An older woman in a bright blue sweater was filling a thermos at one of the coffee machines.
The sudden cessation of snow and wind hit Bexley first. She supposed warmth would seep in more slowly to defrost bones frozen in the short trip to the door.
An attractive fair-haired man in his mid-thirties, wearing quality casual clothes, stepped forward and helpfully took one of the bags from Kiernan and the shopping bag from her.
“More people? More darned people?” came a harsh voice from behind the counter near the door. “Already bursting.”
“It’s these folks and the earlier two, other than your family.” The trooper’s hat tipped toward a group gathered by the opening at the right rear, presumably leading to the other half of the building.
Another man in his mid-thirties, also attractive yet of an entirely different type, stood there with four kids. He wore old, working jeans, with an open jacket showing layers of clothes beneath it. He held a cowboy hat with damp marks spotted on it and a puddle beneath it, signaling it had carried a crop of snow.
The kids ranged around him. A lanky boy barely in his teens. Two girls half the boy’s age who looked enough alike to be twins. One of them held a toddler of two, maybe three years old.
“His family. He’ll tell you so soon enough,” the voice from behind the counter said in apparent reference to the man holding his hat.
Bexley leaned forward to look past Kiernan and saw the voice came from an older man with clashing plaid flannel shirts, one atop the other, patches of solid white and salt-and-pepper hair sticking out at even odder angles than her first ever attempt with styling gel produced, and a slightly lighter-colored beard bushing out from his cheeks, then scraggled toward two uneven points down his chest.
Tension seemed to zing from the man behind the counter to the family group and back.
“What the he— heck’s with this snow anyway? Weren’t supposed to get this storm for another twelve hours,” the older man grumbled.
“Still coming,” the trooper said. “This is a bonus, not the main storm. Some front moved in when it wasn’t supposed to and met up with another front and—” He held his hands together, palms up, then jerked them apart, allowing whatever mythical something they’d held to drop. “—bloop.”
“These are the last of the eastbounders,” he continued. “All other vehicles accounted for. I’m going back west to check if anyone’s stranded.”
“And because your family’s there,” the shopkeeper said cynically.
“That, too. Gives me a chance to be home for Christmas,” he said cheerfully.
Home for Christmas.
The hope got Bexley into the vehicle with Kiernan, made him plan to drive three-quarters of the way across the country, brought them here.
Oh-so-far from home for Christmas.
The trooper had a question for the shopkeeper. “How’re you situated on propane? Got enough?”
“I got plenty for me. Could run right through it with the battalion you’ve dumped on me.”
The older woman came toward them, tightening the top on a thermos with quick, competent movements.
“You’ll have to make do. Maybe ration it out. You all—” The trooper’s gaze went from the woman offering the thermos, to the blond man with her, then to Kiernan, over to the family group by the door, finally to Bexley. “—stay here until we get you word it’s safe to go.”
“Stay here. Stay here. Like I’m running a ritzy hotel at Grand Central Station,” the bearded shopkeeper grumbled.
“Yeah. Exactly like that,” the trooper said dryly. Then he looked at the man with the cowboy hat. Bexley, following his gaze, saw shadows under the man’s eyes, grooves dug in around his mouth. Weariness, worry, and worn down. “Everybody stays here. It’s too dangerous out there to try to get anywhere. Won’t be anybody can get to you to help if you go in a ditch.”
The man said nothing. Nor did he meet the trooper’s gaze. The trooper muttered something, put his hat and gloves back on, took the refilled thermos from the woman with a nod, and left without another word.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then the woman who’d filled the thermos, extended a hand to Bexley. “I’m Pauline Ohlrich and this is Eric Larkin. We’re stranded, too. Couldn’t get far enough east fast enough to miss the storm. And our charming host said everyone calls him Gramps. I suspect he mis-heard them calling him Grump.”
She not only said it loud enough for the man behind the counter to hear, she made a point of looking at him as she said it.
A faint ripple showed in his unruly beard which might have been from a grimace. On the other hand it might not have been aimed at the woman named Pauline.
As Bexley and Kiernan completed introductions with Pauline and Eric, the shopkeeper stomped over to the family group.
The two men’s voices didn’t rise, but the intensity came through.
“—you’re the last person on earth I’d want to see here, Hall Quick. And with all them in tow.”
“Last place on earth I’d want to be or to bring them to. No choice.” The father of the family group jerked his head in the direction of the window. “Can’t risk taking them further in this.”
“You’re worried more about those animals than—”
“If I don’t get them to where I can sell them—” He stopped, clearly not willing to consider it. “I’m going. No choice. I’ll be back for the kids as soon as I can.”
“I don’t want—”
“Don’t worry. They won’t look to you for anything more than you’d give a stranger.” He turned to his family. “Dan—”
The teenage boy didn’t look up. “I know.”
“—you’re responsible for the others.”
“But, Daddy,” said one of the girls, “we have to be home for Christmas. You’ll be back to get us and take us home for Christmas.”
The lines by his mouth deepened. He jerked his head in a sharp negative. “Don’t see how that can happen, Molly.”
