Lost December

by Richard Paul Evans

  “That’s Rachael,” Suman said. “Hey, Rachael.”

  She turned around.

  “This is Luke. He’s the new guy.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she replied stiffly, then returned to her work.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, turning back to Suman.

  He shrugged and we walked to the back of the copy area.

  “She’s a good gal, hard worker, but as guarded as Fort Knox. I’ve known her for three years and I still don’t know her story.” He shook his head. “When do you start?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Awesome. Welcome to Crisp’s.”

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-Three

  “Losers keep their eyes on the clock.

  Winners keep their eyes on the job.”

  My father used to always say that to me.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  The advertisement I designed for the Golden Age ran that Sunday in the Las Vegas Sun. By the time I finished my first day at Crisp’s and returned to the care center, Carlos had already had twenty-eight phone calls. He was as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. He hugged me as I walked in, which was unfortunate because my ribs were still sore.

  “You rock, bro,” he said, “You did it. You sold the place out.”

  “Does that mean I’m losing my room?” I asked.

  “Yes and no. I talked to the center’s owner, Mr. Shantz. He’s agreed to put you up in the Desert Spring Apartments a block from here if you’ll agree to keep helping us with marketing.”

  I nodded. “No problem,” I said. “But I need to talk to you about my employment. I just took another job.”

  His expression fell. “You’re already leaving us?”

  “No. I mean, I hope not. I just need to adjust my schedule a little. I got a job at Crisp’s. I work there until four, so I could still get back and help Sylvia with dinner—and any marketing you needed.”

  He looked somewhat relieved. “That will still work. What time do you start work in the morning?”

  “Eight.”

  “What is that, fourteen, fifteen hours a day?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “That’s a rough schedule, amigo. You sure you can handle that?”

  “I’ve worked that schedule most of my life.”

  “When do you find time to live?”

  I turned to leave. “Don’t worry about me, my friend. I’ve done enough living for a lifetime.”

  From a young age my father taught me the value of hard work. Two full-time jobs wasn’t cake, but it wasn’t going to break me either. In fact, it was a little refreshing to rediscover the person I used to be. The work also kept my mind off my pain. And I had a lot of pain. I had a lot to mourn. I mourned the loss of my previous life, the opportunities I took so much for granted. I mourned Candace and wondered if I’d ever find love again.

  But what I mourned the most was the loss of my father. How could I have hurt him the way I had? I missed him. I missed working and planning together. I missed the way we used to communicate without talking. I worried that he might have more problems with his heart. He could die and I wouldn’t know. The knowledge that I had brought him so much pain wracked my soul. It’s one thing to be careless with money; it’s much worse to be careless with someone’s heart—especially a heart that has loved you.

  As much as I wanted to, I knew that I could never go back to my father. It wasn’t because of pride—I had little enough of that left. I could never go back because after all he had done for me, I had betrayed him. I had betrayed his trust. And I’d deserted him when he needed me the most. I couldn’t go back because I didn’t deserve his love.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-Four

  Everyone carries secret burdens.

  Everyone. Some people are just

  better at hiding them than others.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  I worked to rebuild my life. I got a new cell phone, a new driver’s license and I opened a savings account at a bank a block south of the copy center. I couldn’t say I had my life back—what I had had was gone forever—but my life was definitely on the upswing.

  It felt good to have some extra money. It felt safe. I was frugal again—as my father was and as I had once been. I ate most of my meals at the Golden Age. I’d even take dinner leftovers from the center to Crisp’s to save money on lunch the next day. With no rent, and barely any food expenses, I was able to put away most of my paycheck.

  I also got the bonus from Carlos that I’d been promised. My ad had brought in thirteen new residents, so I received a bonus check for $6,500. I bought a car—an old Honda Civic that had belonged to Sylvia’s sister. “Looks like junk, runs like a kitten,” Sylvia said. It had a thousand scratches and a dent in the passenger-side door, but for just $700 I couldn’t go wrong.

  As I began reassembling my financial world, I had a thought—I knew there was no way to recover my money from Sean, but I had once read that some gambling losses are tax-deductible. I wondered if I could get a refund on some of the money I’d paid in taxes from my trust. Or, at the least, deduct it from the taxes I would be paying now. I texted Mike Semken and asked him to look into it for me, though I wasn’t sure he’d do it since I wasn’t really a client of his anymore. I was willing to try anything.

  Carlos and Carmen invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner. Their home was a stucco, adobe-style house in the Silverado Ranch area—humble and outdated, full of pictures of their family, avocado green shag carpet and a lot of love. Carlos and Carmen had four children; Duane, Felicia, Barnard and Miguel, in that order. The eldest three were married, providing Carlos and Carmen with five grandchildren.

