“And you’re pissed off about that.”
“Damn straight I am. Life sucks. Look who I’m talking to. You know it so there’s no reason to argue with me about it.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“That’s a step up.”
“But I do have a suggestion.”
“Of course you do.”
“You and Sydney have to keep it together for Beckham’s sake. He also has Winona and Stone to lean on. But when this thing happens with Charlotte, he’ll need you and Sydney more than ever, more than he’s ever needed anyone before. I’m counting on you two not to let him down.”
Thirty-Three
Today not letting anyone down would be a challenge for Sydney. She woke up in her own bed with a throbbing head, a mouth dry as scorched earth, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. One reason tequila had never been her drink of choice was that the stuff had always given her a colossal hangover.
She swung her legs out of bed and tried to stand. She should’ve known better. There were consequences—spinning head and sick stomach—after a night of partying, even if it had been a simple girls’ night out.
She dragged her feet into the bathroom to pop three aspirin and chug down a glass of water, hoping one or the other would get her going.
Deciding caffeine would be a better option, she headed into the kitchen. Over the grinder she heard the phone ring.
Her sister’s voice on the other end of the line didn’t act as a soothing balm but a reminder Hayden could be a nag sometimes.
“Hey, I thought I should call and check on you. Last night you were pretty down.”
“Drowning my mood in a pitcher of margaritas was a mistake, hence the whopping headache. What’s up?”
“I know you said Quentin put off having a Christmas party because Charlotte is in such bad shape. So Kinsey and I were talking last night and decided to throw one for your boss. The thing is, we need your help. We need you to tell us his likes and dislikes in the kitchen.”
Sydney stalled. She certainly knew what the man liked in the bedroom but had no idea his preferences for anything else. Instead of opening that up for discussion, she took another tack. “I’ll see what I can find out for you. When is this party happening?”
“December eighteenth, a week before Christmas, at Kinsey’s house.”
“That’s creeping up fast.” The coffee pot finished its brew cycle and she leaned over to pour herself a cup. “Are you planning on having a booth at the Christmas Festival?”
“You bet. It’s a great time to sell books. And almost everyone else I know has been making lots of craft projects to sell, along with an assortment of candy and desserts. It should be fun.”
But fun would have to wait.
After getting dressed, Sydney rode her bike to the clinic to start her workday. She found the office empty and texted Quentin for an update on Charlotte.
The response came back within seconds.
She’s not keeping food down. Her pain has increased.
Are you coming into the office? If not, want me to cancel your morning appointments?
No need to do that. I’ll be there.
The flurry of texts continued right up to when Quentin walked through the door.
“Winona and I tried to get Charlotte up to walk, but she’s more comfortable now sitting in her wheelchair.”
“We knew it would come to this, we just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. By the way, my sister and Kinsey have cooked up a party for you a week before Christmas. I’m supposed to find out what you like to eat—peanut butter and jelly doesn’t count.”
“Isn’t there some way you could talk them out of it? I was successful with Nonnie when she wanted to fill up Bradford House with wall-to-wall people.”
“Nope. Don’t even think about pulling that anti-social attitude with me this morning.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Beckham’s been bugging me to go pick out a tree. Since tonight’s Friday night, I don’t think I can put it off any longer.”
“Are you asking me to come with you? Because you make it sound like you’re going for a root canal. Picking out a tree should be fun.”
“You’d think so, huh? I’m begging you to come with us. It won’t be so bad. We’ll eat one of Stone’s creative dinners, we’ll go pick out this tree, and then we’ll throw some decorations on it. That way it’s done and Beckham will stop nagging me.”
Sydney had a hard time keeping her laughter under control. Knowing Beckham as she did, the night would be anything but simple if it meant finally decorating a tree of his own.
Sure enough, as soon as the kid walked through the door after putting in his two hours at the tree lot, the pestering began over chicken and noodle casserole.
“Caleb helped me save back two of the tallest ones, a balsam fir that’s almost eight feet and a blue spruce that’s a little under seven. But we gotta get there soon and buy one before they all sell out and there’s no more left.”
“Do they normally sell out?” Quentin asked.
“They sold out all the Fraser firs. Caleb says they rarely have a single tree left on the lot by Christmas Eve. That’s why Shelby won’t let me hold two trees forever.”
“He has a point. We’re still two weeks away from Christmas.” Sydney reached over and patted the boy’s shoulder. “Which is why I think we should go tonight.”
Beckham pumped his fist in the air. “Now we’re talking.”
Quentin stared at Sydney. “You know very well it was my idea to get the tree tonight.”
“I know. But I just love messing with you.”
At the other end of the table, Winona cackled with laughter. “My goodness, Stone. I do believe my grandson has met himself a firecracker.”
Stone grinned and leaned over toward Quentin. “Take my advice, son. That kind of woman is hard to find. Don’t let this one slip away.”
Once they reached the nursery, Beckham threw open the car door and dashed out of the backseat before the car came to a full stop. “This way.”
Quentin left the car parked next to the front door of the retail portion. He and Sydney tried to follow the teen, moving in and out of a maze of trees to keep up, until Beckham stopped and proudly showed off his stash. Leaning against the greenhouse were the two premiere choices, a balsam fir and a blue spruce.
