Jingle All the Way

by Fern Michaels

  Addie had loved Frank, but she’d dreamed of going to a university and majoring in journalism; Frank, older, and with his career already mapped out, had wanted her to stay in Pine Crossing and study at the local junior college. He’d reluctantly agreed to delay the marriage, and she’d gone off to Denver to study. There had been no terrible crisis, no confrontation—they had simply grown apart.

  Midway through her sophomore year, when he’d just pinned on his shiny new badge, she’d sent his ring back, by Federal Express, with a brief letter.

  Though it was painful, Addie had kept up on Frank’s life, through the pages of the Pine Crossing Statesman. In the intervening years, he’d married, fathered a child, and been tragically widowed. He’d worked his way up through the ranks, and now he was head man.

  Addie tore herself away from the pictures and checked out the kitchen. Same ancient oak table, chairs with handsewn cushions, and avocado green appliances. Even Eliza’s antique percolator was in its customary place on the counter. It was almost as if the apartment had been preserved as a sort of memorial, yet the effect was heart-warming.

  Suspended above the counter was Eliza’s matchbox Advent calendar, the fraying ends and middle of the supporting ribbon carefully taped into place.

  A powerful yearning swept through Addie. She approached the calendar, ran her fingers lightly from one box to another. Her throat closed, and the tears she’d blinked away earlier came back with a vengeance.

  “Oh, Eliza,” she whispered, “I’d give anything to see you again.”

  Pulling on the tiny ribbon tab at the top, she tugged open the first box, labeled, like the others, with a brass numeral. The miniature teddy bear was still inside.

  She’d been five the night Frank came to live with his aunt, a somber, quiet little boy, arriving on the four o’clock bus from Denver, clutching a threadbare panda in one hand and a beat-up suitcase in the other.

  Needing a distraction, Addie opened the cupboard where Eliza had kept her coffee in a square glass jar with a red lid. Bless Frank, he’d replenished the supply.

  Addie started a pot brewing, and while the percolator was chortling and chugging away, she went downstairs to bring in her things. By the time she’d lugged up the various computer components and the books, the coffee was ready.

  She set the computer up in the smaller of the two bedrooms, the one that had been Frank’s. Other memories awaited her there, but she managed to hold them at bay while she hooked everything up and plugged into the telephone line.

  In her old life, she’d been a reporter. She had done a lot of her research on-line, and kept up with her various sources via e-mail. Now, the Internet was her primary way of staying in touch with her six-year-old stepson, Henry.

  The system booted up and—bless Frank again—she heard the rhythmic blipping sound of a dial tone. Evidently, he hadn’t had the phone service shut off after the last renter moved out.

  She was into her e-mail within seconds, and her first reaction was disappointment. Nothing from Henry.

  Perched on the chair at the secondhand desk where Frank had worked so diligently at his homework, when they were both kids, she scrolled through the usual forwards and spam.

  At the very end was a message with the subject line, THIS IS FROM TOBY.

  Addie’s fingers froze over the keyboard. Toby was her ex-husband. They’d been divorced for two years, but they’d stayed in contact because of Henry. She’d had no legal claim to the child—in the darkest hours of the night she still kicked herself for not adopting him while she and Toby were still married—but Toby had a busy social life, and she’d been a free baby-sitter. Until the debacle that brought her career down around her ears, that was. After that, Toby’s live-in girlfriend, Elle, had decided Addie was a bad influence, and the visits had all but stopped.

  Trembling slightly, she opened the e-mail.

  MEET THE FOUR O’CLOCK BUS, Toby had written. That was all. No explanations, no smart remarks, no signature.

  “Damn you, Toby,” she muttered, and scrabbled in the depths of her purse for her cell phone. His number was on speed dial, from the old days, before she’d become a persona non grata.

  His voice mail picked up. “This is Toby Springer,” he said. “Elle and I are on our honeymoon. Be home around the end of January. Leave a message, and we’ll get back to you then.”

