by Susan Wiggs
In time, they had all learned to smile again, to find the joys in life. And eventually, her father had married Hannah, who adored the children and mothered them as fiercely and devotedly as if she’d given birth to them. One of the reasons Maureen loved Christmas so much was that Hannah always set aside time at the holiday for each child to spend remembering their mother. This meant there were tears, sometimes even anger, but ultimately, it meant their mother lived in their hearts no matter how long she’d been gone.
Only now, as an adult, could Maureen truly appreciate Hannah’s great generosity of spirit. They were a close family, and this time of year was the perfect time to remember the many ways she was blessed. Even in the face of the biggest professional disaster of her career, she could still feel blessed.
Maureen loved everything about Christmas—the cold nip in the air and the crunch of snow underfoot. The aroma of baking cookies and the twinkle of lights in shop windows and along roof lines. The old songs drifting from the radio, sentimental movies on TV, stacks of Christmas books on library tables, the children’s artwork on display. The cheery clink of coins in the Salvation Army collection bucket and the fellowship of people working together on holiday projects.
All of this made her feel a part of something. All of this made her feel safe. Yes, she loved Christmas.
Five
Eddie Haven couldn’t stand Christmas. It was his own private hell. His aversion had started at a young age, and had only grown stronger with the passage of years. Which did not explain why he was on his way to help build a nativity scene in front of the Heart of the Mountains Church.
At least he didn’t have to go alone. His passengers were three brothers who had been categorized at the local high school as at-risk teens. Eddie had never been fond of the label, “at-risk.” As far as he could tell, just being a teenager was risky. Tonight, three of them were his unlikely allies, and at the moment they were arguing over nothing, as brothers seemed to do. Tonight was all about keeping the boys occupied. One of the main reasons they were at risk was that they had too much time on their hands. He figured by putting their hands on hammers and hay bales, they’d spend a productive evening and stay out of trouble.
“Hey, Mr. Haven,” said Omar Veltry, his youngest charge. “I bet you five dollars I can tell you where you got them boots you’re wearing.”
“What makes you think I even have five dollars?” Eddie asked.
“Then bet me,” Omar piped up. “Maybe I’ll lose and you’ll get five dollars off me. Five dollars says I can tell you where you got those boots.”
“Hell, I don’t even know where I got them. So go for it.”
“Ha. You got those boots on your feet, man.” Omar nearly bounced himself off the seat. He high-fived each brother in turn and they all giggled like maniacs.
Christ. At a stoplight, Eddie dug in his pocket, found a five. “Man. You are way too smart for me. All three of you are real wiseguys.”
“Ain’t we, though?”
“I bet you’re smart enough to put that fiver in the church collection box,” Eddie added.
“Oh, man.” Omar collapsed against the seat.
Heart of the Mountains Church was situated on a hillside overlooking Willow Lake, its slender steeple rising above the trees. The downhill-sloping road bowed out to the left near the main yard of the church, and a failure to negotiate the curve could mean a swift ride to disaster. Eddie slowed the van. No matter how many times he rounded this curve in the road, he always felt the same shudder of memory. This was where the two halves of his life had collided—the past and the future—one snowy night, ten years ago.
Tonight, the road was bare and dry. The iconic church was the picture of placid serenity, its windows aglow in the twilight, the landscape stark but beautiful, waiting for the snow. This, Eddie figured, was the sort of setting people imagined for weddings and holiday worship, community events—and of course, AA meetings.
He pulled into the church parking lot. “I’m officially broke now. Thanks a lot.”
“I heard you used to be a movie star,” Randy, the older brother, pointed out. “Everybody knows movie stars are rich.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Eddie said. “Rich.”
“Betcha you’re rich from that movie,” the middle brother, Moby, pointed out. “I saw it on TV just the other night. ‘There’s magic in Christmas, if only you believe,’” he quoted. It was a famous line in The Christmas Caper, uttered by a wide-eyed and irresistible little Eddie. The damn thing aired endlessly like a digital virus every holiday season.
