Last Chance Christmas

by Hope Ramsay

  Kamaria turned toward Lark and, in a most un-mayor-like manner, told her to leave the premises and never return. When Lark ignored her, Kamaria turned toward Stone and said, “Arrest that woman. She’s stalking my mother.”

  “Uh, well, you’d have to get a court protective order for me to arrest her, Mayor LaFlore. And besides, she isn’t stalking your mother. She’s just trying to talk to her. Now, why don’t you just calm down, okay? And we can maybe talk this through like adults.”

  The look on the mayor’s face told him that he’d probably just stepped in a big pile of horse-pucky. She was going to have his ass in a sling if he didn’t stop Lark.

  But there wasn’t any way he could stop Lark from pursuing this. He’d tried. And failed.

  And then it struck him, like a bolt from the blue, that Kamaria was terrified of learning the truth.

  “I’m sorry,” Lark said as she crossed the lawn, “but I need the truth.”

  Nita stood on her walk, her eyes flicking from Lark to Kamaria and back again. The mayor was yelling at Stone, which wasn’t fair. This wasn’t his fault. Stone behaved just like a cop. He went into calm mode, using every bit of his professional training to defuse what was rapidly becoming a domestic situation.

  Just as Lark’s courage began to falter, a tall man, wearing a gray suit, walked up behind Nita and put his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down and spoke softly. “Momma, I know Kamaria is scared, but maybe she needs the truth.”

  Nita looked up at the man, her eyes suddenly liquid with unshed tears. “It’s going to hurt her.”

  “She’ll survive.” He patted Nita’s shoulder and then headed off toward the mayor-elect.

  “That’s my son-in-law, Jakob,” Nita said. “He’s a cardiologist up at the hospital in Orangeburg, and I think he understands hearts better than just about anyone. He’s a good man.”

  Jakob spoke softly to Kamaria, and the yelling stopped. Nita let go of a long, pensive sigh. “Stone, you might as well come on in and hear what I have to say, too. This is as much about your granddaddy as it is about Lark’s father.”

  Nita turned, headed up the porch steps, and unlocked the door to her house. Everyone followed.

  Nita’s front room was awash in Christmas decorations, from the big tree in her front window to a village of Christmas miniatures on her coffee table. The smell of pine filled the room, and the furniture was contemporary and comfortable.

  She turned on the Christmas lights before she settled herself on the couch. “Sit down, Lark. You too, Kamaria.” She turned to Jakob. “Honey, you think you and the boys could get some coffee and sandwiches going?”

  “Coming right up,” Jakob said as he herded two school-aged boys dressed in their Sunday best down the center hall and out of the room.

  “Momma, you don’t have to talk to this woman. You can—”

  “Hush now. The truth is I do need to talk to Lark. And you need to listen to what I have to say.” Nita turned and gazed up at Stone, who had not taken a seat. He stood in the archway, his shoulder propping up the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “Don’t you want to sit, Stone?”

  “I’ll stand,” he said, his voice low and deep.

  Lark was glad he was there. And she wanted to find time to explore some of those things he’d just said. She longed to sleep with him. To wake up with him. She wanted him so much it was almost frightening.

  She turned her attention back to Nita. “On Thursday, I told you what my father always said about the eighteenth hole. You told me you didn’t know why. But I think you do.”

  Nita laced her fingers together and studied the Christmas miniatures for a long moment. When she looked up, there were unshed tears glittering in her eyes.

  “I was not quite twenty years old. And Abe Chaikin was the most amazing person I had ever met in my life. He was gentle and articulate. He’d seen a whole lot of the world. He had a sense of the absurd and a deep, abiding love for justice.

  “And he was color-blind.”

  Lark found herself nodding. “Yeah, he was also irascible, difficult, moody, and opinionated.”

  Nita wiped a tear from her eye. “Yes, I can see that. But I didn’t know him for very long. Just maybe ten days all told.”

