by Amy Gamet
“You should have woken me.”
Gwen, Kelly and Julie sat at the table, working on something small with their hands. Julie stood up, flashing Hank a bright smile. “Merry Christmas Eve, sweetie,” she said, leaning in for a quick peck on the lips. Hank’s jaw dropped open. “Want some coffee?”
“That’d be great.”
She walked to the counter and poured coffee from a Thermos. Hank watched as she put in one scoop of sugar and a small splash of milk. Someone had been paying attention when they stopped for coffee yesterday.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the cup from her. He could get used to this.
“Gwen’s making wedding bands for the ceremony today,” said Julie.
“Just temporaries,” said Gwen. “I don’t think the bride and groom want to wear jewelry made out of paperclips forever.”
“They’re so beautiful, we just might,” said Kelly. “Look, Hank.”
She walked to him, holding something out for him to see. It was an intricate weaving of silver metal, strung with what appeared to be shining blue gemstones and glittering diamonds.
“That’s incredible. You made that out of paperclips? What did you use for stones?”
“The colored ones are beads from Gwen’s necklace, and the diamond-like ones are tiny crystals.”
Hank eyed Gwen incredulously. “You just happened to have those things with you?”
“It was the strangest thing,” said Gwen. “I was packing for our adventure and I stopped short as I was about to head downstairs. I forgot my beaded blue topaz necklace, I thought to myself. I hadn’t intended to bring it, mind you. But after years of these kinds of thoughts you know when to listen.”
She threaded a tiny blue bead onto a thick wire. “So I grabbed the necklace out of my jewelry box and asked the universe,” she said dramatically, raising her head up high, “Is there anything else I need to bring? Then I thought about those crystals in my studio. So I grabbed those, too.”
A chill ran up Hank’s spine.
“Does that happen to you a lot?” asked Kelly, sitting back down.
Gwen touched the younger woman’s hand on the table. “It does.”
Next to Hank, Julie stepped on her tip toes and whispered in his ear. “Can opener.” At his quizzical look, she nodded in Gwen’s direction.
“The first time it ever happened, I was in college,” said Gwen. “I was leaving my dorm room to go to class when I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve forgotten my can opener.’ I didn’t need a can opener for class, of course.” She took a sip of her coffee. “That day at lunch, a friend pulled out a can of soup, but had forgotten to bring a can opener. I said, ‘That would explain why I brought this.’”
“That’s amazing,” said Kelly.
“It is. Very helpful, too,” she said with a wink.
Hank turned thoughtful eyes to Julie, remembering her concerns for their safety here at the house. “Does that ever happen to you?”
“Never.”
“I’m afraid the universe lacks a large enough sledge hammer with which to hit my niece over the head,” said Gwen.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Julie.
“It means you know more than you are willing to admit, even to yourself.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Turning to Hank, she smiled and slipped her arm around his waist. “Can I help with anything today?”
He nearly spit coffee all over himself. “I have no idea.” Just to see what she would do, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, dumbfounded when she settled pleasantly at his side. He shook his head. “What needs to be done, Ma?”
“More than you can possibly imagine. I have a list for you,” she said, reaching to the bulletin board on the side of the refrigerator and handing him a piece of paper. He was oddly pleased to see his name scrawled across the top of it, just as he imagined it would be. “You’re in charge of setting up the big things at the church hall. The tables and chairs, the buffet and the bar. Steve will go with you.”
“I can handle that. Are the tables and chairs being delivered or do I need to pick them up?”
“Delivered. They should be there already. You need to go to the liquor store and stock the bar. Mid-shelf, Hank. No cheap stuff, nothing too expensive either.” Marianne stirred an enormous pot with a spoon nearly three feet long.
“Julie, how would you feel about doing the decorations? I would head over there myself, but I need to stay here and work on the food.”
“I’m almost done with these rings, Marianne. I’d be happy to give you a hand with the cooking,” said Gwen.
“That would be wonderful,” said Marianne, her shoulders dropping and a sigh escaping as she worked.
“And I,” said Julie, “will decorate. What do you have in mind, Kelly?”
“A winter wonderland,” she said excitedly. “The centerpieces are done, but not much else. The church hall was supposed to be vacant yesterday so I could get in there take care of it myself, but there was a funeral reception so nothing is finished. I have a lot of materials, but no real plans. There must be hundreds of yards of red ribbon alone.”
“What else do you have?”
“Gold spray paint, white snow paint, oodles of fake snow, a few artificial Christmas trees, gold glitter, a whole mess of evergreen garland…”
“Julie,” Hank interrupted. “I’m going to wash up so we can head over to the church. About fifteen minutes?” asked Hank.
“Sure. I’ll be ready.” She flashed him a radiant smile. “What do you have in mind for the head table?”
~~~
Julie pulled the door to the SUV closed behind her and reached for her notebook on the middle console. “Isn’t Steve coming with us?” she asked.
“He’s meeting us there.”
She opened to a clean page, intending to work on the cipher, and found her thoughts drifting to her father. An unconscious frown came over her face.
“You okay?”