  His oldest son, Duane, looked frail and smaller than his two male siblings, even though he was the oldest and Miguel was still only in high school. Carlos told me that two years earlier Duane had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a condition that would eventually require open heart surgery to prolong his life. Duane owned a landscaping business and had no health insurance when he was diagnosed. As a preexisting condition, no insurance company would cover him and at a cost of more than a quarter million dollars, his chances for treatment seemed unlikely at best. He had applied for Medicaid, but the bureaucratic wheels turned slowly. Duane had a wife, Tasha, and two boys. Carlos was afraid that his son would die before he got treatment.

  After dinner I was helping Carmen with the dishes when I asked her about Duane’s situation. Her eyes welled up with tears. “We have faith that God will provide,” she said, wiping her eyes with a dishcloth. “We hold to that.”

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-Five

  One of my associates at Crisp’s is named Rachael.

  She is quiet, sad and beautiful.

  I’m not sure why, but I’d like to get to know her better

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  November passed quietly into December. At Crisp’s, Suman was preparing to make his departure the week before Christmas. I was going to be sad to see him go. He was a good guy with a wry sense of humor. He ran a solid and profitable day shift but still found time to make it enjoyable, mostly by pranking Colby. I think the most ingenious prank of his was when he froze Mentos candy in ice cubes then dropped them in Colby’s Diet Coke when he wasn’t looking. It took nearly fifteen minutes before Colby’s coke exploded. Colby never figured out what happened.

  Wayne spent a lot of time with me going over the shop’s clients and finances, things I sometimes had to pretend not to understand, and it became obvious to me that he was priming me to take Suman’s position. I learned from Suman that Rachael had seniority, but even though she could undoubtedly use the increased salary that came with the position, she would likely be passed over for the job. She worked hard, but she seemed to lack drive and too many of their customers had complained about her being unfriendly and aloof.

  I understood the complaints. Rachael was a mystery to me. Actually, she was
a mystery to everyone at Crisp’s, customers and employees alike. She was always quiet and heavy-minded, the way one gets when dealing with heartache. She was cautious like Candace, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where Candace was brutally honest, Rachael seemed to conceal everything, cloaking her feelings beneath a thick veil of privacy. Where Candace would dress, or make herself up to accentuate her beauty, Rachael did the opposite. She was beautiful in spite of herself and acted as if she considered her attractiveness more curse than blessing, as she got hit on daily by Crisp’s customers. She usually just ignored their advances, but sometimes the veil would part and her temper would show. Suman told me that the store had lost more than one customer that way.

  The longer I worked with her, the more she intrigued me. It’s been my experience that those with the toughest shells have the softest hearts—and I sensed that she was hiding a naked vulnerability under all that armor.

  I honestly had no idea what she thought of me. Our working relationship was cordial, but stiff as a starched collar. One time I caught her looking at me. I knew she had been looking at me for a while, but when I turned to look at her, she quickly turned away. I just couldn’t figure her out.

  One afternoon I decided to go to the In-N-Out Burger on my break to get a milkshake and passed Rachael as I was leaving. “I’m going to be gone for a few minutes,” I said. “I’m going to get a shake.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Want to come? It’s slow, Colby can watch the front.”

  She looked at me for a moment then said, “No thank you.”

  “We’ll only be a few minutes.”

  “No thank you,” she repeated.

  Since this was the longest nonwork-related talk I’d had with her since I had started, I decided to venture into unknown territory. “Is it that you don’t like shakes or you don’t like me? Because if it’s the shake, you can order something else.”

  “I don’t associate with coworkers,” she said shortly.

  “I associate with you all day,” I said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I looked at her for a moment, then said, “Just so I understand, you would get a shake with me if I quit?”

  “You wouldn’t want to do that on my account,” she said. She turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-Six

  I am lonely. I am lonely. I am lonely.

  I am lonely. I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to no one.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  Between my two jobs I developed a routine. I got up at 6 A.M., exercised, ate a piece of toast, then showered and dressed and went into Crisp’s. Saturday mornings I slept in until nine or ten, then ran errands or read. Peculiarly, my weekends weren’t a whole lot different than when I was homeless—a lot more comfortable, but just as lonely. My father and I used to go golfing every Saturday. I wished I had him to go golfing with now.

  One Saturday night I was doing my shopping at the Food King when I saw Rachael standing in the breakfast foods aisle. A boy, maybe six or seven years old, was hanging on the shopping cart next to her. He was whining. “Why can’t we have Cap’n Crunch?”

  “The cereal in the bag is cheaper,” Rachael said. “It’s the same thing.”

  “No it’s not. And it has a toy.”

  “The toys are dumb. It will just end up in the garbage anyway.”

  “No it won’t. I’ll play with it.”

  “I said, no.”

  I walked up the aisle. “Hi.”

  I don’t know if she was more surprised or embarrassed to see me. She wore a baseball cap and was wearing sweat pants.

  “Do you always shop here?” I asked.

  “Mostly.”

  The little boy stared at me intently.

  “Who is this handsome young man?” I asked.

  “My son,” she said, moving in front of the cart as if to shield him from me.

  “I’m Luke,” I said, extending my hand past her to the boy. “I work with your mother.”

