Making Spirits Bright

by Fern Michaels

  As daylight drew to a close, the sleet started falling again. More heavily this time.

  “I better leave,” Dinah said, reluctantly picking up her suitcase.

  Clay hopped up. “Walk you to the subway?”

  Dinah looked him over with exasperation.

  He upped the ante. “Treat you to a cab?”

  A smile spread across her lips as she shook her head. “It’s a free country. You can waste your time and money if you want.”

  He scooted to her side and helped her on with her coat as if she’d just agreed to a date.

  “Have a Merry Christmas,” Heidi told her, pressing some cookies on her to take on her trip.

  Dinah smiled. “You, too. Enjoy Avatar. And babysitting. And dog-sitting.”

  When they were gone, Heidi sat Wilson in the chair by the fireplace with a ball of cookie dough, which during the course of the afternoon had become his obsession. He not only liked the taste, it also served as makeshift Play-Doh.

  As afternoon surrendered to Christmas Eve, Heidi sold lots of to-go things to people who were obviously headed to some holiday gathering. They came in for a dozen cookies, or a whole pie, or a loaf of pumpkin gingerbread. Some seemed happy, some frenzied.

  The customers kept her busy enough that she’d almost forgotten about Sal until he appeared again. He didn’t come running in with the same enthusiasm as when he’d left. In fact, he seemed morose, and was hiding something under the arm of his jacket.

  “You found the cab?” she guessed.

  He nodded.

  “And they hadn’t seen anything?”

  He shook his head and slowly unfolded the bag that had been tucked under his arm. She recognized it right away as the shopping bag she’d used to haul around the cash box. It was intact ... except for the gaping hole in the bottom.

  “Dude said it was like this when he found it.”

  Heidi nodded as she inspected the bag—as if it would tell her anything other than the fact that her money was gone.

  She reminded herself that she never really expected to find it. But that didn’t make losing eleven hundred dollars any easier to accept.

  “I’m sorry, Heidi. When I found the right cab, I thought for sure it would be there if we searched—that maybe it could have slipped under the seat. But there was nada. Zip. Maybe the box fell out of the bag and one of his later fares found it.”

  “Or maybe the bag broke before I got to Court Street.” In which case, the money really was gone, because it hadn’t been there when she retraced her steps.

  Any way you looked at it, it was gone. Gone with the wind. Get over it, Heidi. You’re broke. So are a lot of people. Move on.

  Sal dug his hands into his pockets and surveyed the empty café. “Dinah take off?”

  “A little while ago.”

  “Clay go with her?”

  She eyed him sharply. “How did you know?”

  “Guy looked like he was going to stick to her like glue.”

  “Poor Clay. She has her heart set on the master of the universe from Chippenhook.”

  “Don’t write Clay off yet,” Sal said. A dough missile whizzed past him and he pivoted toward Wilson. “Hey, man! What have you got there?” Before he could take a step, the kid hurled another wad of dough through the air.

  “Mizzletoed!” Wilson yelled, which apparently now was toddler-speak for “bombs away!”

  He had surprisingly good aim. The buttery, sugary blob landed a few inches to the right of the mistletoe sprig, where it stuck to the wall.

  “Mizzletoed!”

  Heidi flinched—she wondered if she would ever hear that word again without wanting to duck. “Maybe I could make some extra cash marketing my cookie dough as an adhesive.”

  “I’ll get the ladder,” Sal said.

  He hurried to the storage closet and came back with the stepladder. Before he could start to climb, she stopped him. “I don’t need to accompany anyone else to the hospital this holiday.”

  He tilted his head. “You have to be careful, though. You have a kid now.”

  “Just on loan,” she said, gently nudging him out of the way. She climbed the few rungs with a rag in her hand and reached for the blob of dough. Gallant Sal stayed where he was, holding the base steady, so when the blob fell before she could grab it, he was in a perfect spot to get it splat on his head.

  His face froze in an expression of comical disgust as he picked the sticky lump out of a stray lock of hair. “Exactly what I needed.”

