Last Chance Christmas

by Hope Ramsay

  Stone sat up in the hospital bed. The doc had a fresh face and looked like he’d have trouble growing a beard. He reminded Stone of the marine recruits he’d trained during the time he’d been a DI at Parris Island.

  Hallucinations, huh?

  “All your tests are negative for serious brain injury. But concussions can be tricky.”

  Hallucinations. That’s what the docs had said about Haley’s visions a little more than a year ago. They said the bump she’d gotten on her head had caused her to see things that weren’t there. They said the emotional trauma, coupled with the head injury, had resulted in Haley externalizing the fiction of the Sorrowful Angel.

  Now that Stone thought about it, this was exactly what everyone said about Daddy and Granddaddy and even Great-Granddaddy. Every one of them had gone to war. Every one of them had gotten bumped on the head. And every one of them had ended up seeing angels that weren’t supposed to be there.

  Was this some brain weirdness handed down through the generations, or something else? Like a curse? Or maybe it was a blessing.

  He stared at the doctor and felt oddly disconnected. Was it a curse to see Sharon when he longed for her so much?

  He was losing it. “Right,” he said gruffly. “I’ll be fine.” What else could he say?

  The doc nodded and signed Stone’s discharge papers. When the doc left, Stone got stiffly out of bed and dressed in his civvies. His ribs might not be broken but the bruises were mighty painful.

  He checked his watch. Daddy and the girls were going to be there to collect him in about thirty minutes. He had time.

  He headed up to the orthopedics floor and found David Raab’s room. The kid had had surgery on his shoulder. Plates and screws and all that. He’d be in physical therapy for a while.

  Stone strolled into the room and came right up against David’s lion of a momma. Before he could even talk to the kid, she was right up in his face, pointing a finger at his chest. “This is all your fault. You and your daughter. I told you I wanted you to keep her away from him and you—”

  “Mom, shut up.”

  Both adults turned toward David, who was lying in bed with a huge cast on his arm. He looked unusually pale with an unnatural stain of red across his cheeks. He was probably in pain and running a fever. Poor kid.

  “I am your mother. You don’t tell me to—”

  “Shut it,” the kid said again, and his mother actually stopped talking.

  “Is Lizzy okay?” David asked Stone.

  “She’s fine. She’ll be here shortly, and I was just checking to see if it would be okay if she came to visit you. And also, I wanted to thank you for saving her life.”

  “What?” Mrs. Raab asked. She had obviously not been paying attention. David was something of a hero.

  “Your son saved my daughter’s life. When the sheriff started shooting, David kept his head and got the two of them out of the Ark, where they were sitting ducks. I will be eternally grateful to your son. And I just wanted to let you know that I think you’ve done a good job with him. He’s precisely the kind of boy I want my daughter to be friends with—the kind of kid who looks beyond labels. The kind of kid who knows right from wrong.

  “Also, you should know that Lizzy’s heart will be broken if y’all move back to Michigan. To be honest, I wish you wouldn’t go. You living in our town gives everyone a chance to practice tolerance. And I can’t help but think that if we’d been better at it back in 1968, Nita Wills might have followed her heart, and my granddaddy and Jimmy and Lee Marshall might all still be alive. So before you start pointing fingers, just think about that.”

  He nodded at the woman and turned toward David. “You going to be okay?”

  “Yes, sir. And thanks for coming after us. If you hadn’t shown up, it might have been bad. And when you see Ms. Chaikin, would you thank her for me? She probably saved my life when she threw those ashes. She was impressive. I guess we never got our interview with her about what it’s like being a war correspondent, but we sure did get a taste of what it takes to be one. To be honest, I was terrified. But she seemed to be impervious to it.”

  Stone felt a pang of regret. He’d tried Lark’s cell phone a dozen times, but she hadn’t answered. He needed to thank her, too. But he was afraid to see her.

  He wasn’t sure what to say.

