Bexley quickly turned to see if Pauline had caught it. She had. Her just-give-me-the-Christmas-decorations expression didn’t change, but her sharp eyes intensified.
“Could be something in the attic,” he muttered.
“How do we access the attic?” Pauline demanded.
“Ladder through a door in the ceiling of the back room.”
“Where do we find the ladder?”
Eric muttered, “Why do I think we is going to be me?”
It didn’t ruffle Pauline in the least. “You, along with Kiernan, right after Gramps tells you where the ladder is.”
*
Gramps stamped ahead of them, revealing the back room was the tiny storeroom behind the kitchen. Bexley had joined them. Kiernan came last, following her.
As Gramps turned to leave them to it, she put a hand on his arm. “Your grandchildren will appreciate this.”
“They’re not interested in being my grandchildren. And I’m not interested, either,” he added hurriedly.
“Don’t be so sure,” Bexley said, leaving it unclear which side of the equation she meant. “What Dan said about the car rolling over the curb meaning there was no excitement here?”
“Smart-mouthed kid.”
“Not exactly national news. How’d he know what happened?” An arrested look came into Gramps’ eyes. “He must be interested enough to keep track of what happens here.”
“Huh.” With that neutral grunt, Gramps walked away.
“Impressive, Bexley,” Eric said.
“I just wish it would do some good.”
“It might. Let it sink in.”
She smiled slightly.
Kiernan liked that smile. Wasn’t so wild about Eric giving it to her.
“I’ll get out of your way now,” she said, and left.
The back room was so small, the ladder to reach the push-up ceiling door to the attic extended into the kitchen.
With the attic door up, Eric Larkin’s torso disappeared into the space above. Miracle of miracles, the wall switch they’d flipped had brought on a solitary bulb.
Cold gushed down on Kiernan like an icy shower as he followed. “What’s all that about warm air rising? It’s freezing up here.”
From in front of him, Eric grunted in sympathetic agreement as he left the ladder for the beams providing what flooring there was in the attic. “Think in this case, the warm air keeps rising through this sieve-like roof and into the outdoors. Also, it looks like the boxes are down at the other end and we’ll need to thread these beams to get there.”
“I’d go back for gloves if I didn’t fear being snared into something worse by those two dictators.” Instead, Kiernan followed the other man into the attic space.
“Pauline and Bexley? Or Molly and Lizzie?”
“Take your pick.”
“Pauline’s orders are why I’m up here. She’s supposed to be my employee, but you’d never know it. You and Bexley?” Eric asked, in the vague language of males, which Kiernan knew had nothing to do with whether he and Bexley were connected by employment.
It was another connection altogether Eric Larkin had in mind.
An instant and automatic denial that there was any such connection between him and Bexley or any other female rose in him. Then slammed into the recognition of why Eric asked such a question. The other man was interested in Bexley as a man is interested in a woman. Yet, he wouldn’t intrude if Kiernan said yes, he and Bexley were … whatever.
But if Kiernan said no…
“It’s complicated.”
Eric breathed out through his nose, continuing to edge deeper into the attic. “Isn’t it always?”
“Yes. You?”
“Divorced.”
Kiernan considered the back of the other man as they carefully moved forward. “Nasty?”
“Not for her. For me it was getting hit in the head from behind with a cement block. After the first blow, it’s all a little foggy.”
“God, I know how that is.”
“Were you married to her?”
“No. Wanted to be. Then it turned out she was only using me.” His own words surprised Kiernan. Not because they weren’t true, but because he’d said them. Out loud. To a near stranger.
He shifted to the side, following a parallel pair of beams to the ones Eric was on. The pile of boxes almost seemed to retreat before them as they advanced.
Eric neither looked toward him nor asked any questions.
Kiernan added, “Not sure if it’s better or worse that it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill kind of using. She went after me to get to my brother’s wife’s cousin’s fiancé.”
Eric whistled. “Your brother’s wife’s… Uh…”
I’m her husband’s ranch foreman’s wife’s cousin’s husband’s brother.
