Christmas by Accident

by Camron Wright

  As Abby listened, a lump rose in her throat. It tasted an awful lot like the truth.

  “I know you weren’t as smitten at first,” he continued. “I could tell that as well. But I’ve seen an affection grow in your eyes since. I think you care for him, too.”

  If he meant to make her tear up, then mission accomplished.

  “What should I do, Uncle?” she asked. “I should call him again, shouldn’t I?” She pulled out her phone, pressed in his number, waited for it to ring, but it switched instantly to voice mail.

  “Hello, this is Carter. Leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I’m able.”

  Carter’s plane landed in Boston, but barely. The weather report was dead-on, meaning the ride was bumpy, his flight was late, and the prognosticator deserved a gold star for his forehead. As Carter made his way to the rental-car counter, he heard a worker mention that the runways were being shut down. It meant he had made it in the nick of time.

  Joel had called ahead, already made a reservation, and covered the charges, so the woman behind the counter had just one question: “What size car would you like?”

  Carter was about to tell her that it didn’t matter, that he was alone and had just the single bag and his backpack. Then a thought struck. “Do you by chance have a Ford Fiesta?”

  Her brow wrinkled and her lips drew back, as if perhaps it was the first time said words had ever been uttered at the company. “No, no, sorry. No Fiestas in the rental pool here. Anything else?”

  Carter was thinking about Abby’s playlist. It seemed fitting. He pulled out his phone, held it up for the attendant to see. “Do you have a car with a Bluetooth connection, so I can listen to music on my phone?”

  Her head nodded. “That we can do!”

  And in only a matter of minutes, Carter had signed the papers, located the car, tossed his suitcase in the back, unzipped it to retrieve his gloves, and climbed into the front seat. The snow was coming down fiercely, and he had no time to lose. But before he pulled the car into gear, he set his phone on the passenger’s seat and synced it to the car’s sound system.

  The drive would be miserable, the roads treacherous; the storm had made certain of that. Carter didn’t care. He turned up the heat, turned up the volume, turned up the corners of his mouth. He would do it for Abby. He’d drive back through the snow, singing along to her favorite music on the stereo. He would make the best of it, even if he had to pretend.

  After all, it was almost Christmas.

  While the words to “Winter Wonderland” almost frolicked out of the car’s inside speakers, outside it was anything but wonderful. The storm was showing its contempt, furious that anyone would dare to drive through it.

  There was traffic on the turnpike coming out of Boston, naturally, but the farther away Carter drove from the city, the more it thinned. By the time he passed Auburn, only the dim or the desperate were still trying to navigate the roads.

  Carter passed two snowplows as he headed toward Charlton, but they looked exhausted, as the snow was coming down faster than it could be cleared. He wasn’t worried. Despite the wipers working overtime to keep the windshield clean, the car was navigating well. At his current pace, he would arrive within the hour.

  Carter reached to the passenger’s seat for his phone and tried to dial Abby. However, it barely showed a single bar—perhaps due to the storm—and the call dropped before it connected. He would try again later. Next, he fished for his charging cable. The phone had been feeding Abby’s Christmas songs into the stereo since he had left the airport, and he needed to plug it in to recharge the battery. He found the end, pushed the cable into the phone and connected it securely, then rested it again on the seat beside him. However, when his gaze lifted back to the road, two deer were standing broadside in the turnpike. The closest had his head twisted toward the car, as if he couldn’t figure out why headlights would be barreling through the snow at such a high rate of speed.

  Carter lifted his foot, readied to slam the brakes, but it was too late. Metal crunched, deer bones shattered, the airbag violently exploded. The car flipped sideways, hurtled toward the guardrail, then smashed into the rail on the driver’s side. Carter’s head cracked against the window, and glass shattered.

  Perhaps it was the snow, perhaps it was the angle of the car due to its impact with the deer, perhaps it was pure chance, but as the car hit the railing, it tipped, slid, then rolled over it like a toy tossed aside by an angry child.

  It somersaulted once, twice, and then half again as it tumbled down the embankment—bam, bam, bam—cold metal colliding each quarter turn against snow, earth, and rock, until it rested lifeless and upside down at the bottom.

  Carter’s eyes were closed. He was breathing, but not moving.

  Blood trickled from a cut on the side of his head—drip, drip, drip—to mix with snow that was blowing in through the broken window to settle on the inside car roof below Carter’s head.

  Abby had told Carter that a fresh blanket of snow made even the ugliest of scenes more beautiful, and it was true. Within a few minutes, someone could have stood on the road where the car had plunged over the guardrail, glanced out across the scene, noticed nothing but magical beauty, and declared, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

  When Carter woke, he was cold, his head was pounding, he could taste blood, and he was strapped upside down in an overturned car. He wasn’t certain how long he’d been out, and although it was still light outside, it felt like it could be dusk. He tried to wriggle free, but he couldn’t move his legs.

  He reached for the seat belt and was about to unfasten it, but the steering column had been pushed toward the seat, tightly pinning his calves underneath. Until he could get his legs free, he would need the support of the lap and shoulder belts to keep him from twisting upside down by injured limbs.

