Coming Home for Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  And although it was very much against his will at first, when Kenzie’s mother came up to him to exchange a few words later that evening, Keith couldn’t help thinking of his own mother—the way she had once been, not the woman whose burial service he was going to be attending the day after tomorrow.

  With a great deal of effort, Keith shook off the memory. Nothing good would come of going there. He had to remember that—and resist the temptation to do otherwise.

  “I think our birthday girl is ready to be taken home, don’t you?” Andrea asked him.

  The little girl was sitting beside him on the sofa, her head lolling to one side. She was obviously asleep and had been for the last twenty minutes or so, after valiantly struggling to keep her eyes open. She’d finally lost the battle. Her even, measured breathing attested to that.

  “It is getting late,” Keith agreed. His mother had been very strict about bedtime when he was Ginny’s age. Apparently, Kenzie’s family didn’t feel the same way.

  Kenzie picked up his cue. Looking at Keith, she inclined her head so that only he could hear her and said, “You’ve more than paid off your debt. Would you like to go back to your house?”

  The candles had been blown out and the cake had long since been eaten. Ginny had gone on to daintily remove the wrapping paper from her gifts. Some of the paper, evading cleanup, still littered parts of the floor. Ginny might have fallen asleep, but her older cousins were awake, and some of them were playing with her gifts, all under their mothers’ watchful eyes.

  All in all, it was a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting, only done one better. Keith felt a very odd sensation of longing stirring inside before he managed to block it and lock it away.

  “Are you serious?” Keith asked, surprised that Kenzie would come around so easily—and on her own, too. He had become fairly convinced that in order to leave the premises before midnight, he would be forced to come up with some sort of an elaborate escape plan.

  Not that he really wanted to all that much.

  Maybe there was something in the punch, Keith thought.

  Obviously amused by his response, Kenzie grinned at him. That grin was getting to him, working its way under his skin. He was finding her harder and harder to ignore or even keep at bay.

  “It would be too cruel to tease you like that,” she told him, whispering the words into his ear and creating, unbeknownst to her, waves of warmth that undulated through him. “Yes, I’m serious,” she assured him.

  To prove it, Kenzie rose to her feet.

  The birthday girl chose that moment to wake up. Rubbing her eyes, Ginny looked up at her aunt. The expression on her face silently asked if the fact that Kenzie was on her feet meant that another present was possibly coming her way.

  “We’ve got to get going, sweetie,” she told Ginny—and thereby also informed all those who needed to be informed that they were leaving. “We’ve got a lot of things to do tomorrow.”

  Rather than say anything to her, Ginny turned to look at Keith. With all the guile of a four-year-old, she asked, “Are you gonna come back?”

  The little girl had caught him completely off guard. When Keith opened his mouth, it was to offer what he felt was a valid excuse. “I don’t live around here.”

  “But you can always come back,” Ginny pointed out.

  “Maybe some time,” Keith conceded evasively, not about to get into involved explanations. It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember the last time someone had actually wanted his presence enough to question the excuse he offered.

  “He’s going to be very busy, Ginny,” Kenzie said, once again coming to his rescue.

  “But sometime?” she questioned hopefully, looking at Keith with large, soulful blue eyes.

  “Sometime,” Kenzie echoed, making the nebulous word sound more like a promise.

  Ginny flashed Kenzie a big smile, then surprised Keith by jumping to her feet and awarding him a quick, fierce hug before turning her attention back to her newly acquired loot.

  “You look stunned,” Kenzie observed as they made their way to the door amid a chorus of goodbyes from the people who remained. “Never been hugged by a little girl before?” she guessed.

  He thought of making some sort of flippant remark or excuse, then reconsidered and went with the plain truth. “Not to my recollection.”

  “Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?”

  He grunted something unintelligible. It was enough to make her smile to herself.

  “I think you made a big impression on my niece,” Kenzie said as they were walking back to her car. “As well as on my family,” she added.

  To her surprise, Keith had actually remembered most of her family’s names during the course of the day. That nice guy she’d been trying to reach was beginning to surface.

  The moon lit their way, allowing her to see Keith’s expression. It had been a long day, and part of her had expected him to be annoyed or, at the very least, beleaguered. But he appeared to be neither. That was another nice surprise.

  “Yeah, well, that worked both ways,” Keith told her after a couple of beats.

  Kenzie got the impression that he had first debated the pros and cons of voicing his reaction to the little girl before saying anything.

  “You have a nice family.”

  He couldn’t have said anything better or more meaningful to her.

  “Thanks. I think so,” she said without any hesitation or embarrassment. “There are times I’d like to strangle one or more of my siblings, but for the most part, I have to agree with you. They really are nice.” Then she added, “I’ll bet you’re really tired. I’d better take you home so you get enough rest to help me tackle the pricing tomorrow.”

  “Pricing?” he echoed, confused.

  “Of the things going into the first wave of the estate sale. I decided that it should start tomorrow.” That had changed from her original plan, but she thought it best to keep Keith busy rather than dwelling on the situation—and his loss, even if he didn’t want to admit it. “Remember? I asked if you had any objections to doing it before the funeral, and you were all for getting started.”

