A California Christmas

by Brenda Novak

  It didn’t help that he trusted their judgment.

  But he was actually doing her a favor. He couldn’t give her what she needed. For him, love equaled fear. He couldn’t trust enough to step out of his isolation.

  As he got closer to the wheel, the operator shut everything down and the snowman disappeared as the lights snapped off. “We’re closed,” the man announced the minute he spotted Dallas loitering near him.

  “No worries,” Dallas said, and stepped out of the way so he could leave.

  He gazed out to sea, listening to the waves crash up on the shore. Occasionally, he’d turn around to see if he could spot Ethan, but Ethan was doing a good job of remaining out of sight. Dallas hoped he’d followed through with the plan and told his friends and contacts what he was supposed to tell them. But Dallas couldn’t be sure about that any more than he could be sure his plan would work even if Ethan had followed through.

  It was twelve-thirty when he began to think this would be a wasted trip. No one was coming to meet him. The last few stragglers who’d been at the pier when he arrived were gone. He seemed to be all alone.

  He decided to wait fifteen more minutes, just to be sure, but still no one approached. A woman wearing a thick coat with the hood pulled up against the cold was the only other person in the area. She’d walked past him a few minutes earlier, and although he couldn’t see anything other than her face, he could tell she was too old to be Heidi.

  He pulled out his phone to let Ethan know he was calling it off. First he was going to turn off the app Emery had told him to download that would record the audio part of whatever happened, but right in that moment the woman approached. He assumed she needed directions, some change for a bus ride or a light for a cigarette, but she surprised him by pulling a bag out of her coat and tossing it at his feet.

  “Here’s what you want,” she muttered before pivoting abruptly and hurrying back up the pier.

  Scooping up the bag, Dallas shoved his phone in his pocket and took off after her.

  She could obviously hear his footfalls on the wooden planking, which frightened her. Crying out, she started to run in earnest, but he was younger and quicker and was able to head her off.

  Holding his arms out in front of him in the classic stop position, he got in front of her every time she tried to turn a different direction and yelled, “Come on out!” to Ethan.

  “It’s about damn time.” Ethan appeared from behind a retail booth about twenty feet away and hurried over. “I was just about to give up.”

  With Ethan on one side, it was easier to keep the woman from getting away. Her eyes were wide with fear but now she stood perfectly still.

  “Who is she?” Ethan asked.

  “Hard to say. But she showed up and tossed a bag at my feet, which I assume has the money in it.”

  She was keeping her hood up and her head down, but Ethan ducked so he could see her face and shocked Dallas when he cried, “Mom! What are you doing here?”

  Dallas’s jaw dropped as he looked from one to the other. “This is your mother?”

  “Yes, but... She’d never... I mean...” Ethan shook his head, momentarily speechless, until he managed to say, “Mom, please tell me you had nothing to do with that cowboy—Terrell Something—who choked Emery.”

  She glanced behind her as though she wished running was still an option. But she’d already been identified; it was too late for that. “He wasn’t supposed to hurt her,” she said, finally removing her hood as tears welled up. “I just... I wanted to make her leave you alone. I couldn’t let her cost you money you don’t have, humiliate you in front of your fans and...and threaten your job. You were so relieved when you were able to get it back.”

  “Oh my God,” Ethan whispered. “I set a trap for my own mother. I told her about the lawsuit and Emery going to Silver Springs and about when you called and demanded that I bring five hundred dollars hush money to this pier. I was so freaked out, knew I didn’t have anything to do with it. But I never dreamed that... Oh my God,” he said again.

  Dallas remembered Emery mentioning that Ethan and his mother were unusually close, and that she was overprotective, but the fact that it could be her had never even crossed his mind. “You’re in some serious trouble,” he told her as he opened the sack he’d grabbed before giving chase and pulled out a stack of twenty-dollar bills. He didn’t bother to count; it looked like about five hundred dollars to him.

  Ethan frowned when he saw the money. “Please. Don’t drag her into this.”

  “Drag her into this?” Dallas echoed, putting the money back in the sack. “She’s the one who’s responsible for what happened to Emery.” He pulled out his phone, which had recorded the entire conversation, and flashed it at them. “And now I’ll be able to prove it. Who was the cowboy you hired?”

  “Don’t answer,” Ethan advised, but it was too late. She spoke at the same time. “The brother or brother-in-law of a friend of mine from work. I don’t really know. I never even talked to him. She arranged it all.”

  “For how much?”

  “Three hundred for her and three hundred for him.”

  “I’m calling the cops,” Dallas said.

  Ethan caught his arm. “No, please. She did it for me. She was wrong, but her intentions were good. I’ll take the fall.”

  “Leave Ethan out of it,” his mother cried. “It was me. I’m the one who did it.”

  Dallas shoved the bag under his arm so he wouldn’t drop his phone. Even though Ethan’s mom and the cowboy deserved to be prosecuted, Dallas knew they probably wouldn’t do much jail time since Emery hadn’t been seriously injured.