Tears came to the other girl’s eyes. “But you’ll be back here by Christmas, even if we’re not home, you’ll be here with us for Christmas, won’t you?”
“Probably not.” His voice went even grimmer and rougher. “We’ll have to let Christmas go by this year, Lizzie. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He cupped his hand over the head of the three younger children, one by one, started his hand toward the oldest, then drew it back when the boy called Dan recoiled. He gave his son a nod.
The man clapped the hat on his head, then fastened his jacket as he walked to the door. Did his boots make his footsteps sound like they belonged to a much heavier man? Pulling the door open, he hesitated an instant, then, without looking back, he disappeared into the opaque world beyond.
No one had moved when they heard, under the wind, the low sound of a truck engine laboring to life.
The truck with a trailer.
The familiar sound she’d heard had come from cattle in the trailer, Bexley realized.
She hadn’t spent a lot of time in Wyoming, but knew that wasn’t the regulation size cattle transport trailer. It wouldn’t carry many head. For the man to risk going out in this because he absolutely had to get those few head to market must mean a precarious financial situation.
The storekeeper turned his head to look out the window. “Well, by the lights, he’s made it onto the highway. Doubt the fool will make it much farther.”
The boy named Dan glared a hole in the back of the older man’s head.
Oblivious, the shopkeeper said, “No use waiting around to see. How about some coffee?”
The last was not an offer to the rest of them, but was directed at the older woman with a jerk of his head toward a cup on the counter as an apparent request for a refill.
“Get your own. We need to settle these newcomers in. And considering what you didn’t do for us or your relatives by way of welcoming and settling in, I’ll see to that.”
“The fir
st thing for me is to point me toward the restroom, please,” Bexley said.
“A door in here says Women.” The girl holding the little boy tipped her head toward the room behind her.
“Next to one saying Men,” her sister added.
CHAPTER FIVE
Bexley passed the four children at the doorway to the other room, smiling at them all. The little boy smiled back. The girls stared, not unfriendly. The teenager ignored her.
The room she stepped into was chilly, dim, and dusty except for a pile of belongings — had to be the kids’, considering it included the biggest box of pull-up diapers she’d ever seen — leaning against the wall by the doorway, which was flanked by grubby curtain panels.
She squinted, not sure she could make out the far wall.
“Over there.” The girl holding the little boy shifted him in order to free one hand and point.
The little boy contributed his chubby arm to signpost duty, too. “Dare.”
Turning her squint in that direction, Bexley saw faint lettering on two doors to her left, then a third door in the corner with no lettering.
“Thank you.”
Crossing the room quickly, she pushed open the door marked “Women.”
She returned on the outward swing and made it back across the room twice as fast.
“I thought you had to—”
She swept past Kiernan, now standing in the back aisle of the store near the coffee maker, with a crisp, “I do.”
She also swept past the shopkeeper named Gramps and into the shelves of the store area.
Pauline groaned. “Should have known. Eric, we might need your help.”
“Should have known what?” Gramps asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Not answering or slowing in her gathering of cleaning supplies, Bexley asked, “Where’s your mop?”
“Here’s a new one,” Pauline said, passing it to Eric. “And hold this.”
She took the supplies Bexley had gathered and started to hand those to Eric, too, but Kiernan stepped in and took them. Bexley was already reloading.
“We’ll need the new mop, but for the first pass, an old one will do.” Bexley leveled a look at the shopkeeper over the top of the shelves.
He mumbled two or three sentences of complaint, but finished with, “In the closet by the restrooms.”
With Bexley in front, then Pauline, Kiernan, Eric, and followed at a grumbling distance by the shopkeeper, they trooped past the kids in the doorway and back into the room next to the shop. Bexley headed for the door with no lettering, the best bet for a closet.
She opened it wide, reaching around to capture what appeared to be a pull string for a light.
And jerked her arm back.
The string was actually cobweb. The closet looked like a Halloween decoration of fake spiderwebs, except the webs festooning a mop, broom, bucket, and other artifacts of ancient cleaning rituals were all too real.
In the meantime, Pauline had pushed open the door to the women’s room. Like Bexley, she didn’t linger.
On her immediate return, she confronted Gramps.
“How on earth can you offer these facilities to people?”
“Don’t offer them. Don’t want people stopping here to use the facilities. Most folks who come here live close enough to use their own da— darned facilities. Besides, it was people using the facilities that got them in this state to start with.”
“A decade ago,” Pauline said grimly. “And since we’re all going to be here for a few days, there are going to need to be changes around here.”
Here for a few days.
Without consulting her about it, Bexley’s head turned toward Kiernan.
From the instant she’d awakened to the news the road was closed, she’d focused on their next immediate step to get out of the storm.
Now the reality that they were likely to be here for several days hit.
With home a long day’s drive away in good weather, the line from the song I’ll Be Home for Christmas that applied to her was if only in my dreams.
“We’ll have to let people know we’re stuck here.” Her eyes stung. Mom and Dad would be so disappointed. The rest of the family, too. Almost as disappointed as she was.
A vision of her family home, festively decorated and smelling of evergreens and cookies, flashed bright and warm.