  Heidi laughed and reached over to wipe the residual grease spot on the other side of the mistletoe. At the same time, Sal stepped away from the ladder, which wobbled precariously. For a moment she worried that she would be joining Mrs. DiBenedetto in the hospital, but Sal turned and caught her before calamity could strike. He put his hands around her and hauled her off the step, which might have been a seamless maneuver if she’d weighed forty pounds. As it was, Sal staggered and the two of them nearly went down together before regaining equilibrium.

  After more than twelve tense hours, Heidi finally found some release, laughing at the awkwardness of their Laurel-and-Hardy antics with the ladder. Sal was laughing, too, but when he looked into her face, he evidently saw the strain there. He brushed her hair away from her eyes.

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  They were still standing that way when the bell rang again. Sal crooked a brow at her playfully. “Just when we were finally alone at last.”

  She snorted again and stepped away to right herself before facing the newly arrived customer.

  Only it wasn’t a customer. It was Patrick.

  His skin flashed from wind-burned red to pale shock and then back to red again. He looked as if he wanted to speak, but his lips remained clamped together.

  “Patrick!” Heidi said, stepping farther away from Sal.

  Whatever Patrick had been thinking—and it wasn’t hard to guess—apparently her action only made him think it more. “I came by to tell you that there was no news.” His voice came out clipped, strained. “About your cash box. At the hospital.”

  “I didn’t think there would be,” Heidi said. “Sal found the shopping bag—but it was empty.”

  Patrick narrowed his eyes on Sal.

  Honestly. From the way he was acting, anyone would think finding clues to the cash box was some macho competition. It was ridiculous.

  She crossed her arms, deciding not to dignify his petty jealousy with stammered excuses or explanations.

  Sal, watching them, blurted, “We were just getting some cookie dough off the wall.” When no one responded, he added, “The kid threw it.”

  Patrick glanced at Wilson and then buried his hands in his coat pockets. The shadow of sincere disappointment that crossed his features made Heidi question who was being petty. She wanted to laugh and jolly the tension away, but Patrick was already turning toward the door.

  He pivoted back to say something, and Heidi’s heart lifted. “Mrs. DiBenedetto told me to tell you that the vet’s number is on her refrigerator. In case of an emergency.”

  After the bell had jangled his departure, an enormous sense of letdown overwhelmed Heidi. He actually liked her. Or had. She could see that now.

  It was always easy to see things clearly when they were all over. Her power of hindsight had been honed to laser sharpness.

  Sal let out a sigh. “I hope this doesn’t get back to my girlfriend. She doesn’t trust me as it is.”

  “I doubt she’d consider me much of a threat.”

  Sal reflected on this and nodded. “Probably not.”

  Heidi whacked him on the arm. “Wrong answer!”

  He blushed and stammered, “Oh, hey, you know—”

  “Yes, I know. I’m in my thirties. Old enough to be your grandmother.”

  “I didn’t say that. Anyway, I always liked older—” She cut him off before he could do more damage. “It’s okay, Sal.” A glance at her watch told her i
t was almost six o’clock. “Let’s get out of here.” She went behind the counter and started filling a box with day-olds. “Here—I’ll give you some stuff to take home.”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the box from her. She expected him to breeze out the door as he usually did at the end of the day, but instead he swallowed and looked down at his feet. “Thanks for everything—for giving me the job, I mean. Taking a chance.”

  “No thanks required,” she said, meaning it. “This place couldn’t get by without you.”

  When he was gone, she turned her attention to Wilson. “Hey, Wil. You feel like going home?” He blasted a yell into her face. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  She did a quick clean-up, wiping the tables, sweeping, and tossing all the pans in the dishwasher. Then she boxed up leftovers to lug back to her apartment. Christmas dinner. Of course, she might have to go root around in Janice’s apartment to find some real food—or real baby food—for Wilson. So far he’d been surviving on split pea soup and cookie dough. She wasn’t sure if that was a well-balanced diet or not for a little kid. She knew there were certain things they weren’t supposed to eat, like honey. And popcorn.