Bexley’s delight following the thread of the puzzle. Her laughter. Her nearness. Her touch—
Kiernan shoved aside memories with an abrupt question to Eric. “Why on earth would someone store boxes on the far end of the attic?”
“Perhaps leaving room because he planned to store all the things in the back room up here. Although, considering our host, more likely it was pure cussedness.”
“Definitely pure cussedness. Anyway, yeah, it was my brother’s wife’s cousin’s fiancé.” This time he held off the memories that rundown sparked. “He’d been a suspect in a murder way back—”
“Jack? Jack Ralston?”
Kiernan stopped and faced him. “Yeah. You know Jack?”
“I do. A little, anyway. Met the Curricks through a lawyers’ group, and met Jack through the Curricks. Heard about when he was finally cleared of suspicion. Why’d this woman want to get to Jack?”
“She’s the younger sister of the woman he’d been suspected — wrongfully — of murdering. Even with her cousin proved as the murderer, she wasn’t ready to let go of blaming Jack.”
“But you had no idea of the connection.”
“Not the connection, not any of it until she spilled her venom at Jack and Val’s wedding after getting me to invite her as my guest.”
Eric shook his head. “How’d Bexley react to all this?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“I mean when you told her. Isn’t that why it’s complicated between the two of you?”
“I’ve not told her.”
Was that part of what was complicated between them?
Abruptly, his brother’s voice came into Kiernan’s memory.
You know she’s not Felicity…
Whatever you did or stopped doing or how you stopped doing it flicked on her movie in her head.
So it was part of it. At least according to Cahill.
Eric pivoted his head, giving him a look all too easy to identify, since it matched the soundtrack of Cahill’s words replaying this moment in Kiernan’s memory.
It made for uneasy listening.
Eric turned back to the depths of the attic, lighting up the boxes with the flashlight on his phone, stopping at one. “I believe we’ve found Christmas.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The girls opened the flaps on the first two boxes, while Kiernan and Eric went back for the other two they’d brought down.
Gramps scowled at their return. “What the hell—? What did you get into up there?”
“The boxes from the attic you told us about,” Eric said as he and Kiernan put down the second load of boxes, side by side.
“Not those boxes. Not those. Ones marked Christmas okay, but not those.” Gramps tried to gather two of the boxes but they were too bulky for him to corral.
Bexley, Pauline, Molly, and Lizzie all looked around at the agitation in the man’s voice.
“That’s Mommy’s name on that box.”
Molly’s statement drew Dan’s attention. “And Aunt Trudi’s. What’s in these? Is this Mom’s stuff—?”
“They’re mine and nobody else’s. None of your business what’s in them. They’re going back in the attic right now
.”
Apparently recognizing he couldn’t maneuver both boxes at once, he took the one marked “Angie,” a good tactic from his point of view, since that was the one the kids were reaching for.
“You can’t go up that ladder,” Kiernan said. “Especially not with a box.”
“The hell I can’t.” Gramps resisted Kiernan’s effort to relieve him of the box. Kiernan prevailed.
“We’ll put them back. We didn’t mean…” Eric trailed off, giving the kids a rueful look. He picked up the other box. “Sorry.”
Molly half stood, but Bexley tugged at her hand. And Lizzie inadvertently tugged at her curiosity.
“What’s this?” The girl held up a vaguely boot-shaped form.
“Open it up. Take those two ends,” Pauline instructed.
The two ends Lizzie held came back together as the paper insides opened into a three-dimensional form.
“It’s a bell.” Molly sank back down beside the Christmas boxes. “Look, here’s another one. Can we hang these up?”
“Sure.” Bexley mentally crossed her fingers Gramps didn’t react to these the way he had to the boxes with his daughters’ names on them.
“What’re these?” Molly held up two sad, plastic rounds.
“They go around candlesticks,” Pauline said. “Supposed to be poinsettias, I suppose, though they’re so faded they look more like those flowers around Bardville that bloomed real early. Pasque flowers, that’s the name.”
