A Cowboy's Christmas Carol

by Brenda Harlen

  An unfamiliar figure—young and female—moved toward him, a mug of steaming coffee in hand. “Everyone is home today, sir,” she said.

  “Is it some kind of holiday?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s Christmas.”

  Christmas.

  How could he have forgotten?

  Easily, because years earlier he’d made it clear to his employees that he wasn’t a fan of seasonal decorations and wouldn’t tolerate holiday music being played in the office. Maybe the Christmas card he’d received from his sister, now married and living on the east coast with her family, should have been a clue, but he hadn’t given it that much thought.

  Why would he when he didn’t like to celebrate and there was nobody left in his life to celebrate with, anyway?

  He took the mug from her, his brow furrowing as he tried to remember her name. Heather? Heidi? Margot? Maddie? The names and faces of various assistants who’d come and gone were all blurred together in his mind.

  “So why are you here?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t have any family or anywhere else to be.”

  “Right,” he said, and carried his coffee into his office. “Well, send me the fourth-quarter reports.”

  “I’ll get right on that, sir.”

  “That’s Brooke,” Grandma Daisy said. “Your third assistant in the past six months. The first two quit because they said you were a tyrant—a common observation of your employees.”

  “But none of this is real,” he pointed out. “There’s no way I’d actually forget it was Christmas.”

  “You chose to forgo the joy and celebration of the season a long time ago,” she pointed out. “The togetherness. It’s hardly a jump from that to forgetting about the holiday altogether.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he said. “I have to appreciate the people in my life and remember the true meaning of Christmas. Are we done here now?”

  “Not quite,” she said. “Because it’s not only Daphne’s and your lives that will be different...”

  The scene changed again to show Grandma Daisy alone in a rocking chair by the window, clutching her sketchbook against her chest, tears tracking slowly down her cheeks.

  Evan couldn’t remember ever seeing his grandmother cry. She was always so strong and steady. Even when Grandpa Mike died, Grandma Daisy had held it together. He didn’t doubt that she’d grieved deeply, but she’d done so privately. And the sight of her tears now weighed on his heart.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  “I just found out—too late—that Josiah Abernathy died.”

  He swallowed. “Did you know him?”

  She shook her head. “I never had the chance to meet my biological father. Or my mother.”

  “But you had parents who adored you,” he reminded her. “And you always talked about them with so much love.”

  “Clarence and Frances Hollister were wonderful parents,” she agreed. “They gave me everything they could—except the truth of where I came from.”

  “Why is it my responsibility to fill in the blanks of a story written long before I was ever born?” he challenged.

  “Because you know that the story is incomplete.”

  “I don’t know anything,” he denied. “I just happened to see a social media post that mentioned someone named Daisy.”

  “You should have told me about it,” his grandmother insisted.

  “I didn’t want to be caught in the middle,” he protested.

  “But that’s where you are.”

  For the first time in a very long time, emotion threatened to overwhelm him—but he fought to hold it at bay. “Daphne wanted me to tell you...that’s what we fought about.”

  “Life is about connections, Evan,” she said gently. “And those connections should be embraced and cherished. Even—or maybe especially—when they make you feel uncomfortable.”

  “I made some mistakes. A lot of mistakes.” He swallowed around the tightness in his throat. “But I can do better. I can make things right. I will make things right—if you give me a chance.”

  “It’s not up to me,” Grandma Daisy said. “It’s up to you—it always has been.”

  And with those parting words, she disappeared into the circle of light.

  * * *

  “Daphne.”

  Her name was little more than a whisper from his lips, but Daphne jolted when she heard him speak, relief spreading through her veins. She was already perched on the edge of the hard plastic chair beside his bed, but she leaned closer now. “I’m here, Evan.”

  His eyelids flickered, then opened.

  “You’re here.”

  “Of course, I’m here.”

  He lifted a hand to touch her face, frowning when he saw the hospital bracelet on his wrist. His gaze moved past her then, taking in his surroundings. “Why am I in the hospital?”

  “You were in an accident,” she said.

  The furrow in his brow deepened, as if he was trying to remember.

  “I couldn’t see, because of the snow,” he recalled. “And then my vehicle started to spin—everything seemed to be spinning out of control...but I don’t remember anything after that.”

  She tried to blink away the tears that filled her eyes as she realized, yet again, how much worse the accident could have been and that she might have lost him forever. “Apparently a driver passing by saw your SUV in the ditch and called 9-1-1.”

  “I thought... Did I hear Grandma Daisy’s voice?”

  “Probably,” she said. “Right now she’s in the lounge with your mom, but she was in here earlier. The hospital has a one-visitor-at-a-time policy, so we’ve been taking turns sitting by your bed, waiting for you to wake up.”