  Addie jammed the disconnect button with her thumb, checked her watch.

  Three-ten.

  She fired back an e-mail, just in case Toby, true to form, was shallow enough to take a laptop on his honeymoon. He was irresponsible in just about every area of his life, but when it came to his loan-brokering business, he kept up.

  WHERE IS HENRY? Addie typed furiously, and hit Send.

  After that, she drank coffee and paced, watching the screen for an answer that never came.

  At five minutes to four, she was waiting at the Texaco station, in the center of town. The bus rolled in right on time and stopped with a squeak of air brakes.

  The hydraulic door whooshed open.

  A middle-aged woman descended the steps, then an old man in corduroy pants, a plaid flannel shirt and a quilted vest, then a teenage girl with pink hair and a silver ring at the base of her right eyebrow.

  Addie crammed her hands into the pockets of her coat and paced some more.

  At last, she saw him. A bespectacled little boy, standing tentatively in the doorway of the bus, clutching a teddy bear under one arm.

  Henry.

  She’d been afraid to hope. Now, overjoyed, Addie ran past the gas pumps to gather him close.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Henry sat at Eliza’s table, huddled in his favorite pajamas, his brown hair rumpled, his horn-rimmed glasses slightly askew. “So anyway,” he explained, sounding mildly congested, “Elle said I was incrudgible and Dad had better deal with me or she’d be out of there.”

  Addie seethed. She hadn’t pressed for details the afternoon before, after his arrival, and Henry hadn’t volunteered any. They’d stopped at the supermarket on the way home from the Texaco station, stocked up on fish sticks and French fries, and come back to the apartment for supper. After the meal, Henry had submitted sturdily to a bath, a dose of children’s aspirin, and the smearing on of mentholated rub. Then, exhausted, he’d donned his pajamas and fallen asleep in Frank’s childhood bed.

  Addie had spent half the night trying to track Toby down, but he might as well have moved to Argentina and taken on a new identity. It seemed he’d dropped off the face of the earth.

  Now, in the chilly glare of a winter morning, Henry was more forthcoming with details. “Dad and me flew to Denver together; then he put me on the bus and said he’d call you when he’d worked things out with Elle.”

  Addie gritted her teeth and turned her back, fiddling with the cord on the percolator. The Advent calendar dangled in front of her, a tattered, colorful reminder that there was joy in the world, and that it was often simple and homemade.

  “Hey,” she said brightly, turning around again, “it’s the second of December. Want to see what’s in the box?”

  Henry adjusted his glasses and examined the length of ribbon, with its twenty-four colorful matchboxes. Before he could reply, a firm knock sounded at the front door.

  “Come in!” Addie called, because you could do that in Pine Crossing, without fear of admitting an ax murderer.

  A little girl dashed into the kitchen, wearing everyday clothes and a tinsel halo. Addie was struck dumb, momentarily at least. Frank’s child, she thought, amazed to find herself shaken. This is Frank’s child.

  Addie had barely had time to recover from that realization when Frank himself loomed in the doorway. His badge twinkled on the front of his brown uniform jacket.

  One of her questions was put to rest, at least. Frank still had all his hair.

  He smiled that slow, sparing smile of his. “Hello, Addie,” he said.

  “Frank,” she managed to croak, with a nod.

&nbs
p; He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “This is my daughter, Lissie,” he said. “She’s impersonating an angel.”

  The brief, strange tension was broken, and Addie laughed. Approaching Lissie, she put out a hand. “How do you do?” she said. “My name is Addie. I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting an angel before.” She peered over Lissie’s small shoulders, pretending to be puzzled. “Where are your wings?”

  The child sighed, a little deflated. “You don’t get those unless you’re actually in the play,” she said. “Shepherds aren’t allowed to have wings.”

  Addie gave Frank a quizzical look. He responded with a half smile and a you’ve-got-me shake of his head.