  He forced himself to give David a smile. “That’s the way it is, David. Sometimes in a firefight you just have no time to think. Instincts take over. And that’s where you find your courage.”

  He left David’s room and went back to his own. Daddy showed up shortly thereafter. David’s mother relented and let Lizzy visit David for about five minutes. And then they all got in Daddy’s truck and headed back to town.

  An unearthly shiver seized Stone the minute they turned onto Palmetto Avenue and passed under Santa and his reindeer. He tried to shake away the feeling but it crawled through him. Cold and sort of… itchy.

  And a thought came to him from out of the blue. “I need to go to church,” he said. The words surprised him almost as much as Daddy.

  “Son, you’ve had a head injury. I think I need to take you—”

  Before Stone could come up with a good explanation for his request, Haley piped up from the backseat. “He’s only doing what the Sorrowful Angel wants him to do. She’s been talking to him the whole way home from the hospital, all about how she wants to go into the church. He saw her last night, but he’s not seeing her now.”

  “Haley, why do you always have to make yourself and your stupid made-up angel the center of attention?” Lizzy said.

  “Lizzy,” Elbert said sternly and gave Liz his scary look in the rearview mirror.

  “She’s here?” Stone asked. His pulse quickened with the idea.

  “Yeah. She stayed with you at the hospital. She always stays with you when you sleep,” Haley said.

  Lizzy made a noise and rolled her eyes. Stone ignored her. “She does?”

  Haley nodded. “Yeah. She really, really wants you to go to the church. She says that she misses it.”

  “Well, that sounds exactly like her.”

  Haley frowned. Lizzy sat up. Daddy looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, which was sort of ironic.

  And suddenly Stone had a deep understanding of everything Haley had been going through for the last year. He felt another flood of guilt. Would he ever get over this feeling?

  “She was always nagging me about going to church,” he said.

  “She? You mean Sharon,” Daddy said. “Not Haley’s angel.”

  Stone didn’t respond, and Daddy didn’t argue the point. Instead, Daddy pulled the van up to the sidewalk in front of Christ Church.

  Daddy eyed the other cars parked along Palmetto Avenue. “Looks like the church ladies are up there getting the place ready for services tonight. You sure you want to go up there? You know how they can be.”

  Stone nodded soberly. “Yeah,” he whispered. Something was pushing him. “I won’t be long,” he said. But of course, he had no idea how long he would be. He had no idea why this compulsion had come over him. Obviously, the bump on his head had rattled something loose.

  He got out of the car and walked up the steps and into the sanctuary.

  Dozens of poinsettias graced the choir section and the base of the pulpit. Pine roping outlined the altar and the walls. The sanctuary smelled like evergreen and beeswax.

  Lillian Bray was up on the altar fussing with an arrangement of red roses, white mums, and holly. Several other members of the auxiliary were polishing the brass offering plate and altar cross.

  His own brother Clay was up there arranging music on the organ.

  Memories of another church in Florida assailed him. Sharon had been a devoted member of the ladies’ circle. She had been involved in everything and was always a whirlwind of activity at this time of year.

  He slipped into the back pew, lowered the kneeling bench, and got on his knees. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t pray. He me
rely wished for Sharon with all his might.

  A strange cold came over him, and when he opened his eyes, she was sitting right beside him. A glowing presence.

  “You’re real,” he said.

  “Of course I am,” she said in that voice she always used when he’d said something supremely stupid.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Stone, you don’t need to be sorry. You need to forgive.”

  “But I’m not mad at you. I mean I was when you died. I was mad at you for leaving me. But it’s not you I’m angry with anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I need to go. I don’t want to stay here. But you’re keeping me here.” She wiped a tear from her eye. Another tear formed right behind it.

  “You’re crying?”

  She nodded. “Do you remember what I used to say about Christmas?”

  He nodded, “You used to say we should offer up all that we’ve lost. You said it was the only way to be happy. But you’re not happy. Are you crying because of me?”

