by John Gray
PRAISE FOR
Manchester Christmas
“Sweet, romantic, and suspenseful, Manchester Christmas is an unexpected gift.”
—Richard Paul Evans,
#1 New York Times best-selling author of The Christmas Box
“Stuffed to the seams with wholesome holiday cheer, Manchester Christmas is an adorable Christian romance set in a snow globe-worthy small town in Vermont.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Gray has authored three children’s books and has released his debut novel, a heart-filled book about a young writer who is drawn to a small New England town in search of meaning for her life. She encounters kindness, romance, and is pulled into a mystery. It has the sort of happy-ending story that everyone could use right now.”
—Berkshire Magazine, Massachusetts
“Manchester Christmas is a fun story, perfect for those times when you like a happy ending that brings a tear to your eye and a smile to your face.”
—CatholicMom.com
“The author brought to life the spirit of rural Vermont on every page. The characters are engaging. The story twists and turns in ways that make it difficult to close the book.”
—The White River Valley Herald, Randolph, Vermont
“Manchester Christmas also might be coming to a screen near you. The movie and television rights are being optioned by Brian Herzlinger, who is known for directing ‘Christmas Angel,’ ‘My Date with Drew,’ and ‘Finding Normal’ among others.”
—The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York
FOR MOM AND DAD.
Your love made my dreams possible.
John Gray
author of Manchester Christmas
2021 First Printing
Chasing Manhattan: A Novel
Copyright © 2021 by John Gray
ISBN 978-1-64060-671-5
The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gray, John, 1962- author.
Title: Chasing Manhattan : a novel / John Gray.
Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, [2021] | Summary: “Chase lands in the center of a new mystery when silent messages begin to appear, urging her to help those closest to her who are in peril”--Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021014088 (print) | LCCN 2021014089 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640606715 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781640606722 (epub) | ISBN 9781640606739 (pdf)
Subjects: BISAC: FICTION / Christian / Contemporary | FICTION / Women | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.R3948 C48 2021 (print) | LCC PS3607.R3948 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014088
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014089
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All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
www.paracletepress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Chasing Manhattan
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Acknowledgments
About Paraclete Press
CHAPTER 1
59th or 50th?
For the first time in her life Chase Harrington was hiding. A self-imposed witness protection plan, made necessary because she wrote a book that inspired strangers to pack up their lives, drive cross-country, and seek her help fixing what was broken. In most cases, their lives. But a person cannot give what they no longer possess, and whatever magic Chase had conjured in the past, if it ever existed at all, was gone.
The true account of what happened to Chase in an abandoned church in Manchester, Vermont, and how she healed a hurting town was the stuff of legend, but it was over. The visions, or whatever they were, had vanished like a morning fog on a warm autumn day.
Chase was deeply in love, and it was the object of that love that held her hand tight and told her she needed to get away, at least for a while. Chase was smart, so she figured if the best place to hide a grain of sand was on the beach, then the perfect place for her to disappear was a big city, like Manhattan. And that’s where, for the last twelve months, Chase opened her eyes each morning with her faithful dog, Scooter, at her feet. This is where our story begins.
It was a beautiful fall day in the city that never sleeps. Maple trees with leaves the color of molten lava lined the sidewalks, their branches slowly swaying back and forth in the breeze as if dancing to music only they could hear. Chase needed to get outside and breathe it all in, knowing because she was anonymous here, she was safe.
As sunlight peeked over the tall buildings to her east, Chase could see it was a perfect morning for a jog. Her Australian Shepherd always tagged along for her runs in the country, but here, with so much traffic, it was too dangerous. Scooter didn’t mind hanging back, though, because of the fun he would find in the coffee shop that sat directly below the apartment Chase was renting.
After Chase did a quick stretch on the wide, rust-colored steps of her Manhattan brownstone, her pink and white Nike sneaks bounced lightly along the dirty and cracked streets of Gotham. Her thick auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail, as the matching blue lululemon pants and top hugged her size-four frame, causing more than a few heads to turn. Her pace was slow enough for her to stop on a dime, watching out for all manner of mayhem in such a busy place. Those bike messengers were the worst, flying by silently with some top-secret package to deliver.
Step by step she made her way from her overpriced apartment in the Lenox Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side, toward Central Park for her daily three-mile run. The smell of sausage and peppers from the corner carts filled the air, awakening her empty tummy. Whitney Houston was singing about wanting to dance with somebody in the tiny white pro-beats that clung precariously to her ears, a birthday gift from her loving boyfriend, Gavin.
It was exactly seven blocks from her apartment on York Avenue to the entrance to the park on Fifth, but these were Big Apple blocks, so it took nearly a mile to cover it. Once in the park, she’d turn left and make her way toward the famous Plaza Hotel. There, horse-drawn carriages carried tourists on a half-hour loop through the park, as drivers with top hats and exotic accents pointed out where they filmed Ghostbusters or the rock where Macaulay Culkin met the pigeon lady in Home Alone 2. Chase smiled, thinking how she’d better watch out for those “sticky bandits” who chased little Kevin around.