  He tried to move his feet, found that he could ­wiggle them, and took it as a sign that his legs and ankles were not broken. His head was bleeding, so he looked for something to hold against the wound. He glanced down toward the ground, which was now the inside roof, to see a jumble of clothes, papers, shoes, snow, and glass. His suitcase had been unzipped on the backseat, so when the car had repeatedly flipped, its contents had been properly churned before settling in a strewn layer below him. He reached up, which was actually down, grasped for a T-shirt, and pressed it against his head. It spotted with blood, but the wound didn’t seem to be spurting, and so, he reasoned, he just needed to stay calm and think.

  He tried again to free his legs but couldn’t stop his claim-adjuster instincts from also tabulating the vehicle damage. Considering the distance the steering column had traveled, the engine’s displacement, and the structural frame damage, this car would likely be totaled.

  “Breathe,” he commanded aloud, once he realized what he was doing. “Relax! Help will be coming.”

  But would it? It was still snowing, and there had been no cars on the road behind him. It was likely no one saw the accident, but would they see the tire tracks? Carter peered out the hole once covered by the window, an opening where flakes were now blowing in as if they wanted to inspect the accident, see what was inside. Any tire imprints veering off the road would soon be covered, if they hadn’t been already. The snow had done a stellar job of hiding anything unsightly or unclean.

  Then Carter remembered the deer. Would someone see the dead animal and stop to investigate? If so, wouldn’t they assume the damaged car had kept driving? What would lead them to hike over the embankment? The answer chilled every muscle.

  Nothing!

  Carter pushed the horn, hoping someone would hear it from the roadway. It must have been damaged because, in place of a blasting trumpet, the sound was closer to that of someone pillow-smothering a duck.

  Think! Think!

  Carter again considered the dead deer, only this time a grin followed, pe
rhaps unintended levity stemming from an oversupply of blood pumping to his upside-­down head. He was remembering the moment before impact and wishing desperately someone else were there so he could explain the irony: Just before he had slammed broadside into the helpless creature, the song playing from Abby’s list—which was wide and eclectic—was Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run.”

  Rudolph should have listened.

  Wait, Carter thought, my phone! He reached again into the mess below him, brushed papers aside, and frantically craned his neck. He pulled at his legs to stretch farther, but the pain reeled him back.

  There was no phone in sight.

  Perhaps it didn’t matter. With the storm disrupting the service, what good would it do him anyway?

  One more time he attempted to twist his legs free. To no avail—they may as well have been cemented in place. He felt woozy, worried about vomiting, and instead closed his eyes to rest.

  He’d never been in an accident, and for the second time in a few minutes, he laughed at himself—an accident adjuster with no clue. They should make having a major accident a requirement for adjusters, he decided, so they would better understand what people experience.

  He was embarrassed now that he had had the nerve to ask Abby if she’d smiled right before her accident.

  Abby.

  The thought of her both soothed and distressed. What if he never saw her again? He screamed away the thought. “Help! Anyone, please help!”

  He stopped, listened, waited for someone to answer.

  There was no response, nothing but the uncaring silence of falling snow.

  Abby was pacing tracks into the hospital carpet. “Seven, I’m nervous!”

  She was stating the obvious, and Seven couldn’t argue. Abby had called Carter’s mother, found out when his flight had landed, talked to the car-rental company, and confirmed he had driven away that morning toward home.

  “He should be here by now,” Abby added. “He should have been here long ago.” They were words she’d been persistently repeating for the last couple of hours.

  “Try his phone again,” Seven encouraged.

  Abby slumped into a chair in the hall outside Mannie’s room. She dialed, listened, cringed. “It barely rings, then goes straight to voice mail. That means his phone is off or he doesn’t have service, right?”

  Seven could only shake her head, lift her shoulders.

  Abby bit at her lip. She hadn’t told Seven or anyone about her whispered prayer when she thought Mannie was dying, about wishing for another to step in to take his place. First of all, she didn’t mean it. Second, if she did, even a little bit, she certainly didn’t intend it to be someone she knew, someone she cared about. It was a stupid thing to worry about anyway. Heaven didn’t work that way, did it?

  “It’s getting dark,” she said. “If he’s out there, if he’s lost . . . Seven, what am I going to do?” Before Seven responded, Abby made a decision. “I’ll be back,” she told her friend. “I need to run to the bathroom.”

  It was a lie. Instead, she headed toward the hospital chapel to explain again beside the manger that she was deeply sorry for even thinking such a terrible thing. On the way, she changed her mind. She walked instead to the hospital cafeteria, filled a glass with water, and then took a seat in a booth by the oversized window where she could plainly see the waning moon.

  At the moment, she was too ashamed to talk with God. She had another person in mind—her mother.