  If Ethan confessed to the cyberattack, however, Emery would be able to get a sizable settlement—both from him and the station—and that would be punishment enough for his mother, too, since protecting him was all she cared about.

  While Dallas hated letting “Terrell” off, after taking a moment to weigh his options, he thought gaining the confession served the greater good.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  Tuesday, December 22

  Emery was glad she’d come to Boston. Connie had broken into tears the moment she walked out of the airport into the freezing cold of a Boston winter, and when she got in the car and greeted her grandmother, Adele had actually remembered her. Connie said it was the first hint of clarity Adele had had all day—that it must be a Christmas miracle.

  After they arrived home, they’d visited for an hour or so, but then her mother had helped her grandmother to bed and retired herself. Emery wasn’t remotely sleepy. She’d slept for two hours on the long plane ride. Besides, she was on California time, and she was too wound up about what might happen at the pier to even think about nodding off.

  She closed the door to her room before going online to search for possible jobs in broadcasting, which, with her experience, would be her best bet. She probably couldn’t work as an anchor after what Ethan had done—not for some time—but it might be possible to get on as the producer at a small, obscure station. Even if she was just hired as a receptionist, or a gofer for a producer, it would be a start. She wanted to find work as soon as possible, since she was the only one between her, her mother and her grandmother for whom that was a viable option—while she waited to hear from Dallas.

  She didn’t find a lot of opportunities, which worried her. But she was willing to do almost anything, even if it wasn’t in broadcasting, to keep them afloat and hoped there would be more offerings after Christmas. Surely in January there would be plenty of companies looking for someone who was articulate, conscientious and comfortable with people. She was a good employee—if the person doing the hiring was willing to look past the sex video that had created such a scandal, she thought wryly.

  She watched the clock as it grew later and later. She’d expected to hear from Dallas by
now. Had he forgotten to call her? Maybe no one had shown up and he’d decided that it wouldn’t be worth the risk of waking her just to tell her so.

  As four o’clock came and went—one o’clock in California—she began to pace, eventually pausing to lift the blind and stare out at the snowy scene all around her. If something was going on, she didn’t want to cause Dallas’s phone to light up or distract him. But she also didn’t want him to forget to inform her.

  He couldn’t forget, she told herself. She was the reason he’d gone to the Santa Monica Pier.

  “Have some patience,” she muttered, and waited another fifteen minutes. It was now a full hour after he was supposed to meet whoever had hired “Terrell” at the pier. No matter what’d happened, he had to be done, didn’t he?

  Letting the blind fall back in place, she risked texting Dallas.

  Is everything okay? What happened?

  Give me ten more minutes. Almost done.

  Done with what? Something must’ve happened.

  She gnawed nervously on her bottom lip as she tried to while away another five minutes and then ten. At last, her phone buzzed with his call.

  Although she answered immediately, she waited until she’d shut herself into the bathroom so she wouldn’t wake her mother or her grandmother before saying hello.

  “You’re never going to believe who did it,” he said without preamble.

  “Don’t tell me it was Tommy.” She couldn’t help feeling slightly hurt that Ethan’s old roommate would put her in danger, and be so unfeeling about it. He knew Ethan was the one at fault in the first place.

  “No. It was Karen.”

  Emery couldn’t immediately place the name. If it was a woman, she’d been sure he’d say Heidi. “Karen who?”

  “His mother.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. That was who showed up at the pier to meet me with a bag full of money.”

  Emery sat down on the closed toilet. “Did you call the cops? Has she been arrested? Ethan must be beside himself.”

  “I didn’t call the cops.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think we should turn her in. It’s up to you, of course, but I’ve worked out something that will be a lot better.”

  “And that is...”

  “Ethan has promised to confess to the cyberattack if we leave his mother out of everything.”

  Emery began to massage her forehead. “Really?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “I’m surprised he’d agree to that.”

  “Even to protect his mother?”

  “Yes. He’s so narcissistic, so used to her being the one to take care of him. He expects it by now.”

  “That may be true, but he knows we will probably wind up getting them both if he doesn’t cooperate. There’s a good chance of it, anyway. And if she does have to serve time in jail for what she did, not only would she lose her job, she’d have a record. If you won the lawsuit, Ethan would lose his job, too. It just compounds everything.”

  “What about the cowboy—Terrell?”

  “He’d get away with it, so I’ll understand if you don’t want to go this way. I could still call the cops, and you could take your chance at winning the lawsuit without Ethan’s confession. I recorded some stuff that should help, but it won’t be as easy as if you have his cooperation.”

  She rubbed her forehead, stalling while she tried to think. “I suppose you’re right. I’d rather win the lawsuit than see someone punished just for the sake of punishment.”

  “I agree. They deserve it, but this benefits you much more.”

  “I can’t believe it was her,” she said, still trying to come to terms with what she’d learned. “Or, actually, when I think about it, I guess I can. After witnessing what their relationship was like, it shouldn’t surprise me. I just never even considered her a possibility.”

  “Me, either.”

