A Little Christmas Jingle

by Michele Dunaway

  “Am I up there next?” she asked, but Matt was in motion.

  “Judge Harper, may I approach the bench? I’d like to present a letter from the mayor, a letter he wrote in support of Ms. Saunders’s shelter.”

  Judge Harper waved Matt forward, took the letter, and read it aloud. Kat couldn’t believe the contents. The letter reminded the court that the city did not fund its own shelters, and with the abundance of homeless animals, any regulation no-kill shelter of the quality of the Chippewa Animal Clinic should be welcome in the city, not closed. He also praised Kat’s work with Jingle. When Judge Harper finished, he set the letter down and removed his reading glasses. Rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  Then the judge gestured. “This is ridiculous. You heard the mayor’s wishes, Mr. Banner. I would suggest you and Ms. Saunders reach a compromise designed to keep the character of the neighborhood all while happily coexisting with an animal shelter and clinic. Because I see no reason to continue this. I’m going to rule that the city grant the shelter permit effective immediately. However, I will give you ten days to mediate and find a harmonious relationship. In the spirit of the holidays and all.”

  Kevin Banner leaned over to confer with his Fred. “We’d be happy to find a solution,” he said a moment later.

  Amy stood. “My client would be happy to work with the neighborhood association as well.”

  Judge Harper banged his gavel. “Then schedule a date and time to make the peace before you leave. This case is dismissed. The city will issue a permit.”

  Kat felt giddy. She’d won.

  “Thanks Matt,” Amy said, shaking his hand. “I have it from here.” She moved toward Kevin and Fred.

  “I don’t know how to thank you …” Kat began, rising to her feet. “What do I owe you?”

  “Nothing. I’ve got a busy day. I have to run. See you at Christmas.” Matt grabbed his briefcase and left before she could stop him.

  “What was that about Christmas?” Amy asked, returning. “You’re going to his house for Christmas?”

  “No. I’m as confused as you are.”

  She gave Kat a long look of disbelief. “Our mediation meeting is the first week of January. I’ll send you an e-mail. Have a great holiday. You’ve earned it.”

  Kat thanked her lawyer, who headed for the exit, and stood there a moment before the next defendants approached the table. She grabbed her coat and exited, looking around the hallway as if Jack would suddenly appear.

  But he didn’t, and Kat drove back to her clinic. Even so he’d given her the best gift of all, her dream.

  She was a fixer. She had to fix things between them.

  #

  Two days later, Christmas Eve, found Kat extremely frustrated. Jack hadn’t answered her voice mails. He’d answered only one of her text messages: “No need to thank me. Busy. Promise we’ll talk later.”

  And that had been that. He’d proved he kept his promises, but as minutes turned into hours and hours into days, Kat wondered when he’d call. She’d replayed every moment of their relationship in her head. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she’d fallen in love with him. Had it been the night they’d saved Jingle? Or gone to the hockey game? Or when they stayed in and ended up in bed? Since the breakup, she’d watched every Hallmark movie on her DVR, crying at the end as she always did because she was happy, but now also for what she herself had lost. So she’d thrown herself into work.

  “There you go.” Kat lifted Jinx, now named Mr. Hugh, and returned him into Lizzy’s outstretched arms. “He’s all better, but we can’t let him chew on any more plastic bags, either. Okay?”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Schneider said. “I was worried.”

  “Well, you did the right thing bringing him in for a checkup,” Kat said.

  “He’s such a great cat,” Mrs. Schneider gushed as a vet tech helped Lizzy put a reluctant Mr. Hugh back in his cat carrier. “He sleeps with Lizzy every night. He’s been a godsend.”

  “You have a great Christmas,” Kat said. She watched them exit the exam room and walked back through to her office. It was Christmas Eve, and she was booked solid until noon, when the clinic hosted its annual party. Santa would arrive and pass out presents to neighborhood children and pets.

  Kat had five minutes between patients and went back to check on Jingle. Almost a month had gone by, and he was progressing well. Not needing as many intensive painkillers, he was able to lift his head when she came to his side. “Hey Jingle,” she said, and he licked her hand. “Aren’t you a good boy?”