  He grunted in agreement, but the truth of it was, he’d actually forgotten that conversation. Attending the birthday party, being transported down memory lane by a family-friendly scenario that was so similar to what he’d grown up with, had temporarily driven thoughts of everything else out of his head.

  But it all came back to him now as reality returned to wrap him in its cold embrace.

  He pushed the emotion aside and dwelled only on what needed to be done.

  Chapter Nine

  He’d meant to be gone before the whole thing got underway.

  When he had fallen asleep last night, Keith had had every intention of being gone before the estate sale, or even the preparations for displaying the items, had begun. Although if he were being honest with himself, he hadn’t really a clue as to where “gone” was physically located. He hadn’t gotten that far along in figuring out his escape plan when sleep had suddenly—and silently—overtaken him.

  Sleep had brought dreams, something that he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Years, as a matter of fact. Nocturnal episodes in his life these past few years were defined by being awake, then finding himself waking up. Sleep, obviously, occurred in between those two end posts, but it brought no dreams with it that he was aware of, certainly none that he could summon once his eyes were open and his brain shook off its fuzzy, unfocused state.

  But last night had been different. Last night, when he’d fallen asleep, he’d had dreams, tiny snatches of dreams. Dreams that couldn’t have lasted for more than a few moments. Dreams that he was in this house, the house where he’d grown up, but rather than Amy and his mother, the people inhabiting his childhood home had been Kenzie’s f
amily.

  A couple of times during these disjointed, rambling segments that seemed to fill his head, he thought he’d caught sight of Amy. When that happened, he immediately attempted to follow her. But whenever he entered the room he was positive she was in, he found he was wrong. She wasn’t there. In her place were a whole bunch of nieces and nephews and various assorted other relatives, all of whom belonged to Kenzie.

  And yet, somehow, there was this unspoken feeling that these relatives infiltrating his dreams also belonged to him.

  Part of him was convinced, during these recurring sequences, that he was in fact dreaming, and all he needed to do to end this was to wake up.

  Easier thought than executed.

  No matter how hard he tried, his eyes just would not open, and as long as they stayed closed, he remained within the confines of this endless dreamlike state.

  After numerous attempts, when Keith finally did manage to pry open his eyes—his lids felt as if they weighed a ton—daylight wasn’t tiptoeing into the bedroom.

  It had come stomping into the room.

  The moment his brain registered that fact—as well as the fact that it was the morning of the sale—he sat bolt upright.

  The sudden movement brought a severe penalty with it. His head began to pound, producing one of those inexplicable morning headaches that insisted on haunting him every so often. He’d suffered through them on occasion ever since he’d been a child. They made thinking clearly nothing short of a challenge.

  Keith sat perfectly still for approximately thirty seconds, taking in a deep breath and vainly trying to center himself. When that failed, he threw off his bedclothes and went directly into his bathroom. After shedding his clothing, Keith got into the shower stall. With quick, efficient movements, he did his best to wash the imagery out of his brain as he showered.

  Seven minutes later, he’d dried off, dressed and was walking out of his bedroom. In his conservative estimation, he had about fifteen minutes to vacate the premises before Kenzie arrived and descended on him.

  He estimated wrong.

  The second he was in the hallway, walking toward the stairs, Keith instantly knew he had sorely miscalculated. The warm, inviting aroma of coffee was wafting up the stairs and tantalized him.

  It also mocked him.

  He knew he hadn’t had the presence of mind to program his coffeemaker last night. That meant either he had a warm, hospitable burglar who had broken into his house and decided to make coffee for him while he was at it—or Kenzie was here early, champing at the bit to get the sale underway.

  Making coffee was more her style.

  Keith caught part of himself rooting for the burglar. At least then he could quickly leave the premises without having to offer any excuses or to beg off.

  Reminding himself that he was the one in charge here and that Kenzie, in point of fact, actually worked for him did absolutely no good.

  It wasn’t that he felt he couldn’t stand up to her and make his point known. It was just that for some reason, while he was standing up and making his point, Kenzie seemed able to steamroller right over logic—and him.

  He ran into her on the stairs.

  Kenzie was going up holding a steaming cup of hot coffee in her hands—her bribe of choice—and he was on his way down, still vainly hoping to execute some sort of an eleventh-hour great escape before she saw him. That boat, of course, had instantly sailed off the moment that their eyes met.

  Kenzie grinned as she stopped walking. “You’re up,” she noted cheerfully.

  “Looks that way,” he responded, silently berating himself for not setting an alarm to wake him up earlier.

  Keith glanced over her shoulder at the front door. He was just several yards short of an escape, he couldn’t help thinking almost wistfully.

  So near and yet so far.

  “I brought you coffee,” Kenzie told him.

  His attention was drawn back to the woman directly in front of him. “I figured that part out on my own,” he responded flippantly.

