by Pamela Tracy
The truck stopped, and the driver glared at her as she reached what would have been the passenger door, if UPS carried passengers instead of packages.
"You plan to pay for any dents you made?" He raised his eyebrows above amazingly blue eyes.
Kelli's mouth dropped open, not at the eyes, spectacular though they were, but at the remark. She couldn't prevent herself from looking at the side panel to see if she'd marred the surface. "I didn't—"
He cut her off with a wave and a grin. "Kidding. What's wrong?"
She took a second to give him her teacher's stare, the one she gave her students when they were rude. His grin remained in place.
She blinked. Did she know him? But where would she know him from? She never went anywhere but school and church. Oh, and the supermarket, but he didn't look like a checkout clerk. Maybe a student's father she'd met at Back to School Night?
She cleared her throat and held out the package. "This isn't me."
He didn't take it. "You signed for it."
"Yeah, I know. But it isn't me, and I don't know who it is." She itched between her shoulder blades. She hated doing anything wrong, even inadvertently. It was like she'd elected herself the one person in her family to do things right, and she took the responsibility seriously. Too seriously, if she were honest.
He leaned across the cab and read the address on the package. "Eleven-twenty-one Central Ave, Main Floor." He glanced at the house and the large 1121 on the porch post of the Victorian.
"Right address, wrong name," Kelli said.
"Another apartment? It's a big house."
She shook her head. "I'm the only one here year round. The owners are here only in the summer and some weekends—they live on the ground floor—and the other places are rented seasonally."
She caught herself. That was way too much information to give a stranger. She felt a flutter of panic.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. The words sang through her. Right. She could do that. She would do that. Often it wasn't easy, but she was getting better all the time.
The UPS man glanced at his watch, looking hurried rather than threatening. "Previous tenant? Summer renter?"
"I met the previous tenant. Hank. And summer renters don't stay long enough to have mail forwarded."
"If you're sure you're not Annalise Bennington." He held out a hand for the package.
Perversely she held it close. "What happens when I give it to you?" Why did she think she should know him?
He studied her a moment, and she wondered if he saw the cranberry and turkey gravy stains that made her outfit distinctive, and also made the thought of having an original Pilgrim Thanksgiving meal for twenty-two first graders again next year iffy.
"I return it to the depot." He spoke as if she were one of her slower students. "Then UPS returns it to the sender."
"The senders are lawyers."
"Trust me. UPS sends things back to lawyers too."
Ha-ha. "But what if it's important?"
"Most things from lawyers are."
"But Annalise might need to see what it says right away. What if she's inherited a fortune or a mansion or something?"
His beautiful blue eyes narrowed. Why was it some guy got Bradley Cooper eyes while she got plain old brown?
"Then the lawyers will search for her, I'm sure," he said.
"You don't know that."
He nodded. "You're right, I don't. But if they're honorable folks and decent lawyers, I'm sure they take the need to contact Annalise seriously."
"The Internet!" Kelli almost danced as the idea blazed across her mind. "I bet we can find her there. You can find everybody there."
"We can't do anything," the UPS man said. "But I can see the package is returned."
"What if I don't want to return it? What if I want to find Annalise?" It would be something fun and exciting and interesting to do over Thanksgiving break, something to occupy her while everyone else was at family dinners and football games. It'd keep her from sitting on the couch all melancholy and poor-me-ish while Charlie tried to climb into her lap to comfort her.
She hugged the package. "I'll give you a call if I want you to come back."
With a little wave, she left him and his bemused expression and ran back up the stairs. She felt better than she had all week, listening to students and fellow teachers talk about their Thanksgiving plans.
"What are your plans, Kelli?" someone always asked.
She had her answer ready. "Big turkey dinner with all the fixings. Lots of leftovers. Lots of ball games." And she'd force a smile. No one needed to know that the turkey dinner was a frozen one, the leftovers were bitter memories, and the ball games largely unwatched.