“Which one do you recommend?” Sydney asked.
“I liked the balsam fir because of the branches. It can hold a lot more ornaments because it’s sturdy. But you could buy the blue spruce for the clinic.”
Sydney burst out laughing. “He’s got you there. Nicely done, Beckham.” The two high-fived each other while Quentin checked the price tag.
“You guys do understand that I’m not made of money. I’m a simple country doctor now and not getting my former top dollar salary. I’m trying to run a small practice…”
“Cry me a river,” Sydney interrupted with a grin. “You know darn well you can afford to put up a Christmas tree at the office.”
“Fine,” Quentin muttered. “But I’m not decorating it. That’s up to you guys.”
To the delight of Shelby, she rang up both trees. “Oh, that balsam fir will look wonderful in Bradford House. It’ll be nice to see Christmas lights in the window again. I’ll make sure to drive by later just to take a look.”
Quentin felt the world closing in around him. He was living in a huge house he didn’t even own. He had a kid with a sick grandmother and they were both essentially living with him now. His grandmother and Stone wouldn’t be going back until the first of the year. Which meant he had almost zero privacy. When was the last time he’d had a minute to himself to listen to Vivaldi? On top of everything else, he’d taken out a huge loan to try and build a hospital out of an old rundown cannery.
Panic was inching up his spine when he glanced over at Sydney who was busy oohing and ahhing over a box of glittery ornaments. He watched Beckham carrying the tree out to the car to the warblin
g sound of Bing Crosby. He was buying, not one, but two Christmas trees. How had he gotten to this point so fast?
“You okay, Dr. Blackwood?” Shelby asked, handing him his receipt.
“Sure. Yeah. Fine. You’ll have to deliver the blue spruce tomorrow to the office. We’ll have enough problems wrestling that huge tree up on top of the Woodie.”
Sydney slipped her arm through his. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Look how happy Beckham is.”
Quentin stared at Beckham and Caleb tying the tree to the car. “I know. This is all just happening a little too fast for me.”
“Really? Buying a tree for a kid who hasn’t had one in several years? Sometimes I don’t understand you at all, Quentin.”
It wasn’t until they got home and set up the tree that Quentin noticed how truly tall it was. The top almost touched the ceiling. “If we put a star on that it’ll have to be a small one. Do we have enough decorations for this thing?”
“Charlotte mentioned there were boxes of ornaments in the attic,” Winona pointed out. “I sent Stone up there to bring down some of the cartons. But we’ll have to go through them and see what we have.”
Beckham thought about that. “If we don’t have enough ornaments to cover this sucker, we can always make them from scratch, can’t we, Sydney?”
“We certainly can. We already have a dozen different kinds we’ve put together. The problem is, do we have enough lights? Let’s hope there are more in the attic.”
Beckham’s eyes went wide with a thought. “Gram has lights, lots of them. They’re packed away in the garage. Let’s go get those just in case we need ’em and bring ’em over here.” Beckham darted out of the room, heading for the front door.
Quentin rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess we’re going to hunt down more lights.” He leaned over and gave Sydney a chaste kiss on the lips. “I’m counting on you to have this mess organized by the time we get back.”
She gave him a mock salute. “Aye, aye, Dr. Blackwood. I’ll go through the cartons and personally separate them by size and color and untangle the strings of lights so you’ll have less of a hassle with this entire ordeal.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me a hard time about this. You know what I mean.”
She let out a laugh. “I do. When it comes to neat and orderly you’re bordering on an obsessive compulsive disorder there, Dr. Blackwood. Major OCD.”
Just as Quentin was ready to argue that point, Beckham stuck his head back around the corner. “Are we going or what? Come on, let’s get a move on.”
Quentin pointed a finger at his grandmother. “Defend me while I’m gone. Convince her I’m not even close to OCD.”
“That should take about eight hours,” Winona said with a gleam in her eye. “Anything less and I won’t be able to make my case.”
At Charlotte’s, Quentin dug through a dozen dusty boxes before opening the one filled to the rim with strings of old-fashion glass bulbs.
“That’s them,” Beckham called out.
“I don’t think these match the ones back at the house.”
“You mean you don’t want to use them?”
“That’s not what I said. With two trees, we’ll need all the lights we can get. I’m just saying these look like they’re used on the outside to decorate a porch or front yard.”
“Okay. Cool. We’ll use them to trim the eaves of the house like other people do.”
He’d walked right into that one, Quentin thought, as they made their way back to Bradford House.
Beckham fiddled with the buttons on the car radio until he found a station out of Santa Cruz playing Christmas songs.
“Please don’t make me listen to Dean Martin,” Quentin begged.
His pleas went unheeded when Beckham went on as if he hadn’t heard. “We should turn on this station when we get back and decorate the tree to music.”
But while they’d been gone, Sydney, Winona, and Stone had other ideas. They’d found a glut of old record albums, many of them Christmas tunes, buried in the attic.
“Let’s crank up all the best of Christmas,” Beckham suggested. “It has to be better than that crap Quentin listens to.”