  “I made the halo myself,” Lissie said, squaring her shoulders. She’d been sneaking looks at Henry the whole time; now she addressed him directly. “Who are you?”

  “Henry,” he replied solemnly, and pushed at the nosepiece of his glasses.

  “My dad got married, and his wife says I’m incrudgible.”

  “Oh,” Lissie said with a knowing air.

  Frank and Addie exchanged glances.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Frank said, nodding toward the Advent calendar. A smile lit his eyes. “Lissie was hoping she could be around for the opening of Box Number 2.”

  Addie’s throat tightened. Those memories again, all of them sweet. “You do the honors, Miss Lissie,” she said with a grand gesture of one arm.

  Lissie started toward the calendar, and once again Frank’s hand came to rest on her small shoulder. Although they didn’t look at each other, some silent message traveled between father and daughter.

  “I think Henry should open the box,” Lissie said. “Unless being incrudgible means he’ll mess it up.”

  Henry hesitated, probably wondering if incrudgibility was, indeed, a factor in the enterprise. Then, very carefully, he dragged his chair over to the counter, climbed up on it, and pulled open the second box. Lissie looked on eagerly.

  Henry turned his head, his nose wrinkled. “It’s a ballerina,” he said with little-boy disdain.

  Addie had known what was inside, of course, knew what was tucked into all the boxes. She’d been through the ritual every Christmas of her childhood, from the time she was five. Eliza had let her choose that tiny doll from a shoe box full of small toys, the very first year, dab glue onto its back, and press it into place.

  She looked at Frank, looked away again, quickly. She’d been so jealous of him, those first few weeks after his arrival, afraid he’d take her place in Eliza’s affections. Instead, Eliza had made room in her heart for both children, each lost and unwanted in their own way, and let Addie take part in the tradition, right from the first.

  “We’d better be on our way,” Frank said, somewhat gruffly. “Lissie’s got school.”

  Addie touched Henry’s forehead reflexively, before helping him down from the chair. Despite the aspirin and other stock remedies, he still had a slight fever, and that worried her.

  “Are you going to go to my school?” Lissie asked Henry. “Or are you just here for a vacation?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said, and he sounded so bereft that the insides of Addie’s sinuses burned. Damn Toby, she thought bitterly. Damn him for being selfish and shallow enough to put a small boy on a bus and leave him to his fate. Did the man have so much as a clue how many things could have gone horribly wrong along the way?

  Frank caught her eye. “Everything all right, Addie?” he asked quietly.

  She bit her lower lip. Nodded. Frank didn’t keep up with gossip; he never had. It followed, then, that he didn’t know what she’d been accused of, that she’d staked her whole career on a big story, that she’d almost gone to jail for protecting her source, that that source, as it turned out, had been lying through his capped and gleaming teeth.

  Frank looked good-naturedly skeptical of her answer. He shrugged and raised a coffee mug to his lips. It was white, chipped here and there, with an oversized handle and Frank’s name emblazoned in gold letters across the front, inside a large red heart.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Addie had lost track of the conversation, and it must have shown in her face, because Frank grinned, inclined his head toward the Advent calendar, and said, “It means a lot to Lissie, to open those boxes.”

  “Maybe you should take it back to your place,” she said. Henry and Lissie were in the living room by then; one of them was plunking out a single-finger version of “Jingle Bells” on Eliza’s ancient piano. “After all, it’s a family heirloom.”

  “It seems fitting to me, having it here,” Frank reasoned, watching her intently, “but if you’d rather we didn’t come stomping into your kitchen every morning, I’d understand. So would Lissie.”

  “It isn’t that,” Addie protested, laying a hand to her heart. “Honestly. It was so sweet of you to remember, but—” Her voice fell away, and she struggled to get hold of it again. “Frank, about the rent—you didn’t say how much—”

  “Let’s not worry about that right now,” Frank interrupted. “It’s almost Christmas, and, besides, this is your home.”

