Caro's Gift (Small-Town Christmas Wishes Book 2)

by Jean C. Gordon

  Ruth smiled at him. “If you’re done, Simon, why don’t you go upstairs and bring the yearbooks down for Caro.

  He placed his mug on the tray. If he had any of his wits left, he’d excuse himself and go clear the snow from his driveway.

  “They’re in the closet in the first room on the left,” she said.

  “Gram,” Caro protested. “That’s my room.”

  Ruth blinked. “I’m sure it’s not too messy. You’ve only been here a couple days.”

  Caro placed her mug back on the tray and stood. “Tell you what. I know exactly where the yearbooks are. I’ll get them, and Simon can carry the mugs out to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher.”

  “Sounds like a fair deal to me.” No way did he want to be rummaging through the closet of a woman he barely knew. Or knew well, for that matter. He picked up the tray with the mugs and escaped to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Simon was already back in the living room sitting on the couch when Caro came downstairs with the yearbooks. But her grandmother wasn’t. Which shouldn’t matter. She placed the pile of books on the coffee table. In fact, Gram’s absence was good. If she wasn’t in the room, she couldn’t be matchmaking, and maybe she and Simon could discover something about her mystery family.

  “Your grandmother is resting,” he said.

  “I figured.”

  After a brief silence, he said, “That’s a stack of yearbooks you have there. I’m not sure what happened to mine when Dad took the transfer, and he and Mom moved to Arizona.”

  Caro picked up the top book. “Gram’s got all of mine from every year I went to school in Snowflake.”

  “You didn’t go all through school here?”

  Caro ignored the pang of hurt that he didn’t know she hadn’t spent her whole childhood in Snowflake. Why should he? Simon wasn’t in her grade, and she’d been painfully shy as a child and not that memorable. Finding Bible club and her friends there had been her saving grace.

  “No, only a few of the elementary years and eighth through twelfth grades.” Whenever, my mother had a new boyfriend and didn’t want me around or was coming off a breakup and couldn’t take care of herself, let alone me. “I liked Snowflake, so I asked Gram and Grandpa if I could finish high school here when my mother moved away again my freshman year.”

  “Oh,” Simon said.

  Her cheeks flamed with heat that had nothing to do with the warmth from the fireplace. She should have stopped with twelfth grade and not mentioned her mother again.

  “Sit down.” He patted the couch beside him. “Where do you want to start?”

  She sat and opened the yearbook she had in her hand. “You said Hope’s brother Jake is in seventh grade. This is the yearbook from year the I was in eighth grade. I wasn’t here in seventh grade.”

  “You think whoever Jake reminds you of was in your grade?” Simon took the right side of the book.

  Her hand brushed his as she let go. She shrugged because she really had no idea, but also because she was aware of how closely they were sitting, heads bent over the book. “I don’t know. I’m just going on the facts that Jake looks familiar to me, and he’s in middle school.”

  She flipped the pages to the eighth-grade homeroom group pictures. Neither of them saw anyone who looked like Jake in the first picture. Her gaze dropped to the group photo on the bottom of the page at the same time Simon pointed at her in the picture.

  “Not a word about the haircut,” she said.

  “What?” The corners of his mouth twitched.

  “I cut it myself.”

  “No!” This time he couldn’t control the twitch. His mouth curved into a broad grin.

  If she’d known him better, she’d have punched him in the shoulder. “And that’s after Gram took me to a stylist to fix it.”

  He laughed with her, not at her, which coaxed Caro to continue. “I’d grown out my bangs from seventh grade and was anxious for my hair to be all one length. So the week before pictures, I chopped it all off up to my ears. I didn’t want it any shorter, so all the stylist could do was layer it a little. But enough about me. There are two more homerooms to look at.”

  Neither of the pictures on the next page helped. Caro flipped ahead to the high school pages which had individual pictures.

  “You thinking the guy Jake reminds you of might be older than you?”