  “The Kindreds are here.” Louise approached. “The tech’s in doing vitals now.”

  “Thank you.” Kat gave Jingle one more pat.

  “How are you doing?” Louise asked.

  Kat gave the same answer she’d given since Monday. “Fine. We have our shelter.”

  “I meant with Jack.”

  “Oh,” Kat said. He was constantly in her mind, but nothing she wanted to talk about.

  “This is your favorite time of the year and you’re miserable. We all hate it. We want you happy.”

  Kat adjusted her ponytail. An a cappella version of “O Christmas Tree” piped through the speakers, and Jingle seemed to sigh. She ran her hand along his head one last time before she met her next patient. “He likes Christmas music,” Kat noted, shoving her right hand in her lab coat pocket, “and the Kindreds are waiting.”

  “Not an answer,” Louise called.

  Kat’s spirits lifted as the clock inched toward noon. Like the pet adoption, this gala worked open-house style, with Santa arriving at twelve ten to distribute the presents. Many guests brought dogs sporting canine fashions from Santa hats and elf ears to sweaters embroidered with Christmas trees. “Looks like a great crowd,” her partner, Dr. Marshall, said.

  Kat agreed,” letting the Christmas spirit invade. She loved this holiday and especially this party. Nothing would spoil it. So she made the rounds, passing out cookies and punch, petting dogs, and speaking with clients, until she realized Santa was running late. Angela had been in charge of the scheduling, as she’d done every December. Kat gave a quizzical glance, and Angela mouthed, “Don’t worry.”

  Kat rolled her shoulders back and relaxed. Angela wouldn’t fail to have secured a Santa, the event’s very important guest. In fact, she now heard a jingling noise, a tinkling of bells, coming from the hallway.

  “Ho ho ho!” a deep voice boomed as a white-bearded, jolly man in a red fat suit entered. He heaved a big red bag from his shoulder onto the floor in front of the Christmas tree. Children ran over, excitedly calling “Santa!” “Santa!”

  Parents eased closer as Kat stood back, watching the mayhem. Louise, in an elf outfit, stood by Santa to help distribute presents. With the people in the way, she couldn’t see or hear Santa’s conversations, but clearly the kids liked whatever he said for she heard them squeal and laugh.

  “Seems like we got a good Santa,” Kat told Angela.

  She nodded. “Oh yes, this one’s special. Came highly recommended.”

  “We’ll have to get him again next year.”

  “Play your cards right and that won’t be a problem,” Angela said. She turned to a young mother and child who wanted to purchase a dog collar. “Here, let me help you with that.”

  Kat leaned back against the counter, her white lab coat draping about her tan chinos. She lifted a cup of hot cocoa to her lips and wiped the whipped cream off her lip with a napkin. Strains of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” mixed with laughter, barking, and conversation. Another successful event. And thanks to Jack, they’d keep coming.

  She pushed away the returning melancholy. The crowd thinned as people left, and she set her empty cup down. She walked toward the tree and stopped short. She knew that voice.

  “Jack?”

  “Nope,” he chortled. He had a five-year-old on his lap. “She thinks I’m Jack Frost,” he told the young girl, who giggled. “Do I look like Jack Frost?”

  “No,” the girl
shrieked with glee. “You’re Santa!”

  “Of course, he is,” Kat recovered, giving the little girl a wide, reassuring smile. Behind round wire spectacles, Jack’s blue eyes twinkled. “Santa always makes a stop here before he starts his sleigh rides,” Kat said.

  “He likes to see the doggies,” the little girl said with an all-knowing nod.

  “Yes, I do,” Jack said in his deep Santa voice. He tickled the girl’s arm and she giggled. Then he set her on the floor and she raced back to her parents, who’d finished taking pictures on their smartphones. She held up her candy cane and her present—a doll Kat had purchased at Five Below. These weren’t huge presents, but the kids didn’t care about the value, they cared about the experience.