  He reached out and shook my hand. “I’m Chris.”

  “Nice to meet you, Chris.” I looked up at Rachael. “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “We’re shopping for dinner right now.”

  “I can save you the trouble. Why don’t we go next door to Italian Village and get some pizza. My treat.”

  “Yeah!” Chris shouted. “I want pizza. Can we have pizza, Mom?”

  “No,” Rachael said. “We need to go home.”

  The boy’s face tightened. “Please? He invited us. He said ‘his treat.’ That means it’s free.”

  “Nothing’s free,” she said. She shot me a glance of displeasure, then looked back at her son. “I said, no.”

  “Please, Mom. Please. We never have it anymore.”

  “Chris, you’re seven years old. You’re acting like a five-year-old.”

  I felt bad for the situation I had created, but I was also a little annoyed by how she was handling it. “Come on,” I said. “What’s it going to hurt?”

  “Please, Mom,” the boy continued, “please?”

  She groaned in surrender. “Okay, okay, okay. We’ll get pizza. Just stop nagging.” She looked at me with thinly veiled anger. “I need to finish my shopping,” she said.

  “I’ll wait for you up front,” I said.

  I finished picking up my essentials, then waited at the front of the store for Rachael. She finished her shopping about ten minutes later. Her checkout was lengthy because she used coupons and questioned the prices of several of her purchases, even putting one of them back. Throughout the process her boy kept looking at me. When she was finally done, she pushed her cart over to me. From her expression I thought she’d changed her mind.

  “I need to put my groceries in the car,” she said.

  I followed her to her car, an older-model Jeep Wrangler with a vinyl roof, put her groceries in the back, then the three of us went to the pizzeria. Chris looked as happy as a boy walking into Disneyland.

  The restaurant was crowded, and after a fifteen-minute wait the hostess sat us at a booth in the corner of the restaurant. Rachael was her usual sullen self, which was countered by her son’s excited chatter.

  “What do you want to eat?” I asked.

  “Pizza,” Chris said. “With pepperoni.”

  I looked at Rachael. “And you?”

  “I’ll just have some of what Chris has.”

  “Pepperoni pizza it is.” I turned to her son. “What grade are you in, Chris?”

  “Second grade. I have Covey for my teacher. She’s a tool.”

  “Chris!” Rachael said. “That’s not okay.”

  “She’s really mean,” he continued. “Once my friend Brian accidentally peed his pants in class, and she made him sit in it until recess.”

  I looked at Rachael, who was shaking her head.

  “I agree with Chris,” I said. “Covey is a tool.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said, “she stinks.”

  “Chris,” Rachael said. “Enough of that.”

  I hid my smile. The waitress brought us a pitcher of root beer, a large pepperoni pizza and an order of cheese-garlic bread. A few minutes after we’d started eating, I asked Rachael, “Have you lived in Las Vegas your whole life?”

  “We moved here about eight years ago.”

  “Where did you live before that?”

  “St. George, Utah.”

  “What brought you to Vegas?”

  “My husband,” she said. She turned to her son. “Don’t take such big bites.”

  He looked at me and smiled.

  Rachael said little for the rest of our dinner, and she was ready to leave before Chris or I were done eating. “We’ve got to go,” she said. “We’ve got milk in the car.”

  “Let me get a box for the pizza.”

  “No, we don’t need …”

  “There’s no sense letting it go to waste,” I said. “Chris can have it for breakfast.”

  �
�You eat pizza for breakfast?” Chris asked.

  “Breakfast pizza is the best,” I said.

  “Cool.”

  I paid the bill at the counter, then brought back a carry-out box, put the leftover pizza in it and handed it to Chris. “Thanks, Mr. Luke.”

  “You’re welcome, Chris,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Rachael said to him, “Honey, wait over there by the door for a minute. I need to talk to Mr. Luke.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  As soon as he was away from us Rachael spun around. Her anger had returned. “Don’t you ever do that again. Do you understand me?”

  I folded my arms. “Do what?”

  “Use my kid to get to me.”

  “Is that what you think this was about?”

  “Of course that’s what this is about.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe I just thought it would be nice to get to know someone I have to spend my day with. Maybe I thought we could be friends. Obviously I was mistaken.” I looked into her eyes. “There are wild boars with better dispositions.”

  She looked shocked. When she could speak, she said, “Just stay away from me.” She turned and walked away.

  “We work together,” I said after her. “Good luck with that.”

  She took the pizza from Chris and walked out to her car. She never looked back.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-Seven

  As if she didn’t already hate me enough,

  I was just given Rachael’s promotion.

  I don’t think she’ll be sending a congratulatory bouquet.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  That next Monday at Crisp’s was uncomfortable. Rachael was even more dismal than usual, which is really saying something. The tension was palpable. Just before lunch Wayne called me into his office. I assumed he wanted to ask me what was going on between Rachael and me. As I walked in, Suman was sitting in a chair next to Wayne’s desk.