  “He could be.” But that wasn’t her current mission. She skipped over the freshman class and went to the junior class, specifically the page with last names beginning with N.

  She looked at Simon’s thick brown waves. “No. A buzz cut,” she said gleefully. And I thought I’d needed to apologize for my hairstyle choice.”

  “It wasn’t a choice. It was a dare. That’s the year I made the varsity football team. The team co-captains dared everyone who made the squad for the first time that year to shave their heads. I don’t remember what the consequence was if we didn’t, but I thought shaving my head was the better of the two.”

  She studied the photo again. “I’ll just say you were smart in not making it a permanent choice.” Caro turned back to the freshman pictures and they went through all the high school classes with no success.

  “Let’s go through the next year, if you have time. Maybe, he was absent for eighth-grade photos.”

  “You think he was in your class, then.”

  “Probably, I didn’t know many upperclassmen, except the ones in Bible club.” And you. Although she’d more admired him from afar with her girlfriends than actually known him. She placed the yearbook on the table and took the next one off the pile. She coughed to cover her chagrin when it fell open to the page with Simon’s picture. Caro avoided Simon’s gaze, which she felt on her, and flipped back to the freshman photos.

  “Here!” Had she screamed or did it only sound that loud to her? She pointed at a picture. “Rob Turner.”

  Simon leaned closer for a look and she caught the barest hint of what must be his aftershave. An outdoorsy scent that took her to a cozy picture of them sitting in from of a fire after skiing.

  “I remember him.” Simon’s voice snapped her back to the present. “His family lived a few doors down from mine. Geeky kid.”

  Caro cleared her throat, thinking about what Simon must have thought of her as a teen.

  “I meant that in a good way. He was a whiz with anything tech. Last I heard, he was moving his way up the corporate ladder at the corporation my dad works for.” Simon’s jaw tightened in an expression she couldn’t read.

  “But you agree that Jake looks like Rob?”

  “Definitely. But the different last names.”

  “Maybe Rob and the kids’ mother are divorced. That wouldn’t explain her moving to Snowflake, though,” Caro mused to herself as much as said to Simon.

  “One way we might be able to find out is to Google Rob. My computer skills may not be anywhere near his, but I can manage online research.”

  Caro rubbed her thumb against the glossy paper of the page she held open. Granted, she didn’t know Simon well, but he was about the last person she’d expect to put himself down. She stilled. He couldn’t think she was somehow comparing him with Rob. Caro dismissed that absurd thought with no consideration. “I’ll go get my laptop.”

  A minute later, when she returned, Simon had closed the yearbook and was sitting back on the couch with his ankle crossed over his knee looking out the picture window at the continuing snow. Caro powered up the laptop and typed Robert Turner into the Google search field. She frowned. “He has an awfully common name, and I don’t know his middle name.”

  “Add Lockheed Martin. That’s where he was working when I came back to Snowflake.”

  Caro typed it in and hit enter. And stared at the results. The top one was an obituary in the Littleton, Colorado, newspaper.

  “Click the first one,” Simon said, straightening.

  She did and skimmed the obituary. She swallowed. “It’s him. See, his age … survived by h
is wife Heather, son, Jacob, and daughter Hope, all of Littleton, and his parents …” Except Heather, Jake, and Hope weren’t in Littleton anymore.

  “It’s too spot-on to be coincidental,” Simon said.

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “This is my answer. Hope’s family is who I’m supposed to help with my secret angel gift.”

  Simon squeezed her hand back, pinning her gaze with his until she jerked her hand away and squeezed it with her other hand until pain stopped the tingle wending through her. A tingle she couldn’t attribute entirely to her excitement about God’s answer to her prayer for direction.