Halfway into her run the singing was stopped by the sound of her phone ringing. It was tucked away in th
e small blue knapsack strapped to her back, next to a bottle of Fiji water. She assumed it was her driver, Matthew, wanting to know where to pick her up after her run, so she touched her left ear and said, “Hello?”
A warm male voice, one that still made her knees buckle, responded, “Hey, babe. You sound out of breath. You okay?”
“Yes,” Chase replied, “Just out for my run. Where are you, hon?”
Gavin Bennett, decked out in torn jeans and a red sweatshirt with the word GAP across the front, peered out of his silver and black Dodge pick-up trying to find a road sign. His dirty blonde hair was still like an untamed forest, framing that GQ-model face and ocean-blue eyes. Eyes scanning the landscape while trying to stay in his lane, he said, “Oh, there it is. I’m passing some place called Ram Map Oh.”
Chase laughed and said, “I think they pronounce it Ram-Uh-Poe. Like Edgar Allan Poe but with a ram at the front.”
Gavin smiled, picturing her with her hair back in a ponytail, wearing some perfectly matched outfit, weaving among and around pedestrians.
He finally responded, “Well whatever they call it, the GPS says I’ll be to you in forty-five minutes.”
Chase, not breaking her stride, replied, “Sounds good, cowboy. That should time out perfect. All I’ll need is a quick shower and we’ll grab dinner someplace nice.”
Gavin sipped the blue bottle of Gatorade that was resting in the cup holder and said, “Anything but sushi; we had that the last two times, my sweet.”
Chase loved the Japanese restaurant kitty-corner to her building, but knew Gavin was more a steak and potatoes guy. Still, you couldn’t blame a girl for trying to expand a farm boy’s palate. Plus, watching his face turn red when he put too much wasabi on a salmon roll was priceless.
“Don’t worry, Gav, I have a surprise for you. I’m taking you to Spark’s Steakhouse in Midtown. It has a perfect score on Zagat, serves up juicy steaks, and—you’ll love this part—it was home to a famous mob hit back in the eighties,” she said.
Gavin laughed, “So I’m going to eat where Tony Soprano got whacked? That sounds appetizing.”
Chase giggled as she ran. “It’s actually supposed to have great food.”
Before Gavin could reply, Chase’s ear bud made a beeping sound, letting her know someone else was calling. “Hey, babe, that’s my other line. Let me grab that and I’ll see you in less than an hour.”
Gavin was good about getting off the phone when Chase said she had to go, especially since the book came out and Chase’s life—heck, all of their lives—got turned upside down. So, he said, “No worries, hon, see ya soon.”
Chase tapped her left ear once again and gave another slightly breathless, “Hello?”
A familiar older man’s voice said, “Are we doing 59th or 50th for the pickup?”
It was Chase’s driver, Matthew Rodriguez, a retired New York City detective who came highly recommended by Sheriff Erastus Harlan back in Vermont. A friend of a friend in law enforcement is how Harlan found the guy, and Chase was so glad he did. Smart and honest, Matthew didn’t look at Chase like so many lesser men did, as some conquest. He had become almost a father-figure to her in these past twelve months, and even though he didn’t know all her secrets, he could tell Chase needed protecting, and he was more than up to the task.
“Hello, earth to Chase—can you hear me?” Matthew repeated to the silence on the other end.
“Yes, sorry, bud, my mind was wandering. Um, it feels like an East 50th kind of day.”
Matthew, sitting comfortably in the leather seats of his black 7-series BMW sedan, nodded, then said, “You got it. Oh, and by the way, Chase?”
Still running, but now with Fifth Avenue and the old FAO Schwarz building in her sights, Chase replied, “Yes?”
Matthew put the car in drive and said, “Someday you going to tell me why you keep going there? For real. And don’t tell me you’re praying, ’cause nobody prays that much or that fast.”
Chase waved him away in her mind with a quick, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, someday, Matthew, but for now …”
He checked his mirrors to make sure the coast was clear before pulling into traffic, responding, “But for now just drive the car. Keep it up and I’m gonna start calling you Miss Daisy.”
Chase stopped running for a moment to grab a quick drink out of her pack. “Miss Daisy?” she asked, confused.
Matthew laughing, “Oh, I keep forgetting, you were like two when that movie came out. Never mind, I’ll see you at East 50th and 5th in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Chase was the one smiling now. “You and those lambs. You would have fit in great back where I lived in Vermont. Lambs, cows, horses as far as the eye could see. I’ll catch you in a bit.”