“Now you’re officially on my nerves,” said Eddie. “And FYI, I’m not rich from the movie. Not even close.”
“Huh,” Moby said with a snort of disbelief. Moby was his nickname, based not on his size, but on the fact that his given name was Richard. “Your movie’s huge. It’s on TV every Christmas.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t do me a bit of good.”
“You don’t, like, get a cut or anything?”
“Geez, don’t look at me like that. I was a kid, okay? And my parents didn’t do so hot, being in charge of finances.” The Havens had been incredibly naive, in fact. Against all odds and conventional wisdom, they’d managed to fail to make money off one of the most successful films of the year.
Maybe that was why he avoided his folks like poison ivy around the holidays. Oh, please let it not be so, Eddie thought. He didn’t want to be so shallow. But neither did he want to try figuring out the real reason he steered clear of family matters at Christmas.
“Did they, like, take your money and spend it on cars and stuff?” Randy asked. “Or make stupid investments?”
“It’s complicated,” Eddie said. “To make a long story short, they signed some contracts without quite knowing what they were agreeing to, and none of us saw any earnings. It was a long time ago,” he added. “Water under the bridge.”
“Didn’t you, like, grow up in some kind of compound?” Moby asked. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”
Eddie laughed. “Commune, not compound. There’s a difference.” His parents had caught the tail end of the radical sixties, and for a time, they’d dropped out of society. They’d spent the seventies on a commune in a remote, rural area of the Catskills, convinced that simple living and self-sufficiency would lead the way to Nirvana. Eddie had been born in a hand-built cabin without electricity or running water, his mother attended by a midwife and surrounded by chanting doulas. He wondered what the Veltry brothers would say if they knew the actual name on his birth certificate. It was a far cry from Eddie. “A commune is based on the idea that the community raises the kids, not just the parents,” he explained to them. “I was homeschooled, too. The group kind of fell apart after a while, but by then, my folks had created a traveling show. We were on the road a lot.”
“Musta sucked for you,” Randy said.
Eddie had thought so, but working with kids like the Veltrys had shown him everything was relative. Compared to the three brothers, Eddie’s problems had been nothing. At least both of his parents had been present. According to Eddie’s friend Ray Tolley, who was with the local PD, the Veltry boys were in foster care more than they were out. Eddie didn’t know the precise reason and he didn’t want to bug them by asking. They’d never known their father, and they had a mother who couldn’t manage to stay out of jail.
When Eddie was their age, his biggest worry had been how to survive his parents and the legacy of the Haven family. He came from a long line of entertainers dating back generations, to Edvard Haszczak, a circus acrobat who stowed away on a freighter from the Baltic Sea. Upon arrival in America, Edvard had changed his unspellable last name and founded a family of performers. Eddie’s great-grandparents had been vaudeville singers; his grandparents were borscht-belt crooners and Eddie’s parents were a semifamous couple who had starred in a cheesy variety show in the 1960s called Meet the Havens when they were just teenagers themselves.
During their counterculture y
ears, they’d dropped out of everything, but trying to bring up a child woke them up to the reality that they couldn’t always depend on the commune for everything. They couldn’t raise money for doctor visits and clothes for a growing child in the communal garden. So at a young age, too young to be consulted about it, the youngest Haven carried on the family tradition of show business. After appearing in a couple of commercials, including one featuring him as a bare-bottomed baby, he scored a box office hit which had become the Christmas movie that would not die. His delivery of an unforgettable line, and his performance of an iconic song—“The Runaway Reindeer”—ensured his fame for decades to follow.
Although he landed a couple more movie roles—a horror flick, a stupid musical, voicing a cartoon—Eddie never cared that much for acting and the projects flopped or never made it to release. Yet no matter how many hats he subsequently tried on—serious music student, edgy grunge rocker, soulful singer/songwriter—the child-star persona stuck to him like melted candy. He grew up in the shadow of a little kid who had no idea what he was saying when he mouthed the lines that defined him for a generation of viewers.