She danced across the apartment to Charlie who sat with his leash in his mouth. She held the package for him to see. He examined it carefully, for edibility no doubt. A few good sniffs, and he shook his massive head and sneezed. He walked to the door and looked at her.
"Right." She pulled her coat back on. "But look! Now I have something to do over Thanksgiving vacation, Charlie, just like everybody else. And I met the best looking guy. Well, sort of met. But he was definitely good looking." And she had seen him somewhere, she was sure of it.
Charlie rolled his big head her way, then looked pointedly at the door.
"I know. And you're such a good boy to be so patient." She took the slightly soggy lead from his mouth and clipped it to his collar, the one trick he hadn't yet learned, though she wouldn't be surprised if one day he figured it out. He was her smart boy, her protector.
How sad that the only male she trusted was a dog.
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O Little Town of Bethany Sample
Need a little Christmas? Try O Little Town of Bethany by award-winning authors Rene Gutteridge & Cheryl McKay.
Holly left her unhappy life behind, hoping for a Christmas miracle…
Everything about Holly Truesdale's existence is, well…forgettable. The only good memory of her childhood is their family Christmas in the quaint town of Bethany. Tired of the high society life, Holly leaves the big city, longing to recover the sense of belonging she felt in the Victorian town. She opens a scrapbooking store, ready to help others preserve the important moments she missed as a child.
Holly is drawn to Liam, the widower who runs the B&B next door, but doesn't fully trust herself in a new relationship. As Holly and Liam grow closer, Holly becomes concerned for the town matriarch, Miss Bethany. But even as Yuletide celebrations are in full swing, Holly and Liam can't help but notice that Miss Bethany harbors a secret. One that could change Christmas in Bethany forever…
Read a sample…
This suffocating, starved-for-personality city.
Smog, normally high against the skyline, sank today, pushing against the metropolis, daring it to stay in place. The wind, brisk and biting, like its people, whipped against the Christmas bows tied to the solar-powered street lamps. Thanksgiving had not yet made it to the calendar, but here, in the city, Christmas was a commodity, not a holiday.
In the sea of people, the fast-forwards of the world, Holly Truesdale tried to stroll. She had to keep her eyes up. She'd never developed the skill of weaving around others without actually looking at them. Beside her a man juggled a cell phone between his cheek and his shoulder, using his hands to dig in his briefcase. In front of her, she marveled at a woman in five-inch heels, keeping pace, steady as a racehorse.
Somewhere along the way, she was sure Christmas music was being piped into the air, but nobody could hear it because of the honking. The honking, more than anything, rattled her nerves, even though she was practically born on the street—in a jewelry store two blocks over when her mom decided she needed to buy a diamond bracelet.
Holly finally made it to her office building. Stuffed into the elevator like a pimento in an olive, she stood with her shoulders folded forward and waited for the fifth floor. Someone had eaten an everything bagel this morning.<
br />
Once the doors slid open and she slid out, she greeted Abigail, but Abigail did not greet her.
"Control X Security, please hold. Control X Security, please hold. Control X Security, how may I direct your call?"
Holly waited, because deep in her heart, she felt that life was about people, and people needed to connect, and saying hello to someone in the morning was important.
Abigail continued to navigate early morning phone calls at the receptionist's desk, so Holly stared at the huge display of glass shelves that showcased the progression of information deleting: multi-cut scissors, the antique pasta shredder which inspired old school shredders, samples of straight cut, cross-cuts, and then on through modern computer deletion devices and CD shredders, all neatly labeled with dates of invention.
Abigail took a breath. Holly pounced. "Good morning, Abigail!"
Abigail tried a friendly wave, but it looked more like the last hand to go underwater before a drowning.
Holly continued on to her office.
If the outside streets were suffocating, the inside of her building at Control X Security was like a buzzing fluorescent light. She went to her office, the one that said "manager" on the door placard, and pulled up the blinds, letting the dismal day's light in. No matter how gloomy it was, she always preferred natural light over artificial.