  “Just ten days?”

  “As long as you’ve been in town,” Stone said.

  She looked up at him. He looked oddly grim.

  Nita shrugged. “When you’re nineteen, it doesn’t take much to get swept away.”

  “Momma, what are you saying?”

  Nita stared at her daughter. “Honey, I’m not saying anything you haven’t already halfway figured out. So don’t argue with me. I love you more than I love life itself, but it’s time for me to tell the truth.”

  Nita reached out and took Lark’s hand. She patted it. “Your daddy was a good man. And don’t you believe the nonsense anyone says about him having anything to do with Zeke Rhodes’s death, you hear. That’s not what happened.”

  “What happened then?” Stone asked.

  “Well, for one thing, I fell in love with Abe.”

  “Momma, no.”

  Nita stared her daughter down, then continued. “I did. I fell for him. And I let him talk me into things I never thought I would do. I was a good girl. I was the kind of girl who always walked the straight and narrow line between black and white. But he showed me the absurdity of that. And so I followed him into the Kountry Kitchen that day. And I knew it was the right thing to do. But I wasn’t all that brave. Love filled me up, and I acted on it.

  “But you know, there are people in this world who don’t understand about love.”

  She paused and looked up at the Christmas tree. “I think it’s important, especially at this time of year, to remember why we celebrate Christmas.” She turned back toward Kamaria. “It’s all about love.”

  “Momma, what are you talking about?”

  “For the space of a few days, I loved Abe Chaikin. And because we didn’t have anyplace to go that wasn’t always watched by someone, we ended up in a sleeping bag out on the eighteenth hole.”

  Both Kamaria and Stone made surprised noises.

  Nita gave Lark a sober look. “By your lack of reaction, I’m thinking that you already figured that out, didn’t you?”

  Lark nodded. “Yeah. But if you loved him, why did you let him go?”

  “Because I lost my faith in love. People were angry about what Abe and I did that morning we had breakfast at the Kountry Kitchen. Can you imagine how they would feel if they knew we were sleeping together?

  “A group of white boys decided they were going to teach me and Abe a lesson for being uppity. We got wind of it. Abe begged me to come back to New York with him. He asked me to marry him.”

  “Why didn’t you go?” Lark asked.

  “Because I wasn’t brave enough. I knew things were maybe a little better in New York, but I knew it would be hard for me and Abe no matter where we went. There was a group of angry people chasing us down, and it just seemed like our future was going to be like that no matter where we went.”

  Nita let go of a deep sigh. “I was wrong. I was so wrong. But it took me years to figure that out. Lark, honey, this world is messed up, but it’s a better place than it was forty years ago. It’s not perfect, but it’s a better place. And it’s better because of people like me and Abe.” She looked at Lark and Kamaria. “And because of you girls, too. You don’t see the world the same way, and that’s a good thing. I wish I had been braver. I sent him away.”

  “What happened to my grandfather?” Stone asked.

  Nita looked up at him. “Honestly, Stone, I don’t know. He told me to hide in the Ark. I was buried under a bunch of hay with the barn doors closed when those angry boys came by. I couldn’t tell you who they were. But I do know that somehow Zeke scared the living daylights out of them. He ran them all off. They were terrified by something out there. I heard them hollering.”

  “But how did he—”

  “
I don’t know. If you want the truth, Stone, I think it was his angels. I know that’s a little crazy, but that’s what I believe. Anyway, when I left him that evening, he was alive. I went home, and Momma was so scared about what had happened that she took me right to Columbia and put me on a bus to Chicago where my aunt lived. I only heard later that Zeke died that night. I don’t know how.”

  Nita turned toward Kamaria. “This is the hard part, honey, because about a month after I got to Chicago I discovered I was pregnant.”

  The silence in Nita’s front room was so thick that Lark had trouble breathing.

  “Y’all are sisters,” Nita said.

  “No!” Kamaria stood up and ran from the room, down the hall. In the distance, the back door opened and slammed shut.

