The Last Noel
Page 29
Johnny was frowning at him. Finally he said, “Actually this picture is sort of what Bunny asked for.”
Kaye put it back on the floor.
Johnny held it out to him. “No listen, Bunny already said, if you wanted it, that was okay with her. She said, give it to you.”
Kaye shook his head. “Let Bunny have it.”
The boy looked unhappy. “You don’t want anything?”
Walking to the end of the foyer, Kaye opened the hall closet and pushed aside the coats. There against the back wall, behind some summer screens, he found the red wooden sled where he had left it the day Noni had died. He pulled it out and brushed off a cobweb.
“I’d like this sled,” he told Johnny. “Is that all right?”
Johnny came over and ran his hand along the rusted runner. “This is the one you took the sled ride on?”
Kaye sat down on the foot of the stairs, resting the child's sled on his knees. “It was your mother's first gift to me.” Kaye's head, close-cropped and graying, bent over the sled. “And she gave me so many.”
In the quiet hall, his hand on the carved round ball of the newel post, Johnny stood waiting for the man who sat on the old curving stairs of Heaven's Hill, holding the wooden sled, to retreat to that calm stillness he always had when something upset him. But instead Johnny saw tears of Kaye's fall upon the faint gold letters that curved like a wing over the sled's red bow.
Johnny wiped with his fist at his own tears. “I miss her so much. Don’t you?”
“All my life, son.”
Kaye's tears fell on his name. And on her name, Noelle. And on the gift that had joined the names forever.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Malone is the author of nine novels and two works of nonfiction. Educated at Carolina and at Harvard, he has taught at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Swarth-more. Among his prizes are the Edgar, the O. Henry, the Writers Guild Award, and the Emmy. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, chair of the English department at Duke University.