His parents continued to perform, featuring Eddie in an act designed to cash in on his popularity. “Meet the Havens,” as the trio became known, spent every Christmas season on the road. This left Eddie with little more than a blur of unpleasant memories of the holiday season. His parents insisted Christmas was the ideal time of year for a traveling ensemble. People tended to get nostalgic, and in the grip of the holiday spirit, they opened their pockets. From the time he was very small, he’d been obliged to head out with his parents the day after Thanksgiving, playing a different small venue every night, right up to New Year’s Day. They stayed in nondescript motels and ate their meals on the fly, often skipping dinner because it was too close to showtime.
Eddie had hated it, yet every single night when he stepped out in front of an audience, he did so with a smile on his face and a song on his lips. But it left a bad taste in his mouth about Christmas.
He didn’t let on to the three Veltry boys, though. He honestly wanted them to regard Christmas with the benign good spirits that seemed to emanate from those who, this evening, had left their warm homes to help build the church’s nativity scene—an elaborate, detailed and life-size frieze that attracted fans from all over the upper part of the state. This was one of the most popular sights in Avalon this time of year, and the church, in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce, went all out.
A number of volunteers were there already, organizing the components of the display—structures and figures, heavy-duty cables and lights, lumber and power tools. The boys approached their task with a cocky swagger that was lost on the church people. What was not lost was the boys’ sagging jeans and oversize hoodies with tribal-looking symbols.
Ray Tolley came over to greet them. “Not your usual suspects,” he murmured to Eddie. Ray was one of Eddie’s closest friends, though they couldn’t be more different. Ray came from a solid, stable background. He’d been born and raised right here in Avalon. He was a good keyboard player, mediocre at pool and big on practical jokes.
He was also Eddie’s parole officer.
They’d met as boys at summer camp. They’d met again as adults, the night of the accident. Ray, a rookie back then, had been in charge of taking a statement from Eddie.
In his hospital bed, his injuries relatively minor after the fiery wreck, Eddie had not been able to offer much in the way of explanation. Ray hadn’t wanted to hear about Eddie’s romantic troubles that night or about Eddie’s issues with the Christmas holiday. Looking back on that time, it was surprising that they’d become friends at all, let alone bandmates.
Eddie introduced the Veltry boys to Noah Shepherd, a friend of his who played in the band. Noah was also a veterinarian who had access to large amounts of hay. Noah was with his stepson, Max Bellamy. The kid was growing like a weed, pushing his way awkwardly into adolescence. “These guys will help you with the truck-load of hay bales,” Eddie said, introducing Omar, Randy and Moby.
“Great,” Noah replied. “Grab some work gloves out of the cab.”
A dark, polished Maybach glided to a stop in the parking lot, and out stepped the pudgy kid Eddie had encountered the other night. The moment the elegant ride slipped away, some of the other teenagers present circled him like a school of sharks, taunting him, one of them tugging at his hoodie.
“That’s Cecil Byrne,” said Omar, who’d noticed Eddie’s interest. “He just moved here and he’s, like, the richest kid in town. Everybody hates him.”
“Because he’s new? Or rich?”
Omar shrugged. “He’s pretty much of a geek. People can’t stand that.”
“Do me a favor,” Eddie said to Randy, the eldest of the Veltrys. “Go see if he can help with some transformers.”
Randy nodded, clearly grasping his task. He waded through the shark tank. The other kids gave way without hesitation, some of them greeting him and confirming Eddie’s instinct that the Veltry boys were considered cool. Randy, with his Jay-Z-style good looks and attitude, simply said, “Yo, Cecil, we could use some help with some electrical transformers over here.”
Cecil nodded and followed Randy with unconcealed relief. He still had that outcast look, the look of a kid who wasn’t comfortable in his own skin. High school was a bumpy ride for kids like that.