  “It’s going to take her some time to get used to that. I lied to her, you see. She thought my husband was her daddy. And in all the important ways, Terrence was her father. She didn’t know Abe.”

  “Did Pop know about her?”

  Nita shook her head. “I never told him. I didn’t think there was a place for a family like ours. You know back then, it was against the law for a black woman and a white man to get married in some states. But now, I realize we could have found a place if I’d been willing to try.

  “And then I met Terrence, and he changed me. Kamaria was a few months old, and he taught me the truth about love. He was a good man with a big heart, and he accepted her as his own.”

  “But she must have known he wasn’t her biological father.”

  “Well, Kamaria knew she was born before we got married, but she just thought we’d made a mistake. We were young, and it wasn’t so strange. As it turned out, Terrence couldn’t have children, so she was all we had. He loved her until the cancer took him.”

  Lark nodded. “I’m glad for that. But…” Her throat closed up, and she struggled for words. A hand came down on her shoulder.

  Stone. She had almost forgotten he was there. “Pop would be so disappointed that he didn’t know Kamaria.”

  “I’m sure that’s right. And I regret that. But maybe we can make amends because you’re her sister, and you can tell her about her birth father. And I hope you will.”

  “I’m not sure she wants to know.”

  “She’ll come around. And you should always remember that you have family in Last Chance. I’m so glad you came here this morning, because I spent a lot of time in church today praying about this. I knew I had to tell you the truth. And I needed to make you understand how important it is to have faith in love.

  “I think Abe came to understand this, too. I think he wanted to come back here and be laid to rest in a place where he truly loved. So I’m going to talk to Elbert. Zeke was your father’s friend, and I know he would want your father’s last wish to be granted.”

  Lark nodded, tears filling her eyes. It wasn’t easy to discover that Mom was not Pop’s great love. But then, from the sound of it, Pop probably hadn’t been Nita’s great love either. The way she talked about her husband was a whole lot like the way Stone talked about Sharon.

  “Thanks,” she said and stood up. “I think I better go now.” She turned and headed for the front door before she came apart at the seams. She’d gone looking for answers, and she’d found them. Now she wondered why the hell she’d done it.

  Pop had loved in vain. And it sure did look like his younger daughter might be getting ready to do the same stupid thing. Lark had always been so casual about all her relationships. Love had nothing to do with any of them.

  Damn it.

  The truth didn’t always set you free.

  Lark held her head high as she left Nita’s house. But Stone could tell by the tension in her shoulders that Nita’s story had hurt her.

  He caught up with her and put his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t have any words. He wasn’t good at stuff like this, but he had to make the effort. For Lark. She needed someone right now. And he couldn’t imagine a more awful, messy situation.

  She was alone in the world and had just discovered a family that was divided on whether she should be invited in. That had to suck.

  “You’re not okay,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “C’mon. I’ll take you someplace.”

  He kept his hand on her shoulder, conscious of the tiny bones beneath his palm. He guided her to her SUV. “Give me the keys.”

  She dug in the pocket of her jeans, fished them out, and handed them to him. He opened the door and helped her into the passenger’s seat.

  When he sat in the driver’s seat, he took off his Stetson and threw it in the back. Then he called in to the county dispatch and told them he was taking the rest of the day off. He turned off his radio, then fired up the SUV and drove it back to the parking lot at the Cut ’n Curl.

  Downtown Last Chance was practically deserted, so he didn’t think anyone saw him walk Lark up the stairs to the apartment and shut the door behind him.

  She turned around and spoke in a shaky voice. “Did you mean what you said?”

  “Uh, you mean that stuff about wanting to sleep with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah. I did. Dropping you off last night was one of the hardest things I ever did.”

  She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his middle. His utility belt and vest got in the way, but it was still nice to have her leaning on him. He felt useful holding her up.

  “You’re provincial,” she said.