  “Thank you for doing this,” the mother told Kat before they left, their well-behaved Doberman at their heels. “We just moved into the neighborhood and I’m so glad to find you. We’ll bring Brutus in for his yearly checkup next week.”

  “I’m glad to meet you,” Kat replied

  She faced Jack, who’d welcomed another child onto Santa’s lap, keeping them from speaking. She watched him for the briefest moment, before being called away by one of her clients who wanted to say good-bye. What was he doing here? And in a Santa suit, no less?

  “How did you do it?” she asked Angela at five minutes to one. The event would clearly run over.

  “You mean get Santa?” Angela smirked.

  “No, Jack. He hates Christmas.”

  “You’ll have to ask him. It was all his idea.”

  Kat frowned. “That makes no sense.”

  “Call it a Christmas mystery … or miracle,” Angela said, but before Kat could press her further, a customer who’d decided to buy a Thundershirt for her dog had captured Angela’s attention.

  So Kat waited by the counter for when she could talk to Jack. At last the clinic cleared, and Angela locked the front door. The lobby quieted, except for staff conversations and the music piping through the speakers.

  Santa was on his feet, and Kat headed over. “Jack. Wait.”

  “Ho ho ho. Santa’s late.” He reached into his sack and withdrew a red envelope. “However, Santa would love for you to read this.”

  “Jack.”

  But instead he left, leaving her standing there holding the envelope. She turned it over in her hands, feeling the smooth texture and noting the round gold seal where the back flap reached a point. She slipped the greeting card into her coat pocket as Dr. Marshall came back so they could give their staff their holiday bonuses. As Christmas was on a Thursday, the clinic would be closed until the day after, excepting emergencies, of course.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Angela asked later, after the staff party. Around Kat, the staff bustled about, cleaning up.

  “I will.” Kat grabbed a garbage bag and began clearing away residual trash. While the card had been burning a hole in her pocket, she hadn’t wanted to read it until she had time to be alone. The right time came thirty minutes later, when she finally sat down at her desk around three o’clock.

  She slid her finger under the heavy paper, the ensuing tear creating a jagged edge at the top. She pulled out a glossy white card, which read simply “Merry Christmas” in red-embossed lettering above a green fir tree with red ball ornaments. It looked like her tree.

  She slid her finger under the edge, opening the card sideways to her left. A piece of cardstock fluttered out, and Kat made a grab for it, noted it was a ticket to the Mayor’s Black & White Ball, and set it aside. The inside of the card was also white, and the red printing read “Wishing You a Wonderful Holiday and Happy New Year.”

  But it was what was underneath, in Jack’s black-ink scrawl, that captured her attention. “Let’s start this over,” he’d written. “Are you willing to attend one more event? I’d love it if you say yes. J.”

  She looked at the ticket to the Black & White Ball, one of the most exclusive New Year’s Eve invitations in the city. The dress code was formal—black or white tuxedos and women in black or white dresses, or a combination of the two. She’d heard the event was like something out of Hollywood. If she went, she’d need to buy a dress, and the part of her that loved retail therapy thrilled at the idea.

  Plus it meant spending New Year’s Eve with Jack, instead of drinking a glass of sparkling wine with her cats and watching the ball drop in New York City on TV.

  She turned the ticket over between her fingers. He’d sent one. Did that mean she meet him there?

  She hated mysteries about as much as she hated games, although she was certain this was the former, not the latter.

  Her stomach grumbled as Kat rose. She’d figure out what to do at home. She planned on attending nine o’clock Christmas morning mass, which meant she needed to be up early to check on Jingle and the other animals first. Since it was Christmas, Kat, not one of her employees, would go in.

  She did the final check of the clinic and left around four o’clock, darkness beginning to blanket the city. A storm front had rolled in, and the weathermen were predicting two inches of powdery snow to fall tonight, enough to make everything magical without coating streets and paralyzing traffic. The moist, blustery air certainly felt like snow, she thought as she climbed into her car. She picked up some Chinese food and carried that and the bag of presents her employees had given her up the stairs. Her tenants had gone to Kansas City for the holiday, so she’d house sit their two cats, feeding them first thing tomorrow.