  She looked at him, tears running down her cheeks. How could Sharon be the Sorrowful Angel? Sharon never cried.

  “Stop blaming yourself for everything. Make room in your heart. Start laughing again. Pay attention to your children. Love again. Don’t you know that the things you’ve lost eventually come back to you with love?”

  She flickered like a television set. She wasn’t real, was she? She was a hallucination, and he was probably talking right out loud to the air. But she was wise. Sharon had always been wiser than her years.

  “I’ve got to go. You’ve got to offer me up to the light.” She got up and kind of drifted down the center aisle of the church. She was wearing her Watermelon Queen dress. The one she’d been married in. Had she been wearing that yesterday when he first saw her?

  He couldn’t remember. She had been so beautiful in that dress.

  Just then Clay started playing “Silent Night” on the church organ. Sharon stopped right before the altar, where a strange golden aura winked into existence. The light hurt Stone’s eyes, but even so, he knew there was a being inside that light.

  Sharon reached toward it, her face filled with longing. But she couldn’t go any farther. She was tethered with an ethereal line that ran from her chest to his.

  Every tug on that string made it harder for Stone to breathe.

  And Sharon was crying.

  His memory turned back to that awful morning when they’d argued about Sharon’s wish to attend college. He’d tried to hold her back that morning. And she’d cried. Her tears had surprised the hell out of him. And it hurt so much that his last memory of Sharon alive was the sight of her crying.

  He needed to let her go. For her own sake. For himself. And for Haley. He needed to send Haley’s angel to Heaven where she belonged.

  “You can go,” he whispered—halfway meaning those long-ago courses she had cried about on the day she died.

  “You can go,” he said again, this time giving her a mental push toward the light. “You don’t have to stay here with me. Besides, Haley needs you to go,” he said, his voice thick. “It’s the only thing she wants for Christmas.”

  The cord between them broke. His chest swelled as he took a deep, deep breath. As Sharon broke free, he immediately felt lighter somehow. She walked up onto the altar, and the angel embraced her, and then they were gone, leaving behind Lillian fussing with her flowers, and Millie and Thelma polishing brass, and Clay playing the organ like a virtuoso.

  He rested his hands across the top of the pew and laid his head on them. His head was pounding, and his ribs ached. But he felt so much better.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Lark woke up lonely and late.

  She cracked her eye and cataloged the standard Days Inn furnishings: An oak bedside table bolted to the wall, a digital clock that said eleven-thirty, teal curtains edged with gray winter light, a bedspread with a cabbage rose motif that was echoed in the wallpaper border.

  The long bureau had a flat-panel television tuned to CNN. She had fallen asleep with the television on, the sound set just above a whisper. The news anchor was covering a story about a kid in some midwestern town who had raised a load of money for toys and gifts for the disadvantaged. The kid in the story reminded her of David Raab—braces; too-large hands; serious, intelligent eyes.

  A pang of regret squeezed her heart. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She needed to get up. She’d driven for six hours last night—to the Virginia border. She still had a couple of hours to go, and it was almost noon.

  She stretched and sat up in bed. CNN had moved on to international news. More news about the tense situation in Africa and the Middle East. It sometimes seemed like nothing ever changed.

  She picked up one of the many pillows on her bed and hugged it. She was so tired of recording history for everyone else. She rocked back and forth. This wasn’t fear talking. She wasn’t afraid of going back into the field. She could handle bullets and mayhem. She could find that invincible place in her mind and fool herself. She had done it yesterday.

  She could do it, if she wanted to.

  She just didn’t want to.

  What did she want?

  All thoughts led her back to Last Chance, South Carolina, where people genuinely cared about one another.

  She thought about Pop as a young man, going there and falling in love. She thought about Nita, who was too scared to hold on to what she wanted. She thought about a certain small-town cop who worked hard to keep everyone safe.

  She stopped thinking.