  He buried his nose in her short hair and inhaled. Her aroma raced through his brain, unleashing a chaos of longing within him. “Provincial?”

  “Yeah. It’s one of the things I like most about you.”

  “Well, I guess I’m glad you like something.”

  “I like a lot,” she said against his shirt.

  He tilted her head up and kissed her briefly. Then he pulled back. “Momma has the girls for the day. I’m free until this afternoon. I have to be home early because of Haley’s Christmas play. But I’ve got a few hours. We can sit here and drink tea and talk. You can tell me how you’re hurting. We can swap war stories. There isn’t anything you’re feeling right now that would scare me away. Or we could not talk, if that’s what you want.”

  She looked up at him and pressed her fingers against his lips. “I want more than talk. You can start by taking off the weapon and the vest, and then we can see where it goes from there.”

  She didn’t have to ask him twice.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Lizzy had taken her phone into the bathroom, which meant she was talking to David. Or maybe Cassie, but Haley was pretty sure it was David.

  Which was why Haley leaned up against the door and listened. Lizzy was talking in a low voice, but Haley heard enough to know that her big sister was planning to meet someone out at Granddaddy’s golf course.

  Haley waited until the phone call was almost over before she scooted into the living room, where Granddaddy was watching the Atlanta Falcons football game. Granny was in the kitchen fixing the dumb ol’ shepherd costume that Haley was going to have to wear for the play at church later. The hood on the costume was too big and flopped down into Haley’s eyes.

  Haley sure hoped Granny could fix that because it was bad enough that the stupid costume itched. And she was going to be so embarrassed when Maryanne messed up her lines.

  She pretended to watch the football game as Lizzy came into the room, pulling on her big red sweater.

  “Hey Granny,” Lizzy called as she hurried into the kitchen. “Is it okay if I go over to Cassie’s house for a little while? Her mother is acting all weird again.”

  Granny looked up from the sewing machine. She was wearing a pair of little half-glasses that made her look kind of funny. “You know, Lizzy, it’s not right to talk about your elders like that.”

  Lizzy rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Granny, you know as well as I do that Mrs. Nelson is goofy. And Cassie says she gets all weird and sad this time of year.”
>
  Granny nodded. “It’s depression, honey, not goofiness. And she’s on medication for it.”

  “I’m sorry, Granny. But Cassie calls her goofy all the time.”

  “Well, I guess it’s not easy having a mother like that. You need to be back home no later than four o’clock, you hear? Haley’s play is at five-thirty.”

  “Do I have to?”

  Granny gave Lizzy one of those grown-up looks. “Yes, you do. She’s your sister.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lizzy said.

  Haley didn’t really blame Lizzy. The Christmas play was going to be lame.

  But at the same time, Lizzy not wanting to be there made Haley feel kind of sad and lonely. She’d been feeling that way all day, ever since this morning, when the Sorrowful Angel had left the house with Daddy. She hadn’t come back. Neither had Daddy, even though he didn’t really have to work on Sundays.

  Sometimes he came home and watched football with Granddaddy. Haley liked those Sundays. She would sometimes sit on his lap and watch with him. But not today.

  Daddy was working today. And Lizzy was going to hang out with Cassie. Maryanne was practicing for the play. And the angel was missing suddenly. Haley felt a little bit hollow, like one of those chocolate Santa Clauses that she always got in her stocking.

  Thinking about Santa only made her feel worse. She really was having her doubts.

  “All right, honey, you can go to Cassie’s, but you need to be back on time. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely. I promise.” Lizzy turned on her heel and headed for the door. Haley followed her out onto the porch. It had gotten cold outside. Maybe cold enough to snow.

  Although right now the sun was shining.

  “You’re not going to Cassie’s, are you?” Haley said.

  “Shut up, Haley. You’re such a brat sometimes.”

  “You’re going to Granddaddy’s golf course. I heard you tell someone that the door to the Ark is always open.”