  Sean Donohue was there, too, offering moral support to Wanda, who’d immediately left the office when she learned of the accident. But understanding that Evan had mixed feelings about his mother’s relationship, Daphne held back on mentioning the man’s presence.

  “I should go now,” she said instead, “and let them know that you’re awake.”

  He caught her hand as she started to rise. “How long have I been here?”

  “A few hours.”

  “Did they give me drugs?”

  “No. The doctor didn’t want to give you anything until you regained consciousness. Why? Do you want something now? Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “No,” he said, even as he winced. “I just had some really weird dreams that I figured must have been chemically induced.”

  “Do you want to tell me about them?”

  “Yeah, but first I have to know...do you think I’m a scrooge?”

  She frowned. “Where is that coming from?”

  “You didn’t immediately say ‘no,’” he noted.

  “No,” she said now. “I don’t think you’re a scrooge. You might need a little help remembering the true meaning of Christmas, but I think we’ve started to make some progress on that.”

  “Are you still willing to help?”

  “If that’s what you want,” she said cautiously.

  “I want to be with you, Daphne.”

  “Does that mean I’m still invited to Christmas dinner at your mom’s house?”

  “You are definitely still invited to Christmas dinner.” He squeezed her hand tighter. “I love you, Daphne.”

  “You’ve got a head injury,” she reminded him—and maybe herself. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “There are a lot of things I don’t know, but I do know how I feel.” His tone was quieter now, his gaze direct. “And I love you.”

  She hesitated, not because she didn’t feel the same way but because she was afraid to believe that the feelings he professed to have were real.

  “I don’t need you to say it back,” he said. “I just need y
ou to know that it’s true.”

  “I want to say it back,” she told him. Because she could no longer deny the truth that was in her own heart and, still reeling from the knowledge that she could have lost him, she didn’t want to. “Because I love you, too,”

  He smiled then. “I know there are still a lot of things we need to figure out, but right now, I need to talk to Grandma Daisy.”

  * * *

  But Wanda insisted on coming in first to see for herself that her son was okay. She cried, relieved to confirm that he was, then scolded him for scaring her half to death, then cried some more.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  She sniffled. “I know you do.”

  “Still, I should say it more often.”

  “I wouldn’t object to that,” she told him. Then, “I finally got to meet Daphne. I wish it hadn’t happened in a hospital waiting room, but at least it happened.”

  “It would have happened in a few days.”

  “You invited her for Christmas dinner?”

  He nodded, then winced when the movement exacerbated the pounding inside his head.

  Wanda smiled. “I need to get a Tofurky.”

  “A what?” he asked.

  “It’s a tofu turkey.”

  “A regular turkey is fine,” he said. “Daphne offered to make a vegetarian dish. Something with chestnuts.”

  “I can’t have a guest bring her own dinner.” His mother sounded horrified by the very thought.

  “I’ll leave it to you and her to hammer out those details,” he said. “In fact, why don’t you go do that now so I can talk to Grandma Daisy?”

  Of course, his mother was only too happy to leave him then, and he felt only a little bit guilty about using Daphne to distract her. After all, if this was going to be the first of many holidays together, she was going to have to get used to his family.

  “You gave us all a pretty good scare,” Grandma Daisy said, settling into the chair his mother had recently vacated.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “Well, don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t.” He crossed his heart with his finger, making her smile.

  “So what did you want to talk about that couldn’t wait until you got out of here?”

  “Contacting Josiah Abernathy.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Who?”

  “Sorry.” He gave his head a slight shake, then winced at the pain that shot through his skull, a not-at-all-subtle warning to stop doing that. “I had a really weird dream while I was unconscious, and you were there so I assumed you’d know what I was talking about.”

  “I think you’re going to have to go back to the beginning.”

  So he did, starting with the uneasy feeling he had when he first saw the social media post and the internal battle he’d been waging ever since about whether or not to bring it to her attention, even admitting that it was what he and Daphne had argued about.

  “It seems to me that you caused yourself a lot of grief over something that’s probably nothing,” she said. “The name Daisy isn’t all that uncommon.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “But the name and the birth date together with the fact that you’ve lived your whole life in the same town as the Abernathys?”

  “That does seem like a remarkable coincidence.”

  “And maybe that’s all it is,” he said.

  But they both knew that she wouldn’t ever be certain unless and until she got in touch with the Abernathy family.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dorothea wished she could take some time to figure out whether or not she really wanted to open up what might turn out to be a can of worms. But after Evan had shown her the social media post that ended with “Time is of the essence!” she couldn’t help but worry that it might already be too late.