  God, there were probably a million things. What was she going to do if Janice never came back? A disastrous string of headlines scrolled through her mind like the newsfeed at Times Square. What if Janice got kidnapped, or her plane went down over the Atlantic Ocean? Had she unwittingly signed on to a lifetime child-care commitment just by opening her front door this morning?

  After a short struggle, she managed to get Wilson bundled up again. The kid could squirm away from a sleeve like nobody’s business. As she was turning to shut off the CD player, the café’s door opened, causing her to twist back as an overstuffed backpack dropped to the ground. Its owner let out a sigh that was half triumph, half exhaustion, as if she’d just summited Pike’s Peak.

  “I made it!”

  Heidi stared at the tall girl in black jeans, high-top sneakers, and a blue denim jacket. She knew who this was, but her mind stubbornly refused to accept the idea that Erica—daughter of her late friend, Rue—could possibly be standing in her café. In Brooklyn. It was all wrong. She blinked twice, certain the figure was only a person who looked like Erica.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say something?” The Texas twang was undeniable.

  “Erica?” Heidi’s voice came out as a squeak. “What are you doing here?”

  “Surprised?”

  Erica’s face broke into a hopeful expression that had so much Rue in it that tears sprang to Heidi’s eyes. She lurched forward and nearly squeezed Erica to death in a hug. It felt as if she’d grown half a foot in the past year and three months since Heidi had last seen her.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Where do you think?” Erica asked, as if dropping in out of the blue was the most reasonable thing in the world. She extracted herself from Heidi’s death squeeze and stepped into the middle of the room, where she turned in a circle. “Wow!”

  A picture in the corner caught Erica’s attention—a black-and-white photo of Rue, Laura, and Heidi as teenagers, sitting on the bench in front of the store in Sweetgum. Rue and Laura were leaning against each other, laughing, while Heidi sat apart, primly, with a lapful of schoolbooks—the odd girl out, stepsister, dweeb—her blond hair cut in bangs and sprouting from one side of her head in a poofy ponytail.

  “That’s the Sweetgum store, isn’t it?” Erica asked. She didn’t wait for Heidi’s nod before adding, “Look at Mom! She was so pretty.”

  The photo had been snapped the year before the car accident that had scarred Rue’s face. The accident had scarred Laura’s psyche, too, although in Heidi’s opinion, Laura had never been the poster girl for good mental health.

  The café had other pictures from Sweetgum—including one of Erica and her horse, Milkshake, by the cash register—mixed in with eight-by-tens of movie stars. Erica walked around, taking it all in. Then she tilted her head, listening to Dean Martin singing “A Marshmallow World” on the CD player.

  “Mom would have loved this place!”

  Heidi swallowed. “That’s the best compliment anyone’s ever paid me.” She had conjured up the café as a sort of tribute to Rue, and the way she had taken Heidi into her own kitchen when Heidi had been at her low-water mark, morale-wise, before her ex-boyfriend Vinnie’s trial.

  Erica sank down on a chair. “I was starting to believe that I was the only one who remembered Mom anymore.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” Heidi said.

  Erica sniffed. “I miss her so much. Laura never talks about her. Nobody does.”

  The mention of Laura jolted Heidi a little. Where was Laura?

  Laura had been Heidi’s tormenter in her teen years, and the possibility of her being in New York, on her own home turf, didn’t exactly fill her with Christmas cheer. She returned to her original question. “Erica, what are you doing here?”

  “Visiting you.”

  Her brain attempted to digest those two words. “Who brought you?”

  “No one.”

  “You mean ... ?”

  “You said you couldn’t come to Sweetgum,” Erica explained, “so I’ve come to spend Christmas with you!”

  Though enthusiasm suffused Erica’s voice, Heidi could tell she was nervous about how that announcement would be received. A host of new doubts and worries swirled through Heidi’s brain, but she tried not to let them show.

  Erica, however, wasn’t so good at hiding her surprise—and dismay—upon finally spotting Wilson. Which she didn’t do until Wilson chucked a tiny glove at her. “What’s that?”