“This message is beginning to drive me crazy,” she said, then decided to tell him the truth. “And I miss my dad. I miss my dad a lot.”
He took the key out of the ignition and turned to face her. “I’m missing my dad a lot today, too.”
She nodded, feeling tears begin to build up in her eyes. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him, but she was wise enough to see that she needed it.
“It’s been so busy, coming here. Everything that’s going on. I haven’t had a chance…”
“To mourn.”
She nodded vigorously, an embarrassing sob escaping as she did.
“I just want to crawl under a rock and be alone for a while.”
He bowed his head. “I know. I wish I could give you that chance.” His lips pressed together in a thin line. “We could pretend you’re sick, but I really would feel better if you were with me.”
“I’d feel better, too. I’m just babbling.”
He reached for her hand and held it. “You’re not babbling. And you’re entitled to feel however you feel.”
She took a deep breath and took her hand back from Hank’s, again reaching for the notebook in her lap.
“Chip,” he said, digging in his pocket for his cell phone.
“He never called you back?”
“No.”
This is Chip Vandermead. I can’t take your call right now…
Hank sighed. “Chip, it’s Hank. I’m getting worried. Call me when you get this.” He hung up the phone and started the engine.
“Do you think she had the babies?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the alternative?”
Hank’s eyes met hers as he pulled out of the driveway. “I don’t know that either. That’s what worries me.” He turned his windshield wipers on as snow began to collect on the glass. “Tell me something. If Chip can’t crack that code, why are you so confident you’ll be able to?”
“Gwen says it was m
eant for me. That my father wrote it, intending for me to be able to read it.”
“Chip said that short codes are harder to break.”
“As a rule, they are. Often it’s impossible. But Gwen’s right—if my father wanted me to be able to read this, he would have made sure to use a cipher or symbol I would recognize.”
The moment she said the words, Julie froze. In the space of an instant, she understood what her subconscious had been trying to tell her since she first saw the secret message.
“Oh my God. Oh my God! A cipher I would recognize!” she yelled, clutching Hank’s arm. “Let me use your phone, please!”
“What is it? What do you recognize?”
Grabbing Hank’s phone, she opened the web browser and typed in the first six characters of the cipher from memory. Clever bastard, she thought, smiling at his ingenuity as she used the internet to quickly confirm what she already knew.
“The first line of the cipher isn’t part of his message at all. It’s the beginning of a message that got King Leopold the Fourth executed for espionage in the Fourteenth Century!” she smacked his upper arm, a big grin lighting her face.
“Your father knew you would realize that?”
“He taught me the Leopold cipher when I was little. It was fun for a kid, because you make this decoder out of rings on a dowel. I brought it to show and tell.”
“Sounds like a secret decoder ring.”
“It is sort of, yes.”
“So now you can decode the message.”
Julie scoffed. “Not even close. Knowing the type of cipher is half the battle. I still need to break the code.”
“Don’t you just have to build the rings?”
“It’s not that simple. They have to be aligned on an axle in the right order. There are thirteen factorial possible positions, which means millions of possibilities. That’s the strength of the cipher.”
“What do you do now?”
“I need to find the keyword. It will tell me what order to put the rings onto the axle. It could be a number, or a word or phrase.” She was missing the vast capabilities of the computers that surrounded her when she was at work. “If I had access to my computers, I would write a simple program which tries out all possible combinations, then just wait until it hits on one that makes sense.”
“How long does that take?”
“Hard to say. It depends on how lucky you are, and how many machines you have searching for the right combination simultaneously. Days, weeks, maybe months. It certainly would be a lot easier if I could figure out the combination on my own, in whatever way my father expected me to discover it.” Julie bit down on her lip and looked out the window, unseeing.
Hank pulled into the parking lot of a small white church with a tall four-sided steeple. “This is it.” Steve’s sedan was already in the parking lot.
“Can I use your phone one more time? I’m going to have Becky use my work computers to search for the key.”
“Sure.”
When Hank waited for her to make her call, she looked at him uncomfortably. “I’ll be right in.”
She doesn’t want me to hear her conversation.
Clearly she didn’t trust him, which reminded him of Admiral Barstow and his own deception. If Julie knew who he worked for, he’d be guilty by association.
And what about her? Hank still wasn’t sure if Julie sympathized with her father. She may even have helped him commit espionage, or deleted his Navy records. Was she working to hide important facts right now?
The unpleasant thought stuck with him as he walked to the door of the church and let himself in. The building appeared to be empty, its long wooden pews glistening in the light from the stained glass windows. Hank looked at the simple altar and the cross behind it, and found himself saying a silent prayer.
Please let her be innocent. Please let her trust me.
Chapter 5
Julie put her hands on her hips and surveyed her handiwork. The church basement had been greatly improved, but it was a far cry from “transformed”.
“These lights have to go,” she said.
Raising his head, Hank looked up at the fluorescent fixtures that ran the entire space. “The fluorescents?” he asked, raising his eyebrows high.
“They’re horrible, aren’t they? I feel like I’m shopping in a discount clothing store, not enjoying a winter wonderland with my one true love.”