  Addie opened her mouth, closed it again. Her father, the judge, had quietly waited out her ill-fated engagement to Frank, but he’d been unhappy with her decision to go into journalism instead of law. When she refused to change her major, he’d changed his will, leaving the main house and property to Eliza. A year later, he’d died of a heart attack.

  Addie had never been close to her father, but she’d grieved all right. She hadn’t needed the inheritance. She’d buckled down, gotten her degree, and landed a promising job with a California newspaper. She’d been the golden girl—until she’d trusted the wrong people, and written a story that nearly brought down an entire chain of newspapers.

  Frank raised his free hand, as though he might touch the tip of her nose, the way he’d done when they were young, and thought they were in love. Then, apparently having second thoughts, he let it fall back to his side.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Addie awoke to silvery light and the sort of muffled sounds that always meant snow. She lay perfectly still, for a long time, hands cupped behind her head, grinning like a delighted fool. Snow. Oh, how she had missed the snow, in the land of palm trees and almost constant sunshine.

  Henry was trying to make a phone call when she got to the kitchen. After a moment’s pause, she started the coffee.

  “I hate my dad,” he said, hanging up the receiver with a slight slam. “I hate Elle, too.”

  Addie wanted to wrap the child in her arms and hold him close, but she sensed that he wouldn’t welcome the gesture at this delicate point. He was barely keeping himself together as it was. “No, sweetie,” she said softly. “You don’t hate either of them. You’re just angry, and that’s understandable. And for the record, you’re not incorrigible, either. You are a very good boy.”

  He stared at her in that owlish way of his. “I don’t want to go back there. Not ever. I want to stay here, with you.”

  Addie’s heart ached. You have no rights, she reminded herself. Not where this child is concerned. “You know I’d love to have you live with me for always,” she said carefully, “but that might not be possible. Your dad—”

  Suddenly, Henry hurled himself at her. She dropped to her knees and pulled him into her arms.

  There was a rap at the front door.

  “Addie?” Frank called.

  Henry pulled back and rubbed furiously at his eyes, then straightened his glasses.

  “Come in,” Addie said.

  Frank appeared in the doorway, carrying his coffee cup and a bakery box. He paused on the threshold, watching as Addie got to her feet.

  “Do you sleep in that stupid halo?” Henry asked, gazing balefully at Lissie, who pressed past her father to bounce into the kitchen.

  “Henry,” Addie said in soft reprimand. He wasn’t usually a difficult child, but under the
present circumstances . . .

  “You’re just jealous,” Lissie said with cheerful confidence, striking a pose.

  Frank set his coffee mug on the counter with an authoritative thump. “Lissandra,” he said. “Be nice.”

  “Well, he is,” Lissie countered.

  “Am not,” Henry insisted, digging in his heels and folding his arms. “And your hair is poofy.”

  “Somebody open the box,” Frank put in.

  “My turn,” Lissie announced, and dragged over the same chair Henry had used the day before. With appropriate ceremony, she tugged at the little ribbon-pull at the top of the matchbox and revealed the cotton-ball snowman inside. He still had his black top hat and bead eyes.

  “We could build a snowman, after school,” Lissie told Henry, inspired. “And my hair is not either poofy.” She paused. “You are going to school, aren’t you?”

  Henry looked up at Addie. “Do I have to?”

  She ruffled his hair, resisted an impulse to adjust his glasses. He hated it when she did that, and, anyway, it might call attention to the fact that he’d been crying. “I think you should,” she said. She’d had him checked out at the Main Street Clinic the day before, and physically, he was fine. She had explained his situation to the doctor, and they’d agreed that the best thing to do was keep his life as normal as possible.

  Henry sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll go. As long as I get to help build the snow-dude afterwards.”

  Frank refilled his coffee mug at the percolator and helped himself to a pastry. “Sounds like a fair deal to me,” he said, munching. He looked at Addie over the top of Lissie’s head. “You going to help? With the snowman, I mean?”