Kiernan’s family, too. They’d all be gathered in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Without him. He had to be as disappointed as she was.
Suddenly seventeen hours in a car with him didn’t seem such a bad prospect. Especially if it had gotten them each home.
He nodded grimly, confirming Pauline’s forecast, acknowledging Bexley’s dismay.
Before it was clear if Kiernan would have said anything, Gramps erupted.
“Changes around here? What changes? Bad enough I have to have all you people here for days when I don’t want you, but—”
“Days? But it’s two days to Christmas. If we’re here for days… We’re all going to be here for Christmas?” The question rose toward a wail. Bexley felt as if the girl her father called Lizzie channeled her inner reaction.
“Of course we are,” Dan snapped, rolling his eyes. “What did you not understand about Dad saying, no, he wouldn’t be back for Christmas? And we’re letting Christmas go by this year?”
“But… But…”
Molly, the girl holding the little boy, blurted out the fear behind her sister’s repeated syllables. “How will Santa Claus find us here?”
“Santa Claus always knows where to find good children,” Bexley said.
Where had that come from? Was she channeling her mother? Bexley touched each girl on her shoulder, then saw she’d trailed cobwebs along, and quickly tucked it into her fist before the girls noticed.
“Not here,” Gramps said. “No Santa Claus ever came here.”
“He will this year,” Bexley said firmly.
Pauline sent the shopkeeper a teeth-bared grimace, then turned a pleasant but no-nonsense expression on the girls. “But first we have to make sure he finds a clean establishment.”
“Absolutely.” Ignoring the spiderwebs, Bexley quickly pulled out the old broom.
As she reached for the mop handle, steeling herself for the cobwebby feel, Kiernan shouldered in next to her. “I’ll get it.”
He grasped the handle and used it to also drag the bucket out. With a gesture, he indicated he’d take it into the restroom for them. Bexley went first, holding the women’s room door open for him, followed by Pauline.
He muttered something. Sounded like a curse, though not a word she recognized. “Do you want me to—?”
“Clean the whole thing yourself?” she interrupted, shaking cobwebs off the gray and stringy mop head. “Oh, yes, I do. I really, really do. But I can’t imagine the men’s is any better. Save yourself for that.”
“Eric will help you, Kiernan.” Pauline turned on a faucet in the sink where the graphite gray of dirt was relieved by rust stains. The faucet spat and hawked like a cat trying to get up a hairball, then produced a small but steady stream of passable water. “Before you go, check the commode.”
“The—?”
“Toilet,” Bexley translated, applying the dry mop first to the ceiling, and a small window set high in the wall. She did not want to be surprised by those things falling on her head.
Behind her, she heard Kiernan jangle the toilet handle, then a recognizable flush.
Pauline commented, “Hope you’re as lucky on your side. Now, get out of here. We’ll have to work fast to keep from freezing and it’s too tight to work fast with three of us when one’s the size of you, Kiernan.”
“I’ll go, but before I do… Bexley, you can’t promise those kids what you can’t deliver. That talk of Santa…”
Bexley didn’t turn around, focusing intently on the cobwebs above her.
After a moment, she heard the door open and close behind him.
“He has a point, you know,”
Pauline said.
She did know.
So she’d just have to deliver. Somehow.
CHAPTER SIX
Bexley and Pauline finished the women’s room — uncovering a white sink no one would call bright white — and gladly started on the main room, because it wasn’t quite as cold as the women’s room. The shopkeeper clearly didn’t waste any money heating this side of the building. And not much on the shop side, either.
While they’d worked, Pauline had told her Eric was a lawyer in Bardville, Wyoming, and her employer.
Their relationship seemed closer. Pauline certainly showed no sign of deferring to a boss.
Perhaps noticing Bexley’s surprise, Pauline expanded.
“Guess you could say we bonded from the start. He was opening his practice and he took a risk on a new widow with no work history, who’d been turned down for jobs dozens of times. He’s a good man. And he got a real raw deal in the relationship department. When he decided to listen to a few friends he had out here and start all over in Wyoming, I wasn’t about to let him do it on his own, whatever he said.”
Her decisive conclusion matched Bexley’s brief observations so well she bit back a grin.
As Bexley and Pauline switched to the new cleaning supplies from the old mop and bucket, they passed those tools to Kiernan and Eric to start on the men’s room.
Now, they had the first-pass tools back for the main room.
Pauline apparently took it as an accepted fact they would clean the outer room.
Bexley hadn’t thought about it.
Not until she saw those four kids, seated on the floor, using their bags as backrests, except for the small boy, who sat in the lap of one of the girls.
Fine.
They were cleaning the main room, too.
The first task, though, was putting working light bulbs — supplied from the shelves of the shop over Gramps’ protests — in an overhead wagon wheel fixture hanging off-center over the empty area of the room. Bexley started by standing on a stool.
More light allowed them to see a wood stove occupied the corner opposite the door. The wall next to the stove had an odd texture… Bexley stared hard to make out dingy hubcaps hanging in incomplete rows across it.
Making Christmas Page 3