“The genius of Bach and Mozart is not crap,” Quentin defended as Perry Como’s voice filled the room, crooning about how great it was to be home for the holidays. He pointed to his uncle’s stereo. “Novelty music should never be compared with the uplifting brilliance of Shostakovich. And if you want Christmas music, try Handel’s Messiah.”
Beckham snickered and looked at Sydney. “It’s so easy to get him going.”
“That’s my boy,” Sydney chimed back with another high five.
Watching from her wheelchair, Charlotte infused her own ideas in her croaky voice. “Let’s hear a little Bobby Rydell or Chubby Checker, something from the 1950s.”
“Connie Francis isn’t bad,” Stone added, still flipping through the vast array of albums. “With Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, I think we should have everyone’s taste in music covered.”
Quentin and Stone got the lights unfurled and wrapped around the tree from top to bottom. Sydney and Beckham found a set of two dozen silver icicles and dangled them in a pyramid shape on each of the branches.
And when Brenda Lee’s voice came on, urging them to rock around the tree, Sydney grabbed Quentin’s hand. As the saxophone played, they moved to the beat.
Winona snatched Beckham’s hand to do the same. But Beckham balked.
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“Better learn before next Saturday night,” Sydney teased. “How else will you be able to ask Faye to dance at the Christmas party next week?”
Beckham’s eyes bugged out. “Huh? Faye’s going to be at the Christmas party?”
Quentin chuckled. “That’s right. And trust me, she’ll expect you to ask her to dance.”
Winona took Beckham’s hand. “Come on, dance with me. It’s easy. Watch my feet. Now you do what I do.”
For the next hour, they all took turns teaching the boy to sway and move his feet to a variety of music.
When the teen began to put the moves all together, Charlotte applauded. “You’re getting the hang of it. You’ll sweep Faye off her feet.”
When it was time to put the star at the top, Quentin handed it to Beckham. “You do the honors.”
“Me?”
“You got me into this mess,” Quentin said in a low voice. “It’s the least you can do.”
Sydney cut out the overhead lights in the room so all that remained was the multi-colored lights glittering on the tree. Their creativity might’ve included a mishmash of ornaments that didn’t match, but to Beckham, it was the most beautiful tree he’d ever seen.
Thirty-Four
On Sunday, Sydney got roped into babysitting Nate while her sister and Ethan went Christmas shopping.
Babysitting an active toddler for the afternoon came with its own challenges. Nate Cody was an energetic, curious bundle who loved to climb. He could scale a dresser or scurry up a chest of drawers in less time than it took to turn around.
She also had to keep an eye on Charlotte while Quentin took care of Tandy Gilliam’s “emergency” cyst that had gotten worse overnight.
Sydney sat down on the floor in the sunroom with Nate to build a bridge out of Legos, but noticed Beckham moping around the house with Buckley.
“What’s wrong? You still upset because Caleb suggested you take a day off?”
“A little. Quentin told him I had to work on finishing my book report for English class. It’ll leave my paycheck short again.”
“Stop worrying about your paycheck. Focus on school. So did you finish? If not, I can help you with it after Hayden picks up Nate.”
“It’s okay. I’m done with it.”
“So do you have any other homework to do?”
“I studied for my chemistry test already.”
Sydney studied Beckham’s face. He looked more than sulky—he looked sad.
“What else is going on?”
Beckham gathered Buckley close and kept his arm around the pooch. “Gram’s having a bad day today, isn’t she?”
Sydney sighed and patted the spot next to her on the hardwood. “Aw honey, come here a minute. I hate to see you like this. It must be hard on you to watch your gram go downhill a little bit more each day.”
“I don’t like it.”
“None of us do. I tell you what, it’s a pretty day. Why don’t we pack a lunch and go down to the beach for a little while? You could relax after a tough week and Nate would get to run around. And I’d get some much-needed fresh air.”
“What about Gram?”
“I’ll go see if Stone and Winona can watch her for about an hour.”
“Remind them you already changed out her IV so they don’t have to worry about that.”
“I will. Watch Nate for me, okay? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Left alone, Beckham stared at the toddler. “What are you working on?”
“Big building,” Nate said in his three-year-old voice. “Wanna build a big one and den knock it down.”
Beckham laughed and began to pick up blocks to add to Nate’s creative structure. “Do you want to pet Buckley?”
Nate bobbed his little head up and down and then scooted over to lay his head on the dog’s back.
“I probably need to take Buckley for a walk. Wanna go outside with us?”
“Like to play in a fort?”
“We don’t have a fort around here. But we do have the beach. My dad used to take me down there. We’d sit on the sand and build us a sandcastle. Have you ever made a sandcastle before?”
Nate shook his head.
“It’s messy work. Wanna go help me build one, a big one, the biggest I’ve ever made?”
“’K.”
“Then let’s go take Buckley down to the beach. We better put your jacket on first. It’s bound to be a little chilly out by the water.”
It only took Sydney a few minutes to find Winona and Stone in the den, kicking back and watching the Raiders game.
Sandcastles Under the Christmas Moon Page 31