  “I probably should’ve thought of her. She’s seen me in a swimsuit, so she could’ve seen the freckle on my thigh. And they talked on the phone almost every day. That caused a lot of friction between Ethan and I. He always became so...puerile whenever he dealt with her. She didn’t know when she was crossing boundaries.”

  “She still doesn’t. She’s not happy that his ass is in a sling. She’d rather take the fall. But if she does that, they both might wind up in a worse situation than they are now.”

  “What I don’t understand is...why would Ethan help us figure out who did it if it was his mother?” she asked. “I can’t see him ever doing that.”

  “He didn’t know it was her. She arranged it with a coworker, didn’t even have any direct contact with the cowboy. He just happened to confide in her about the call I tried to entrap him with, so she showed up at the pier to handle it.”

  “But she didn’t get away with it—because of you.”

  “I’m just glad I was able to get to the bottom of the whole thing. It would’ve been really hard for me to leave California, knowing that you might still be in trouble.”

  “I doubt anyone would try to hurt me here in Boston, but it’s nice to know I can go back to LA and won’t have to worry.”

  Now she wouldn’t have to fear returning to her apartment, and she’d soon be vindicated when she won the lawsuit. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate...everything.”

  There was a moment of silence during which she could sense he wanted to say something—something he didn’t end up expressing. “No problem,” he said instead. “How’re your mother and grandmother?”

  “They’ll be okay. I’m going to make sure of it.”

  “You’ll have the means, once you win the lawsuit.”

  She imagined the relief that would offer. She couldn’t get that video to disappear or go back in time and make it so that no one ever saw it, but at least she wouldn’t have to take the first menial job she could find. She’d have time to spend with her family, as it was now, and her mother would be able to hold out until her father was willing to split their assets in a more equitable fashion. “That’s incredible,” she admitted. “It feels so good to have the answers, and to know the person responsible is admitting what he did.”

  “God, I miss you,” he said. “And don’t tell me it’ll pass.”

  “Don’t look back,” she told him. “Go, be free and fulfill your dreams. And whenever you think of me, know that what I wanted most was for you to be happy.”

  His voice grew slightly hoarse with emotion. “Emery...”

  She squeezed her eyes closed. “Goodbye, Dallas.”

  28

  Dallas was exhausted when he finally rolled into Silver Springs. He’d been up all night, but he didn’t have to worry about not getting enough rest. Aiyana and Cal were honeymooning, and he and his brothers were on Christmas break. He planned to sleep as long as he wanted, and he hoped that when he woke up sometime later he’d feel better about his decision to let Emery go. She was special. He couldn’t deny that. But every time he considered embracing what he felt for her and actually making a commitment, the past rose up to mock him, reminding him of his poor sister, who’d meant the world to him. He couldn’t allow himself to be that happy, not when she’d lost everything.

  He yawned as he got out of the van and started trudging toward the house. At least he could rest assured that Ethan couldn’t hurt Emery anymore and that the world would know her former boyfriend was responsible for the cyberattack that ruined her career. They’d also know that the television station fired her because of what Ethan did, not anything she did. She had to be glad for that, and knowing she was in a better place made things easier for him, too.

  If only he could’ve done something to help Jenny.

  Damn it! He knew he had to stop punishing himself, but he couldn’t.

  Forge
t, he told himself, and hoped he’d be able to do that once he returned to climbing and was once again caught up in the enthusiasm he felt for the sport. He might not be happy choosing the road he’d chosen, but at least he’d appease his sense of justice.

  As soon as he let himself into the house, he was surprised to find the television on and Seth sitting on the couch. His brother had dozed off with the remote in his hand, but he startled awake at the sound of the door. “How’d it go?” he asked, sitting up when he saw Dallas.

  “Great. It’s all handled. She’s going to be fine.”

  “What happened?”

  Dallas was so tired his eyes felt like sandpaper, but he sat in the recliner next to the couch while he explained.

  “So it wasn’t Ethan,” Seth said when he was done.

  “No, but if he hadn’t loaded that video onto the internet, none of this would’ve happened. So I don’t feel bad that he’s the one paying the price.”

  Seth grimaced. “I hate that the cowboy is going to get away with what he did.”

  Dallas did, too, but they didn’t live in a perfect world, and he felt damn lucky to have achieved this much justice for Emery. “There’s always karma. It’ll come around and smack him down one day. And if I ever find out who he is, I’ll smack him myself. At least Emery will get a sizable settlement. It’ll ease a lot of the pressure she’s under and will enable her to help the people she loves.”

  “I’m happy to hear that.”

  “I’m happy it’s over.”

  “Mom called last night,” Seth announced. “Forgot to tell you.”

  “How’s the honeymoon?”

  “Sounds like it’s going great. She said she’s happier than she’s ever been. But when I told her what you were up to, she started to worry. You should give her a call.”

  “It’s too early—I’ll text instead, in case she’s asleep. Will she and Cal still be coming home Christmas Eve?” Dallas asked as he gathered what was left of his strength and stood.

  “She wouldn’t miss Christmas. Not with us here.”