Kiernan’s head snapped up.
Before Bexley could wonder much about that, Molly had a new find from the box. “Oh, look. Ornaments for a tree. These are pretty.”
Pauline took the wobbly old box with glass ornaments from Lizzie. “We have to be careful with these. They break very easily and could cut you just as easily.”
She retrieved two more boxes of ornaments, setting them aside.
“These won’t break.” Molly came up with a box of candles in the shape of choir boys and girls, snowmen, Christmas trees, and Santas in varied poses — in a chimney, on his own two feet, steering a sleigh.
That hollowed out the first box and they opened the second as the three men returned.
Gramps pulled the chair he’d previously occupied farther away. Eric and Kiernan gave small, No idea shrugs in answer to questioning looks from Bexley and Pauline, then joined in withdrawing snarled strands of old Christmas tree lights from the box.
“Oh, boy, we can hang lights,” Molly said.
“Not these lights,” Kiernan said. “I can see from here the cords are brittle and cracking, those plugs show fraying.”
“But—”
“No.”
Even Molly recognized that finality and looked back into the box for more treasures.
Boxes of Christmas cards with Currier and Ives scenes drew little interest from the girls, but Bexley put them aside as potentially useful.
A layer of crushed tinsel garlands came next. “We can fluff those up,” Bexley said.
A tree stand took up most of the rest of the room, but Lizzie pulled out one more item swathed in yellowed tissue paper, about the size of a loaf of bread.
Peeling back the tissue revealed a green ceramic Christmas tree with tiny multi-colored lights on the ends of its branches.
“I had one of those,” Pauline said with a reminiscent smile.
Kiernan reached over and ran the cord through his hand, then examined the plug.
The two girls turned expectant looks to him.
“Maybe. I’ll need to check it more thoroughly first.”
With that hopeful ending to the explorations, they went off to bed. Bexley went along, but they were self-sufficient, even standing on the upside-down trash can to reach the sink to brush their teeth.
She pushed back a pang at their being so self-sufficient, wished them a good night, and returned to the bar room.
*
While she’d been gone, the guys gathered sleeping bags and other gear the Curricks had stashed in Kiernan’s vehicle and Eric and Pauline had traveled with, along with a few things from Gramps’ back room, setting up four sleeping areas in the bar room, clustered near the stove.
“Okay,” she said brightly, “now we have to figure out presents.”
“Presents? Whaddya think this is? A la-di-da gift shop?”
“No chance of that.” Bexley’s brisk response drew faint grins from everyone except Gramps.
“At least you have that much sense,” he grumbled. “So enough of this malarkey about gifts.”
“It’s Christmas. Those babies are going to have gifts.”
“Like what? Beef jerky?” Dan’s cynicism suffered when his voice cracked — not from emotion, but hormones.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with jerky,” Gramps snapped.
Dan, naturally, rolled his eyes — again. Didn’t his eye muscles cramp from doing the same motion over and over? “Gifts are set, then.”
“No jerky. C’mon, we’ll put our heads together and think of something,” Bexley encouraged them.
Silence.
Pauline said, “I have a necklace. Those little girls like jewelry?”
“Can’t give something to just one of them,” Dan objected.
“You and your grandfather are full of obstacles, aren’t you? Ever have constructive ideas?” Neither responded to Pauline’s challenge. “All right then. It’s a long necklace. We cut it in half, tie the ends together, and there we go, two necklaces.”
Bexley beamed at her. “Brilliant. I have some toiletries — not makeup or anything — but a few things little girls might like.”
“As do I. We can put something together,” Pauline said.
“I gotta knife,” Dan drawled. “Which of ’em would want that? Bobby?”
“What kind of knife?” Gramps asked unexpectedly.
Dan scowled. “A knife knife. A sharp edge and—”
“A hunting knife? A Bowie knife? A—”
“Pocket knife.”
“Huh.”