  Kenzie wasn’t about to comment on his less than sunny disposition. Kenzie thought his surliness might have something to do with the fact that people would be going through, paying for and carting off bits and pieces of his former life.

  That had to be rough. But that was exactly why she had given him the option of holding some things back, of vetoing any item from going on sale.

  However, he had declined to even entertain the idea, much less executing it, saying, “As far as I’m concerned, you can sell the whole household as one big lot if it means getting rid of everything.”

  In her heart, she refused to believe he actually meant that. At least, she was sure he didn’t mean it about everything in the house. The man whom she’d gotten to interact with her family was definitely not devoid of all feelings and emotions.

  Those emotions and feelings were most likely buried rather deeply because of his sister’s death.

  People reacted differently to tragedies of that magnitude. Some rallied, and it became their finest hour. Others fell to pieces and were never quite the same again.

  Most people, however, fell somewhere in between, with an entire spectrum of emotions. And she wanted to help him navigate the spectrum if she possibly could.

  Surrendering the coffee cup to him, Kenzie made a U-turn on the stairs and headed back down. “There’s breakfast in the kitchen if you’re interested,” she added.

  “Good place for it,”

  Hand on the banister, Kenzie paused and looked over her shoulder at him. “Your breakfast.”

  He did his best to seem disinterested, fully aware now that if he gave Kenzie an inch, she would create a little village on it.

  “I didn’t ask for any.”

  The coffee felt like liquid heaven going down, though. He was forced to admit secretly that the woman really knew how to make one hell of a cup of coffee.

  “No, you didn’t,” Kenzie agreed. “But you do need to eat and keep up your strength.”

  He stared at the back of the blond head as he walked behind her. That was an odd thing to say, he thought. Why would she think he needed strength? “Are you entering me in a weight lifting contest?”

  Coming to the bottom of the stairs, she turned around to look at him. “No, but I would like you to carry some things out to the driveway for me. Pablo pulled a muscle, so I told him to stay home and take care of himself.”

  “Pablo?” he echoed. Who was that? He was fairly certain he hadn’t met anyone by that name at her niece’s birthday party last night.

  “Pablo’s my assistant and general, all-around handy person,” she explained.

  “I take it he’s not very handy with a pulled muscle.” Finishing off the coffee, Keith left the cup on the first flat surface nearest the staircase.

  “None of us is.” Deftly she scooped up the cup, quickly carrying it to the kitchen, where his breakfast was waiting for him beneath a covered dish on the kitchen counter. “And, like I said, he’s home, resting. I arranged everything that’s going on sale today in boxes, but now the boxes need to find their way outside to the tables.”

  “Tables?”

  Nothing was making immediate sense to him. Keith was beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland after she slid down the rabbit hole. Quite an identity crisis for a thirty-two-year-old male, he couldn’t help thinking.

  Kenzie nodded, patiently explaining, “The ones I set up under the canopy in your driveway.”

  “My driveway—the driveway,” he amended, still doing his best to distance himself from the house and the woman who had lived alone here for the past ten years, “doesn’t have a canopy.”

  “It does for today,” she contradicted him. “And for later this week when the sales resume.”

  Because she wanted to be res
pectful of his mother, she was putting the sale on hold the day of the funeral. But since Keith was in a hurry to have it all over with, the sale would resume the day after that.

  “The canopy catches the neighbors’ eye—and it also protects some of the more delicate items from being damaged by the sun,” she added. “Don’t forget, some of the things are old and very delicate.”

  Keith just shook his head. She had gone too far in her efforts to protect things he had no use for or desire to preserve.

  “You’re the expert,” he commented in a tone that said what he thought was the exact opposite.

  Kenzie took pride in the fact that she was good at her job and even better at not getting drawn into any sort of a confrontation about minor matters. Long ago, she had learned to pick her fights, and this was definitely not meant to be one of them. She sensed that despite Keith’s bravado, he was having a hard time with what was happening.

  For all she knew, he hadn’t even made his peace with his mother’s death. If that was the case, it would hit him really hard down the line.

  “Thank you for that,” she said quietly. “Now eat your breakfast while it’s still warm and then come out and help me show off the first wave of items to their best advantage.”

  Keith picked up the dish from the counter, removing the cover and leaving it behind. He sat down at the table. He noticed she’d set utensils out for him. She didn’t miss a thing.

  “It’s a glorified garage sale,” he pointed out. “There is no showing things off to their best advantage, no matter what you try.”

  Kenzie was not easily dissuaded. Flashing one of her dazzling smiles, she told him as she left the kitchen, “You’d be surprised.”

  And, he discovered shortly thereafter, he was.

  Half an hour after he had carried out close to ten boxes of memorabilia and then retreated into the house, Keith moved the curtain aside from the living room window and saw that there were people lining up on his driveway, waiting their turn to approach the very end of a long table.

  They were holding items they had discovered at the sale in one hand and money in the other. They were all queuing up to reach Kenzie. She was on the other side of the long rectangular table, ringing up these found treasures on what looked to be an old-fashioned cash register.