Guys were setting up power tools, plugging them into long orange extension cords. One of the volunteers, a local business owner who’d never liked Eddie for reasons Eddie didn’t quite understand, leaned over to his friend and said, “Look who’s back in town. Mr. Runaway Reindeer.”
Eddie made a kissing sound with his mouth. “Always a pleasure to see you again, Lyall.”
The guy jerked a thumb at the Veltry boys. “Check out the baby outlaws,” he told his buddies. “Better keep track of your tools.”
“Come on, Lyall,” Eddie said, grinning through his temper. “Don’t be an ass.” The two of them went back way too far, all the way back to their summer camp days, when Eddie had stolen a girl from Lyall.
“Then quit bringing your trashy kids around and we won’t have a problem,” Lyall said.
Eddie stared down at the ground. Counted to ten. Silently recited the serenity prayer. Forced his fists to unfurl. “Let’s not do this, Lyall.”
“Fine. We won’t do this. Just keep an eye on those kids.”
Damn, thought Eddie, counting again. Why do I do this to myself? I could be back in the city, playing my guitar, or—
A car door slammed. “Hello,” sang a female voice. “We brought hot chocolate.”
He looked over to see Maureen Davenport with a hugely pregnant woman. They started pouring drinks from a thermos and handing them out. The blond, pregnant woman was pretty enough, but it was Maureen who held his attention. Dour little Maureen, wrapped up like a cannoli in a muffler, peering out at the world from behind her thick glasses.
He sidled over to her. “Didn’t know I’d see you here. I guess you can’t get enough of me.”
She pulled the muffler down and offered a tight little smile. “Right. You are so irresistible. What are you doing here, Mr. I-Can’t-Stand-Christmas?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the other woman. “This is my friend, Olivia Davis.”
“Hey, Lolly.” A big guy in a parka showed up, bending to give her a peck on the cheek. “Connor Davis,” he said. “This is my brother, Julian Gastineaux. He’s a Cornell student, just visiting for the weekend.”
They didn’t look like brothers; Connor resembled a lumberjack while Julian was clearly of mixed race, long-limbed and slender as a marathon runner. He wore a fleece-lined bomber cap but despite the dorky headgear, nearly every teenage girl present seemed to be swooning over him.
“I’m Eddie Haven.” Eddie turned to the blond woman again. “Lolly. Have we met?”
“Lolly Bellamy,” she said. “We both went to Camp Kioga, a hundred years ago.”
�
�I didn’t know you went to Camp Kioga,” said Maureen.
“Five summers,” Eddie said. “Best summers of my life.”
“Olivia and Connor turned it into a year-round resort,” Maureen said.
“Good to know,” Julian said, aiming a teasing grin at Olivia. “I’m ordering room service breakfast in the morning.”
“Huh,” she said, “that’s for paying guests only.” She held out an insulated paper cup to Eddie. “Hot chocolate?”
He thanked her, and she went off with her husband and brother-in-law. Eddie turned to Maureen. “I’m here for the drinks. What about you?”
“I wanted to help out.”
“Let’s both be honest and say we didn’t want to be alone tonight, and neither of us had a better offer.”
She frowned as though unsure whether she believed him or not. “Who says I didn’t have a better offer?”
“Yeah? What did you turn down in order to build a manger?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’re trying to psych me out,” he accused.
“Sure. Of course that’s what I’m doing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go uncrate a sheep.”
The air came alive with the sound of hammering. Eddie worked on the lighting and sound for the display, because these were things he knew. And in spite of himself, he kept an eye on the Veltry brothers—not because he thought they might steal something, but because they had wandering attention spans. He commandeered Max and Omar to aim the floodlights at the display from all angles, with the most powerful beam installed above, streaming down into the middle of the manger. There were also yards of light strings that would outline the structure and the church, as well.
Maureen was hovering nearby. “It’s not coming together,” she said, her head tipped back as she critically surveyed the display.