Dan stared at his grandfather a moment, then jerked his hands up shoulder high, keeping his elbows in. He reminded Bexley of an adolescent bird.
“Huh, what?”
“We’ll set to whittling, that’s huh what.”
“Whittling? Whittling?”
“Yup. I got wood. I got a knife, you got a knife, that’s two knives.”
“I can’t whittle.”
“Not yet, you can’t.”
“We’re saving the wood to burn. Heat, remember? So we don’t freeze,” Dan said.
“Hard wood’s better for burning. Pine’ll burn too fast, pop all over, and leave a mess. But it’s good for whittling. Cuts real easily. Some say it doesn’t give the sharp cuts, but for a beginner that’s okay. Course the sap gums up your knife so you’re cleaning it a lot and even then it gets on your hands. If you’re the kind minds mess, you don’t want to try. Sap—”
“I don’t mind sap. It’s—”
“—or you’re afraid of failing—”
“I’m not afraid of—”
“Good. Then we’ll get started.”
“I don’t—”
He gave up, because Gramps had left the room.
They shared a few more ideas. Pauline suggesting scouring the store for items.
“Great. Especially stocking stuffers— Oh. We need stockings.” Bexley looked around at the others.
“If we absolutely have to, we could use their actual socks,” Pauline said.
Dan said nothing, but his glower deepened. Did none of them have socks to spare? At least clean ones — and with the moratorium on laundry because it used up propane… And then there would be another issue.
“Bobby’s would be so small, we wouldn’t be able to get anything in it.”
“That would solve the whole issue.”
Bexley fought a desire to growl at Dan. He was a kid. A kid in difficult circumstances that extended beyond a few days of a storm.
Plus, at that moment, his grandfath
er stamped back into the room with several pieces of wood and an old knife in a case. Eric rose and offered Gramps the chair next to Dan.
The grandfather nodded his thanks. The grandson did not look the least grateful.
“We’ll think about the stockings overnight,” Bexley said. “We still need a tree.”
“What about the one from the box?” Eric asked. “If Kiernan thinks it’s safe to plug in.”
“It’s good.”
“Great. But it’s tiny. It’s not someplace to put packages under.”
Gramps interrupted his low-voiced instructions to Dan to scoff, “Packages.” Then he said, “They make a tree by stacking up Jack Daniels’ barrels in the town where they make it. That’s my kind of tree.”
“In the spirit of the season,” Kiernan added.
“Spirit of the season.” Gramps’ repeat ended in a croaky sound that had them all turning to him. “Spirits. Because that’s what Jack Daniels is.”
“Somewhere down in Texas uses deer horns to create a tree,” Eric said.
“Using what’s at hand,” Bexley murmured thoughtfully.
Kiernan nodded. “Gloucester has one from lobster pots and buoys. And I’ve seen hubcap trees along the highway.”
“Okay,” she mused, “what do we have lots of?”
“Jerky,” Pauline said.
After the chuckles died, she added, “Sorry, Bexley. No ideas about a tree, but I had another idea for presents for the littles. As a teenager, I made yarn octopi for my young cousins. Stuffed animals — sea creatures. I could do them with assistance. If—” Pauline turned to Gramps. “You have yarn?”
“Yarn? What would I be doing with yarn?”
“Knitting, crocheting, or—” Pauline’s deadpan turned pointed. “—selling it to those who do.”
“Nope. Got twine—”
“A child cannot cuddle with a twine octopus. It will scratch.”
“—or baling wire.”
Pauline’s nostrils flared. “Baling wire?”
Apparently unaware of her outrage, Gramps cautioned, “Not a whole lot of it and it’s out in the shed, so it would be a rough trip to get it. Besides, I don’t know why a kid would want any kind of octopus. Especially a Wyoming kid. It’s not like a horse or a dog. Or even a cow or a sheep or a goat. What’s the point?”
“The point is to give those two girls and their little brother something soft and lovable, unlike their grandfather.”
Making Christmas Page 9