  “It’s Wilson.”

  “A baby?”

  “Toddler,” Heidi corrected, envisioning another ten minutes of struggle to get that glove back on. “He’s ... well, he’s sort of spending the holiday with me, too.”

  Erica lowered herself into a chair with a groan. “There’s no escaping them, is there?”

  “I didn’t really run away,” Erica said after devouring her second bowl of soup and her second turkey sandwich. “I just sort of took off.”

  As she listened to the story of Erica’s journey, including the tricky way she’d gotten to the bus station, then the ride to the airport, and the many delays thereafter, Heidi wasn’t sure which was stronger—her awe for what a thirteen-year-old had managed on her own, or her sense of impending doom. Erica might not think of herself as a runaway, but Heidi was pretty sure her father wouldn’t see her Christmas journey as a big adventure.

  “The most awful part was sitting on the runway for hours.” She frowned. “No, actually, the hardest part was when I got to the city, on account of the cabs were so expensive. I was almost out of money, so the guy dropped me at a subway and told me to go to the Carroll Street stop. It sounded easy when he said it, but I think I went the wrong way first. It took forever. But everybody was pretty nice, actually. After the way Laura always talked about this place, I was expecting to get mugged.”

  “And Laura had no idea you were coming here?” Heidi asked.

  “Gosh, no. She might be a little mad, actually,” Erica admitted. “I was supposed to spend Christmas on the farm with her and Webb.”

  Oh. Oh. Oh.

  Erica perceived her growing panic. “But she didn’t want me there—not really. I swear, all Laura does now is whine.”

  “Laura?” One thing Heidi couldn’t associate with her ex-stepsister was whining. Laura was as tough as old boot leather.

  “She’s got morning sickness.”

  “Laura is pregnant?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No!”

  “Yeah, well, she’s sort of cranky these days.”

  Heidi snorted. “These days?” Laura’s first reaction after slipping out of the womb had probably been a huff of irritation.

  “Most of the time she’s vegged out in her recliner chair, moaning and thinking about the baby.” Erica
eyed Wilson again. “Babies have taken over my world.”

  Hearing that Laura was La-Z-Boy-bound did not soothe Heidi any. If anything, the idea of a sick Laura frightened her more than Laura in tip-top health. Sick, she became an even more unpredictable animal. The only thing certain was that she would freak when she discovered Erica missing. And when she discovered she had run away to spend the holiday with her once arch-nemesis, she’d be doubly pissed.

  “We have to call her,” Heidi said, dreading it. “And your dad.”

  Erica’s face fell. “Can’t we wait till tomorrow?” Heidi shook her head. “Now.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Erica, when they figure out you’re missing they’re going to be frantic with worry. They might already have reported you missing to the police. There could be Amber Alerts and all sorts of searches going on!”

  Erica laughed. “I left a note.”

  Thank heavens for that, at least. “Where?”

  “At the house.”

  “Whose house?”

  “Dad’s.”

  Considering that she herself had forgotten to do as much for Janice, Heidi gave her points for clearheaded-ness. “Do Webb and Laura have a key to your dad’s house?”

  Erica’s face collapsed, and Heidi had her answer.

  “Oops.”

  Chapter 8

  Erica slipped and fell on her butt twice within two blocks before she got a clue and slowed down. High-top sneakers weren’t the best footwear for hockey rink sidewalks. And her denim jacket was a joke in twenty degrees. Not only her teeth but all of her bones were chattering with cold, even though Heidi had made her put on an extra old sweater she kept at the restaurant.

  Still and all, it was sort of cool to be here. It would have stunk if she’d come all this way and everything had seemed exactly like Sweetgum. No way could anyone confuse the two places. The world here was so vertical, just block after block of three-story houses smooshed together. All the buildings seemed ancient—as old as or maybe even older than the courthouse in Carter’s Springs, a building from so far back that people sometimes drove hours just to take a picture of it. That kind of person would go crazy here. Except for the ice-encrusted vehicles that appeared more like larva than actual cars, the city around her looked like something out of another century.