  And started feeling. She leaned back against the padded headboard and squeezed the pillow to her chest. It was hard to be rational about Stone. He was in every way her deepest fantasy. A big, strong man who spoke with his body, and not with words. A guy who actually understood all of her deepest, darkest secrets. A family man who cared deeply, but who kind of bumbled his way through it all. He was adorable and serious and sexy as hell. He came ready-made with a big family, and damned if she didn’t long for that.

  She stared at the ceiling for a long time, sorting through her feelings until she recognized the truth.

  She was behaving like Pop.

  Nita had been too scared to fight for what she wanted. And Pop had let Nita send him away. He hadn’t been brave enough either.

  Maybe that’s what Pop meant about finding himself on the eighteenth hole. Maybe it wasn’t only about finding love in a sleeping bag. Maybe it was realizing that he had walked away from something really important because he was scared. Maybe he learned something from that.

  Lark would never know, except that Pop’s version of Carmine Falcone always walked away. But Carmine Falcone wasn’t real.

  And Stone wasn’t Carmine. Stone hadn’t sent her away. Yesterday afternoon, he’d told her she wasn’t ready to go back into the field. He’d told her he was worried about her. He told her that he’d had fun. She had pushed him away, not the other way around.

  Idiot.

  She didn’t want to run away like Pop and Nita. And she didn’t want to go back to Africa and shoot photos of starving kids. She wanted something different. She wanted to be part of someone’s family album, as stupid and ordinary as that might be.

  She needed to stand and fight for what she wanted. She needed to ask for more. She needed to tell Stone that she loved him, even though she knew in her heart that he loved Sharon more. But if she never said the words, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

  It terrified her. But then again, she had a role model in her mother. She didn’t remember Mom very well. But when Mom was alive, Lark had been happy and felt loved. Mom had showered love on everyone. Mom had been easy to love, so of course, Pop had loved her.

  Terrence Wills had probably been like that, too.

  Maybe she could be like them. She could be the person who came along second and was easy to love.

  She picked up her cell phone and called h
er editor and told him she wasn’t going to Africa. He begged and pleaded. She stood her ground and told him all about her flashbacks and her fear of the camera’s shutter. He refused to take her resignation. Instead he gave her a leave of absence so she could go find herself. Lark found that mildly amusing.

  She ended the call and noticed that she had fifteen voice-mail messages, and they were all from Stone. If there had been only one, she would have known he was merely calling to thank her for taking care of David and Lizzy when the shooting started.

  But fifteen voice-mail messages said something else altogether. Her finger poised over the redial button. She should call him and explain why she’d left.

  No.

  No, Stone didn’t need her words right now. Right now she needed to act. And what she had to say to him was better said face-to-face. Maybe he would believe it when he found out that she wasn’t going to be on that plane to Africa.

  Stone sat on a hard folding chair in the Christ Church fellowship hall waiting for Haley’s rescheduled Christmas play to begin. The kids were getting ready in one of the Sunday School rooms. All around him parishioners in Christmas finery were greeting one another.

  He was here for the duration. After the play came the choir’s annual Christmas concert, followed by a traditional evening service. Christmas Eve was the one day of the year Momma got him to church—mostly because he enjoyed the music.

  He was sitting down, feeling antsy and out of sorts. Why the hell hadn’t Lark returned any of his phone calls? Was she mad at him? He could understand that. They hadn’t parted well yesterday afternoon. He’d been too busy feeling guilty and thinking about Sharon. And he’d probably said some crazy things right after the shootings.

  Well, he probably needed to let it go. Lark had to be on a plane to Africa tomorrow, so she was really busy. The thought left him feeling deeply depressed.

  Yesterday he’d wanted to find a way to love her, but Sharon stood in the way. Now he wasn’t sure that was true. He needed to see Lark. He needed to figure this out.

  “So, how’s your head?” Miriam Randall said as she sat down beside him. Today Miriam was wearing a bright green sweater and a costume jewelry wreath with a bunch of large sparkly stones. She cocked her head and studied him from behind her goofy trifocals.