  She flipped the lights on, and was enthusiastically greeted by Pippa and Ty, who rubbed in between her legs in the hopes of securing some of the meat from her beef and broccoli order. She sidestepped them, set the bags on the counter, and brought her dinner out into the living room, where she first watched Jeopardy, the local news, and then NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

  As the next local news broadcast began, Kat sighed and checked out the offerings on Netflix. Tonight she’d normally be with her parents or some of her friends, but everyone was out of town, and with being so busy at work, she hadn’t made any arrangements to do something productive, like volunteer to serve dinner at the one of the homeless shelters.

  There were worse things than being alone, but being alone on Christmas sucked.

  Her front doorbell buzzed, and Kat set her plate of half-eaten dinner down on the coffee table, to the delight of the hovering cats with the twitchy noses.

  A group of shadows stood outside her door, and as she got closer she heard a chorus of voices. Christmas carolers. She turned on the front porch light.

  As she opened the heavy wooden door, the chorus grew louder as the group of men and women and children began “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas Day …”

  Wind swirled in around her slipper-covered feet, but Kat didn’t feel cold. They sang the complete song, then began “Silent Night.”

  As the song came to an end, Kat realized she didn’t have any money. “Let me run upstairs and …”

  A round, pink-cheeked woman put out her gloved hand. In it was a green envelope. “Oh no, ma’am. No money. We’re the City Players and we carol for charity. We received a donation to come by your house. We’re to give you this.”

  Kat took the offered envelope. “Thank you.” She stood there awkwardly. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Hot cocoa? Replenish your coffee?”

  The woman shook her head. “Thank you but we must be off to our next stop if we’re to keep our schedule. You have a blessed Christmas.”

  “And a Happy New Year,” someone else called, which was echoed by the others, and with that the group shuffled down the sidewalk to enter two huge passenger vans.

  Kat closed her front door and shuffled back upstairs. She flopped on the couch, movie choices frozen and waiting on the TV screen. She tore into the envelope. This card was white like the other, but the outside had a gold-embossed trumpet, complete with decorative holly, that almost completely filled the fi
ve-by-seven horizontal space. She lifted the flap, and the inside read “May Your Christmas Be Filled with Joyful Noise.”

  There was just a J for a signature.

  And with that, Kat burst into tears.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sitting across the street and parked slightly down from Kat’s, Jack watched the carolers leave. Had she liked them? Was his plan even working?

  He’d never done anything so crazy, but his mother the expert matchmaker insisted he follow her instructions to the letter. Still, he’d itched to answer Kat’s texts and voice mails. But Mike, now his full-time partner and the second member of the task force, stood as a testament to Joyce’s abilities. Jack had to trust his mom knew best. So he sat in a darkened car with his sister Brenna, who looked over at him.

  “Okay, it’s time. Get out and go.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  She shrugged and started the car. “I’m nineteen. I have no idea. But Mom is legendary, and you agreed to play along. So out.”

  Jack reached for the door handle of Brenna’s compact. He’d folded himself inside, and getting out seemed even more painful. He’d left his SUV in his parents’ driveway. Normally he’d be in the old neighborhood tonight, for his mother and Nelson always hosted a Christmas Eve open house that lasted until everyone went to midnight mass.

  “So, she’s the one, huh?”

  Jack pulled his down parka tighter. A few snow flurries had started to fall, and being without a car was a calculated risk, one his mother had insisted upon. “We’ll come get you if it fails,” she’d announced. “But it won’t.”

  He clutched the gold envelope in his left hand and pulled the door handle with his right. Now or never. Stand or fall.

  Boot hit curb, and as soon as he’d closed the passenger door, Brenna was off like a bullet. Jack inhaled a deep breath, his exhale creating a misty white cloud. He crossed the street and went up to the house covered in Christmas lights and holiday inflatables. Frosty the Snowman gave Jack a friendly wave, which Jack hoped was a good omen. He’d live with this memory the rest of his life.