  Carter didn’t remember drifting off to sleep, but he must have, because when he woke, it was dark. His vision was blurred, his head felt like fire, and he could hardly move his fingers in the cold. The falling snow had stopped, and the clouds must have cleared because the slightest hint of moonlight crawled into the car to rest beside him. It also meant that as the winter night set in, the temperatures would plummet. He was wearing only a light shirt and would be kidding himself if he thought he could make it until morning.

  In the muted light, Carter made out the scattered pages of his Christmas story. The car was littered with them. His manuscript had been sitting inside his unzipped suitcase. He’d brought a hard copy along to read over in case the wedding turned out to be a total disaster.

  It was now rather ironic. He was going to die right before Christmas, in the snow, surrounded by the pages of his own tragic Christmas tale. It confirmed something Abby had once patiently explained as he sat beside her at the bookstore. “In a good story,” she had said, “the ending often circles back to the beginning. Life does that.” Those were the words she had used, and now they proved true.

  But there was tragedy stitched in her lesson. Had it not been for the first accident, he would never have met Abby. Now, because of the second, he would never see her again. How should he reconcile that? It was almost as if heaven were whispering that despite the calamity, there were no accidents.

  In nearly every Christmas book Carter had read, there was someone close to death, someone begging for a Christmas miracle. If he believed the stories, then this would be the moment that a Christmas ghost of some flavor—past, present, future—would appear by his side and walk him through the reasons he should be grateful for the wonders of his life and for the season.

  Carter waited.

  Nothing. No ghost. No angel. No miracle.

  Oddly, he was consigned to the outcome. If every story were to end miraculously and happily, it would negate the need for hope. That was another writing lesson learned from Abby, a lesson that likewise applied to life. The wonder isn’t in the miraculous ending, it’s in a changed heart. He tried now to recall her exact words. Anyone can believe when it’s raining miracles. The question is, do we have the strength to believe during the drought? Then she’d squeezed his hand, kissed him on the cheek, and told him it didn’t matter because, as she’d put it, “Christmas is the miracle.”

  Carter’s regret was that he wouldn’t have a chance to tell her that she’d made a difference, that he was better because of her. She had tried to tell him that Christmas was a choice, but he was hesitant, too skeptical to listen. If she were now sitting beside him, if he could speak to her one last time, he would take her hand, look into her warm eyes, and tell her that he’d also decided to choose Christmas.

  He let out a cold breath.

  If he could speak to her again, he would tell her that he loved her.

  His thoughts were interrupted by music. It took him a minute to recognize the song. It was coming from the backseat, but the tune was unmistakable.

  “Santa Baby” was playing from his cell phone.

  Abby was calling!

  One ring. Two rings. Three rings.

  “Seven!” Abby screamed. “Finally, it’s ringing! It’s not going to voice mail!” She stood from her chair. Seven inched close. Mannie looked up.

  Four rings. Five rings. Six rings. “Hello, this is Carter Cross. I can’t take your call right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call you right back.”

  “It did go to voice mail after all,” Abby told the room, “but after a bunch of rings. What does that mean? What should I do?”

  Mannie and Seven answered in unison. “Try again!”

  Carter rubbed the cold from his face, twisted his head until his neck burned, squinted his eyes, and ordered them to focus. He couldn’t see the phone itself, but in the mess of things scattered across the backseat roof, he could make out a faint glow.

  The song ended, rested, then started to play again.

  He knew that the phone was well out of reach and was surprised that its battery was not yet dead. Even more startling was that it was connecting. It must have been the clearing sky that was finally letting the signal through.

  If only he had a stick or something he could use to reach it . . . but he knew that it was an empty wish. When the ringtone started for the third time, Carter cringed. He ground his teet
h. “Santa Baby” was mocking him. It was a beautiful song when it meant he could speak with Abby. It was ugly when it taunted him with the fact that he would never see her again.

  The thought wormed into his brain—ugly, ugly, ugly.

  What was the lesson Abby had loved from his photography? To find purpose in our problems, to see past the ugliness, rather than step back, we should get closer. Only then will we notice the beauty.

  It took but a second for the words to bud. Even the cold couldn’t stop them. Carter flexed his freezing fingers. It was an idea that could work. The real question was, were the electronics damaged in the crash?

  He would know soon enough.

  A moment before, Carter had been praying for the rings to stop. Now he prayed that she wouldn’t give up, that she’d try one last time.

  The car brimmed with silence, fear, silence.

  “Please, Abby. Once more.”

  The stillness stretched until it felt like hope would break. Then, like angels from heaven, the phone once again began to sing.

  Carter’s hands trembled—perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was nerves. He reached toward the ignition. The car wouldn’t start—he knew that already from trying earlier, hoping he could run the heater. It was understandable, since the car was upside down.

  At the moment, however, he didn’t need the car to turn over. He simply needed to turn the key and pray. He twisted the ignition, and the lights flickered. He pleaded that the Bluetooth used to play Abby’s songs over the radio would once again automatically connect with his phone.

  He rested his finger against the green button on the steering wheel labeled with an icon of an ear. On the third ring, he whispered his prayer and pressed it tightly.

  The ringing stopped. The car speakers crackled.