the dark a pair of red and blue flashing lights lit up his rearview mirror. The Jubilee Police Department.
He groaned. “C’mon, man. Not tonight.”
“What is?” Flynn craned her neck. “We weren’t speeding. Did you run a stop sign or something?”
“No. Maybe I’ve got a taillight out.” He moved over onto the shoulder of the empty road and the police cruiser pulled in behind him.
A prickly sensation, as if a tarantula was crawling over his skin, spread up the back of his neck. He waited with his hands on the steering wheel while the patrol officer stalked to the window. It had been three years since he’d been released from prison, but he still couldn’t shake the adversarial feelings he had for law enforcement.
The trooper rapped on the glass.
He put the window down. “Good evening, Officer.”
“You Jesse Calloway?” The trooper widened his stance, his hand resting on the duty weapon at his hip. His name tag read Penninger.
Jesse winced. Uh-oh. No automatic let’s-have-your-license-and-registration. This was not a routine traffic stop. “I am.”
A second trooper came up on Flynn’s side of the car. Jesse chuffed a breath.
“May I see some ID?” Officer Penninger asked.
“What’s this about, Officer?” Flynn stretched across the seat to peer up at the trooper.
“Ma’am, I’m not speaking to you.”
The muscles in Jesse’s throat seized and it took everything inside him not to double up his fists. Don’t disrespect my pregnant wife, you tool. He bit his tongue and motioned for Flynn to sit back.
She looked frightened, shivered.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, and patted her arm.
“ID,” Penninger demanded.
Jesse fished his wallet from his back pocket, took out his driver’s license, and passed it to the officer. Stay cool. This was not worth spending Christmas Eve in jail over.
“You were just at the residence of lot sixteen on Morning Glory Trail, correct?”
The knobby bones of Jesse’s spine turned to ice cubes. “That’s right.”
“Were you aware that it’s the residence of a known drug dealer?” Penninger scowled.
Jesse gripped the steering wheel tightly, and from the corner of his eye kept watch on the second officer.
“Myra Scott is a drug dealer?” Flynn exclaimed.
“Not her. The guy whose house trailer she moved into. We got a tip there’s a drug deal going down there tonight and we’ve had the residence under surveillance, and lo and behold, an ex-con who went to prison for cocaine distribution shows up.” Penninger tapped the brim of his hat. “Makes you go hmm.”
“Excuse me?” Flynn scolded. “If you’ve been watching that trailer, then you must have seen how that woman is struggling to provide for those children. Why didn’t you do something to help her? Call CPS if you believe these kids are going to end up in the middle of a drug deal.”
Jesse loved his wife dearly, but he wished she would stop talking. He ran a palm down his face. “Honey, this is not our battle.”
“Well,” Flynn said. “They’ve pulled us over about it, so seems to me they’ve made it our battle.”
“You’re married to a convicted felon. Getting pulled over goes with the territory,” Penninger said snidely.
Jesse’s biceps turned to stone. Don’t rise to the bait. Just don’t do it. He wants you to give him a reason to slap the cuffs on you.
“He was innocent of those charges,” Flynn said, leaning back across the seat.
Officer Penninger lowered his head, fixed a marble stare on Flynn. “Not to sound like a jaded cop or anything, but all convicts say that, ma’am.”
“In this case it’s true. My husband was framed and we know by whom.” Fly
nn looked mad enough to spit bullets. “You’re profiling my husband.”
“But your husband was never pardoned, that makes him an ex-con no matter how you slice it.”
“Please, cut her some slack, Officer,” Jesse said. “As you can see, my wife is nine months pregnant.”
“Don’t make excuses for me,” Flynn bristled. “I have a right to get testy over police harassment.”
Penninger shifted his gaze from Flynn to Jesse. “We simply want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Calloway.”
“There’s no reason to ask him questions. We were delivering Christmas gifts and food with the Angel Tree foundation of Hood County.”
“This is Parker County.”
“Clearly. No one in Hood County would make the mistake of pulling us over for nothing.”
Penninger decided to let that go. “Mr. Calloway, this is nothing complicated. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you shouldn’t have a problem with following us to the Jubilee Police Department to answer a few questions.”
“I’d rather take my wife home first,” Jesse said. “It’s late and an ice storm is on the way.”
“Or we could take you in with us, and let your wife go on home,” Penninger said. “We’d happily give you a ride home if everything checks out so she does not have to come out in the weather to pick you up.”
He did not like that option, but it didn’t look like Penninger was going to give him a choice.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this on Christmas Eve,” Flynn interjected.
“Mrs. Calloway, your husband was in the residence of a known drug dealer. That’s a clear violation of his parole. It’s not my intention to put him under arrest, but if he chooses not to cooperate . . .” Penninger shrugged, his implication clear.
Flynn shrank back against her seat, her face pale. “Are you threatening us?”
Gently, Jesse put a hand on her shoulder. He understood why she was hot under the collar. Hell, he loved her fierce loyalty, but the only way to deal with this was to play their game. “It’s okay, sweetheart. They’re just doing their job. I’ll go with them, answer their questions, and be home before you know it.”