  Chapter Four

  The next evening, Simon sat at his laptop, hand hovering over his cell phone, unable to decide whether to call Caro. Now that she’d made her decision about her secret angel gift, Simon didn’t know if she still wanted his help or not. Ruth had rejoined them shortly after they’d found the obituary and invited him to stay for supper. He’d declined with the excuse that he had to get home and grade papers. Which was true. But the bigger reason may have been that the more time he spent with Caro, the more time he wanted to spend with her. And that wasn’t a good idea. She had her work and life in Aurora, and his work and life were here in Snowflake. Caro would only be around for a few weeks. Why start something they couldn’t finish?

  But the little bit of information he and Caro had uncovered yesterday about Rob Turner had piqued his curiosity, especially the closing line of Rob’s obituary. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Activists for Recovery. After he’d finished grading his classes’ tests, he dived into research on Rob and his family. Part of his love of history was research, finding new information. He’d picked up this evening where he’d left off last. Simon rubbed the side button of his phone with his thumb. He had a lot of information to share. Why not? He pressed the button to activate the phone screen and pressed Caro’s number, which he’d put on his contact list. He was helping her with her project. That’s all.

  Caro’s phone rang numerous times before Simon was put through to her voicemail. He swallowed his disappointment before starting his message, “Hey, it’s Simon. I have some information for you about the Turners … Campbells. Give me a call back. We can compare research.”

  He placed his laptop on the end table and rose from his recliner to get a drink from the kitchen. Before he’d taken ten steps, his phone rang, and he raced back. Caro’s phone number flashed on the screen.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she returned. “It’s Caro. Sorry for not answering. With all the robo-call solicitations, I’ve started letting any caller numbers I don’t recognize go to voicemail.”

  He rolled his shoulders. So she didn’t have him on her contact list.

  “You have information for me?”

  “Yeah.” He tracked back to the kitchen. “It’s stuff you may already have, but I thought I’d check.”

  “I doubt it. Gram’s cable and internet went down sometime last night during the storm and it’s still not back. Researching on my phone was kind of useless.”

  “My internet is through the local phone company and it’s fine. Want me to email you what I’ve found. You could read it on your phone and print it out when you have service again.”

  The phone went quiet. Maybe she didn’t want more help from him. He tapped his foot. “You still there?”

  “Yes. I was thinking. If you don’t mind the self-invitation, I could come over.”

  Yes. “What about your grandmother?”

  “Gram’s friend Mrs. Afzali is here, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house for a while.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Okay, give me ten minutes to get the supper dishes in the dishwasher and I’ll be there.”

  “Great.” He eyed the two days’ worth of dishes in his sink. “See you then.”

  Simon stuck the dishes in the dishwasher, which he didn’t often use. Most likely, Caro wouldn’t come in the kitchen, but he shouldn’t let dishes pile up like that. Next, he surveyed the living room for random dirty socks or anything. All clear. Then on to the bathroom. He balled up bath towel from his morning shower and stuffed it in the linen closet to put in the laundry hamper later. In its place, he hung two hand towels his mother had given him last Christmas. The sink looked okay. The frosted shower doors hid the tub. Before heading back to the living room, he brushed his teeth and gargled with mouthwash. They would be working closely around his laptop.

  Simon moved his laptop from the end table to the couch, so they both could use it, and was printing out copies of what he’d found when he heard a knock on his front door. He opened it to Caro silhouetted against an inky sky with twinkling stars above. He hadn’t put on the house light or the lamp light at the beginning of his walkway.

  “Come in.” He pulled the door closed behind her. “Sorry about not putting the lights on.”

  “No problem.” She smiled, as she pulled off her gloves and unzipped her jacket. “I got here.”

  “I’ll take your coat.” Simon hesitated for a moment. Closet or chair? He draped it across the back of his recliner, stepped over, and picked up his laptop so she could sit on the couch. Would you like a drink? I was going to get myself a bottle of water.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And I’ll get the copies I printed out for you.”

  She nodded, the corners of her mouth tugging up. He was acting like a nervous adolescent on his first date. Except he was thirty-six and this wasn’t a date. He escaped into the kitchen, hoping to return as his adult self.