“Maybe Kelly and Ron are a couple of tree huggers. Maybe they love fluorescent lights. Maybe,” he said, raising his index finger, “they’d be angry if you changed them.”
“Just the other day,” said Steve, taking a break from arranging tables, “I heard Kelly talking about how she hoped to be married under LEDs. But if that’s not possible, I’m sure fluorescents are the next best thing.”
“Marriage is all about compromise,” agreed Hank.
Julie rounded on the men. Clearly, they were thick as thieves. “Do you two lunkheads think this is Kelly’s dream? To celebrate her marriage to Ron under lights that give everything the horrible glow of energy efficiency?” she shift her weight onto one hip and crossed her arms. “I think not.”
Hank rubbed the back of his neck. “What do you suggest?”
“How about candles?”
“Candles to light the whole space?” He spun around, holding his arms out to his sides. “Do you know how many candles that would take?”
“Is there a DJ coming? He might have some lights for the dance floor,” said Julie.
“I don’t know if there’s a DJ, or a band, or the Boys Choir of Harlem.”
“Who are you calling?”
“My mother,” he said, walking to the far end of the room.
Julie busied herself by decorating the last Christmas tree with red ribbon while she waited.
“There’s a DJ, and he comes with his own light display. Including,” his eyes lit up, “his very own spinning disco ball.”
“Oh, well, you have to have a disco ball to do the Electric Slide.”
“Bingo.”
“All right. The DJ’s lights should illuminate that half of the room fairly well, and the centerpieces each have one candle. We can bump that up to five or six…” her voice trailed off as she surveyed the large basement.
“That’s still a hell of a lot of candles,” said Hank.
“Sounds like a fire hazard,” said Steve.
“Got a better idea?”
Hank snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Two hours later, Julie finished hanging her last strand of white Christmas lights and stepped back to admire the room. Gone was the drab and depressing basement, and in its place glittered a gorgeous, romantic setting for the beginning of Kelly and Ron’s life together. She also added four more candles to each centerpiece, not wanting to give up her idea completely.
Steve had been summoned back to the house to help deliver food to neighbors’ ovens and refrigerators, and Julie was feeling his absence. He had acted as a buffer, and she wasn’t sure what to do with Hank now that it was just the two of them.
He stood on a step ladder, connecting several strands of the twinkling lights to the center of the ceiling in a spoke-like pattern. Julie watched his beautiful body in silent appreciation, the muscles of his arms and shoulders clearly visible beneath his t-shirt. The gentle light that filled the room flattered him, glorifying his amber skin, and Julie savored the chance to observe him unnoticed.
In a different time and place, she could have cared for this man. She knew it like she knew her own face in the mirror. Julie had been looking for Hank Jared in every man she had ever met, and now she understood why each of them had left her cold and unaffected.
I never knew a man this good could care about me—know every skeleton in my closet and want me anyway.
Hank stepped off the ladder to grab the last string of lights from the floor, climbing again to add it to the bundle. Raising his head, he caught her eye and smiled.
Jul
ie felt her breath hitch in her chest as she stared at him from across the room. Her gaze spoke volumes that she herself would never give voice to, and she was waiting for his answer as they stared at each other. She knew she should look away, do something else. But that would break the spell, and it was a lovely, intoxicating magic to behold.
Moments slipped by before Hank picked up his tools and completed hanging the last of the lights. Julie didn’t move, knowing he would come to her. They each felt it, and both were powerless to stop it.
Hank stepped down and strode toward her purposefully. He surprised her when he reached out with the gentlest of touches and stroked her face.
Closing her eyes, she leaned into his caress. Hank’s hand went around to the back of her neck, his touch tingling on her skin like the lightest of raindrops. Julie opened her eyes, and seeing the desire she felt mirrored in his eyes, leaned toward him to enjoy the kiss that his talented fingers promised.
He drew her inside the circle of his arms. Their mouths met hungrily as hands skated over each other, exploring.
His beard raked over her smooth skin, leaving a trail of sensation in its wake. She could feel the evidence of how much he wanted her, and reveled in her own power to excite this man.
Someone coughed near the stairway, and the couple sprang apart. Julie turned her back in embarrassment when she saw the man standing there.
“Hank William Jared, I thought I told you not to go kissing girls in my church basement,” he said with a thick Irish brogue. Tall and thin, he had white hair and an athletic build that contrasted with his heavily lined face.
“I must have forgotten,” said Hank, shaking the older man’s hand with a boyish grin. “Father McHale, I’d like you to meet Julie Trueblood. He reached for her arm, spinning her around. Julie, this is Father McHale. He’s the priest who’ll be marrying Kelly and Ron today.”
A priest!
Julie wanted to melt into the concrete floor beneath her and die an invisible death. She heard herself say politely, “It’s nice to meet you, Father.”
To his credit, he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable at having caught them in such a compromising position. “I’m also the priest who heard Hank William’s first confession, when he was just a wee lad. I’m there in the confessional every Saturday, by the way.” He rocked forward and back, with his hands behind him. “Or if you two are serious, perhaps we can have us a double ceremony.” He winked conspiratorially at Julie.