  As she stared through the minivan’s windshield at the Ambling A Ranch, beautifully decorated for the holidays, Wanda reached across the console and took her hand. Dorothea knew that her daughter was still worried about Evan, who’d been released from the hospital just that morning to stay at Happy Hearts with Daphne. No doubt Wanda would have preferred to have him home with her, where she could fuss over him to her heart’s content, but with Vanessa scheduled to arrive the following day, there wasn’t really room for him. And even if there had been somewhere for him to sleep, everyone knew that his preference would be to stay with the woman he’d finally admitted he loved.

  It was interesting, Dorothea thought, that her grandson’s life finally seemed to be settling down and her own was possibly on the verge of being upended.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Wanda said to her now.

  She appreciated her daughter’s support, but Dorothea knew that she was wrong. “If I don’t, I’ll always wonder.”

  “And I can’t help worrying that if it turns out you were adopted, the knowledge will change your memories of your relationship with your parents.”

  “It won’t,” Dorothea said. And then another thought occurred to her. “But this could change things for you, too. If I was adopted, it means you have a whole other family out there, too.”

  “I’m not worried about me,” Wanda said. “Because I had two of the most wonderful parents who ever walked the face of this earth.”

  “Out of all my kids, you always were the biggest suck-up.”

  Her daughter laughed. “Your favorite, you mean.”

  “A mother doesn’t have favorites,” she said, because it was true.

  It was also true that there had always been a special bond between Dorothea and Wanda and, by extension, Wanda’s children.

  And she was grateful for her daughter’s support now as she reached for the handle of the door and said, “Let’s do this.”

  Gabe Abernathy had obviously been watching for their arrival, because he pulled open the door before they had a chance to knock.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” he said, ushering them into a parlor fragrant with the scent of pine, courtesy of the towering tree in front of the window.

  “Melanie’s going to be sorry she missed you,” Gabe said, after they were all seated. “My fiancée’s been spearheading the search for Daisy, but she had a work meeting she couldn’t miss this afternoon.”

  “You’re going to have to start at the beginning,” Dorothea told him. “We don’t really know anything more than what was written in those few lines we read on Facebook.”

  So that was what Gabe did. He told them about Melanie’s discovery of the letter, written by his great-grandfather to his first love, and within it the reference to a daughter given up for adoption seventy-five years earlier. The letter had given them more questions than answers, and unfortunately Josiah, in the late stages of dementia, wasn’t able to answer any of them. But with the help of Malone, the Abernathy’s longtime family cook, they’d managed to piece together a little bit more history.

  “It was at my sister Erica’s wedding, when the organist played ‘Bicycle Built for Two,’ that Malone suddenly remembered Josiah referring to his long-lost daughter, Daisy,” Gabe said.

  “I’m not familiar with that song,” Wanda admitted.

  “I know it,” Dorothea said. “And I remember—at least I think I remember—a man singing it to me when I was a little girl.”

  “Then you have to be the Daisy we’ve been looking for,” Gabe said excitedly. “I thought the social media post was a long shot at first. And after a few days, I thought it was a mistake.” He shook his head ruefully. “You wouldn’t believe some of the crazy calls we got. But we followed up every single one, despite the fact that none of them presented any real leads—until now.”

  “I think it’s a pretty big leap from coincidental names and birth dates to such a conclusion,” Wanda told him.

  “Maybe it is,” he said. “But—”

>   “I want to see Josiah,” Dorothea interjected.

  Her daughter looked worried. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I feel strongly that it’s something I have to do.”

  “I’ll call Snowy Mountain and add your name to the visitor list,” Gabe said.

  * * *

  “And now we’re all going to Snowy Mountain on Saturday to meet Josiah Abernathy,” Evan explained to Daphne later that day, after he’d spoken to his mother and been advised of the plan.

  “Who’s all?” she wondered as she continued to tidy up the kitchen after dinner.

  Evan had wanted to help, but Daphne was determined to see that he adhered to the doctor’s order to rest.

  “Grandma Daisy, my mom, Vanessa, me—and you, if you want to come.”

  “I’ve got a thousand and one things to do here,” she said. “And truthfully—”

  “Truthfully, what?” he prompted.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s not really any of my business.”

  He reached out for her hand and slowly drew her toward him. “Please tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “If you really want my opinion—”

  “I do,” he interrupted to assure her.

  “I’m not sure you should be going, either.”

  “Well, since you won’t let me help with any of those thousand and one things you mentioned—”

  “Because you’re recovering from a head injury,” she said, interrupting him this time.

  “—there’s no reason for me to hang around here.”

  “How about the fact that you’re recovering from a head injury?” she asked as he drew her down onto his lap. “And you’re here because, when the doctor released you from the hospital this morning, he said you shouldn’t be alone for the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Which doesn’t mean that you have to ask me every five minutes how I’m feeling.”

  “I haven’t been asking every five minutes.” More like every thirty. “And how else am I supposed to know if you’re experiencing any headaches, dizziness or nausea?”