  * * *

  Caro blew out a breath. Simon was acting as antsy as she felt. But she’d chalked up her unease to being cooped up all day with nothing much to do. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the couch. She hoped what Simon had found was a lot more than she had. She wanted to help Hope and her family, but she needed to figure out how, besides buying the nativity scene.

  “Here you go.” Simon returned and handed her a bottle of water, followed by a sheaf of papers that said Simon had definitely been more successful than she had.

  He sat next to her, opened his water, and placed it on the coffee table in front of him. “I printed out Rob’s obituary. Go to the last sentence.”

  “Okay, teacher,” she teased, reading the in lieu of flowers line and her breath caught. It hadn’t registered when she’d read the obit online. “Rob was an addict? He died of an overdose?”

  “Yes and no,” Simon answered. “Flip to the next sheet, the newspaper article. He was fatally shot in a drug deal gone bad.”

  Caro’s heart squeezed. “How awful. All of it.” Sadly, overdoses and gunshots were all too common in the ER. So common that she feared she was developing a shell against the devastation they caused families. The force at which Simons words had hit her gave her some hope she wasn’t becoming completely callous.

  “Yeah. I’m guessing by that time, he’d lost his job at Lockheed, since there’s no mention of it, and the next thing I found is a foreclosure sale on a home in the Littleton area owned by Heather Tucker and the Estate of Robert Tucker.”

  Caro shuffled her papers to the next item about the foreclosure, focusing on the picture of the property. People think they are insulated from situations like the Campbells’. But they’re not, not even in places like Snowflake.

  “It’s a beautiful home. Must be ‘their old house’ that Hope said wasn’t cold like their house here.” The sadness that flowed over her reinforced that she could still feel. But if these were details she’d gotten about an ER patient, would she have felt empathy?

  “Hmm?”

  Caro collected herself. “Hope said it at church, when Gram and I helped with Sunday school. It made me think I could use a chunk of the gift money to buy heating oil or fix their heating system, solve whatever the problem is that’s making where they’re living now cold. But we need to know where they’re living.” Caro raised her gaze from the picture. “Tell me t
hat’s on the next page.”

  “Negative on that. Yet. I do know where the last name Campbell came from. It’s the mother’s maiden name.”

  “Maybe she went back to it after Rob died as part of making a new start for her and the kids. But why in Snowflake? None of Rob’s relatives still live here that I know of.”

  “Me, either. I did search that, and I think I remember Dad saying something about Rob being estranged from his parents. You know, if this were on TV, they’d be hiding here ‘in plain view' from something or someone.”

  “Ha, ha. This isn’t TV. I think Heather is a grieving, struggling single mother. She can’t be earning much working evenings at the convenience mart, even if she’s working there full-time. But I haven’t ever seen her there during the day, except on weekends. Some life insurance maybe?”

  Simon shrugged. “I don’t know, but I had an idea when you were talking about the house foreclosure. We could look at the Arapahoe County Court website and see if we can look at Rob’s will, if he had one.” He picked up his laptop.

  Caro set the printouts Simon had given her aside and leaned toward him to better see the screen. “Rob had a wife, two kids, a big house, and you said that at one time he had a corporate-manager-level job. Chances are good he had a will.”

  Simon clicked on a link on the court website and a PDF application for records opened on the screen. Caro skimmed the form, her heart sinking when she returned her gaze to the first paragraph which said to allow three to five days for a response. And the form didn’t have any link to file it electronically. It would have to be filled out and mailed to or dropped off at the courthouse. The days until Christmas and her having to go back to work were slipping by.

  “We aren’t going to learn anything tonight,” she said. “But we might as well fill the form out.”

  “Yeah, it looks like we can complete it online and print.”

  “Let me put in my information as the person requesting the documents.”

  He handed her the laptop.