A push of the button and Matthew was gone, replaced by Beyoncé singing about all the single ladies. The morning run finished, Chase was walking up Fifth Avenue now toward a big stone building she visited at least once a week. She was thinking, I’m a single lady, well sort of. But, probably not for long. She could tell Gavin was getting itchy to take things to the next level, and while Chase loved him, she needed time right now to get her life in order and figure out what came next, besides a wedding cake and place settings.
She walked by the famed Tiffany’s store and stopped in her tracks as a memory flooded her. Chase had taken a trip to New York City the summer before she started college, a graduation present from her grandmother. A handful of her high school friends were planning the trip, all the way from Seattle, but there was no way Chase’s mom could swing the plane ticket, hotel, and money for spending.
Grandma Margaret, “Marge” to her friends, overheard Chase telling her best friend, Cadence, on the telephone that she couldn’t go because she was broke. That’s when Marge took her husband’s old coin collection, collecting dust on the shelf, down to a dealer in Tacoma and got a thousand dollars for it. Those silver dollars, Buffalo nickels, and Liberty dimes certainly added up.
That was such a generous gift for a teenage girl who had never been more than fifty miles from where she was born. They stayed at the Hilton on West 54th Street, bought half-price tickets to the Broadway show Rent at something called the “TKTS Booth,” and ran around Times Square until 3 a.m. pretending they were Angel and Mimi from the show. Today for you, tomorrow for me, was the call of that crazy night.
Before they flew back home, the four girls walked up ritzy Fifth Avenue to see where the rich people shopped, and Chase went into Tiffany’s with her last fifty bucks, hoping to buy a souvenir. She didn’t care what it was, as long as it came in that famous light blue Tiffany box. An older employee, a well-dressed woman with blonde hair, saw how much money Chase had to spend and gently pulled her away from the other customers so no one could hear their conversation.
She whispered in Chase’s ear, “I’m sorry, sweetie. The cheapest thing we have in the store is a key chain, and those are seventy-five dollars.”
All of a sudden, after playing bigshot for the past forty-eight hours, the girl from the Pacific Northwest felt small and poor again. It stung.
The woman then did something incredibly kind, grabbing an empty Tiffany’s ring box from behind the counter and placing it in Chase’s hand. “Here, take a box and use it to hold something special. Someday, you’ll come back, and, on that day, it won’t be empty.”
Chase stood, lost in that memory, in front of Tiffany’s, making people in a hurry walk around her. She gazed through the windows at the fancy store, knowing she could purchase pretty much anything she wanted now, due to the success of her book. Funny thing was, she had no desire to go in. Every time she walked by though, she hoped she’d catch a glimpse of that older woman who had been kind to her that hot summer day seventeen years earlier.
She’d say, “You don’t remember me, but you were very nice to me when I was young and poor and pretending to be rich.”
It’s funny how moments like that don’t just leave a mark, but sometimes come back to take another bite. You
can’t make friends with some memories, no matter how hard you try. The first time Gavin visited her in Manhattan they walked by Tiffany’s and he asked if she wanted to go in. Instead, they sat and had coffee at the Carnegie Deli, and she told him the story about the kind woman giving her the empty blue Tiffany’s box. She could see his heart breaking for her as she told it. It was another reason Chase knew she loved Gavin, sharing something so personal and knowing he was truly listening.
The thought of Gavin in the deli that day holding her hand made her smile when, “EXCUSE ME MISS,” someone said in a loud rude tone, reminding Chase that standing still in the middle of the sidewalk on busy Fifth Avenue was an invitation for a collision.
“Sorry, sorry,” she replied sheepishly, getting her feet moving again. As she passed a group of teenagers taking selfies outside the Versace store to her left, the all too familiar stone spires of her destination were beginning to come into sight. Parked outside the historic building was the black BMW with her charming driver, Matthew, behind the wheel.
He looked up from his New York Post and locked eyes with Chase, shaking his head with a tiny smirk that said, You’re nuts, young lady, but go ahead. I know you can’t help yourself. Go on in.
Chase threw him a quick wave and then went up the steps where a security guard recognized her from her frequent visits and gave her a friendly nod.
No vehicle, big or small, is allowed to linger long on Fifth Avenue, especially at the corner of East 50th near Rockefeller Center, but Matthew had no intention of circling the block or even shutting off the car’s engine. He knew that ninety seconds after Chase disappeared behind those big wooden doors, she’d pop back out and come directly to the car, hop in the front seat, and say, “Drive, please.”
Sure enough, as if he were timing a soft-boiled egg, Chase did exactly that, exiting the building as quickly as she’d gone in.
The security guard wished Chase a good day as she skipped down the steps, passing a large group of tourists who had just gotten off a Greyhound bus. They were young and wearing matching yellow t-shirts so they wouldn’t lose each other, cameras at the ready, heading toward the large stone structure. This particular building was a must stop for anyone visiting New York City for the first time.