She shut the office door and locked it, though nobody would come in without knocking.
Placing her hands behind her back, she looked out the window and said, "Noah…we're just…you and I are two different…people. I mean, you feel that too, don't you, Noah?"
Her faint reflection stared back at her in the window.
"Yep. You got this."
After unlocking her office door, she marched down the first hallway, turned right, turned left, and intended to take another left when she ran into a hulk of a man, otherwise known as her father.
"Daddy! Sorry about that, I…" She smiled slightly. "Excuse me. I meant Mr. Truesdale." He insisted on the formal name during work hours. As owner of the company, he would say before explicit instructions to her, whatever those instructions might be. As if she could forget. He reminded her every day, without even saying it.
His nose was in a folder. "Hello, Holliston."
They rarely had much to say to each other, but she stroked the leaf of a fake tree next to them and gave it a try. "This needs a strand of Christmas lights, don't you think?"
"If you say so. Don't forget, staff meeting tomorrow at eleven. We have a lot of work coming up for the end of year shreds. Some of our biggest corporate clients are ready to forget the less noteworthy parts of their year. Don't make big Christmas plans." He continued down the hall. "Would you tell that mother of yours that her allowance for the month is already blown?"
"Why don't you tell her yourself?" Holly grabbed onto the fake branch to give her hands something to do. Why did she still feel like a kid when she talked back to him?
"She won't throw a plate at you."
And he was gone around the corner.
She continued on her path and made it to Noah's office. His placard was bigger. She stared at his name: NOAH DAY, V.P. Holly Day always sounded nice to her, but she knew hoping to marry into a nice last name was not enough to hold a relationship together. Her friend, Isabelle, had once married a Gerald Hupperskiwitz. They lived happily ever after, even though Isabelle could barely pronounce her own name and loathed the amount of time it took to get her signature on paper.
She went into Noah's office. He did a little wave, the one he always did when he couldn't manage to tear his eyes off his monitor. His back was toward her, his nose was four inches from the screen. She observed him, thinking through the list she'd made when they began to date. He was responsible, secure, and not bad looking. She'd yet to fill out the other two of her top five things she appreciated about him
And that was why she was here. Perhaps it was more appropriate to do it out of the office, but they hardly saw each other anywhere else.
Clearly, though, this wasn't a good time. She slumped, leaning on his desk with her palms flat against the wood. "Hey, uh, Noah?"
"Hmm?"
"Would you…could we…do you have any time later? Tonight maybe?"
"Later."
"That's what I said."
Suddenly he swung his arm backward, the way someone would do to loosen a muscle, but then he pointed to a small black box sitting near the edge of his desk.
"That finally came. I was supposed to give it to you last weekend when we had that nice lunch."
"Early Christmas? What is it?"
She picked it up and popped it open. He always thought she liked jewelry because her mom liked jewelry. He never seemed to notice she didn't even wear earrings. She stretched a smile across her mouth, mimicking her mother's reaction to any kind of jewel, preparing herself for a bracelet she would never like but would have to wear.
But it was not a bracelet, or earrings, or necklace.
It was, of all things, an engagement ring. She choked on nothing but air.
"Uh…Noah?"
"Pretty, huh? I had Belvedere, your mom's guy, help me pick it out. Tasteful but big, right? Listen, I can't talk now," he said, his finger tracing some spreadsheet line on his computer, "I'm on a rush scrub for Heritage Trust and…"
He had this habit of letting his words trail off, like he forgot he was speaking, like whatever was on his mind was more important.
He didn't notice when she set the box back on his desk and slipped out.
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Copyright © 2016 Pamela Tracy Osback
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means - photocopied, shared electronically, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, or other - without the express permission of the publisher. Ex
ceptions will be made for brief quotations used in critical reviews or articles promoting this work.
The characters and events in this fictional work are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is coincidental.
